I’d only just bought Blackstar that afternoon. Didn’t even have time to listen to it before the news broke (indeed, my first hearing of the album would be on Double J that evening when they played the whole thing). Dave’s timing was impeccable. In memoriam ten years later, duke.
Category: [RIP]
Initials RIP
Apparently Brigitte Bardot has left us. Shame she revealed herself as such a godawful racist in later life, cos for me at least that rather undid whatever good work she did as an actress and animal rights activist… on which note, I wonder what she made of her good mate and “alter ego” Alain Delon’s request to have his dog euthanased and buried with him at his death? I know her foundation stepped in to prevent that, I just wonder what she herself thought about it. After all, they seemed to agree on so much else politically…
RIP Marty Di Bergi
I actually never saw many of Rob Reiner’s films, but I still knew he was a major and popular player in Hollywood (though I didn’t know until now he also headed Castle Rock Entertainment, without whom no Seinfeld among many others), as well as a serious political activist (he played a big role in overturning a gay marriage ban in California many years ago). So the news that he and his wife Michele had been murdered over the weekend was obviously inherently terrible, but it was made worse by the news that it was apparently their son who did it… and what made it even worse was the fact that both Reiners had actually collaborated on a film inspired by the younger man’s misadventures with drug addiction and homelessness over the years.
And then, like diarrhoea icing on a shit cake:
Yeah, SOMEONE couldn’t not be a complete fucking ghoul about this. Nothing here needed to be said apart from the opening and closing sentences. And you know, cos I’ve said it on here enough times, I’m not into celebrating people’s deaths, but I’ll make an exception for this thing when his time comes. A joyful exception. And I know that when his clogs do finally pop, someone equally awful if not worse will follow him as president… but we’ll be saved from him at least. On the plus side, even Republicans are aghast at this bullshit, though not all:
I’ll be charitable and assume Jack Posobiec posted this before Mushroom Cock belched his post out. But let’s look at Rob Reiner celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death…
…Oh, he didn’t. Well, there you go. Anyway, RIP Rob and Michele; hilariously, before the two of them met, Michele took the cover photo of Trump for The Art of the Deal. And Rob, well, Rob gave us a joke that’s added more to human happiness in the last four decades than Mushroom Cock ever could:
Jimmy finds his way over
Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.
With hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want, I Can See Clearly Now and Wonderful World, Beautiful People, Cliff’s upbeat musical temperament brought him a large and longstanding fanbase. His lead acting role in 1972 crime drama The Harder They Come was also acclaimed, with the film seen as a cornerstone of Jamaican cinema.
He is one of just a handful of musicians, alongside Bob Marley and others, to be awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit.
Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness was among those paying tribute to Cliff, calling him “a true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world … Jimmy Cliff told our story with honesty and soul. His music lifted people through hard times, inspired generations, and helped to shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.”
Goodbye world
John Laws is gone at last. Did you know he was still alive until now? I certainly didn’t. I suppose this is what happens when you don’t listen to AM talkback radio stations that struggle to get more than a few thousand listeners, you don’t realise what coffin dodgers are on them… Anyway, nothing of value, etc? I don’t know. Nothing if not a fantastic voice, obviously, iconic figure and all that, and most charitably called “problematic”:
Laws did not achieve his fame and success without controversy. In 1999, he was at the centre of the cash-for-comment scandal alongside his fellow 2UE broadcaster Alan Jones. The pair were accused of accepting payments from companies in exchange for favourable on-air commentary. Both denied any wrongdoing.
“Nobody has suggested I have broken any law. But you would think from the controversy that it was first-class industrial espionage or industrial rape,” Laws said at the time. […]
He was found in contempt of court for interviewing a juror in 2000 and received a suspended jail sentence. In 2001, his show was found to have breached the rules around decency and the treatment of suicide. In 2013, Laws asked a tearful female caller describing her childhood sexual assault if she might not have been at fault.
Two years later, he told a distressed older male listener who had called in to describe his childhood sexual abuse to “go to the pub and have a lemonade” and, although he had been empathic, Laws was criticised for his lack of awareness. In 2015, the former Socceroo Tim Cahill hung up on Laws after he repeatedly questioned him about his wealth.
In 2021 he was found to have breached the commercial radio code after calling a listener “mentally deficient” and urging them to “say something constructive, like you’re going to kill yourself”.
“I’d hate to think I was very cruel. I’m certainly rude and I’m certainly impatient, intolerant and a lot of things I shouldn’t be” he told Studio 10 in 2017.
He called his producers “handmaidens” and insisted they wear skirts or dresses to work although at least one former female employee maintained he was always a courteous boss and said “his old-fashioned manner felt respectful” to her.
His Wiki entry further notes:
In 2004, Laws and rival talk-back host Alan Jones were accused of taking payment to make favourable comments on products and services under the guise of merely expressing personal opinion, after entering into deals with Telstra. The ABA subsequently found that Laws’ deal constituted cash for comment but Jones’ did not. Laws, apparently angered by what he saw as inequitable treatment, launched stinging attacks on Jones and the ABA’s head, David Flint. In an appearance on the ABC’s Enough Rope, Laws accused Jones of placing pressure on Prime Minister John Howard to keep Flint as head of the ABA, and made comments that many viewers took to imply a sexual relationship between Jones and Flint, and broadly hinted that Jones, like Flint, was homosexual.
In November 2004, Laws and 2UE colleague Steve Price were found guilty of vilifying homosexuals after an on-air discussion about a gay couple appearing in the reality TV show The Block. They described the couple as “young poofs”. Laws had previously apologised for another incident in which he called gay TV personality Carson Kressley, of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame, a “pillow-biter” and a “pompous little pansy prig”.
