Dr. Morbius (Bill Weber) RIP

RIP Morbs and if there's a god I hope he lets you pop back to fuck with Quentin Tarantino a few times.

adding to the thanks pile for J0rdan's post

Something else that I realized was, you know what? This guy is right a lot more times than he's wrong.

― pplains, Wednesday, October 21, 2020 11:40 PM (thirty-seven seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

one of the funny things about the ongoing degradation of our world is how its proven the cranks right

oh shit. Yeah, i'd see him in the politics threads here and there and did not recognize him as the same person I'd met many times IRL. There is/was a contingent of ILXors who'd come to my little DJ nights now and again and he was often there and always a total sweetheart, though last time I ran into him was a coincidence when we both ended up at Jupiter Disco where a common friend was DJing a happy hour. He was always a total sweetheart and seemed quite cheerful to have a beer and hang out.

Bill was a mensch and the most passionate devotee of baseball and film I'll ever know. He gave our kid a talking Mr. Magoo doll that caused him to develop a Jim Backus impression basically the moment he learned to speak. Love you Bill. https://t.co/O6EcYrfcFu

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) October 22, 2020

Do you guys know who took that picture?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Paley

all i can think about right now are all the times morbs would reach out to see if i wanted to catch a movie and me turning him down because of, i don't know, some bullshit . i hate this. rest in peace, bill.

It’s been a few years now, but Bill was truly kind, fun, good company, full of thoughtful and funny conversation, and was, yes, utterly sweet and charming. Also crucially self deprecating! I had a vague idea that we’d continue to encounter each other from time to time, so this is a terrible shock. A unique good presence in the world, now gone. I honestly can’t believe it still. Just saw reference to him in the politics thread and got real worried. His crankiness re: politics probably made me laugh as much as anything on ILX!

reading and refreshing this thread and crying and thinking about how i love y'all very much

<3

aw, a beautiful picture in which a beautiful soul comes through

thanks guys... it helped me remember him more clearly getting those words out

it might sound crazy if you just read his posts on this board or knew morbs the character, but we would all do good to live like bill. it's so easy to live a sedentary existence now (i'm not talking about covid), to feel like there's so much culture at your fingertips that you might as well be drowning in it. bill was from a different era, he never changed, and his rigidity and pride in being that way came thru loud and clear even if you barely knew him. but behind that was someone who valued tangibly experiencing the things that mattered to him, even when that thing was watching the sorry ass mets score 2 runs on a windy april night. (and btw he would never leave early.) i'm posting this as a reminder to myself as much as anything

hope he's still here in the ether, seeing that this thread is already up to 200+ posts, and realizing how beloved he is.

This is crushing. Someone I was never lucky enough to meet but I appreciated the contribution he made to ILX and will miss him deeply and watch a Marx brothers film this weekend.

RIP, this place is worse without him

https://i.imgur.com/fDcHvui.jpg

oh no! not morbz. I don't know what to say....this is so sad

fuck

This is such terrible news... all kinds of tears reading this goddamn thread
Only met him once (the same time treeship met him, when wins was in NYC. Dr C was there too)
Motherfucker was alive

oh man, RIP legend.

i only really know him from the movie threads. his posts usually pissed me off. for whatever reason, i'm really affected by this news. i know very few ilx people irl but it's somehow helpful for me to have occasional remote anonymous conversation, specifically on here, and it's all much appreciated.

his very un-American trait of freely expressing his loathing of shite US politicians and political parties

Until our current era I thought Morbs' dogmatic rage about, and cutesy nicknames for, Democratic Party politicians was as tedious and ill-directed as general US poster consensus held. When I became aware of how general US poster consensus also treats politicians as a murmuration of Tinkerbells, all requiring baseless faith to be vocally expressed lest we cause them to let us down, I realised he had been OTM all along.



Except about the nicknames.

