R.I.P. Neil Armstrong, 1930-2012

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." - Neil Armstrong

Rest in Peace.

RIP Ted Kennedy

Quality care shouldn't depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to.
- Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy has died of brain cancer at the age of 77. Sadly, "the liberal lion of the Senate" never saw the universal healthcare he fought so hard for come to fruition.

May the Senator's fight not have be in vain.

Related:

New York Times: "Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies"

Los Angeles Times: "Ted Kennedy is making a final press for universal healthcare, from his sickbed"

Newsweek: "The Cause of my Life" by Ted Kennedy

RIP Walter Cronkite

I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got.
- Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009

Walter Cronkite has died at 92.

RIP Robert S. McNamara

“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children. LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals. What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” - Robert S. McNamara

Robert McNamara seemed a tortured soul towards the end of his life. Errol Morris's compelling 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, found him apologetic, even haunted. Can we imagine Donald Rumsfeld, who served in the same position, Secretary of Defense, as McNamara, similarly apologetic some time into the future? Or Bush? Or Cheney? It's hard to imagine. But I suppose it's possible.

More: McNamara writing in Foreign policy in May/June 2005 on the dangers of nuclear proliferation

RIP Invisible Hand

Adam's Smith's "Invisible Hand" died today and was buried after a short ceremony at the rear end of Wall Street's famous bull statue. The Invisible Hand was just 232 years old. It leaves behind scores of still faithful adherants, hundreds of bankrupt companies, and millions of former employees with diminished retirement accounts.

RIP Paul Newman

Paul Newman, you were one classy, classy guy. Can't imagine the young whippersnapper actor who'd replace you.

RIP George Carlin

Fuck. George Carlin died. 71 years. Not a bad age. The same age at which Yves Saint Laurent just died. They both got a lot done in their own way, right?

A few choice quotes from one of the great comics in modern times:

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat.

- all from the inimitable George Carlin

He's just been named the first posthumous awardee of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

NYT topic page on Carlin

RIP Tim Russert

Big Tim Russert died today, way too young for such a talented and gregarious journalist and gentleman. Apparently, Russert paused mid-narration and died of a heart attack.

The most extraordinary thing about him was that he just had such unparalleled empathy for whoever he was talking with. You never had the feeling he was trying to get somebody, he just wanted to get them to talk and wanted to get the record straight and his emotional self was as strong as his intellect. As a journalist there was such a strength of his person who everyone who knew him knew. He was just beloved. - Doris Kearns Goodwin

Go Bills.

Russert's NYT obit

RIP Sir Edmund Hillary

There are famous people and then there are legends. Sir Edmund Hillary falls squarely into the latter category. Not just an adventurer, but a humanitarian and unfailingly modest. When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay, the former bee keeper famously replied, "because it's there." Words to live by.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

1922-2007

The New York Times once called him "the laughing prophet of doom." Kurt Vonnegut died today.

From his 1965 novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

From Rolling Stone magazine last year:

He has stalled finishing his highly anticipated novel If God Were Alive Today - or so he claims. "I've given up on it ... It won't happen. ... The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?"

So it goes.

More Vonnegut:

• The Aesthetics of Accessibility [PDF] - in this 1979 essay, John Irving defends Vonnegut against critics who complained his writing was simplistic
  
  
• "Custodians of Chaos" - a chapter from Vonnegut's most recent collection of essays, A Man Without a Country
  
  
• PBS Now interview with Vonnegut

RIP Syd Barrett

"Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun."

Pink Floyd's original vocalist and co-founder, the reclusive Syd Barrett died a few days ago in Cambridge, England. He was 60. The Floyd song "Shine on you Crazy Diamond was a tribute to him, and he famously showed up during its recording, though the band member didn't initially recognize him. The album title Wish Your Were Here also references Barrett.

- Excellent Observer story on Barrett's evolution into a recluse.

- YouTube search on "Syd Barrett"

RIP Saul Bellow

Nobel winner Saul Bellow is dead at 89.

Because Herzog behaved like a philosophe who cared only for about the very highest things--creative reason, how to render good for evil, and all the wisdom of old books. Because he thought and cared about belief. (Without which, human life is simply the raw material of technological transformation, of fashion, salesmanship, industry, politics, finance, experiment, automatism, et cetera, et cetera. The whole inventory of disgraces which one is glad to terminate in death.) - from Herzog by Bellow

RIP Hunter S. Thompson1937-2005

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

According to his son, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself at his home in Aspen, Colorado today. The writer, raconteur, mentor to Johnny Depp, and godfather of gonzo journalism was 67 years old. For some reason, I wouldn't have pegged him the type to go that way. On the other hand, he lived his life with such abandon, I supposed it's fitting that he should go out with a bang. You never do know the demons folks are wrestling with.

ESPN's Page Two has an homage and links to the Doctor's first and last "Hey Rube" columns. His last column details a 3:30 a.m. phonecall to Bill Murray (who portrayed Thompson in the 1980 flick Where the Buffalo Roam) to tell him his newly invented sport, shotgun golf. On the other hand, I can't believe Rolling Stone doesn't even have a mention of Thompson's death on their homepage, especially considering all the writing he did for that mag. Very sad indeed. Guess that's what happens when you have a strictly controlled, marketing-oriented web site representing your mag. Guess you hafta get a "package" together, put it out there when it's been all scrutinized by the right marketing and legal folks and such. Aaaagh!

On a personal note, I guess I was never a rabid fan but more an entranced spectator of the Duke. He was such an iconoclast, and I'm sure that's what I found compelling about him.

Finally, here's a fitting quote often attributed to the old boy:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, "Wow! What a Ride!"

Update 2/22: MTV's Kurt Loder writes a decent, balanced obit, and includes this great Thompson quote which shows that even the Duke understood that booze and drugs alone do not a writer make:

One day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore: You shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were — the writer.

And Rolling Stone finally adds a piece--which they link to unobtrusively from their homepage. Better than nothing, I guess. . . . And finally (later today) they add their "package." Toldja.

Oh yeah, Christopher Hitchens offers this Thompson obit and manages to insert this subtle but lame dig in those who opposed the war in Iraq in the second sentence:

The meeting was to be enlivened by the announcement of the forcible annexation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, who would go on to trouble our tranquility for another 13 years.

Sorry, Hitch. Hussein wasn't troubling our tranquility for 13 years. On the other hand, this guy--you may have heard of him--Osama Bin Laden, he severely troubled our tranquility back in 2001. It's hard to believe that Hitchens has become such a one-string banjo that he has to insert a thumbs-up to the war in Iraq in an obituary for a guy he no doubt knows full well opposed said war.

RIP Philip Johnson

The inimitable American architect Philip Johnson died yesterday at 98. Now, that's what I call a long, full life. This Wikipedia entry has a good listing of his work.

Note that the Times's superlative architectural critic Paul Goldberger wrote Johnson's lengthy obit.

RIP Ray

Ray Charles - 9/23/1930-6/10/04