So another dinosaur bites the dust (along with Graham Richardson, who popped his own clogs just the other day). Nothing else to say about the tedious old git.
Nothing of value, etc.
Dick Cheney, the hard-charging conservative who became one of the most powerful and polarizing vice presidents in U.S. history and a leading advocate for the invasion of Iraq, has died at age 84.
Cheney died Monday night due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family. […]
Cheney was, in effect, the chief operating officer of the younger Bush’s presidency. He had a hand, often a commanding one, in implementing decisions most important to the president and some of surpassing interest to himself — all while living with decades of heart disease and, post-administration, a heart transplant. Cheney consistently defended the extraordinary tools of surveillance, detention and inquisition employed in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Years after leaving office, he became a target of President Donald Trump, especially after daughter Liz Cheney became the leading Republican critic and examiner of Trump’s desperate attempts to stay in power after his election defeat and his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a television ad for his daughter. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He is a coward.”
In a twist the Democrats of his era could never have imagined, Dick Cheney said last year he was voting for their candidate, Kamala Harris, for president against Trump.
How nice of him. Given his part in steering the Republicans into the increasingly far-right morass it’s been in ever since Obama displaced Dubya, though, I’m disinclined to give him too much credit for finally seeing the light. Him and Rummy were the real power behind Bush the Younger, and though the latter must take ultimate responsibility for his catastrophe of a presidency, Dick & Don deserve as much blame. No mourning here.
RIP Space Ace
Ace Frehley’s comet has gone back to the stars. Really, it’s kind of surprising in some respects that he lasted this long, given his propensity for substance abuse when he was in Kiss, but all credit to him for finally getting off the shit and managing fine without those other two guys. People are sorry to see Ace go. I don’t think they’ll miss Paul or Gene the same way (especially not the latter).
RIP Robert Redford
And there goes another of the good ones. Of people that have died in Utah in the last few days, this is the one I’m most likely to mourn; Redford made an actual positive contribution with his work, variously as an actor, a director, and the guy behind Sundance which boosted the careers of so many others. 89 was a good innings, and he put it to good use. I find that much more worthy of memorialising than that other individual from last week.
RIP David Stratton
What awfully sad news to wake up to today. I knew Stratton was going blind, which is an awful thing to befall someone whose chief love that they built their life on is a visual art, but this really is the last of him… I suppose at least he didn’t have to live too long without films. The Stratton family’s grocery store loss was very much cinema’s gain; he did well for a man who never finished high school.
And, for once when I’m doing one of these notices, I’ve actually got a story about Dave and how *I* once taught him something about a film…
…the film in question being Benjamin Christensen’s great barnyard oddity of a movie Häxan, a weird hybrid of horror and documentary before either of those film genres were really a thing. So, picture this: it’s 1999, and Stratton’s restarting his great cinema history course as part of the Continuing Education thing at Sydney University. I can’t resist passing this up, especially given how big I was on silent cinema at that time and that was where the course was. I sign up as a student. In the second semester, we get around to the first half of the 1920s, and for one of his 1922 choices, Stratton picks this. And people are CONFUSED.
Cos the version Stratton showed only had dialogue intertitles; all the expository titles for the opening lecture bit and elsewhere in the film were missing. By the end of the screening, I think the general mood was “WTF”, cos the absence of the expository titles rendered some parts (particularly the ending) kind of incomprehensible. I, on the other hand, was, well, not as confused as the rest of the class, cos I’d actually seen the film before this—got the old Redemption VHS from the UK when we were there in ’96—and so I knew what should’ve been there… so why wasn’t it? Well, I also knew the film had been reissued in 1968 with a narration by William S. Burroughs… was that what we were watching that night? That would explain the lack of expository stuff cos the narration would’ve replaced that… but the print didn’t have the narration. So I was still a bit confused.
Anyway, I got the Criterion DVD of Häxan a few years later and that confirmed my suspicion that it was indeed the 1968 print (which is on that disc as an extra), just that someone had stripped the narration from it for some reason (I can’t remember now if it even had a score or not). On that night, though, everyone was a bit bemused by what had just happened… and your humble scribe here uncharacteristically put himself forth to explain to everyone else “hi, I’ve actually seen this before and David’s copy was missing a whole heap of intertitles for some reason, so it actually does make sense than you’re all probably thinking it does”. And Stratton was quite taken aback by this cos, as he then said, he’d never seen any other version of the film, and had never realised there even was one. Well, he certainly knew by the end of that class. And that, children, is how I, of all people, got one up on the expert and professional. I don’t get to do this sort of thing often, so excuse me if I’m mildly self-impressed for a moment…
Oh, and this guy died too, brother
Yeah, Hulk Hogan shuffled off his mortal coil last night too. Funnily enough, I’m not seeing nearly as much affection on his passing as I’m still seeing for Mr Osbourne, which I suppose indicates a certain… difference between the two. Hogan was famous enough that even I kind of knew about him in the 80s, and I knew nothing about wrestling; I only started becoming even dimly aware of what it was all about once the Internet started seriously becoming a thing at the start of the oughts, but it was my housemate and bandmate Joe who taught me more about it cos he was a big wrestling nut and had actually run some shows here… so that was also how I kind of discovered just how rotten the business is, and how Mr Bollea above was one of the most rotten figures in it. Whatever else could be said against Ozzy—and let’s be honest, there is quite a lot—I don’t think he ever claimed to be something he wasn’t; conversely, Hogan’s stardom was built upon him doing just that, using the stage figure of Hulk to hide the fact that the real Terry was a bit of a shit. And, as time passed, people became increasingly aware of that as he became increasingly shitty… but what about Hulk, instead of Terry? Steve Shives, an actual lifelong wrestling fan, had some thoughts I found interesting, so I’ll let him speak:
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