i loved him best in the dream team. the scene, where they're all singing "hit the road jack" in the van is one of the best ever. and of course, his "putting on the ritz" in young frankenstein is legend.

i am geniunely sad.

Oh no!! I love that guy!! He was a democrat too.

ETA- Interesting. I just read that John Lennon was the best man at Boyle's wedding. I guess he and his wife were really close to John and Yoko.

His wife is friends with Yoko Ono and John Lennon was his best man when he got married. How cool would that be?

RIP Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic records. This is the man that helped bring Ray Charles, Aretha, & the Stones to our ever lovin' ears.

This sucks. Mike Evans, who played Lionel Jefferson, died.

Mike Evans was so cool, and not just for his kicking 'fro. Lionel Jefferson stood up to Archie's bigotry, went to college, and married a beautiful biracial chick--in the 70s. That character was the brother this little white suburban boy wanted to be.

Evans also helped create Good Times.

Rest in peace, Mike.

That's too bad. He couldn't have been that old. How'd he die?

He was 57. Throat cancer.

James Brown died about an hour ago.

Not that he led the most exemplary life, but it's still sad. He was the Godfather of Soul.

He was 73, died in Atlanta, after being hospitalized for pneumonia.

R.I.P. James ....

Ah, James Brown. Ye gave us one of the most entertaining interviews I've ever seen (possibly only topped by Matt Lauer's interview of Tom Cruise on the Today Show.)

Nagashaan, James. Nagashaan.

I read something that said James Brown would often lose 2-3 pounds doing a performance. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business is now, as GameBoy put it, the Hardest Working Man in the Afterlife.

the sad thing about jb is if you don't know musical history, his recent antics overshadowed how important he was-- not just to american music-- but to american life.

he really gave his all to the audience-- if you ever have a chance to see a concert film called "the T.A.M.I. show" i highly recommend it. it's a bunch of soul/r&b singers, but james brown is by far the highlight. i'm told that eddie murphy does his version of what you see in the tami show in the new movie "dreamgirls" but nothing could compare. dripping with sweat, stomping, shouting, crooning and singing, he was unique.

not only THE performer for his era, he was also THE band leader who basically created the foundation for funk--discovering artists like bobby byrd and bootsy collins (who was a teen bass prodigy), as well as innovative arrangements, and the syncopation that would prefigure, and dominate hip-hop. most people forget he was also a pivotal figure in the black pride/power movement. his songs like "i'm black and i'm proud" weren't just fun little dittys. they were calls to action-- anthems that the black community rallied arround. america itself would'nt be the place we know today without his contribution.

G-d bless James Brown

Gerald Ford died. Was he one of those ineffectual presidents? I guess he would have been in the aftermath of Nixon.

I tripped over my ottoman in homage...

R.I.P. James Brown - tho I doubt there'll be any rest or peace for any place that is lucky enough to have you belting it out!! Keep on callin 'em up to 'get up offa that thing', 'say it loud' and 'make it funky'. A small testament to the impact this man has had on the evolution of music was the visibly upset reaction of my thirteen-year-old daughter (who of course is more interested in general pop right now) to the great man's death. Even she thought he was immortal. I sometimes think his influence on music over the last 50 years is underestimated - and you know how much easer it is to get things done around the house when the JB cd is playing!

... Take it to the bridge... !!

I totally agree. What has really upset me about the death of JB is that I really feel like he was dissed by the media and they didn't give his contributions the recongition they truly deserve.

As far as I am concerned he is just as if not MORE important then President Ford.

Without JB there would be no hip hop, funk, disco or RB music. Everyone should be mourning.

Saddam is dead. Not that he is missed.

Maybe we should have a "this just in" thread?

a headline thread would be really good, ggg. There's been several times where a news break has been posted in one thread and the others take a while to catch up... there should be somewhere where we can all share huge current event. I'm going to cross-post this in the community forum.

Word on that, looking. Every time the news media announces a new number for the death toll in our "War On Terror," I sarcastically say (inwardly or out loud, depending on if anyone's around): "Mission Accomplished!"

I mean, it's all just so fucked up. I'm infuriated whenever I hear about the number of dead, as a result of a war that never should have been started the first place. Gah!

i know this isn't on topic, but rat girl, i get pissed at that too. what really bugs the shit out of me is their revisonist shit when they talk about getting in to this damn war:

"how could we have known? nobody knew there was no WMDs." really? why were there huge protests in almost every major american city then, assholes? there were protests overseas...WTF?!

and this bs about saddam being some hitler like monster to justify our "pre-emptive" war... yeah, he was an asshole, but still doesn't make bush's horse shit smell any less....

