"Sweet, sweet Connie" Hamzy will be doing her act: no more. She was seventeen and had been enjoying her hobby for two years when that lyric came out.
Sarah Harding, pop star from former UK pop band, Girl Aloud has died at 39 from breast cancer. She wouldn’t attend routine treatment at the hospital as expected because of covid. Sad news.
comedy legend Norm McDonald has passed away. He was hilarious. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/14/entertainment/norm-macdonald-death/index.html
Whoah. That's the SNL alum I was trying to remember earlier today on another thread and couldn't remember his name. A hell of a way to find out.
Personal computing pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair, dead at 81. [My first computer was a ZX81 'doorstop'.]
George Holliday, the guy who video recorded the brutal LA police assault on Rodney King, succumbed to complications related to covid 19. He was 61.
Just heard that Willie Garson has died. Remember him fondly from White Collar, and a brief appearance in The X-Files. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58647331
Melvin Van Peebles has died at 89. I'm ashamed to say I thought of him as just a filmmaker until I read an obit the other day. Turns out he was also a journalist (in France), wrote novels (in both French and English), several plays, at least one musical, painted portraits...maybe my favorite fact I learned reading about him was that Bill Cosby, of all people, loaned him $50k to get Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song made (and no, I'm not going to double-check the number of As and Ses in that, don't @ me).
Not sure how well this fits in, because this person was notable only to me (and of course to family and friends unknown to me). He was someone I made contact with via internet, when I agreed to help edit his proposed book. After we finished that project (which unfortunately went nowhere) we kept in contact over the years. We never met in person, never shared photos, etc., only Gmail conversations on general topics, and banter about our respective competing athletic teams, and so on. I learned he was essentially a loner, shy, with a very limited social media presence. He asked about my own family, and I enjoyed sharing that with him; he seemed to have a special fondness for my autistic adult child, with whom he shared a name. And perhaps some characteristics. In essence we simply shared our mutual existence. He was also important to me as a bellwether, because we would often assure each other that despite our increasing ages and impending infirmities, we were still alive and mostly well. A couple weeks ago I realized I hadn't heard from him for awhile, so I sent a missive. No response. I sent a couple more, then dug up his phone number and called, but the phone was no longer in service. And that's how it stands. Signs are he's gone, and my gut tells me so. And it's more unsettling than I would expect. I've seen some deaths, my father and almost all of his generation, a few friends, schoolmates, and acquaintances, and so on. But this bothers me especially, I think because we had our mutual existence, and he left without saying goodbye. Or without me having the chance to do so. A key assurance of my continued presence in this world has gone. Goodbye Dan. May God or the Universe be kind to you as you wander through the bardo. May you find peace, and the ultimate release from attachment and aversion. I miss you. Namaste.
Colin Powell, 84. I suspect there's pretty much nothing we would have agreed on, but he always came across as someone with conviction and integrity. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58957273
The guy clearly had a lot of antipathy for Trump, and after 1/6 said he no longer considered himself a Republican. Even if his age hadn't been a factor, his chances of ever getting elected to anything (much less nominated for prez) were pretty much nil after that. Not to mention that, whatever else he did in the rest of his career, his association with the run-up to the Iraq invasion would've cast a long shadow.
The FBI believes they found what’s left of Brian Laundrie. So he’s dead. They found him in an area his parents said he’d likely be, but weren’t able to search because it was flooded. The water is down now, so they went in; found his backpack, then his notebook, then some alligator leftovers.
So much conviction and integrity that he knowingly lied in front of the entire world in support of a war that led to countless deaths. So much conviction and integrity that he threatened to resign over gays in the military but willingly sold a war based on “intelligence“ that he knew at the time was bullshit. Oh but he said he was sorry about it later. I’m sure millions of Iraqis and their dead loved ones were relieved to hear that. Great guy.
Gators, huh? Do we know if the they started feeding on his corpse, or could one of them be the actual cause of death?
Conviction and integrity means he stood by what he believed in. Whether he believed the same things as you - or indeed me - is neither here nor there.
