Obituaries

[sbarrera]

Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou (29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vangelis



ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Vangelis, the Greek electronic composer who wrote the unforgettable Academy Award-winning score for the film “Chariots of Fire” and music for dozens of other movies, documentaries and TV series, has died at 79.

https://apnews.com/article/vangelis-dead...64da98d44d

He did the film score for 1982's Blade Runner, absolutely beautiful, atmospheric music. He also cofounded the progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child, with its astonishing concept album 666 based on the Book of Revelation.

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Raymond Allen Liotta (Italian: [liˈɔtta]; December 18, 1954 – May 26, 2022) was an American actor and producer. His best-known roles include Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989), Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990) and Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002).

His other roles included Ray Sinclair in Something Wild (1986), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, as well as starring in Unlawful Entry (1992), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), and Marriage Story (2019), as well as the drama series Shades of Blue (2016–2018).

After college, Liotta moved to New York City. He got a job as a bartender at the Shubert Organization and landed an agent within six months.[7] One of his earliest roles was as Joey Perrini on the soap opera Another World, on which he appeared from 1978 to 1981. He quit the show so he could try his luck in the film industry and moved to Los Angeles. He made his film debut in 1983's The Lonely Lady. His first major acting role was Something Wild (1986),[5][14] which earned him his first Golden Globe nomination, this nomination being for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture.[15] In 1989, Liotta portrayed the ghost of famed baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in the fantasy/drama film Field of Dreams.[16]


In 1990, Liotta portrayed real-life mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed and commercially successful film Goodfellas.[7] In 1992, he starred as a psychopathic cop in the thriller Unlawful Entry. He appeared in a leading role in the science-fiction/action film No Escape. In 1996, he starred in the sci-fi/thriller Unforgettable. Liotta earned critical praise for his turn in James Mangold's 1997 film Cop Land, and he received critical praise in 1998 for his performance as a compulsive gambler in Phoenix.[17]

In addition to his film roles, Liotta portrayed singer Frank Sinatra in the 1998 TV movie The Rat Pack (for which he received a Screen Actors Guild award nomination), starred as himself in the sitcom Just Shoot Me in December 2001 and January 2002, provided the voice of Tommy Vercetti for the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and appeared in the television drama ER in 2004, playing Charlie Metcalf in the episode "Time of Death". The ER role earned Liotta an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Liotta later spoofed himself and his Emmy win in Bee Movie). Liotta starred in the 2006 CBS television series Smith, which was pulled from the schedule after three episodes, and in 2012 Liotta appeared as himself in a purely vocal role for the "What a Croc!" episode of the Disney Channel comedy series Phineas & Ferb.[18]
Liotta played the Justice Department official Paul Krendler in the 2001 film Hannibal opposite Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore; he becomes a victim of Hannibal Lecter when Lecter opens Krendler's skull, removes part of his prefrontal cortex, sautés it, and feeds it to him. Also in 2001, Liotta played the father of drug dealer George Jung in the film Blow and, in the following year, appeared as Detective Lieutenant Henry Oak in the Joe Carnahan-directed film Narc, a role that led to an Independent Spirit Award nomination and a Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards nomination for Best Supporting Male.[19][20]

Liotta then reunited with director James Mangold in 2003, alongside John Cusack and Alfred Molina, in the dark horror-thriller Identity. In 2005, he narrated Inside the Mafia for the National Geographic Channel. He later appeared in Smokin' Aces—reuniting with Narc director Carnahan, in which he portrayed an FBI agent named Donald Carruthers in one of the lead roles.[21]
Liotta appeared with John Travolta in the movie Wild Hogs, in Battle in Seattle as the city's mayor, and in 2008, starred in Hero Wanted as a detective alongside Cuba Gooding Jr. Also in 2008, he made a guest appearance on the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "What Ever Happened to SpongeBob?"; in the episode, he voices the leader of a gang called the Bubble Poppin’ Boys, who try to kill an amnesiac SpongeBob (voiced by Tom Kenny).[22][23][24] He also appeared in Crossing Over, co-starring Harrison Ford. Liotta played Detective Harrison in the 2009 Jody Hill comedy Observe and Report as Seth Rogen's nemesis from the local police. In 2011, he starred in The Son of No One, opposite Channing Tatum, and for the first time in his career, Al Pacino.[25]

In 2004, Liotta made his Broadway debut opposite Frank Langella[26] in the Stephen Belber play, Match.[27][28]
In the 2010s, Liotta appeared in Date Night, with Steve Carell, Charlie St. Cloud with Zac Efron, the independent drama Snowmen, and The River Sorrow, which stars Liotta as a detective alongside Christian Slater and Ving Rhames. He starred alongside Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini in the 2012 Andrew Dominik film Killing Them Softly[29] and the 2013 Ariel Vromen film The Iceman features Liotta as the character of Roy DeMeo.[30] He had a supporting role in Muppets Most Wanted (2014).[31]

In 2014, Liotta played a preacher in the faith-based film The Identical.[13][32]
Liotta starred in the Western miniseries Texas Rising for The History Channel in 2015. Other projects include Kill the Messenger with Jeremy Renner, Stretch with Chris Pine and a David Guetta video.[32]

Since June 2015, Liotta narrates the AMC docu-series The Making of the Mob.[33]

Liotta starred opposite Jennifer Lopez in Shades of Blue between 2016 and 2018.[34]
In 2018, Liotta became a spokesperson for Pfizer's Chantix advertising campaign.[35]
In 2021, Liotta played "Hollywood Dick" Moltisanti and Salvatore "Sally" Moltisanti, twin brothers, in the film, The Many Saints of Newark.

Liotta died in his sleep on May 26, 2022, while in the Dominican Republic filming Dangerous Waters; he was 67.[40] 

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Roger Angell (September 19, 1920 – May 20, 2022) was an American essayist known for his writing on sports, especially baseball. He was a regular contributor to The New Yorker and was its chief fiction editor for many years.[3] He wrote numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, and criticism, and for many years wrote an annual Christmas poem for The New Yorker.[3]

More at Wikipedia.

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Last living grandchild of Sigmund Freud:



Miriam Sophie Freud (August 6, 1924 – June 3, 2022) was an Austrian American psychologist, educator, social scientist, and author. The granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, she was a critic of psychoanalysis, aspects of which she described as "narcissistic indulgence".[1] Her criticisms of the elder Freud's psychoanalytical doctrines made her the "black sheep" of the family and she observed how all of her female relatives, including her mother and aunt Anna, were negatively impacted by Sigmund's harmful claims about women and their internal experiences.[2]

Freud was born in Vienna, Austria, and was raised in what her mother, Ernestine "Esti" Drucker Freud [de] (1896–1980), a speech therapist,[1] referred to as an upper class Jewish ghetto. Her father, lawyer Jean Martin Freud (1889–1967), was the eldest son of Sigmund Freud. He later became the director of Freud’s Psychoanalytic Publishing House. Sophie had one elder brother, Walter (1921–2004).[citation needed]

Freud fled Vienna when it was coming under the influence of the Nazis.[1] Starting in 1942, she began living in Boston, United States, and attended Radcliffe College for her bachelor's degree, graduating in 1946.[3] Later, she studied at the Simmons University School of Social Work[4] and graduated with a master's degree in 1948 before obtaining a doctoral degree from Brandeis University in 1970.[5]

Freud then taught at Simmons College,[1] along with taking time to teach social work in Canada and across countries in Europe.[6] She went on to write a book entitled Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family for her mother,[7] which was released in Germany as In the Shadow of the Freud Family: My Mother Experiences the 20th Century.[8] She also wrote My Three Mothers and Other Passions.[9] She appeared in the 2003 film, Neighbours: Freud and Hitler in Vienna, in which she stated: “In my eyes, both Adolf Hitler and my grandfather were false prophets of the twentieth century.”
1]
Freud served as the book review editor for the American Journal of Psychotherapy.[10]

A primary focus of Freud's life's research alongside her social work activities was on re-investigating the work of her grandfather regarding women and narcissism. In the 1970's, she conducted surveys of women on their "passions" and the things they felt strongly about, showing that Sigmund Freud was incorrect in his claim that only men have "true passion".[11][12]

Freud was the last surviving granddaughter of Sigmund Freud[1] and during the last year of his life, when she was fifteen, she visited with him every Sunday for 15 minutes.[13] She was a feminist who pushed for women's rights in academia and fought against the presumption that a woman who became pregnant would be unable to continue with education or, in her case, professional social work activities.[14]
Freud married Paul Loewenstein (1921–1992) in 1945; the couple had three children.[15][16] They divorced in 1985 and Freud reverted to using her maiden name.[17] On June 3, 2022, Freud died of pancreatic cancer at her home in Lincoln, Massachusetts.[1]


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Freud

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Valery Victorovich Ryumin[ (Russian: Валерий Викторович Рюмин; 16 August 1939 – 6 June 2022)[1] was a Soviet cosmonaut.

In 1958, he graduated from the Kaliningrad Mechanical Engineering Technical College with the specialty "Cold Working of Metal." In 1966, he graduated from the Department of Electronics and Computing Technology of the Moscow Forestry Engineering Institute with the specialty "Spacecraft Control Systems."
From 1958 to 1961, Ryumin served in the army as a tank commander.
From 1966 to the present,[when?] he was employed at the Rocket Space Corporation Energia, holding the positions of Ground Electrical Test Engineer, Deputy Lead Designer for Orbital Stations, Department Head, and Deputy General Designer for Testing. He helped develop and prepare all orbital stations, beginning with Salyut 1.
In 1973, he joined the RSC Energia cosmonaut corps. A veteran of four space flights, Ryumin logged a total of 362 days in space. In 1977, he spent two days aboard Soyuz-25, in 1979, he spent 175 days aboard Soyuz vehicles and the Salyut 6 space station, and in 1980, he spent 185 days aboard Soyuz vehicles and the Salyut 6 space station.

[/url]
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Popov]Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin on USSR postage stamp, 1981

From 1981 to 1989, Ryumin was flight director for the Salyut 7 space station and the Mir space station. Since 1992, he was the Director of the Russian portion of the Shuttle-Mir and NASA-Mir program.
In January 1998, NASA announced Ryumin's selection to the crew of STS-91. Ryumin served aboard STS-91 Discovery (2–12 June 1998) the 9th and final Shuttle-Mir docking mission, concluding the joint U.S./Russian Phase I Program. The STS-91 mission was accomplished in 154 Earth orbits, traveling 3.8 million miles in 235 hours and 54 seconds.

Married to fellow cosmonaut Yelena Kondakova, he had two daughters and a son. His hobbies included tennis, angling, hunting, walking through forests, and travel.

