Our Daily Dead

NY Times
Harold Hunter, whose skateboarding prowess and outsize personality led him to modeling and movie roles, celebrity friendships and prominence in the downtown Manhattan scene, was found dead on Feb. 17 in the East Village housing project where he grew up. He was 31. His brother, Ronald, who summoned the police to the apartment, said the cause was a heart attack.

Mr. Hunter was already well known in skateboarding circles when he was a teenager and began gaining mainstream fame after landing film roles, including one in “Kids,” the 1995 movie portraying a decadent teenage subculture.

By his early teens, he was touring with Zoo York, the prominent New York skateboarding team, and appearing widely in skateboard magazines and videos, showing his mastery of moves, from basic skills like the ollie, a skateboard hop, to high-flying backside heel flips.

From benches to stoops to staircases and building facades to handrails, the cityscape of Lower Manhattan became Mr. Hunter’s skate park. He was a fixture in Washington Square, Union Square and Astor Place and at skating spots like the Brooklyn Banks, the concrete slopes under the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan.

Technorati Tags: Harold Hunter, skateboarding, modeling, movie, celebrity

LA Times
Rickie Layne, a ventriloquist whose frequent appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with his Yiddish-accented dummy Velvel boosted the former Borscht Belt comic’s career to a new level in the 1950s, has died. He was 81.

Layne, a longtime resident of Northridge, died of heart failure Feb. 11 at Tarzana Hospital, his family said.

Layne was performing at Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip with singer Maria Cole in 1955 when Nat King Cole would stop in each night to watch his wife.

Cole was so impressed with Layne and Velvel that he urged Sullivan to put the act on his popular Sunday night variety show. Layne made his Sullivan show debut on Jan. 1, 1956. Afterward, Sullivan invited him to return in two weeks, and Layne and Velvel made several dozen return visits over the years.

Sullivan was such a fan of Layne and Velvel that he’d often get into the act himself, serving as straight man for the dummy, who referred to the normally stone-faced TV host as “Ed Solomon.”

He later worked occasionally as a character actor in films, including “The Shaggy D.A.,” and on television, including a 1986 guest shot on the comedy series “Night Court,” in which he and Velvel appeared as an aging ventriloquist and his dummy.

Technorati Tags: Rickie Layne, ventriloquist, The Ed Sullivan Show, Borscht Belt, Nat King Cole

A daily slice of hooey…or perhaps you’d rather invoke Balderdash and Piffle.

And then there is all that Wiki stuff…Wiktionary and that other thing the Wikipedia. And no they don’t add up to nor together create a wiki-wiki just in case you wondered.

Now all this just might be too silly, but it is Friday (at least here at ODD Galactic HQ) and the Motovational and Inspirational Corner site alerts us that Horace no less said:

Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans: it’s lovely to be silly at the right moment.

And lastly back to silly phrases for $200. We’re seriously considering working in the tag line Pop One’s Clogs given the focus of this blog. Besides the phrase has such nice rhyming appeal.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: daily, Balderdash, Piffle, Wiki, Pop One’s Clogs, blog

Annette Funicello made her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis public in 1992 and then in 1993 established the Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological Disorders. Much as we saw with our dear departed Richard Pryor MS is taking its toll on Ms. Funicello.

Technorati Tags: Annette Funicello, multiple sclerosis, Richard Pryor

The good doctor of something or other landed here in the ODD On Deck list because of this wee bit of news from last year:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell was in critical condition Tuesday March 29, 2005 at Lynchburg General Hospital in Lynchburg, Va., suffering from respiratory arrest brought about by viral pneumonia.

Rather serious that. One hopes that Tinky Winky was not on call during Dr. Jerry’s visit, but perhaps the whole episode was due to his paralysis over his TeleTubbie decision.

Technorati Tags: Jerry Falwell, Lynchburg, respiratory arrest, viral pneumonia, Tinky Winky, TeleTubbie

LA Tiimes
Thomas Malcolm Taylor, 63, the primary money manager for the billionaire Bass brothers of Texas for more than 20 years, died Sunday in a snowmobile accident in Brighton, N.Y.

Taylor and his wife, Linda, were riding on a snowmobile trail that crosses a country road when they collided with a minivan at an intersection. Taylor died at the scene and his wife, who is 57, was flown to a Burlington, Vt., hospital in critical condition.

For most of his career, Taylor had a reputation as a daring and hard-charging money manager. He was working at Kidder Peabody in 1977 when a high school friend persuaded him to leave Wall Street and manage money for the Bass brothers, who made their fortune in oil.

Technorati Tags: Thomas Malcolm Taylor, Bass brothers, snowmobile

NY Times
Paul Avrich, a historian of the anarchist movement that played a role in the Russian Revolution and flourished in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, died on Feb. 16 at Mount Sinai Hospital. He was 74 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said his wife, Ina Avrich.

