People I Thought Were Dead
- Joey Bishop – TV host
- Ernest Borgnine – actor
- Red Buttons – actor
- Kitty Carlisle – game show panelist
- Alistair Cooke – TV host
- Buddy Ebsen – actor
- Glenn Ford – actor
- Eugene McCarthy – U.S. senator
- Jack Paar – TV host, “The Tonight Show”
- Don Pardo – TV announcer
- Artie Shaw – clarinetist and bandleader
- Byron White – U.S. supreme court justice
- Richard Widmark – actor
Updates
- Joey Bishop – died 10/17/2007, age 89
- Ernest Borgnine – died 7/8/2012, age 95
- Red Buttons – died 7/13/2006, age 87
- Kitty Carlisle – died 4/18/2007, age 96
- Alistair Cooke – died 3/30/2004, age 95
- Buddy Ebsen – died 7/6/2003, age 95
- Glenn Ford – died 8/30/2006, age 90
- Eugene McCarthy – died 12/10/2005, age 89
- Jack Paar – died 1/27/2004, age 85
- Don Pardo – died 8/18/2014, age 96
- Artie Shaw – died 12/30/2004, age 94
- Byron White – died 4/15/2002, age 84
- Richard Widmark – died 3/24/2008, age 93
Got a Minute?
Samuel Butler Meets Rusty and Andrea Yates
“Poor people! They had tried to keep their ignorance of the world from themselves by calling it the pursuit of heavenly things, and then shutting their eyes to anything that might give them trouble.”
Related Links
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Transcript of Andrea Yates’ confession
This is very, very sad and hard to forget. You may want to just skip it.
Is That All There Is?
Peggy Lee dies at 81. No report as yet on her final words . . .
Convergence
Ted Demme
Director Ted Demme dies while participating in a celebrity basketball game.
I can’t think of any plausible reason for attending a celebrity basketball game other than watching some fat cokehead keel over.
Kudos, Ted!
Topics to Avoid
From ExecutivePlanet.com:
- England
- Do not make references to the mediocrity of British food, since it has now improved significantly.
Paul Lynde
I’d forgotten how funny this guy was.
Here’s a link to Lynde’s best Hollywood Squares one-liners.
Samples:
PETER MARSHALL: Burt Reynolds is quoted as saying, “Dinah (Shore)’s in top form. I’ve never known anyone to be so completely able to throw herself into a . . . ” A what?
PAUL LYNDE: A headboard.
PETER MARSHALL: Prometheus was tied to the top of a mountain by the gods because he had given something to man. What did he give us?
PAUL LYNDE: I don’t know what you got, but I got a sports shirt.
Hockey is Fun!
Thomas Junta, a 275-pound “hockey dad,” was convicted of manslaughter for beating to death another parent, 156-pound Michael Costin, at a youth scrimmage.
The point that Junta was trying to get across to Costin was that Costin’s sons were playing too rough and spoiling a nice, fun game of hockey.
Way to go, Dad!
Disband Man
Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale is disbanding his venture firm, the Barksdale Group, after two years of operation.
Many of the firm’s investments received favorable publicity mentions, none actually made any money, and some are defunct.
This guy is the kiss of death . . .
Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips — producer (The Sting, Taxi Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), author ( You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again), cocaine addict — dies of cancer in West Hollywood, Ca. She was 57.
Her book, a memoir of life in Tinseltown, made her an icon and a pariah simultaneously.
“I wasn’t a pariah because I was a drug-addicted . . . rotten person [but] because I lit them with a harsh fluorescent light and rendered them as contemptible as they truly are.”
Crazy Eddie’s Movie Reviews
Entertainment for mental patients
I was a student at Cal State Fullerton in 1976 when Ed Allaway went berserk, shooting nine of his co-workers in the university library, killing seven.
Don’t Tell Strom the Babysitter’s Dead
Radical Notions Debunked!
The big controversy at the office this week was a “radical” idea offered by one of our developers regarding data collection with a series of web-based forms.
The idea was that rather than just pouring the data into a relational database like everyone else does, we’d build up an XML tree, essentially a gigantic (in this case, ~200K) string, and pass that around from form to form.
The advantages of this, if I understood correctly, would be to simplify the data model design and eliminate the need for table joins.
Of course, it also violates every known rule of efficient data access and ratchets up the processing requirements by several orders of magnitude, but that didn’t stop one of the development managers from throwing his full-fledged support behind it.
I TA’ed undergraduate software engineering classes for a year at USC, and every so often an underclassman would advance some “radical” theory on how a programming problem ought to be solved, unaware of the fact that their proposed approach had actually been discredited 15 years earlier.
That’s okay . . . by the time they completed their degree, they usually had a much better understanding of the history and foundation of their discipline.
But the advent of web development has brought us a new generation of programmers, many of whom have not had the benefit of a formal education in computer science, which leads to sophomoric programming strategies being proposed by “professional” developers . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Overheard
Him: I’m going to Shooters tonight, if you want to go. Have you ever been there on Wednesdays?
Her: I’ve been to Shooters.
Him: Have you ever been on a Wednesday?
Her: Actually, I try to avoid places like that.
Him: I’ve never been either. My buddy wanted to go.
Students Lack Grasp of Science
Only one in five high school seniors has a solid grasp of science, according to the results of a national test released today.
Related link: Having It All!
Perseverance
Cato began to urge that the only sure defense against a resurgent Carthage was to destroy it. Rome would never be safe so long as Carthage stood. He made a campaign of it: Carthago delenda est! — Carthage must be destroyed! In the 150s this was Cato’s slogan, repeated endlessly. At parties he would bring it up — Carthago delenda est! In the Senate he might be speaking on any subject, but always found a way to work in his slogan: the harbor at Ostia should be expanded . . . and Carthage must be destroyed! the appointment of Gaius Gaius to provincial governor should be approved . . . and Carthage must be destroyed! A vote of thanks to a loyal tribal chieftain . . . and Carthage must be destroyed!
No Critics
I tried to conduct myself in such a way that I wanted my players to act. I think our youngsters, whether they be basketball players or our children at home, need models more than they need critics.
Milestones
From Time magazine:
BORN. To ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, 52, photographer: a daughter, Sarah Cameron Leibovitz. Neither Leibovitz nor her companion Susan Sontag offered word on the child’s paternity.
For some things, you still need a man.