2014 Off Topic Celebrity Dead Pool - Now under New Management

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Hmmm. There was a certain new wave element to much of his work where stories seemed to stop instead of end... He didn't push it as far as Ballard, all to the good, if you ask me.

[molly bloom]

Hmmm. There was a certain new wave element to much of his work where stories seemed to stop instead of end... He didn't push it as far as Ballard, all to the good, if you ask me.

I like Ballard's experiments.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Your tastes run more cosmopolitan than mine.

[molly bloom]

Your tastes run more cosmopolitan than mine.

You sweet talker , you.

I wish I owned a Doubleday edition of 'The Atrocity Exhibition' :

Here it is... the heart of my JGB collection.

This edition was destroyed by the publisher before distribution, scheduled for June 12, 1970, so it's difficult to tell how many escaped the pulper. Even the super-informed Lloyd Currey doesn't know how many are really out there... but he thinks there's probably less than 10... and my sources have located at least five. My copy is further distinguished by being signed by both Ballard and the artist, Michael Foreman... Foreman, of course, is JGB's buddy and was the art director of Ambit magazine. His illustrations are bang-on late 1960s line art -- check the hat tips to Peter Max, Yellow Submarine, Eye Magazine, Laugh-In, etc.

In 1990 JGB gave the following commentary to RE/Search publications:

Why I Want to F*ck Ronald Reagan prompted Doubleday in 1970 to pulp its first American edition of The Atrocity Exhibition. Ronald Reagan's presidency remained a complete mystery to most Europeans, though I noticed that Americans took him far more easily in their stride. But the amiable old duffer who occupied the White House was a very different person from the often sinister figure I described in 1967, when the present piece was first published. The then-novelty of a Hollywood film star entering politics and becoming governor of California gave Reagan considerable air time on British TV. Watching his right-wing speeches, in which he castigated in sneering tones the profligate, welfare-spending, bureaucrat-infested state government, I saw a more crude and ambitious figure, far closer to the brutal crime boss he played in the 1964 movie, The Killers, his last Hollywood role. In his commercials Reagan used the smooth, teleprompter-perfect tones of the TV auto-salesman to project a political message that was absolutely the reverse of bland and reassuring. A complete discontinuity existed between Reagan's manner and body language, on the one hand, and his scarily simplistic far-right message on the other. Above all, it struck me that Reagan was the first politician to exploit the fact that his TV audience would not be listening too closely, if at all, to what he was saying, and indeed might well assume from his manner and presentation that he was saying the exact opposite of the words actually emerging from his mouth. Though the man himself mellowed, his later presidency seems to have run the same formula."

http://www.jgballard.ca/terminal_collection/jgbatrocity.html

[-Jrabbit]

RIP Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, an amazing writer and Nobel laureate (a big favorite of my wife), who passed away today at age 87.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/garcia-marquez-nobel-laureate-dies-87-0

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

And that's a unique hit for me.

[regexcellent]

**** magical realism. One Hundred Years of Solitude was among the worst books I read in high school (beaten out handily by the Scarlet Letter though).

Also, dude was a ****ing communist.

His acceptance speech for the nobel prize in literature was a hilariously hamfisted attempt to justify why South America is a ****hole.

[-Jrabbit]

RIP boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, 76. Prostate cancer.

[Uncle Sparky]

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter is dead @ 76

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014...ead_at_76.html

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who spent 19 years in jail for a triple murder he did not commit, has died in Toronto, the city where he reclaimed his life.

The professional boxer from New Jersey with a swift left hook and a troubled past started anew in the GTA, becoming a world-renowned champion for the wrongly convicted, acclaimed speaker and keen gardener.

He passed away in his home on Sunday of prostate cancer, at age 76.

[-Jrabbit]

Another sports figure: RIP Earl Morrall, 79.
Complications from Parkinson's disease.

Morrall played 21 years, was QB for 3 Super Bowl teams, and had a reputation as the 'ultimate backup quarterback.' He was league MVP in 1968 when Unitas got hurt in training camp, then a few years later came in for an injured Unitas and got Baltimore past favored Dallas 16-13 in another Super Bowl. Morrall also started the last 9 games of the regular season (at age 38) when Bob Griese broke a leg during Miami's 17-0 season in 1972. Pretty impressive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/sports/football/earl-morrall-backup-quarterback-in-dolphins-perfect-season-dies-at-79.html?_r=0

[Uncle Sparky]

I wonder what the scores are now?

[regexcellent]

3-4 people have scored in the last month, gonna update tomorrow but I'm exhausted so I'm not doing it tonight. Sorry. Hopefully this time it'll actually update the table when I update the database.

[-Jrabbit]

It's good to have hopes and dreams.

[Sava]

The vast majority of these people are not celebrities.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Come up with some kind of equation to define it.