RIP!

[WalterB]

I liked Dennis. Started, of course, with Billy (Easy Rider,) and went from there. He did a TV show maybe 3 years ago titled "The E-Ring." Had to do with combatting terrorism from the Pentagon. I liked it, but after about 4 episodes I could see that each program was pretty much the same thing - no variety.

I've got some tapes here of early Hopper, one of him in The Rifleman, and one in an early Bonanza show.

When guys my age die of prostrate cancer, it gets a little scary.

[stickyvicky]

OMG! I thought this was a thread about Stiffy's dog and long past. I was shocked when I just checked it and realized I had 4 whole pages to catch up on! Just goes to show you how short and precious life really is. "We're here for a good time - not a long time"! Make it count. Do the right things. Help others when you can. That's the only way I can make sense out of any of it. I'm still not really sure what my purpose here on life is. Are you? What will your gravestone say when you are gone?

I used to obsess about my house being really clean. Then one day my little brother, my wonderful little brother with wisdom way beyond his years, told me the most important cliche in the world. He said "don't sweat the little things". How simple is that? Will the world come to an end if your floor & cupboards are not clean? I laughed. He is so right, we get so caught up in the minutia of everyday life that we forget the big picture. Another really important one for me is "choose your battles". You can't always be stressing and confronting everyone, choose the ones that are really important to you, and let the rest go.

I'm rambling... but I hope that by the time I die I have positively affected some people's lives. I've always had a want to create a homeless shelter for people and stray pets where they could live out their lives. I want to put it in the Baltimore/DC/NY area where it is the most needed because of how cold it gets in the winter. Then when I'm gone my gravestone will say something about helping others, not "she died at 89 and her house was always clean". lol......

[WalterB]

I really don't want to steal someone elses line, but I like "Thanks for the memories."

I like the saying you had before about sliding in with a drink in one hand and yelling "what a ride" or something like that!

[Torp]

OMG! I was shocked when I just checked it and realized I had 4 whole pages to catch up on! Just goes to show you how short and precious life really is. I'm rambling... but I hope that by the time I die I have positively affected some people's lives. I've always had a want to create a homeless shelter for people and stray pets where they could live out their lives. I want to put it in the Baltimore/DC/NY area where it is the most needed because of how cold it gets in the winter. Then when I'm gone my gravestone will say something about helping others, not "she died at 89 and her house was always clean". lol......

The five people you meet in heaven makes for interesting reading. We only go around once so enjoy life as best you can. Sounds like the making of a great bucket list

[John_fromNY]

Well baseball lost two greats this year....

The Detroit Tigers lost legendary broadcaster Ernie Harwell about two monhs ago...

And the New York Yankees lost their "voice", public address announcer Bob Sheppard today...

Bob recreating the lineups of Game Six of the 1951 World Series (Joe DiMaggio's final game) on the day after Joe DiMaggio's passing:

[Torp]

Yankees' George Steinbrenner dies at 80

while many new englanders may have hated his Evil Empire it's to someone who loved the game of baseball and his New York Yankees

[WalterB]

Dang, guys, you're losing all your old timers. Are we gonna have to reactivate Bob Euchre?

[John_fromNY]

A sad day...

I just found out that General Norman Johnson, the frontman of the group The Chairmen of the Board, has died of lung cancer on Wednesday, October 13th ... He was 67 years old.

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/ ... 2206.story

[stickyvicky]

So sorry.... 67 is young.... Appropriate song, will think of it differently now every time I hear it.

[John_fromNY]

Penthouse magazine founder Bob Guccione dies at 79

DALLAS - Bob Guccione had tried the seminary and spent years trying to make it as an artist before he found the niche that Hugh Hefner left for him in the late 1960s. Where Hefner's Playboy magazine strove to surround its pinups with an upscale image, Guccione aimed for something a little more direct with Penthouse.

More explicit nudes. Sensational stories. Even more sensational letters that began, "Dear Penthouse, I never thought I'd be writing you..."

It worked for decades for Guccione, who died Wednesday in Texas at the age of 79. He estimated that Penthouse earned $4 billion during his reign as publisher. He was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people with a net worth of about $400 million in 1982.

In 1984 it was the magazine that took down Miss America, publishing nude pictures of Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to hold the title. Williams, who went on to fame as a singer and actress, was forced to relinquish her crown after the release of the issue, which sold nearly 6 million copies and reportedly made $14 million.

But Guccione's empire fell apart thanks to several bad investments and changes in the pornography industry, which became flooded with competition as it migrated from print to video and the Internet. His company, his world-class art collection, his huge Manhattan mansion - all of it, sold off.

Guccione's family said in a statement that he died at Plano Specialty Hospital in Plano. His wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione, had said he had battled lung cancer for several years.

Guccione started Penthouse in 1965 in England to subsidize his art career and was the magazine's first photographer. He introduced the magazine to the American public in 1969 at the height of the feminist movement and the sexual revolution.

Penthouse quickly posed a challenge to Playboy by offering a mix of tabloid journalism with provocative photos of nude women. The centerfolds were dubbed Penthouse Pets.

"We followed the philosophy of voyeurism," Guccione told The Independent newspaper in London in 2004. He added that he attained a stylized eroticism in his photography by posing his models looking away from the camera.

"To see her as if she doesn't know she's being seen," he said. "That was the sexy part. That was the part that none of our competition understood."

Guccione built a corporate empire under the General Media Inc. umbrella that included book publishing and merchandising divisions and Viva, a magazine featuring male nudes aimed at a female audience. He also created Penthouse Forum, the pocket-size magazine that played off the success of the racy letters to the editor.

