On A Pale Horse

I wrote this whole beautiful tribute to Robert Altman. As I was about to hit 'publish' Foxfire crashed and I lost everything. I've got a pie baking in the oven...another one to bake. I'll write this again at a later date.

February 20, 1925 - November 20, 2006
RIP

Labels: 1925 births, 2006 November deaths, director, leukemia

I wasn’t a huge 60 Minutes fan. Probably because of Andy Rooney or possibly because it was the only thing on Sunday nights that my Grandpa would watch and at the time they only had the one television set and I just didn't care about the news back then. Later on in life I occasionally listened to it…some AM station broadcast it on Sunday nights, and for the life of me I can’t remember why, but I used to drive some insane amount on Sundays, to and from somewhere. Probably for some asshat I was dating at the time that didn’t have a car or who knew that I’d be willing to haul my derrière out to his place at the drop of a hat rather then wasting any of his time because I was just waiting for his call. I seem to attract these guys but that’s probably because of some deep seated attention hungry neurosis that I have from childhood. I’m trying to break this habit but so far I’m doing a piss poor job of it. And NO I’m not taking applications for this position!

ANYWAY

The long & the short of it is that one of the anchors I ending up liking was Ed Bradley. He spent 25 seasons on the long running Sunday news show starting during the 1981 – 1982 season. His career was deep seated at CBS, he started out there in 1976 as a White House correspondent. I supposed one thing that I appreciated was that he was a little different then the rest; I never quite understood the earring but hey I have my one ear pierced 13 times a lot of people don’t seem to understand that either. He did win a bunch of news broadcasting awards including a Peabody Award, three Emmy's, a Lifetime Achievement Emmy, as well as many others. I know that I, along with many others, think that he did an incredible job of interviewing Howard Stern without making Howard seem like a total deranged, perverted loser. That's worth something.

Mr Bradley passed away from complications of leukemia.

June 22, 1941 – November 9, 2006

RIP

Labels: 1941 births, 2006 November deaths, leukemia, news, television

In 1991 I went to a drive-in theater for the first and only time in my life. It was located on the corner of Gratiot & Hall Road, just behind a modular home sales lot. Now a days there's a 7-11 a Ford dealership, which has 24 hour service center (nice).

I was home from my first year in college...I didn't want to do much other then hang out with some of my high school friends and have one more summer together (ala American Pie 2). But my parents, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it would be beneficial for me to have a job and pay for my own EMU education. So in order to do those two things I took a job at McDonald's. The pay wasn't that bad & it didn't require too many brain cells. I picked the morning shift, start out at 6am out by 1pm, nap time, party time, repeat. I was the one in the first drive through window taking orders and handing out change from this position I had the perfect view of Belle Tire right across the parking lot. So every day I got to watch 20 something year old guys open up the overhead doors and get sticky, oily hot from changing tires. We started the wave-and-smile flirtation and after a few days we actually talked. A co-worker thought he looked like Kenny Loggins I kinda thought it was Vanilla Ice (it was 1991 for godsakes).

Our first date was at that drive-in the double feature was 'City Slickers' followed up by 'Robin Hood Prince of Thieves'. We watched the first half hour or so and then made out during the rest of the film. He wanted sex I told him I was unavailable that day, even though I wasn't. So with no where else to go and a 5am wake up call for both of us we fell asleep before Robin Hood even started. To this day I haven't seen that movie.

Kirby's career started 1971 with film "The Young Graduates" and progressed with television and supporting film rolls. His film career included rolls in 'The Godfather Part 2', 'City Slickers', 'When Harry Met Sally', 'The Basketball Diaries' and 'Good Morning Vietnam'.

He passed away due to complications of leukemia which he had only been recently diagnosed with.

April 28, 1949 - August 14, 2006 - RIP

Labels: 1949 births, 2006 August deaths, actor, leukemia