Our Daily Dead

NY Times
Robert Moog, the creator of the electronic music synthesizer that bears his name and that became ubiquitous among experimental composers as well as rock musicians in the 1960’s and 70’s, died on Sunday at his home in Asheville, N.C. He was 71.

The cause was an inoperable brain tumor, discovered in April, his daughter Michelle Moog-Koussa said.

At the height of his synthesizer’s popularity, when progressive rock bands like Yes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Emerson, Lake and Palmer built their sounds around the assertive, bouncy, exotically wheezy and occasionally explosive timbres of Mr. Moog’s instruments, his name (which rhymes with vogue) became so closely associated with electronic sound that it was often used generically, if incorrectly, to describe synthesizers of all kinds.

More recently, hip-hop groups like the Beastie Boys and rock bands with more experimentalist leanings, from They Might Be Giants to Wilco, have revived an interest in the early Moog synthesizer timbres. Partly because of this renewed interest, Mr. Moog and his instruments were the subjects of a documentary, “Moog,” which opened in the fall of 2004. In an interview last year with The New York Times, Hans Fjellestad, who directed the film, likened Mr. Moog to Les Paul and Leo Fender, who are widely regarded as the fathers of the electric guitar.

“He embodies that sort of visionary, maverick spirit and that inventor mythology,” Mr. Fjellestad said at the time.

Mucho Moog Syntesizers on eBay

Now we’re getting into to some seriously interesting stuff. Too bad someone had to die to make it happen.

Robert Moog qualifies as cross-generational. His Moog synthesizers
changed the tune of rock, and helped bring in psychodelia
. If you ever question how tripped-out that whole scene became, just think, “Why would anyone name their band ‘Tangerine Dream.’
”? Sounds like a bad cocktail—come to think of it, it is a bad cocktail
. Now bands like the Beastie Boys have rediscovered Mr. Moog’s synthesizer, as has
They Might Be Giants (a “Family Friendly Band” white bread rock band with some gift for entertaining lyrics. TMBG has actually put out a children’s album
on the alphabet; we haven’t heard it, but, given today’s culture, we certainly wonder what “A” is for, “B” is for, “C” is for, and we have a good idea what “F” is for.)

The Moog synthesizer has its own fan club
, a site worth checking out; you will definitely see why the Moog synthesizer never became popular with marching bands. We’ve linked below to some “pretty cool Moog stuff” on eBay. Since we’re talking cross-generational, we’ll rephrase this. We’ve linked below to some “All this and a bag of chips Moog stuff” on eBay. We ODDfellows are only being responsible since “cool” means something very different in the 2000s
.

Robert Moog was a physicist who became interested in music after playing with a Theremin
. If you don’t know what a Theremin is, it is an instrument you don’t blow, pound, kick, pluck, or bow. It’s just a bit, well, ethereal
.

“Hells Bells, you’re alive.” Rising Runner Missed By Endless Sender Tangerine Dream

NY Times
WOODY CREEK, Colo., Aug. 21 - Hunter S. Thompson indulged in numerous hallucinogenic fantasies over the years, but this weekend, one of them morphed into reality: his ashes were blasted into the sky over his farm here, carried by red, blue and silver fireworks in front of a 153-foot monument that Mr. Thompson, the writer and avatar of “gonzo” journalism, designed himself almost 30 years ago.

“I’m not quite sure where he’s going,” Mr. McGovern, 83, mused in his flat South Dakota prairie voice during two hours of alcohol-free tributes. “But I salute you and wish you a happy journey in that land of mystery.”

Mr. Thompson’s family and friends - including Senator John Kerry, Lyle Lovett, Bill Murray, the musician David Amram, Ed Bradley and locals like Bob Braudis, the sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo. - watched Saturday night as his ashes exploded with fireworks, lingered in great puffs of milky smoke, then vanished.

“When the going gets weird,” Mr. Thompson once wrote, “the weird turn pro.”

Loads of Hunter Thompson Stuff on eBay

Well it’s still summer, and summer is the time of
summer reruns (but we repeat ourselves.) So, we title today with one of Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite expressions as we post the account of his sendoff yesterday in Woody Creek, Colorado. A Notable Exit
indeed. Hunter swallowed his gun on February 20 of this year, and there was a memorial service for him in March. But yesterday, a select crowed of 400 watched as Hunter’s ashes were blasted into the air by three waves of red, white, and blue fireworks. As Pitkin County
sheriff Bob Braudis said, “The Pope only got one funeral .”

The whole thing reportedly cost Johnny Depp
a cool $2 million. Come on Johnny, just think how many starving kids in Santa Barbara
could have been fed for that $2 million.

George McGovern and John Kerry were in the audience. Both took the occasion to claim their respective presidential loses were due rigged elections. ( George lost to Nixon 520 electoral votes to 17
.) Another attendee, Lyle Lovett
, when asked again as to his favorite Texas Aggie joke
replied, “I still don’t understand that question.”
Lovett is a 1979 T A&M graduate. Speaking of T & A, we thought the blow up sex dolls
in Thompson’s red Chevrolet convertible were a nice touch.

So “Uncle Duke”
is gone from Aspen, but we ODDfellows know that another Duke, an occasional peruser of this ODD site, is preparing the definitive book on Aspen and the Cold War. (“Hot damn” again.”)