Awards[

• Twice as Hero of the Soviet Union (19 August 1979 and 11 October 1980)
  
  
• Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR
  
  
• Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" 4th class
  
  
• Three Orders of Lenin (USSR)
  
  
• Medal "For Merit in Space Exploration"
  
  
• Hero of the Republic of Cuba
  
  
• Hero of Socialist Labour (Vietnam)
  
  
• Order of Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam)
  

[beechnut79]

Jimmy Seals, one half of the 1970s pop music duo Seals and Crofts, left us on June 6, 2022. Their legendary hits include "Summer Breeze", "Diamond Girl", and "We May Never Pass This Way Again".

He was also the brother of the late Dan Seals (d. 2009), first one half of England Dan and John Ford Coley. After that duo folded he went on to become a very successful country singer scoring numerous chart hits including "God Must Be a Cowboy", "You Still Move Me", "Addicted" as well as the big crossover hit "Bop".

[Eric the Green]

Mark Stephen Shields (May 25, 1937 – June 18, 2022) was an American political columnist, advisor, and commentator. He worked in leadership positions for many Democratic candidates' electoral campaigns.

Shields provided weekly political analysis and commentary for the PBS NewsHour from 1988 to 2020. His on-screen counterpart from 2001 to 2020 was David Brooks of The New York Times. Previous counterparts were the late William Safire, Paul Gigot of The Wall Street Journal, and David Gergen. Shields was also a regular panelist on Inside Washington, a weekly public affairs show that was seen on both PBS and ABC until it ceased production in December 2013. Shields was moderator and panelist on CNN's Capital Gang for 17 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shields

For 30 years, PBS viewers tuned into the NewsHour on Friday nights to hear what Shields had to say about the most pressing political issues of the week. Mark brought a lifetime of Washington experience to the conversation, drawing upon his work on countless political campaigns supporting candidates from Robert F. Kennedy to Moe Udall to Sargent Shriver.

Sitting opposite a conservative counterpart — David Gergen, William Safire, Paul Gigot, Michael Gerson, David Brooks – Mark helped the PBS NewsHour establish its reputation as a place where even the most contentious political issues could be discussed with respect and civility.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ma...dies-at-85

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Don't underestimate the importance of toys and games in shaping the values and aspirations of children once they reach adulthood:



Bernard Stolar (October 9, 1946 – June 22, 2022)[1] was an American businessman and a prominent figure in the video game industry for many years. Among several roles in the industry, he was a founding member of Sony Computer Entertainment America, and president of Sega of America, where he helped lead the development of the Sega Dreamcast home console.
Early life and education[edit]
Stolar graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity.[2]

Stolar started by co-founding Pacific Novelty Manufacturing Inc., a coin-op machine company in 1980, before he was hired by Atari into their own arcade game business. Later, Stolar was moved into Atari's home console division, where he led development of the Atari Lynx handheld console in the early 1990's.[3]

Stolar was the first executive vice president and founding member of Sony Computer Entertainment America, where he was integral in both the launch and building of the original PlayStation's game catalog. At Sony, Stolar signed many game franchises including Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, Oddworld Inhabitants, Spyro The Dragon and Battle Arena Toshinden. After leaving Sony, he accepted an offer to become president and chief operating officer at Sega of America, where he led the development and launch of the Dreamcast. One of Stolar's top moves was to acquire Visual Concepts for Sega of America and create 2K Sports.[4]

In December 1999, Stolar joined Mattel as president and helped spawn a multi-million unit selling Barbie video game series.[5] In late 2005, Stolar became an advisor and director at Adscape Media. Stolar would later sell Adscape Media to Google for $23 million USD.[6] Afterwards, Google would hire Stolar as their Games Evangelist.[7] In 2009, Stolar became the chief executive officer of GetFugu.[8] By 2010, Stolar had resigned.[9] In 2014, Stolar became the chairman of ZOOM Platform and the Jordan Freeman Group.[10]
Stolar died in June 2022 in California at the age of 75.[11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Stolar

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Christina ("Stien") Wilhelmina Baas-Kaiser (20 May 1938 – 23 June 2022) was a Dutch speed skater.[2]

She was not selected for the 1964 Winter Olympics because of her 'old age' (25 at that time) but later turned out to be the first Dutch female world class speed skater. In both 1965 and 1966, she won bronze at the World Allround Championships. After having become World Allround Champion twice (in 1967 and 1968) – and also winning her 3rd and 4th Dutch Allround Championships those years – she participated at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. Her two bronze medals – in the 1,500 m, behind Finnish skater Kaija Mustonen and Dutch compatriot Carry Geijssen, and in the 3,000 m behind compatriot Ans Schut and, once more, Kaija Mustonen – were a bit disappointing. Not she, but Geijssen (who not only won silver in the 1,500 m, but also gold in the 1,000 m) and Schut became the Dutch heroines of those Olympics.[2]

Although she was still a formidable competitor in the years that followed, Kaiser was slightly surpassed at major championships by Atje Keulen-Deelstra, who was the same age as Kaiser. In 1972, by then married and 33 years old, Baas-Kaiser was no longer really considered to be a favourite, especially not after her disappointing 11th place at the European Allround Championships. At the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Baas-Kaiser originally was not meant to skate, but since fellow Dutch skater Trijnie Rep had disappointed in the 500 m (finishing 20th) and the 1,000 m (finishing 24th), Baas-Kaiser was given a chance in the 1,500 m and the 3,000 m. And she turned it into something beautiful: On the 1,500 m, she won silver behind Dianne Holum, but ahead of Atje Keulen-Deelstra, and in the 3,000 m two days later, she became Olympic Champion ahead of Holum and Keulen-Deelstra. She ended her skating career later that year with a silver medal at the World Allround Championships.[2]

Nationally, she won the allround titles in 1964, 1965, 1967–1969, and 1971, finished second in 1970 and 1972, and third in 1966. In 1967, she was chosen the Dutch Sportswoman of the Year. She was a niece of the Olympic speed skater Kees Broekman.[2]

Over the course of her career, Baas-Kaiser skated nine world records and twenty-seven Dutch records.



Medal record


Women's speed skating
Representing the  Netherlands
Olympic Games

1972 Sapporo
3000 m

1972 Sapporo
1500 m

1968 Grenoble
1500 m

1968 Grenoble
3000 m

From Wikipedia.

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One of the vocal pioneers in period-instrument music, especially with the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt:


Kurt Equiluz (13 June 1929 – 20 June 2022) was an Austrian classical tenor in opera and concert. He was a member of the Vienna State Opera as a tenor buffo from 1957 until 1983, remembered for roles such as Pedrillo in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. He appeared regularly at the Salzburg Festival, including world premieres such as Rolf Liebermann's Penelope in 1954. He recorded works by Johann Sebastian Bach with conductors such as Michel Corboz, Helmuth Rilling and Charles de Wolff, and prominently as the Evangelist in the first recording of Bach's St John Passion on period instruments with the Concentus Musicus Wien in 1965, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Equiluz was born in Vienna on 13 June 1929.[1] He was a member of the Wiener Sängerknaben, performing as an alto soloist.[1][2][3] From 1944 to 1950, he studied music theory, harp and singing at the Austrian State Academy for Music and Art in Vienna, singing with Adolf Vogel.[1][2] He was a member of the Wiener Akademie Kammerchor from 1945.[1]

Equiluz was a member of the chorus of the Wiener Staatsoper from 1950. From 1957 he appeared as a soloist, with Pedrillo in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail as his first major role. He remained with the company until 1983, performing 69 different roles of the Spieltenor repertory,[4] such as Jaquino in Beethoven's Fidelio and Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss.[1][2] He took part in around 2000 performances, also as Monostatos in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Trabuco in Verdi's La forza del destino, Goro in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Spoletta in Tosca, and Remendado in Bizet's Carmen,[4][5] working with conductors such as Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan and Georg Solti.[3] He regularly appeared at the Salzburg Festival operas and concerts, including the world premieres of Rolf Liebermann's Penelope (1954), Frank Martin's Mystère de la Nativité (1960), and Rudolf Wagner-Régeny's Das Bergwerk zu Falun (1961).[1] He was honoured by the title Kammersänger in 1980.[1][2]
Kurt Equiluz became known for his interpretation of Bach cantatas and oratorios when was engaged in the recordings of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt covering the complete vocal works with historical instruments.[2][6] He was the Evangelist in the first recording of Bach's St John Passion on period instruments with the Concentus Musicus Wien in 1965[7][8] and in 1970 the Evangelist in the St Matthew Passion in its first recording with period instruments.[9]

In 1977 he was the Evangelist in a recording of the St Matthew Passion with the Netherlands Bach Society, conducted by Charles de Wolff, with Max van Egmond as the vox Christi. He recorded the St John Passion, the St Matthew Passion and the Christmas Oratorio also with Michel Corboz[10] He recorded Bach cantatas also with the Gächinger Kantorei and Helmuth Rilling. With Harnoncourt he recorded works by Monteverdi, such as his operas L'Orfeo, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, L'incoronazione di Poppea[11] and the Vespro della Beata Vergine.[12] He recorded sacred music of the classical period with the Wiener Sängerknaben, such as Mozart's Missa solemnis in C minor, K. 139 "Waisenhausmesse",[13] his Coronation Mass,[14] Haydn's Theresienmesse[15] and Schubert's Mass No. 6 in E-flat major, D 950 (1976).[16]

Equiluz started teaching in 1964, was appointed professor of the Musikhochschule of Graz in 1971, and of the Wiener Musikakademie in 1982.[1][2]
In 2000, he performed Schubert's Winterreise at the Vienna Musikvereinsaal to mark the beginning of his retirement.[17]

He died on 20 June 2022 a week after his 93rd birthday,[2][5] and will be remembered for his clarity of voice, precise diction and flexible interpretation ("die Klarheit seiner Stimme, die Deutlichkeit seiner Diktion und die Flexibilität seiner Gestaltung").[3]

Recordings

• Bach: Johannes-Passion, BWV 245
  

Kurt Equiluz (Evangelist), Max van Egmond, treble & alto soloists from the Wiener Sängerknaben, Bert van t'Hoff, Jacques Villisech, Wiener Sängerknaben, Chorus Viennensis, Concentus Musicus Wien, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Teldec 1965[7][8]

• Bach: Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244
  

Kurt Equiluz (Evangelist), Karl Ridderbusch, soprano soloists of the Wiener Sängerknaben, James Bowman, Tom Sutcliffe, Paul Esswood, Nigel Rogers, Michael Schopper, Regensburger Domspatzen, Choir of King's College, Cambridge, Concentus Musicus Wien, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Teldec 1970 ("Erste Gesamtaufnahme in authentischer Besetzung mit Originalinstrumenten. Aufnahmeort: Wien, Casino Zögernitz, September 1970." – first complete recording in authentic instrumentation with period instruments, Vienna)[9]

• Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248[10]
  

Kurt Equiluz (Evangelist), Barbara Schlick, Carolyn Watkinson, Michel Brodard, Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, conductor Michel Corboz, Erato 1984[10]

• Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine
  

Margaret Marshall, Felicity Palmer, Philip Langridge, Kurt Equiluz, Thomas Hampson, Arthur Korn, Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Tölzer Knabenchor, Wiener Hofburgkapelle, Choralschola, Concentus Musicus Wien, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Teldec 1986[12]

from Wikip[edia.

