So Long, Ernie

Ernest Borgnine dies at 95

Best known for McHale's Navy and beating Frank Sinatra to death in "From Here to Eternity", he won an Oscar for "Marty."

"Sooner or later, there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts," Marty movingly tells his mother at one point in the film. "And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it. I chased after enough girls in my life. I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough. I don't wanna get hurt no more."

 But in real life, he knew the answer to that dilemma:



The son of Italian immagrants, Ernie enrolled in the US Navy after high school where he served for 10 straight years, fighting in WWII.  He was awarded many medals, including the Good Conduct Medal. Fair winds and following seas.

RIP Ray Bradbury

It's all over the news today that Ray Bradbury, one of the early and greatest sci-fi authors died this morning in Los Angeles at age 91.  Writers tend to like Fahrenheit 45, as the possibility of censorship looms huge in their minds, Others are naming their favorite works of his, Insty has picked Dandelion Wine, for example.  I suppose my favorite was Something Wicked This Way Comes, probably because it had young boys about the age I was then as protagonists.  The Martian Chronicles didn't do that much for me, although I still remember many of the vignettes.

I had a brush with Bradbury; he lived in my neighborhood, Rancho Park in Los Angeles while I was in 6th grade (at least), and his daughter, Ramona, was in my class.  If I recall correctly, we even read one of his short stories in class, somewhat to her embarrassment.

At some point a couple of years later, I met him on the street and we traded pleasantries.

Sorry Ramona; if you pick this up; your dad was a great writer, and my sympathies go out to you and the rest of your family.

And now, what you've all been waiting to see, thanks to Ann Althouse (NSFW language):

F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury - watch more funny videos

RIP Doc Watson

Doc Watson dies at 89

Doc Watson, the blind Grammy-award winning folk musician whose mountain-rooted sound was embraced by generations and whose lightning-fast style of flatpicking influenced guitarists around the world, died Tuesday at a North Carolina hospital, according to a hospital spokeswoman and his manager. He was 89.

Watson died at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, where he was hospitalized recently after falling at his home in Deep Gap, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He underwent abdominal surgery while in the hospital and had been in critical condition for several days.

Doc and a couple of lesser known guitarists....

Sorry I didn't get to see you live.