Our Daily Dead

Look Ma! More news! We be weblog’n again.

A sad farewell for the Penn family today as word comes down that Chris Penn was found dead at the tender age of 40. No word on the cause as of yet, but nothing sinister is currently suspected. Chris was the brother of Michael Penn and Sean Penn as you likely know. Imagine growing up in that household and trying to find your identity. All the critics agreed that young Chris had solid, if under-appreciated, talent.

And now, on a slightly lighter note, another fine ODD community service announcement: stumped for that perfect gift for the Chinese New Year or Valentine’s Day or your Johnny Winter birthday (Feb 23) celebration? Mosey on over to Your Novel.com and order up a personalized book. Make it bawdy, steamy, wild or mild. Your choice and you are the star.

Our other ODDguest today is Schafik Handal, the former senior leader of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN. Perhaps you will recall the long and bloddy El Salvadorian war of the 1980s. El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, left, right, middle…or perhaps just the voices of the innocent…
Here comes the helicopter — second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they’ve murdered only God can say
If I had a rocket launcher…I’d make somebody pay ~~ “If I Had A Rocket Launcher”, Bruce Cockburn

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: news, weblog, Chris Penn, dead, Michael Penn, Sean Penn, Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, Johnny Winter, Schafik Handal

Reuters AlertNet
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Schafik Handal, a communist guerrilla commander during El Salvador’s brutal 12-year civil war and a former presidential candidate, died of a heart attack on Tuesday at the age of 75.

Handal was a senior leader of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, rebel group that fought a series of U.S.-backed right-wing governments throughout the 1980s in a war that claimed around 75,000 lives.

FMLN party officials said Handal died after suffering a heart attack at El Salvador’s main airport as he returned from the weekend inauguration of Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Handal led El Salvador’s Communist Party into forming the FMLN guerrilla army with four other leftist groups in 1980.

Backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, he was one of five top rebel commanders during the war and led the FMLN team in peace talks that finally ended the conflict in 1992.

The FMLN became a political party under the peace agreement and Handal, a friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro, was elected to the National Assembly.

Gray-bearded and feisty, he ran for president in March 2004 but lost to conservative Tony Saca.

The veteran leftist had promised to withdraw El Salvador’s small troop contingent from Iraq, but many voters were turned off by his violent past and feared damage to El Salvador’s relations with the United States.

Still, even his political rivals found reason to praise him after his death.

“The country has lost a politician who knew how to fight for his convictions,” said Roberto Avila, a founder of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance party, or ARENA.

The FMLN and ARENA were bitter enemies throughout the civil war, with both sides linked to brutal crimes. The rebel army executed mayors in rural areas and killed civilians in botched attacks, while ARENA had ties to shadowy right-wing death squads blamed for thousands of murders.

Despite his dour appearance and hard-line positions, Handal was an astute negotiator and was credited with helping save the peace process at times of tension with funny one-liners.

“I’ll remember Schafik as a left-winger, a fighter, but with his feet on the ground. And when it was time to negotiate, he negotiated,” said Gloria Salguero Gross, another founding member of ARENA who now has a post in Saca’s government.

Technorati Tags: Schafik Handal, El Salvador, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, FMLN, Evo Morales, Fidel Castro, ARENA, Gloria Salguero Gross

LA Times
Chris Penn, 40, was found dead Tuesday in his Santa Monica condominium, officials said. Authorities are investigating the cause of his death but said they do not suspect foul play.

Penn, the younger brother of actor Sean Penn, specialized in working-class, regular-guy characters, and had roles in a long list of movies and television shows during a career of more than two decades.

Santa Monica police were called by a housekeeper in Penn’s first-floor unit at 1033 Ocean Ave. just after 4 p.m. Tuesday and arrived to find the actor’s body in his bed, authorities said.

Santa Monica Police Lt. Frank Fabrega said officers were investigating the death but have no evidence of homicide.

