Jan Hooks
 

Former "Saturday Night Live" star Jan Hooks died on Thursday. She was 57 years old.

Hooks appeared on "SNL" from 1986-91 and most recently guest starred on "30 Rock" as Jenna Maroney's mother, Verna. She was a regular on "Designing Women" from 1991-93 and appeared on TV shows "3rd Rock From The Sun," "The Martin Short Show," "The Dana Carvey Show," "The Simpsons," "Futurama" and "Primetime Glick." While on "SNL," she was known for her recurring character Candy Sweeney of "The Sweeney Sisters." She also impersonated Bette Davis, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Sinéad O'Connor, Jodie Foster and Hillary Clinton.

Originally, Hooks was considered for the 1985 "SNL" cast, but was passed over for Joan Cusack. She was hired the next season alongside Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman and Nora Dunn. In one of her most memorable sketches, she played Brenda the Waitress in "The Diner" with Alec Baldwin.

Hooks was born near Atlanta in 1957 and began her career as part of famed comedy troupe The Groundlings. Prior to joining "SNL," she landed a small but notable part in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" as a tour guide at the Alamo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/1...n_5961882.html

Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, gay man and head of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
 

Soft-spoken and clad in a subdued black robe of his monastic order, the Right Rev. M. Thomas Shaw seemed an unlikely choice in 1994 to lead one of the largest Episcopal dioceses in the nation. Yet his unswerving devotion to spirituality and his unwillingness to avoid political controversy turned him into one of the most visible and vocal religious leaders of his time.

For Bishop Shaw, once called upon to be a leader, fulfilling the will of God meant becoming a citizen of the world far beyond the doors of the serene monastery on Memorial Drive in Cambridge that was his home for nearly four decades. Though he preferred the life of a monk, he appeared in national TV interviews, lobbied State House officials, worked as an unpaid congressional intern, traveled to distant dangerous lands, and created programs to address urban violence, particularly among the young.

He also went online with “Monk in the midst: Bishop Shaw’s blog.” Still, his presence always reflected his background, and he wore his monastic garb whether riding the T to his downtown Boston office or walking through Washington’s halls of power.

Among Boston’s most powerful clergy, Bishop Shaw was an early, key advocate for gay rights and for the ordination of women, gays, and lesbians as priests in his denomination, and in a 2012 interview for a documentary, he let it be known that he was gay and celibate. Long before making his sexuality public, he guided his diocese through a stormy decade while a conflicted Episcopal Church decided whether it would consecrate a gay bishop and allow clergy to bless same-gender unions.

“The life of the church is always enhanced by including people that live on the margins of society – women, people of color, gay or lesbian people,” he told the Globe in 1997. “They have something profound to say about the Kingdom of God and they are the people Jesus specifically included among his disciples.”

At the same time, Bishop Shaw remained sensitive to conservative opponents of gay marriage at home and abroad. Even while advocating forcefully for gay rights within his denomination and beyond, he waited more than five years after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004 before giving priests permission to officiate at same-gender weddings.

“I have a longstanding reputation for supporting gay and lesbian rights, both in society and in the church, and I was surprised and delighted when the Supreme Judicial Court made its decision,” he told the Globe in 2004. “But this is one place where the state is ahead of the life of the church.”

He was a leading supporter of elevating an openly gay priest, V. Gene Robinson, to become bishop of New Hampshire. Nonetheless, to better grasp the deeply held opposition some cultures have to homosexuality, Bishop Shaw went to Africa in the late 1990s and immersed himself in the Episcopal Church’s health and education projects in Uganda and Tanzania.

A decade later, he traveled to Zimbabwe on a secret mission to express support for Anglican worshippers who were subjected to human rights abuses and to bear witness to their suffering through letters to US officials back home. “I don’t think I’ve ever been any place where the oppression has been that overt,” Bishop Shaw told the Globe upon his return.

To see close up how public policy is forged, he moved to Washington, D.C., in early 2000 and spent a month as a congressional intern working for Amory Houghton Jr., an Episcopalian and a Republican who was then a US representative from New York and now lives in Cohasset.

The following year, Bishop Shaw incurred the ire of Jewish leaders when he joined others outside the Israeli consulate in Boston to protest that country’s treatment of Palestinians. Uncharacteristically, he traded his monk’s garb for a purple cassock that announced the gravitas of a bishop. His participation surprised many Jews, and he subsequently spent years mending the rift through discussions with leaders in the Jewish community. Bishop Shaw continued to speak out for Palestinian rights.

Discussing his political activism in January 2013, when he announced plans to retire before learning he was ill, Bishop Shaw invoked the life of Jesus. “He was very out there in terms of critiquing a society that didn’t recognize the dignity of human beings,” he told the Globe. “And so I think because I’m a follower of Jesus, that’s my responsibility as well – I’m supposed to speak up on issues that diminish people’s dignity.”

Born in Battle Creek, Mich., on Aug. 28, 1945, Marvil Thomas Shaw III grew up in a devout family and believed early on that he would give his life over to God.

He graduated from Alma College in Alma, Mich., and received master’s degrees from the General Theological Seminary in New York City and Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

After being ordained to the priesthood in 1971, he was a curate at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, England, and then assistant rector of St. James Church in Milwaukee.

