RIP Matt "Guitar" Murphy

Via Zuey:

RIP

RIP Koko, the sign languaging gorilla. A fan of Robin Williams and cats.

R.I.P. Koko

Not Koko!! Dammit.

Vinnie Paul from Pantera.......

This one hurts like hell!! RIP brother!! At least you’re back with Dime now!!

Oh damn. I saw him with Hellyeah a year ago.

My nickname for Koko was T-Bone, RIP. Also for the Pantera guy. I recently learned that pantera is Spanish for panther.

Australian golfer Peter Thomson, five-time British Open Champion, died at age 88, in Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday, June 20, 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/o...e=sectionfront

Donald Hall, New Englander, poet, author of children's books and books on baseball, dead at 89. His wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, died many years ago. I read Hall's long, book length poem, Without, to console myself.

Weeds and Peonies

by Donald Hall

Your peonies burst out, white as snow squalls,
with red flecks at their shaggy centers
in your border of prodigies by the porch.
I carry one magnanimous blossom indoors
and float it in a glass bowl, as you used to do.

Ordinary pleasures, contentment recollected,
blow like snow into the abandoned garden,
overcoming the daisies. Your blue coat
vanishes down Pond Road into imagined snowflakes
with Gus at your side, his great tail swinging,

but you will not reappear, tired and satisfied,
and grief’s repeated particles suffuse the air —
like the dog yipping through the entire night,
or the cat stretching awake, then curling
as if to dream of her mother’s milky nipples.

A raccoon dislodged a geranium from its pot.
Flowers, roots, and dirt lay upended
in the back garden where lilies begin
their daily excursions above stone walls
in the season of old roses. I pace beside weeds

and snowy peonies, staring at Mount Kearsarge
where you climbed wearing purple hiking boots.
“Hurry back. Be careful, climbing down.”
Your peonies lean their vast heads westward
as if they might topple. Some topple.



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Sad to see Donald Hall die. I would recommend his writing to everyone -- it was not what I was expecting at all.

+1

Richard Harrison, the "Old Man" on Pawn Stars, dead at age 77 on Monday, June 25, 2018, at Las Vegas, Nevada.

http://www.tmz.com/2018/06/25/old-ma...hard-harrison/

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment...ead-at-77.html

The most surprising aspect of his death to me is that I always thought that he was older than that. I would have thought he was well into his 70s when the show first began 9 years ago.

Twitter reporting that Harlan Ellison has died.

I interviewed him once. He was at once thrilled I was a huge fan and annoyed at me for daring to interview him. I loved every minute. I was happy to escape without getting sued. (he was was prodigiously litigious) He was such a lovable azzhole. RIP

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity."

He wrote a few episodes (or at least one) for the original Star Trek. City on the edge of tomorrow I think it was.

I don't remember if I read any of his SF stories.

It was just the one, but he did write two classic Outer Limits episodes, Soldier, and Demon With A Glass Hand. My three favorite tv shows from that early to mid-60s time period were Star Trek, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. I guess I was a strange kid. I was always mesmerized by the opening of The Outer Limits.

Ellison's Dangerous Visions is a SF classic. I always loved his appearances with Tom Snyder.

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I believe he wrote A Boy and His Dog. I enjoyed a lot of his stuff -- he was excellent at masking his sunny optimism.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is peak Ellison.

RIP Harlan

Stephen King tells some great Harlan stories in Dance Macabre, especially the time he pitched some ideas about a new Star Trek movie and had to deal with stupid movie execs.

Harlan was a one of a kind

Just saw that Stanley Cavell died on June 19th. I have read and treasured a number of his books, but in particular his philosophical writing on film, most importantly his writing on the Hollywood comedies of remarriage, as he called them. Cavell also wrote The Senses of Walden, treating Thoreau and Emerson as great philosophers, and The Claim of Reason, which featured a terrific essay on King Lear.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/o...ies-at-91.html

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Article was an interesting read. Mr. Cavell apparently had his head screwed on correctly. Not too tight and not too loose.

Fellow strange kid.

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The Bush's baked beans dog died, Duke. His unique voice now silenced forever, RIP.