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Outlaw biker  Sonny Barger (Hell's Angels)



Ralph Hubert Barger (October 8, 1938 – June 29, 2022), better known as Sonny Barger, was an American outlaw biker who was a founding member of the Oakland, California, chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in 1957.[2] He authored five books, and appeared on television and in film.

Ralph Hubert Barger was born in Modesto, California, on October 8, 1938. His mother abandoned the family when Barger was four months old, leaving him and his older sister Shirley to be raised by their grandmother and alcoholic father.[3] Growing up in Oakland, he was suspended from school several times for assaulting teachers, and he often fought with other boys. He dropped out of school in the tenth grade. Although many of his school friends became drug addicts, Barger worked at a grocery store and enlisted in the U.S. Army aged sixteen in 1955, but was given an honorable discharge fourteen months later when it was discovered that he had forged his birth certificate in order to be able to join. After his return from the Army, Barger drifted between menial jobs and lived with his father in a single residence at a hotel, later moving in with his sister and her children.[4]

Barger joined his first motorcycle club, the Oakland Panthers, in 1956. After that club disbanded, he started riding with another group of bikers, one of whom, Don "Boots" Reeves, wore a patch – a small skull wearing an aviator cap set within a set of wings – that belonged to a defunct motorcycle club in North Sacramento.[4] Founding their own club named the Hells Angels on April 1, 1957, each member wore the patch, later known as the Hells Angels' "Death's Head" logo, after having duplicates made at a trophy store in Hayward. Barger and the Oakland Hells Angels were unaware at the time that there were several other, loosely affiliated, clubs using the same name throughout California. With Barger as president, the Oakland Hells Angels travelled to southern California and amalgamated with the other Hells Angels chapters, dividing territory and forming club bylaws. While infighting did take place between the chapters, conflicts predominantly arose with other clubs such as the Gypsy Jokers.[5]
With Otto Friedli, the founder of the original San Bernardino Hells Angels chapter, in jail, Barger was proclaimed national president in 1958. One of his first actions was to relocate the club's mother chapter – the de facto national headquarters – from San Bernardino to Oakland. Later that year, Barger suffered a fractured skull during a fight with Oakland police.[6]

Barger was employed as a machine operator from 1960 to 1965, when he was dismissed due to extended absences. His criminal record began in 1963 after he was arrested for possession of marijuana. He was arrested again on the same charge the following year, and for assault with a deadly weapon in 1965 and 1966.[7] In the late 1960s, Barger began selling heroin and also developed an addiction to cocaine.[8] Between 1966 and 1973, the majority of Barger's legitimate personal income was derived from advising various film projects.[6]
According to former Oakland Hells Angels chapter vice-president George "Baby Huey" Wethern – who later testified against the club and entered the Federal Witness Protection Program – in his 1978 book A Wayward Angel, Barger convened a meeting of the leaders of the Hells Angels and other California motorcycle clubs in 1960 in which the various clubs parleyed over the mutual problem of police harassment. The clubs voted to ally under a "one percenter" patch to be worn on their respective colors. The term refers to a comment allegedly made by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) that 99% of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens, implying the last one percent were outlaws.[6] The Oakland chapter, with Barger serving as its president, assumed an informal position of authority within the Hells Angels that began following a standoff with local police and the California Highway Patrol in the aftermath of an outlaw motorcycle meeting in Porterville in September 1963.[5]

On October 16, 1965, six Hells Angels members were arrested and a police sergeant suffered a broken leg when a group of bikers attacked anti-Vietnam War demonstrators in Berkeley. The incident led to a collection of students, left-wing political groups and labor unions led by Allen Ginsberg and Jerry Rubin meeting with motorcycle club representatives, headed by the president of the Sacramento HAMC chapter, in the cafeteria at San Jose State College, seeking assurance that a planned Vietnam Day Committee protest march in Oakland on November 20 would go undisturbed. On November 19, five Hells Angels led by Barger held a press conference at their bail bondsman's office, announcing that the club would not attend the protest the following day as "Any physical encounter would only produce sympathy for this mob of traitors", according to Barger.[9] He went on to read out a telegram sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson, reading "I volunteer a group of loyal Americans for behind the line duty in Vietnam. We feel that a crack group of trained guerillas could demoralize the Viet Cong and advance the cause of freedom."[10] President Johnson did not reply to the letter.[11]

For at least five years beginning in 1967, Barger and the Hells Angels turned over weapons acquired on the black market or locations of weapons, which could otherwise be used by Black Panther Party and Weather Underground radicals, to the Oakland Police Department (OPD) in exchange for the release of jailed Hells Angels members. OPD sergeant Edward "Ted" Hilliard testified in 1972 that he accepted guns, dynamite and grenades from Barger personally in return for deals on arrests during at least fifteen separate meetings, the most recent of which took place in the spring of 1971.[12] Hilliard also testified that Barger had offered "to deliver the bagged body of a leftist for every Angel released from jail".[13] He denied, however, that authorities permitted crimes committed by the Hells Angels.[6]

Barger was among thirty-three members of the Oakland chapter arrested on drug charges after police raided a bar and a duplex apartment in the city on August 30, 1968. $7,000 worth of heroin and $2,500 worth of other narcotics were confiscated, as were firearms – including an M16 rifle, two shotguns and an M1 carbine – and a large cache of ammunition, knives, chains and suspected stolen merchandise.[14]

Barger was one of the Hells Angels present at the Rolling Stones' Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969, where concert goers and musicians alike were subjected to violence from the bikers, including Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane who was knocked unconscious and audience member Meredith Hunter who was stabbed to death. After the concert and critical media attention given to the HAMC, Barger went on a local California radio station to justify the actions of the Hells Angels and to present their side of the story. He claimed that violence only started once the crowd began vandalizing the Hells Angels' motorcycles. Barger would later claim that Hunter fired a shot which struck a Hells Angels member with what he described as "just a flesh wound."[15]

On April 11, 1970, Barger was arrested on narcotics charges after Donald Howarth, a film studio property manager and 1967 Mr. America from Studio City, was apprehended while walking towards Barger's home with 17 ounces of cocaine and 30 ounces of heroin (with an estimated retail worth of $350,000) in a suitcase. Barger temporarily resigned as president of the Oakland chapter in June 1970 to fight the charges, but returned to the position within months after his successor, John "Johnny Angel" Palomar, was sentenced to a ten-year prison term for shooting a bartender.[8] The drug charges against Barger were later dismissed, although Howarth was convicted and sentenced to serve five years-to-life in prison.[16] Barger was, however, sentenced to ninety days in jail after walking out of a court session.[7]

Barger and four other Hells Angels were charged with attempted murder, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon after being arrested while driving through Redwood Regional Park by park rangers who discovered two bound, gagged and beaten club prospects in the trunk of the vehicle on January 22, 1972.[17] All five pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of unlawful imprisonment.[16]

Along with fellow Hells Angels members Sergey Walton, Donald Duane "Whitey" Smith and "Oakland" Gary Popkin, Barger was charged with the May 21, 1972, murder of Servio Winston Agero – a drug dealer from McAllen, Texas who had travelled to Oakland with a consignment of narcotics for sale – which allegedly occurred following a dispute over an $80,000 cocaine deal. A prosecution witness, Richard Ivaldi, testified that he witnessed Barger shoot Agero dead as he slept at the home of an absent acquaintance, and that Barger subsequently ordered the others to set fire to the residence.[18] Barger and his three co-defendants were acquitted on December 29, 1972, following a seven-week trial after Ivaldi's credibility came under scrutiny.[8]

On March 16, 1973, Barger was sentenced to a prison term of ten years-to-life after he was convicted of possession of narcotics for sale (37 grams of heroin), and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. His girlfriend, Sharon Gruhlke, was a co-defendant; her case ended in a mistrial when a jury failed to reach a verdict.[8] According to police intelligence reports, Barger had designated San Jose chapter president Fillmore Cross as his international successor during a motorcycle run at Bass Lake prior to his imprisonment.[16] Cross was also imprisoned, for possession of amphetamine in 1975, however, and Barger allegedly continued to lead the Hells Angels from his cell at Folsom Prison.[17] He was paroled on November 3, 1977, after serving four-and-a-half years of his sentence.[19]

Barger was arrested on a parole violation charge of possession of firearms when police officers discovered a 9 mm automatic pistol, a .38 caliber revolver and a rifle after arriving at his Oakland home on March 27, 1978, to serve a subpoena and to conduct a parole search.[17] The case was dismissed when Barger's wife Sharon testified that the guns belonged to her, not her husband.[20]

Barger and his wife were among thirty-three members and associates of the Hells Angels' Oakland, San Francisco, Marin County, San Jose, Los Angeles and Vallejo chapters indicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act statutes on June 13, 1979.[20][21] The prosecution team, representing the federal government, attempted to demonstrate a pattern of behavior to convict Barger and other members of the club of racketeering offenses related to illegal weapons and drugs.[22] On July 2, 1980, following an eight-month trial in which 194 witnesses testified, a mistrial was declared when a jury failed to reach a verdict on counts against eighteen defendants. Of the remaining twelve, nine were convicted and three – including Sonny and Sharon Barger – were acquitted.[23]

In 1983, Barger was diagnosed with throat cancer[6] and temporarily handed control of the club over to his second-in-command, Michael O'Farrell, while he received and recovered from treatment.[24]
On November 10, 1987, thirteen Hells Angels including Barger were arrested on narcotics, weapons, explosives and conspiracy charges during a series of raids carried out by the FBI, ATF and California State Police in the San Francisco Bay Area, which also resulted in the seizure of over a hundred weapons, more than $1 million in cash and drugs, and three methamphetamine laboratories.[25] The operation in the Bay Area was executed in synchronization with raids on various other HAMC chapters in four other states – producing a total of thirty-eight arrests – and concluded a two-year FBI investigation of the club, which commenced in 1985 after Anthony John Tait, sergeant-at-arms of the Anchorage, Alaska Hells Angels chapter, volunteered to become a paid informant. Travelling the country at government expense, Tait made documented purchases of weapons, explosives and drugs from the Hells Angels.[26] He also covertly recorded club meetings by wearing a wire.[27] During one such meeting, Barger admiringly told Tait he represented the "Hells Angel of the '90s" – clean-cut, articulate and able to get club business done.[28] Barger and nine other Hells Angels from California and Alaska were extradited to Louisville, Kentucky to face trial for conspiring to transport firearms and explosives across state lines in order to kill members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in retaliation for the death of John Cleave Webb, the Anchorage HAMC chapter president who was shot and killed by two Outlaws members outside a biker bar in Jefferson County, Kentucky on August 12, 1986.[29] Barger was convicted of conspiracy on October 28, 1988,[30][31] and was sentenced to a four-year prison term the following year.[6]

