Mollie Sugden was a good actress. Saw her interviewed a couple of years ago during a PBS fund drive.
Mrs. Slocombe and her pussy!

LMAO BBC!

Here's another tribute to Mrs. Slocombe's pussy:

Are you free, Mrs. Slocombe?

Another death reported today was that of Shi Pei Pu, the Chinese operatic singer and spy, whose love affair with a minor French diplomat was the inspiration of "M. Butterfly."
Shi Pei Pu Dead at 70

I did love this show. The snippets put together in one YouTube video about "pussy" is just to f**king funny!

Mollie Sugden died? How did I miss that news?! I loved Mrs. Slocombe and the Are You Being Served? gang.

Corazon Aquino has just died. She was the former president of the Philippines, who was swept into power following the Ferdinand Marcos regime. And who could forget his lovely wife, shoe aficionado, Imelda.

John Hughes, who directed and/or wrote some of the most popular movies of the '80s, died today. He was 59.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090806/ap_en_mo/us_obit_hughes

Rip John.

...His films were certainly a staple of my younger days during the 80s. Loved The Breakfast Club & the brat-pack!

NY Times slideshow pics of Hughes and some of his films.

I remember reading several years ago about how he would select the songs for his films' soundtracks. I'd go as far as to say that he really helped many Indie music artists become hip. Most of the stuff that was being played on top 40 stations then were dominated by American artists. No doubt, one of my all-time faves is the Pretty In Pink soundtrack.

Wow his movies are among some of my favorites. The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Sixteen Candles, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are among 80s staples. I am a HUGE fan of 80s music and film. I don't know...the movies then were of such a different time when there didn't seem to be so much crap going on. The movies were fun and the relationships were great and the movies were really worth seeing. My 80s party this year is going to be Michael Jackson themed but I think I'm gonna have to have an 80s movie night showing my fave films of his just to pay homage. What a great loss.

In addition, there was National Lampoon's Vacation, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Planes Trains, and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, and Home Alone. All of them are movies I have in my DVD collection. He was a great director and I'm so sad for his family that they lost him at only 59.

aside from "Some Kind of Wonderful" (directed by Howard Deutsch), lousy f***ing movies. Although I never made it past the first 5 obnoxious minutes of "Ferris."

Best loved by folks who hate their parents.

Author Dominick Dunne died today of cancer.

Henry Gibson of Laugh In has died.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2009-0...it_N.htm?csp=34

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul, and Mary died of leukemia.
NY Times obit

Photographer Irving Penn has died at 92. NY Times obit. Slideshow of some of his work.

Openly gay singer Stephen Gately, from the boyband Boyzone, has died at 33. BBC video report.

Some of the comments Ive heard here in Britain about Stephen Gately's death have been unbelievable - "glad hes dead, one less bender, etc, etc". Sometimes we non-Americans are complacent about just how much homophobia there still is here. It may be less overt than in the US but it certainly hasnt gone away.

Probably considered more of a Detroit legend but comedian Soupy Sales passed away last night at the age of 83.

Although his heyday was the '60's, I remember Soupy Sales from the '70's. His real name was apparently Milton Supman. Here's the LA Times obituary.

Certainly a great one lost! R.I.P.

Jeanne-Claude passes on. R.I.P.

I LOVED her & her husband Christo's installations. I remember The Umbrellas installation they did back in '91 just outside of LA off the 5-fwy. It was pretty cool to see in person. The Umbrellas also coincided w/ a similar installation in Japan, but the umbrellas were blue, pretty cool. I remember they did The Gates installation in Central Park which looked pretty cool from the pix.

Back when I was in high-school, I had a crush on Dennis Cole, the young blond actor in the detective-show "Felony Squad". He was in his twenties then. I continued to see him on TV in other series, and as a guest-star, throughout the 1970's and 1980's. He pretty much faded out in the 1990's. He had several marriages (including Charlie's Angel Jacqlyn Smith ) that ended in divorce, and his only kid was killed in an unsolved mugging. I just found out that Dennis died, age 69, last month of liver-failure, in Florida. Sort of brings my own mortality home to me.

Actress Brittany Murphy is dead at 32. She was in films such as Clueless, 8 Mile, Sin City, Girl, Interrupted and Just Married. She also voiced the adorable, dim-witted character Luanne on King of the Hill (loved her!).

I saw her in person once, when she was promoting the film Love and Other Disasters at the Toronto Film Festival a few years ago. She seemed quite lovely, and during the Q&A following the screening was eager to prop up her co-star Matthew Rhys... an unknown at the time who was about to appear in a new TV show... Brothers and Sisters. (Matthew played the gay best friend of Brittany's character in Love and Other Disasters).

So sad, I liked her ever since she was the chubby outsider in Clueless. She lost so much weight after that role, to the point people didn't recognize her, and she was always thin after that. She was well known for 8 Mile and Girl Interrupted, but she should have been more well-known for her singing. She showed off her pipes as the voice of one of the penguins in Happy Feet. I remember her from Sin City, too. Another star dies way too young.

