Okay, edition number 36 – three years old. Getting this out a bit late because I had to ensure no one rose from the dead. Writing this is often fun, sometimes challenging and occasionally a pain-in-the-ass due to the time crunch. It is a rewarding, but Sisyphean, task. On the one hand, I never have to worry about what I am to write about. On the other, the crush of humanity heading to the hereinafter can be daunting. Especially when they choose to go right before the end of the month as Lou Gossett, Jr. did. This month is exemplary of the past 36. Too many good people headed to whatever is to come. No one gets out alive but somehow we delude ourselves into thinking it will not be us – and then it is. That is why we have to make the most of our time here and often live for those we know who can no longer. So as Spring and Summer arrive, make the best of it because, as the people who appear below will tell you, it ain’t gonna last. I know, a bit introspective, but we’re now a three-year-old.
Filed under the heading “and you think you have it bad,” Paul Alexander, who suffered a polio attack when he was six, leaving him paralyzed from the chest-down, and forcing to spend the next 70 years in an iron lung, had the machine provide his last gasp at 76. Now I am claustrophobic and merely looking at Mr. Alexander in that medieval contraption, with only his head sticking out, nearly drove me to the medicine cabinet for some Xanax. While mostly rendered obsolete due to scientific strides which led to much more streamlined and portable machines, Mr. Alexander’s chest muscles were too weak to be aided by anything than the original that was developed by Phillip Drinker and Louis Shaw in 1928. Mr. Alexander, while a prisoner to the machine, accepted his lot in life and thrived. He was one of the first primary school children to be home schooled in his Dallas school district. He later attended and graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, and attended their law school earning his law degree in 1982. During his college years, he trained himself to be able to live outside the lung for a few hours each day and his fellow students helped him to class in a wheelchair. He practiced law for some 30 years. He also published an autobiography entitled “Three Minutes for a Dog: My Life In an Iron Lung,” which referred to a nurse’s promise to get him a dog if he could learn to breathe on his own for three minutes. In his later life he became a tick-tock star (Polio Paul) with 300,000 followers, so to those people who are attempting to shut the platform down, the Chinese now have the keys to the iron lung technology as well as a list of really good twerkers. That ought to set them up for global domination. In his video’s, he exhibited an incredibly positive attitude. To those who wrote him complaining of anxiety and depression he said: “Life is such an extraordinary thing. Just hold on. It’s going to get better.” Mr. Alexander’s death leaves Martha Lillard, 75, of Shawnee, Oklahoma, as the last person surviving in an iron lung. As to Mr. Alexander, I hope wherever he is, he’s swinging his arms and skipping his feet.
Erick Carmen, front man for the Raspberries has gone all the way, at 75. That band was formed in Cleveland but for some reason I always thought they were European. That is probably because I mixed them up with the Cranberries from Ireland. A common mistake, I am sure. Anyway, even not knowing from where they emanated, I liked them and their big hit “Go All the Way,” written from the perspective of a girl who was hoping for the guy she was with to keep going around third and head for home plate. Sort of like the other side of the story from “Paradise By the Dashboard Light,” except I don’t think the act ever happens in Mr. Carmen’s tune so the regret is different. Clearly, that gal was not someone I ever dated. As for Carmen, he claimed to have gotten his penchant for melodies from spending his youth with his “head between two stereo speakers listening to the Byrds and the Beatles and later on the Beach Boys.” The first Raspberries album had a fruit-scented scratch n’ sniff on the cover which must have driven the marketing division crazy. While the band was hopelessly pop-ish, it counted John Lennon, Cheap Trick, Kiss and Nirvana as fans. The band broke up and Mr. Carmen went solo and even more sappy with hits such as “All By Myself,” the Beach Boysey “Never Gonna Fall In Love Again,” and with Frank Previte, “Hungry Eyes,” from the movie “Footloose,” among others. Not saying they were bad, but they were sappy. Sort of like 10 cc without the edge. Given all that, Carmen is the last guy I would have thought to be a Trump supporter but he caught a lot of grief for his public statements backing the then President. He even got into a then Twitter row with Peter Frampton over it. Both of them probably better off sticking with music but it was an interesting aside. Back to Carmen, there was perhaps more musical substance to him that he gets credit for. “All By Myself,” actually appropriated the melody from the second movement of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 in C minor. That to me is cred. He unfortunately died before Trump marketed his bible. A lost opportunity for the presidential hopeful.
