Miscellany

Bea Arthur, 1922-2009

“Sassy” is the word that comes easiest to mind when describing an actress like Bea Arthur and the characters she played, most notably on Maude and The Golden Girls. But sassy finally seems too small for Arthur, who died today of cancer at age 86. It connotes perkiness and feistiness; Arthur, on the other hand, exuded too much stature and …

Ron Silver Dies at 62

Ron Silver, an actor as well known for his off-stage activism as his on-stage work, has died of esophageal cancer. While I didn’t particularly follow Silver’s political work (he was active in liberal causes but endorsed George W. Bush for re-election in 2004), as an actor on TV (and film and theater), he was distinguished for bringing a …

Death on Mars

Not a shock but too bad, anyway: Life on Mars is being cancelled. I can’t say I will miss it deeply; after a very strong pilot, the show vacillated between being a mystery about how Sam got trapped in the ’70s and simply being a ’70s cop show with a twist. (And actually, it was often better as the latter.) I feel about it very much …

Bernie Mac, 1957-2008

Comedian and actor Bernie Mac died early this morning of complications from pneumonia. I was more familiar with him from his Fox sitcom than from his standup, but Mac first broke through to a wide, national (read: white) audience in The Original Kings of Comedy, the concert film about the African American comedy tour. It was in a routine …

George Carlin, 1937-2008

Though he wasn’t mainly known as a TV personality per se, he is forever known for Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV (a routine which, ironically, was itself cited in a Supreme Court ruling on what you could and couldn’t say on broadcast TV). Putting his civil and linguistic libertarianism at the center of his work made him a …

Tim Russert, 1950-2008

He died suddenly, at work, in the NBC Washington bureau this afternoon. Whether you praise or criticize him (and I’ve done both), his influence on political journalism has been immense, as he’s demonstrated right up through his last election. My obituary of him should be is online at time.com. shortly.

Update: Appropriately, and …

Harvey Korman, 1927-2008

Harvey Korman, the comic actor best known for his appearances on The Carol Burnett Show and Mel Brooks’ movies (for instance, as the tightly wound Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles), died yesterday. On the Burnett show, my earliest memory of him, he was one of TV’s all-time great supporting comics, pulling off multiple roles with …

How D&D Changed the Culture

Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax has died. At first blush, this seems more like a Nerd World topic, and Lev Grossman doffs his +2 Cloak of Protection to Gygax over there. But I couldn’t let the news go unnoted here, because far from being a hermetic obsession of antisocial geeks, D&D had a wide influence on pop culture, even, …

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