Our Daily Dead

Did you happen to catch this tale of bliss and tragedy?

And did you read up on the story of John Profumo yet? As per the CBC site: “Former British cabinet minister John Profumo, whose affair with a high-class prostitute linked to a Soviet naval attaché was one of the biggest political scandals of the 20th century”. Sleeping with the enemy indeed.

And this tip just in from ODD sweetheart Satori at I See Dead People: seems paparazzi and Reese Witherspoon stalker Todd Wallace has turned up dead. Todd was a wanted man for failing to appear at a hearing in connection with the Witherspoon incident.

Our guests today - Doug Hamilton, Garrett Scott and Daniel DeLaVergne all had one thing in common which you no doubt noticed: all were far and away too young to be joining us here. Daniel however wins one extra award for creativity or stupidity - you decide - given he was sleeping in a train tunnel. Damed ODD that.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: John Profumo, Satori, paparazzi, Reese Witherspoon, Todd Wallace, Doug Hamilton, Garrett Scott, Daniel DeLaVergne

from the LA Times
Doug Hamilton, president and general manager of the Galaxy, died Thursday evening while on a flight back to Los Angeles from San Jose, Costa Rica, where the team had played a CONCACAF Champions Cup game Wednesday night. He was 43.

The preliminary cause of death was listed as an apparent heart attack. Hamilton had slumped over in his seat only four minutes into the flight.

According to Galaxy Coach Steve Sampson, a team doctor who was aboard the LACSA aircraft tried for 45 minutes to resuscitate him, after which the plane’s captain decided to return to the San Jose airport.

Hamilton had become one of Major League Soccer’s brightest and most successful executives during his seven years in the league. He guided the Galaxy to championship seasons in 2002 and 2005, when the team also won the U.S. Open Cup.

He twice was named the league’s executive of the year, and under him the Galaxy became the first team to show a profit in the 10-year history of MLS.

“His passion was the Galaxy,” Sampson said in telephone interview from Costa Rica. “In retrospect, it’s fitting that we won a championship for him this past year because he was so passionate about this team and loved every single player and the organization.

Technorati Tags: Doug Hamilton, Galaxy, Major League Soccer

from the LA Times

Daniel DeLaVergne, 29, a noted whitewater kayaker who was part of a four-man team that set a record for paddling one of North America’s most dangerous rivers, died Wednesday near Ridgecrest, N.C., after being hit by a train.

Friends said they believed DeLaVergne was camping in the High Ridge Tunnel to avoid bad weather Tuesday when he was struck by a Norfolk Southern train heading to Asheville. DeLaVergne lost an arm in the accident and was airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he died Wednesday.

National Geographic Adventure magazine named DeLaVergne a 2005 adventurer of the year for paddling the 50-mile run of the Stikine River in British Columbia with three other kayakers.

The magazine said it normally takes three days to paddle the Stikine, but DeLaVergne and his friends did it in nine hours and 50 minutes.

from the LA Times
Garrett Scott was on his way to becoming an English professor when an unemployed plumber rampaged through the streets of suburban San Diego in a stolen Army tank.

Before that 1995 incident, Scott hadn’t thought about making documentaries. When he couldn’t shake the television image of the tank crashing into cars, he decided to try his hand at filmmaking and crafted the 2002 film, “Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story,” a bleak tale praised for its unorthodox style and insights into grass-roots attitudes about violence and war.

For his second documentary, Scott spent six weeks embedded with the 82nd Airborne Division fighting in Fallouja, Iraq, to make “Occupation: Dreamland.” The portrait of conflicted soldiers also received wide acclaim. Calling it an “excellent film,” The Times’ Kenneth Turan said it had “an intimate, personal quality” that reflected the filmmakers’ hard-earned bond with the soldiers.

When the 2005 film won the Truer Than Fiction Award at Saturday’s Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, his filmmaking partner, Ian Olds, dedicated it to Scott.

Scott, who lived in New York City, was visiting his family when he died March 2 of cardiac arrest while swimming in a public pool in Coronado, said his mother, Lynne. He was 37.

“Everybody who met him was struck by his unique and powerful mind,” said Olds, who edited both documentaries. “We talked about the idea of making films with a cold eye and a warm heart.”

Technorati Tags: Garrett Scott, documentaries, documentary, 82nd Airborne, film

We came across this factoid while surfing and looking for something else (of course) - what three TV programs “went out on top”? Here are your hints: one starred recently departed Don Knotts, one starred a wacky red-headed lady and the third was the quintessential “show about nothing”. Did you get them all?

Rodney Strong the founder of the Rodney Strong Vineyards is one of our guests today. Rodney’s obit indicates that he was first a dancer, then married his dancing partner and then started up his Sonoma County vineyard. He apparently decided it was easier being an old winemaker than being an old dancer.