You might want to look at the Colorado River drainage
. You will see that Woody Creek drains into the Roaring Fork River which, at Glenwood Springs, Colorado joins up with the Colorado River. What’s the point? Well, ol’ Hunter’s ashes went into the air, eventually fell to the grounds, and over time, no matter how minute, some of his molecules will find their way into the spring runoff, and into the water headed to L.A. People will drink the water, and somewhere in the cosmos, Hunter Thompson will pass through the kidneys and bowels of innocents from Basalt
to San Bernardino. “Ho Ho”.

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Hunter S. Thompson, (R.I.P.–ya, right.)

LA Times
Retired Navy Capt. Roy “Butch” Voris, a World War II ace who assembled the Navy’s famous Blue Angels flight demonstration team after the war and served as its first flight leader, has died. He was 85.

Voris, a former NASA spokesman during Apollo moon missions, died Aug. 9 at his home in Monterey, Calif., his family said. He had been ill for several years.

A veteran of the war in the Pacific who flew from the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Hornet, Voris shot down eight Japanese fighter planes and participated in numerous battles, including Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, Tarawa and the Philippine Sea.

Voris was a flight officer in the Instructors Advanced Training Unit at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1946 when Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, the chief of naval operations, ordered the establishment of a flight demonstration team to showcase naval aviation.

Handpicked to form the elite team, Voris chose the pilots, the crew members and the aircraft — initially the same Grumman F-6F Hellcats he had flown in the Pacific.

NY Times
Manfred Korfmann, a German archaeologist whose excavations revived research and debate about ancient Troy, the besieged Bronze Age city that Homer immortalized in “The Iliad,” died Aug. 11 at his home near Tübingen, Germany. He was 63.

His death was reported by the University of Tübingen, where he was a professor of prehistory and archaeology and the director of an international team that since 1988 has explored ruins in Turkey widely regarded as the site of Troy. He had been ill for several months, but the cause of death was not given.

Hans G. Jansen, a colleague on the Troy project, said Dr. Korfmann’s excavations had broadened research beyond the usual questions about the historical foundation for Homer’s Trojan War in the 13th century B.C.

He uncovered new evidence that for many centuries Troy, standing at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the strait leading from the Aegean into the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, was a powerful fortress city at a crossroads for historical, ethnological and cultural interchange.

For Dr. Korfmann the epic confrontation between Greeks and Trojans, Dr. Jansen said, “was merely an illustrative and metaphoric episode in a series of many wars that undoubtedly were waged through the centuries in the power play at this strategic place.”

Looks like drug-maker Merck may qualify for On Deck, and be headed for the drug peddler graveyard. Texas Jury hit them with a Texas-sized $254.3 million award
to a woman who alleged that Vioxx
contributed to the death of her husband. Ironically, we ODDfellows who know some cardiologists that have their own private stash of Vioxx. Live life in pain and risk death, or have less pain and eventually die anyway. “Live’s a bitch, then you die.”

Two notable deaths today: one flew in the air, the other dug in the dirt. Roy Voris founded the Navy precision flying group, the Blue Angels
; Manfred Korfman excavated ancient Greek city of 4000 B.B.P.P. (“Before Brad Pitt’s Pecs”).
ODDfans will note that we actually recommended The Iliad
as a book to read and impress people by having on your coffee table or bedside table (depending on intensions with a visitor to living room or boudoir.)

Under the category of “Prospective ODDrecommends, ODDhousekeeping,” we are finding Stephen Walker’s new book about the atomic bomb, “Shockwave”
to be a good read, and Ian Tyson’s “Live at Longview”
is helping us find our inner cowboy. Certainly better than keeping up with the life-and-times of Courtney Love
.

Hope everyone enjoys the next-to-last weekend in August. We will be choosing up sides for
kickball and blending Pink Fluffy Clouds
for the team
.

Beware of plasticized Chinese
.

Looks like drug-maker Merck may qualify for On Deck, and be headed for the drug peddler graveyard. Texas Jury hit them with a Texas-sized $254.3 million award
to a woman who alleged that Vioxx
contributed to the death of her husband. Ironically, we ODDfellows who know some cardiologists that have their own private stash of Vioxx. Live life in pain and risk death, or have less pain and eventually die anyway. “Live’s a bitch, then you die.”

Two notable deaths today: one flew in the air, the other dug in the dirt. Roy Voris founded the Navy precision flying group, the Blue Angels
; Manfred Korfman excavated ancient Greek city of 4000 B.B.P.B. (“Before Brad Pitt’s Pecs”).
ODDfans will note that we actually recommended The Iliad
as a book to read and impress people by having on your coffee table or bedside table (depending on intensions with a visitor to living room or boudoir.)

Under the category of “Prospective ODDrecommends, ODDhousekeeping,” we are finding Stephen Walker’s new book about the atomic bomb, “Shockwave”
to be a good read, and Ian Tyson’s “>“Live at Longview”
is helping us find our inner cowboy. Certainly better than keeping up with the life-and-times of Courtney Love
.

Hope everyone enjoys the next-to-last weekend in August. We will be choosing up sides for kickball
and blending Pink Fluffy Clouds
for the team
.

Beware of plasticized Chinese
.