Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Eli Woods aka Jack Casey

Comedian -- via Gazette Live.

Marvin D. Einhorn

Actor and director -- via legacy.com.

Jessica Cleaves

Singer; best known for her work with The Friends of Distinction and Earth, Wind &Fire -- via soultracks.com.



Gerald Guralnik

Physicist -- via the New York Times.

Michael Travis

Costume designer -- via the Hollywood Reporter.

From the Chicago Tribune: Death cafes are catching on

Dick Ayers

Comics artist -- via Comic Book Resources. One of my faves -- long-time creator of "Sgt. Fury and Howling Commandos"!


Hilario "Larry" Ramos

Guitarist and singer; known for his work first with the New Christy Minstrels and later with the Association -- via the L.A. Times.








Marsha Mehran

Novelist -- via the L.A. Times.

Joe Young

Guitarist for Antiseen -- via Creative Loafing.



Theo Constante

Artist and writer -- via El Universal.

Roz Chast's rueful comedy of death

From the New York Times: The brilliantly funny New Yorker cartoonist on the end of her parents' lives, and how it made her CRAZY! A new book -- "Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?"



Monday, May 5, 2014

Jerry Manning

Artistic director of the Seattle Rep -- via the Seattle Times.

Nicholas Martin aka Joel Martin Levinson

Stage director -- via the New York Times. 

Dave Walker

Filmmaker -- via the CBC.


Howard Smith

Oscar-winning filmmaker, and journalist -- via the New York Times.


Juan Formell

From the New York Times: Death as art project?

An interesting, in-depth look by Bob Morris at artist Sophie Calle's installation piece on the subject of her mother's death, currently in place at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest

Tim Carpenter

Progressive activist -- via the Huffington Post.

Mohammadreza Lotfi

Musician -- via the Tehran Times.

Isabelle 'Barbara' Fiske Calhoun

Angel Inigo Blanco

Artist; creator of the Stone Zoo -- via cubadebate.cu.


Sarmad Tariq

Storyteller and athlete -- via dawn.com.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

From the Washington Post: Death cafes

An excellent survey of the many new actions being taken to demystify and humanize the dying process, by Tara Bahrampour.

From the Guardian: Death doulas are coming

From Ghost Hunting Theories: The Victorian Way of Death

An interesting survey of death and mourning practices in the 19th century. Finally, a reference to the unnerving practice of the time of photographing the dead -- a tradition carried on in my family through 1967!

Friday, May 2, 2014

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

Emblematic actor of the 1960s -- via the Hollywood Reporter. The son of famed musicians -- violinist Erfrem Sr. and soprano Alma Gluck -- Zimbalist worked his way through stage, on the way producing three of Menoti's most significant operas -- "The Telephone," "The Medium," and "The Consul." He first made a splash in the guest role of Dandy Jim Buckley on the short-lived but significant Western comedy "Maverick." He then starred in the lighthearted detective series "77 Sunset Strip."

Most significantly, he portrayed the central figure of straight-arrow Inspector Lewis Erskine on the series "The F.B.I." for 15 years. He embodied Hoover's ideal of how an agent should look and act. However, once free to act again, he proved his droll charm on his daughter Stephanie's "Remington Steele" show as a suave con man Daniel Chalmers. Later still, he became the voice of Alfred on various animated "Batman" series. A fine talent!











Chou Meng-tieh

Poet and writer -- via the Taipei Times.

Chris Harris

Actor and director -- via the Western Daily Press.

Khaled Choudhury

Director and designer for the theater -- via the Telegraph of India.

Nan Rosenthal

Art curator -- via the New York Times.


Kartina Dahari

Singer known as the "queen of keroncong (Malay folk music)" -- via The Star.

William Ash

Edmund Abel

Engineer and inventor of Mr. Coffee, the automatic drip coffeemaker -- via the Boston Globe. He has earned my undying gratitude! The innovation created mellower, most flavorful coffee and made it faster. It saves my life on a daily basis. P.S. -- he never drank coffee.




Bassem Sabry

Assi Dayan aka Assaf Dayan

Director and actor -- via the Jerusalem Post.

Norma Pons aka Norma Delia Orizi

Actress and showgirl -- via Sitio Andino.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

'Levels of Life': No art in grief?

Levels of Life
Julian Barnes
2013
Alfred A. Knopf


If you haven’t read any of Julian Barnes’ work yet, why not? This incredibly talented and readable author has been lauded in many ways, most notably by being awarded England’s prestigious (and usually controversial and disputed) Man Booker Prize in 2011. My favorites of his works include the novels “Metroland,” “Flaubert’s Parrot,” and “Arthur & George.”

His most recent work is a meditation on the death of his wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, who passed away in 2008. “Levels of Life” is a powerful and unflinching examination of the after-life of the author as the survivor of a loved one.