He entered the Society of St. John the Evangelist in 1975 and seven years later was elected its superior, serving a 10-year term. While he was the order’s leader, the diocese said, Bishop Shaw “was instrumental in developing the society’s rural Emery House property as a retreat center, establishing the Cowley publishing imprint for books on prayer and spirituality, and renewing the society’s longtime commitment to at-risk children in Boston through Camp St. Augustine in Foxborough.”

When he was elected bishop in 1994, he was 48 and was the first monk in the church’s history to serve in that position. Then and until not long before his death, he lived in the order’s monastery on Memorial Drive, a short walk from Harvard Square in Cambridge. His home was a small cell in the monastery, and he managed to pray 90 minutes a day, even after taking on greater responsibilities as head of the diocese. “I wouldn’t have the perspective I have on my struggles if I didn’t pray,” he told the Globe in 1996.

Those struggles began early when he was elected bishop. Serving initially alongside his predecessor, Bishop David E. Johnson, Bishop Shaw guided the diocese through tragedy and tumult when Johnson shot himself in January 1995. At the funeral, Bishop Shaw told mourners that “we know David fell in the struggle against despair.”

Then, 11 days after announcing the suicide, Bishop Shaw was a co-signer of a statement the diocese issued explaining that Johnson “was involved in several extramarital relationships at different times throughout his years of ministry, both as a priest and bishop,” including some that “appear to have been of the character of sexual exploitation.” That Johnson had been viewed as a tough enforcer of rules against clergy sexual abuse added to the sense of betrayal many felt. “We don’t want to keep anything hidden,” Bishop Shaw told the Globe a few days after issuing the statement. “Knowing everything will help the healing begin.”

During Bishop Shaw’s tenure, among his proudest accomplishments were programs he created to serve youth and to help reduce urban violence. A diocesan camp and retreat center opened in Greenfield, N.H., in 2003, while in the South End, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church initiated the Bishop’s Summer Academic and Fun Enrichment program, or B-SAFE, for hundreds of inner city youth. A graduate of the program, Jorge Fuentes, became a respected counselor and mentor, and his death by a stray bullet, across the street from his Dorchester home in 2012 was devastating for the diocese and Bishop Shaw, who presided over the 19-year-old’s funeral.

Bishop Shaw’s final blog post included a video of him speaking at the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace in 2013, when he was part of a contingent of more than 600 Episcopalians who walked in memory of Fuentes.

When Bishop Shaw thought the time had arrived to address his sexuality publicly, he took an understated approach, doing so in an interview while being filmed for “Love Free or Die,” a 2012 documentary about Robinson, who became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church when he led the New Hampshire diocese.

Bishop Shaw told the Globe he didn’t want his choice to be a celibate monk to be held up as an example that lesbians and gays in the clergy should also choose celibacy.

“My hope has always been … that we can move along this discussion about human sexuality in the best possible way, and I thought for myself the best possible way I could move it along as a celibate bishop was not by hiding it, but by not making myself the center of the discussion,” he said then.

In January 2013, he announced he would retire by year’s end. A few months later, he said that he had brain cancer, and he began radiation and chemotherapy soon after. Hr died Friday at the age of 69.



http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...brJ/story.html

Playing with Janis, Jimi, Marc, Cass, et al
 

Jack Bruce

http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...n-dies-aged-71

Marcia Strassman: Starred In ‘Welcome Back Kotter,’ ‘Honey I Shrunk The Kids’
 

Actress Marcia Strassman has died at the age of 66 after a long battle with breast cancer. Though Marcia Strassman acted in a wide range of TV shows and feature films, she was best known for her lead roles in the TV show Welcome Back Kotter and the comedy feature Honey I Shrunk the Kids and its sequel, Honey I Blew Up the Kids. Strassman also served on the national board of the Screen Actors Guild.

Strassman was born Apri 28, 1948 in New York City, and grew up in New Jersey.

She came to Los Angeles when she was just 18. She was initially a singer in the late 1960s with some modest local success, most notably with The Groovy World of Jack and Jill and The Flower Children. She also had a few TV roles, including three episodes of The Patty Duke Show. She left show business for a time before returning as an actress in a recurring role as nurse Margie Cutler in M.A.S.H.

In 1975, Strassman had a breakout role in the TV hit Welcome Back Kotter, opposite comedian Gabe Kaplan, playing his frequently exasperated wife Julie. That show, about a teacher returning to the tough high school and neighborhood where he grew up, ran through 1979.

Strassman worked steadily thereafter, most notably in major roles on several mostly short-lived TV shows, including Booker, Tremors, Third Watch, Providence, and Noah Knows Best and as a voice-over artist on the children’s animated show Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and elsewhere.

Her biggest film success came playing the wife and mother opposite Rick Moranis in Disney’s hit comedy Honey I Shrunk The Kids and its equally successful sequel, Honey I Blew Up The Kids. She also appeared in 1985’s The Aviator with Christopher Reeve and Roseanna Arquette.

http://deadline.com/2014/10/marcia-s...e-kids-861946/

House of Cards Actress Elizabeth Norment
 

Elizabeth Norment, the seasoned TV actress who most recently starred as an unflappable Beltway secretary on Season 2 of House of Cards, has died at the age of 61.