Sounds like a Karen Carpenter type death. Its also swirling that she had diabetes.

RIP Teddy Pendergrass. I put up a few clips on my blog.

I hate to admit that I thought he was already dead.

Actress Jean Simmons has died at 80.

Loved her in "Elmer Gantry" and as Fee in "The Thorn Birds."

Whenever I notice "The Robe" is on television, I make a point of watching it. Jay Robinson gives a somewhat over the top performance as the emperor Caligula. The best exchange is in the last scene, when Diana, played by Simmons, tells Caligula that she choses death over spending another hour on earth, if he's emperor. As she and Marcellus, played by Burton, walk off to their deaths, Caligula rants:

"Then, by the gods, you shall! Go, both of you, into your kingdom!"

The movie fades and triumphant music swells as the martyred pair walk off into the clouds.

Robinson played Caligula again in the sequel to this film, "Demetrius and the Gladiators."

R.I.P Jean Simmons!

Pernell Roberts, who played Adam Cartwright on "Bonanza" and then the title character of "Trapper John, M.D." just died at 81.
Pernell Roberts: Death Announcement

JD Salinger, author of Catcher in The Rye, went into permanent seclusion today at age 91. RIP

J.D. Salinger obit in the New York Times.

Earlier today Catcher in the Rye was #565 in books on Amazon.com. Now it's zoomed up to #13.

According to his daughter in that obit, Salinger drank his own urine!!!

Catcher in the Rye is now #4 on Amazon.

Urine therapy is not so odd (OK, maybe it is odd). But it has a long history. See the wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine_therapy

"In alternative medicine, the term urine therapy (also urotherapy, urinotherapy or uropathy) refers to various applications of human urine for medicinal or cosmetic purposes, including drinking of one's own urine and massaging one's skin with one's own urine."

Salinger's son Matt disputed most of what the daughter wrote in her tell-all book, for what it's worth.

"Days of our Lives" matriarch Frances Reid dies

Designer Alexander McQueen Found Dead; Apparent Suicide

I was really shocked by this. While I like fashions that are conservative and classic, McQueen was a genius with his brand of style. His mother died on February 3rd and he had been tweeting that he was having a rough time with it. A real shame.

I was quite shocked when I heard today about McQueen's death. Here's an article on Alexander McQueen from the NY Times Magazine from September 2009: General Lee.

Obituary from the London Telegraph.

Star Trek's "Chekov," actor Walter Koenig has announced that his son, actor Andrew Koenig ("Boner" on Growing Pains) committed suicide in Vancouver. His body was found in Stanley Park.

Michael Blosil, 18 year old son of Marie Osmond, has died of an apparent suicide.

What in the hell?! Is it an epidemic??!!

People magazine on Marie Osmond's son: INSIDE STORY: Marie Osmond's Son's Final Months

Rosanne Barr has come out swinging on the death of Marie Osmond's son: marie osmonds poor gay son killed himself

Was Marie Osmond's son gay? Does Roseanne Barr know this? I applaud Roseanne Barr for bringing attention to the issue of suicide among gay teenagers. However, the other reports of his death do not mention that he was gay. It's not right for Barr to take his family to task, if she does not have proof that Michael Blosil committed suicide because he was depressed over being gay. And she has no idea whether the young man's family reached out to help him. Roseanne Barr's comments strike me as rather crass here.

I tend to believe Roseanne. She is a huge gay-rights supporter, and I seriously doubt she would come out so strong on this issue, as sensitive as it is, unless there were some bit of truth to it all. Mormons have been notorious in their hatred toward gays. (as have many other religions). I think she is rightfully pointing out the hypocrisy of Mormonism (and other religions) in their unbridled hatred of gays. What I will never understand is how religions justify hatred of any select group. It is repeated over and over in the Bible how this should not be the case. We are all God's children, and we all deserve respect. Tragedies like this occur as a result of the hypocrisy.

Roseanne takes back some of her words.

Queerty: Roseanne Barr Very Much Regrets Saying Terrible Things About Marie Osmond Over Michael Blosil's Suicide
Advocate: Barr Tones Down Attack on Osmond

I've read on the Internet that the son may or may not have been gay. That he was attending fashion school may have led people to jump to conclusions. But not every fashion student is gay.

US: Marie Osmond Eulogizes Son at Funeral

Corey haim is dead of an apparent drug overdose at the age of 38. The only surprisng thing about this news is that it took this long.

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/03/...ed_reports.html

Ashame about Corey Haim. As was said, can't say I'm surprised. For me it was always which one was going to die of an overdose first.....Corey Haim or Corey Feldman?

Speaking of Feldman, he's lost both Haim and Michael Jackson, with in a year. I wonder how he's holding up.

Peter Graves, star on the tv series Mission Impossible and the film comedy Airplane had died in LA at age 83.