“Willie Davis, who succeeded Duke Snider as the center fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers and used his blazing speed to steal 20 or more bases 11 straight years, led the National League in triples twice and set a record of three stolen bases in a World Series game, was found dead on Tuesday at [...]
Archive for the ‘Popular Culture’ Category
R.I.P. – Willie Davis (1940-2010)
Posted in Baseball, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Sports on March 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Willful Misconduct: The Legal Battle Over Jack Kerouac’s Forged Will
Posted in Books, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Literature, Poets & Poetry, Popular Culture, Writers & Writing on January 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“When Jack Kerouac wrote his will shortly before his death in 1969, he was broke. Forty years later, a ferocious battle rages over his multi-million dollar literary estate. Kerouac, at odds with his third wife, Stella Sampas, had left everything to his mother, Gabrielle Kerouac. But when Gabrielle Kerouac passed away in 1973, her will [...]
R.I.P. – Eric Rohmer (1920-2010)
Posted in Cinema, Europe, Movie Reviews, Obituaries, Popular Culture on January 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“Eric Rohmer, the French critic and filmmaker who was one of the founding figures of the internationally influential movement that became known as the French New Wave, and the director of more than 50 films for theaters and television, including the Oscar-nominated ’My Night at Maud’s‘ (1969), died on Monday. He was 89. . . . [...]
Out of the Woods: Collectors Dumping Tiger Woods Memorabilia
Posted in Celebrities, Collectors & Collecting, Current Events, Ephemera, Popular Culture, Sex & Gender, Sports, Sports Memorabilia on December 8, 2009 | 2 Comments »
“The closest toy store to Tiger Woods’ boyhood home is a Toys ‘R’ Us in Huntington Beach, California. There’s a strong chance Earl and Kultida Woods shopped for Christmas presents here when then their son was young, and the store yesterday was girded again for the holiday rush, with Barbies and pottery kits stacked up [...]
Blue Notes: Is Jazz Dying? (And if it is, What’s Killing It?)
Posted in Blues & Jazz, Performing Arts, Popular Culture, Popular Music on November 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Long before we debated what real punk-rock was, what true hip-hop was, or what made indie-rock authentic, jazz heads grappled with what is and isn’t jazz music. Now, the debate is whether jazz is dying off or not. “Not long ago Jae Sinnett, a jazz drummer, composer, educator and radio personality, told NPR that jazz is dying because people [...]
Sweet Home Hazelhurst, Mississippi: Robert Johnson’s Birthplace Verified
Posted in Blues & Jazz, Museums & Exhibitions, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll, U.S. Travel on November 14, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“The mystery surrounding bluesman Robert Johnson‘s life and death feeds the lingering fascination with his work. “There’s the myth he sold his soul to the devil to create his haunting guitar intonations. There’s the dispute over where he died after his alleged poisoning by a jealous man in 1938. Three different markers claim to be [...]
R.I.P. – Art D’Lugoff (1924-2009)
Posted in Blues & Jazz, Business, Counter Culture, New York City, Performing Arts, Plays & Playwrights, Poets & Poetry, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll, Theater, Writers & Writing on November 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Art D’Lugoff, who was widely regarded as the dean of New York nightclub impresarios and whose storied spot, the Village Gate, was for more than 30 years home to performers as celebrated, and diverse, as Duke Ellington, Allen Ginsberg and John Belushi, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 85 and lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. [...]
The Jerry Smolin Collection of Historic Baseball Programs Headed To Auction in April
Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Baseball, Collectors & Collecting, Ephemera, Popular Culture, Sports, Sports Memorabilia on October 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Shameless self-promotion, I know, but . . . “Since the 1970s, as a collector, as a dealer, and as an auctioneer (one-half of the highly respected Sloate & Smolin Auctions and the sole owner of About Time Auctions), Jerry Smolin has been well known as a baseball historian and as a true connoisseur of baseball memorabilia. [...]
R.I.P. – Milton Supman, aka “Soupy Sales” (1926-2009)
Posted in Actors & Acting, New York City, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Television on October 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Soupy Sales, whose zany television routines turned the smashing of a pie to the face into a madcap art form, died Thursday night. He was 83. “Mr. Sales’s former manager, Dave Usher, said the entertainer died in a hospice in New York City after suffering from multiple health problems. “Cavorting with his puppet sidekicks White [...]