Another guest today is Richard Kuklinski aka “The Iceman” - no, not the 40,000 year old guy Italian Iceman Oetzi (as in the 5,000 year old guy found in the Italian Alps because the glaciers are receeding) and no not the Iceman from the movie with Timothy Hutton, but yes, exactly right, the guy at the center of “The Iceman - Confessions of a Mafia Hitman”.

Our third guest today is photographer Gordon Parks. Gordon’s obit mentions his start in life in a “…clapboard house in a segregated town in rural Kansas…”, but goes on to point out that covered a lot of ground in his life coming all the way to a “…high-rise Manhattan apartment with a panoramic view of the East River…”. Quite the distance both in space, time and culture. Along the way Gordon found the time, energy and resources to help create the timely movie “Shaft”. And no we do NOT mean that remake.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: TV, show about nothing, Rodney Strong, Rodney Strong Vineyards, obit, Sonoma County, vineyard, The Iceman, Mafia, Hitman, photographer, Gordon Parks, Shaft

from the LA Times
Gordon Parks, who became the first African American staff photographer at Life magazine in the late 1940s and broke more ground in Hollywood two decades later as the first black person to direct a major studio film, “The Learning Tree,” followed by the landmark black private eye movie “Shaft,” has died. He was 93.

Parks, who also carved out niches as a novelist, memoirist, poet and composer, died Tuesday in New York, his nephew, Charles Parks, told The Times. Parks had been in failing health for some time, but the cause of death was not reported.

Although his films widened his fame, it was as a photographer and social documentarian that Parks first made his mark as an artist and achieved his greatest acclaim.

From a clapboard house in a segregated town in rural Kansas to a high-rise Manhattan apartment with a panoramic view of the East River, he covered a lot of ground on his way to becoming one of America’s foremost photojournalists.

Parks, who once played piano in a Minneapolis brothel and worked as a waiter on a railroad dining car, was a self-taught photographer. He was equally at ease documenting a chain gang in Alabama and photographing Manhattan socialite Gloria Vanderbilt or a Paris fashion model.

Technorati Tags: Gordon Parks, African American, photographer, Life magazine, Shaft, death, artist

from the LA Times
Richard Kuklinski, 70, a notorious Mafia hit man known as “The Iceman,” who claimed to have killed more than 100 people and was the subject of several books and two cable television documentaries, died Sunday at St. Francis Hospital in Trenton, N.J.

A spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Corrections did not disclose the cause of death but said it was not suspicious.

Kuklinski, who was serving consecutive life sentences at New Jersey State Prison for two murders, typically used cyanide administered from a nasal spray on his victims and earned the nickname “The Iceman” because he kept some bodies in a freezer.

Kuklinski’s admissions of guilt in TV interviews and in court were shocking to his wife, Barbara, who said in an HBO interview: “We were perfect. We were the all-American family.”

The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer

Married to the Iceman: A True Account of Life With a Mafia Hitman and the Inside Story of His Crimes

Technorati Tags: Richard Kuklinski, Mafia, hit man, The Iceman

from the LA Times
Rodney Strong, a dancer turned winemaker who was a renowned champion of Northern California’s Sonoma County wine-growing region, died Sunday in Healdsburg, Calif. He was 78. Strong died of complications from a stroke, said Michele Prinz, spokeswoman for Rodney Strong Vineyards.

Elegant and well-spoken, Strong was known for promoting high-quality winemaking practices in Sonoma County and for traveling the country to promote the region’s wines.

“The guy just was phenomenally erudite,” said Richard Arrowood, wine master of Arrowood Vineyards and Winery in Sonoma County, who remembered Strong as a generous mentor and a tough act to follow on the speaking circuit. “He just was a great artist, no two ways about it, and was a heck of a friend to boot.”

Born March 8, 1927, in Camas, Wash., Strong trained as a dancer and spent four years in Paris, where he developed an interest in fine wines. He concentrated on the latter, he was known to say, after realizing it was easier to be an old winemaker than an old dancer.

Rodney Strong Vineyards: Creative winemaking and winery management in Sonoma County (Wine spectator California winemen oral history series)

Technorati Tags: Rodney Strong, dancer, winemaker, Sonoma County

Today’s slice of the ODD daily life diary brings us four guests: Seymour Furman, Walerian Borowczyk, Kirby Puckett, and Dana Reeve.

Seymour effectively gave us the pacemaker. Walerian was a movie-maker of considerable critical success, although no few folks labelled him a pornographer. Kirby, ah Kirby…you probably know something of his baseball story and if you ever saw him play you certainly remember his smile. And finally we’ve stalwart Dana who stood by Christopher’s side through it all when many would have run.

