irishstu based his life on Roy Scheider. There will be a lot of tears before bedtime in the irish household tonight.
French Connection was classic as was Jaws. Roy’s passing, as well as others of his generation, reminds me that the golden age of the moving picture is way way behind us now 
The car chase scene in the French Connection is awesome.
To be fair, I was more than a little suprised he was still alive, well, until yesterday at least.
[quote]Folk legend Smoky Dawson dies
Australian country music pioneer Smoky Dawson has died.
Dawson became a household name around Australia for his western-style radio show The Adventures of Smoky Dawson.
Dawson’s recording career spanned more than six decades. His latest album, Homestead of My Dreams, was released in 2005 - at which point he became the oldest recording artist in the world.
Dawson’s record label manager, Philip Mortlock, said his death was a great loss for Australian music and culture.
“An irony about Smoky, even though he was best known in the country music sphere, I would call him one of Australia’s great folk artists,” he said.
“While his music was tinged with country, he was also a great poet and a very creative man. He encompassed a great sense of Australiana.”[/quote]
HG
A bit more on Smoky Dawson:
Music legend Smoky Dawson dies
“Dawson is survived by his wife, Dot.
The pair married in 1944 and set-up the Smoky Dawson Ranch in Sydney’s northern outskirts.”
Wow.
Some great comments about him.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]
Some great comments about him.[/quote]
Slammy says, “RIP… smokey
I can’t belive he is 97
God … bless u”
Nick says, “I can’t believe it either, mainly becuase he was 94.”
[quote=“Namahottie”]Imad Mugniyah
[/quote]
I wonder if the Lebanese community in Windsor, Canada, will put up a billboard in his honour. 
I hope they put a billboard with a picture of each life he took. Bastard.(Not you chewy)
A good friend of Taiwan and Israel and a champion of human rights. Rest in peace, Tom.
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c … DV2JI6.DTL
Assuming we’ll never find his body or plane wreckage, this is probably about as official as it’s going to get for Fossett.
Missing adventurer declared dead
[quote]CHICAGO — Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who risked his life seeking to set records in high-tech balloons, gliders and jets, was declared dead on Friday.
The declaration came five months after he vanished while flying in an ordinary small plane. He was 63. [/quote]
[i]"Son, you’re gonna’ drive me to drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot … Rod … Lincoln!”[/i]
The gentleman who wrote that tune has moved up to the Big Race in the Sky.
[quote]Writer of “Hot Rod Lincoln” moves to drag race in the sky
February 19, 2008 12:14PM
Mr. Ryan and the Hot Rod Lincoln
SPOKANE – Charles Ryan, the Spokane man who co-wrote the hit song “Hot Rod Lincoln,” has run his last road race. Ryan died Saturday at age 92 after a long battle with heart disease.
“Anyone who ever had the pleasure of meeting with, or working with Charlie, knew one thing: He was the REAL DEAL!” wrote Karl Bingle, a friend who operates the Web site www.hot-rod-lincoln.com.
“He had the kind of spirit and personality that immediately brought a smile to your face and challenged you to live life to the fullest,” Bingle wrote. “His amazing contributions to country and rockabilly music will never be forgotten.”
Ryan and W.S. Stevenson wrote “Hot Rod Lincoln” and Ryan first recorded it in 1955. It has been recorded many times since.
Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen made it a hit in 1972, and it has been a mainstay of popular culture for decades. The song passed the 1 million-play mark in the summer of 2000, according to Broadcast Music Inc.
Ryan was born in Graceville, Minn., on Dec. 19, 1915, grew up in Polson, Mont., and moved to Spokane in 1943. He served in the Army in World War II.
He worked as a musician and songwriter, touring with Jim Reeves, Johnny Horton and others. He married Ruth Scheffler of Polson in 1943 and they had three children.
The song was inspired by Ryan’s commutes in his 1941 Lincoln from Spokane to play gigs at the Paradise Club in Lewiston, Idaho.
“One night his Lincoln chased a friend’s Cadillac over the Clearwater River bridge and up the Lewiston grade,” the Web site said. “The telephone poles were whizzing by so fast they looked like picket fences as Charlie later referred to in his hit song.”
The song concluded with the rueful line, “Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ if you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln!”
To hear a recording of the song by Commander Cody and the Lost Airmen, which released a hit version, go to eMusic.