On the hit Netflix series, Norment played steely, steadfast Nancy Kaufberger, who worked for ruthless soon-to-be president Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and remained firmly by his side amid his conniving and devious political machinations.

Throughout a career that spanned both stage and screen – the Yale School of Drama grad was a founding member of the American Repertory Theatre, THR reports – Norment appeared on a slew of TV shows, including L.A. Law, E.R. and Party of Five.

She also had recurring role as a judge on Law & Order from 2002 to 2008.

http://www.people.com/article/elizab...p+Headlines%29

My Kasey was a hippie in the 60's and Cream was one of her favorite groups.

Tom Menino, Boston's longest-serving mayor, dies at 71
 

BOSTON (AP) — Thomas Menino, whose folksy manner and verbal gaffes belied his shrewd political tactics and effective use of technology to govern as Boston's longest-serving mayor and one of its most beloved, died Thursday. He was 71

He was diagnosed with advanced cancer in February 2014, shortly after leaving office, and announced Oct. 23 he was suspending treatment and a book tour so he could spend more time with family and friends.

Menino was first elected in 1993 and built a formidable political machine that ended decades of Irish domination of city politics, at least temporarily. He won re-election four times. He was the city's first Italian-American mayor and served in the office for more than 20 years before a series of health problems forced him, reluctantly, to eschew a bid for a sixth term.

Menino was anything but a smooth public speaker and was prone to verbal gaffes. He was widely quoted describing Boston's notorious parking shortage as "an Alcatraz" around his neck, rather than an albatross.

He often mangled or mixed up the names of Boston sports heroes — once famously confusing former New England Patriots kicker and Super Bowl hero Adam Vinatieri with ex-Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek. But while such mistakes might sink other politicians in a sports-crazed city, they only seemed to reinforce his affable personality and ability to connect with the residents he served.

"I'm Tom Menino. I'm not a fancy talker, but I get things done," he said in his first TV ad.

In an interview with The Associated Press in March, Menino said he "loved every minute" of being mayor, even during the city's darkest days. He credited his staff and others, downplaying his own role.

"I just did my job — nothing special," he said.

Menino was sometimes faulted for being too controlling or too quick to lose his temper with subordinates. But his lengthy administration would steer clear of major scandal, something that could not be said for many of his predecessors.

Thomas Michael Menino was born on Dec. 27, 1942, in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood. A former insurance salesman, he caught the political bug while working as a legislative aide to state Sen. Joseph Timilty. He first earned elective office as a district city councilor in 1984.

Menino became the council's president in 1993 and was automatically elevated to mayor when then-mayor Raymond Flynn was named U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. While that prompted some to initially chide Menino as an 'accidental mayor,' he quickly proved his own political mettle, winning a four-year term later that year.

He never sought nor showed interest in running for higher office. Mayor, it seemed, was the only political job to which he aspired.

Menino didn't take sides in the race to succeed him, eventually won in November 2013 by Martin Walsh, a state representative from the Dorchester neighborhood. He instructed his staff to work closely with Walsh on a smooth transition of power.

Walsh paid tribute to his predecessor in his inaugural address the following January, saying Menino's "legacy is already legend and his vision is all around us."

Menino left City Hall on his final day in office Jan. 6 to thunderous applause from city workers. Later, he tweeted: "Thank you Boston. It has been the honor and thrill of a lifetime to be your Mayor. Be as good to each other as you have been to me."

In March 2014, Menino revealed in an interview with The Boston Globe he was battling an advanced form of cancer that had spread to his liver and lymph nodes. Doctors said they were unable to pinpoint where the cancer originated.

Menino told the newspaper he was ready to face the challenge.

"What I don't want is people feeling sorry for me. I don't want sympathy. There are people worse off than me. It's my biggest concern — I don't want to be treated any differently," he said.

In a statement announcing he was stopping treatment to devote himself to his loved ones, Menino said he was "hopeful and optimistic that one day the talented researchers, doctors and medical professionals in this city will find a cure for this awful disease."

-------------------


An incredible man, gone way too soon.


___

Dick Schaal
 

Richard "Dick" Schaal, a pioneer at the Second City comedy theater in Chicago, the former husband of the actress Valerie Harper and a familiar face from a plethora of character roles on movies and television, including "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Rhoda," died Tuesday. He was 86.

On film, he appeared (among others) in "Slaughterhouse-Five: and, in 1966, "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" and "Once Bitten."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...05-column.html

Big Bang Theory’ Actress Carol Ann Susi Dead at 62
 

You never saw her onscreen, but if you’re a fan of “The Big Bang Theory,” you certainly knew the sound of Carol Ann Susi‘s voice. The long-running CBS sitcom was dealt a heavy blow yesterday when it was announced that Susi had died in Los Angeles following a battle with cancer.

Susi portrayed the largely offscreen character of Mrs. Wolowitz, the long-suffering mother of perpetually put-upon engineer Howard (Simon Helberg). Despite her grating voice and lack of filter (“Howaaahhhd, I think [my girdle] shrunk! I’m spilling out like the Pillsbury Dough Boy here!”), Mrs. Wolowitz was a fan favorite, and Susi’s death leaves behind a huge hole in the hearts of the “Big Bang Theory” community.

