Saturday, September 27, 2003
IT'S NOT QUITE ABRAHAM, MARTIN, AND JOHN: Three celeb (or semi-celeb) deaths rated mention on Yahoo's wires today:
--Robert Palmer, best remembered for "Addicted To Love" and those creepy expressionless black-dress robomodels in the video. My favorite Palmer songs came from before that period ("Clues" comes to mind from the pre-suit-and-tie period). A paragon of suave, he will be missed.
--George Plimpton, who might best be remembered by some as a "participatory journalist", especially for his bestseller about his experiences joining the Detroit Lions in training. As an editor for the Paris Review, whose 50th anniversary edition he'd just put to bed the day before he died, he introduced the literary world to men such as Jack Kerouac and Phillip Roth. However, for those of my generation, he's best remembered as the guy in the Intellivision ads.
--Stanley Fafara...um, okay. This one has me flummoxed as to how it made my headlines page. His entire acting career was a couple of movies and the role "Whitey" Whitney on Leave It To Beaver. After that, it was drinking and drugging as a teen, breaking into pharmacies in the '80s, and sliding in and out of drug rehab programs in the early '90s...seemingly the post-adoration path these days for TV child stars. While I feel bad for him not making it past 53, Leave It To Beaver was a show I grew to despise. I'm a bit more charitable about the New Leave It To Beaver from the 80s, but I haven't seen that in a long time either. I can't get all soft about total strangers who never had a second act in life, or even a proper first act.
So what does it all prove? It makes me wonder how the Olsen twins do it, nothing else.
(Edit @ 3:20pm 9/27 for spelling)
--Robert Palmer, best remembered for "Addicted To Love" and those creepy expressionless black-dress robomodels in the video. My favorite Palmer songs came from before that period ("Clues" comes to mind from the pre-suit-and-tie period). A paragon of suave, he will be missed.
--George Plimpton, who might best be remembered by some as a "participatory journalist", especially for his bestseller about his experiences joining the Detroit Lions in training. As an editor for the Paris Review, whose 50th anniversary edition he'd just put to bed the day before he died, he introduced the literary world to men such as Jack Kerouac and Phillip Roth. However, for those of my generation, he's best remembered as the guy in the Intellivision ads.
--Stanley Fafara...um, okay. This one has me flummoxed as to how it made my headlines page. His entire acting career was a couple of movies and the role "Whitey" Whitney on Leave It To Beaver. After that, it was drinking and drugging as a teen, breaking into pharmacies in the '80s, and sliding in and out of drug rehab programs in the early '90s...seemingly the post-adoration path these days for TV child stars. While I feel bad for him not making it past 53, Leave It To Beaver was a show I grew to despise. I'm a bit more charitable about the New Leave It To Beaver from the 80s, but I haven't seen that in a long time either. I can't get all soft about total strangers who never had a second act in life, or even a proper first act.
So what does it all prove? It makes me wonder how the Olsen twins do it, nothing else.
(Edit @ 3:20pm 9/27 for spelling)
|| Eric 1:06 AM#
