people you thought were dead but aren't

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (428 of them)

whoa.
I can't believe Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard are still hanging in there.
― pplains, Tuesday, 10 December 2013 15:59

Something I think about too, and which I specifically called my class's attention to when I talked about Little Richard on his birthday 10 days ago. I wrote the names of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, and Little Richard on the board, and I said that these were the four guys who invented rock and roll 60 years ago, and three of the four are still alive.

(I realize that's a very simplified version of how rock and roll came into being. They're 12-year-olds--more than adequate enough.)

clemenza, Sunday, 15 December 2013 19:25 (ten years ago) link

Something I think about too, and which I specifically called my class's attention to when I talked about Little Richard on his birthday 10 days ago. I wrote the names of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, and Little Richard on the board, and I said that these were the four guys who invented rock and roll 60 years ago, and three of the four are still alive.

Momentarily misread this as "and all four are still alive."

MV, Sunday, 15 December 2013 19:40 (ten years ago) link

There was a sad piece about Little Richard in a recent Rolling Stone. Apparently he had a bad hospital experience a couple years ago (went in for one thing, then several worse things happened) and can't perform much anymore. You get this feeling that he's in pain all the time and is basically waiting to die.

Maintenance Engineer of Foolhardiness (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, 15 December 2013 19:41 (ten years ago) link

That's sad to hear. Saw Chuck Berry play in 2008. Was a bit of a carnival attraction air about it, but still, great to see him. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Joan Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland are the six I keep in my head as sort of hoping they go on for ever.

On a different note, I heard an interesting Radiolab episode recently about the Heimlich manoeuvre, which started with raised eyebrows that Henry Heimlich wasn't someone who 100 years ago. He's now 93.

Alba, Sunday, 15 December 2013 20:00 (ten years ago) link

who 100 = who died 100

Alba, Sunday, 15 December 2013 20:02 (ten years ago) link

Bishop Desmond Tutu

He's like my piano teacher, someone who I thought was just plain ancient when I was a kid and now I realize that hey, he was only something like 50 years old at the time.

pplains, Sunday, 15 December 2013 22:04 (ten years ago) link

Shirley Temple Black

*tera, Sunday, 15 December 2013 22:27 (ten years ago) link

Mickey Rooney

pplains, Sunday, 15 December 2013 22:28 (ten years ago) link

Mickey Rourke.

clemenza, Sunday, 15 December 2013 22:30 (ten years ago) link

On a different note, I heard an interesting Radiolab episode recently about the Heimlich manoeuvre, which started with raised eyebrows that Henry Heimlich wasn't someone who (died) 100 years ago. He's now 93.

This is genuinely interesting to know, I had no idea either.

emil.y, Sunday, 15 December 2013 22:34 (ten years ago) link

Wait, Chuck Berry's still alive?

I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Sunday, 15 December 2013 22:41 (ten years ago) link

I was surprised that both Galton and Simpson are still alive

going out dancing with the girls, her cat. (soref), Sunday, 15 December 2013 23:07 (ten years ago) link

This is useful dead pool 2014 research, you guys, keep 'em coming!

ailsa, Sunday, 15 December 2013 23:12 (ten years ago) link

Incidentally, we were out with a few friends this afternoon when one friend told us that Peter O'Toole had died. Was pretty much an even split between "aw no, what a shame" and "was he not dead already?".

ailsa, Sunday, 15 December 2013 23:16 (ten years ago) link

Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Joan Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland are the six I keep in my head as sort of hoping they go on for ever.

RIP :(

when skrillex just stood there (unregistered), Monday, 16 December 2013 01:01 (ten years ago) link

alba you're the fucken angel of death. alba = white

veneer timber (imago), Monday, 16 December 2013 01:07 (ten years ago) link

Shit, did Alba just kill Joan Fontaine like that time Tuomas killed Michael Jackson?

ailsa, Monday, 16 December 2013 01:07 (ten years ago) link

lol xpost

ailsa, Monday, 16 December 2013 01:07 (ten years ago) link

Oh, this is bad. RIP Joan Fontaine.

Alba, Monday, 16 December 2013 07:11 (ten years ago) link

Horace Silver

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, December 15, 2013 11:57 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/news-mainmenu-139/70-2013/12947-horace-silver-dies-aged-85

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 17 December 2013 12:43 (ten years ago) link

I was going to say Mose Allison, but it seems like tempting fate now.

wooting does not count as being active. (soref), Tuesday, 17 December 2013 12:49 (ten years ago) link

Horace Silver is still alive. Gonna keep on fearlessly naming people I assumed were dead.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 17 December 2013 20:17 (ten years ago) link

http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9780312642686.jpg

Mort Drucker

pplains, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 18:35 (ten years ago) link

Richard Kiel

"Turkey In The Straw" coming from someplace in the clouds (Sparkle Motion), Wednesday, 18 December 2013 18:51 (ten years ago) link

I remember being surprised Pharoah Sanders was still alive (and gigging!) a couple years ago when I saw him on the bill at a local jazz club. Looking at his wiki I see he's not even that old, 73 now.

nickn, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 21:19 (ten years ago) link

I'm really thrown by Mort Drucker for some reason

wooting does not count as being active (soref), Wednesday, 18 December 2013 21:24 (ten years ago) link

Jack Davis is still alive too!

pplains, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 21:30 (ten years ago) link

Al Jaffee still draws for Mad and turns 93 next March, what the hell.

pplains, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 21:31 (ten years ago) link

James Garner. Im shocked

Prince Kajuku (Bill Magill), Wednesday, 18 December 2013 21:37 (ten years ago) link

you shouldn't be, dude was in space cowboys and the notebook. you're not a man if you haven't seen the former and you haven't really fucked a woman if you haven't seen the latter.

balls, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 23:30 (ten years ago) link

I'm still pulling for Chuck Yeager to outlive the entire Mercury 7 (only one left - John Glenn)

Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 23:35 (ten years ago) link

Chuck Yeager is still alive!?!? He looked ancient in those car parts ads, and those were in the '80s!

