The 2013 Off Topic Celebrity Dead Pool

[Grandpa Troll]

(CNN) -- Dennis Farina, the dapper, mustachioed cop-turned-actor best known for his tough-as-nails work in such series as "Law & Order," "Crime Story," "Miami Vice" and the film "Goodfellas," has died. He was 69.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of a great actor and a wonderful man," said his publicist, Lori De Waal, in a statement. "Dennis Farina was always warm-hearted and professional, with a great sense of humor and passion for his profession. He will be greatly missed by his family, friends, and colleagues."

Farina, who had a long career as a policeman in his hometown of Chicago, got into acting through director Michael Mann, who used him as a consultant and cast him in his movie "Thief." That role led to others in such Mann-created shows as "Miami Vice" (in which Farina played a mobster) and "Crime Story" (in which he starred as Lt. Mike Torrello).

Farina also had roles, generally as either cops or gangsters, in a number of movies, including "Midnight Run" (1987), "Get Shorty" (1995), "The Mod Squad" (1999) and "Snatch" (2000).

In 2004, he joined the cast of the long-running "Law & Order" after Jerry Orbach's departure, playing Det. Joe Fontana, a role he reprised on the "L&O" spinoff "Trial by Jury." Fontana was known for flashy clothes and expensive car, a distinct counterpoint to Orbach's rumpled Lenny Briscoe.

Farina was on "L&O" for two years, partnered with Jesse L. Martin's Ed Green. Martin's character became a senior detective after Farina left the show.

In recent years, Farina was one of the stars of "Luck," the ill-fated HBO series about horse racing, and had an occasional role on the Fox series "New Girl."

Throughout his career, he was loyal to his hometown.

"My personality was formed by Chicago," Farina told Cigar Aficionado in 1999. "It's very American, very straightforward. If you can't find it, or make it there, you won't make it anywhere. It's a very honest place."

I always enjoyed his work.

Me too Wezil..he played Chuck Norris's partner in Code of Silence

[Grandpa Troll]

Former world-class boxer Emile Griffith, who won five titles during the 1960s, died Tuesday just east of New York City, the International Boxing Hall of Fame announced.

He was 75.

Griffith died Tuesday morning at the Nassau Extended Care Facility in Hempstead, New York.



Former boxer Emile Griffith attends a show at The Apollo Theater in 2008 in New York City.

Former boxer Emile Griffith attends a show at The Apollo Theater in 2008 in New York City.

"Emile Griffith was a gifted athlete and a truly great boxer," Edward Brophy, the hall of fame's executive director, said. "Outside of the ring, he was as great a gentleman as he was a fighter."

Born in the Virgin Islands, Griffith was 19 when he moved to New York. His had his first big breakthrough -- a Golden Gloves title -- a few years later in 1957. He went pro the following year.

Griffith scored his first of three welterweight titles in 1961.

He made headlines the next year for his pummeling of Benny Paret after the latter had called him a maricon, a derogatory Spanish term for homosexual, according to Sports Illustrated and other news reports. Paret died of his injuries 10 days later.

A 2005 documentary, "Ring of Fire," recalled that bout and how it haunted Griffith for years. Yet he kept on fighting.

By the end of the 1960s -- a decade highlighted by his being named the Boxing Writers Association of America's Fighter of the Year in 1963 -- Griffith had won two middleweight championships in addition to his titles in lighter welterweight division.

He retired with a record of 85 wins (including 23 knockouts), 24 losses and two draws, according to the International Boxing Hall of Fame, which inducted him into its ranks in 1990.

[Wezil]

KO'd.

[Tuberski]

Turns out, he was a maricon, he was beaten coming out of a gay club in New York in the early 90's.

Sad to see he passed.

ACK!

[Uncle Sparky]

We missed Alex Colville

WOLFVILLE, N.S. - Celebrated painter Alex Colville, whose meticulously crafted scenes of everyday life established him as one of Canada's most well-known modern artists, has died at the age of 92.

His son, Graham,, said his father passed away Tuesday at his home in Wolfville, N.S.

A painter, engraver, sketch artist and muralist, Colville earned a reputation for crafting tranquil compositions that focused on routine moments of family life and featured landscapes, animals and the sea.

His work was accessible, memorable and reached millions of Canadians through a myriad of avenues including art galleries, magazines, book covers, postcards, posters, television, coins and even via the cover of a Bruce Cockburn record album.