Karl Wallinger, who was a member of the early Waterboys, and started World Party, died at 66. What is scary about that is he is younger than me. Thankfully, I don’t have his miles on me. I am a fan of the Waterboys but Wallinger left after the third album which was before I discovered their music. Upon leaving the Waterboys, he began World Party with just himself and then formed it into a band. You all might not know the band but perhaps do know the song “Put the Message in the Box.” He was the musical director for the film “Reality Bites and produced an album for Peter Gabriel who attended the same private primary school as Mr. Wallinger. Sometimes it’s who you know. For me, he got the nod due to his Waterboys connection. I wish I was a fisherman.
Steve Lawrence, a singer who along with his wife, Eydie Gorme, were stars in the 50’s and 60’s, prior to the onset of rock ‘n roll, died at 88. Known for songs such as “Our Love is Here to Stay,” (imagine some rock band like Megadeath singing a song like that) and “One for My Baby (and One Just for the Road),” a song Mothers Against Drunk Drivers might have something to say if it were a hit today, it was their performance of “Blame it on the Bosso Nova,” on the Jerry Lewis (Muscular Dystrophy) telethon, that left a huge imprint on my brain. I don’t know if it was the song, their delivery of it, or the effect that Ms. Gorme had on a young kid, but I can still see and hear them singing it on the show now. Sort of like the first time I heard “Rocket 88,” which is somewhat incongruous. Mr. Lawrence, in addition to singing with his wife, acted on Broadway, in television, and appeared in the occasional movie; the “Blues Brothers” being one. When rock moved them out of the spotlight, there was Vegas which kept their careers going. Blame it on the bossa nova; with its magic spell.
Louis Gossett, Jr. Who started acting on Broadway when he was still in high school and hit the apex of his film career by winning the Academy Award for best supporting actor in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” died at 87. Born in Brooklyn, he might have been a basketball player but when injured, he started acting and found himself on the Broadway boards. He intended on becoming a pharmacist and attended New York University on a basketball scholarship, where he studied both acting and pharmacy. When he graduated, his work on Broadway paid more than anything he could make on a gym floor so acting it was. After a number of different plays on Broadway (“Desk Set,” “My Sweet Charlie” “Golden Boy”), he hit the big screen appearing in movies such as “Travels With My Aunt,” “The Landlord,” and “Curse of the Starving Class.” It was in “An Officer and A Gentleman,” where he really got to strut his stuff.” He had already earned an Emmy for his work in the multi-part “Roots,” but “An Officer and a Gentlemen was really a tour de force. He played Emil Foley, a super-hard-ass drill sergeant who turns out to have more empathy than one would have thought, in his helping to mold a young recruit played by Richard Gere. He made over 100 television appearances but thankfully, none on the “Love Boat.” He had a brush with death in 1969. He was partying with members of the Mamma’s and Pappa’s (not sure how hard they partied) and they were invited to Sharon Tate’s house. He went home to shower and change and saw the news reports about the Manson murders. Timing is everything.
Iris Apfel, a grand dame, interior designer, and society matron, and, in her eighties and nineties, a fashion icon, died this month at 103. I suspect her warranty just wore out. Perhaps most importantly, she was, like me, born in Astoria, Queens. She was a high-end interior designer with a flair for the outrageous. She and her husband started a company that sourced and restored textiles. During her travels, she accumulated a large wardrobe that was, let’s say, unique. In an interview, she told the New York Times, that “when you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everyone else.” In 1985 the Metropolitan Museum was casting about for an exhibit to replace a last-minute cancellation and approached Ms. Apfel about doing a retrospective of her wardrobe for its Costume Institute. She agreed and the exhibit was a hit, firmly putting her on the head of the list of fashionistas. She called the exhibit more a raid on my closet than a collection. The curator of the exhibit, Harold Koda, said that “to dress this way … takes courage. I keep thinking, don’t try this at home.” The show raised her fashion reputation to iconic. She lectured at colleges, wrote books and just showed up exhibiting her unique styles and drew crowds. In her 90’s she modeled and appeared in television commercials. She believed that the fashion industry was sadly overlooking 60 to 80 year-old women believing that they have the time and money and “want to go shopping.” There she has a point. I know a woman, her initials are Jeanine LaRue, who has used Ms. Apfel to set her own sartorial pathway. Ms. LaRue is, if nothing else, incredibly flashy, and unforgettable. Score one for Ms. Apfel who, in commenting on her own wardrobe, once quipped that “color can raise the dead.” I am sure she is searching for just the right gamboge as I write.