Barger was released from FCI Phoenix in Arizona on November 6, 1992, after serving three-and-a-half years of a four-year sentence.[6][32] To celebrate the end of his parole, he held a private party in Livermore on November 6, 1994, which was attended by approximately 700 guests, including the politicians Gary Condit and Ben Nighthorse Campbell.[33][34] Colorado state senator Nighthorse Campbell had allegedly tried to use his influence to have Barger released from prison earlier.[28] In 1998, Barger returned to Arizona to join the Hells Angels' Cave Creek chapter.[5] The club was established in the state the year before following a patch-over of the Dirty Dozen Motorcycle Club, which was promulgated during a meeting in Oakland in October 1997.[35]
Barger was present at the Hellraiser Ball, a tattoo and motorcycle trade exposition in Plainview, New York sponsored by the Long Island chapter of the HAMC, which was ambushed by dozens of members of the rival Pagan's Motorcycle Club on February 23, 2002, resulting in one biker being killed and at least ten injured.[36][37] A Hells Angels member was charged with second-degree murder and seventy-three Pagan members were indicted on federal racketeering charges in the aftermath of the incident.[38] Increasing tensions between the Hells Angels and other motorcycle clubs led to Barger organizing a peace conference scheduled to be held in the Arizona desert following the April 2002 Laughlin River Run motorcycle rally in Laughlin, Nevada. The meeting was cancelled, however, as a result of the River Run riot, a confrontation between members of the Hells Angels and the Mongols Motorcycle Club at the rally which ended with three deaths.[39]

Barger left Arizona in October 2016, returning to the Oakland chapter.[40] On May 3, 2018, he testified in the racketeering trial of Bandidos Motorcycle Club former national president Jeffrey Fay Pike and former vice-president Xavier John Portillo after being called as a defense witness by lawyers for Pike. Unable to travel to the trial in San Antonio, Texas due to medical reasons, Barger testified via video link from the federal courthouse in San Francisco, denying that the Hells Angels and the Bandidos were enemies. Barger's testimony challenged earlier assertions by government witnesses who testified that Anthony Benesh, a motorcyclist who was shot dead in Austin, Texas on March 18, 2006, after attempting to establish a Hells Angels chapter in the city, was killed by Bandidos members because he had ignored the club's warnings to not set up a HAMC chapter in Texas.[41]

Sonny Barger features prominently in Hunter S. Thompson's book, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966). Barger and the Hells Angels are also depicted in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), during Ken Kesey's La Honda encampment. He appears in the documentary film about the Altamont Free Concert: Gimme Shelter (1970). Onscreen, Barger was identified but did not speak in Hells Angels on Wheels (1967) and was one of several members of the Angels who had speaking parts playing themselves in Hell's Angels '69 (1969); he has appeared in several additional films.
In 2000, Barger became a best-selling author with his autobiography, Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. He subsequently wrote several biker-related novels.[42] In later years, Barger worked to promote motorcycle safety: he co-authored a book on the subject with Darwin Holmstrom (the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Motorcycles (1998)[43]) titled Let's Ride: Sonny Barger's Guide to Motorcycling (2010).[44]

Quote:In terms of pure workmanship, personally I don't like Harleys. I ride them because I'm in the club, and that's the image, but if I could I would seriously consider riding a Honda ST1100 or a BMW. We really missed the boat not switching over to the Japanese models when they began building bigger bikes. I'll usually say "Fuck Harley-Davidson." – Ralph "Sonny" Barger, Hell's Angel [45]

On November 30, 2010, Barger made a guest appearance as Lenny "The Pimp" Janowitz on the season 3 finale of the FX television series Sons of Anarchy, about a fictional outlaw motorcycle club, allegedly based on the Hells Angels. Show creator Kurt Sutter spent time with Barger and other members of Hells Angels researching for the show, and acted opposite Barger in his scene. Barger returned on November 29, 2011, in the season 4 finale, part one. Barger's third guest appearance on Sons of Anarchy was during season 5, episode 10, which aired on November 13, 2012.

Barger's first wife Elsie Mae (née George) died on February 1, 1967, from an embolism in the bloodstream after undergoing an illegal abortion. In 1969, he began a relationship with Sharon Gruhlke, a former beauty queen from Livermore.[8] Barger married Gruhlke while he was incarcerated at Folsom State Prison in 1973.[46]
In 1983, Barger was diagnosed with throat cancer after years of heavy smoking. His diagnosis and treatment took place at Fort Miley VA Hospital in San Francisco. Having stage III laryngeal cancer, a total laryngectomy with bilateral functional neck dissections was performed by Michael Tralla MD, FACS. Consequently, due to his vocal cords being removed, he learned to vocalize using the muscles in his esophagus.[6]
In 1998, Barger returned to Arizona, where he had previously served a prison sentence, with his third wife Noel and stepdaughter Sarrah, joining the Hells Angels' Cave Creek chapter and working as a motorcycle mechanic.[47][5][48]
On March 7, 2003, Barger was arrested by Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies after a reported domestic dispute with his wife, Noel, and stepdaughter, Sarrah, at their home in New River, Arizona. Noel suffered a broken rib and back, and a lacerated spleen.[49] Barger was later sentenced to an eight-day jail term for aggravated assault.[50]
He married his fourth wife, Zorana, on June 25, 2005.[51] He remained married to Zorana until he died in 2022.
Barger underwent surgery as a result of prostate cancer in 2012. His prostate was removed and he was subsequently declared free of cancer.[52]

On June 29, 2022, Barger died after a battle with liver cancer aged 83. He died peacefully in his home[53][54] in Livermore, California.[1] His death was announced in a Facebook post reading:

Quote:If you are reading this message, you'll know that I'm gone. I've asked that this note be posted immediately after my passing.
I've lived a long and good life filled with adventure. And I've had the privilege to be part of an amazing club. Although I've had a public persona for decades, i've mostly enjoyed special time with my club brothers, my family, and close friends. Please know that I passed peacefully after a brief battle with cancer. But also know that in the end, I was surrounded by what really matters: My wife, Zorana, as well as my loved ones. Keep your head up high, stay loyal, remain free, and always value honor.
Sonny
HAMCO[55][56]

from Wikipedia.

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Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation.[1] The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as musical analysis that combines sociological, cultural, and political perspectives, has incited much discussion, debate and controversy.[2][3] He regularly wrote music criticism for newspapers including The New York Times. He researched a wide variety of topics, but a central topic was the Russian music of the 18th century to present day.[4] Other subjects he engaged with include the theory of performance, 15th-century music, 20th-century classical music, nationalism in music, the theory of modernism, and analysis.[4] He is best known for his monumental survey of Western classical music, the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music.[2][5]: 124–125  He received several awards, including the first Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society in 1978, and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in 2017.

Richard Filler Taruskin[6] was born on April 2, 1945, in New York,[4] Taruskin was raised in a family described as liberal, intellectual, Jewish and musical; his mother was a piano teacher and father an amateur violinist.[2][7] He attended the High School of Music & Art, now part of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, where he studied cello.[2] Taruskin went on to receive his B.A. magna cum laude (1965), M.A. (1968), and Ph.D. in historical musicology (1976) from Columbia University.[7] As a choral conductor he directed the Columbia University Collegium Musicum. He played the viola da gamba with the Aulos Ensemble from the late 1970s to the late 1980s.[2][4]

During his PhD studies, he worked with Paul Henry Lang, who had pioneered placing music within its socio-cultural context, as in Music in Western Civilization.[6] Through a family member who had stayed in Russia after the Revolution, Taruskin had access to recordings of Russian operas besides the most familiar ones, which sparked his interest in Russian music. He went to Moscow for a year on a Fulbright Scholarship, where he was interested not only in the language and music, but also in the way music connects to social and political history. In the 1980s, he explored the archives of Igor Stravinsky, when they were held by the New York Public Library.[1]

Taruskin was on the faculty of Columbia University from 1975 until 1986.[6] He then moved to California as a professor of musicology at the University of California, Berkeley,[1] where he held the Class of 1955 Chair.[2] He retired from Berkeley at the end of 2014.[8]
Taruskin published his first book in 1981, Opera and Drama in Russia as Preached and Practiced in the 1860s.[6] He also wrote extensively for lay readers, including numerous articles in The New York Times beginning in the mid 1980s.[6][9] They were often "lively, erudite, fiercely articulate"[6] and controversial, with targets for example Elliott Carter, Carl Orff, and Sergei Prokofiev.[6] Many of the articles were collected in books, Text and Act,[10] a volume which exhibits him as having been an influential critic of the premises of the "historically informed performance" movement in classical music,[1][2][9] The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays,[11] and On Russian Music.[12] His writings frequently took up social, cultural, and political issues in connection with music—for example, the question of censorship. A specific instance was the debate over John Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer.[13][n 1]

Taruskin's extensive 1996 study Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through Mavra showed that Igor Stravinsky drew more heavily on Russian folk material than had previously been recognized, and analyzed the historical trends that caused Stravinsky not to be forthcoming about some of these borrowings.[1][14]

His survey of Western classical music appeared as the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music.[2][5]: 124–125  The first volume, devoted to Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century, is weaving "facts and impressions from histories, visual art and architecture" as a transporting introduction to early music.[6]

Taruskin married Cathy Roebuck in 1984, and they had two children.[1][6] He died from esophageal cancer at a hospital in Oakland, California, on July 1, 2022, aged 77.[6][7][15]

Taruskin received numerous awards and honors for his scholarship. In 1978, he was the first recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society (AMS) for his research and recording of Ockeghem's Missa prolationum.[16] He received the Alfred Einstein Award (1980) from the AMS; and the Dent Medal (1987) from the Royal Musical Association.[17] He received the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the AMS twice, in 1997 and 2006.[4] In 1998, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.[18] The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers awarded him the Deems Taylor Award in 1988,[19] and later in 2006.[20] In 2017 he was the recipient of the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy (Music).[8][9][21]
In 2012, a conference honoring him and his work, After the End of Music History, was held at Princeton University.[6]

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James Joseph Pappin (September 10, 1939 – June 29, 2022) was a Canadian professional ice hockey right winger who played 14 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL). He played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Black Hawks, California Golden Seals, and Cleveland Barons from 1963 to 1977. He won the Stanley Cup in 1964 and 1967 with the Leafs. Pappin led the league in playoff goals and points in 1967 with four goals and six assists in the Finals, including the Cup-winning goal in Game 6 on May 2, 1967.[1]
After playing for the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League (AHL) in the early 1960s, Pappin played in 767 NHL games between 1963 and 1977, scoring 278 goals and 295 assists for 573 points. The 1972–73 season was his statistical best, when he scored 41 goals and 92 points with Chicago.

