Rolling Obituary Thread 2024

The not-voting thing seems especially dumb these days. This quote from Peter Baker of the NYT (from 2020) sounds like someone trying to contort himself into never feeling empathy.

"I try hard not to take strong positions on public issues even in private, much to the frustration of friends and family. For me, it’s easier to stay out of the fray if I never make up my mind, even in the privacy of the kitchen or the voting booth, that one candidate is better than another, that one side is right and the other wrong."

I've got a lawyer friend who iirc didn't vote while she worked for a series of federal judges, and only resumed voting when she took a teaching job in the private sector.

Crank psychiatrist and 'satanic panic'/repressed memory promoter Bennett Braun, truly one of the worst people pushing all that garbage at its height, and easily culpable for a lot of lingering damage on a wide number of fronts. An ice-cold obituary in that clearly nobody had a good word for him at the end, it seems. Even the final lines show he was still rotten:

After temporarily losing his medical license in Illinois, Dr. Braun moved to Montana, where he received a new state license and opened a private practice.

But in 2019, one of his patients, Ciara Rehbein, sued him for overprescribing medication that left her with a permanent facial tic. She also filed a complaint against the Montana Board of Medical Examiners for allowing him a license, despite knowing his past.

Dr. Braun lost his license to practice medicine in Montana in 2020.

wow, the details there, just evil.

truly a grade A creep

Deadly Derek dead.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/15/derek-underwood-outstanding-england-cricket-spinner-dies-aged-78

― My God's got no nose... (Tom D.), Monday, April 15, 2024 1:48 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

was sad to learn he was on the first "rebel" tour to Apartheid South Africa

Yes but then I don't exactly associate cricketers with progressive politics.

Graeme Naysmith of Pale Saints

Some very sad news here to report, the passing of Graeme Naysmith of Pale Saints. Thoughts with his family and friends. 🙏 Image taken from FB. pic.twitter.com/hRRFN6vwsD

— Andrea (@parramaterial) April 16, 2024

Yeah, just rotten to see that. What a sound he had.

Oh no, that’s shocking. I’ll be giving Comforts of Madness a good kicking today, one of my favourite guitar albums of all time.

Bob Graham:

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/former-us-senator-and-florida-governor-bob-graham-dead-at-87/

One of those guys I remember as being on CNN constantly during the Clinton presidency.

He was the obsessive diarist, right?

"He kept a meticulous diary, noting almost everyone he spoke with, everything he ate, the TV shows he watched and even his golf scores."

Minus the golf scores, he was Andy Warhol.

he was no william lyon mackenzie king

Florida politics seemed so relatively normal back during his governorship

Yep -- and for a while the only truly bipartisan figure we ever had.

The political media's obsession with the diary keeping during the Iraq War was Example #4518 of why we're doomed.

James Dean, Founding Director of NASA Art Program, 92
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/science/space/james-dean-dead.html

James Dean, a landscape painter who ran a NASA program that invited artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Norman Rockwell and Jamie Wyeth to document aspects of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, died on March 22 in Washington. He was 92.

His son Steven confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.

From the final Mercury mission in 1963 until 1974, Mr. Dean gave dozens of artists access to astronauts, to areas near the launchpads at Cape Canaveral (and the Kennedy Space Center) and to ships that recovered astronauts after their ocean splashdowns.

Mr. Dean believed that artists offered a perspective that could not be found in photographs.

Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band.

Damn, well that just leaves Jaimoep

*Jaimoe

Steve Kille, bass player in DC stoner titans Dead Meadow.

Woooooah

Oh no! awful news

Daniel Dennett 1942-2024

In Memoriam: Daniel Dennett (1942-2024) https://t.co/I2vx8ZgW9Y

— Brian Leiter https://universeodon.com/@BrianLeiter (@BrianLeiter) April 19, 2024

Cartoonist Pete Loveday, creator of Russell, kinda like a British festy version of Gilbert Shelton

Eddie Sutton, former vocalist of Queens-based hardcore band Leeway. Lung cancer. They were playing shows as recently as 2022, but this footage from CBGB in 1988 is them as I remember them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFUcqcVQImg

Daniel Dennett was really interesting! I have two of his books — I won't exactly say I've read them, but I've read some of them. He was a very ambitious thinker, he made a lot of fascinating connections.

Michael Cuscuna, producer, jazz historian, and founder of Mosaic Records, 75.

Surprised Calvin Keys hasn’t been mentioned https://www.kqed.org/arts/13955977/calvin-keys-jazz-guitarist-dies-obit-oakland

Michael Cuscuna, producer, jazz historian, and founder of Mosaic Records, 75.

Jean-Marie Aerts, 72, Belgian guitarist & producer (biggest project: TC Matic)

saw tc matic live once in about 1985, think they were supporting simple minds on a european tour?

correct!

From when I still followed football:

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/former-nfl-quarterback-roman-gabriel-dies-at-83

I remember him because one of the teenagers who worked in my dad's milk store around that time was named Roman.

I remember him from when my dad was a self-hating LA Rams fan

Chan Romero

https://www.ktvq.com/news/local-news/billings-native-chan-romero-who-wrote-the-hippy-hippy-shake-dies-at-82

Larry Page (not the Google one), 86

We are sad to hear of the death of music industry legend Larry Page. A successful manager, producer & label owner, Larry discovered both the Kinks and The Troggs and produced the Chelsea anthem Blue Is The Colour in '72, which is still played at every Stamford Bridge game... 1/4 pic.twitter.com/0JtJUEm8vG

— Cherry Red Records (@CherryRedGroup) April 23, 2024

Terry Carter, who did almost everything:

https://variety.com/2024/film/people-news/terry-carter-dead-battlestar-galactica-mccloud-1235979429/

First knew of him through the original Battlestar Galactica

Yeah, "Galactica" is where I formerly believed I'd first seen him too, until eventually realizing that he'd also played the mailman in the original "Benji" several years earlier

Beloved San Francisco pastor and activist Rev. Cecil Williams, aged 94

RIP Larry Page. Source of a lot of hilarious stories about the Davies brothers.

He’s the “Larry” mentioned in the Kinks’ song “The Moneygoround” isn’t he?

Yes, and he also "co-wrote" an instrumental on their first album.

Helen Vendler, poetry critic, 90.

She outlived her enemy—Perloff—by about a month

Oh damn, I took her class on Modern American Poetry back in the 90s. She was quite the academic celebrity back then.

Frank Field, aged 581. He will rise again though.

RIP vile right-wing dead Labour guy who was never alive in the first place. He did some great work with IDS on how to starve kids and make the poor poorer. So I guess he'll be in some kind of hell. Maybe his version of hell is where poor ppl can afford to eat without recourse to food banks.