Oregon Live[/quote]
Some more versions of the song:
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
RockaBilly at its FINEST!
William F. Buckley Jr.
The man started Crossfire, the National Review and, like them, became a caricature.
But damn, he could write and twist the knife.
“Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription”
[quote=“Jaboney”]William F. Buckley Jr.
The man started Crossfire, the National Review and, like them, became a caricature.
But damn, he could write and twist the knife.
Another fine one:
Dan Shomron, IDF.
haaretz.com/hasen/spages/958428.html
[quote][i]"In his 35 years of army service - first as a combat soldier during mandatory service, then in the reserves, then as a commissioned officer after reenlisting - he participated in most of Israel’s large military campaigns.
In the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Shomron was a young paratrooper. In the 1967 Six-Day War, he led the first jeep detachment to reach the Suez Canal. During the War of Attrition in the 1970s, he was commander of Paratroopers Battalion 890 and head of the army’s operations branch.
Then, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he led tank brigade 401 into battle, from the first defensive battles east of the Suez Canal, to the encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army west of it. In the 1982 Lebanon war, he commanded the Western Regiment, which was intended to press north all the way to Tripoli, though it was never ordered to do so.
In 1987, he insisted that the plan to build an Israeli fighter jet, the Lavih, be dropped in favor of more funds for the ground forces. A year later, he shocked the politicians by saying that the intifada could not be solved through military means alone.
The IDF has seen famous officers who made their name by extracting a heavy body count from the enemy - and, in the process, from their own troops as well. Shomron, by contrast, always tried and most of the time succeeded in keeping IDF casualties to a minimum. He did so through wisdom and courage.
His advance down Sinai’s Northern Route in June 1967 is an example of that thoughtful approach. So was his performance during the 1976 Entebbe Operation - the heroic extraction of Israeli passengers from a commercial airliner hijacked to Uganda. That operation gave him fame and made his colleagues and commanders envious of him.
He commanded the operation and was among its few architects. But within days of his triumphant return, he would see a media-oriented drive to dwarf his contribution and glorify that of Yonatan Netanyahu, who commanded one of the detachments at Entebbe and was the IDF’s only fatality.
Both as a soldier and civilian, in politics and in business, elbowing was never his forte, making him easy prey for intrigues.
nytimes.com/2008/02/27/world … ei=5087%0A
news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/date … 786967.stm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Entebbe
Buddy Miles – Drummer
Jimi Hindrix & Buddy Miles - Them Changes
[quote]Drummer Buddy Miles dies at 60
Voice of California Raisins played with Hendrix
By PHIL GALLO
Buddy Miles, the rock and R&B drummer who worked with Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and was best known for the song “Them Changes,” died Tuesday at his home in Austin, Texas, according to a report on Miles’ website. He was 60.
Among the first artists to fuse psychedelic rock with soul, blues and jazz, Miles got his start performing with his father George’s jazz band the BeBops at the age of 12 in and around their hometown of Omaha, Neb. He played with a number of performers and toured with Ruby & the Romantics, the Ink Spots and Wilson Pickett. It was after a gig in Brooklyn, N.Y., where guitarist Michael Bloomfield, who had just left the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, inquired if Miles would be interested in forming a new band. The band became the Electric Flag, which issued only one album with Bloomfield and Miles.
After the break up of the Electric Flag, Miles created the first edition of Buddy Miles Express and recorded “Expressway to Your Skull,” with Hendrix producing. The two alternated in returning favors: Miles played on Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland”; Hendrix produced Miles’ “Electric Church”; and the two created Band of Gypsys after Hendrix broke up his trio, the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
The Express was curtailed when Miles formed Band of Gypsys with Hendrix and Billy Cox; that band only made one album, a live disc recorded in New York.
Following Hendrix’s death in 1970, Miles restarted the Express and had considerable success. Their album “Them Changes” was on the pop music chart for 74 weeks; the act had hits such as “Them Changes,” a cover of Neil Young’s “Down By the River” and a disco number “Rockin’ and Rollin’ on the Streets of Hollywood.”
Miles recorded a live album in Hawaii with Santana in 1974 that became a top seller. Much of his work after that pairing was in the studio, often with superstar acts such as Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and Bootsy Collins.
He kept a relatively low profile until the mid-1980s when he was the talent behind the California Raisins, producing and singing on the three albums released by the animated characters. Their popularity led to him rejoining Santana as lead singer and, in 1994, creating a new edition of Buddy Miles Express.