Pappin was born in Copper Cliff in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, on September 10, 1939.[2][3] He began his junior career by playing two seasons for the Toronto Marlboros of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) from 1958 to 1960. He then joined the Sudbury Wolves in the middle of the 1959–60 season.[3]

Pappin began his professional hockey career in 1960 with the Rochester Americans in the American Hockey League (AHL).[3][4] He played on its Calder Cup-winning teams in 1965, 1966, and 1968.[5] He scored the most goals during the 1965 and 1966 playoffs,[4] including the game-winning goals in the both Cup-clinching games.[6] He went on to score 134 goals in 275 regular-season games for the Americans and was later inducted into the team's hall of fame in 1996.[4]

Pappin was added to the Toronto Maple Leafs roster during the 1963–64 season.[7] He made his NHL debut for the franchise on November 23, 1963,[8] against the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens.[9] He continued to go back and forth between the Leafs and its Rochester affiliate throughout his tenure with the franchise.[10] He won his first Stanley Cup in 1964,[7] and played in his first NHL All-Star Game later that year.[2]
During the 1966–67 season, Pappin led the league in game-winning goals (7) and finished eighth in shooting percentage (15.3) and power-play goals (6).[2] However, he had a poor relationship with general manager and coach Punch Imlach, who sent Pappin down to Rochester in February 1967 after he scored only six goals.[11] However, he was recalled to Toronto after six games, around the time when Imlach temporarily stepped aside due to illness and King Clancy became interim coach.[7][11] Pappin thrived with Clancy at the helm, scoring 15 goals in the last 22 games of the regular season.[11][12] He went on to win his second Stanley Cup championship that same season, scoring the series-winning goal in Game 6.[7] At the time of his death in 2022, it was the Leafs most recent championship-clinching goal. Although his shot was deflected in off the skate of teammate Pete Stemkowski and credit was given to the latter at first, they privately agreed to give Pappin the goal as he was in the running for a contract bonus should he score the most goals in that year's Stanley Cup playoffs.[7][13] He ultimately scored the most goals (7) and points (15), and recorded the highest shooting percentage (15.9) of any player in that series.[2] Pappin reportedly accorded Stemkowski with unlimited access to the backyard pool that he constructed with the bonus payment.[7] Pappin was also in line for a C$1,000 bonus after scoring a combined 25 goals in the NHL and AHL, but Imlach refused to honour the agreement.[11]

During the offseason, Imlach raised Pappin's salary to $22,000, which was $3,000 less than what the latter had requested.[11] He appeared in his second All-Star Game in 1968,[2] but was also sent down to the Americans again by Imlach.[11] He was traded to the Chicago Black Hawks on May 23 that same year in exchange for Pierre Pilote.[2] The move – which was instigated by Imlach[14] – aggrieved Pappin and spurred him to give his 1967 championship ring to his father-in-law.[7][15]

During his first season with the Black Hawks, Pappin finished fourth in the NHL in game-winning goals (7) and fifth in shooting percentage (17.7).[2] In the 1972–73 season – arguably Pappin's best season as a professional – he recorded career-highs in goals (41), assists (51), and points (92).[2][13] He finished third in the league in shooting percentage (22.5), sixth in goals, seventh in goals per game (0.54), eighth in points per game (1.21), and tenth in points. He was also named to his third All-Star Game that year. Pappin proceeded to lead the NHL in games played with 78 the following season, and was again selected to the All-Star Game that year.[2] He played in his fifth and final All-Star Game in 1975 and posted the second-best shooting percentage (23.1) in the league that year after Peter McNab.[2][16]

Pappin was traded to the California Golden Seals on June 1, 1975, in exchange for Joey Johnston. He played his final two seasons for the franchise, which relocated to Cleveland to become the Cleveland Barons in 1976.[2] He played his final NHL game on December 11, 1976, at the age of 37.[17] Three days later, he notified general manager Bill McCreary Sr. of his retirement.[18]

After retiring from professional hockey, Pappin worked as a scout for the Black Hawks.[19] He continued in that capacity until the middle of the 1984–85 season, when he was hired as a replacement head coach of the International Hockey League's Milwaukee Admirals.[20] During his tenure, the team posted a record of 12 wins and 14 losses.[3] He subsequently returned to the Black Hawks as its director of U.S. scouting.[21] He later scouted for the St. 
Aside from hockey, Pappin had a keen interest in harness racing and owned several standardbred horses.[22][23] He also ran a tennis facility in his hometown of Sudbury.[7] His 1967 Stanley Cup ring – which his father-in-law lost at a beach during the 1970s – was found in 2007 by treasure hunter Mark DesErmia in the Gulf of Mexico.[15] Pappin eventually struck a deal with the treasure hunter and the ring was returned for a reward.[24]

During the NHL offseason, Pappin operated a hockey school that also functioned as a horse-riding camp.[7] His first marriage was to Karen Kyrzakos.[25] Together, they had two children: Arne and Merrill.[11] They eventually divorced in 1982.[25] He married Peggy two years later.[15]
Pappin died on June 29, 2022, at the age of 82.[7][26]

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Lawrence Samuel Storch (January 8, 1923 – July 8, 2022)[1] was an American actor and comedian best known for his comic television roles, including voice-over work for cartoon shows such as Mr. Whoopee on Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, and his live-action role of the bumbling Corporal Randolph Agarn on F Troop.

Storch was born in New York City to Alfred Storch, a realtor, and his wife, Sally Kupperman Storch, a telephone operator. His parents were observant Jews.[2] He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx with Don Adams, who remained his lifelong friend. Due to hard times in the Great Depression, Storch said he never graduated from high school, instead finding work as a comic for $12 a week opening for bandleader Al Donahue at the band shell in Sheepshead Bay.[3]
During World War II, he served in the United States Navy where he was shipmates with Tony Curtis on the submarine tender USS Proteus (AS-19).[4]

Storch was originally a comic. This led to guest appearances on dozens of television series, including, Mannix, Car 54, Where Are You?; Hennesey; Get Smart; Sergeant Bilko; Columbo; CHiPs; Fantasy Island; McCloud; Emergency!; The Flying Nun; Alias Smith and Jones; The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; That Girl; I Dream of Jeannie; Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.; Gilligan's Island; The Doris Day Show; The Persuaders; Love, American Style; All in the Family; and Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

[/url]
Storch, top right, with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Troop]F Troop cast (1965)

His most famous role was ftim 1965 to 1967 as the scheming Corporal Randolph Agarn on the situation comedy F Troop, with Forrest Tucker, Ken Berry, and Melody Patterson.
In 1975, Storch co-starred with Bob Burns (who wore a gorilla costume) and Forrest Tucker on the short-lived but popular Saturday morning children's show The Ghost Busters. He also appeared on The Love Boat, was Al Bundy's childhood hero on Married... with Children (Al Bundy's daughter Kelly attended an acting school operated by Larry), and was a semi-regular on Car 54, Where Are You?. He co-starred on the short-lived series The Queen and I.

Storch appeared on many variety shows, including Sonny and Cher, Laugh-In, Hollywood Squares, Playboy After Dark? and The Hollywood Palace, with several appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and The Steve Allen Show. Jackie Gleason asked Storch to fill in for him in the summer of 1953 while Gleason was on hiatus. This led to the 10-episode The Larry Storch Show with guest stars including Janet Blair, Risë Stevens, Dick Haymes, and Cab Calloway. He also made appearances on Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. and Gilligan's Island.

An impressionist, Storch recreated hundreds of voices and dialects ranging from Muhammad Ali to Claude Rains and voiced characters in many television and film animations including The Pink Panther Show, Groovie Goolies, The Inspector, The Brady Kids, Cool Cat, Koko the Clown, Treasure Island, and Tennessee Tuxedo.
Storch worked with Mel Blanc and June Foray at Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, voicing characters such as Merlin the Magic Mouse and Cool Cat. He continued his association with Filmation as a voiceover actor in other series and films the company produced including Journey Back to Oz where he voiced Aunt Em and Uncle Henry's farmhand Amos.

Storch appeared in more than 25 Hollywood films, including Gun Fever (1958), Who Was That Lady? (1960), 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), Wild and Wonderful (1964), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), and The Great Race (1965), all starring Tony Curtis. He also appeared in Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965), A Very Special Favor (1965), That Funny Feeling, (1965), The Great Bank Robbery (1969), Airport 1975 (1974), The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977), Record City (1978), S.O.B (1981), Fake-Out (1982), Sweet Sixteen (1983), and A Fine Mess (1986), as well as the cult sci-fi films The Monitors (1969), and Without Warning (1980). Tony Curtis and Storch reunited for a 2003 run of the musical version of Some Like It Hot. In 2005, he worked with Anthony Michael Hall in Funny Valentine (2005), and appeared in the documentary feature The Aristocrats (2005).

After success in television and films, Storch returned to the New York stage, having first performed on the Broadway stage in the 1950s.[5] He received rave reviews for the Off-Broadway production of Breaking Legs. Co-starring Philip Bosco and Vincent Gardenia, the show extended several times before going on the road. Storch appeared in the Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess (which Storch considers his favorite), Arsenic and Old Lace with Jean Stapleton, and Annie Get Your Gun with Reba McEntire. He toured the United States and Europe with Porgy and Bess.
In 2004, he was in Sly Fox with Richard Dreyfuss and his old friend Irwin Corey. Larry, then 81, and "Professor" Corey, 90, did eight shows a week. In March 2008, Storch celebrated his 50th anniversary performing on Broadway. His first Broadway appearance had been Who Was That Lady I Saw You With, later made into a 1960 film starring Dean Martin and Tony Curtis, with Storch appearing.
Storch and Dark Shadows star Marie Wallace appeared in Love Letters by A.R. Gurney on June 24, 2012, a benefit performance for the Actor's Temple in New York City.[6]
In the summer of 2012, Storch appeared in a benefit performance of Love Letters with actress Diana Sowle (best known for her role as Mrs. Bucket in the original Willy Wonka film) in Farmville, Virginia to benefit The Tom Mix Rangers.[citation needed]

Storch recorded a comedy LP, Larry Storch at The Bon Soir, released by Jubilee Records in the 1960s. His other records include Larry Storch Reads Philip Roth's Epstein, and singles such as "Pooped" b/w "The Eighth Wonder Of The World", and "I'm Walkin'".

