D For The Dead

A round-up of notables who've recently departed this steaming mortal coil. The pace has picked up of late, 'though it seems to be striking among those who are beyond their allotted three-score & ten.

Richard Schickel, 84, film critic, director and author

18 February.

No personal connection here, but we have the same print of the Eiffel Tower
that's seen to Bob's left on the TCM set above hanging in our bunker. (Ours isn't sepia, however.)

Robert Osborne, 84, host on Turner Classic Movies

6 March.

Previously noted in this space, founding definer Chuck Berry, 18 March.

Artist Bernie Wrightson, also 18 March, & sadly under his allotted 70.

Jimmy Breslin, ink-stained wretch, made 88 before croaking the 19th inst.

David Rockefeller, inheritor of vast wealth & power & rent-seeking parasite, made it to 101 before dying much too late, on the 20th. There is no justice.

Chuck Barris, whose Gong Show was a work of absurdist genius (he also created The Dating Game) 87 when he was gonged March 21st. "Brush w/ Greatness": Saw Mr. Barris in the (rather short) flesh in probably 1978, at the then-A.B.C. studios on Vine St., walking down the hall followed by several flunkies. The broadcast technicians were striking A.B.C., which meant the corporate accountants had to run the cameras on the soaps & news & this reporter was called in to do some work for the A.B.C. Records Group. (Fun Fact I Learned: The first Ramones album, on Sire, had only sold about 20,000 copies by mid-1978.)

And speaking of absurdity, we had neglected until now to mention the passing, on 6 February, of The World's Foremost Authority, Professor Irwin Corey, whose contributions to American intellectual discourse will long be remembered. The Professor outlived that bastard Rockefeller, having hit 102. There may be a slight amount of justice.