Dash Snow

OK, I confess. I didn't know who he was at first. Being the suburban creative director that I am, I'm a little slow on the uptake and behind the times on the hip downtown artists.

Bitter? Guilty as charged. I have just never had much tolerance for trust funders who call themselves artists. It's probably a bad trait of mine. Why be so angry? Why not give the guy a break? Why you be hatin', C?

I dunno. I just don't know if it is possible to be hardcore if you grew up as art royalty. He's sort of disqualified from day one.

So, what does it mean to me? Well, I see the guy's Polaroid work, and I think about my good friend, Steven Cloud, who has been doing shit like that for years. OK, so maybe no pictures of penises (that I know of), but I just feel like this Snow fellow gets a little advantage that most of us wouldn't get and for that I hate him. But, I do enjoy art, particularly provocative art -- and, to a degree I'll give him a pass. I even like partying hard, although I have never done H, and I never plan to. My brother, who got hit by a car was a big fan of Dylan Thomas who basically drank himself to death. So, I sort of romanticize the tortured, fucked up artist persona more than most. And for some reason, all of a sudden, I am thinking about Layne Stanley, who I think captured that heroin addiction vibe quite well on one of my favorite albums, Dirt.

Back to the formula. Give the information age that we dwell in, there is no shortage of hyperlinks, trivia, videos, and Tweets to be had from a contemporary artist. For some of these older folks, I have to work all night just to find a decent link, but anybody famous and under thirty is well-indexed.

Arturo Gatti

What are the odds of two recently retired athletes, both 37, being murdered on consecutive weekends? If I were Michael Strahan, I would stay home and lock all the doors next weekend. But even then, with all the domestic disputes and what not, are you truly safe? The whole thing is really sobering.

Arturo Gatti fell into the category of sports celebrities I "knew of," but did not follow. If you read the Alexis Arguello post, you'd remember that I was into boxing in the eighties, but have since lost interest. I do find it somewhat ironic that the suicide and murder of two boxers occurred in all the pre-fight hub-bub of UFC 100, a sport which I also do not follow, but I know it has really gained some momentum in the last couple years, at the expense of boxing.

I have to say, I wish I followed Gatti a bit more, given his reputation as the human highlight film. His trilogy, as they called it, with Irish Micky Ward was epic. And at this point I have to give pause and reflect on two things I just said. This "trilogy" idea makes me laugh because I associate the word with elves and minotaurs. Or perhaps other self-important works of art. And then, the other thing is "Irish" Micky Ward. As if the name "Micky Ward" needs some sort of modifier. In the absence of a deep frame of reference. I have nothing to cling to but interesting little turns of phrase. It's what I do. I'm a writer, not a boxer.

Robert McNamera

The Vietnam War. Missed it.

I was born a little too late to have any direct memories of this very unfortunate part of American History. I once had a very smart, but underachieving substitute history teacher who remarked that the history we live, and in particular, the more immediate history from the first ten years of our lives, is a massive blind spot. It was probably more true back then, when text books were woefully out of date and we didn't have the internet and we routinely ate dirt to survive. Oh, wait that was the thirties. Nevermind.

Forget about text books and internet for a moment. Even with those things, recent history isn't really history yet, and everybody takes for granted that if they lived through something (even if they were five) they MUST know about it. So, hence the blindspot. And, since I am not a big book reader, all I have to go on is Oliver Stone movies and long-haired "Nam" vets who talk my ear off down at the Pensacola American Legion. Believe it or not, this is absolutely true. My mom used to tend bar there. They served cans of beer. I'll leave it at that.

So, guilty as charged, this McNamera death was a good excuse for me to do a little homework on the Vietnam War. Call me lazy, but Wikipedia is a pretty damn good place to start. Then, I ended up at this site, which besides having amazing pictures, had a map of Vietnam. One look at the map sort of tells you why there would be a war in the first place. It looks like a "3" with thickness on the extremities and thinness in the middle. So, it isn't surprising that Vietnam has had a history of north and south tensions. I also can't understand how the hell Chile ended up like that, but now we are worlds away from Robert McNamera.

