RIP
 

Erica Kennedy, author, 42
 

Erica Kennedy, an author and blogger best known for popular novels Feminista and Bling, has died. She resided in Miami Beach and was 42 years old at the time of her death, according to a family member.

A former fashion publicist, Kennedy started her writing career as a special correspondent for the New York Daily News. She went on to write about fashion and entertainment for magazines such as Vibe, In Style, Paper and Elle UK, according to her website.

In 2004 she published a satire on the high stakes world of hip-hop with her debut novel, Bling, which went on to become a New York Times best-seller. Five years later she released her second novel, Feminista, a story about smart, modern women.

LeRoy Neiman, artist of sports world, dies
 

NEW YORK (AP) — LeRoy Neiman, the painter and sketch artist best known for evoking the kinetic energy of the world's biggest sporting and leisure events with bright quick strokes, died Wednesday at age 91.

Neiman was a media-savvy artist who knew how to enthrall audiences with his instant renditions of what he observed. In 1972, he sketched the world chess tournament between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a live television audience.

He also produced live drawings of the Olympics for TV and was the official computer artist of the Super Bowl for CBS.

Neiman's paintings, many executed in household enamel paints that allowed the artist his fast-moving strokes, are an explosion in reds, blues, pinks, greens and yellows of pure kinetic energy.

http://news.yahoo.com/leroy-neiman-a...3688--spt.html

Tony Award-winning composer, lyricist Richard Adler, who wrote 'Pajama Game,' dies at 90
 

Composer and lyricist Richard Adler, who won Tony Awardsfor co-writing the songs for such hit musicals as "The Pajama Game" and "Damn Yankees," has died. He was 90.

His family says he died Thursday at his home in Southampton, New York.

Some of Adler's biggest songs are "You Gotta Have Heart," ''Hey, There," ''Hernando's Hideaway," ''Whatever Lola Wants," ''Steam Heat," ''Rags to Riches" and "Everybody Loves a Lover."

Adler staged and produced several shows for U.S. presidents, including the unforgettable birthday celebration for President John F. Kennedy featuring Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday."

Nora Ephron, famed screenwriter and director, dies at 71
 

When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Silkwood" screenwriter Nora Ephron has died, according to the Washington Post and CBS News. She was 71 years old and was said to be suffering from leukemia.

Known as a prolific writer spanning film, stage, novels, works of journalism and blogs, Ephron was also an accomplished filmmaker, having both written anddirected "Julie & Julia" (2009), "Bewitched" (2005), "You've Got Mail" (1998), "Michael" (1996), "Mixed Nuts" (1994), "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) and "This Is My Life" (1992). She was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

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Nora Ephron passed away today. Not only did we lose an amazing writer, thinker, journalist, storyteller, and director; we lost the world’s funniest feminist.

Ephron came up in the 1960s, working first as an intern in John F. Kennedy's White House (“…it has become horribly clear to me that I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House whom the president did not make a pass at,” she wrote in The New York Times), and then the New York Post (she got that job by satirizing Post columnists and being a little too good at it). From there she started writing essays for Esquire like “A Few Words About Breasts,” which combined her penchant for personal history mixed with incredible humor.

Ephron graduated from Wellesley at a time when six girls in her class were expelled for lesbianism. “We weren't meant to have futures, we were meant to marry them,” she told the college's class of 1996. “We weren't' meant to have politics, or careers that mattered, or opinions, or lives; we were meant to marry them. If you wanted to be an architect, you married an architect.”

Naturally she had something to say about that. Her work in the late 1960s and 1970s focused on women, sex and the feminist movement, which was eventually compiled into the books Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women and Scribble Scribble. She used her greatest gift to cut to the core of inequality and misogyny so prevalent at the time:

“Men dominate the conversations in Washington and therefore, as far as I am concerned, the conversations are far less interesting than those in New York.”

“I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.”

“I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity [Wellesley] stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.… How marvelous it would have been to go to a women's college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”

Forget the never-ending “women aren’t funny” line that spews from every male comedian who has been or will be on the Celebrity Apprentice. The debate Ephron tackled was sexual politics itself and she did it with humor, with words both powerful and resonant. She understood that aphorisms aren’t just throw-aways that cheapen over time but can be piercing retorts in the right woman’s mouth. As Entertainment Weekly wrote about Crazy Salad, “Gloria Steinem was never this much fun,” which is both a little catty and deeply true — Steinem’s weapon of choice was never humor.

Of course, Ephron also made fun of the women’s movement when she found things frustrating or ridiculous. You are more likely to be heard if you’re a member of a choir you’re preaching to after all. When Crazy Salad was published, the AP wrote, “A dedicated feminist, Miss Ephron nevertheless pokes affectionate fun at her consciousness-raising group and sexual politics (‘We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy…and a dry martini and now we have come to the era when happiness is ‘knowing what your uterus looks like.’)” (Notice that the AP called her “Miss” and not “Ms.”)

Ephron took on Betty Friedan, Phyllis Chesler and Jan Morris in her essays, always poking holes where she saw hypocrisy, cliché or narcissism, and at the same time outwardly struggling with how to be a good reporter and a good feminist. I would (with admitted bias) argue that even if you don’t agree with what she wrote the courage and talent behind it was great for women.

As her career grew, she extended her voice from journalism to film, writing Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and directing Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and many more. She said she “[tried] to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.” Considering the number of Oscar nominations and the number of roles Meryl Streep took in her films, I think she exceeded expectations.