Storch married actress Norma Catherine Greve on July 10, 1961. They remained married until her death at age 81 on August 28, 2003. Both briefly appeared in the made-for-television movie The Woman Hunter (1972). He had three children: a stepson, Lary May; a daughter, Candace Herman, the result of a brief encounter with his future wife, born in 1947 and given up for adoption (and later reunited); and a stepdaughter, June Cross, born in 1954 to Norma and Jimmy Cross ("Stump" of the song-and-dance team Stump and Stumpy).[7][8]
Storch's younger brother, Jay (1924–1987), was an actor/voiceover performer under the name Jay Lawrence.[9][10]
Storch died at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on July 8, 2022, at the age of 99.[11]

Storch was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award in 1967 for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series for F Troop. Storch lost to childhood friend Don Adams that year. Storch said he later remarked to Adams, “You kept it on the block.”
An episode of Animaniacs titled "The Sound of Warners" features a banner that says "Larry Storch Days; Nov 13 & 14".
In Fort Lee, New Jersey, Mayor Mark Sokolich named Storch as honorary Mayor for a Day on June 1, 2014. Storch had previously been honored by the local film commission for performing at the Riviera nightclub, which had closed 60 years earlier.[12] He received the 2013 Barrymore Award for Lifetime Achievement in Film and TV from the Fort Lee Film Commission.
A Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to Storch in 2014.[13]
Storch was named an honorary citizen of Passaic, New Jersey, on September 13, 2016. He also received a Distinguished Service Medal to recognize his World War II service.[14]

On January 14, 2019, The Lambs honored Storch with their Shepherd's Award.
Wild West City, an amusement park in New Jersey, renamed one of its storefronts “Larry Storch’s Silver Dollar Saloon” in his honor.[15]
Storch was named an Honorary Friar in early 2019 at a ceremony with Dick Cavett at the New York Friars Club.
On his 97th birthday, Storch was presented with a Proclamation from the State of New York.

[pbrower2a]

Former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, was assassinated!

Count on far more news.

[pbrower2a]

Might have become our First Lady except for you-know-whose sexual hanky-panky. 


Ivana Marie Trump (née Zelníčková, Czech: [ˈzɛlɲiːtʃkovaː]; February 20, 1949 – July 14, 2022) was a Czech-American businesswoman, media personality, fashion designer, author, and model. Trump was also the first wife of later U.S. president Donald Trump. She lived in Canada in the 1970s before immigrating to the United States, and held key managerial positions in The Trump Organization[1] as vice president of interior design, as CEO and president of Trump's Castle casino resort, and as manager of the Plaza Hotel.

Ivana and Donald were prominent figures in New York society throughout the 1980s. The couple's divorce, finalized in 1992, was the subject of extensive media coverage. Following the divorce, she developed her own lines of clothing, fashion jewelry, and beauty products which were sold on QVC London and the Home Shopping Network. Ivana wrote an advice column for Globe called "Ask Ivana" from 1995 through 2010 and published several books including works of fiction, self-help, and the autobiography Raising Trump.



Ivana Zelníčková was born on February 20, 1949, in the Moravian city of Zlín (known between 1949 and 1990 as Gottwaldov), Czechoslovakia, the daughter of Miloš Zelníček (1927–1990) and Marie Zelníčková (née Francová; born 1926).[2][3][4] Her father was an electrical engineer and her mother worked as a telephone operator.[5] Her father encouraged her skiing abilities, a practice she began at age four.[5][6] After developing skills as a skier, she joined the junior national ski team, which offered her opportunities to travel beyond the Soviet-era communist boundaries of what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.[5] She attended Charles University in Prague and earned a master's degree in physical education in 1972.[7][6] In 1970, Trump appeared on Czechoslovak Television in the children's television series Pan Tau.[8]

Accounts differ as to Trump's history of skiing competitively.[9] It was reported that she was selected as an alternate on the Czechoslovak ski team during the 1972 Winter Olympics, specializing in downhill and slalom.[10][6] However, in 1989, Petr Pomezný, Secretary General of the Czechoslovak Olympic Committee, denied the claim and stated that despite searching extensively, no record could be found of her involvement.[7]


In 1971, Zelníčková married Alfred Winklmayr, an Austrian ski instructor and her platonic friend, in order to obtain Austrian citizenship.[11][12] The marriage granted her the freedom to leave Czechoslovakia without defection so she could retain the right to return to visit her parents.[13][14][11][15] As Ivana Winklmayr, she received her Austrian passport in March 1972.[12] The following year, she obtained an absentee divorce from Alfred Winklmayr in Los Angeles, California, where he had moved to teach skiing.[13][14][12]

Zelníčková was romantically involved with the lyricist and playwright George (Jiři) Staidl who was killed in a car accident in 1973.[16] After Staidl's death, Zelníčková moved to Canada where she lived with George (Jiři) Syrovatka whom she had dated since 1967; Syrovatka had defected to Canada in 1971 and owned a ski boutique in Montreal.[13][14][15] Zelníčková worked as a ski instructor while living in Canada.[17] She lived in Montreal for two years where she continued to improve her English via night courses at McGill University.[15] Working as a model, Zelníčková told the Montreal Gazette in 1975 that she considered modeling to be a job, rather than a career.[18] Her modeling clients included Eaton's department store and the fashion designer Auckie Sanft, along with promotional work for the 1976 Summer Olympics that were being hosted in Montreal.[15]

Ivana was in New York City with a group of models in 1976 when she met Donald Trump.[15] On April 7, 1977, the couple married at Marble Collegiate Church in a wedding officiated by Norman Vincent Peale.[19][20][21][22] They became tabloid figures in New York society during the 1980s and worked together on several large projects, including the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the renovation of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City, and the construction of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey.[23][24]





During the marriage, Ivana and Donald had three children: Donald Jr. (born 1977), Ivana Marie (born 1981), and Eric (born 1984). Donald Jr. learned to speak fluent Czech (with the help of his maternal grandfather), while Ivanka gained only a basic understanding of her mother's native tongue, and Eric was not exposed to the language since, by the time of his birth, his grandparents were comfortable using English.[25][26]

A reviewer of the 2018 Netflix documentary miniseries on Donald, Trump: An American Dream, described Ivana as a "charismatic workaholic, a career woman, an equal", and a life partner deliberately chosen by Trump to "work beside him and challenge him."[27]

The Trumps' troubled marriage became the subject of public interest over the Christmas holiday in 1989 when—on vacation in Aspen, Colorado—they were observed fighting after Ivana encountered Donald's mistress Marla Maples.[28] The Chicago Tribune reported that by February 1990, Donald had locked Ivana out of her office at the Plaza Hotel, and a legal battle ensued over the legitimacy of the four prenuptial agreements the pair had successively negotiated over the years.[28]



In October 1990, Ivana's 63-year-old father, Miloš Zelníček, died suddenly from a heart attack. According to The Guardian, her father was an informer for Czechoslovakia's Státní bezpečnost (StB) intelligence service who relayed information from his daughter, including a correct prediction that George H. W. Bush would win the 1988 presidential election.[29] Despite their marital troubles and pending divorce, Donald stood at her side at her father's funeral in Zlín[30] held in November 1990.[29]


The Trumps' divorce proceedings received worldwide publicity.[31] Front-page coverage appeared in New York tabloid newspapers for eleven days in a row, and the story was the subject of Liz Smith's entire news coverage for three months.[32] In a deposition relating to their divorce, Ivana accused Donald of rape and of pulling out handfuls of her hair.[33] In Harry Hurt III's book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, she confirmed that she had "felt violated". However, in a statement provided by Donald and his lawyers, she said that she had used the word "rape", but she did not "want [her] words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense."[34] The uncontested divorce was granted in December 1990 on the grounds of cruel and inhumane treatment by Donald.[31][35] Ivana had to sign a non-disclosure agreement as a condition of the divorce settlement, and she was required to seek Donald's permission before publicly discussing their marriage.[34][36] The New York Times reported in 1991 that Ivana's divorce settlement included $14 million, a 45-room Connecticut mansion, an apartment in the Trump Plaza, and the use of Mar-a-Lago for one month a year.[35] The divorce was finalized in 1992.[33]

Trump married four times. Her first marriage, to Alfred Winklmayr, was for the goal of securing Austrian nationality, according to a biographer.[9] She was married to Donald from 1977 to 1992, and they had three children: Donald Jr. in 1977, Ivanka in 1981, and Eric in 1984.[61] She became a naturalized United States citizen in 1988.[62][63]

Trump married Italian entrepreneur and international businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli in November 1995.[64][65] They divorced in 1997.[66] That same year, she filed a $15 million breach of contract suit against Mazzucchelli for violating the confidentiality clause in their prenuptial agreement,[67] while Mazzucchelli sued Ivana and Donald in a British court for libel.[65] The suit was later settled under undisclosed terms.[66]

In the summer of 1997, she began dating Italian aristocrat Count Roffredo Gaetani dell'Aquila d'Aragona Lovatelli.[68] The relationship continued until his death in 2005.[69]

Trump dated Italian actor and model Rossano Rubicondi for six years before they married on April 12, 2008.[70][71][72] The marriage to Rubicondi, 36, was the fourth for Ivana, then 59.[72] The couple's $3 million wedding for 400 guests was hosted by ex-husband Donald at Mar-a-Lago with daughter Ivanka as her maid of honor.[73] The wedding was officiated by Trump's ex-sister-in-law Judge Maryanne Trump Barry.[72] Although Ivana and Rubicondi divorced less than a year later, their on-again, off-again relationship continued until 2019, when Ivana announced they had once again "called it quits".[17][74] Rubicondi died on October 29, 2021, at the age of 49 reportedly from melanoma.[75][76]

Trump had ten grandchildren.[77] In the late 2010s, she reportedly split her time between New York City, Miami, and Saint-Tropez.[17] She stated she was fluent in German, French, Czech, and Russian.[1]



On July 14, 2022, at the age of 73, Ivana Trump died at her home in the New York city borough of Manhattan after being found unconscious and unresponsive at the bottom of a staircase.[78] Donald Trump, her ex-husband, posted on the Truth Social app:[79]

Quote:"I am very saddened to inform all of those that loved her, of which there are many, that Ivana Trump has passed away at her home in New York City. She was a wonderful, beautiful and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life. Her pride and joy were her three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her. Rest in peace, Ivana!"[80]

A number of politicians and celebrities posted condolences on social media, including former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani; political commentators Paris Dennard and Kayleigh McEnany; actress Alana Stewart; Florida House representative Byron Donalds; political analyist Sebastian Gorka; RNC Chairperson Ronna McDaniel; political advisor Stephen Miller; and photographer Harry Benson.[81]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivana_Trump

[sbarrera]

Gennaro Anthony Sirico Jr. (July 29, 1942 – July 8, 2022)  was an American actor. He was best known for his role as Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri in The Sopranos. He also made numerous appearances in the films of Woody Allen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Sirico

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituarie...rico-dies/

Tony Sirico, ‘Sopranos’ actor who played Paulie Walnuts, dies at 79
By Matt Schudel
July 9, 2022 at 9:42 p.m. EDT


Tony Sirico, who played Paulie Walnuts on “The Sopranos,” in 2007. (Peter Foley/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

“I have an arsenal of weapons and an army of men, and I’m going to use them,” Tony Sirico, who played the mob henchman Paulie Walnuts in the HBO crime drama “The Sopranos,” was once quoted as saying, “and … I’m going to come back here and carve my initials in your forehead. You better learn a lesson. You better show me the respect I deserve.”

The lines seem to have come from a script for the groundbreaking series, which aired from 1999 to 2007, won 21 Emmy Awards and is acclaimed as one of the greatest programs in television history. But the words are taken verbatim from a 1970 police charging record, documenting the reasons for Mr. Sirico’s arrest on extortion and weapons charges.