McNamara was responsible for a number of other things besides our greatest military failure. He was responsible for the 4 seater Ford Thunderbird. He was responsible for redefining the mission of the World Bank to focus more on developing the third world. He was largely responsible for JFK's burial in Arlington National Cemetary for greater public access. Oh, and he is responsible for the bespectacled walnut farmer, Robert Craig McNamara. But, he will forever be memorialized as the tragically misguided architect of Vietnam.

Allen Klein

This one has been on the back burner for about 48 hours, and my apologies to my fans and followers. Believe it or not, I have been extremely busy with my job, ripping off music artists from all their royalties, ...oh wait, that's somebody else...

Well, this Allen Klein gentleman is not a very popular man at all. He's almost universally hated as a rat bastard scumbag. So, what is one to do? Do you go for the jugglar like the Telegraph? Do you treat him with kid gloves like the Times? Do you give him the benefit of the doubt?

Well, in keeping with the spirit of the blog, you just give your own take on the man, toss a link or two, and move on.

Just in case you missed it, Allen Klein was the notorious manager of BOTH the Beatles and the Stones, fired by both, and spent the duration of the next twenty years or so in myriad lawsuits with both. He was famously chased by Mick Jagger throughout a NY hotel with Jagger shouting "Where's my F%$#ing money?"

I had a Beatles "Let it Be" poster in my bedroom as a kid, which was really just an expanded version of the album cover. There was no band at all, really. It was just four pictures of four guys, all doing their own thing. Contrast that with the early days, when they all dressed the same and looked the same. Even for Peppers, they were more or less, down with the program. Yes, for me, Allen Klein is right up there with Yoko in terms of Beatle-busters.

As for the Stones, I specifically remember buying "Hot Rocks," at a department store called J.M. Fields which is one of many, many, many Rolling Stones compilations from the sixties. Why so many? Well, the whole catalog is owned by one, Allen Klein, and he just kept pumping them out in different flavors.

I looked long and hard, and I couldn't find many people who had positive things to say about Mr. Klein. All of it was negative. So, let me give the guy a little parting gift. Unlike many dead celebs, Allen Klein has a nice Web site. And I should know. I specialize in both matters. Ok, so it was all about selling whatever Stones, Sam Cooke, and other catalogs he still owned. I sure would hate to be on the other side of the table in negotiating the price on that site, though. I'm sure he got a great deal.

Steve "Air" McNair

So, I am sitting at Penfield Beach waiting for the Fairfield fireworks display and my neighbor dropped this bomb shell on me.Perhaps I have lamented this before, but I really have made a 24/7 job for myself what with this celebrity death blog. I continue to wrestle with the whole "timely vs. thoughtful" issue. Instead of rushing home and banging out a hasty version of this, I decided to wait until today. And, then Allen Klein kicks it, and now I am all backlogged. Ugh.

So, regarding Air McNair. Guts. Guts. Guts. Root for the Titans or not, and I imagine most were indifferent, the guy earned his rep as a real throwback type guy who played through injuries. He was the kind of guy who was more valuable in reality to his team than in the abstract, statistical world of "fantasy" football.

Interestingly, my strongest McNair memory is a non-memory. Everyone who knows me, knows that I am a huge sports fan. As such, I don't miss Super Bowls. Well, Super Bowl XXXIV was a different matter. At the time, I worked for Modem Media NY and we were pitching the site design of what would ultimately become the travel portal, Orbitz. I'm not sure how it worked out that we ended up working on Super Bowl Sunday, but sure enough there I was on 26th street in the old Bozell building. I recall "watching" the game, one of the most exciting Super Bowls ever, via a primitive version of ESPN's GameCast. Well, McNair's Titans lost the game and Marrelli's Modem Medians lost the pitch. I was miserable, especially given the personal sacrifice.