Burning Passion: Matchcover Collectors & The Return of a New Old Restaurant Freebie
Posted in Business, Collectors & Collecting, Design, Ephemera, Food & Wine, Media & Advertising, Popular Culture, U.S. Travel on October 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“If smoking was their sole raison d’être, restaurant matches should by all rights have disappeared by now. After being overtaken by the disposable lighter, they have run into smoking bans of varying severity. (Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia now have laws prohibiting smoking in restaurants, according to the American Lung Association, and local [...]
R.I.P. – Lucy O’Donnell, aka “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (1963-2009)
Posted in Counter Culture, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll on September 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Lucy O’Donnell, the woman who inspired the classic Beatles song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, has died aged 46. “The song [was] featured on the ground-breaking 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “John Lennon’s elder son Julian said it was inspired by a picture he drew of his classmate Lucy O’Donnell when [...]
What’s a Culture Snob to Do?: The Future Aesthetic of Snobbery in a Digitized World
Posted in Books, Human Behavior, Literature, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Science & Technology on September 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Pity the culture snob, as Kindles, iPods, and flash drives swallow up the visible markers of superior taste and intelligence. With the digitization of books, music, and movies, how will the highbrow distinguish him- or herself from the masses?” (James Wolcott, via Vanity Fair)
R.I.P. – Jim Carroll (1950-2009)
Posted in Books, Counter Culture, Obituaries, Poets & Poetry, Popular Culture, Rock 'n' Roll, Writers & Writing on September 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker in the outlaw tradition of Rimbaud and Burroughs who chronicled his wild youth in ‘The Basketball Diaries,’ died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 60. . . . “As a teenage basketball star in the 1960s at Trinity, an elite private school on the Upper [...]
R.I.P. – Gordon Waller (1945-2009)
Posted in Counter Culture, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll on July 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Gordon Waller, who formed half of Peter and Gordon, a successful pop duo that followed the Beatles to America as part of the British Invasion of the 1960s and that scored a No. 1 hit with ‘A World Without Love,’ died on Friday in Norwich, Conn. He was 64 and lived in Ledyard, Conn. . . [...]
R.I.P. – Tom Wilkes (1939-2009)
Posted in Counter Culture, Design, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll on July 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Tom Wilkes, an art director, photographer and designer whose posters for the Monterey Pop Festival and album covers for the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, George Harrison and others helped illustrate the age of rock ’n’ roll, died on June 28 in Pioneertown, Calif., in the high desert east of Los Angeles. He was [...]
Today’s Sign of the Apocalypse: Candy Maker PEZ Sues PEZ Museum Over Giant Snowman Dispenser
Posted in Collectors & Collecting, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Museums & Exhibitions, Popular Culture, Sign of the Apocalypse on July 16, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“It took more than 30 years for the creators of Pez candy dispensers to give the little plastic figurines feet, and they never did get hands. But now the long arm of the Pez Candy Co. has reached all the way from Linz, Austria, into U.S. District Court, where it has slapped the tiny faces that [...]
Collecting Blues: Collecting Fragile 78 R.P.M. Records in a Fragile Economy
Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Blues & Jazz, Collectors & Collecting, Popular Culture, Popular Music on July 16, 2009 | 2 Comments »
“John Heneghan tugged a large shellac disc from its brown paper sleeve, placed it on a turntable and gently nudged a needle into place. Behind him, in the corner of his East Village apartment, sat 16 wooden crates, each filled with meticulously cataloged 78-r.p.m. records. The coarse, crackling voice of the blues singer Charley Patton, [...]
Food for Thought: “Food, Inc.” & The Perils of Big Food
Posted in Business, Cinema, Food & Wine, Health & Medicine, Movie Reviews, Popular Culture on June 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“MOVIES about food used to make you want to eat. . . . “But that was then, before Wal-Mart started selling organic food and Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Before E. coli was a constant in the food supply, before politicians tried to tax soda and before anyone gave much thought [...]
Baseball’s Slang, or: “Setting the Table” with “Muffins” & “Jelly Beans”
Posted in Baseball, Books, Language, Popular Culture, Sports on May 15, 2009 | 1 Comment »
“Slang is like a breeze; it softly comes and goes, as new times bring new buzzwords. Some stick (‘cool’ defiantly endures); some induce cringes when dusted off (‘groovy’ is now in the dustbin of irony). It’s obvious when slang becomes less funny or less meaningful through overuse: ‘Internets,’ for example, has become too widespread to [...]
Kerouac at the Bat: Jack Kerouac’s Personal Fantasy Baseball Game
Posted in Baseball, Books, Museums & Exhibitions, New York City, Popular Culture, Sports, Writers & Writing on May 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Almost all his life Jack Kerouac had a hobby that even close friends and fellow-Beats like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs never knew about. He obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, charting the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either [...]
