Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Stan Berenstain, who with his wife, Jan, wrote and illustrated the best-selling Berenstain Bears children’s books — soft-sell morality plays that revel in poking fun at and safely solving the everyday travails of family life — has died. He was 82.

Berenstain died of complications from cancer Saturday in Bucks County, Pa., said his publisher, HarperCollins Children’s Books.

The more than 200 books published since 1962 have a Seinfeldian quality, because entire volumes are built around ordinary matters — messy rooms, a visit to the dentist, fear of the dark — that constitute high drama for the under-7 set.

“They were able to take the real issues of children’s lives and make them entertaining and not preachy,” said Ilene Abramson, director of children’s services at the Los Angeles Public Library. “The books had messages of basic character-building, but they were always done with humor and with that strong sense of family.”

The family of bears in human clothing were simply named Mama, Papa, Brother, Sister and, much later, Baby to capitalize on the “Everybear” concept of the stories, Berenstain once said.

The idea for the series was born in 1960 after Berenstain read a New Yorker magazine profile on a Random House editor, Theodor Geisel, who was launching a line of books for young readers.

The Berenstains sought out the man better known as Dr. Seuss, taking with them what they called “a bad imitation of Ogden Nash.”

Geisel looked at the slim manuscript that would become “The Big Honey Hunt” two years later and said, “This is going to be a great book,” Berenstain told The Times in 1995.

When Geisel, a fan of cinematic plotting, asked the couple to characterize the bears as familiar actors, they compared Papa Bear to Wallace Beery and Brother Bear to Jackie Cooper in the weepy 1931 boxing film “The Champ.”

Without consulting them, Geisel shortened the authors’ names from Stanley and Janice to Stan and Jan to make them rhyme and slapped the phrase “Berenstain Bears” on succeeding covers. The moves were credited with making the books easy to market, and nearly 300 million copies have been sold.

“Stan Berenstain was a man of great humor and a generous spirit. He helped define children’s publishing as we know it today,” Kate Jackson, editor in chief of HarperCollins Children’s Books, said in a statement. “It’s the end of an era.”

Stanley Berenstain was born Sept. 29, 1923, into what he described as a gritty, lower-class Philadelphia family that had been “pogrommed out of the Ukraine.”

When he was growing up, he and his parents, Harry and Rose, lived above an Army-Navy surplus store.

In 1941, on his first day at what is now the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, Berenstain met his future wife when they admired each other’s drawings of classical plaster casts.

Their dating ritual included weekly class visits to the zoo, where they often sketched bears because “no one else wanted to and we could be alone,” Berenstain told the Tampa Tribune in 1999.

LA Times
Constance Cummings, an American actress who dazzled audiences on both sides of the Atlantic on stage and in such motion pictures as “Movie Crazy” and “Blithe Spirit,” has died. She was 95.

Cummings died Wednesday of natural causes in the Chelsea section of London. She had lived there since 1933, when she married British playwright and member of Parliament Benn Wolfe Levy. He died in 1973.

Cummings was a already a seasoned entertainer when, at 22, she appeared as an ingenue with twin personalities opposite Harold Lloyd in his semi-autographical “Movie Crazy” (1932).

The film “was very funny — it still is — and unlike many of the other things I did, stood the test of time,” the actress said in 1999. ” ‘Movie Crazy’ is what I’m best remembered for and what fans refer to the most. I did much better things but get a kick out of talking about the film and working with the genius that was Harold Lloyd.”

Cummings was remembered as Rex Harrison’s second wife, Ruth, in David Lean’s 1945 motion picture version of Noel Coward’s frothy “Blithe Spirit,” one of the films she made in England.

Cummings made most of her films in her youth and, although the beautiful blond ingenue matured into a fine character actress, she concentrated more on live theater as she grew older. She excelled on stage, working on Broadway, in London’s West End and with Laurence Olivier in Britain’s revered National Theatre.

Along with performing Shakespearean plays and other classics, she memorably appeared as Martha in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1964 and opposite Olivier in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1971.

For the latter role, as drug addicted Mary Tyrone, she received a London Theatre Critics Award as best actress. One British critic wrote for the Financial Times: “In Constance Cummings, a performance to travel across the country to see, you see the most delicate artistry.”

Cummings reprised her role in the ABC television version of the play in 1973 — 40 years after her Hollywood heyday — demonstrating her deepening acting ability for a new generation of Americans.