One of the things I like to do is go to the area where folks are most affected by the loss. A little research on McNair's roots brought me to Alcorn State University Athletics site which has a nifty flash intro. I also discovered that Jefferson County, Mississippi, has the highest density of obese people in the U.S. In keeping with the back to the roots theme of this entry, there is a really nice career retrospective in photos from the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. Taking it even a bit further back, I found this very humble home page for Mt. Olive High School that serves the less than 1,000 population of M. Olive, Mississippi.

Karl Malden

Mladen Sekulovich.

That's Karl's birth name. No biggie. That kind of stuff happens all the time with celebrities. Just ask Vincent Furnier, Lawrence Turead, or even Allan Stewart Konigsberg.

So, why is that important? I will submit to you, dear reader, that Karl Malden's story is a story about branding. Were it not for his 25 year relationship with Ogilvy and American Express, today's passing of Mr. Malden (if that is your name) would be merely a footnote.

Sure, there was "Streetcar Named Desire." And "On the Waterfront." And "Patton." It's all very good. Indeed, excellent. But, I think it's fair to say that Karl owes his true relevance and exposure to my profession of choice, advertising.

Karl was the first person, sorry, the first actor to utter the words "Don't Leave Home Without It/Them." It became his calling card. I don't think you get away with such a positively straight forward tag line these days. But it worked. Again and again and again. It was classic FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt). It was like, "...holy shit, if I am in a foreign country and I don't bring this with me, and I lose my wallet...that's it, I'm never making it back."

Amex did the class move and issued a statement, albeit a vanilla one, about old Karl.

OK, so yet again, I went and hijacked a fellow human being's obituary for my own selfish purposes. But, I maintain that this is my frame of reference. Sure, I have seen the movies, but, ...close your eyes, when I say "Karl Malden" do you think "collar" or "hat?" Hat, of course. And, OK, I will give you the fact that this look was originated in the show "The Streets of San Francisco." But I still maintain that were it not for American Express Traveler's Cheques, Malden would be about 10% as famous.

I've belabored the point enough. Here is my favorite Malden tidbit. Karl was a major player in the postal service as a member of The Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee. These are the people who decide who gets on a stamp, which, in my opinion, is a pretty awesome gig. Karl was so influential and important to the group that he got a post office named after him. For my money, though, I'll always think of that office as Mladen Sekulovich Postal Station. Rolls off the tongue a little nicer, huh?

Alexis Arguello

Now that some, if not all, of the MJ hysteria has ebbed, I can just get back to a more workmanlike obituary. I do still need to revisit the Farrah one and add links. And I need to do a little housecleaning in general, going back and adding labels and what not. I guess of should apologize right away to the Mayor of Managua for being so matter of fact during this somber time. In fact, I bet if I were Nicaraguan, I wouldn't be so phlegmatic about the whole thing. So, let me get down to my side of the story and maybe I can make things right, again.

I really wish the major networks would carry boxing again. When I grew up, boxing seemed to be a bigger part of the entertainment equation. Who can forget Hearns, Hagler, Leonard, Duran,...even Ray BOOM BOOM Mancini who quite literally killed the Korean southpaw Duk Koo Kim on CBS Sports Spectacular. I was a huge Mancini fan, and that bout was a bittersweet return to form after his crushing defeat to, you guessed it... Alexis Arguello. I didn't like Arguello, or really any non-American fighter or team. I feel like the world was different then, and perhaps we all were a bit more patriotic.

So, here's this guy, Arguello who was #1) a foreigner and #2) the champ. And those two tings didn't sit well with me. Which is why I rooted hard against Arguello in his "Battle of Champions" against Aaron Pryor. The fight was on HBO and was a certified classic. I was so happy that Pryor won, mostly because of my extreme dislike of Arguello, which is unfortunate in retrospect, because it turns out that Alexis was apparently a helluva a guy. So much so that he was elected Mayor of Managua. But, by many accounts, he was a better boxer than a mayor.

And while we're talking about Sandinistas, I just can't stop thinking about the under-appreciated Clash triple album.

So, what is with all the suicides?