RIP

[Phil]

Great article in the Dallas Morning News this AM about how Townes Van Zandt wrote Pancho and Lefty amidst Graham's 1972 "Explo".

 

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/02/22/howbilly-graham-closed-dallas-co-wrote-townes-van-zandts-pancho-lefty

[el mister]

Toys R Us UK met the Great Divider yesterday - I believe the parent US company has also been touching cloth for some time.

 

The UK High St is being squeezed remorselessly by the giant online retailers, so usually it's sad to see these businesses fold under the pressure. Suspect few tears will be shed for Toys R Us, though - dead business model, dreadful stores filled with plastic landfill shite. Like ordering something on amazon then driving to the warehouse to pick it out yourself.

[barmar]

Toys R Us filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US and Canada last September, and expects to close about half its US stores this spring. They haven't had a profit in any of the last 4 years.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toys_%22R%22_Us#Bankruptcy

[Winstonm]

Roger Bannister who, it is reported, succumbed in a record time of 3:59.

[Cyberyeti]

Trevor Baylis http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-43290756?SThisFB

[ktmp]

Ben Beever (BnBeever on BBO)

 

From his obituary:

 

I've only found out about him now.

I was lucky enough to play a few hands with him in Manchester.

He was no doubt the greatest juggler in the bridge world. Here is a great video about him:

 

[lamford]

Paul Magriel, occasional bridge player, chess junior champion, world champion backgammon player and strong poker player died last Monday:

https://www.pokertube.com/article/poker-pro-and-backgammon-champ-paul-magriel-dies-at-71

[Phil]

Paul Magriel, occasional bridge player, chess junior champion, world champion backgammon player and strong poker player died last Monday:

https://www.pokertube.com/article/poker-pro-and-backgammon-champ-paul-magriel-dies-at-71

 

Inventor of the ratio "M" too.

 

Surprised the article didnt mention that.

[el mister]

I've only found out about him now.

I was lucky enough to play a few hands with him in Manchester.

He was no doubt the greatest juggler in the bridge world. Here is a great video about him:

 

That's a really nice vid. I didn't know Ben but like you played against him a few times round Manc - always a friendly guy at the table. Sad to pass away so young.

[PeterAlan]

Stephen Hawking

[jjbrr]

What a beautiful person. Everyone, remember to look up to the stars rather than down at your feet. Try to make sense about what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist.

 

RIP

[ggwhiz]

Perhaps fitting on opening day where the focus is on baseball, Rusty Staub, Le Grand Orange.

 

One of my favorite Rusty moments was when he was a pinch hitter for the Mets.

 

Nearing his mid-40's and having owned a restaurant for a few years he was somewhere north of 300 lbs and could still hit but in a game that went 15 innings or so they had to send him out to right field.

 

A flare down the right field line, Rusty rumbled in (in slow motion) and caught it off his shoe tops to save the game and the crowd went completely bonkers including a curtain call when he went back to the dugout.

[Al_U_Card]

Perhaps fitting on opening day where the focus is on baseball, Rusty Staub, Le Grand Orange.

 

One of my favorite Rusty moments was when he was a pinch hitter for the Mets.

 

Nearing his mid-40's and having owned a restaurant for a few years he was somewhere north of 300 lbs and could still hit but in a game that went 15 innings or so they had to send him out to right field.

 

A flare down the right field line, Rusty rumbled in (in slow motion) and caught it off his shoe tops to save the game and the crowd went completely bonkers including a curtain call when he went back to the dugout.

I watched him play at Parc Jarry and even tho my favorite player was Kenny "throw 'em out at first" Singleton, Staub was the first "name" player on the team. They got him from Houston IIRC. Very popular with those in the Estrades Populaires.

[y66]

Steven Bochco

 

Mr. Bochco said that for “Hill Street Blues,” he had studied a police documentary and aimed to make the series “dimensional,” filling every part of a scene and a frame with something important.

 

He told Mr. Bianculli: “I always thought that with the success of ‘NYPD Blue’ we would bust open the door for broadcast television to really come into the 21st century properly. And it never happened. And I was amazed then, as I am now, that it didn’t seem to give broadcast television the license to get significantly more adult in their programming.”

 

He continued: “But the interesting thing is, I think ‘NYPD Blue’ created the cable drama world. I think that’s the door that it opened.”