Coroner’s officials will seek to determine the cause of death and will conduct toxicology tests, Fabrega said. But asked late Tuesday whether Penn’s death appeared to be the result of anything other than natural causes, coroner’s spokesman Ed Winter said: “Not at this time.”

Although less well-known than Sean Penn, Chris Penn won praise for a series of supporting roles in major films, including “Footloose” and “Reservoir Dogs.”

With a hefty build, protruding chin and slightly pouting lips, Chris Penn looked the part of the ordinary guy or small-time crook, although he had played cops as well.

Penn began his career as a child performer in the 1970s and moved on to films such as “Rumble Fish” and “All the Right Moves.” He played the role of an awkward teenager who says he can’t dance in “Footloose,” and starred in one of that movie’s most memorable scenes, when Kevin Bacon ultimately teaches him some moves.

Perhaps his best-known role, was as Nice Guy Eddie Cabot in the 1992 film “Reservoir Dogs.” The character he brought to life — both disturbing and humorous — caught critics’ attention. After that, Penn, who grew heavier through the years, played a series of sidekick roles, appearing in such recent movies as “Starsky & Hutch” and “Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang.”

He was destined to never approach his brother’s fame nor win anything like Sean Penn’s critical acclaim, and in later years, especially, he seemed to have settled into a steady, journeyman actor’s career of modest distinction.

But throughout his work, critics noticed striking moments in his performances and often called him underrated. “Just as talented as Sean — just a lot less cocky,” Slate magazine critic Cintra Wilson wrote of him last year. He could play humiliation and vulnerability especially well, she wrote, and “makes you seamlessly believe in characters so much you barely even notice them.”

A bar on New York’s Lower East Side called “Nice Guy Eddie’s” was named for his performance in “Reservoir Dogs.” Owner David McWater, an acquaintance of the actor, said that Penn attended the opening, easily mingling with bar patrons.

“He was real nice … approachable, just one of the guys. He wasn’t standoffish, not trying to be star,” McWater said. “I always thought he was underrated. When he wanted to be, he was a really good actor. He was great in ‘True Romance’ …. He was so believable as the aggressive detective who just wants a lot of collars.”

Technorati Tags: Chris Penn, death, Sean Penn, movies, television, Footloose, Reservoir Dogs, Rumble Fish, All the Right Moves, Footloose, Kevin Bacon, Eddie Cabot, Slate magazine

All the news that is fit to print. Opium is a narcotic analgesic drug which is obtained from the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy. Poppies! Poppies! Poppies!

Our ODDguest Alethea Hayter brings opium to our minds today. She produced a study of opium and literature that is considered a definitive account of the contribution made by narcotics to literary creation. And some big names are involved here: Walter Scott, Poe (surprise!!), Coleridge and Keats.

Opium in its medicinal form of laudanum was routinely given for pain. Walter Scott was said to be too ill to work and was given large doses of laudanum. He was thus able to dictate parts of his novel to a scribe, but hows-about-that?! - he later could not recall a thing about the novel sections he dictated. Hayter revealed that the narcotic gave the taker waking dreams and these had a number of common themes, including the horror of limitless yet enclosed space found in Poe and, to a lesser extent, Coleridge.

Now because the Wizard of Oz came up earlier in this weblog try this one on for trivia: do you remember the name of the book that drove Sean Connery throughout the movie Zardoz? Come on, its right there in front of you: Wizard of Oz == Zardoz (if you drop a letter/word or two) - Sean’s copy had some of the title obscured on the spine of the book if memory serves..

And if you liked Zardoz surely you found A Boy and His Dog just as entertaining. Harlan Ellison has quite the gift.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: news, Opium, narcotic, drug, Alethea Hayter, literature, Walter Scott, Coleridge, Keats, Poe, Coleridge, Wizard of Oz, weblog, Sean Connery

Sydney Morning Herald
Alethea Hayter, who has died aged 94, was a critic and biographer who wrote mainly about literary society in 19th-century England; The author Julian Barnes called her “one of our finest non-academic literary historians”, and her study Opium and the Romantic Imagination (1968) is considered a definitive account of the contribution made by narcotics to literary creation.