Leslie Feinberg

http://www.advocate.com/arts-enterta...blues-has-died

Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist, died on November 15. She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness.

She died at home in Syracuse, NY, with her partner and spouse of 22 years, Minnie Bruce Pratt, at her side. Her last words were: “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”...

I just read the news late this evening when I came home from school. First, my condolences to hir spouse, Minnie Bruce Pratt.

I came home back here to the Planet to acknowledge the passing of one of our warriors. I am very saddened by hir death but I am heartened to know hir work still lives on.

I remember my first reading of Stone Butch Blues, I cried because I felt like someone really got us, our lives, our hopes, our loves, our losses. I felt so validated. Thank you Leslie. RIP brave one.

Journey well, Leslie. I am certain that you will find many more injustices to battle as you journey forward, for you are a true warrior. Be well now.

Jimmy Ruffin
 

Jimmy Ruffin, the Motown singer whose hits include "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" and "Hold on to My Love," died Monday in a Las Vegas hospital. He was 78.

Ruffin was the older brother of Temptations lead singer David Ruffin, who died in 1991 at age 50.

Jimmy Lee Ruffin was born on May 7, 1936, in Collinsville, Mississippi. He was signed to Berry Gordy's Motown Records, and had a string of hits in the 1960s, including "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," which became a Top 10 pop hit.

He had continued success with songs such as "I've Passed This Way Before" and "Gonna Give Her All the Love I've Got," but Ruffin marked a comeback in 1980 with his second Top 10 hit, "Hold on to My Love." The song was produced by Robin Gibb, the Bee Gees member who died in 2012.

Ruffin worked with his brother David in the 1970s on the album, "I Am My Brother's Keeper."

http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....7eOup366.dpuf

Mike Nichols
 

NEW YORK (AP) - Mike Nichols, the director of matchless versatility who brought fierce wit, caustic social commentary and wicked absurdity to such film, TV and stage hits as "The Graduate," ''Angels in America" and "Monty Python's Spamalot," has died. He was 83.

During a career spanning more than 50 years, Nichol, who was married to ABC's Diane Sawyer, managed to be both an insider and outsider, an occasional White House guest and friend to countless celebrities who was as likely to satirize the elite as he was to mingle with them. A former stand-up performer who began his career in a groundbreaking comedy duo with Elaine May and whose work brought him an Academy Award, a Grammy and multiple Tony and Emmy honors, Nichols had a remarkable gift for mixing edgy humor and dusky drama.

His 1966 film directing debut "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" unforgettably captured the vicious yet sparkling and sly dialogue of Edward Albee's play, as a couple (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) torment each other over deep-seated guilt and resentment.

"Angels in America," the 2003 TV miniseries adapted from the stage sensation, blended rich pathos and whimsy in its portrait of people coping with AIDS and looking to the heavens for compassion they found lacking in Ronald Reagan's 1980s America.

Similarly, Nichols' 2001 TV adaptation of the play "Wit" packed biting levity within the stark story of a college professor dying of ovarian cancer.

Nichols, who won directing Emmys for both "Angels in America" and "Wit," said he liked stories about the real lives of real people and that humor inevitably pervades even the bleakest of such tales.

He was a wealthy, educated man who often mocked those just like him, never more memorably than in "The Graduate," which shot Dustin Hoffman to fame in the 1967 story of an earnest young man rebelling against his elders' expectations. Nichols himself would say that he identified with Hoffman's awkward, perpetually flustered Benjamin Braddock.

Mixing farce and Oedipal drama, Nichols managed to capture a generation's discontent without ever mentioning Vietnam, civil rights or any other issues of the time. But young people laughed hard when a family friend advised Benjamin that the road to success was paved with "plastics" or at Benjamin's lament that he felt like life was "some kind of game, but the rules don't make any sense to me. They're being made up by all the wrong people. I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up."

At the time, Nichols was "just trying to make a nice little movie," he recalled in 2005 at a retrospective screening of "The Graduate." ''It wasn't until when I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable."

Nichols won the best-director Oscar for "The Graduate," which co-starred Anne Bancroft as an aging temptress pursuing Hoffman, whose character responds with the celebrated line, "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me."

Divorced three times, Nichols married TV journalist Diane Sawyer in 1988. He admitted in 2013 that many of his film and stage projects explored a familiar, naughty theme.

Nichols often collaborated with Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. Other stars who worked with Nichols included Al Pacino ("Angels in America"), Gene Hackman and Robin Williams ("The Birdcage"), Harrison Ford, Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver ("Working Girl") and Julia Roberts ("Closer"). In 2007, Nichols brought out "Charlie Wilson's War," starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Just as he moved easily among stage, screen and television, Nichols fearlessly switched from genre to genre. Onstage, he tackled comedy ("The Odd Couple"), classics ("Uncle Vanya") and musicals ("The Apple Tree," ''Spamalot," the latter winning him his sixth Tony for directing).