Joe Lieberman, the man many still believe (although there was no insurrection caused by it) was elected Vice President over Dick Cheney in 2000, died at 82. With Al Gore at the top of the ticket, they won the popular vote and the election came down to the State of Florida and a few hanging chads. The Supreme Court ultimately decided the race for Bush by halting the ballot recall in the State. The most surprising thing to me about his death is that he was living in Riverdale, which is really the Bronx dressed up as Westport, which is where I thought he would be living. I mean what’s a life-long Nutmeg-Stater doing living in an outer boro? One of the many dichotomies of his life. He grew up in what the New York Times described as a “working-class section of Stamford,” Connecticut. Unless they are referring to the working class of hedge fund operators, they are sadly mistaken. Working-class and Stamford is an oxymoron unless you are referring to the landscapers, house cleaners, and other domestic help who commute in from Bridgeport. Anyway, the future Senator attended Yale Law School and was decidedly Democratic. He entered politics and after ten years as a State Senator, he was elected the first full-time attorney general in Connecticut. From there it was on to the U.S. Senate and ultimately a run at Vice President. He became more conservative, or at least in-the-middle, as he aged. He publicly took Clinton (who had campaigned for him when he first ran for state office and Clinton was a Yale law student wooing Hillary) to task for the Monica Lewinski scandal. He later supported the Iraq war which basically made him an outcast amongst Democrats. He did cast the deciding vote in favor of Obamacare so the Dems had something to credit him for. Attending the 2008 Republican convention, he supported John McCain for President. None of this helped his support from the Democrats and ultimately in 2006, Ned Lamont beat him in the Democratic Senate primary. Lieberman, who still held great support from middle and even some from the right, ran as an independent and easily defeated Lamont (who since 2019 has been the Connecticut governor) in the general election. Lieberman was his own man. He was liberal in many ways but not an idealogue. He reached across the aisle, took positions against his party when he believed in the cause, and did what he believed was right, regardless of how it would affect his polling. In other words, he was a political dinosaur, as today’s politicians only worry about how an issue will affect their reelection possibilities. We sadly need people like him who put practicality over party. Recently, he was the founding chairman of the No Labels party, seeking an alternative to the wreck that is the Republican and Democratic parties. He and his brand of political leadership will be sorely missed. As Joni Mitchell wrote, “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…”
I’ve written about this before but growing up, we were a channel five news family which always started with the admonition that “it is ten o’clock; do you know where your children are?” The guy who sat in the anchor chair for most of my childhood, Bill Jorgenson, filed his last story at 96. He carried himself in a manner that screamed credibility, which is something severely lacking in today’s news/entertainment arena. It was a time when television news people gave you facts and not spin and left the editorializing to the newspapers and their columnists. After twelve years at WNEW, he moved to WPIX channel 11 in New York. Each night, he signed off his broadcast saying “thanking you for your time, this time, until next time. Until next time, Bill.
