Firesign Theatre’s Peter Bergman dies at 72 - latimes.com
Clockwise from far right, Peter Bergman, and his fellow Firesign Theatre members Phil Austin, Phil Proctor and Dave Ossman in 1970.
Peter Bergman, a co-founder of the offbeat Los Angeles comedy troupe Firesign Theatre and host of the late-night KPFK-FM radio program, “Radio Free Oz,” has died. He was 72.
Bergman died Friday, according to an announcement on the Firesign Theatre website. He had leukemia…
(via mudwerks)
Yesterday, hundreds of people protested Oklahoma’s “personhood” bill at the state capitol. Among them was State Senator Judy Eason McIntyre — holding a sign to end all protest signs.
kilsoquah: July 24th, 1966 The Firesign Theatre made their debut on Radio Free Oz. 45 years later, they’re both still going strong!
One of my favorite comedy groups of all time. “Dear Friends” is possibly the most perfect comedy album ever made.
(via oldtobegin)
Joe Frazier, Ex-Heavyweight Champ, Dies at 67 - NYTimes.com
Joe Frazier won the undisputed heavyweight title with a 15-round decision over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, in an extravaganza known as the Fight of the Century
Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champion whose furious and intensely personal fights with a taunting Muhammad Ali endure as an epic rivalry in boxing history, died Monday night. He was 67…
(via mudwerks)
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise & Fall of Jack Johnson
I watched this again yesterday. It’s one of my favorite Ken Burns documentaries. If you’ve never heard of Jack Johnson, you owe it to yourself to watch this film. Johnson was the first black Heavyweight boxing champion. He had the bombast of Ali, and the ferociousness of Tyson. To whet your appetite, above is the first 10 minutes of the film.
I have Cancer.
The following words might anger some of you, but I’ve reached my limit.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I get it. I’m asking all of you to stop sending me links to websites that sell coffee mugs and key chains. I know that you mean well, but I don’t plan on buying things with pink ribbons on them.
I have breasts, yes, but I also have lungs, which are statistically more likely to get Cancer.
I’m living with cancer, not the threat of it. I have Cancer all year long. I need no month to remind me that it exists. I need no trinkets, I assure you. Seeing money that could be used on research being spent on merchandising instead, is sad.
A pink ribbon on your mini-van doesn’t help me, but research might.
RIP Betty Skelton: Badass
You may not have heard of the late aviatix and all around daredevil Betty Skelton, but after reading this article about her life, you might kind of want to be her.
Skelton died of cancer on August 31 at age 85, but it’s her life, not her death, that’s noteworthy. To put it succinctly: she was a complete and utter badass, a pioneer daredevil who drove airplanes and cars in ways many men dared not.
And we did it in less than ten years from inception to completion, using technology that is eclipsed a thousandfold by disposable cell phones.
Whenever some halfwit in Congress drones on and on about how we can’t do something, or we don’t have the will or the money or the imagination, I want to grab that idiot by the collar and scream this quote into its stupid corrupt face.
(via whisperingwordsofwisdom)
I’m imagining Lt. Columbo in heaven asking an angel, “How much did you pay for those wings?”
Rest in Peace, Mr. Falk.
“[Rube] Waddell has spent years refining his reputation for being incorrigible. Traded to the A’s for the 1902 season by the Cubs (who had bought him from the Pirates in 1901, whose no-nonsense manager, Fred Clarke, just couldn’t take him anymore), it took several Pinkerston detectives actually to deliver him to Philadelphia.
In 1903, Waddell had a good season; once he finally bothered to show up in June, he won twenty-one games and led the league in strikeouts (with 302). It was a busy year in other ways, too: he also starred on vaudeville; led a marching band through Jacksonville; got engaged, married and separated; rescued a log from drowning (he thought it was a woman); accidentally shot a friend; and was bitten by a lion.
Throughout his career, Waddell skipped games to go fishing and skipped debts he found annoying. Among his more respectable hobbies were chasing fires (he adored fire engines) and wrestling alligators; he once taught geese to skip rope. Hughie Jennings, manager of the Tigers, used to try to distract him from the sidelines by waving children’s toys.”
(Source: shoplifteroftheworld)