On Broadway, he won nine Tonys, for directing the plays "Barefoot in the Park" (1964), "Luv" and "The Odd Couple" (1965), "Plaza Suite" (1968), "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" (1972), "The Real Thing" (1984), and Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" (2012). He has also won in other categories, for directing the musical "Monty Python's Spamalot" (2005), and for producing "Annie" (1977) and "The Real Thing" (1984).

Though known for films with a comic edge, Nichols branched into thrillers with "Day of the Dolphin," horror with "Wolf," and real-life drama with "Silkwood." Along with directing for television, he was an executive producer for the 1970s TV series "Family."

Nichols' golden touch failed him on occasion with such duds as the anti-war satire "Catch-22," with Alan Arkin in an adaptation of Joseph Heller's best-seller, and "What Planet Are You From?", an unusually tame comedy for Nichols that starred Garry Shandling and Annette Bening.

Born Michael Igor Peschkowsky on Nov. 6, 1931, in Berlin, Nichols fled Nazi Germany for America at age 7 with his family. He recalled to the AP in 1996 that at the time, he could say only two things in English: "I don't speak English" and "Please don't kiss me."

Nichols attended the University of Chicago but left to study acting in New York. He returned to Chicago, where he began working with May in the Compass Players, a comedy troupe that later became the Second City.

Elaine May and Nichols developed their great improvisational rapport into a saucy, sophisticated stage show that took on sex, marriage, family and other subjects in a frank manner that titillated and startled audiences of the late 1950s and early '60s.

"People always thought we were making fun of other people when we were in fact making fun of ourselves," Nichols told the AP in 1997. "We did teenagers in the back seat of the car and people committing adultery. Of course, you're making fun of yourself. You're making jokes about yourself. Who can you better observe?"

Their Broadway show, "An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May," earned them a Grammy for best comedy recording in 1961.

The two split up soon after, though they reunited in the 1990s, with May writing screenplays for Nichols' "Primary Colors" and "The Birdcage," adapted from the French farce "La Cage aux Folles."

After the break with May, Nichols found his true calling as a director, his early stage work highlighted by "Barefoot in the Park," ''The Odd Couple," ''Plaza Suite" and "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," each of which earned him Tonys.

Other honors included Oscar nominations for directing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "Silkwood" and "Working Girl," a best-picture nomination for producing "The Remains of the Day," and a lifetime-achievement award from the Directors Guild of America in 2004.

http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....Mqg8Zrnu.dpuf

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...Ux_zEzL2odTzEA

Japanese tough guy actor Ken Takakura dies at 83

(Reuters) - Ken Takakura, an actor known as "Japan's Clint Eastwood" for his portrayal of tough but principled gangsters in over 100 movies and who gained international fame in director Ridley Scott's "Black Rain," has died at the age of 83.

Takakura, who played alongside U.S. stars such as Tom Selleck and starred in movies directed by Sydney Pollack and China's Zhang Yimou, died on Nov. 10 of lymphoma, his office said on Tuesday.

Born Goichi Oda in Oita, on the southwestern island of Kyushu, Takakura got his start in film in 1955 when he dropped into an audition at Toei, one of Japan's biggest film studios, out of curiosity.

He became known to international audiences through roles in Pollack's 1975 "The Yakuza," where he starred with U.S. actor Robert Mitchum, and the 1992 comedy "Mr. Baseball." In 2005 he appeared in Zhang's "Riding alone for Thousands of Miles."

But it was in the 1989 police thriller "Black Rain", where he played a Japanese policeman dealing with Michael Douglas in the role of an irritable New York cop, that he gained international renown.

Mary Ann Mobley Collins
 

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A former Miss America who went on to appear in movies with Elvis Presley and make documentary films around the world has died after a battle with breast cancer. She was 77.

She graduated from Ole Miss in 1958, the same year she won the Miss America crown.

She became an actress a few years later, with credits including such TV shows as "General Hospital" and "Perry Mason," and films such as "Girl Happy" with Presley and "Three on a Couch" with Jerry Lewis. It was on that film that she met her husband, actor Gary Collins, who died in 2012.

Mobley Collins was also a documentarian, traveling to Cambodia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Sudan to make movies about the struggle s of homeless and starving children. She and her husband were also active humanitarians, raising money and awareness for organizations such as the March of Dimes and the United Cerebral Palsy Association. -


- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/memorial-sites....GUgP7LLd.dpuf

oh wow, this is upsetting, I have been listening to Woodstock and he was a prominent person for me.

R.I.P. JOE COCKER

YOU WILL GET BY UP THERE WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS

Joe Cocker died of lung cancer according to CNN.

RIP(f)

R.I.P Joe

I have loved this song for a long time now.

Oh wow...
Journey well, Joe. Thanks for the music.

Anne Kirkbride
 

LONDON (AP) — Actress Anne Kirkbride, a star of British soap opera "Coronation Street" for more than 40 years, has died at the age of 60.


See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....xIfrIKVR.dpuf

Colleen McCullough
 

SYDNEY (AP) - Best-selling Australian author Colleen McCullough, whose novel "The Thorn Birds" sold 30 million copies worldwide, has died at age 77 after a long illness.

McCullough wrote 25 novels throughout her career. Her final book "Bittersweet" was released in 2013.