Opium in its medicinal form of laudanum was widely used as a painkiller from the late 18th century onwards, but was particularly attractive to romantic writers such as Coleridge and Keats because it seemed to provide a means whereby the dreamer could control his dreams, switching them on and off and having access to the marvellous at will.

In fact, what they experienced were waking dreams which, Hayter revealed, had a number of common themes, including the horror of limitless yet enclosed space found in Poe and, to a lesser extent, Coleridge.

In what she described as “one of the best attested examples of an opium interlude in the work of a non-addicted writer”, Hayter described how, in 1819, Walter Scott was too ill to write The Bride of Lammermoor and had to dictate to his appalled assistants from his bed, with the help of huge doses of laudanum. When he recovered and read the finished narrative, he did not recollect one single incident, character or conversation it contained.

Another key text was The Moonstone. During its composition, Hayter revealed, author Wilkie Collins was in such pain from gout that only large doses of laudanum could relieve it. The Moonstone was dictated to its conclusion accompanied by Collins’s screams and when he saw the proofs, he, like Scott, did not recognise it as his own work.

The life of the opium addict, Hayter emphasised, was nevertheless a wretched one, and she concluded that if a writer was not naturally gifted, the drug would not make up for his deficiencies.
Opium and the Romantic Imagination

Technorati Tags: Alethea Hayter, narcotics, Opium, laudanum, Walter Scott, opium addict

NY Times
Janette Carter, the last surviving child of country music’s Carter Family, who in recent years preserved her parents’ old-time style with weekly performances, died here on Sunday. She was 82.

Her death was announced by her family, who said she had battled Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses.

Carter was the daughter of A. P. and Sara Carter. Her parents and her father’s sister-in-law Maybelle Carter formed a singing trio discovered in 1927 when the talent scout Ralph Peer went to the Tennessee-Virginia border town of Bristol to record mountain music.

When her brother Joe died last March, Janette Carter became the last surviving child of the original group’s members. (The best known of her generation to present-day listeners was the country star June Carter Cash, a daughter of Maybelle and wife of Johnny Cash. Carter Cash died in May 2003 at 73. Her husband died later that year.)

Following the death of her father in 1960, Janette Carter dedicated her life to preserving not only the Carter Family music, but also the folk and country music of Appalachia.

A result of that effort was the establishment of the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, Va., an auditorium built from railroad ties and school bus seats near the family farm in Hiltons; until recently she gave concerts each Saturday. She played autoharp.

Technorati Tags: Janette Carter, country music, Carter Family, music, June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash, Carter Family Fold

I went back to the preacher full of lies and hate
I seemed to scare him a little so he showed me to the Golden gate
Can you see the real me, preacher, preacher?
can you see the real me, preacher?
Can you see the real me, doctor?
Can you see the real me, mother?
Can you see the real me me me me me me me? ~~”The Real Me”, Quadrophenia, The Who

What say the news oh Weblog? Once upon a time in the West a young doctor rolled into a small, sleepy southern Colorado town. The year was in 1954 and his new job was at a United Mine Workers clinic. For 15 years he had the typical daily life of a small town doctor’s practice until one day in 1969. A friend came in and asked for an operation. “Well, of course,” Dr. Biber replied. “What do you want done?” “I’m a transsexual,” she said. “What’s that?” Dr. Stanley Biber asked her. He learned that his friend was a man living as a woman.

“It looked like hell,” he told The Rocky Mountain News in 2004. “It was terrible. But it functioned, and she was very happy with it because it functioned.” Sex as a business, but with a bit of a twist you might say.

“Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild side” ~~ “Walk on the Wild Side” - Lou Reed

Indeed. That sleepy little town - Trinidad, Colorado - became known as the sex-change capital of the world. The title bothered some, but Dr. Biber shrugged it off and pointed out the economic benefits of the business for a town where the coal mining had faded out long ago. Considering that the number of operations performed over the years is said to be north of 4,000 we suppose there were a few economic perks for Trinidad.

