Obituary // Current TV

George McGovern (1922-2012), The Essential American

Peace out . . . http://latestbloomer.uskoa.com/?p=1252

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Dionne Warwick (RIP Hal David) – 1964 – Nights At The Roundtable « Past Daily

A tribute to one of the great songwriters and his passing earlier today.

Gordonskene
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Vaclav Havel (1936-2011)

A tribute via the BBC World Service Newshour program.

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If In The Moment of Passing: Piri Thomas (1928-2011)

Poet Piri Thomas who was born and grew up in Spanish Harlem before it became... more

MarkButkus
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Doctor Who's Elisabeth Sladen passed away

Doctor Who fans everywhere are mourning after Elisabeth Sladen (who plays Sarah Jane... more

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Nights At The Roundtable - Broadcast (Trish Keenan, RIP) | Newstalgia

In honor of Trish Keenan of the group Broadcast, whose passing to complications of... more

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2 years ago
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Actor Pete Postlethwaite has died

British actor Pete Postlewaite OBE, has died on Sunday after a long battle with... more

smurph25
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Sopranos' Denise Borino-Quinn has died

Denise Borino-Quinn, the actress who found fame in the HBO drama "The... more

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“Designing Women” Star Dixie Carter Cause Of Death…Hal Holbrook’s Wife had Cancer?…VIDEO

Desinging Women Star Dixie Carter Dead: Actress Dies At 70 Huffingtonpost.com... more

ctpatriot1970
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Brittany Murphy A life in Video Clips

Brittany Murphy was not one of the world's great actors. Nor, in recent years,... more

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Robert Degen, Had a Hand in the Hokey Pokey, Dies at 104 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Let's all put a right hand in and a left hand in, now put them together for a... more

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3 years ago
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Celebrity Death Watch

LES Paul dies and the Celebrity Death Watch business thrives. Anorak’s Man in LA... more

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John Hugheses I Have Known - aka Why Cameron Frye is the Perfect John Hughes Character

Nostalgia for John Hughes films can work in a number of ways – we can feel... more

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3 years ago
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Messy life, clichéed death for prince of hipsters

Demise of Dash Snow, notorious in New York's downtown art scene, marks the end of an era.

Dash Snow died this past Monday of a heroin overdose, and obituaries all over the world have established him, already, as "iconic," a kind of cipher for the Downtown New York art scene of the past 10 years. They usually begin by identifying him as an artist but nobody really wants to talk about his art. He was a fascinating muse for other artists, but his lifestyle is the most interesting thing about him, involving as it did a devotion to every kind of hedonism possible when a person has no respect for taboos and pots and pots of money. The style of his death also represents the end of a particular moment in the life of American art, the logical conclusion of its utter submission to the glut of money fuelled by fraudulent financial instruments pumping through the world's major cities before the crash. He was an icon of a nasty and empty art so cynical it amounted nearly to nihilism.

Snow was also, in a very direct way, one of the most influential forces on popular culture. Gavin McInnes, the founder of the hipster bible Vice magazine, literally used to follow Snow around recording the smallest detail of his life. The fact is you've seen Dash Snow. You can see him on Ossington tonight if you want. He's the trucker-hat-donning, skinny-jeans-wearing, Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-drinking, Converse-shoe-stepping trustafarian hipster of the past decade who thinks that the good life is staying up until eight in the morning snorting blow in the toilet stalls at after-hours clubs. Snow was the source that Vice magazine used to develop that template.

The comparison with Basquiat, another New York artist who died from consuming massive quantities of drugs, has already begun and it is not flattering to Snow. I caught the Basquiat retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2005, and it was a revelation of his searing originality and consistent growth right up to the point of his death. Basquiat's life was about the work. Even his drug use was about the work. He would snort coke all night to paint and then shoot up in the morning to fall asleep. He poured his demiurge energies into self-education and the mastery of technique, steeping himself in the traditions of Symbolism and Expressionism, which he then melded with street art.