Maintenance Engineer of Foolhardiness (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 18 December 2013 23:43 (ten years ago) link

Yeager should go on the people who know how to live list

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. – In the parking lot of this small Sierra Nevada town's airfield, a decommissioned F-104 Starfighter jet looms over a series of plaques. They honor the exploits of one Charles Elwood Yeager, better known as Chuck.

But while the display has a posthumous vibe, the local legend in question is very much alive and well, sitting in his hanger a few yards up the road.

"I'll be 90 in February, and while I'm not gonna run no marathon I still hunt and fish and fly," says Yeager, resting in the shade of a tail-dragger prop plane that he solos in regularly. Parked nearby is an old pickup whose plate reads BELL X1, the rocket plane he rode into history when it broke the sound barrier in 1947.

Living legend is an overused term, but it applies to this American original indelibly captured by Sam Shepard in 1983's The Right Stuff. Not that Yeager is remotely Hollywood. For him, life boils down to "duty, it's that simple."

The General, as he prefers to be called, doesn't particularly enjoy interviews; navel-gazing isn't his style. But he agreed to speak with USA TODAY to draw attention to the foundation that bears his name, which supports a scholarship program at Marshall University in his native West Virginia as well as the Young Eagles, a non-profit program chaired by pilot Sully Sullenberger that gets kids airborne (Yeager is Eagles' chairman emeritus).

Yeager may be in a dogfight with Father Time, but his bearing is still ramrod straight. He says his famously acute 20/10 vision remains sharp, although his ears are another matter. "I can't hear well," he growls in his iconic drawl. "Damn P-51 Mustang noise. You go sit behind that engine for eight hours, with a leather helmet on. But that's a handicap that came with the job."

...

Yeager's name popped back onto the cultural radar Oct. 14, the anniversary of his first supersonic flight. On that day in New Mexico, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner made history when he jumped out of a capsule at nearly 130,000 feet and broke the speed of sound on his descent.

While some 8 million people watched Baumgartner jump live on YouTube, Yeager wasn't one of them. He was over at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas, strapped into a borrowed F-15 fighter. He proceeded to repeat his own record flight by laying down "a big ol' sonic boom over Edwards" Air Force base in the Mojave desert, where he'd run a pilot training program a half-century ago.

Always on the go, a few days later Yeager was hunting deer with the governor of West Virginia, and a week after that he was grand marshal of the Veterans Day parade in San Diego.

Elvis Telecom, Thursday, 19 December 2013 01:26 (ten years ago) link

Coulda sworn Ronnie died a couple of years ago.

I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Thursday, 19 December 2013 01:30 (ten years ago) link

Ronnie Biggs that is.

I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Thursday, 19 December 2013 01:31 (ten years ago) link

three weeks pass...

Lata Mangeshkar

MrDasher, Saturday, 11 January 2014 03:57 (ten years ago) link

paul sorvino

j., Saturday, 11 January 2014 04:02 (ten years ago) link

Richard Hoggart!

Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Saturday, 11 January 2014 13:33 (ten years ago) link

ariel sharon until today

panettone for the painfully alone (mayor jingleberries), Saturday, 11 January 2014 20:40 (ten years ago) link

Dick Gregory?

bamcquern, Saturday, 11 January 2014 20:43 (ten years ago) link

I remember being a bit surprised when I found out Doris Day is still alive. For some reason I seem to assume every celebrity who had his or her heyday before the 60s must be dead by now.

― Tuomas, Friday, August 8, 2008 2:48 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She's still alive! Still a surprise to me.

Michael F Gill, Sunday, 12 January 2014 06:47 (ten years ago) link

Prince Buster! He wrote a piece for the Mojo 20th Anniversary issue.

Gary Buerghoff, M*A*S*H's Radar, is on twitter and it has to be read to be believed...

Iago Galdston, Sunday, 12 January 2014 07:58 (ten years ago) link

Gary Buerghoff, M*A*S*H's Radar, is on twitter and it has to be read to be believed...

― Iago Galdston, Sunday, January 12, 2014 2:58 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Burghoff

Iago Galdston, Sunday, 12 January 2014 08:10 (ten years ago) link

I remember being a bit surprised when I found out Doris Day is still alive. For some reason I seem to assume every celebrity who had his or her heyday before the 60s must be dead by now.

― Tuomas, Friday, August 8, 2008 2:48 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She's still alive! Still a surprise to me.

― Michael F Gill, 12. tammikuuta 2014 8:47

Apparently Day also released a new album in 2011, 62 years after her debut album! That must be some kind of a record, no?

Tuomas, Tuesday, 14 January 2014 14:17 (ten years ago) link

Robert Conquest.

UK Cop Humour (Bananaman Begins), Tuesday, 14 January 2014 14:35 (ten years ago) link

Probably. Thought of Cliff but the gap between his debut and most recent albums is a mere 54 years.

xp

my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Tuesday, 14 January 2014 15:41 (ten years ago) link

tony bennett

balls, Tuesday, 14 January 2014 17:23 (ten years ago) link

Not only is Doris Day still alive, but so's B.B. King.

Matt Busby, not so alive.

pplains, Tuesday, 14 January 2014 17:24 (ten years ago) link

Marge Champion

tokyo rosemary, Saturday, 18 January 2014 02:14 (ten years ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.