Just saw this post, Raisin. I thought it was great, too. Made you feel like you really missed out on not knowing him personally. His memorial service, on CSPAN, did that too. I felt a real sense of loss, too.

o/t still: the WMD were a pretext for declaring war but, in actual fact, they were aware that there were weapons of mass destruction somewhere . The reason they knew? because they provided the materials to make them. (I'm in the UK and know someone who worked in an engineering capacity in a pump factory who provide (and install) pumps in the Middle East and did so in Iraq. I have no idea what pumps have to do with WMDs but I'm assured that it's all connected.

The fabulous Yvonne de Carlo has died of natural causes. She was eighty-four. She was Lily Munster for those not in the know. She was also Sephora, Moses' wife in the Ten Commandments & made lots of B pictures in the fifties. I'll always remember her as belting out Sondheim's classic, "I'm Still Here" from Follies.

she was gorgeous!

yes, she was stunningly beautiful.

She was gorgeous in the 1950s. I was just thinking of Al Lewis yesterday and how he was playing Grandpa in 1960 yet couldn't have been too much older than the guy who played Herman Munster.

Fred Gwynne, I miss him. He was fabulous in My Cousin Vinny as well as being "the guy who played Herman".

Brent Liles, a former bassist for Social Distortion, was struck and killed by a semi-truck while riding a bicycle in California yesterday. He recorded on my favorite album, Mommy's Little Monster. I would see those guys play all over the Southwest for $5 in VFW halls in the mid-80's.

He went on to play with Agent Orange.

I'm pouring a bit of a beer out in memory of him right now.

Peter Boyle, quite possibly the funniest actor on Everybody Loves Raymond, died late last year. He will be missed by those in his personal life and fans of his on-screen personality.

Poor Barbaro.

Liz Renay (probably most known from John Waters' Desperate Living) died last Monday at 80 years old. She lived a long and very interesting life.

RIP, ((((molly ivins))))

Molly Ivins. Oh, that woman was funny. I always wanted to meet her.

Hopefully her and Ann Richards are somewhere whooping it up.

(lights candle in honor of Molly Ivins)

Anna Nicole Smith died today. She collapsed in a hotel room somewhere in Hollywood, FL, cause of death not known (or disclosed).

Yep. I know a lot of people have a distaste for her, with the alleged golddigging (which may or may not be why she was with her late husband) and drug use, but it's still a shame to see someone relatively young die like that. Her life could have been so wonderful if she got the money left to her by her late husband and if she got off the drugs and yo-yo diets to live a long and healthy. (I think it's reasonable to figure her lifestyle contributed to her death, unless her late husband's family poisoned her to keep her from getting the money or something.) Unfortunately, a lot of people in the limelight die because of drugs and alcohol.

That's depressing. And Jayne Mansfield was about the same age when she had her tragic death.

This is sad and so messed-up.

Alleged golddigging: J. Howard was of stable mind to hang out at the strip club and befriend her and date her, and to marry her. Maybe he would've been disappointed that she spent time concentrating on being a star, but he knew what he was doing.

(see 'celebrity gossip' for talk about anna nicole)

i feel really sad about her. she seemed like a good person always going in the wrong direction. i wish she had more time to figure herself out.

I think anyone who'd gone through the loss of a child would be vulnerable to dying like ANSmith. That's the kind of loss that many people cannot ever overcome, so if she was drugging herself to deal with the pain of the last year, it's understandable (wish it didn't happen, but you can see why someone would feel like they wanted to be drugged instead of suffering from the intensity of that loss).

Her life was a mess, and she was watched for all the wrong reasons. I hope she's found peace.

I know what you're saying, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions without having known the people personally.

Calvert DeForest, better known as Larry "Bud" Melman from The David Letterman Show died. He was 85. Such a cute little old man!

oh, that's sad polly.

kurt vonnegut died, apparently of brain injuries resulting from a fall a few weeks ago. that's sad.

oh, no. i loved him.......i loved his books and i saw him speak once a few years ago and it was fantastic. oh, he will be missed.

very sad about kurt vonnegut... i never thought it would happen.

Damn, the world feels a little bit emptier without Kurt Vonnegut.

I remember being in seventh grade English class and reading "Harrison Bergeron" for the first time.

I really can't describe how much he means to me.

It's a little bit crushing, that Vonnegut died, his writing meant so much to not just me but a lot of people that I know. RIP Kurt.

rip kurt.

he was a fantastic writer and i kindof hoped he'd live forever.

As the man himself would say, "So it goes..."