Her first novel "Tim" was published in 1974. It became a movie starring Mel Gibson, who played a young, intellectually disabled handyman who had a romance with a middle-aged woman.

Her second novel, "The Thorn Birds," published in 1977, became a U.S. television mini-series in 1983 starring Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward and Christopher Plummer. The Outback melodrama about a priest's struggle between church and love won four Golden Globe awards.

During the 1980s, she wrote love stories including "An Indecent Obsession" and "The Ladies of Missalonghi."

Her historical seven-novel series "Masters of Rome" was published from 1990 to 2007.

McCullough was born in the small town of Wellington in New South Wales state on June 1, 1937. The family moved to the state capital, Sydney, where she began studying at Sydney University to become a medical doctor until she discovered that she had an allergic reaction to the antiseptic soap that surgeons use to scrub.

She switched her studies to neuroscience and spent 10 years as a researcher at Yale Medical School in the United States. She established the neurophysiology department at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital.

She lived as an author in the United States and London before settling on Norfolk Island, a former British penal colony in the Pacific Ocean which became home to descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers.



- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....xoUCe9X7.dpuf

Ann Mara
 

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — Ann Mara, the matriarch of the NFL's New York Giants for the past 60 years, has died. She was 85.

Giants co-owner John Mara announced his mother's death on Super Bowl Sunday. Ann Mara slipped in front of her home in Rye, New York, during an ice storm two weeks ago and was hospitalized with a head injury the following day. While there were initial hopes for recovery, John Mara said, complications developed and she died early Sunday surrounded by her family.

Ann Mara and her children owned 50 percent of the Giants, one of the founding families of the league, since the death of her husband, Hall of Famer Wellington Mara, in 2005. While she was not active in daily operations, her opinion was valued greatly.

Ann Mara was a prominent philanthropist who supported educational organizations. Mara also helped children with cancer through the Ronald McDonald House of New York. In November, she dedicated the opening of a new building for the San Miguel Academy for children at risk, which was built through the NFL Snowflake Foundation.

Three days before MetLife Stadium — the home of the Giants and Jets — was the site of the Super Bowl last year, Ann Mara received the Paul J. Tagliabue Award of Excellence. It is presented to a league or team executive who demonstrates the integrity and leadership that he exhibited in career development opportunities for minority candidates and advocacy for diversity on the league and club level when he was NFL commissioner.

Married to Wellington Mara in 1954 after a chance meeting in a Roman Catholic church, Ann Mara attended almost every Giants home and away game. She was a fierce defender of the team.

After the Giants beat the San Francisco 49ers in the 2011 NFC Championship game en route to their fourth Super Bowl title, she approached Fox broadcaster and Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw, poking his arm to get his attention.

"You never pick the Giants," Ann Mara said.

Bradshaw turned toward the camera and said, "I know. I know. I'm sorry. I'm getting hammered for not picking the Giants."

Ann Mara, sometimes referred to as "The First Lady of Football," also let her sons know how she felt. Three of them work in the Giants' front office. Along with John, Chris is the senior vice president of player evaluation and Frank is the vice president of community relations.

She used to like to remind John Mara that "you're an employee.'"

When the Giants missed the playoffs for the third consecutive year this past season, John Mara, who serves as president and chief executive, was asked how his mother felt.

"She is not very happy with me right now, believe me," John Mara said. "She suffers through this probably even more so than I do. I am on notice as well."

Born Ann Mumm in New York City on June 18, 1929, Mara is survived by 11 children, 43 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

One of her grandchildren, Chris' daughter Rooney Mara, was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in 2012.

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....6mnXof9S.dpuf

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lisa Trubnikova
 

Armed to the teeth, Coast Guardsman Adrian Loya stormed the Massachusetts home of two lesbian colleagues and opened fire because he was obsessed with one of the women, authorities said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lisa Trubnikova (left) died at the scene of Thursday's bloody rampage in Cape Cod. Her wife, Anna Trubnikova, also a petty officer, remains hospitalized with severe injuries.

Relatives told the Boston Globe that Loya had been pursuing Lisa Trubnikova for years, beginning when all three were stationed in Alaska. "He became obsessed," one family member told the paper. "He was fixated on her."

Loya, who lived in Virginia, is believed to have driven to Massachusetts earlier in the week and rented a motel room near the couple's condo complex.

Loya was armed with two rifles, a 9mm handgun and a shotgun, police said. He set a car on fire to keep officers at bay, and shot at cops who responded to a home invasion call.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.2106705

Lesley Gore
 

Ernie Banks
 

I know it is late but I am going to post it anyways! RIP Mr. Banks!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/23/us/ernie-banks-obit/

LLAP.
 

godspeed...

http://agentsofgeek.com/wp-content/u...nard-Nimoy.jpg

"of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human."


LLAP

One of my favorite authors
 

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/26/389282...al-avon-ladies

She changed romance and changed my world. Her boldness opened up the doors that now house erotic romance. She is on my keeper shelf as well as my Kindle. May the Universe be glad for its latest author.

Sir Terry Pratchett
 

An amazing heart has stopped beating, fantasy author and creator of the Discworld series Sir Terry Pratchett has died at home aged 66, having had Alzheimer's disease (which he called an 'embuggerance') for eight years. He is one of my favorite writers. My screen name, Miss Tick, is taken from a very minor character in a couple of his discworld books. I am saddened by his loss.