With his focus on the ordinary, some have been tempted to crown the Maritimer as Canada's Norman Rockwell. Robert Fulford has simply described Colville as "our painter laureate" and "a great national icon-maker."

Colville began his career as a military artist and famously documented troops landing at Juno Beach on D-Day, becoming the most prominent painter to document Canada's involvement in the Second World War.

After the war, Colville forged a unique hyper-realist style that eschewed fashionable trends towards abstract and expressionist art.

"No other modern painter is so unconscious of prevailing fashion and so indifferent to what's new in the art world," literary critic John Bayley said of Colville in his book "Elegy for Iris."

Colville's images managed to elicit feelings of both contemplation and angst through the pairing of incongruous elements such as a languid nude with a gun or a blond toddler next to a large black dog with prominent claws.

Even his most serene compositions were infused with a sense of unease.

"I see life as inherently dangerous. I have an essentially dark view of the world and human affairs," Colville has said.

"Anxiety is the normality of our age."

Colville's rigorously crafted works included "To Prince Edward Island," "Nude and Dummy" and "Horse and Train," which Cockburn put on the jacket of his 1973 album "Night Vision."

Colville's 1953 piece "Man on Verandah" sold for $1.29 million at an auction in November 2010, setting a record for a work by a living Canadian artist.

His technique involved a painstaking process of multiple drawings, precise geometry and carefully applied blots of paint, often taking months.

Chances are good that many Canadians carried an example of Colville's work in their own pocket at one time or another — he designed a series of coins for the 1967 centennial that put a mackerel on the dime, a hare on the nickel and a dove with outstretched wings on the penny.

Colville was born Aug. 24, 1920 in Toronto. He moved to Amherst, N.S. as a boy with his family and studied fine arts at Mount Allison University. He graduated in 1942 and married that same year in Wolfville, N.S.

His wife and muse, Rhoda Colville, died in December 2012 at the couple's home in Wolfville.

After they married, Colville served in the Canadian Army from 1942 to 1946, working as a military artist from 1944 to 1946. He then taught painting and art history at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., where the couple raised three sons and a daughter.

From the early 1950s, Colville became closely associated with the American "regionalist" school of painting exemplified by Andrew Wyeth, as well as the American Precisionists of the 1930s.

The National Gallery of Canada began collecting his work in the '50s but it was not until he gained exhibitions in Hanover, Germany and London, England in 1969 and 1970 that commercial success would build.

Colville left the university in 1963 to devote himself to painting, but would return to teaching a few years later for stints that included visiting professor at University of California in 1967 and visiting artist in Berlin in 1971.

He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1967, and made Companion of the Order of Canada in 1982. He won a Governor General's Visual and Media Arts Award in 2003.

He also served on several provincial and national boards, including the Canada Council and the National Gallery of Canada, and was chancellor of Nova Scotia's Acadia University from 1981 to 1991.

Colville was predeceased by his wife Rhoda and their middle son, John. In addition to Graham, Colville is survived by a second son, Charles, and a daughter, Ann.

[Wezil]

(CNN) -- Virginia Johnson, the pioneering sex researcher who was part of the groundbreaking team Masters and Johnson, has died at age 88, her son, Scott Johnson, told CNN on Wednesday.

Johnson died Tuesday morning in St. Louis of natural causes, though she had some complications from heart disease, he said.

Dr. William Masters and Johnson conducted the first modern research on sexuality and the treatment of sexual dysfunction that paved the way for the sexual revolution.

The pair wrote several books, starting with "Human Sexual Response" in 1966, a landmark work discussing the physiology of sex. Their second book, "Human Sexual Inadequacy," published in 1970, detailed how to treat sexual dysfunction.

"The first research on 'sexual response' was unique and surprising," Dr. Julia Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute, said in a statement. "No one had, with a fairly large number of men and women in a laboratory setting, tried to measure a number of physical responses (heart rate, lubrication, blood pressure, penile and vaginal size charges) during sexual stimulation and orgasm.

"Then the second book, on 'treatment for sexual dysfunctions,' used a very non-medical approach (no drugs, physical aids, or surgery), incorporating behavioral treatments for sexual dysfunctions in men and women. And doing so within two short weeks of daily treatment," Heiman said.

Johnson never had a degree, other than two honorary doctor of science degrees, her son said. She was working at Washington University's medical school in St. Louis when she met Masters, who was looking for a partner to help conduct his experiments and research.

The two shared the work but complemented each other's strengths, Scott Johnson said. Masters. who died in 2001 at age 85, knew what made sense from a scientific perspective and Johnson was able to humanize it, helping their hundreds of subjects get comfortable enough to talk about their problems, and knowing how to address those problems without being cold and impersonal, he said.