[kenberg]

Hill Sreet Blues was a show that I saw most every week. In addition to the substantial story line, here is another aspect mentioned in WaPo :

 

 

The old shows usually had one main character that interested viewers and perhaps a sidekick or two. "Hill Street Blues" had an ensemble cast of roughly 13 characters, each with his or her own story. In traditional shows, each episode of the show usually featured a single crime, which was solved, only to disappear from memory in all future episodes. Cops didn't get shot.

 

In short, HSB had an air of reality about it.

[diana_eva]

Milos Forman

[kenberg]

Surely we should note the passing of Barbara Bush. I always liked her, and reading now some of the details of her life reminds me of why. It also brings up how the world has changed.

 

She met her future husband when she was 16, became engaged 18 months later, and married when she was 19. This was not some wild child from the wrong side of the tracks, she dropped out of Smith to get married. I am not claiming that getting married at 19 is a good idea, but it's what we did back then. I married, but not successfully, when I was 21. One friend my age was already married, another soon after. And of course the modern view might be to frown on a woman dropping out of college just to marry a man, but this is a woman who knew her own mind.

 

A couple of quotes:

 

"I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children, they just about throw up."

"I hate abortions, but I just could not make that choice for someone else."

She also indicated that she had tired of Trump over the course of the campaign and due to her gender, she was "not crazy about what he says about women."

 

She was herself, and at least when applied to most people, that's a compliment.

[Winstonm]

Erin Popovich, late wife of San Antonio Spurs coach Greg Popovich.

[barmar]

Surely we should note the passing of Barbara Bush. I always liked her, and reading now some of the details of her life reminds me of why. It also brings up how the world has changed.

I remember her being a very gracious First Lady, and they seemed like a good couple. Whatever issues I might have had with the Bushes' politics, they seemed like reasonable people, good representatives of their (and your?) generation.

[kenberg]

I remember her being a very gracious First Lady, and they seemed like a good couple. Whatever issues I might have had with the Bushes' politics, they seemed like reasonable people, good representatives of their (and your?) generation.

 

There is a lengthy tribute on PBS

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/remembering-barbara-bush-political-dynasty-matriarch

 

Her date of birth (1925) is closer to mine (1939) than it is to my parent's (1900 and 1899). A lot happened between 1925 and 1939, and a lot happened between 1900 and 1925, so identifying with a generation is tricky I think it is true that my parents would have felt kinship, or whatever it should be called, with her in a way that they would not have felt it with either Nancy Reagan or Hillary Clinton.

 

Politicians have to be political, this we accept, but I think anyone can see that now is different from then. Some of this, maybe much of this, depends on personal qualities and judgment.

[gordontd]

Martin Hoffman

[barmar]

Martin Hoffman

Seems like he's been out of the limelight too long. I'd never heard of him, and I had try 3 or 4 different google searches before I found out who he was.

[PeterAlan]

Seems like he's been out of the limelight too long. I'd never heard of him, and I had try 3 or 4 different google searches before I found out who he was.

You'll find much more here - do look at his wartime past.

[y66]

The Last Word: Philip Roth

 

From his NYT obitituary:

 

In the course of a very long career, Mr. Roth took on many guises — mainly versions of himself — in the exploration of what it means to be an American, a Jew, a writer, a man. He was a champion of Eastern European novelists like Ivan Klima and Bruno Schulz, and also a passionate student of American history and the American vernacular. And more than just about any other writer of his time he was tireless in his exploration of male sexuality. His creations include Alexander Portnoy, a teenager so libidinous he has sex with both his baseball mitt and the family dinner, and David Kepesh, a professor who turns into an exquisitely sensitive 155-pound female breast.

 

Mr. Roth was the last of the great white males: the triumvirate of writers — Saul Bellow and John Updike were the others — who towered over American letters in the second half of the 20th century. Outliving both and borne aloft by an extraordinary second wind, Mr. Roth wrote more novels than either of them. In 2005 he became only the third living writer (after Bellow and Eudora Welty) to have his books enshrined in the Library of America.

 

“Updike and Bellow hold their flashlights out into the world, reveal the world as it is now,” Mr. Roth once said. “I dig a hole and shine my flashlight into the hole.”

[Winstonm]

Anthony Bourdain.