Barnes’ approach to his subject is circuitous, taking an oblique route first through stories about early ballooning, photography, and Sarah Bernhardt. This is an approach Barnes has used before, and although it seems quite counterintuitive at face value, it is astonishingly effective. The writing, three interconnected essays titled “The Sin of Height,” “On the Level,” and “The Loss of Depth,” has been criticized by some as being not sufficiently to the point, to which I can simply respond, well blow it out your fundament then, write your own damn book about mourning.

Patient and intelligent readers will be drawn in by the disparate threads that Barnes deftly gathers as he goes, weaving them into a deeply moving self-portrait. I see the writer’s seeming diffidence as the only effective way to circle in and name painful truths, sparing himself absolutely nothing on the way.

Neither does he spare the well-intentioned around him, whose blundering attempts to assuage his feelings are accurately analyzed as a distaste for the discomfort his loss causes them. Case in point:

Someone I had only met twice wrote to tell me that a few months previously he had ‘lost his wife to cancer’ (another phrase that jarred: compare “We lost our dog to gypsies,” or “He lost his wife to a commercial traveler”). He reassured me that one does survive the grief; moreover, one emerges a “stronger,” and in some ways a “better,” person. This struck me as outrageous and self-praising (as well as too quickly decided). How could I possibly be a better person without her than with her? Later, I thought: but he is just echoing Nietzsche’s line about what doesn’t kill us making us stronger. And as it happens, I have long considered this epigram particularly specious. There are many things that fail to kill us but weaken us for ever. Ask anyone who deals with victims of torture. Ask rape counsellors and those who handle domestic violence. Look around at those emotionally damaged by mere ordinary life.”

Barnes conveys his fluctuating inner state with a dry compassion that neither kids himself nor discounts the depth, confusion, and profusion of thoughts and feelings attendant on the death of his wife. The honesty and accuracy here is brave, and intensely comforting.

When I am at my desk, I am frequently writing simply to find out what is on my mind – thinking with my fingers (and scraping up a buck or two in the process – two missions that sometimes cohere). Barnes’ words have the effortless flow of free association, but multiple readings reveal a meticulous arrangement and honing of the text, which in itself a reward or those who seek good writing. We are long past the time when “meta” in literature was a novelty; Barnes is such a master of it that it draws no attention to itself.

In the end, Barnes gives us no neat conclusions, but he does ties his metaphors together. The crude and pilotless pioneer air journeys resemble marriage itself; early photography mirrors his attempts to redefine the landscape of his solitaire life. The act of writing affirms the act of living.

Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns, destroys even more: the belief that any pattern exists. But we cannot, I think, survive without such belief. So each of us must pretend to find, or re-erect, a pattern. Writers believe in the patterns their words make, which they hope and trust add up to ideas, to stories, to truths. This is always their salvation, whether griefless or griefstruck.


From First Coast News: In death, segregation?

Well, this will blow your mind -- evidently, some people don't want corpses of different races in the same funeral homes or cemeteries. What the what??? It's not history, folks, it's still happening.

Malcom Tierney

Actor -- via the Guardian. Marvelous at playing baddies, his range was actually exceptionally broad, embracing comedy and classical works as well.

Malcolm Tierney Interview from Music & Performing Arts on Vimeo.

Al Feldstein

Editor of MAD magazine, writer, and illustrator -- via the New York Times. Wow -- while not the funniest or non-grumpiest of people himself, he got the mag out on time and under budget, and made all the key hires that made the magazine one that we all waited around the drugstore for in order to grab the newest copy! He employed Don Martin ("Shtoink! Fladdaddaddap!"), Antonio Prohias ("Spy vs. Spy"), Dave Berg, Mort Drucker, and many others. Plus he made buck-toothed Alfred E. Neuman the poster boy of our generation.


Much gratitude to Al and "the usual gang of idiots" -- the humor was dumb, infantile, gross, and sometimes just not funny. However, it gave us permission to think differently about just about everything, and groomed a lot of us for comedy careers down the road. Thanks, Al, for giving us something we treasured that pissed our parents off  as well. 

Paul Goddard

Satyendra Pal Chaudhary

Producer -- via the Telugu Post.

Sidek Hussain

Actor -- via Bernama.


Wednesday, April 30, 2014

From Charles Garfield: 'Seven Keys to a Good Death'

Is there such a thing as as "good death"? I wonder. Still, I have witnessed many, many mismanaged end-of-life scenarios. Knowledge is power, and Garfield eloquently outlines important considerations for those nearing death, and those who care for them. 

Bob Hoskins

Actor -- via the Guardian. One of my all-time favorite performers, he was typed as Cockney lads, gangsters, and detectives, but his emotional range, expressiveness, and subtlety was far beyond those seeming limitations. Best roles: of course, his star-making turn as Arthur Parker in the BBC-TV original version of "Pennies from Heaven"; Shand in "The Long Good Friday"; Iago in the otherwise not-so-great BBC-TV "Othello"; Eddie Valiant in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"; and Micawber in Simon Curtis' "David Copperfield." My dream Brit cast for a parody remake of "The Ten Commandments" always featured Bob as a profanity-spewing Pharaoh, Michael Caine as Moses, and Sean Connery as God.