RIP

[Kobi]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Hector ''Macho'' Camacho was a brash fighter with a mean jab and an aggressive style, launching himself furiously against some of the biggest names in boxing. And his bad-boy persona was not entirely an act, with a history of legal scrapes that began in his teens and continued throughout his life.

The man who once starred at the pinnacle of boxing, winning several world titles, died Saturday back in the Puerto Rican town of Bayamon where he was born, ambushed in a parking lot in a car where packets of cocaine were found.

Camacho, 50, left behind a reputation for flamboyance - leading fans in cheers of ''It's Macho time!'' before fights - and for fearsome skills as one of the top fighters of his generation.

Camacho fought professionally for three decades, from his humble debut against David Brown at New York's Felt Forum in 1980 to an equally forgettable swansong against Saul Duran in Kissimmee, Florida, in 2010.

In between, he fought some of the biggest stars spanning two eras, including Sugar Ray Leonard, Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya and Roberto Duran.

[Kobi]

Most people remember him as JR, I remember him as Major Anthony Nelson, master to a genie in a bottle.

It was the master thing that always stuck with me.

[princessbelle]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Most people remember him as JR, I remember him as Major Anthony Nelson, master to a genie in a bottle.

It was the master thing that always stuck with me.

Loved these shows. Grew up watching them both. He was a brilliant performer and will be missed.

[Kobi]

[Parker]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Most people remember him as JR, I remember him as Major Anthony Nelson, master to a genie in a bottle.

It was the master thing that always stuck with me.

I know - the article said he became a superstar hen he was on Dallas, but I always remembered him as Major Nelson.....

[thedivahrrrself]

RIP Macy's Parade Clown

[puddin']

Originally Posted by Parker

I know - the article said he became a superstar when he was on Dallas, but I always remembered him as Major Nelson.....

me, too. i loved "i dream of genie".

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawrence Guyot, a civil rights leader who survived jailhouse beatings in the Deep South in the 1960s and went on to encourage generations to get involved, has died.

Mississippi native, Guyot (pronounced GHEE-ott) worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and served as director of the 1964 Freedom Summer Project, which brought thousands of young people to the state to register blacks to vote despite a history of violence and intimidation by authorities. He also chaired the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which sought to have blacks included among the state's delegates to the 1964 Democratic National Convention. The bid was rejected, but another civil rights activist, Fannie Lou Hamer, addressed the convention during a nationally televised appearance.

Guyot was severely beaten several times, including at the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary known as Parchman Farm. He continued to speak on voting rights until his death, including encouraging people to cast ballots for President Barack Obama.

Guyot participated in the 40th anniversary of the Freedom Summer Project to make sure a new generation could learn about the civil rights movement.

There is nothing like having risked your life with people over something immensely important to you," he told The Clarion-Ledger in 2004. "As Churchill said, there's nothing more exhilarating than to have been shot at — and missed."

His daughter said she recently saw him on a bus encouraging people to register to vote and asking about their political views. She said he was an early backer of gay marriage, noting that when he married a white woman, interracial marriage was illegal in some states. He met his wife Monica while they both worked for racial equality.

"He followed justice," his daughter said. "He followed what was consistent with his values, not what was fashionable. He just pushed people along with him."

Susan Glisson, executive director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, called Guyot "a towering figure, a real warrior for freedom and justice."

When she attended Ole Miss, students reached out to civil rights activists and Guyot responded.

"He was very opinionated," she said. "But always — he always backed up his opinions with detailed facts. He always pushed you to think more deeply and to be more strategic. It could be long days of debate about the way forward. But once the path was set, there was nobody more committed to the path."

Glisson said Guyot's efforts helped lay the groundwork for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

"Mississippi has more black elected officials than any other state in the country, and that's a direct tribute to his work," she said.

Guyot was born in Pass Christian, Miss., on July 17, 1939. He became active in civil rights while attending Tougaloo College in Mississippi, and graduated in 1963. Guyot received a law degree in 1971 from Rutgers University, and then moved to Washington, where he worked to elect fellow Mississippian and civil rights activist Marion Barry as mayor in 1978.

"When he came to Washington, he continued his revolutionary zeal," Barry told The Washington Post on Friday. "He was always busy working for the people."

Guyot worked for the District of Columbia government in various capacities and as a neighborhood advisory commissioner.

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton told The Post in 2007 that she first met Guyot within days of his beating at a jail in Winona, Miss. "Because of Larry Guyot, I understood what it meant to live with terror and to walk straight into it," she told the newspaper. On Friday, she called Guyot "an unsung hero" of the civil rights movement.

"Very few Mississippians were willing to risk their lives at that time," she said. "But Guyot did."

In recent months, his daughter said he was concerned about what he said were Republican efforts to limit access to the polls. As his health was failing, he voted early because he wanted to make sure his vote was counted, he told the AFRO newspaper.

[macele]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Most people remember him as JR, I remember him as Major Anthony Nelson, master to a genie in a bottle.