A few of the literally thousands of quotes from his writings.

"It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it." Terry Pratchett

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” - Terry Pratchett

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry Pratchett

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life." - Terry Pratchett

Sidney Abbott - co author of Sappho Was A Right On Woman
 

Longtime NYC-based feminist and lesbian activist Sidney Abbott, 78, was found dead Wednesday morning after a fire in her home in Southold, Suffolk County.

Abbott was a force for gay women’s rights in New York and beyond since the ’70s, when she helped urge NOW not to ignore lesbian issues.

She had been wheelchair dependent in recent years, and had limited mobility, said Jacqueline Michot Ceballos, a friend for nearly 50 years.

“We were the earliest members of NOW, from day one in New York City, back in 1967,” said Ceballos, a former NOW-New York president and founder of the Veteran Feminists of America.

There were disagreements among the gay and straight members in those early days — famously, Betty Friedan warned about a “Lavender Menace” from the lesbian activists in their movement’s midst. But Abbott was always a mender of rifts within the larger feminist movement.

“She held no grudges and was truly a loving human being,” Ceballos said. “There was no anger whatsoever — It was very, very important to her to make sure we knew that there’s no big difference between us.”

Added VFA president Eleanor Pam, “Sydney Abbott’s contribution to modern feminism cannot be overstated. She was a brilliant, fearless trailblazer, an authentic pioneer in the women revolution and its struggle for equal rights.”

Longtime close friend and co-author Barbara Love spoke by phone with Abbott less than two hours before the fire. A home attendant had just left to do some shopping for Abbott, Love said.

“She was in good spirits,” said Love, who lived with Abbott in the ’70s and co-authored “Sappho,” which remains “a classic.”

“She’s very well known in the women’s movement,” Love said.

---------------


Rest in peace dear woman. You were an inspiration to many and will be fondly remembered for everything you did to fight for the recognition and rights of both women and lesbians.

Anna Walentynowicz of Poland's Solidarity movement dies at 80
 

Anna Walentynowicz, a shipyard worker whose firing made her a central figure in Poland's Solidarity movement, which broke the communist grip on the country in the 1980s, died April 10 in the airplane crash near Smolensk, Russia, that also claimed the lives of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other top Polish officials. She was 80.

Ms. Walentynowicz became a heroic symbol of freedom in her homeland after she was dismissed from her job at the Gdansk shipyard in August 1980, just five months before she was scheduled to retire. She had been harassed for years by authorities, who considered her a troublemaker for launching an underground newspaper and helping organize the budding Solidarity movement in the 1970s.

Her firing prompted a strike at the shipyard and the spread of the Solidarity movement, which quickly attracted millions of followers across Poland. It was the first successful labor revolt in a communist country and resulted, less than a decade later, in the downfall of Poland's communist regime.

"I was the drop that caused the cup of bitterness to overflow," Ms. Walentynowicz (pronounced val-en-teen-OH-vitch) once said.

Repeatedly jailed, reinstated to her job and jailed again, Ms. Walentynowicz became known as the "mother of Solidarity."

She began her life of activism in 1970, when security forces killed 50 striking workers in Polish port cities. For years, on the anniversary of the killings, Ms. Walentynowicz was arrested for collecting money to buy memorial flowers for the slain workers.

By 1978, when she received her first substantial prison sentence, she had begun to publish an underground newspaper that exposed corruption among the shipyard's leaders and was one of the seven founders of Solidarity. Four of the founders were women, she said.

"Woman activists were in the worst situation, because they were responsible for children," she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1989. "But I could afford to sacrifice, because I was widow and my son was in the Army."


In December 1981, a little more than a year after Ms. Walentynowicz's firing sparked the Solidarity revolt, Poland's military government under Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and arrested many dissidents on flimsy pretenses.

Ms. Walentynowicz spent seven months in a women's prison, where she learned a "repertoire of 57 political songs, many of them very rude about the Communist authorities and Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski," she told The Washington Post in 1982. "If they maltreated us, we would sing the whole repertoire."

Anna Walentynowicz was born Aug. 13, 1929, in Rovno, a Ukrainian city that was then part of Poland. She was orphaned at a young age and began working as a maid when she was 10.

She made her way to the port city of Gdansk in 1950 and found work as a welder in the Lenin Shipyard, where her short stature (4-foot-10) enabled her to climb deep into the hulls of ships. She later became a crane operator.

Little is known about her immediate family, except that she raised a son as a single mother, later married and was widowed. She continued to work at the shipyard, often organizing labor strikes, until 1991.

For a time, she was close to Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was elected Poland's president in 1990. But she broke with Walesa in the early 1980s, believing he compromised too easily with communist authorities and ran the Solidarity union in an autocratic manner. She refused three offers to work in his government.

"We have a jester for a president," she said in 1991. "The real Solidarity was born on my back, and now it is destroyed."

Often called the conscience of her country, Ms. Walentynowicz received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the U.S. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation at the Polish Embassy in Washington in 2005. She was the inspiration for "Strike," a 2006 film by German director Volker Schloendorff.