Guccione and longtime business collaborator Kathy Keeton, who later became his third wife, also published more mainstream fare, such as Omni magazine, which focused on science and science fiction, and Longevity, a health advice magazine. Keeton died of cancer in 1997 following surgery, but Guccione continued to list her on the Penthouse masthead as president.

Guccione lost much of his personal fortune on bad investments and risky ventures.

Probably his best-known business failure was a $17.5 million investment in the 1979 production of the X-rated film "Caligula." Malcolm McDowell was cast as the decadent emperor of the title, and the supporting cast included Helen Mirren, John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole.

Distributors shunned the film, with its graphic scenes of lesbianism and incest. However, it eventually became General Media's most popular DVD.

Guccione also lost millions on a proposed Atlantic City casino. He never received a gambling license and construction of the casino stalled.

Legal fees further eroded his fortune. Among those who sued were televangelist Jerry Falwell, a California resort, a former Miss Wyoming and a Penthouse Pet who accused Guccione of forcing her to perform sexual favors for business colleagues.

In 1985, Guccione had to pay $45 million in delinquent taxes.

The next year, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography issued a report attacking the adult entertainment industry. Guccione called the report "disgraceful" and doubted it would have any impact, but newsstands and convenience stores responded by pulling Penthouse from their magazine racks.

Sales dropped after the Meese commission report and years later took another hit with the proliferation of X-rated videos and Web sites. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Penthouse's circulation dipped below 1 million in the late 1990s and fell to about 463,000 in 2003, the year General Media Inc. filed for bankruptcy. Over the first six months of 2010, Penthouse reported circulation of barely 178,000.

"The future has definitely migrated to electronic media," Guccione acknowledged in a 2002 New York Times interview.

In 2004, a private-equity investor from Florida acquired Penthouse in a bankruptcy sale. Penthouse and related properties are now owned by FriendFinder Networks Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla.-based company that offers social networking and online adult entertainment, including some with the Penthouse brand. FriendFinder made a bid this year for Playboy, which now outsells Penthouse roughly 10 to one, but Hefner has rejected it.

Guccione was born in Brooklyn and attended prep school in New Jersey. He spent several months in a Catholic seminary before dropping out to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. He wandered Europe as a painter for several years.

April Guccione said her husband was working as a cartoonist and a manager of self-service laundries in London when he got the idea of starting a magazine more explicit and aimed more squarely at "regular guys" than Playboy, which cultivated an upscale image.

Guccione's staff, which included family members, often described the publisher as mercurial.

"He was a mass of contradictions, engendering fierce loyalty and equally fierce contempt," wrote Patricia Bosworth in a 2005 Vanity Fair article about Guccione, for whom she had worked as executive editor of Viva.

"He hired and fired people - then rehired them. He could be warm and funny one minute and cold and detached the next."

Guccione's management style even sparked a rift with his own son, Bob Guccione Jr. In 1985, the publisher helped his son launch the music magazine Spin, with Bob Jr. serving as editor and publisher. After just two years, the two clashed over the direction of the magazine and the elder Guccione decided to shut it down, forcing his son to secure outside funding.

Success as a publisher allowed Guccione to amass an impressive art collection, which included paintings by El Greco, Modigliani, Dali, Degas, Matisse and Picasso. The works adorned his 30-room, 22,000-square-foot mansion in New York City.

Guccione's financial problems forced him to sell his art collection in 2002 at auction. The collection had been appraised by Christie's at $59 million two years earlier. Four years later, he was forced to sell his Manhattan mansion.

Guccione eventually went back to painting, and his works were shown at venues including the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio and the Nassau County Museum of Art in New York, said April Guccione, who married him in 2006. The couple moved from New Jersey to Texas in 2009.

Married four times, Guccione had a daughter, Toni, from his first marriage and two sons, Bob Jr. and Nick, and a daughter, Nina, from his second marriage.

April Guccione said services for her husband will be private.

[h0rnytoad1]

Tom Bosley passed away tuesday at the age of 83

An affable, immensely likeable actor who appeared in such TV classics as “Happy Days,” “Father Dowling,” and “Murder, She Wrote,” Tom in person was exactly the man he portrayed onscreen: the model “American Dad” who projected the calm wisdom and gentle wit that endeared him to millions through the years.

read more... and see a tribute interview with Henry Winkler on the Today show.

[John_fromNY]

Yes HT. I heard about Tom Bosley's untimely passing.

[Torp]

Leslie Neilsen will most certainly be remembered for his comical roles, especially as Frank Drebin in the hit TV show Police Squad and subsequent movie follow ups, the Naked Gun series, despite his career starting with serious roles.

The 84 year old actor, born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada died last night after complications with pneumonia at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

met him at a show a few years back and have a number of items he signed for me including a poster from Forbidden Planet that his sister created and also signed...including the one with him as an umpire.

Frank Drebin now belongs to the ages...

[WalterB]

RIP, Leslie. Thanks for the laughter. And, don't call me Shirley.

[h0rnytoad1]

Another great bites the dust. i'll miss him.

[Benny25]

His greatest line?

Nice Beaver!
Adult Image Hosting

[h0rnytoad1]

always the funny man, good one benny!

[John_fromNY]

Good one Benny.

I remember Leslie Nielson in serious films too. Here he is with Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelly Winters, Roddy McDowell, Jack Albertson, Red Buttons, Stella Stevens, Carol Lynley and Pamela Sue Martin in 1972's The Poseidon Adventure.

[Torp]

His greatest line?

Nice Beaver!
Adult Image Hosting

benny, and he would if he could... I dunno if he'd be thinking the USC Marching Band Song or Capt Over, Under, Done!

some might also remember him as the Swamp Fox

[Benny25]

Swamp Fox! I forgot all about that one. I remember it now on Sunday nights on Disney. I loved that series.