Mountaineer and cinematographer, David Brashears who was on Everest when tragedy struck, that was chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air,” died at 68. Brashears was a well-respected climber who became a cinematographer and was on Everest filming a documentary with Jamling Tenzig Norgay, the son of Tenzing Norgay, the sherpa who completed the first summit of the Mountain with Sir Edmund Hillary. During the climb, a severe storm blew in and many climbers were stranded with no supplies. Brashears assisted many of the climbers, providing oxygen, batteries, and many supplies he would have needed to complete the film he was there to make. Eight climbers died on the mountain in that storm all of which was excruciatingly chronicled by Mr. Krakauer who was there on an assignment for Outside Magazine. Mr. Krakauer published “Into thin Air,’ which is an incredibly moving account of the events on the mountain in murderous conditions. Undoubtedly the death toll would have been higher without the aid provided by Mr. Brashears and others. Brashear’s movie, “Everest,” was the first, high definition film about ascending to the top of the world and remains the highest grossing IMAX documentary of all time. He summited Everest five times but climbed all over the world. His movies brought death-defying climbs into the living rooms of armchair explorers the world over. His father, who left the family when David was ten, was abusive and demanding. An example of this was in teaching his young son to swim. The father would throw his son into the deep end of the pool and watch him struggle to get to the side. It taught David to make tough decisions under extreme pressure which, while abusive at the time, helped him make tougher decisions at incredibly high altitudes under inhuman conditions. The family moved to Denver where he took up rock climbing. “Other boys imagined they were Namath or Seaver,” he wrote in his autobiography “High Exposure: An Enduring Passion for Everest and Unforgiving Places,” “I dreamed I was [Tenzig] Norgay.” He made movies to bankroll his climbing which was his true passion. He also founded a non-profit, GlacierWorks, which focused attention on climate change and its effects on Himalayan glaciers. According to the climber and moviemaker, Jimmy Chin, who saw Brashears as a mentor, he had a sharp wit, exacting standards and high expectations which pushed those around him to greater heights. I am sure it was is exacting professionalism that caused him to die at home, of natural causes, and not on a mountain due to human error. He has already been to the top of the world, he has now gone further.
I’m not a big fan of analytics. Perhaps because I don’t have the patience to understand them or because it’s just too much work. I prefer to go with my gut because it’s easier and ample. I also happen to trust my gut. That would contradict everything Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton Psychologist and Nobel prize winner in economics, who died at 97, has taught. He believed that before you make any business decision you should figure out the objective odds of success given the historical range of outcomes in similar situations. That is too much for me and frankly given that decision tree, people like Elon Musk and Henry Ford would have not bothered. I’m part of the let’s forge ahead group. Mind you, that doesn’t make me Musk or Ford, and certainly will never garner me a Nobel Prize for anything other than laziness if they ever initiate that category. I am told that “Thinking Fast and Slow,” one of his books, is a must read. If you read it and find it has wasted your time or crushed your spirit, complain to Don Davidson as he touted both the book and the man to me.
Gerald Levin, the head of Time-Warner, who was both a visionary and a maligned CEO for his merger of the company with AOL, died at 84. He will, unfortunately for him, always be known for merging his vital entity with Steve Case’s AOL. At the time, it seemed like a perfect synergy but the timing was bad and as Fay Vincent, the former baseball Commissioner and Time-Warner Board member said, “[i]t turns out, we just got on the wrong horse.” When it took place, the $350 billion merger between AOL and Time Warner was the largest deal ever in U.S. history. In many ways, it was in keeping with Mr. Levin’s forward-thinking ethos. He worked at a then small cable channel called Home Box Office, eventually convincing Time executives to put it on the satellite system and making it a pay service. It became what we all know it to be. Levin then helped engineer the merger of Time and Warner Brothers and the purchase of the Turner Broadcasting system, which included CNN. With the internet looming on the horizon, Levin knew that it would be a major force and he wanted, once again, to get ahead of the curve. According to Richard Parsons, who succeeded Levin as the head of the AOL Time Warner, Levin was a visionary and to the AOL deal made “Time Warner digital by injection.” It was not a good fit, however, as Levin and Case clashed in styles and the companies had very different cultures. Toss in the bursting of the dot com bubble and you have what is seen as the worst business deal in modern corporate times. It was a steroidal corporate mistake that played out on the front pages of business journals and one tough to live down. Levin’s vision was correct but his timing and choice of partner were wrong. Sounds like many a marriage to me. Business schools will be forever studying the merger and its ensuing woes. Steve Case didn’t get enough of the blame for what was really a failure of his company to live up to expectations. He should have taken more heat but instead, was able to hedge his losses with Time Warner’s strengths. Meanwhile, Levin has taken most of the blame. Such is life on the big stage. Let’s cut to a commercial.