It was the master thing that always stuck with me.

i still have the 45 record of song Who Shot J.R., ... i remember buying it in alabama on summer vacation. Dallas was televised on friday nights. during football season, i'd come home from the game hoping to watch at least some of the show.

[Kobi]

Just one week and a half into the NBA's 2012-13 season, Rockets coach Kevin McHale took leave of his crew on Nov. 10 to attend to what the team at the time called a personal family matter. A few weeks later, we've learned the sad truth of what forced the Basketball Hall of Famer to step away from the group he's coached since 2011.

McHale's daughter, Alexandra ''Sasha'' McHale, passed away at age 23 on Saturday. The team did not announce the reason behind her untimely passing, but longtime Houston Chronicle beat writer Jonathan Feigen is reporting that Sasha McHale had long been suffering from lupus, and was hospitalized recently with a condition unfortunately spurred on by the autoimmune disease.

The Rocket coach's daughter passed away in Minnesota — Kevin McHale was raised in the area, played at the University of Minnesota, and returned to the NBA in 1995 after retirement from the Boston Celtics as a longtime executive and eventual coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

[Kobi]

Deborah Raffin,59, who had brief but successful careers both as an actress – 7th Heaven, among other shows – and a book publisher, died of leukemia.

Through no fault of her own, Raffin made a string of bad movies in the '70s, including 40 Carats and Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough. Nevertheless, she cannily kept her face and figure before the public modeling for fashion magazines.

She and her husband, Michael Viner, founded the L.A.-based Dove Books-on-Tape, which they eventually expanded into a highly successful book publishing and movie and TV production. Among their authors were Amy Tan and Sidney Sheldon.

Before her prolific publishing career – Raffin served as co-executive producer on 1,600 titles and line-produced more than 400 audio books – she also played what remained her meatiest role, as the real-life Brooke Hayward, daughter of legendary Hollywood agent and producer Leland Hayward and troubled screen star Margaret Sullavan. The highly rated CBS TV movie was 1980's Haywire, based on Brooke's best-selling memoir.

On the CW's 7th Heaven, she played Aunt Julie for 11 years, from 1996 to 2007.

[Kobi]

David Oliver Relin, a journalist who co-authored the controversial best-selling book Three Cups of Tea, has committed suicide, the New York Times reports. He was 49.

Relin, who co-wrote the 2006 book with Greg Mortenson about how Mortenson, a former mountain climber, started building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, "suffered emotionally and financially as basic facts in the book were called into question," the Times says.

His family said Relin "suffered from depression" but would not give further details surrounding his death.

As a journalist during the '90s, Relin focused on telling humanitarian stories including articles about child soldiers and traveling to Vietnam. This work was what led Viking Books to pair him with Mortenson.

Three Cups of Tea sold over four million copies, but in 2011 60 Minutes and author Jon Krakauer – who released an E-book titled Three Cups of Deceit – both questioned the validity of major points in the book.

Relin did not speak publicly about the accusations, but hired a lawyer to defend him in a federal lawsuit that claimed he and Mortenson defrauded readers. The suit was dismissed earlier this year.

[Kelt]

LA Times
By Chris Barton
December 5, 2012, 1:33 p.m.
When thinking about Dave Brubeck, you can't help but also consider time, and not just how much of it fans received from the prolific jazz pianist up to his death Wednesday at age 91.

A titan of West Coast jazz, Brubeck was linked with California for much of his career. He was born in Concord, studied at what is now is the University of the Pacific in Stockton and recorded for Berkeley-based Fantasy Records, which helped forge the Bay Area's sound in the '50s. But regardless of where a listener was based, the Dave Brubeck catalog was an inevitable destination.

Part of the reason is "Time Out," the aptly named 1959 recording that stands with Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue," Charles Mingus' "Mingus Ah Um" and Ornette Coleman's "Shape of Jazz to Come" as a groundbreaking album during a pivotal year in the evolution of jazz. Where Davis explored modal structures and Coleman blazed into a new world of saxophone, Brubeck was equally inventive for his experimentation with jazz's heartbeat.

[Parker]

Originally Posted by Kobi

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Hector ''Macho'' Camacho was a brash fighter with a mean jab and an aggressive style, launching himself furiously against some of the biggest names in boxing. And his bad-boy persona was not entirely an act, with a history of legal scrapes that began in his teens and continued throughout his life.

The man who once starred at the pinnacle of boxing, winning several world titles, died Saturday back in the Puerto Rican town of Bayamon where he was born, ambushed in a parking lot in a car where packets of cocaine were found.

Camacho, 50, left behind a reputation for flamboyance - leading fans in cheers of ''It's Macho time!'' before fights - and for fearsome skills as one of the top fighters of his generation.

Camacho fought professionally for three decades, from his humble debut against David Brown at New York's Felt Forum in 1980 to an equally forgettable swansong against Saul Duran in Kissimmee, Florida, in 2010.

In between, he fought some of the biggest stars spanning two eras, including Sugar Ray Leonard, Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya and Roberto Duran.

After reading the other day that his mom was just waiting long enough for his siblings to get there to say goodbye before terminating life support, I knew this sad news was coming. RIP