The <celebrity> Died Thread

[HaemishM]

Can we already just fast forward to the end of this fucking year?

[Chimpy]

So I know he really isn't really a 'lesser' celebrity, but I also didn't think he needed his own thread.

Fidel Castro has died at age 90

[Khaldun]

I was wrestling with whether that took a new thread or not. Fairly major person, but it's hard to know what to say really. In my social media, older people are more or less re-enacting arguments they've been having about Cuba for forty years.

[satael]

Fidel saw that the USA elected Trump and decided that he might as well exit the stage now. 

[Sir T]

Not sure of Fidel Castro counts as a Lesser celeb, but he has died. Made it to 90, good run.

[Teleku]

Even the the glorious revolution of the people cannot withstand the awesome destructive powers of 2016.

[Velorath]

2016 just got Ron Glass also.

[HaemishM]

Is it just me, or is 2016 really collecting an inordinately large amount of celebrities I know for it's goddamn death pool?

[Sir T]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/florence-henderson-dead_us_5837d277e4b01ba68ac456d9

Florence Henderson died yesterday. Man... I grew up on the Brady Bunch. How many more days we got in this dreadful year?

So yeah got ninja'ed on Castro. Ah well. Sorry

As for Henderson, this is one of my favourite clips from Whose line is it anyway where she came on as a special guest. Great fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNTZYRxoWaw

[Chimpy]

Is it just me, or is 2016 really collecting an inordinately large amount of celebrities I know for it's goddamn death pool?

Well, I think it is actually a combination of things. Sure, a lot of "celebrities" are dying, but I think it has as much to do with the fact that A) in the era of Television and the paparazzi, there are more people who are "celebrities" and B) we are getting to the age where the people who were on TV, the radio, and in movies since we were children are now reaching the "Really old" stage where nature inevitably wins.

And now that the baby boom generation is getting up into that area we are going to see a lot more of it because they had such a large impact on who we know since there were/are so many of them.

[apocrypha]

I know this probably isn't the ideal place for this mini rant but I really don't want to post in Politics, but the last week has left me flabbergasted at how many people who consider themselves left wing are prepared to defend and justify Castro.

Yeah, he stood up to the US for 50 years, but that doesn't make him a socialist. He took on that mantle solely to align himself with the Soviet Union since he had no other choice. Yes there were improvements in health care and social housing but only in the 1960s and after Batista it wasn't hard to do better! Opposition and resistance were brutally repressed, as were LGBT people with forced labour camps and mass arrests! Abortion wasn't legal until 1979. Communist Party bureaucrats lived in lavish luxury while ordinary people lived in poverty.

Being a freedom fighter doesn't automatically make you a 'man of the people' and the total lack of objectivity on the part of many left wing commentators this week has been very disheartening.

[satael]

I know this probably isn't the ideal place for this mini rant but I really don't want to post in Politics, but the last week has left me flabbergasted at how many people who consider themselves left wing are prepared to defend and justify Castro.

Yeah, he stood up to the US for 50 years, but that doesn't make him a socialist. He took on that mantle solely to align himself with the Soviet Union since he had no other choice. Yes there were improvements in health care and social housing but only in the 1960s and after Batista it wasn't hard to do better! Opposition and resistance were brutally repressed, as were LGBT people with forced labour camps and mass arrests! Abortion wasn't legal until 1979. Communist Party bureaucrats lived in lavish luxury while ordinary people lived in poverty.

Being a freedom fighter doesn't automatically make you a 'man of the people' and the total lack of objectivity on the part of many left wing commentators this week has been very disheartening.

Not to defend Castro, but using abortion law as  the measure seems a bit weird considering it was totally illegal in 30 states of USA until 1973 (so just a difference of 6 years). By that standard Finland must be something else since abortion was (partly) legalized in the 1950s?

[apocrypha]

It was just one example, of the many that you can easily dig up, of an authoritarian society that was a very long way away from the socialist paradise that some on the left seem to think it was.

[Engels]

I'm curious; who on the left is lionizing Castro? Cuz, you know, mass execution of dissidents, etc.

[apocrypha]

Mostly family/fools (that boundary is increasingly indistinct) on Facebook etc.

[Teleku]

The Prime Minister of Canada.   

[Chimpy]

The actor that played Manuel on Fawlty Towers died last week.

2016 just keeps on sticking it to us.

[Sir T]

December 2016 begins it's harvest.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/alice-drummond-character-actress-broadway-star-dies-at-88-report-952453

Alice Drummond, Character Actress and Broadway Star, Dies at 88 (Report)

She is widely remembered for playing a librarian frightened by an evil spirit in the beginning of 1984's 'Ghostbusters.'

Alice Drummond, an actress who starred in several CBS soap operas and performed regularly on Broadway in the 1960s and '70s, has died. She was 88.

Character actress June Gable, a friend of Drummond's, said her death was caused by complications from a fall she suffered two months prior, according to The New York Times.

Drummond made numerous appearances on TV sitcoms and Broadway shows (The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, You Can't Take It With You) before venturing into film. She starred as Nurse Jackson on the 1967 series Dark Shadows and had regular roles on CBS soap dramas Where the Heart Is and As the World Turns.

In 1970, she garnered a Tony Award nomination for best featured actress in a play for her performance in Murray Schisgal's The Chinese.

Drummond scored one of her most memorable film roles playing a frightened librarian who is later questioned by Bill Murray in the beginning of 1984's Ghostbusters. She is also widely known for playing one Robin Williams' patients in 1990's Awakenings, an Oscar-nominated film based on the true life story of British neurologist Oliver Sacks.

The actress most recently appeared as a senile senior citizen in the 2010 comedy Furry Vengeance, starring Brendan Fraser, Samantha Bee, Ken Jeong and Brooke Shields.

[Chimpy]

2016 Strikes again, Maester Aemon is dead:

British actor Peter Vaughan, best known for roles in Game of Thrones and Porridge, has died at the age of 93.

[Merusk]

Well that tears it. Winter is Coming, the Walkers will be here soon. About goddamn time.

[Signe]

And there goes Greg Lake.     Now only Palmer is left.  Cancer again.

[Cadaverine]

Add John Glenn to the list.  Dead at 95.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/12/08/john-glenn-the-first-american-astronaut-to-orbit-the-earth-dies-at-95/?pushid=breaking-news_1481232545&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&utm_term=.70f111d1d6e8

[Merusk]

TBH I thought he died a while back. He really left the public life when he retired. Godspeed.

[calapine]

Godspeed, John Glenn

[Teleku]

 

That actually really hurts.  Fuck.

This year really is the very worst.

Goodspeed .   

[Sir T]

[jgsugden]

 Dave Brubeck has left us.

[Selby]

Damn you 2012!

[Trippy]

Greg Lake of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer died two days ago:

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

[Nebu]

Greg Lake of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer died two days ago:

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

Keith Emerson also died early this year (March 2016).

  

[Teleku]

Somebody really famous is going to die New Years Eve I bet.

[01101010]

Alan Thicke just passed on...

ugh.

[HaemishM]

And it just won't stop.

[Signe]

Is that Robin Thick's father?  The universe took the wrong Thicke.

[Ginaz]

Alan Thicke also wrote a lot of TV show theme songs in the 70's and 80's.  The one for Diff'rent Strokes was probably his most well know and it's also his voice you hear singing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jJIVK-daGk