Malachy McCourt, an Irish raconteur with the gift of the Blarney, died at 92. He made his living essentially by being Irish which has its occupational hazards, although he gave up smoking and drinking in the mid 80’s. He appeared on television in soap operas, radio shows, where he talked about being Irish (where I found him), plays, movies (“Brewster’s millions), and wrote books (three autobiographies), though none as popular as his brother Frank’s “Angela’s Ashes.” He once said that in truth “I knew I couldn’t do anything at all except but tell stories and lies.” Noting the differences in the brothers’ books, the New York Times, wrote “where Frank is restrained and tragic, Malachy is outrageous and comic.” McCourt was actually born in New York as his family was here because his father was fleeing the British as a member of the IRA. The family soon returned to Ireland and it wasn’t until he was 20 that Malachy returned to the City of his birth. In 2006 he ran for Governor of New York for the Green Party. His stand against the war in Iraq and his environmental policy of taxing chewing gum garnered him 40,000 votes and a third place showing against the winner Eliot Spitzer, or, as he was known in some circles, Client No. 9. We probably would have done better with Mr. McCourt. In 2022 he announced he was in hospice care but after a few months he didn’t die and they tossed him out where he survived another St Patrick’s Day. Some say the devil is dead.
I’ll be quick with this one. Peter Angelos, the personal injury lawyer who owned a controlling interest in the Baltimore Orioles, making it essentially the team that Mesothelioma bought, died at 94. He bought the team in 1994 at a time when the ball park they played in (Camden Yards) was far better than the team. Lately, though, they seem headed to become a powerhouse. Amidst a lot if intra-family squabbling and lawsuits, the team was sold in the last week to a group headed by David Rubenstein for $1.725 billion. Hey, they ain’t the Yankees. Given that Angelos bought the team for $172 million, that’s not a bad payday, proving Bill Veek’s adage that you don’t make money running a baseball team, you make money selling it.
I am sure if I ever picked up a microphone and started singing, I could empty a music hall in a minute. That is just self-awareness. Too many people lack it and head out to karaoke bars to torture people, driving them to drink in order to block out the would-be Steve Perry’s trying to sing “Don’t Stop Believing,” turning it into an audible dog whistle. For this we have Shigeichi Negishi, who died at 100, to thank, at least in part. And you all have Don Shea to thank for this one because Mr. Negisi was on the wrong side of the bubble until Don went to bat big-time for him. Negishi is the inventor of the Sparko Box, thought to be the first Karaoke machine. Karaoke, meaning “empty orchestra,” actually traces its roots back to the American television show “Sing Along with Mitch,” which included lyrics to the songs at the bottom of the TV screen so people could literally sing along. This wasn’t bad because all you could bother was the family and perhaps the dog. The difference between these sing-along songs which everyone could take part in and karaoke, was the introduction of a lead singer, and not a unified chorus. Here is where Mr. Negishi comes in. He developed the first, coin-operated machine that used eight track tapes to play the music over which the lead singer could croon using the attached microphone. Booklets with the song lyrics were provided to the would-be Pavarotti’s. Thus, karaoke was now out of the house and into public spaces where people could visit their lack of talent on the world. Mr. Negishi installed about 8,000 of these machines in bars across Japan. One mistake he made was in not patenting his machine. Close in time, a competitor, Toshiharu Yamashita, began marketing a similar product, also without a patent. A third person, Daisuke Inoue, came along with a few improvements. First, he recorded versions of popular songs in different keys so that people could sing without hurting themselves. Second, perhaps understanding that most people can’t sing for shit, he introduced reverb into the equation making even the most basic singer comparable to say, Robert Plant. Not sure whether this is a cultural problem, but he, too, didn’t patent his product and eventually big companies came in and cornered the karaoke market, shoving aside karaoke creators such as Mr. Negishi. While the governing body (can you imagine there even is such a thing) of karaoke doesn’t recognize a single creator of the industry, Mr. Negishi certainly gets credit as being the first to market these inane contraptions. We can thank him the next time someone defiles the memory of Sinatra by singing “My Way,” the second most popular karaoke tune behind Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” Okay Don, there you go.
This has been too long so I will stop here. Unfortunately, death won’t.
Every month, I not only learn about dead people but I learn more about you! Always interesting!
A great issue, Charlie! Thanks, especially, for the words on Bill Jorgensen. I had missed the news about his death, and your piece on him reminded me of his sign-off words, which I hadn't thought of since they were uttered by him, but which I remember well!