The actress soared to her professional zenith in 1979 when she received a Tony Award as best actress for her Broadway portrayal of a former daredevil aviatrix felled by a stroke in Arthur Kopit’s “Wings.” Cummings also won an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award in the role.

She came to Los Angeles in 1983 to tape a Public Broadcasting Service version of “Wings” at the KCET-TV studios. The production was later broadcast on the network’s “American Playhouse.”

Childhood’s End: Stan Berenstain has passed away. Stan and his wife Jan penned no end of children’s books featuring Mama, Papa, Brother and Sister Bear with Baby added sometime later. The books main message was that of building character and handling everyday situations. No capes, no space ships, no Gazoo. Stan’s obituary uses the term ‘Seinfeldian‘ to describe the fact that most of the Berenstain Bears books cover matters most ordinary. To borrow from Mr. Kroc - millions and millions served (but with no excess fat).

That Seinfeldian‘ term was a clever bit, eh? Our old buddy Wikipedia didn’t have the exact term, but did of course contain a long reference to the Seinfeld show. Said reference does make use of the Seinfeldian term.

Thus wondering we skipped a bit over to THE OED website to see if The Master had anything to say about Seinfeldian. Alas the OED doth require a buy in and we found ourselves bereft of coin. Oh sigh…

Fret not however…’Seinfeldian definition’ we did try using the Mighty Hammer (Google). The first hit was for a Schtick site and the second one queried “How Bad Is Sex On TV For Teenagers?”. Hmmm. You don’t suppose the site is trying to decide on the quality of TV sex as per teenagers do you?

The third Google hit referenced “Seinfeldian Anti-War Dialectic”. Ugh. Another hit spoke of something “quasi-Seinfeldian”. Ugh again. Other phrases we discovered were:

* Seinfeldian thought - thinking about nothing? or just a man thinking about sex?

* Seinfeldian universe - universal Nothing? This could be a Taoist maxim.

* Seinfeldian nothing (?) - a nothing nothing? Nothing from Nothing leaves Nothing.

* Seinfeldian haze - Timothy Leary is back and the Color Isn’t Purple.

* Seinfeldian drawl - a Texas nothing?

Well, gotta go. We’ve a bit of deoxy cooking and someone’s knocking on the front door…

NY Times
Chris Whitley, an innovative songwriter and guitarist who played traditional blues as well as hybrids made with the sounds of electronic dance music, died on Sunday at a friend’s home near Houston. He was 45 and lived in New York.

The cause was lung cancer, said his brother, Daniel.

Mr. Whitley emerged in 1991 with “Living With the Law,” an album of traditional acoustic blues and some conservative blues-rock that was acclaimed by critics. A tour that year with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers introduced him to a wide audience.

But on his second album, “Din of Ecstasy,” Mr. Whitley changed course, favoring loud, grungy alternative rock and setting a pattern of experimentation that would characterize his career. On later albums he played a stark blues-cabaret music reminiscent of Tom Waits, as well as combinations of blues, funk and slippery electronics; his album “Rocket House,” from 2001, made use of turntable scratchings and what he called “electronic abstraction.”

In recent years Mr. Whitley’s music became especially dark. “With his slurred voice and the lurching propulsion of his bluesy slide guitar,” Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote in a review last year of his protest album “War Crime Blues,” “Mr. Whitley has come to sound like a haggard, desolate wraith, carrying tidings from some private inferno.”

Mr. Whitley’s changes kept critics watching him closely, and he was praised by many as a clever modernizer of the blues. Other musicians also held him in high esteem, particularly for his mastery of the slide guitar. Dave Matthews was one admirer; the label ATO, of which Mr. Matthews was a founder, released “Rocket House.”

Mr. Whitley’s music was challenging to many listeners. What was viewed as free-spirited creativity by some was seen by others as capriciousness, and throughout his career he remained on the fringes of both the blues and alternative-rock worlds.

Christopher Becker Whitley was born in Houston and took up the guitar at 15, inspired by Jimi Hendrix and Creedence Clearwater Revival. He taught himself slide guitar after hearing Johnny Winter’s song “Dallas” and got his start as a teenager playing in public places in New York.

Washington Post
A. Stanley Rand, 73, a Smithsonian staff scientist known for his research in herpetology, died of complications from cancer Nov. 14 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Dr. Rand spent 33 years in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. His work on frogs and lizards built him an international reputation, colleagues said, and he made significant contributions in animal communication, territoriality, sexual selection and anti-predator systems.