Long before he became renowned for playing a silver-haired enforcer for New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano (played by James Gandolfini), Mr. Sirico was a real-life hoodlum who was arrested 28 times and spent two stints in prison, totaling almost three years.

The memories of his earlier life were never far from the surface as Mr. Sirico portrayed Paulie Walnuts throughout the six-season run of “The Sopranos,” creating one of television’s most unforgettable characters. Mr. Sirico was 79 when he died July 8 at an assisted-living facility in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The death was announced in a statement from his brother Robert Sirico, a Catholic priest in Michigan. He reportedly had dementia.

Before “The Sopranos,” Mr. Sirico had played a mobster in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” (1990), had acted in several films directed by Woody Allen, including “Bullets Over Broadway,” “Mighty Aphrodite” and “Everyone Says I Love You,” and appeared in the 1997 police corruption drama “Cop Land” with Sylvester Stallone and Ray Liotta.

When he auditioned for “The Sopranos,” Mr. Sirico was 55 and living with his mother in a small apartment in Brooklyn. He tried out for two roles and was told by David Chase, the show’s creator, that he didn’t get either of them.

“He said, ‘No, I got you in mind for somebody else,’ ” Mr. Sirico said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in 2001, “and along came Paulie Walnuts.”

The character’s formal name was Peter Paul Gualtieri, who had been a trusted lieutenant of Tony Soprano’s late father, Johnny Boy Soprano. During the show’s first season, Paulie Walnuts described his life in this way: “I was born, grew up, spent a few years in the Army, a few more in the can and here I am, a half a wise guy.”

He got his nickname when he thought he was hijacking a truck loaded with televisions. It turned out to be carrying nuts.

Mr. Sirico wore a pinkie ring in real life, the same as Paulie. When the show’s wardrobe staff picked out a shirt for him, he said he had one just like it at home. On the show, while sitting outside a meat market that was an informal mob clubhouse, Paulie would flip open an aluminum reflector, brightening the tan on his neck and face.

And then there was his hair: a pompadour first sculpted into place in the ’50s, now highlighted by two wings of silver slicked back on the sides. Mr. Sirico refused to let anyone touch his hair and spent hours combing and spraying it before shooting a scene.

Tony Sirico and James Gandolfini hold their awards for best ensemble in a drama for their work in “The Sopranos” at the 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2008. (Chris Pizzello/AP)
His character killed more people than any other during the course of the show — nine — but there was much more to “The Sopranos” than mob violence. It was about families, both criminal and nuclear; about being part of a fading culture failing to adapt to change; and about the problems associated with addiction and depression.

When Tony Soprano revealed he was seeing a therapist, Paulie admitted he had too: “I had some issues.”

Mr. Sirico once said, “If Paulie can’t curse, he can’t talk,” and he delivered some of the show’s funniest lines, always in a serious, deadpan style, usually punctuated by profanity. In one episode, he was cooking lunch for his pals when he paused for a long disquisition on the dangers of wet shoelaces.

“Why would they be wet?” he asked, while everyone was eating. “You go to public bathrooms? You stand at the urinal? … You look at ladies’ johns, you could eat maple walnut ice cream from the toilets … But the men’s? Heh! … Even if you keep your shoes tied, and you’re not dragging your laces through urine …”

Perhaps Mr. Sirico’s most memorable episode came in the third season, when he and his fellow mobster — Christopher Moltisanti (played by Michael Imperioli) — journey to New Jersey’s desolate Pine Barrens in pursuit of a Russian rival in the dead of winter.

Paulie receives his orders from Tony Soprano, who says, “Bad connection, so I’m going to talk fast. The guy you are looking for is an ex-commando. He killed 16 Chechen rebels single-handed.”

Paulie: “Get … outta here.”

Tony: “Yeah, nice, huh? He was with the Interior Ministry. Guy’s some kind of Russian Green Beret. This guy cannot come back to tell this story. You understand?”

The telephone connection goes dead, and Paulie explains the situation to Christopher: “You’re not going to believe this. He killed 16 Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator.”

Christopher: “His house looked like s---.”

They chase the Russian on foot through the snow, wearing light leather jackets and no hats or gloves. (The scene was filmed in 11-degree weather.) Christopher shoots at the fleeing Russian but succeeds only in killing a deer.

Running through woods, Paulie tumbles to the ground, ends up with snow caked in his mussed hair, then looks forlornly at his foot, saying, “I lost my shoe.”

Gennaro Anthony Sirico Jr. was born July 29, 1942, in Brooklyn and grew up in the heavily Italian Bensonhurst section. His father was a dockworker and later ran a candy shop, and his mother was a homemaker.

Young “Junior” Sirico, as he was then known, was first detained by the police when he was 7 for stealing change from a newsstand. As a teenager, he was shot in the leg and back when he kissed another boy’s girlfriend.

“Where I grew up every guy tried to prove himself,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “Either you had a tattoo or a gun scar. I have both.”

He served in the Army, then returned to Brooklyn, admiring the style of the gangsters in his neighborhood.

“So I hooked up with these guys,” he later said, “and all of a sudden I’m a stickup artist. I stuck up every nightclub in New York.”

He first went to prison in 1967.

“I was a pistol-packing guy,” he told the Times. “The first time I went away to prison, they searched me to see if I had a gun — and I had three of ’em on me. They’d ask why I was carrying and I’d say I live in a bad neighborhood. It was true.”

In 1970, he entered the maximum-security Sing Sing prison in New York, where he saw a troupe of actors who had been inmates. “I thought, ‘I can do that,’ ” he said.

When he was released after 20 months, he began to take acting lessons. One of his teachers had to remind him not to bring his gun to class.

“Everything I do is inspired by one actor — James Cagney,” he said in 2012.

Mr. Sirico was an extra in the 1974 organized crime film “Crazy Joe,” then began to get parts in commercials and TV shows, usually cast as a crook or a cop.

“I have been in over 40 films and God knows how many TV shows, and I have had a gun in my hand in most of them,” Mr. Sirico said on “Larry King Live.” “But, I don’t feel bad about it, Larry. I pay the rent and mortgage.”

Mr. Sirico had an early marriage that ended in divorce. Survivors include two children; two brothers; a sister; and at least two grandchildren.

When Mr. Sirico took the role of Paulie Walnuts on “The Sopranos,” he said he would do anything except rat out his friends as an informant — in part because he still lived in his old Brooklyn neighborhood. He asked for a script to be altered only once, when Paulie was called a “bully.” He had no problem with his new description as “psycho.”

The success of “The Sopranos” brought Mr. Sirico other roles, including a voice-over part as a talking dog on “Family Guy” in 2013. He also raised millions of dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, wounded veterans and other charities.

Unlike many of his associates, Paulie Walnuts survived all six seasons of “The Sopranos.” The character made Mr. Sirico a popular figure around the world, and especially in his Brooklyn neighborhood. He even found friends among his onetime enemies on the police force.

“I ran out of my local OTB” — an off-track betting booth for horse races — “and a cop was putting a ticket under the wipers of my double-parked car,” Mr. Sirico told the New York Daily News in 2000. “When he saw me, he tore up the ticket and asked for an autographed picture, which I carry in the trunk … In one year, it’s like I got a life transplant. Sometimes I gotta remind myself I’m Tony Sirico, from Bensonhurst.”

[pbrower2a]

Vincent DeRosa, French horn player

Vincent Ned DeRosa (October 5, 1920 – July 18, 2022) was an American hornist who served as a studio musician for Hollywood soundtracks and other recordings from 1935 until his retirement in 2008. Because his career spanned over 70 years, during which he played on many film and television soundtracks and as a sideman on studio albums, he is considered to be one of the most recorded brass players of all time.[1][2][3] He set "impeccably high standards"[4] for the horn, and became the first horn for Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Alfred Newman, and John Williams, among others, with Williams calling him "one of the greatest instrumentalists of his generation."[5] DeRosa contributed to many of the most acclaimed albums of the 20th century, including some of the biggest-selling albums by artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra, Barry Manilow, Frank Zappa, Boz Scaggs, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Nilsson, Stan Kenton, Henry Mancini, The Monkees, Sammy Davis Jr., and Mel Tormé.




DeRosa was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 5, 1920. His family moved to Chicago about a year after his birth. His father, John DeRosa, was a professional clarinetist; his mother, Clelia DeRubertis DeRosa, was an accomplished singer. He began his horn studies at age ten with Peter Di Lecce, Principal Horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.[6] In 1932, the family moved to Los Angeles.[7] While still a teenager, DeRosa studied briefly with his uncle, Vincent DeRubertis.[8] He also studied with and played several times for Alfred Edwin Brain Jr., Dennis Brain's uncle. [9]



DeRosa began his professional career in 1935 by substituting for another player in the San Carlo Opera Company's production of La traviata. When the U.S. entered World War II, DeRosa enlisted before he could be drafted and was assigned to play with the California Army Air Forces radio production unit. He was discharged in 1943 because he was the head of a household. However, eventually he was recalled to service and was demobilized in 1945.[10]



DeRosa's recording career began shortly after his military service ended, and he quickly established himself as the first-call session horn player in the recording industry.[8] He recorded extensively in several genres, including jazz, rock, pop, and classical. His name has become a metaphor for prolific recording: in Collected Thoughts on Teaching and Learning, Creativity, and Horn Performance Douglas Hill refers to a prolific session player as “the Vince DeRosa of the London freelance scene.”[11]



As a jazz player, he is recognized as one of the first French horn players to forge a career as a jazz sideman.[12] During his career, he played on important jazz instrumental recordings, including Art Pepper's Art Pepper + Eleven – Modern Jazz Classics, Stan Kenton's Kenton / Wagner, and Johnny Mandel's I Want to Live!. He also appeared on landmark recordings by jazz vocalists, including Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dek-Tette, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers & Hart Song Book and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, Sammy Davis Jr.'s The Wham of Sam, and June Christy's Something Cool. DeRosa also contributed to important jazz fusion recordings, including David Axelrod's Song of Innocence and groundbreaking albums by Jean-Luc Ponty including King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa.

As a sideman on pop records, his contributions to Sinatra's most important recordings are perhaps best known (see with "Work with Sinatra" below). However, he also contributed to many other hit pop recordings such as Barry Manilow's triple-platinum album Even Now, Neil Diamond's hit September Morn, and Louis Armstrong's I’ve Got the World on a String and Louis Under the Stars, two of the most important pop albums from Armstrong's later catalog.[13]


As a sideman on rock, blues, and funk records, DeRosa contributed to seminal recordings such as Frank Zappa's first solo album Lumpy Gravy, Boz Scaggs' quintuple-platinum Silk Degrees, and Tower of Power's Back to Oakland, and to rock cult classics such as Harry Nilsson's Son of Schmilsson and Van Dyke Parks's Song Cycle.