Of course if this style of economic boom bothers you well there is always the lottery, but don’t ask Bud Post about that OK?

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: news, Weblog, doctor, daily life, transsexual, Stanley Biber, Sex, sex-change, coal mining, lottery, Bud Post

LA Times
William Post III, 66, who won a $16.2-million jackpot and bitterly called it the “lottery of death” after his life turned sour, died of respiratory failure Jan. 15 at a hospital in Seneca, Pa.

He won the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988 after pawning a ring for $40 and buying 40 tickets. The Erie, Pa., native, who had been living on Social Security disability income, had $2.46 in the bank the day he bought the ticket. But the winnings, paid in annual installments of $498,000 after taxes, brought trouble.

Businesses he started with siblings failed. His sixth wife moved out, his brother was convicted of trying to kill him, and his sometime girlfriend successfully sued for a third of his winnings. He was convicted of assault for firing a shotgun over the head of a bill collector.

“He was like ‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’ ” said John Lacher, a bankruptcy lawyer who assisted Post. “He did everything you would expect of a guy who became a millionaire overnight.”

Technorati Tags: William Post, lottery of death, millionaire

NY Times
Anthony Franciosa, whose strong portrayals of moody, troubled characters made him a Hollywood star in the 1950’s and 60’s but whose combative behavior on movie sets hampered his career in the movies, died here on Thursday. He was 77.

The cause was a stroke, his publicist, Dick Guttman, said.

Mr. Franciosa was one of a wave of actors in the mid-20th century who revolutionized film acting with their introspective, intensely realistic approach. Most were schooled in the Method, the style of acting taught at the Actors Studio in New York. They included Marlon Brando, James Dean, Rod Steiger, Paul Newman and Shelley Winters.

Mr. Franciosa was married to Winters, who died last weekend, from 1957 to 1960.

Mr. Franciosa was also married to Beatrice Bakalyar, a writer, and Judy Balaban Kanter, a real estate agent, with whom he had a daughter, Nina. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife since 1970, Rita Thiel, a German fashion model; their sons Christopher and Marco; and a granddaughter.

From his first important film role, as the brother of a drug addict in “A Hatful of Rain,” Mr. Franciosa became known for his portrayals of complicated young men. He received a 1956 Tony nomination for his performance in the “Hatful” role, which he created on Broadway, then an Oscar nomination for his part in the 1957 movie of the play. In 1957, he appeared in three other films, “This Could Be the Night,” “A Face in the Crowd” and “Wild Is the Wind.”

Mr. Franciosa’s career continued in high gear with films like “The Long, Hot Summer,” “The Naked Maja” (in which he played Goya), “The Story on Page One,” “Period of Adjustment,” “Rio Conchos” and “The Pleasure Seekers.”

His behavior on movie productions became the subject of Hollywood gossip. The stories were of fiery disputes with directors, his sulking in his dressing room and outbursts directed at other actors.

“I went out to Hollywood in the mid-1950’s,” he said in a 1996 interview, “and I would say I went there a little too early. It was an incredible amount of attention, and I wasn’t quite mature enough psychologically and emotionally for it.”

Mr. Franciosa’s assertive attitude extended beyond movie sets; in 1957 he served 10 days in the Los Angeles County jail for hitting a news photographer. His reputation contributed to a downturn in Hollywood offers, and his career veered to European-made films and television. His first television series, “Valentine’s Day,” cast him as a swinging New York publishing executive involved in numerous romances. It lasted one season, from 1964 to 1965.

In “The Name of the Game” (1968-71), Mr. Franciosa alternated with Gene Barry and Robert Stack as adventurous members of a Los Angeles publishing firm. In 1971, the producing company, Universal Pictures, fired him, charging erratic behavior. He countered that the company had treated him badly and had demanded that he take a pay cut.