In 1996, two years before You’ve Got Mail would premiere, she gave the commencement address at her alma mater. After some warm-up jokes about dated hairstyles and tuition prices, Ephron, in no uncertain terms, challenged the graduating class to bring it or go home:

What I'm saying is, don't delude yourself that the powerful cultural values that wrecked the lives of so many of my classmates have vanished from the earth. Don't let The New York Times article about the brilliant success of Wellesley graduates in the business world fool you — there's still a glass ceiling. … Don't underestimate how much antagonism there is toward women and how many people wish we could turn the clock back. One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Because you don’t have the alibi my class had.

When her book I Feel Bad About My Neck came out, she again found herself at odds with some women of her generation who saw it as demeaning to negatively portray the process of aging. If that were what the book was about, I’d agree with them, but it was so much more than that. It was about family and politics, food and parenting, and yes, a look at those little embarrassing moments that come with time and all the little injustices your body inflicts without your consent. As she’s said in many ways over the years, “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.” I dare you to argue that’s not empowerment.

Nora Ephron will be remembered for many things — that she loved her family, that she helped change the voice of journalism, that she was one of the first great female directors — but I will always remember her for what she did for women be they her friends, women she mentored, women she advised, women she employed or women who read/heard/saw her work. Thanks, Nora, from all of us.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/enter...minist/53954/#

My Three Sons star, Don Grady 68
 

Don Grady, who was one of television's most beloved big brothers as Robbie Douglas on the long-running 1960s hit "My Three Sons," died Wednesday.

Born in San Diego as Don Louis Agrati, Grady had a brief stint singing and dancing on "The Mickey Mouse Club" starting at age 13.

But he was best known by far as one of Fred MacMurray's "My Three Sons" on the series that ran on ABC and later CBS from 1960 to 1972.

A musical prodigy from a young age, Grady appeared with a band, the Greefs, in the series, and in real life played drums for The Yellow Balloon, who had a minor hit with a self-titled song in 1967.

He made a handful of guest appearances on TV series in the 1970s and 1980s, but worked primarily as a musician and composer, writing the theme for "The Phil Donahue Show" and music for the Blake Edwards film "Switch" and the popular Las Vegas show "EFX," a showcase for "Phantom of the Opera" star Michael Crawford.

Doris Sams, Pro Baseball Star, Dies at 85
 

Doris Sams, who pitched a perfect game and set a single-season home run record in the women’s professional baseball world of the 1940s and 50s that inspired the movie “A League of Their Own,” died Thursday in Knoxville, Tenn. She was 85.

Sams was one of the leading players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, founded in 1943 by Phil Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, to provide evening entertainment in Midwestern towns and keep interest in baseball alive when the majors were losing most of their players to military service in World War II.

The women’s league, which survived into 1954, was largely forgotten until the 1992 Hollywood comedy with Madonna and Geena Davis on the field and Tom Hanks as the profane manager who drove one of his players to tears and then famously exclaimed in bewilderment, “There’s no crying in baseball!”

Playing for Michigan’s Muskegon Lassies and their successor franchise, the Kalamazoo Lassies, from 1946 to 1953, Sams, who was 5 feet 9 inches and wore glasses, pitched underhand, sidearm and overhand, as the rules governing deliveries evolved.

She hit a league-record 12 home runs in 1952, playing in 109 games; she hit better than .300 in each of her last four seasons; threw out many runners playing the outfield when she was not pitching; and she was the league’s player of the year in 1947 and 1949.

Sams pitched her perfect game in August 1947, retiring all 27 batters for the Fort Wayne Daisies in a 2-0 victory, then threw a no-hitter the next year against the Springfield Sallies.

Doris Jane Sams was born in Knoxville on Feb. 2, 1927. A grandfather and her father, Robert, played semipro baseball, and she joined with two older brothers in playing baseball as a youngster. By 11, she was playing fast-pitch softball on a team with much older girls. She also won a regional marbles tournament and was a Knoxville city badminton champion before turning to pro baseball after a tryout in 1946.

She was soon a star and shared the covers of Dell publishing’s 1948 major league yearbook with Ted Williams — he on the front, she on the back. She estimated that she was paid about $4,000 a season.

The Hall of Fame displayed one of Sams’s player-of-the year trophies along with her Louisville Slugger bat when it opened its permanent exhibition on women in baseball.

In her interview with The Post-Dispatch, Sams said that a mannequin of Babe Ruth was on display near the women’s exhibit.

“I look over to the right and see Babe Ruth,” she said. “I look over on the left and see Ted Williams. Then I look in the mirror and say, ‘What are you doing here?’ It’s all so unbelievable. I never ever dreamed our league would get this kind of recognition.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/sp...ies-at-85.html

R.I.P. Andy Griffith!!
 

matlock adjourned.
 

I live 20 minutes from Mt Airy, which is where Mayberry was set. I am quite sure there will be amazing tributes and may find myself aimlessly riding down there today or tomorrow.

Will be missed without a doubt...

http://img.discountpostersale.com/po...y-Griffith.jpg

sweet dreams (((( andy ))))

R.I.P. ERNEST BORGNINE (1917-2012)

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/...ead/56097750/1

I loved him in McHale's Navy. TY for posting this.

I got to meet him 2 yrs ago,,he was a very kind man

Interesting how famous people get more press than this person. Kind of sad if you think about it. She was so young and was murdered, she didn't get to live a full life. I'm sure it was a hate crime. really sad. My thoughts go to Kristene.