"We wanted better money, improved work safety, a free trade union and my job back," Ms. Walentynowicz said in 1999, reflecting on the early days of Solidarity. "Nobody wanted a revolution. And when I see what the so-called revolution has brought -- mass poverty, homelessness, self-styled capitalists selling off our plants and pocketing the money -- I think we were right."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041304387.html

B.B. King, 89 passed away on Thursday. "His 2009 album, One Kind Favor, earned him his 15th Grammy." Journey well, B.B.

http://time.com/3857528/b-b-king-pho...-john-shearer/

Rest in Peace, John Nash 5/25/15
 

John Nash, Mathematician who inspired A Beautiful Mind, killed in car accident

Mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner who inspired the movie A Beautiful Mind, was killed in an auto accident along with his wife in New Jersey, US police have confirmed.

The couple were in a taxi cab whose driver lost control and crashed into a guard rail.

"The taxi passengers were ejected," Sergeant Gregory Williams told AFP.

The Oscar award-winning film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe, was loosely based on Nash's longtime struggle with schizophrenia.

Crowe wrote on Twitter that he was stunned by reports of the death of Nash and his wife, Alicia.

Nash, a Princeton University scholar, was awarded the Nobel Price for economics in 1994.

John Nash was 86 and his wife was 82, according to ABC News America, which reported the couple was living in Princeton, New Jersey.

Reuters/AFP

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-2...killed/6493530

Anne Meara
 

Anne Meara, the loopy, lovable comedian who launched a standup career with husband Jerry Stiller in the 1950s and found success as an actress in films, on TV and the stage, has died.

Born in Brooklyn on Sept. 20, 1929, she was a red-haired, Irish-Catholic girl who struck a vivid contrast to Stiller, a Jewish guy from Manhattan's Lower East Side who was two years older and four inches shorter.

As Stiller and Meara, they appeared in comedy routines that joked about married life and their respective ethnic backgrounds. They logged 36 appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and were a successful team in Las Vegas, major nightclubs, on records and in commercials (scoring big for Blue Nun wine with their sketches on radio).

They were beloved New Yorkers, well known to their Upper West Side neighbors. The marriage lasted, but the act was dissolved in the 1970s as Meara resumed the acting career she had originally sought. She appeared in such films as "The Out-of-Towners," ''Fame," ''Awakenings" and, directed by her son, "Reality Bites."

Meara was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role on "Archie Bunker's Place," along with two other Emmy nods, most recently in 1997 for her guest-starring role on "Homicide." She won a Writers Guild Award for co-writing the 1983 TV movie "The Other Woman."

She also appeared in dozens of films and TV shows, including a longtime role on "All My Children" and appearances on "Rhoda," ''Alf" and "The King of Queens." She shared the screen with her son in 2006's "Night at the Museum."

Meara also had a recurring role on CBS' "Murphy Brown" and on HBO's "Sex and the City." In 1975, she starred in CBS' "Kate McShane," which, though short-lived, had the distinction of being the first network drama to feature a woman lawyer.

She made her off-Broadway debut in 1971 in John Guare's award-winning play "The House of Blue Leaves." A quarter-century later, she made her off-Broadway bow as a playwright with her comedy-drama, "After-Play."

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos...&pid=174930394

Betsy Palmer
 

Betsy Palmer, the veteran character actress who achieved lasting, though not necessarily sought-after, fame as the murderous camp cook in the cheesy horror film "Friday the 13th," has died at age 88.

Palmer had appeared in numerous TV shows dating to the early 1950s Golden Age of Television. Among them were such classic dramas as "Kraft Theatre," ''Playhouse 90" and "Studio One."

Her film credits included "Mr. Roberts" with Henry Fonda, "The Long Gray Line" with Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara, "Queen Bee" with Joan Crawford, and "The Tin Star" with Fonda and Anthony Perkins.

Other TV credits included "Knot's Landing," ''The Love Boat," ''Newhart," ''Just Shoot Me" and "Murder, She Wrote." She also appeared in several Broadway plays, including "Same Time, Next Year" and "Cactus Flower."

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....1ZymirPT.dpuf

----------------------------------------------


I remember her most from the show I've Got A Secret. Another woman who spoke to my inner lesbian. Sigh.

Beau Biden
 

The death of the U.S. Vice President's son. The Vice President lost his first wife and one year old daughter in 1972. He was at his two young sons' bed sides in the hospital 18 days after the accident, when he was sworn into the Senate. Senator Biden spend 4 hours each way on a train to D.C. and back to DE everyday, so he could be home with his children at night and then, after they grew up and out, he still did it in order to be with his second wife. That would be for 36 years, for those who are counting his terms.

Beau Biden was 46 years old and died of brain cancer.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...forged-n367296

Thank you for posting the incredibly sad news about the untimely death of Joe Biden"s son, Beau.

Learning about this today brought to mind the experience of a dear friend of mine, in Berlin. She watched both her mother and her mother's sister, her aunt, die rather suddenly from brain cancer. And it changed her, in so many ways. Stemming the tide of unfathomable sorrow nearly always affects a person deeply, but I couldn't help but remember my friend Len.

(w) (w) (w)

Thanks for sharing, Dapper.