Toady Blair is pretty good, though.

it's true, the nicknames were terrible

also fitting

Why is Morbs dead

Morbs and I never tangled over anything directly. I'd be surprised if he even knew me on ilx, but we all knew him. Endlessly infuriating and, in retrospect, one of the pillars of this entire place. Cancer is a fucking menace.

ha i remember really getting into it
with him on here once then he said something
to the effect of i know you dont really mean it
just like i dont and we both clocked out
like the loony tunes wolf and sheep dog

― lag∞n, Wednesday, October 21, 2020

<3

ILX has its "the day lady died" now is how i break it down to an extent

Multiple Myeloma

I met Bill at a fap in Chicago one time, he seemed like a gracious person and I appreciated his commitment to his political points of view. I hope he and his family and loved ones find peace.

i remember yelling at him on the Ken Burns’ Vietnam War doc series thread, I called him
Jacob Marley’s ghost bc he kept showing up randomly to shit on Burns & the series & of course never watched a second of it bc why would he lol

and he drove me round the bend with those fkn Dick Nixon tweets he always posted

but i’d welcome all of that bullshit again in a heartbear right now ;_;

*heartbeat

:(

I never did and never will meet Dr Morbius but his determination to live precisely as he pleased, harming none, outside of making all of us furious at his unwavering ideas of justice, will stay with me. I never did figure out how old he was.

Appreciated your write-up Alfred, that was lovely. I never really interacted with him much on here, other than maybe absorbing a few of his glancing blows, I am far too ignorant in film and not nearly as observant in baseball as he was to even attempt genuine sparring, but I always appreciated his passion and grit.

this sucks, RIP

I didn't want to know what Morbs looked like but that's somehow exactly what I imagined.

but i’d welcome all of that bullshit again in a heartbear right now ;_;

Morbs really was a heartbear tbh

Fuck cancer, over and over again. I’ll remember him with genuine love.

I didn't know him well. I got drinks with him maybe a dozen times. A great guy. Unbelievably smart as much as anything.

I once asked him for recommendations for Broadway, and his suggestion seemed fine so I got tickets for myself and my then gf now wife. A couple of months later we sat down for the show and he was in the seat next to us. It was honestly kind of awkward! And then we realized we were getting the same long slow weeknight train home. Oof! But he was such a kind, social, quiet person. We chatted (well, he spoke extemporaneously and wittily) about Off Broadway in the 1980s all the way home. I wish I could remember any of the things he told me that night or any other. He was so full of knowledge and he loved to share it, but he was never overbearing about it.

Jordan put it better than me, but an example of a New York life lived well. It's so sad he's gone, but the main thing I feel right now is that I miss New York and if I ever go back I want to be more like he was.

Also 100% otm about US politics always.

So nice to see retired/infrequent posters here.

Also I remember standing in front of the fridge in a bodega at Ft Greene and Fulton with my wife after got off the train home and telling her "I was reading that guy post stuff on a thread called 'I Lost A Coughdrop in His Asshole' earlier today".

omg lol
I frequent that bodega
crazy to think how long I’ve been crossing paths with Bill
He had a special place in my heart

RIP

I *believe* that the second-to-last time I saw Bill (before the poetry reading Brad mentioned upthread) was when we spotted each other on the street as the Pinefox and I were leaving a free Mountain Goats gig in East River Park. The amount of board representation there makes me happy; wish we'd been able to say hi to J0hn.

I never had much in the way of interaction with him, but have been missing his posts over the last several months. RIP, Dr Morbius.

Last time I saw bill was five seats down on the train at rush hour. I let him be because no proper New Yorker wants to be talked to on a train at rush hour. I got annoyed at The morbs character in the way you get annoyed with someone who is doing your shit but better. The last time I went to the real Shea stadium was with bill and mook.

This is horrible, I never interacted with him much but I saw his posts all the time and I hoped, like everyone else, his treatment would work. Really horrible. RIP, i am so sorry for his family.

RIP Morbz

Fuck! Never got to meet the good Dr but he's always been one of my favorite posters and I've definitely missed his presence lately. Deep condolences to those who knew him well. Will be sure to watch some Keaton and talk shit about the Dems this weekend.

RIP, i love morbs

Me too. <3 x x x

such a beautiful photo up there^