RIP Kris Kristofferson.

There was a time when I was spending too much of my paycheck on Kris Krsitofferson albums. Never the greatest vocalist, but a helluva a songwriter, and frankly, his voice worked for his songs. 

This has always been one of my favorites:

 RIP, Jimmy Buffet.

I m sure he's enjoying a cheeseburger in Paradise. Washed down, no doubt, with a margarita.

Fr @VictoriaYeage11 It is w/ profound sorrow, I must tell you that my life love General Chuck Yeager passed just before 9pm ET. An incredible life well lived, America’s greatest Pilot, & a legacy of strength, adventure, & patriotism will be remembered forever.

— Chuck Yeager (@GenChuckYeager) December 8, 2020

Not the usual...

Writer Harlan Ellison Dead At 84

Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”—HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration of his life are pending.

— Christine Valada (@mcvalada) June 28, 2018

Harlan Ellison Dead: Hollywood Reacts: “No One Quite Like Him” Stephen King Says | Deadline
Probably the truest thing King ever wrote...

 Harlan Ellison, one of science fiction’s most controversial authors, has died - The Verge
Ditto The Verge.

EDIT: Adding this link.  Goodbye To Harlan Ellison, 'America's Weird Uncle' : NPR Yes, its NPR. This one, I approve of.

I have no personal stories of Harlan Ellison. Never met him. Certainly never argued politics with him.

Things I remember hearing or reading, though...

I know he was Guest of Honor at a con thrown by the SF club at Eastern Michigan University before I joined, someone heard he would be in the general area visiting family, and got hold of his phone number, and called him in the middle of the night, when he was coherent enough to answer the hone and say "sure", but not coherent enough to say "No."

Or, famously, "Fuck you, pay me." (Typically, the GoH at a con gets their travel and room comped, but not even that always happens. I understand Heinlein always paid his own way. So far as I know, Ellison never actually demanded pay for a Con appearance, but I don't know.)

There was an essay where someone had referred to him  as a "gadfly"; ISTR that this was about the time I saw him referred to in a letter column in Analog magazine as "Harlan 'I Am All Mouth And Therefore I Scream' Ellison". Anyway, he refuted the "gadfly" claim, because gadflies are mere nuisances, not actually accomplishing anything.

There was a column in, ahem, a man's magazine IYKWIMAITYD in which he described his half-day of employment at Disney. Apparently, at lunch he was hanging with a bunch of other writers who had been brought in to "reimagine" Disney product, or something. He started in on "we should do Disney porn" and riffing on the roles of The Mouse, The Duck, The Big Stupid Dog, doing expert impressions of all their voices and really getting into it...

And Eisner was at the next table. So much for that job...

Ellison had beat out Larry Niven for a Hugo. later, Niven was sitting in the Author's Lounge, with some adult beverage in a brndy snifter, cooled with dry ice. So all the water is sublimating out in a cloud of steam. Ellison walks in, Niven holds the snifter out and says (slurs) "Harlan, ol' buddy, have a drink." Ellsion recoils and exclaims "Don't tell me this bastard doesn't hold a grudge!"

While I was attending the Defense Language Institute the first time, one of my classmates mentioned to me that "They've republished the collections of the TV criticism Harlan Ellison did for the LA Free Press." Yes, they had, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat. I picked them up, and the articles I most remember are the ones he did on the "Junior Miss" pageant -- "Can you say 'child pornography'?" -- and the one about the time he appeared on one of the early Dating Game shows.

He claimed Barris had the tape burned, after he (Ellison) told the woman that they would spend their dream date down at the city dump, shooting rats with chrome plated 1911s...

I told Bill Quick that story, and he said "Harley's a commie, you know."

I said "Duh."

And, really, just re-reading TGT and TOGT, I have to wonder what Ellison thought of the state of political discourse today. He not only predicted AntiFa, Black Blok, the Occupy Movement, BLM, Maxine Waters, Peter Fonda, Cathy Griffin, the whole vile lot... He was calling for it!

I suppose it is possible that Harlan repented of these opinions, or his extreme statements of them, as he aged; he might have seen what he and his ilk had wrought and realized that maybe this would not work out so well after all...

Still, I look at his politics, and wonder if growing up Jewish in small-town Ohio was really so traumatic that calling for violence was a rational outcome. I dunno, I didn't grow up Jewish in small town Ohio.

So I while will try to remember the talent that was responsible for some of the most imaginative speculative fiction ever -- "'Repent, Harlequin', said the Ticktockman", "A Boy And His Dog", "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream", not to mention the Star Trek episode "City On The Edge of Forever" and his contributions to Babylon 5, and I will continue to admire one who relentlessly refused to cave in to mainstream thought and convention just because it was convenient.

