Did you know you can pay to have the obituary for a non-famous loved one put in the New York Times?
The family of Antonia W. "Toni" Larroux of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi did."Waffle House lost a loyal customer on April 30, 2013. Antonia W. "Toni" Larroux died after a battle with multiple illnesses: lupus, rickets, scurvy, kidney disease and feline leukemia."
The obituary goes on to make fun of four generations of family (from her father to her grandchildren), the Hancock County Library Foundation and the clergyman presiding at her memorial service, closing with the statement that "Anyone wearing black will not be admitted to the memorial."
via Miss Cellania of Neatorama
posted by oneswellfoop
on May 5, 2013 -
62 comments
On Thursday, February 21st, influential British animator
Bob Godfrey passed away at the age of 91. (
Guardian,
BBC,
Cartoon Brew,
Mirror,
Rueters,
Telegraph, and yes, even the
Daily Mail. [more inside]
posted by louche mustachio
on Feb 23, 2013 -
12 comments
Donald Richie , American author, journalist, critic and expert on Japan, dies at 88.
Smilingly excluded here in Japan, politely stigmatised, I can from my angle attempt only objectivity, since my subjective self will not fit the space I am allotted . . . how fortunate I am to occupy this niche with its lateral view. In America I would be denied this place. I would live on the flat surface of a plain. In Japan, from where I am sitting, the light falls just right – I can see the peaks and valleys, the crags and crevasses.
-- from The Japan Journals, 1947-2004
[more inside]
posted by Ice Cream Socialist
on Feb 19, 2013 -
23 comments
In 1974, Leon Leyson was one of a group of Jews who greeted Oskar Schindler when he visited Los Angeles. It was the first time the two had seen each other since the war. He began to introduce himself, but Schindler interrupted: "I know who you are," Schindler said, grinning at the middle-aged man before him. "You're Little Leyson."
On Sunday, the youngest name on Schindler's List passed away at the age of 83. "The truth is, I did not live my life in the shadow of the Holocaust," he told the Portland Oregonian in 1997. "I did not give my children a legacy of fear. I gave them a legacy of freedom."
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 14, 2013 -
35 comments
Aaron Swartz, web technologist, has committed suicide. First mentioned on Metafilter for his
involvement in the standardization of RSS in 2001 as a ninth-grader, most of Swartz's 26 years were devoted to leaving a lasting impact on the web. Swartz
co-founded Infogami, which merged with the internet aggregator
Reddit, and also founded the Internet activist organization
Demand Progress which
fought against the SOPA/PIPA legislation. His framework for web servers,
web.py, was first released in 2006 when Reddit switched from Lisp to Python and continues to be actively
used and updated. In a 2008 attempt to make a public version of the contents of the PACER public court records database, Swartz
angered government officials when they learned he had downloaded 20 million articles, which he subsequently made
freely available. In 2011 he was
indicted for data theft for downloading large amounts from the academic article repository JSTOR. Despite JSTOR's statement indicating "
no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter," the US case
continued with additional charges, to which Aaron pled innocent in September of 2012.
[more inside]
posted by Llama-Lime
on Jan 12, 2013 -
528 comments
The poet Jayne Cortez passed away this past December 28th in New York City (
New York Times obituary). She started publishing her poems in the late 1960s and in the 70s began performing her poetry backed by music,
first in
collaboration with bassist Richard Davis, and then backed by her own band The Firespitters. Some of their tracks have found their way to YouTube:
I See Chano Pozo,
If the Drum Is a Woman,
There It Is,
Maintain Control & Economic Love Song I,
Everybody Wants to Be Somebody,
Takin' the Blues Back Home,
Talk to Me (for Don Cherry),
I've Been Searching,
You Can Be and
Endangered Species List Blues. Just two years ago she performed solo with her son by Ornette Coleman, drummer Denardo Coleman:
Find Your Own Voice,
I'm Gonna Shake and
She Got He Got. In 1997 she was featured on University of California television network in the series
Artists on the Cutting Edge where she read poems and discussed her work. Finally,
here's a brief clip from the 1982 documentary Poetry in Motion, where she was interviewed.
posted by Kattullus
on Jan 5, 2013 -
4 comments
'TV historians will tell you that “Felix the Cat” was one of the first images ever broadcast on television (when RCA broadcast a Felix doll in 1928 on experimental station W2XBS) — but it wasn’t until the late ’40s that the first animated character was created expressly for TV.
Crusader Rabbit appeared for the very first time on KNBH (Los Angeles) on August 1, 1950, and featured a Don Quixote-like title character aided by his friend Ragland T. “Rags” Tiger as they pursued adventures in serial (i.e. cliffhanger) installments.' On November 8th, the voice of Crusader Rabbit, Lucille Bliss,
passed away at the age of 96. Ms. Bliss may be more familiar to younger fans as the voice of
Smurfette, from
The Smurfs, or as
Ms. Bitters on Invader ZIM.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 15, 2012 -
18 comments
First published in 1997, Anne Fadiman's
book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a chronicle of a Hmong refugee family's
interactions with the American medical system in the face of a child's devastating
illness, has become highly recommended, if not required, reading for many medical students and health care professionals, over the past 15 years quietly changing how
young doctors approach patients from different cultures. On August 31, with little publicity, Lia Lee, the young girl who inspired the book, after living most of her life in a persistent vegetative state,
quietly died [NYT obit].
posted by Slarty Bartfast
on Sep 15, 2012 -
79 comments
Tony Scott, younger brother of Ridley Scott, is perhaps best known for directing
True Romance, but he had a long career making action films that had verve and a pulse, including an ongoing collaboration with Denzel Washington. His last film,
Unstoppable, was one of his biggest critical and commercial hits, earning him
widespread praise as the consummate mainstream Hollywood stylist.
He committed suicide today at age 68.
posted by eugenen
on Aug 19, 2012 -
171 comments
"Garrett Reid, the oldest son of Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid, was found dead Sunday morning in his room at training camp at Lehigh University."
Garrett's
legal troubles and
struggle with addiction were widely publicized over the years due to his high profile father. After leaving prison he fought hard to change this legacy and was employed as a trainer with the team at the time of his death.
"Garrett’s road through life was not always an easy one. He faced tremendous personal challenges with bravery and spirit. As a family, we stood by him and were inspired as he worked to overcome those challenges. Even though he lost the battle that has been ongoing for the last eight years, we will always remember him as a fighter who had a huge, loving heart."
[more inside]
posted by furiousxgeorge
on Aug 7, 2012 -
17 comments
When the works of David Simon were translated to television, the job of portraying 15-year-old DeAndre McCullough from "The Corner" was given to
Sean Nelson. DeAndre himself, then 23, appeared on screen in a cameo as an officer and in a non-fiction
discussion at the end of the miniseries. Later, in the world of "The Wire," DeAndre returned as the
bodyguard of Brother Mouzone.
David Simon: "He enjoyed acting, and showed some poise, but the jobs that offered the chance at a real career — the behind-the-camera production work, the path to union wages and benefits —
those couldn’t hold him."
DeAndre McCullough was found dead on Wednesday in Baltimore. He was 35.
posted by rewil
on Aug 4, 2012 -
38 comments