Over the past 15 years, Miles has been key in sustaining the legacy of Hendrix, making promotional appearances on behalf of Hendrix projects and appearing in Hendrix tribute concerts.
At the time of his death, Miles was working on three album projects and helping to raise money for several organizations and sponsors that support hurricane-disaster relief efforts and the Children’s Craniofacial Assn.
variety.com/article/VR111798 … id=16&cs=1[/quote]
[quote=“TheGingerMan”][quote=“Jaboney”]William F. Buckley Jr.
The man started Crossfire, the National Review and, like them, became a caricature.
But damn, he could write and twist the knife.
“Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription”[/quote]
Damn!
I loved his pasty-faced sharp-tongued whaling of the whist! [/quote]
Eloquent to the very end. This was his last piece for National Review on Feb 2. I did enjoy watching his battles with Gore Vidal. Very entertaining indeed.
Whether I agreed with him or not, I enjoyed reading most anything Buckley wrote. However, I couldn’t stand listening to his fake Pom accent. Note that I have nothing against real Poms with real Pom accents. I just can’t stand hearing Americans who spent no part of their formative years in Pomland putting on an English accent.
Buddy Miles was a “cement mixer.” That’s what Hendrix said.
youtube.com/watch?v=Mo4zf7IIa78
[url=http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08059/861127-66.stm]Remembering Myron Cope: He spoke for Steelers Nation in a language all his own
Myron Cope was the much-decorated master of the written word, the ever-celebrated sand-blaster of the spoken word, and a pre-eminent Pittsburgh symbol not only of our selves but also of our hopes and our innate joyfulness.
He was best known as the squawking talisman of Steelers football, and had the good fortune of arriving on the scene just as the ballclub was escaping some four decades of losing. Mr. Cope hit the glory road sprinting in 1970 and never lost momentum for the next 30 years.
Mr. Cope’s magazine writing took its inevitable place among the nation’s very best. In 1963, he won the E.P. Dutton Prize for “Best Magazine Sportswriting in the Nation” for his portrayal of Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay.
In 1987, on the occasion of the Hearst Corporation’s 100th anniversary, Mr. Cope was named as a noted literary achiever, among them Mark Twain, Jack London, Frederick Remington, Walter Winchell, and Sidney Sheldon.
His style, simultaneously elegant, robust, and humored, landed him on the original full-time staff of Sports Illustrated, which, with the Saturday Evening Post, became the primary conduits of his work. At its 50th anniversary, Sports Illustrated cited Mr. Cope’s profile of Howard Cosell as one of its 50 all-time classic articles. Only Mr. Cope and George Plimpton held the title of special contributor at that magazine when Mr. Cope left due to the demands of his burgeoning radio career…
Mr. Cope’s legendary charitable work, which ultimately led to his being awarded the American Institute for Public Service’s Jefferson Award in January 1999…
Mr. Cope wound up broadcasting five Super Bowls, and was the only broadcaster appointed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Board of Selectors, which he served for 10 years.
He became the first pro football announcer elected to the National Radio Hall of Fame, which he considered his greatest broadcast honor, as its honorees include Bob Hope, Edward R. Murrow, Orson Welles, and Vin Scully.[/url]
Gonna miss Myron.
Terrible Towels flying at half mast today all over STEELER Nation.
He did spend at least four months of every year in Switzerland. Not sure how often to the UK. His wife (who was from Vancouver and died last year) was quite funny. I enjoyed reading this anecdote about her humour:
[quote=“New York Magazine”]
Pat Buckley, the legendarily well-dressed socialite also known as Mrs. William F., died Sunday at her home in Stamford, Connecticut, and the event has prompted a flow of fond and admiring obituaries. The Observer takes its turn in paper, and it presents this delightful paragraph, which gets only more delightful as you read on:
“My favorite story is the time John Kenneth Galbraith brought Ted Kennedy to visit them in their chateau in Rougemont,” said Linda Bridges, a friend of Mrs. Buckley and a longtime editorial assistant to her husband. “And then Kennedy was going back to Gstaad, and the Galbraiths were going in the other direction. Kennedy asked if he could borrow a car to go back to Gstaad and Pat said, ‘Certainly not — there are three bridges between here and Gstaad.’”[/quote]
Sorry for your loss TM… 