Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Dave Boswell

An amazing and colorful MLB pitcher -- via ESPN.


Gavin Packard

Actor -- via the Times of India. His specialty: villains.

Richard Rabago

Engineering designer, actor and expert in Okinawan kobudo -- via awwman.com.




Elaine Mulqueen

Children's show host -- via the Daily Herald (Chicago).

Gerald J. Christian

Emmy-winning sound editor -- via the Hollywood Reporter. He did the sound for "Psycho" and "Duel," among many others. An ever-so-gifted pro!




Monday, June 11, 2012

Ann Rutherford

Actress -- via the L.A. Times. She played Polly Benedict 12 times in the Andy Hardy film series. She also appeared in "Gone with the Wind," and played the ingenue for Red Skelton in his "Whistling" series.



Ray Torres aka Raynaldo Torres

Drummer -- via the Sacramento Bee.

Boleslaw Sulik

Filmmaker -- via the Independent.


Dudley Clendinen

Journalist -- via the New York Times.


Earl Shorris

Social critic, author, activist and educator -- via the New York Times.

Calvin Hicks

Photographer -- via the L.A. Times.


Sunday, June 10, 2012

Frank Cady

Great comic character actor in film and television -- via the L.A. Times. Cady will be best remembered as the inimitable Sam Drucker on the trifecta of rural TV comedy on CBS, "Petticoat Junction," "Green Acres," and "The Beverly Hillbillies."






Thursday, June 7, 2012

Bob Welch

Guitarist, vocalist, composer; key but overlooked figure in Fleetwood Mac -- via MSNBC.








James Van Buren

Jazz and blues vocalist -- via Westword.

Dick Beals

Voiceover actor -- via the New York Times. He started off in 1949, doing kids' and small-animal voices in the great trilogy of WXYZ-Detroit children's action shows: "The Lone Ranger," "The Green Hornet," and "The Challenge of the Yukon." He was the voice of the Speedy Alka-Seltzer character in early TV commericals; he was the original voice of Davey in the religious claymation series "Davey and Goliath"; he even subbed as the voice of Gumby. A great talent!






Kathryn Joosten

Actress -- via the New York Times.

Ed Quillen

Writer and columnist -- via the Denver Post.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Henry John "Hank" Dire

Scion of the fabulous Bonnie Brae Tavern -- via the Denver Post. He was always there. Always. Never didn't see him there.

His parents started the place in 1934, and if you go in and look over the bar you will see a photo of it, sitting at University and Exposition. It is a lone building out in the middle of nowhere. Now of course it's in central Denver, and it has been a wonderful oasis of good pizza, nice folks, friendly service down through the years -- a great place to watch a Bronco game!

Hank Dire built on his parents' efforts and kept the place alive and well. I hope that his kids will continue the tradition for decades to come. Thank you, Hank!



John Fox

Comedian -- via laughspin.com.




Pete Cosey

Blues, soul and jazz guitar great -- via the Chicago Reader.






Matthew Yuricich

Oscar-winning special-effects artist -- via legacy.com . You can look at an extensive selection of his work here.


Bill Wohrman

Actor and teacher -- via the Sun-Sentinel.

Elias Snitzer

Physicist and inventor -- via osa.org.


Ray Bradbury

Writer -- via the L.A. Times.

To call Ray Bradbury a writer is insufficient. He was an imaginative river. He composed more than 30 books and 600 short stories. He wrote for the page, the stage, for radio and television and film – his screen adaptation of “Moby Dick” for John Huston is masterful.

He began in the age of the pulps, when sci-fi and fantasy was still despised kid stuff, and he has passed on now, in our Flash-Gordonish present times, many of his visions fulfilled. For better and for worse, he was my number one creative influence. Period.

I ran across him for the first time during one of my first trips to my elementary-school library. Like the little egotist I was (and am), I saw my name imbedded within his, and grabbed “S is for Space” for that reason. I can still see the cover – an inverted, harlequinade space-helmeted figure plummeting into a whirling galaxy beneath it. Every story in it: “Chrysalis,” “Pillar of Fire,” “The Pedestrian” – horrified me, captivated me, gave me nightmares, took me out of myself, inspired me. No writing had ever done that to me before.



I devoured his work, plowing through it all, pushed to fantastic realms through the power of his imagination. Every creature and work he referenced, I read up on, discovering the hair-raising pleasures of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, Poe, Lovecraft, Welles, Verne, Burroughs, the Chaneys, Karloff, Lugosi . . . He wrote for radio? I started finding and listening to old-time radio. I sought his TV and film work, and began to explore around, under and past him to other sci-fi and fantasy writers, and from there to the larger world of literature, poetry, film, theater and all the rest. Ray Bradbury made me a writer.

Of course, I have had my imaginary falling-outs with him over time. A chronic overwriter, at times his prolixity was stupefying, his flights of rhetoric ridiculous. He would wax poetic at the drop of an eyelash. But time and again I would return to him, reading of Guy Montag, of Cooger and Dark’s Carnival, of the delicate, abandoned glassine palaces of Mars.



For me, his greatest achievements will always be the three early novels “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” They spoke directly to me, building their universes within me. There is something wonderful in his ability to delineate the movements of history, the significant moments of human lives, the relation of society to the individual, and his architectural ability to construct a story, a musical sense of proportion and pace that is unrivalled.



(The virtues of his short stories are, at times, even stronger -- among the dozens of unforgettable ones are "There Will Come Soft Rains," and the the classic "Mars is Heaven," when it turns out that, for the first astronaut visitors, all their loved ones are on Mars . . . just waiting for them to go to sleep in their childhood homes so they can change back into monsters and eat them all up!)

I hope that enough of my worshipful study of him has rubbed off on my own work, rendering it readable. It’s good to know that he insisted on producing his 1,000 words a day, good or bad, for 70-some years. It’s an excellent goal for which to aim.

And, in the meantime and despite that, he has my profound thanks. In a largely isolated and unlovely childhood, Bradbury was my friend, one who could tell me the most amazing stories, one who gave me visions that told me of an entire world beyond the mundane. He inspired me to go and do likewise, to know that a life spent in the world of the imagination was a worthwhile ambition.

I will start re-reading my stack of battered paperbacks of his, the ones bearing the grandiose slogan “The World’s Greatest Living Science Fiction Writer” on many of them, all over again. He is so much more than that hopelessly hyperbolic title. He means the world to me.