DeRosa was also an accomplished classical player. He was the hornist on the album The Intimate Bach which received a Grammy Nomination for Best Classical Performance – Chamber Music (1962). [14] Music critic Alfred Frankenstein wrote of DeRosa's performance on this record, "This is the most astonishing example of virtuosity on the horn I have ever heard on records...To play as lightly and speedily as a harpsichord, right out in the open with a minimum of support, is to give an incredible performance."[6]



In addition to his work as a sideman, DeRosa appeared on many prominent soundtracks for film, musicals, and TV, including Carousel, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Edward Scissorhands, How the West Was Won, Jaws, Mary Poppins, Midway, Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, Rocky, The Days of Wine and Roses, The Magnificent Seven, The Music Man, and The Sound of Music.[15] The television programs for which he played include Batman, Bonanza, Dallas, Hawaii Five-O, Peter Gunn, Star Trek, The Rockford Files, and The Simpsons.[16]

Work with Frank Sinatra[edit]

DeRosa's playing and career are closely associated with Frank Sinatra's recordings because of Frank Sinatra's fame, the number of seminal Sinatra albums on which DeRosa played, and two highly publicized accounts of Sinatra's comments to or about DeRosa (see below). DeRosa played first horn on many albums considered to be the greatest in Sinatra's catalog and among the greatest of all time, including In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, and Strangers in the Night.

Sinatra was not known for openly complimenting his musicians (drummer Irv Cottler once said, "Frank will never come right out and tell you that you swung your ass off”[17]). However, he publicly acknowledged DeRosa's excellence. In Sinatra: The Chairman, author James Kaplan discusses DeRosa with Milt Bernhart, a trombonist who had played with both Sinatra and DeRosa on many occasions:

Quote:"Another time, Bernhart remembered, Sinatra praised French horn player Vince DeRosa on executing a difficult passage by telling the band, 'I wish you guys could have heard Vince DeRosa last night—I could have hit him in the mouth!' We all knew what he meant—he had loved it!” Bernhart said. “And believe me, he reserved comments like that only for special occasions."[18]

Another reason DeRosa is closely associated with Sinatra is that an exchange between DeRosa and Sinatra was featured in the article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” for Esquire by Gay Talese in 1966. The article became one of the most famous pieces of magazine journalism ever written, and is often considered not only the greatest profile of Frank Sinatra but one of the greatest celebrity profiles ever written.[19] In his piece, Talese documents the following touching conversation between Sinatra and DeRosa:

When a French horn player, a short Italian named Vincent DeRosa who has played with Sinatra since The Lucky Strike "Hit Parade" days on radio, strolled by, Sinatra reached out to hold him for a second.
"Vincenzo," Sinatra said, "how's your little girl?" "She's fine, Frank."
"Oh, she's not a little girl anymore," Sinatra corrected himself, "she's a big girl now."
"Yes, she goes to college now. U.S.C."
"That's great."
"She's also got a little talent, I think, Frank, as a singer."
Sinatra was silent for a moment, then said, "Yes, but it's very good for her to get her education first, Vincenzo."
Vincent DeRosa nodded.
"Yes, Frank," he said, and then he said, "Well, good night, Frank." "Good night, Vincenzo."[20]

The exchange was given renewed exposure by Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Alex Ross in his book Listen to This. In the chapter "Edges of Pop," Ross highlights the famous article and calls the exchange between DeRosa and Sinatra “The sweetest moment in Gay Talese’s classic Esquire profile.”[21]

One reason for DeRosa's appearance on so many of Sinatra's albums is that DeRosa was the preferred first horn for Sinatra's frequent collaborator Nelson Riddle (Riddle's biographer refers to DeRosa as a “horn player extraordinaire”[22]). As an example of Riddle's esteem for DeRosa, he chose DeRosa as a featured soloist on the Sinatra album Close to You, an album on which the Hollywood String Quartet and typically one soloist per song accompanied Sinatra. Riddle was deliberate in his choice of sideman,[23] selecting trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison, clarinetist Mahlon Clark, and DeRosa for this project.

Work with Henry Mancini[edit]

While DeRosa might be most closely associated with Frank Sinatra, he is also well known as Henry Mancini's first-call horn player, working with Mancini on at least eight albums and many film scores. The albums included The Music from Peter Gunn, the first album to win the Grammy award for Album of the Year (1959) and was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The album's title song features famous,[24] difficult-to-execute French horn lines, with DeRosa as first chair.[25]

Mancini often composed his themes with a favorite player in mind: "Sometimes when I hear people play, especially if they’re distinctive players, I actually try to incorporate their sound into a particular score."[26]


Days of Wine and Roses
[/url]0:21
DeRosa's famous opening horn line on "Days of Wine and Roses"

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Problems playing this file? See [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Media]media help.




(He taught many distinguished horn players). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_DeRosa

[Eric the Green]

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis, dies on 103rd birthday
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/...d-birthday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

Born James Ephraim Lovelock
26 July 1919
Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England
Died 26 July 2022 (aged 103)
Abbotsbury, Dorset, England



His family said: “Our beloved James Lovelock died yesterday in his home surrounded by his family on his 103rd birthday. To the world he was best known as a scientific pioneer, climate prophet and conceiver of the Gaia theory. To us he was a loving husband and wonderful father with a boundless sense of curiosity, a mischievous sense of humour and a passion for nature.

“Up until six months ago he was still able to walk along the coast near his home in Dorset and take part in interviews, but his health deteriorated after a bad fall earlier this year. He passed away at 9.55pm of complications related to the fall. The funeral will be private. There will be a public memorial service later. The family requests privacy at this time.”

Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s global environment editor, who knew Lovelock and has been working on a biography about him, said: “The news is extremely sad, but what a life and what a legacy. Until very recently he was in good health and had a remarkable memory for events that happened almost a century ago. He was smart, funny and happy to share intimate details from his extraordinary life.

“It was thrilling to talk to one of the greatest minds Britain has ever produced. Here was a man who helped to shape many of the most important scientific events of the 20th century – Nasa’s search for life on Mars, growing awareness of the climate risks posed by fossil fuels, the debate over ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphere and the dangers of industrial pollution – as well as his work for the British secret services.”

Lovelock spent his life advocating for climate measures, starting decades before many others started to take notice of the crisis. By the time he died he did not believe there was hope of avoiding some of the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

Watts said: “Without Lovelock, environmental movements across the globe would have started later and taken a very different path. In the 1960s his ultrasensitive electron capture detector revealed for the first time how toxic chemicals were creeping into the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil where we grow our food. He was the first to confirm the presence of fluorocarbons in the stratosphere and issued one of the earliest warnings that petroleum products were destabilising the climate and damaging the brains of children.

“His Gaia theory, conceived with the Pentagon consultant Dian Hitchcock and honed in collaboration with the US biologist Lynn Margulis, laid the foundations for Earth system science and a new understanding of the interplay between life, clouds, rocks and the atmosphere. He also warned, in clearer terms than any of his peers, of the dangers humanity posed to the extraordinary web of relations that make Earth uniquely alive in our universe.”

Lovelock was passionate about, and committed to, his work as he felt it imperative to warn humanity of the incoming climate catastrophe. He said in a lecture in 2011 that he had no plans for a comfortable retirement because of this.

“My main reason for not relaxing into contented retirement is that like most of you I am deeply concerned about the probability of massively harmful climate change and the need to do something about it now,” Lovelock said.

His Gaia theory was ridiculed when he first proposed it, by many who believed it was “new age nonsense”. It now makes up the basis of much of climate science. He was also controversial among his fellow environmental scientists and campaigners because he advocated for nuclear energy. Now, many agree with his view.

Another notable invention by Lovelock was a device that detected CFCs, which are damaging to the ozone layer.


I am glad to have heard him lecture -- Eric the Green

[Eric the Green]

Tony Dow, Wally Cleaver on 'Leave It to Beaver,' dies at 77

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ton...-rcna40202
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Dow



With almost no acting experience, Dow's career began when he went on a casting call and landed the role of Wally Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver.[3][4] With the exception of the television pilot, for the show's entire run, from 1957 to 1963, he played the older son of June (played by Barbara Billingsley) and Ward (played by Hugh Beaumont) Cleaver, and the older brother of protagonist Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver (played by Jerry Mathers). He parodied his role in The Kentucky Fried Movie with Jerry Zucker playing Beaver.

After Leave it to Beaver, Dow appeared on other television shows, including My Three Sons, Dr. Kildare, The Greatest Show on Earth, Never Too Young, and on five episodes of Mr. Novak in three different roles. Then, from 1965 to 1968, he served in the U.S. National Guard, interrupting his acting career. On his return to acting, he guest-starred on the television series Adam-12, Love, American Style, Knight Rider, Square Pegs, The Mod Squad, The Hardy Boys, and Emergency!

During the 1970s, Dow continued acting while working in the construction industry and studying journalism and filmmaking.[4]

From 1983 to 1989, Dow reprised his role as Wally Cleaver in a reunion television movie and in a subsequent series The New Leave It to Beaver.[5]

In 1986, he wrote an episode of The New Leave It to Beaver. In 1987, he was honored by the Young Artist Foundation with its Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award for his role as Wally Cleaver.[6]

In 1989, Dow made his debut as a director with an episode of The New Lassie, followed by episodes of Get a Life, Harry and the Hendersons, Coach, Babylon 5, Crusade, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He served as the visual effects supervisor for Babylon 5. In 1996, he provided visual effects for the FOX television movie Doctor Who.[7][5]

Aside from acting, he was also a sculptor, creating abstract bronze sculptures. He said about his work, "The figures are abstract and not meant to represent reality but rather the truth of the interactions as I see and feel them. I find the wood in the hills of Topanga Canyon and each piece evolves from my subconscious. I produce limited editions of nine bronzes using the lost wax process from molds of the original burl sculpture."[8] One of his bronze pieces was on display in the backyard garden of Barbara Billingsley, who played his character's mother on Leave It to Beaver. He was chosen as one of three sculptors to show at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts exhibition, in the Carrousel du Louvre, in Paris, France, in December 2008. He represented the United States delegation, which was composed of artists from the Karen Lynne Gallery. His abstract shown at the Parisian shopping mall was titled "Unarmed Warrior", a bronze figure of a woman holding a shield.[9]

Personal life
Anthony Lee Dow was born in Hollywood, California.[10] In his youth, Dow trained as a swimmer and was a Junior Olympics diving champion.[3] Dow married Carol Marlow in June 1969 and their marriage ended in 1978.[11] They had one child, born in 1973. In June 1980, Dow married Lauren Shulkind.[3] In the 1990s, Dow revealed that he had suffered from clinical depression. He subsequently starred in self-help videos chronicling this battle, including the 1998 Beating the Blues.[12] In October 2021, Dow was hospitalized with pneumonia.

Cancer diagnosis and death
In May 2022, Dow was diagnosed with cancer.[13] On July 26, 2022, after a premature report of Dow's death,[14] his family announced that he was at his home in Topanga, California. However, it was reported he was in his "last hours", and under hospice care.[15][16] Dow died the following day, on July 27, at the age of 77.