Rip Torn was Sissy Spacek’s cousin, Geraldine Page’s husband, got into a knife fight with Dennis Hopper, was arrested for robbing a bank and took the Larry Sanders job because he owed his family “a lot of money.” This @THR obituary is....quite something. https://t.co/SyNuuZtIWD
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Sorry for double-posting, but this one’s worth it.
I met Rip Torn once, in 1990, on a movie location in NC. "You write science fiction?" he said, teeth in a scary grin. "I was in BEASTMASTER." Then he shook my hand and I ceased to exist for him. That was the start of Mr Wednesday in American Gods. RIP Rip.https://t.co/Fp7fVKtrDp
In doing Random Roles interviews, I always ask anyone who's ever worked with Rip Torn if they've got a Rip Torn story, but Conchata Ferrell’s is probably my all-time favorite, because that last line... I mean, I can hear the words rumbling out of his mouth even now... #RIPRipTornpic.twitter.com/9oUYaYVfyT
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Johnny Clegg was never my #1 favourite artist but he was a great artist and a pioneer in bringing Zulu and English cultures together and challenging apartheid.
RIP former Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court, who died yesterday at age 99.
It was a sign of the times that Justice Stevens, a lifelong conservative law-'n'-order Republican, came to be viewed the moonbattyest wild-eyed liberal on SCOTUS. Standing up for liberties enshrined in a document dating back to 1787 qualifies as lefty batshittery in this day and age.
Reading Stevens' opinions was an absolute joy. That combination of honesty, scrupulous fidelity to the lower court record, and powerhouse legal analytical ability is hard to come by. For potent examples, check out his dissents in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale and District of Columbia v. Heller.
Stevens was also the last of a grand total of 3 (I think) justices who went on record in an opinion written for a SCOTUS case that capital punishment is unconstitutional in all cases.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
Dutch film actor Rutger Hauer, who specialized in menacing roles, including a memorable turn as a murderous android in “Blade Runner” opposite Harrison Ford, has died. He was 75.
Hauer’s agent, Steve Kenis, says the actor died July 19 at his home in the Netherlands.
Hauer’s roles included a terrorist in “Nighthawks” with Sylvester Stallone, Cardinal Roark in “Sin City” and playing an evil corporate executive in “Batman Begins.” He was in the big-budget 1985 fantasy “Ladyhawke,” portrayed a menacing hitchhiker who’s picked up by a murderer in the Mojave Desert in “The Hitcher” and won a supporting-actor Golden Globe award in 1988 for “Escape from Sobibor.”
...“It’s so much fun to playfully roam into the dark side of the soul and tease people,” the actor told The Associated Press in 1987. “If you try to work on human beings’ light side, that’s harder. What is good is hard. Most people try to be good all their lives. So you have to work harder to make those characters interesting.”
Incidentally, the most famous line (and namesake) of the "Tears in Rain" soliloquy, which everyone who's seen Blade Runner, myself included, quoted in response to news of Hauer's death, was written by Hauer himself. The original script had:
Quote:
I’ve seen things… seen things you little people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium… I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments… they’ll be gone.
Hauer changed this to:
Quote:
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
The bold segments were Hauer's own invention. Hauer's version is unquestionably way stronger.
Hauer was also an environmental activist and established an AIDS awareness charity, so apparently a pretty good guy IRL.
R.I.P.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Oh man, Rutger Hauer was awesome. Couldn't find a clip of the "Because I cut off his legs... and his arms... and his head... and I'm going to do the same to you" line from The Hitcher, which is a damn shame given how beautifully delivered it was. We'll just have to settle for some Hauer/Gene Simmons "Fuck the bonus" action.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
Former Kinks keyboardist Ian Gibbons died today, August 1, at the age of 67.
Ian played with the band from 1979 to 1989, then rejoined the group in 1993 and remained with them until their 1996 breakup.
Gibbons also played with Ian Hunter and contributed to some solo projects by Dave Davies and by Kinks frontman Ray Davies.