RIP, Dolores O'Riordan

We are devastated on the passing of our friend Dolores. She was an extraordinary talent and we feel very privileged to have been part of her life from 1989 when we started the Cranberries. The world has lost a true artist today.
Noel, Mike and Fergal

— The Cranberries (@The_Cranberries) January 15, 2018

Garryowen!

I think Barron said he got the playlist that made up the prelude and the recessional. I was surprised to enter the Sanctuary and hear Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing", but if the idea is to celebrate a life...

So, I just finished up my previous Memorial Day post about "My Buddy", clicked on Tamara's link, and saw that My Buddy Ray has died.

God damn it.

Once again, Memorial Day is not about those of us who made it home, it's about those who "Gave Their All."

It's never said so in the song, but the assumption from the day it was released is that it was for a friend who never made it back from "Over There."

Lyrics are found here.

I'd never heard this version before. It may be a bit of a change from what most expect from Jerry Jeff Walker, and I think my buddy George would have liked it. There was really no reason for us to hit it off as well as we did, other than a mutual interest in guns and hunting. And Science Fiction. And a shared distrust of authority, which I suppose seems odd to those who never served, in a couple of NCO's.

But we did, and I always had a couch to sleep on if I needed to get away from the barracks, even if I needed to drive 800 miles to do it. (Long weekends. Great things, but don't tell the Army I drove that far in a night...)

Like me, George served overseas several times, but never saw combat except for on TV.

Somewhere I read that a high percentage of military, police, and fire/rescue retirees die about a year after retirement. That was the case for George; one night he stood up and then hit the floor.

Pat, his wife, told me later that when she was filing for survivor  benefits the person from the VA took one look at his retirement physical and upgraded him retroactively to 100% disabled. She also told me that he kept getting a job, and then waking out when they told him he had to join a union. He figured if he joined a union that would mean two bosses, which was at least one too many.

Eventually I lost contact with Pat and her kids. She went her way, and put her life back together. This being before cell phones, the Internet, and social media, keeping in touch meant expensive long distance bills or actually writing a letter and mailing it, and the Army was keeping me pretty busy then; even when I moved back to within a hundred miles of where they were, I met the future Mrs. Drang and was otherwise occupied.

Speaking of upgrading George's disability, this is the other sing I usually play on Memorial and Veteran's Days:

Hey don't ya remember...?

Ever since I got the word that Todd L. Green had passed away this morning I have had the stanza about The Duke in my head:

Now on the day that John Wayne died
I found myself on the continental divide
Tell me where do I go from here
Think I'll ride into Leadville and have a few beers
I think of "Red River" or "Liberty Valance"
Can't believe the old man's gone

Chorus:
But now he's incommunicado
Leavin' such a hole in a world that believed
That a life with such bravado
Was takin' the right way home

It's strange: I never met or trained with Todd Green, but news of his passing has me all down.

I dunno.

I guess I'll hit the range.

Then I'll hit up Rampage For The Cure!

I had heard that George "Mad Ogre" Hill's brother Zach passed away. For some reason, I didn't realize Zach was the Minimum Wage Historian.

Larry Correia's post: In memory of Zach Hill.

I have nothing to add, except a link to some of Zach's books on Amazon:

• Fearless: Powerful Women of History (Minimum Wage Historian Book 1)
• Sins of Prometheus
• The Gods of Miskatonic

Blatantly.

I mean, I was never a huge Bowie fan, but that doesn't mean I never enjoyed any of his music, or  movies, and I am certainly aware of his contributions to rock music.

Alan Rickman, OTOH, is probably my favorite Bad Guy.  Die Hard. (Best Christmas movie ever!) Quigley Down Under. Harry Potter. And, just for variety, Galaxy Quest.

Crap.

Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson dies at 73

Maureen O’Hara, Actress of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Dies at 95 | Vanity Fair

My favorite John Wayne co-star, which sadly may be the way most remember her. She was quite the swashbuckler too. Swashbuckleress? Swashbucklitrix?





Maureen O'Hara - Biography - IMDb filled in a few banks I was unaware of:

In 1968 Maureen found much deserved personal happiness when she married Charles Blair. Gen. Blair was a famous aviator whom she had known as a friend of her family for many years. A new career began for Maureen, that of a full-time wife. Her marriage to Blair, however, was again far from typical. Blair was the real-life version of what John Wayne had been on the screen. He had been a Brigadier General in the Air Force, a Senior Pilot with Pan American, and held many incredible record-breaking aeronautic achievements. Maureen happily retired from films in 1973 after making the TV movie The Red Pony (1973) (which won the prestigious Peabody Award for Excellence) with Henry Fonda. With Blair, Maureen managed Antilles Airboats, a commuter sea plane service in the Caribbean. She not only made trips around the world with her pilot husband, but owned and published a magazine, "The Virgin Islander", writing a monthly column called "Maureen O'Hara Says".