Very sad news, indeed.

ESPN Article

Signor V.

Never understood why Karras never got into the Pro Football HOF. I once heard that his refusal to ever admit he was wrong to gamble was the reason he got blackballed by the voters.

Meanwhile, Roger Clemens is eligible for Cooperstown.

He's gone (Karras).

RIP MONGO

yup, main reason why. maybe now that he passed they can consider him joining (i doubt it though) but, if it happens then maybe pete rose will make it in the HOF after he dies.

Sorry to hear about Karras. I remember him as a character on Monday Night Football, appearing one Halloween night with fangs. He was a very good defensive lineman, but never thoght he was Hall of Fame material.

Gary Collins died early today in a hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi of natural causes at age 74. Besides his career as an actor, he was an Emmy-winning talk show host and had also hosted the Miss America pageant for several years.



R.I.P.


Signor V.

I didn't know he passed. RIP Gary.

Arlen Specter

I met Arlen Specter several times. When I was clerking in a Philadelphia law office the summer before my last year of law school, I worked with his son, Shanin, who was a young lawyer at the time. Arlen took a group of us out to lunch that summer, and he was a fascinating guy, who knew a lot about sports, history and music.

Specter was an effective and principled legislator as well as a nice guy. He'll be missed.

We forgot to mention the great Beano Cook passing away last week.

Sylvia Kristel,star of Emmanuelle, dies

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19990457

He was mostly unheralded outside of the jazz world but was a true giant of music.
David Ware dies

David S. Ware, a powerful and contemplative jazz saxophonist whose career began in the early 1970s but who did not make a significant name for himself until 20 years later when he helped lead a resurgence of free jazz in New York, died on Thursday in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 62.

The cause was complications of a kidney transplant in 2009, said Steven Joerg, Mr. Ware’s manager and record producer. The musical world in which Mr. Ware traveled has few breakout stars, but he was one. In 1995 a review of his album “Cryptology” received the lead slot in Rolling Stone, which rarely reviews jazz albums. In 2001, after the release of his album “Corridors & Parallels,” Gary Giddins of The Village Voice called Mr. Ware’s quartet “the best small band in jazz today.”

Mr. Ware was a large man with a big sound. Among his influences were the breadth of tone Sonny Rollins could invest in a single note and the ferocity John Coltrane could put into a hundred of them. He wrote his own music, performed some jazz and pop standards (“Yesterdays,” “Angel Eyes,” even “The Way We Were”) and sometimes improvised within standard harmony. But for the most part he played less conventionally, planning his strategies and diving in deeply.

“I’m not interested in chord changes,” he said in a recent interview for a short film produced by the David Lynch Foundation. “I don’t need that. I work on concepts.”..

You can do a lot in life if you're willing to work hard and learn.
Stan Ovshinsky dies

Stanford R. Ovshinsky, an iconoclastic, largely self-taught and commercially successful scientist who invented the nickel-metal hydride battery and contributed to the development of a host of devices, including solar energy panels, flat-panel displays and rewritable compact discs, died on Wednesday at his home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. He was 89.

The cause was prostate cancer, his son Harvey said.

Placing Mr. Ovshinsky in “the league of genius inventors,” The Economist magazine once titled an article about him “The Edison of Our Age?”

If not quite that, he was certainly among the 20th century’s most inventive breed of scientists who, like Edison, parlayed their ideas into practical commercial applications...

George McGovern, the Democratic Party candidate for president in the 1972 election, died early this morning at age 90.

McGovern lost the presidential election to Richard Nixon in a landslide win by Tricky Dick. He ran on an anti-war platform and he was the first candidate for president that I voted for.

R.I.P. Mr. McGovern

(dontomasso had picked him for the contest).

My first Presidential vote also. The Watergate burglary and the Viet Nam war gave me reason to not even consider Nixon. He would come on TV and I would shout at the TV, LIAR!

If that election was held just two years later McGovern would have won.

I was in sixth grade at that time and we had a mock election in Social Studies class. I was the only kid that voted for McGovern (it was a secret ballot, but the tally was pretty easy to interpret). My mom was virulently anti-war, having two draft-eligible sons, and she was all for McGovern. Unfortunately, we were just about the only ones. LOL

RIP, sir.

Nixon was so paranoid yet he won that election against McGovern by pretty much a landslide. There was no need for Watergate but the massive paranoia of Nixon and his team brought them all down.

Here's a good article on McGovern:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/19/George_McGovern_A_Real_American_Hero

On the second page, there's a quote of his speech, "Come home America." Very daring.

Native American activist and sometime-actor Russell Means died October 22 from throat cancer at the age of 72.



NY Times Obit

R.I.P.


Signor V.

Emmanuel Steward passed away
Kronk Gym boxing icon Emanuel Steward died today, his sister, Diane Steward-Jones, told the Free Press.

Steward, who had been in a Chicago-area hospital for several weeks after undergoing surgery for what was termed diverticulitis, died at 2:46 p.m. Detroit time, Steward-Jones said. He was 68.

Steward-Jones, who handled business and public relations for Steward, said she and several family members were by his side.

“He has passed – he’s gone home,” Steward-Jones said by phone. “He was in no pain, and we sang to him, as well as did the doctors present. He had loved ones around him.”

R.I.P. Emanuel Stewart. He was a great trainer and always seemed like a decent guy.

Cleve Duncan, singer of "Earth Angel" passed away

Sonny Eliot was a Detroit Icon

Former New Hampshire senator, Warren Rudman died last night. He was 82.

What was the signature legislation Rudman did???


BTW almost time to start the 2013 list.

But Nixon said, "I'm not a crook" just a liar....

TIS

Art Ginsburg, better known to most as Mr. Food, died last night at age 81. I used to love to watch him on tv... he was a real trip.

R.I.P. Art

The Gramm-Rudman Act (actually the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act).


Signor V.