In 2008, Gibbons joined The Kast Off Kinks, a band that has featured various former Kinks members, including original drummer Mick Avory, keyboardist John Gosling and bassists John Dalton and Jim Rodford.
For long-time Raiders fans such as myself, this is a sad time. Branch gave us 14 years of spectacular highlights, was a key component on 3 Superbowl championship teams, and retired the leading playoff receiver in terms of both catches and yards in NFL history. (It took Jerry Rice to break those records.) In 1976, the year the Raiders first won the Superbowl, Branch was almost uncoverable, averaging over 24 yards a catch.
Here's a video of pro football Hall of Fame inductees describing why Branch belongs in the Hall. Gotta believe he'll be voted in someday, but now the honor will have to be posthumous.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
Morrison brought U.S. multiculturalism to a global platform, telling the world about disenfranchised Americans she called "the unfree at the heart of the democratic experiment."
In her speech upon winning the Nobel, Morrison said, "Narrative has never been merely entertainment for me. It is, I believe, one of the principal ways in which we absorb knowledge."
When I began, there was just one thing that I wanted to write about, which was the true devastation of racism on the most vulnerable, the most helpless unit in the society – a black female and a child.
“I’m already discredited, I’m already politicized, before I get out of the gate,” Morrison said. “I can accept the labels”—the adjectives like “black” and “female” that are often attached to her work—“because being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn’t limit my imagination; it expands it. It’s richer than being a white male writer because I know more and I’ve experienced more.” . . .
Morrison always lived, she said, “below or next to white people,” and the schools were integrated—stratification in Lorain was more economic than racial—but in the Wofford house there was an intense suspicion of white people. In a 1976 essay, Morrison recalled watching her father attack a white man he’d discovered lurking in their apartment building. “My father, distrusting every word and every gesture of every white man on earth, assumed that the white man who crept up the stairs one afternoon had come to molest his daughters and threw him down the stairs and then our tricycle after him. (I think my father was wrong, but considering what I have seen since, it may have been very healthy for me to have witnessed that as my first black-white encounter.)” I asked her about the story. “The man was a threat to us, we thought,” Morrison replied. “He scared us. I’m sure that man was drunk, you know, but the important thing was the notion that my father was a protector, and particularly against the white man. Seeing that physical confrontation with a white man and knowing that my father could win thrilled, excited, and pleased me. It made me know that it was possible to win.”
She will be read long after the terrorists responsible for the last few days’ mass shootings have been forgotten by history. That pleases me, at least.
…also, probably my favourite rap song ever was inspired by The Bluest Eye:
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
They really were. I liked their music a lot, but I'd never really paid much attention to him as a person, except I do just vaguely remember hearing about this right here. He really gets started on the third post from the top, but in a nutshell, his father is Richard Berman, an evil right wing lobbyist who's on the wrong side of pretty much everything. So he seemed pretty haunted by the sins of his father, among, I'm sure, plenty of other things.
Johnny Clegg was never my #1 favourite artist but he was a great artist and a pioneer in bringing Zulu and English cultures together and challenging apartheid.
This is really sad. One of the few live music shows I’ve seen was Johnny Clegg and Savuka, at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, in 1990. It was a great show.
They really were. I liked their music a lot, but I'd never really paid much attention to him as a person, except I do just vaguely remember hearing about this right here. He really gets started on the third post from the top, but in a nutshell, his father is Richard Berman, an evil right wing lobbyist who's on the wrong side of pretty much everything. So he seemed pretty haunted by the sins of his father, among, I'm sure, plenty of other things.
The whole thing's pretty tragic.
Freaky, my dad (dear and departed socialist) worked at Bethleham Steele in the 1950s and was introduced to his most radical unionist and socialist friends there. And Richard Berman was a Bethleham steel apologist and WOW yeah on the wrong side of everything. WHooo.
And damn he's my age. ....
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Ishmaeline of Domesticity drinker of smurf tears
RIP to Peter Fonda, who's died of cancer at age 79.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko