Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Robert Farnon, who scored about 40 motion pictures including “Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.” and arranged popular songs for top recording artists such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Lena Horne, has died. He was 87.

Farnon died Saturday in his sleep at a hospice on Guernsey in Britain’s Channel Islands. The suspected cause was a heart attack.

NY Times
Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, a father of British Pop Art and a leading sculptor of the postwar era, died in a London hospital on Friday. He was 81.

Sir Eduardo’s death followed a period of decline that began when he suffered a stroke four years ago, said Emily Bishop, director of the New York branch of Flowers, the London gallery that handles his work.

Long before Pop Art emerged in the United States, Sir Eduardo made collages using mass-media images that reflected the impact of commercialism and consumerism on contemporary culture. He went on to create sculptures resembling futuristic and surrealistic machines, satirizing the mechanization of modern life.

NY Times
Earl Wilson, a leading pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and the 1968 World Series champion Detroit Tigers, and one of the top home run hitters among major league pitchers, died Saturday at his home in Southfield, Mich. He was 70.

The cause was a heart attack, said Jim Martin, the executive director of the Baseball Assistance Team, which provides financial aid to former baseball figures. Wilson served as the organization’s president from 2000 through 2004 and headed its grants committee at his death.

The ODD notable passings for this day are Robert Faron (arranger of music), Edwardo Paolozzi (very much into heavy metal), and Earl Wilson (heat, junk and a big bat.)

Here’s you health tip of the day, ‘Go easy on the BlackBerry
Dude.’ We just found a title
that constantly dealing with e-mails, telephone calls, and text messaging may decrease IQ
. Does textural abuse lead to insatiable craving for soy lattes, bloodshot eyes, problems concentrating, and odor of burnt silica? Reflecting on yesterday’s comment, is Rivers Cuomo doubledly in jeopardy? Will Pauly Shore
be the new spokesperson for RIM
?

Got to sign off early, we’re interviewing for the role of lawn boy on ‘Desperate Housewives.’
We think the dirt under our fingernails is a nice touch. We’ve been digging up dirt on Eva Longoria
.

LA Times
Philip Morrison, one of the youngest physicists to work on the Manhattan Project and a leading voice in post-World War II efforts to contain the bomb, has died. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor emeritus, who was also one of the godfathers of the search for extraterrestrial life, was 89.

Morrison died Friday at his home in Cambridge, Mass., according to an announcement from MIT. The cause of death was not reported.

Hindered by the lingering aftereffects of a childhood bout with polio and hounded by the House Un-American Activities committee for a youthful flirtation with communism — as well as later unsubstantiated charges that he was a nuclear spy for Russia — Morrison overcame the obstacles to become a strong moral voice on defense topics and, later, a prolific and popular writer on science.

LA Times
Helen Liu Fong, a commercial architect who helped create icons of style in the futuristic coffee shops that sprouted in Southern California in the 1950s and ’60s, died of cancer April 17 at a Glendora hospice. She was 78.

A UC Berkeley graduate who was born in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, Fong was a key member of the architecture firm Armet & Davis when it translated post-World War II optimism into distinctive designs for such restaurant chains as Denny’s, Bob’s Big Boy and Norms.

Japan Zone - News and Gossip
Entertainer Pooru (Paul) Maki died early yesterday morning after jumping from the balcony of his Tokyo apartment. He was 63. Police found evidence of his having climbed onto the railings of his 9th-floor Nishi-Shinjuku apartment and are treating the death as a suicide. He is believed to have jumped at around 4:48am and was found by a taxi driver seconds later. He was taken to the nearby Tokyo Medical University Hospital but died about two hours later. The driver said, “I was driving when I heard a thud. His lower body was bleeding very badly and he was already unconscious.” Maki had two children but divorced his wife in 2000. He is said to have had a history of depression and recently had been undergoing treatment after seeing his career on the variety circuit dwindle away. He also took an overdose of sleeping pills back in 1983, though he denied that it was a suicide attempt. Real name Hanzawa Kazumichi, he was born into a Hokkaido Buddhist temple family in 1941. He started to study to become a monk at the age of 10, but gave it up at 17 and came to Tokyo. he went through dozens of jobs before becoming a comedian. He achieved fame in the early 1970s with something as simple as a finger snapping routine, which became his trademark. he set up his own theater group in 1979 and also was a regular on the TV variety circuit throughout the 80s and early 90s.