A prolific writer, he published his first scientific article in 1944, when he was 12 years old and presumably assisting his father, a well-known ornithologist, in Canada. His next publication occurred in 1950, while he was working as an 18-year-old assistant in the division of amphibians and reptiles at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He wrote or edited more than 150 scientific journal articles and books, including “Ecology of a Tropical Forest: Seasonal Rhythms and Long-Term Changes” (1982) and “Iguanas of the World: Their Behavior, Ecology and Conservation” (1982). He established the tngara frog project in Gamboa, Panama, attracting numerous scientists and students from around the world.

His research on occasion burst out of the intensely observed world of scientific publications and into the mass media. His work was written up several times in the New York Times, including in a 1977 series on the creative process of scientific research. In 1995, his study on the evolving songs of tngara frogs attracted the attention of a Dallas Morning News writer, who waxed poetic over the mating calls of amphibians.

First up, since we love our adoring ODDfans darling and the email we receive…

It’s Sunday night, somewheres the flood
the famine flame and slide of mud.
who’s on deck the raven’s say
who will it be that dies today????

Will they be rich or very poor
an inventer, a doctor or common whore
a lawyer, a nurse, the pulitzer prize
what one will appear before our eyes???

Death, Oh Death ,sleep well in bed
give us tommorow Our Daily Dead.

Second Verse (hardly the same as the first) - Here now…the news…

The World’s Ugliest Dog is dead at 14. We thought you’d like to know just in case your dog was runner up.

Surprise! An Iowa woman reportedly had a Cracker Jack moment when all she wanted was her usual wake up.

Everywhere You Want To Be - a Florida woman was arrested for something other than your usual turkey stuffing.

And speaking of natural science in the home we can certainly recommend some additions to your library. You will enjoy most anything from David Quammen including his The Flight of the Iguana. Early on David found work as a columnist for Outside Magazine

Let’s see, we’d better take score: ugly dogs, over-caffeinated turtles, everywhere you want to be parrots and Dodo Curses. Must be time for a Rock and Roll segue…

Chris Whitley visits ODD today. Chris began his career as a bluesy singer/songwriter. As he grew he found his way into rock and alternative rock. He never had a massive following, but did achieve critical success and did have your oft-cited “cult following”.

The ground gives as you go
With all them secrets that you know
As if to give nothing away
Of the signals you obey
You’re weightless as a child

Falling from above
Helpless to your size
Lonelier than God
~ ‘Weightless’ from Weed by Chris Whitely

NY Times
Actor Pat Morita, best known for helping teach a boy martial-arts mastery through household chores as the wise Mr. Miyagi in ‘’The Karate Kid,'’ has died. He was 73.

Pat Morita, pictured here in a scene from “The Karate Kid,” died Thursday at his home in Las Vegas of natural causes.

Arts & Leisure (November 27, 2005)There were conflicting reports about the cause of death. His daughter Aly Morita said he died Thursday of heart failure at a Las Vegas hospital; longtime manager Arnold Soloway said the actor died of kidney failure at a hospital while awaiting a transplant.

His wife of 12 years, Evelyn, said in a statement that her husband, who first rose to fame with a role on ‘’Happy Days,'’ had ‘’dedicated his entire life to acting and comedy.'’

His role in the 1984 film defined his career. As Kesuke Miyagi, the mentor to Ralph Macchio’s ‘’Daniel-san,'’ he taught karate while trying to catch flies with chopsticks and offering such advice as ‘’wax on, wax off'’ to help Daniel improve his karate hand movements while doing his chores.

NY Times
George Best, an Irish soccer star who captivated the public with his flamboyant skill on the field and his playboy exploits off the field, died today in London’s Cromwell Hospital of multiple organ failure, a hospital spokesman said.

Skip to next paragraph

Associated Press
George Best, one of the most dazzling players in soccer history who also reveled in a hard-drinking, playboy lifestyle, died at age 59.

He was 59.

Mr. Best had been in the intensive care unit for a month, when his condition deteriorated drastically on Wednesday. Dr. Roger Williams, in charge of his care at the hospital, said that the former soccer star had internal bleeding, most likely from his bowel.

Mr. Best was hospitalized in 2000 for a liver condition and had a liver transplant in 2002. He had waged a lifelong battle with alcohol and lost. .

Special recipe for crow
(may substitute parrot).

“Life’s a bitch, then you die.”