Dr. Morbius (Bill Weber) RIP

Right. Here's my little obit to him, with said photo. It's not so fresh because I used a few lines here.

I wish I had talked to Dr Morbius more about Jack Benny

― all cats are beautiful (silby), Friday, 23 October 2020 3:18 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is reminding me to good look for those threads where he talked about old radio shows. There’s some absolute gold in there.

This has really ambushed me emotionally. I regret never meeting him in person, but Bill was one of the most fun people to argue with. I am going to miss his wit and crankiness. I had to post this here because you all are the ones who are going to understand.

I want to post a heart emoji here but I can feel his disapproval already

haha yeah i've been alternating between feeling mushy and rolling my eyes at myself all day.

I’m not much of a poster but have been lurking for 10+ years. He was among the most distinct and singular posters on this board, his voice was strong (and funny!) and he’s leaving a big void. I will miss him very much.

That's a really beautiful obit, Alfred.

I haven't been to the fuck cancer thread in awhile.

Reading his posts over there and, whew. Definitely not the same guy who once asked me how much I ejaculated whenever Obama gave a speech.

did he ever completely get through The Sopranos to the end? I used to think it very amusing that in the era of the binge-watch, that even years after acknowledging he liked it - he still seemed to be on season 2 or 3, bless him!

this is sad, I'm sorry to see this. I had no idea what his real name was, but I saw Ally post this on Twitter and I just now made the connection. Awful.

I love when I go to log some obscure '30s short subject on Letterboxd and see that Bill was among the single-digit number of people who've done likewise. It happens a lot. And I hope it continues to happen a lot.

― OrificeMax (Old Lunch), Thursday, October 22, 2020 10:16 AM bookmarkflaglink

same.

It was Halloween night, a Saturday, 2015. The Mets were playing Game 4 of the World Series at home against the Kansas City Royals. I didn't have tickets to the game, but I went to Citi Field just to check out the atmosphere. The New York Post was giving out free orange towels with Go Mets! written on them. I picked an extra one up for Bill, who I was meeting later at the Station Bar in Woodside, because he wanted to watch the game in Queens and watch the Mets in their natural habitat. When I met Bill, I proudly presented him the towel. He looked at it witheringly and scoffed, "Baseball fans don't wave rally towels!" He did not accept the gift. The Station Bar, which Bill had traveled over an hour from Brooklyn to get to, was boring and kind of sad that night (as it is most nights--I'm not sure why we picked it), so after a while we went to my local in Sunnyside, where he proceeded to bicker about baseball facts with a friend of mine. The Mets lost the game, 5-3, and the next night they lost the series. The Mets haven't made the World Series since then, though they did make the postseason the next year. I never again attempted to gift Bill a dreaded towel.

I often ran into Bill at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. I live nearby, but he took the messed up weekend trains, when delays and out-of-service lines extended and frustrated his travel time. Neither the journey nor the weather ever dissuaded him. I often saw him at MOMI on his second screening of the day, when he had come from Film Forum or MOMA or Lincoln Center. As others have said, he continued doing the things he loved even after his diagnosis, and I'm sure he saw at least double the movies I saw in theaters over the years. We lost touch in recent years, but I felt like he would always be traversing the city, hitting the revival film circuit, and I would run into him again, ready to be schooled on baseball, film, or any other topic. I lost my mom to cancer in 2013, and while she got longer than Bill, I can't get over the unfairness and sadness of this disease. Thanks to everyone who has shared memories--it's so nice to read about peoples' experiences. But how did I not know about Julius' Bar?

I just saw the news on Twitter and immediately came here. This is terrible. Thank you for these posts; they’re lovely. I was not close to him, on ilx or in life, but he always seemed so fully human in his posts here, so smart and so puzzling. Just want to echo some of you that I got my feelings hurt at his posts in politics threads at times, but he was right about everything, and I was an idiot.

What a good life he seems to have lived.

Nah, some of you are playing like it was loving fun and on your part it very clearly wasn't. There was real nasty, nasty shit aimed at Bill and it's self-serving to pretend there wasn't. I said you consciences should be heavy, but I have no reason to expect it will happen. Just expressing my disgust at some of the self-serving hagiography the way Bill would, I like to think.

― Three Word Username, Friday, October 23, 2020 2:33 AM (five hours ago)

lolol at the idea that Morbs wasn't at least 3x more unwarrantedly nasty to anyone than they were to him

I remember us throwing back G&Ts at Julius', and very shortly after that seeing Julius' major supporting role in "Can You Ever Forgive Me" and realizing CYEFM is as much as a Bill Weber New York Fever Dream of a movie as I've ever watched -- it's utterly within his universe. That stubborn tenacity of being the kind of aging New Yorker who writes Tallulah Bankhead biographies no one reads and chats with the bartender as the afternoon light streams through the window of the battered old gay haunt.

― A Smedley Adoption (get bent), Friday, October 23, 2020 2:54 AM (five hours ago)

thanks for this comment, JB - not only in its own quiet poetry, but for helping a few more of us to contextualise the bar being cited so often itt.