"The combination of the two may have been critical for the research to begin, continue and to have the lasting impact it did," Heiman said.

[Wezil]

SAN FRANCISCO -- A prominent hacker who discovered a way to have ATMs spit out cash and was set to deliver a talk about hacking pacemakers and other wireless implantable medical devices died in San Francisco, authorities and his employer said.

Barnaby Jack died on Thursday, although the cause of death is still under investigation, San Francisco Deputy Coroner Kris Barbrich said. Craig Brophy, a spokesman for computer security firm IOActive, Inc., where Jack worked, confirmed his death and said the company would be issuing a statement.

Jack, who was in his mid-30s, was scheduled to speak on Aug. 1 at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The headline of his talk was, "Implantable Medical Devices: Hacking Humans," according to a synopsis on the Black Hat conference website.

Jack planned to reveal software that uses a common transmitter to scan for and "interrogate" individual medical implants, the website said.

He made headlines at the conference in 2010 when he demonstrated his ability to hack stand-alone ATMs. He was able to hack them in two ways -- remotely and using physical keys that come with the machines.

He had spent years tinkering with ATM machines and found that the keys that came with his machines were the same for all ATMs of that type made by that manufacturer. He used his key to unlock a compartment in the ATM, and then used a USB slot to insert a program that commanded the ATM to dump its vaults.

In the second method, he exploited weaknesses in the way ATM makers communicate with the machines over the Internet.

"Barnaby had the ability to take complex technology and intricate research and make it tangible and accessible for everyone to learn and grow from," Black Hat said in a statement.

The conference said it will not replace Jack's talk, but instead leave the slot open so people can commemorate his life and work.

[Wezil]

Oh dear.

(CNN) -- Musician JJ Cale, whose songs "Cocaine" and "After Midnight" were made famous by Eric Clapton, died Friday after suffering a heart attack, the president of his management agency said. His contemporaries considered him a legend, even if many fans weren't familiar with his name. He was 74.

"JJ Cale was loved by fans worldwide for his completely unpretentious and beautiful music," said Mike Kappus, president of the Rosebud Agency. "He was loved even more dearly by all those he came in contact with as the most real and down-to-earth person we all knew."

Lynyrd Skynyrd made Cale's song "Call Me The Breeze" famous, and bands including Santana, The Allman Brothers, Johnny Cash, and many others covered his songs.

He won a Grammy for his 2006 album with Clapton, called The Road to Escondido.

"He was incredibly humble and avoided the spotlight at all costs but will be missed by anyone touched by him directly or indirectly," Kappus said. "Luckily, his music lives on."

The singer-songwriter passed away at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, his official website said.

There were no immediate plans for funeral services, it said.

His official biography describes Cale as someone for whom music is all he's ever known.

"I remember when I made my first album, I was 32 or 33 years old and I thought I was way too old then," Cale said, according to his bio. "When I see myself doing this at 70, I go, 'What am I doing, I should be layin' down in a hammock.'"

He was living in Tulsa and had given up on making money in the record business when his career was suddenly made by Clapton's cover of "After Midnight."

That moment changed everything for the musician, his biography states. After Clapton picked up his song, Cale drove to Nashville to record his first album.

Other musicians who covered Cale's work include The Band, Chet Atkins, Freddie King, Maria Muldaur and Captain Beefheart, according to his biography, which also notes he was asked whether it bothered him that fellow musicians considered him a legend while many fans did not even know his name.

"No, it doesn't bother me," Cale said. "What's really nice is when you get a check in the mail."

The older posters will miss him.

[-Jrabbit]

Another legend lost. RIP, J.J.

[Berzerker]

rip Eileen Brennan

[Tuberski]

Art Donovan of the Baltimore Colts, dead at 89.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/hall-of-fame-defensive-tackle-art-donovan-dies-at-89-won-2-titles-with-baltimore-colts/2013/08/04/24711816-fd6e-11e2-8294-0ee5075b840d_story.html

ACK!

[Hauldren Collider]

Mandela's such a god damn tease.

[-Jrabbit]

Mandela has taken a page from The Book of Zsa Zsa.

RIP Art Donovan...

[SlowwHand]

Can we please just say "her" and know of whom we're speaking? Seeing or hearing the name is just so infuriating.

[-Jrabbit]

I hear they're selling tickets for tourist viewings of her still-living body.