Named distinguished professor of history at Queens College in 1982, Dr. Avrich, whose field was Russian history, wrote 10 books, mainly about anarchism, the belief that society is better off without the constraints of government.

Dr. Avrich became the confidant of well-known figures in the anarchist movement.

“He considered himself a scholar, teacher and chronicler of the movement and had great sympathy and affection for them,” his wife said. Dr. Avrich took issue with the prevalent image of the anarchist as violent and amoral.

“Every good person deep down is an anarchist,” he was quoted as saying in the announcement by Queens College of his elevation to distinguished professor. Three of the 20th century’s literary giants, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O’Neill, were anarchists in their youth, Dr. Avrich said, and he had hoped to write a book about O’Neill.

Technorati Tags: Paul Avrich, historian, anarchist, Russian Revolution

NY Times
BUCHAREST, Romania, Feb. 23 (AP) — Angelica Rozeanu, the Romanian-born table tennis great who won six straight world championships in the 1950’s, died Tuesday at her daughter’s home in Haifa, Israel. She was 84.

Her death came less than a month after she learned she had cirrhosis, the Romanian table tennis federation said. Rozeanu was the world women’s singles champion from 1950-55, a feat that has not been equaled. She won 17 world titles, taking the world’s women’s doubles title three times (1953-55) and the world mixed doubles titles three times (1951-53).

Rozeanu was Romanian national champion from 1936-57, excluding four years during World War II when championship play was not held.

Technorati Tags: Angelica Rozeanu, table tennis

Welcome to the ODD daily diary…

We found that the Sydney Morning Herald has an obituary titled “The prince cheated out of royalty“. This is an interesting story: “Prince Carol of Romania, who has died aged 86, spent much of his life in the quest to prove his legitimacy.” The tale has no end of intrigue - Dad was a looney, skirt chasing King, Grandma was trying to hold the household together, a half-brother sat on the throne for a time and the Communists came knocking on the door and eventually burst in to interrupt the party.

And speaking of Princes or in this case Prince-ton, Ken Keuffel joins us today. Ken played single wing style football for Princeton and Hall-of-Fame coach Charlie Caldwell. Ken continued to teach and coach single wing football after his Princeton days.

And since we’re on a Prince run, BET reports that “MICHAEL JACKSON PAYS TRIBUTE TO KATRINA VICTIMS…FINALLY…Even though he announced plans to record an all-star song for the victims of Hurricane Katrina immediately following the destructive event, it took Michael Jackson a full six months to make the song a reality.” Apparently the single is set to be released on the 2 Seas imprint, a venture between Jackson and Prince Abdullah bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the son of the King of Bahrain, Jackson’s (run-away-from-the-law) adoptive home. See also (of course) the Prince.org story.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: daily, diary, Prince Carol of Romania, Ken Keuffel, Charlie Caldwell, Michael Jackson

NY Times
Bruce Hart, who wrote lyrics for “Sesame Street” and “Free to Be … You and Me,” died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 68.

The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Carole.

Mr. Hart and his wife were among the first writers on “Sesame Street” when it began in 1969 as a children’s show that tried to be equally entertaining and educational. To shake up the creative process, its producers hired people new to children’s television.

Mr. Hart, who had written for “Candid Camera” and composed the lyrics to “One Way Ticket,” a hit for Cass Elliott, was hired to write sketches and help with the theme song. With a clear whistle of a melody and lyrics that seemed to come straight from the mind of a happy child, the song — written with Joe Raposo and Jon Stone — became a touchstone of children’s music:

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?

“That opening bar summoned children all over the world to the television set,” said Phil Donahue, a longtime friend. “Its purity is its strength.”

NY Times
Ken Keuffel, the head football coach for 21 years at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and for 6 years at Wabash College and one of the last exponents of the single-wing offense, died Sunday at the University Medical Center in Princeton, N.J. He was 82 and lived in Lawrenceville, outside Princeton.

The cause was prostate cancer, his son, Ken Jr., said.

In the 1940’s, when Keuffel played at Princeton University for Coach Charlie Caldwell, almost every team used the single wing. The backfield consisted of a quarterback who was essentially a blocker, a tailback who took most of the snaps and ran or passed, a fullback and a wingback. The center would snap the ball to the tailback or the fullback.

The formation combined power and deception. It was last used in the National Football League by Coach Jock Sutherland of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1947. It has all but disappeared from colleges and survives in only a few high schools. Keuffel regretted that, telling The New York Times in 1973:

“For us, it presents many advantages. One of the big ones is that rival teams find it difficult to prepare for us. They aren’t familiar with the single wing.”

That was not Keuffel’s fault. His books “Simplified Single Wing Football,” published in 1964, and “Winning Single Wing Football” (2004) are definitive textbooks for the formation.