Just found out a couple of days ago that my favorite aunt died. She was the quintessential eccentric artist. Her entire life was a performance piece. Her real name was Emily. She ran away from home at a fairly young age and changed her name to Stania. Because she thought that more exotic and better …
RIP
Inkblot RIP
Sad news — the body of Kevin Drum’s cat Inkblot was found last night. Inkblot has graced his blog every Friday for a very long time, and he’ll be missed.
RIP Ray Bradbury
I confess — I haven’t read Bradbury in years. But the Martian Chronicles and, of course, Farenheit 451 were mileposts in my growing up as a reader. Lots more besides, but those are the books that rise in memory like pillars along a road that led to the thought that making worlds — and ideas …
Paul Fussell, RIP
Paul Fussell died yesterday. Wartime is the best book I’ve read on World War II, and Doing Battle is a painfully honest account of being a soldier. Here’s how the latter starts: Late in the afternoon of March 15, 1945, in a small woods in southeastern France, Boy Fussell, aged twenty, was ill treated by …
RIP, Robin Gibb
Dead at 62. Cancer sucks. I doubt there has ever been cheesier music that still makes me smile.
RIP Adam Yauch
Damnit: Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 48, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treatment for cancer since 2009. The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland. One of my favorite all …
Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch Dead at 48
I am sad. I’ve loved Beastie Boys for as long as I can remember. I saw them in concert in D.C. the night before President Obama’s inauguration. Paul’s Boutique is hands down one of the best albums ever made. Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of …