By way of Infospigot we found this excellent last child in the woods post over at the National Parks Travel blog. Remember this when you are in mid-plan for your summer time getaway. And no, you do not have to go to a National Park, a simple trip to any out-of-doors area will suffice. Just find someplace where you can look up at the perfect silence of the stars together and wonder.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: daily life, diary, Seymour Furman, Walerian Borowczyk, Kirby Puckett, Dana Reeve, pacemaker, pornographer, baseball

from CNN
NEW YORK (CNN) — Dana Reeve, the widow of the late actor Christopher Reeve, has died from lung cancer at age 44, according to a statement from the Christopher Reeve Foundation.

She revealed she had the disease in August, less than a year after her husband’s death. A lifelong nonsmoker, Dana Reeve died Monday night.

She was the chairwoman of the foundation, which funds research for new treatments for spinal cord injuries and works to improve the quality of life for people suffering from paralysis.

Her husband died in October 2004 at age 52 after falling into a coma. He had been paralyzed since a horseback riding accident in 1995.

Reeve was admired for the support and love she showed for her husband and for her assistance in his care.

Fellow board member Kate Michelman remembered her as “a great spirit.” “The country suffers because Dana, on a personal level, was one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known,” Michelman said.

She said Reeve’s health had seemed to improve, giving friends and loved ones hope that she might recover from the cancer. “She was improving. You know her own spirit and her own determination to overcome this plague made us feel she could do it,” Michelman said.

“She just recently learned that she was failing and right up [till] the end, I have to tell you, Dana was convinced she was going to overcome this.”

from the NY Times
Kirby Puckett, the Hall of Fame outfielder for the Minnesota Twins, acclaimed for his sunny personality and his passion for baseball, died yesterday at a hospital in Phoenix. He was 45.

The cause was complications from a stroke he had Sunday at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., the Twins said. Puckett had neurosurgery at Scottsdale Osborne Hospital on Sunday, then was transferred to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, where he died. Mike Herman, a spokesman for the Twins, said medical records showed that Puckett was a year older than his listed age in record books.

At 5 feet 9 inches and around 220 pounds, Puckett hardly bore the frame of a major league star. But he became one of baseball’s premier hitters and a superb center fielder, starring for the Twins from 1984 to 1995.

For all those statistical achievements, Puckett was hailed as much for the sheer joy he communicated at a time when soaring salaries distanced many players from their fans.

“I played every game like it was my last,” Puckett said when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001, his first year of eligibility. “I think I’m one of the few guys who can say I left my blood, sweat and tears on the field.”

Technorati Tags: Kirby Puckett, Hall of Fame, Minnesota Twins

from the NY Times
Walerian Borowczyk, an internationally known Surrealist filmmaker described variously by critics as a genius, a pornographer and a genius who also happened to be a pornographer, died on Feb. 3 in Paris, where he had resided since the late 1950’s. He was 82.

The cause was heart trouble, friends of Mr. Borowczyk told Agence France-Presse. His wife, Ligia Branice, who starred in several of his films, is his only known survivor.

If Franz Kafka and the filmmaker Luis Buñuel were cross-pollinated, the result would be Mr. Borowczyk. Originally trained as a painter and graphic artist, he made several dozen films, both animated and live-action, in the decades after World War II. His work attracted a cult following over the years and has been cited as an influence on contemporary filmmakers like Terry Gilliam, Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay.

Working first in his native Poland and later in France, Mr. Borowczyk (pronounced bo-ROV-chick) was drawn incessantly to the competing lures of sex and death. His best-known live-action work includes “Goto, l’Île d’Amour” (”Goto, Island of Love,” 1968); “Blanche” (1971); “Contes Immoraux” (”Immoral Tales,” 1974); and, most notoriously, “La Bête” (”The Beast,” 1975).

Among his animated films are “Dom” (”House,” 1958), made with Jan Lenica; “Les Astronautes” (1959), with Chris Marker; “Renaissance” (1963); and the full-length feature “Théâtre de M. et Mme. Kabal” (”Mr. and Mrs. Kabal’s Theater,” 1967).

Technorati Tags: Walerian Borowczyk, Surrealist, pornographer, Terry Gilliam, sex, death, Immoral Tales, The Beast

from the NY Times
Dr. Seymour Furman, a cardiologist who devised a way to insert pacemakers into patients without performing surgery, died on Feb. 20 at the Jewish Home and Hospital in the Bronx. He was 74.

The cause of death was complications of cardiovascular disease, his son Neil Furman said.

Along with two colleagues, Dr. Furman made history on July 16, 1958, at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx when he threaded plastic-coated wires connected to an electrode through the veins of a patient’s heart, eliminating the need to cut the chest open.

That changed the way pacemakers are implanted, a procedure performed hundreds of thousands of times since then. Once regarded as a biotechnological miracle, the pacemaker — a device that stimulates a regular heartbeat through electrical impulses — is today a routine aid to cardiac health.

An article in the Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology said of Dr. Furman 43 years after the pioneering procedure, “His contributions are so numerous that many are now taken for granted and their origin often forgotten.”

Technorati Tags: Seymour Furman, cardiologist, pacemaker