Snow's work is the stuff teenage kids do at parties. His most famous pieces are a photograph of himself snorting coke off a semi-erect penis, and a collection of newspaper pages covered with his sperm. Basquiat's hedonism fuelled his creativity, but for Snow hedonism was the creativity. Ariel Levy's profile of Snow in New York magazine in 2007, which made him famous beyond his immediate circle of friends, began with a description of a game he played semi-regularly with the sculptor Dan Colen called "The Hamster's Nest." "To make a Hamster's Nest, Snow and Colen shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs – mushrooms, coke, ecstasy – until they feel like hamsters." This is what Snow was good at. His art grew out of running around at night, doing graffiti and stealing. He was proud of being a thief; he believed it gave him authenticity. He paid bums to let him tag their backs. He thought it was cool.

Even the hedonism seems joyless and cynical, fuelled by only the shallowest spirit of rebellion. Because, of course, Dash Snow was rich. He was a de Menil, a member of a family regularly featured on Forbes' list of the richest families in America and one of the greatest art collecting dynasties in history. How else could he have maintained his lifestyle if he were not a scion of one of America's great fortunes? How could he have called himself an artist if he were not a descendant of some of the greatest patrons the world has ever known? His brother has dated Mary-Kate Olsen. His grandmother commissioned the Rothko chapel in Houston. His family sponsoreDemise of Dash Snow, notorious in New York's downtown art scene, marks the end of... more

Apocalipstick
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Walter Cronkite, Iconic Anchorman, Dies

Walter Cronkite, an iconic CBS News journalist who defined the role of anchorman for a generation of television viewers, died Friday at the age of 92, his family said.

Mr. Cronkite anchored the “CBS Evening News” from 1962 to 1981, at a time when television became the dominant medium of the United States. He figuratively held the hand of the American public during the civil rights movement, the space race, the Vietnam war, and the impeachment of Richard Nixon. During his tenure, network newscasts were expanded to 30 minutes from 15.

“It is impossible to imagine CBS News, journalism or indeed America without Walter Cronkite,” said Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports, in a statement. “More than just the best and most trusted anchor in history, he guided America through our crises, tragedies and also our victories and greatest moments.”

Mr. McManus added: “No matter what the news event was, Walter was always the consummate professional with an un-paralleled sense of compassion, integrity, humanity, warmth, and occasionally even humor. There will never be another figure in American history who will hold the position Walter held in our minds, our hearts and on the television. We were blessed to have this man in our lives and words cannot describe how much he will be missed by those of us at CBS News and by all of America.”

In a review of Mr. Cronkite’s autobiography in 1997, the former New York Times columnist Tom Wicker wrote:

When John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas in 1963, Walter Cronkite stayed on the air for the Columbia Broadcasting System for countless hours. His performance that weekend helped pull together a nation stricken with grief and was a signal event in television’s evolution into the national nervous system.

When Mr. Cronkite came back from Vietnam after the Tet offensive of 1968, he concluded on national television that the war had become no better than a stalemate. Hearing that, President Lyndon Johnson told associates, ”If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” And he had. When Mr. Cronkite asked Robert Kennedy, then a senator from New York, whether he would run for President in 1968, Kennedy turned the tables: he proposed that Mr. Cronkite should run for the Senate. Mr. Cronkite refused, but the idea reflected polls showing that a journalist — a television journalist at that — had become the most trusted man in America.

For his exhaustive and enthusiastic coverage of NASA, Mr. Cronkite was sometimes called “the eighth astronaut.” During the first moon landing in 1969, Mr. Cronkite “was on the air for 27 of the 30 hours that Apollo 11 took to complete its mission,” The Museum of Broadcast Communications notes.Walter Cronkite, an iconic CBS News journalist who defined the role of anchorman for a... more

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Julius Shulman celebrated photographer of modernist architecture dies

His mission was to use his photography to build the reputation of architects who were... more

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Actor Karl Malden dies

The hits just keep on coming. The star of "On the Waterfront" and... more

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Gale Storm, star of '50s hit TV series, passes

Gale Storm, whose wholesome appearance and perky personality made her one of early... more

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3 years ago
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'Heere's Johnny!' Ed McMahon Dies

Ed McMahon, perhaps the most famous sidekick in television history, has died at a Los... more

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3 years ago
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Ali Akbar Khan dies at 87; sarod player helped bring Indian music to U.S.

Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, the master Indian musician and composer who was a pivotal... more

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3 years ago
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