Reading his posts over there and, whew. Definitely not the same guy who once asked me how much I ejaculated whenever Obama gave a speech.

hahaha

did he ever completely get through The Sopranos to the end? I used to think it very amusing that in the era of the binge-watch, that even years after acknowledging he liked it - he still seemed to be on season 2 or 3, bless him!

aw man, I don't think he ever finished Twin Peaks S3 either

Haha oh man. Such principles! :/

He really reminds me of this passage in Oliver Wendell Holmes' 'Poet at the Breakfast-Table':

He stirs me up, and finds me occupation in various ways, and especially, because he has good solid prejudices, that one can rub against, and so get up and let off a superficial intellectual irritation, just as the cattle rub their backs against a rail (you remember Sydney Smith's contrivance in his pasture) or their sides against an apple-tree (I don't know why they take to these so particularly, but you will often find the trunk of an apple-tree as brown and smooth as an old saddle at the height of a cow's ribs). I think they begin rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, l'appetit vient en mangeant, the more they rub the more they want to. That is the way to use your friend's prejudices.

I too have been to The Station Bar with Morbius. I'm pretty sure it was before a game, when the Mets were still playing at Shea.

The eulogy and short playlist-for-Bill on WFMU Pseu's Thing with a Hook today (starts around 24:00) was just lovely (and had me feeling intensely nostalgic) ;_;

Alfred, your obit is truly lovely. Thanks. x

re: rrrobyn's post:

https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/97785

The reference to Can You Ever Forgive Me? is soooo otm. I associate Morbs w/the Manhattan 1980-1997 where you grabbed a martini in the middle of the afternoon in a Midtown bar after a Visconti retrospective, reading the NYROB before they piled up.

Alfred, your obit is truly lovely. Thanks. x

― Gerneten-flüken cake (jed_)

Thanks, jed and tangenttangent,

He finished twin peaks, liked it, and said something like “50% shit like most lynch” iirc

Agreed with others, Alfred, and that photo of Bill and J0rdan is lovely.

He finished twin peaks, liked it, and said something like “50% shit like most lynch” iirc

phew!

From Pseu's on-air eulogy: Bill will be buried in his favorite WFMU t-shirt.

and pants!

Listening to that eulogy and literally lold when the DJ said he was always thoughtful and measured online.

Lurked and posted here under various names for fifteen years or so, and this is really very sad to hear. His humour and attitude made him one of the personalities that you really couldn't miss. A piece of ilx is now missing.

I honestly couldn’t tell if she was being tongue in cheek or what ha

xp

haha i dunno that sounds like a parting shot to me lol

Listening to that eulogy and literally lold when the DJ said he was always thoughtful and measured online.

:D

and she leads straight into "i need a new heart". it's a lovely tribute to him.

Will miss his withering contempt in general, but especially for people that don't appreciate Spielberg.

Lmao I literally told the story of him calling me a vacuous tart/whore (would change depending on the convo!) because of my opinions on Spielberg just a few weeks ago on a work call, weirdly. I will never back down, sorry Bill.

He gave my kid a little Mr Magoo doll when he was a baby; he still plays with it and every time I hear it talk it cracks me up. I don't even know where he got it or where one would even think to get such a doll! I put it out on his little display shelf in his room today and it cheered me up.

Really sweet, although I detected some irritation at my request at the end of the evening to contribute to whatever film poll we were going to do next when he said he wasn't going to. But of course he did contribute - his grouchiness at the film poll results became a highlight of sorts for me.

When we all met up for drinks the director poll was going on and he did have a quick mock-rant at the placement of Ford (he also had just come from seeing phantom thread and was fulsome in his praise: “best American film in x years”) (can’t remember x sorry)

The other thing xyz’s quote reminds me of is that I would always have a go at him for always loudly announcing that he wouldn’t vote in the annual film polls that he always voted in, and he would always tell me to piss off - and then last year he randomly apologised to me about it. It was v weird cause whatever he said to me won’t have been worse than “go fuck yourself” and the thing I was carping about was really only an extension of his classic announcing he was leaving the room bit

We definitely had way more unpleasant interactions at an earlier point; I don’t remember any of the things he said to me then, I reckon just generic gfy stuff again, I guess I didn’t warrant anything quotable - but I remember well him saying to me “take care of yourself, please.”

We weren’t pals but now I wish we were

Aw Mr Magoo <3

Is there a link to the eulogy?

yep: https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/97785

it starts about 20, 21 minutes in

When I met Bill, I proudly presented him the towel. He looked at it witheringly and scoffed, "Baseball fans don't wave rally towels!" He did not accept the gift.

lmao

"Is there a link to the eulogy?"

I lost a good friend in Bill Weber yesterday: a part of a vanishing NYC, a film historian of astonishing debts, a fiery liberal, a warm dude. I'm fortunate to have met him a half dozen times. https://t.co/V51IOcFL4n

— Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (@SotoAlfred) October 22, 2020

oops sorry, misunderstood. thanks calzino!

it might me be me who misunderstood the question, god knows!

nice words, Alfred

I don't know what he would think about being called a "fiery liberal" haha

oh so that's why I heard a burst of static in the stream there

That’s a beautiful post, Alfred.

i've been thinking about what s1ocki said, like, "i thought this guy hated me!" years and years ago morbs mentioned on some thread (not replying to me; i don't think i was even on the thread) that i "seemed like a good kid" even if i seemed to dislike him. i think we had argued on a couple of film threads and i had called him some nasty names. i was stunned when i saw that he had such kind words for me, given that i don't think i had ever said anything particularly kind to him at all. that left an impression and even tho i certainly sparred with him again after that i tried to keep that moment in mind. but i don't think i ever thanked him for saying that; i guess i always figured eventually i might meet him and we could hash it out in person. so it goes.

(thinking about the story now i'm also a bit melancholy thinking of a time when someone could call me a "kid" without being ironic about it.) 

One time he referred to me on here as "one of you Brits" (or something like that), and after being shocked to learn I'm from Texas, he said I was 'Spiritually British'.

lmao

hahaha! i'm sorry, but that is great

lmao