Greetings earthlings. Today we have news of the death of designer of ODD buildings, a blower-upper of buildings (well, Morrison was involved in building the ultimate blower-upper) and a sad man who jumped off a building. The world is flat and so is Pooru (Paul) Maki. ODDly sick. On a more positive note, the new Richard Feynman book is due out this week. Should be a dandy about a man who was a Noble Prize-winning physicist, raconteur, musician, and the person credited with figuring out the Challenger blower-upper.

Today’s ODDquality of life story concerns Rivers Cumo of Weezer . He recently bragged that he hasn’t had sex in two years. When I mentioned this too a fellow ODDfellow at ODDfellow Intergalactic Headquarters, he put down his cilantro-flavored Diet Coke, and asked, ‘On purpose?’ Although Cumo claims, ‘I feel a little more relaxed,’ this is not something we’d brag about Mr. Cumo. It’s not like it’s a record or something. Check out Emanuel Kant under ‘ODDExits’. And just for the record, Rivers is running a bit of an impotent race thus far as compared with both Teri Hatcher and Kirstie Alley.

If any of you ODDBrits, Kiwis, or Auzzis plan to visit the U.S. this summer, remember, ‘Look left or die’ when crossing the road. For all of you ODDfans in general, we direct you attention to the left hand side of your monitor. We’ve decided to post some ODDfavorite recommendations. We’ll probably do so on a weekly basis, but we ODDones sometimes lose track of time . T.R. Pearson is Faulkner with a sense of humor. James McMurtry is the son of Larry, writes good lyrics and plays capable guitar. ‘Live in Aught Three’ is worth it just to listen to (over and over) ‘Choctaw Bingo.’ BTW, what is a ‘Bulldart fence post’? If you like the constructively cynical, try to catch McMurtry live . ‘Tis the season (for touring.) OBTW, one of McMurtry songs is on Bush’s iPod .

That’s it. We’re off to work on our Jessica Alba Scrapbook.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: Rivers Cumo, Weezer, sex, ODDfellow, Emanuel Kant, Teri Hatcher, Kirstie Alley, T.R. Pearson, Faulkner, James McMurtry, Choctaw Bingo, Jessica Alba

LA Times
JERUSALEM — Former President Ezer Weizman, a warrior-turned-statesman who helped build his fledgling state’s air force and later played a key role in peacemaking with Egypt, died Sunday at his home in the Israeli coastal city of Caesarea. He was 80.

The cause of death was not immediately disclosed by his family, but Weizman had been suffering for some time from a variety of debilitating ailments. Earlier this month, he was treated for pneumonia at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, the Mediterranean port city where he spent much of his youth.

In the classic mode of many leaders of Israel’s founding generation, Weizman — a nephew of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann — held hawkish views for much of his adult life, shaped by harsh battlefield experience in his country’s many wars.

Eventually, however, he came around to the idea that achieving peace with Arab neighbors was the ultimate key to Israel’s long-term survival.

NY Times
John Hultberg, an American abstract painter and printmaker who came to the fore with the avant-garde after World War II, died on April 15 at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. He was 83 and lived on the Upper West Side.

The cause was complications of a stroke, according to Christopher Wieliczko, an associate.

Uh, today’s passings touch a few nerves within the ODDfellows. Ezer Weizman had an ‘abrupt tongue’ that occasionally got him in trouble. We ODDones like to tell-it-like-it is/was
. No politicians we. And, we were ODDly attracted to some of the descriptors in the obit of John Hultberg: ‘multiplicities of bizarre’, ‘air of mystery’, ‘bathed in dread’, ‘ominous’, ‘disturbing’, and particularly liked ‘whiff of mysticism.’ We’re thinking of sprucing up the old ODDoffice; maybe a few Hultbergs
would brighten up the place?

This does not touch a nerve, but we did note a report from last month’s American Psychopathological Association Meeting
that individual’s with psychotic symptoms were 2-3 times more likely to use cannabis, as compared to the general population. Report came out of England, and presumably has no relationship to behavior of the Royals, although there does appear to be a genetic link
in all this. What’s the connection: cause-and-effect, chicken-and-egg, Charles-and-Camilla, four-and-twenty–who knows?

Have a great start to your week, and don’t be bothered by those multiplicities of bizarre thoughts’enjoy them.