The 1975 television series “Matt Helm,” with Mr. Franciosa as the wisecracking detective of the title (a role Dean Martin played in feature films), was canceled after half a season.

Mr. Franciosa was born Anthony Papaleo on Oct. 25, 1928, in New York City. He was billed as both Anthony and Tony over his career. He was 1 when his father disappeared, and grew up tough in Manhattan slums. “Getting in the first blow was something I learned in childhood,” he once said.

Technorati Tags: Anthony Franciosa, movies, Shelley Winters, television

NY Times
Stanley H. Biber, a small-town Colorado doctor who for decades was internationally renowned as the dean of sex-change surgery, died on Monday at a hospital in Pueblo. He was 82 and lived in Hoehne, Colo.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his secretary, Marie Pacino.

A former Army surgeon, Dr. Biber (pronounced BYE-ber) was among the first doctors in the United States to perform sex changes and for years was one of only a handful to offer them. He became one of the country’s most prolific providers of the operation, which, it was estimated, he performed more than 4,000 times beginning in 1969.

By now, about 30,000 Americans have undergone sex-change surgery, according to the International Foundation for Gender Education, an advocacy group in Waltham, Mass.

During the 1970’s, 80’s and early 90’s, Trinidad, Colo., where Dr. Biber practiced, was an unlikely mecca for men and women who sought to change their sex. Featured frequently on television and in newspapers, the doctor’s work earned the town (current population 9,078) a reputation as “the sex-change capital of the world.”

If some local residents bristled at the title, many others embraced Dr. Biber and his work. Few disputed its quality. Some expressed pride in the service he performed. And no one doubted the economic benefit to Trinidad, which was a down-at-the-heels former coal-mining town when the doctor moved there in the mid-1950’s.

“It’s a boon to business here,” Dr. Biber told The New York Times in 1998. “They come with families, they stay in the hotels, they eat in the restaurants, they buy at the florists.”

Once a rabbinical student, Dr. Biber took to the Old West ethic of Trinidad, near the New Mexico border in southern Colorado. He favored blue jeans, silver belt buckles and pickup trucks. He owned a ranch, was once a county commissioner and to the end of his life rode in cattle drives.

Throughout his career, he continued his work as a general practitioner, performing tonsillectomies, delivering babies and setting bones, sometimes reading X-rays at his kitchen table when patients called on him at night.

Stanley Harold Biber was born on May 4, 1923, in Des Moines. After graduating from high school at 16, he enrolled in a yeshiva in Chicago, intending to become a rabbi. He interrupted his studies to work for the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Iowa, where he earned a medical degree in 1948.

After a residency in the Panama Canal Zone, Dr. Biber joined the Army, where he was the chief surgeon of a MASH unit in the Korean War. He finished his service at what is now Fort Carson, in Colorado, and in 1954 took a job at a United Mine Workers clinic in Trinidad. He planned to stay a year or two.

For the next 15 years, Dr. Biber had a typical small-town practice, working at Trinidad’s only hospital, Mount San Rafael. In 1969, a friend went to his office. She was a social worker who admired Dr. Biber’s skill in repairing the harelips of children she had referred to him. She asked if he would perform an operation on her.

“Well, of course,” Dr. Biber replied. “What do you want done?”

“I’m a transsexual,” she said.

“What’s that?” Dr. Biber asked her. He learned that his friend was a man living as a woman.

Not even two decades had passed since a G.I. from the Bronx named George Jorgensen became Christine Jorgensen in Denmark, in 1952. Few surgeons in the United States had ever seen a sex-change operation, much less performed one. But Dr. Biber was young and sure of his surgical prowess. In Korea, he had once performed 37 operations in a row before passing out from exhaustion.

Working from a set of hand-drawn diagrams he obtained from the Johns Hopkins University hospital, he performed the operation.

“It looked like hell,” he told The Rocky Mountain News in 2004. “It was terrible. But it functioned, and she was very happy with it because it functioned.”

Technorati Tags: Stanley H. Biber, sex-change, sex, sex-change surgery, transsexual