Quote:NEW YORK — The Ramones always seemed too fast. Their songs rushed by, often two minutes or less of pure adrenaline. Their influence outstripped their sales. And now, with the death of drummer Tommy, all four original members of the seminal punk rock band are gone.

Tommy Ramone, born Erdelyi Tamas in Budapest, Hungary, died Friday at age 65, said Dave Frey, who works for Ramones Productions and Silent Partner Management. Frey had no further details.

Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommy Ramone, taking their surname from an alias Paul McCartney used to check into hotels, formed in Queens, N.Y. in 1974. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members were among the leaders of the original punk rock movement with songs like “I Wanna Be Sedated,” ‘’Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Rockaway Beach.”

Wearing ripped jeans, black leather and bad haircuts, the Ramones stripped rock down to its essentials: two guitars, drums, a singer and no solos. Their 1976 debut album had 14 songs in less than 30 minutes, with “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and “Beat on the Brat” reflecting their twisted teen years.....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/associate-tommy-ramone-last-of-the-ramones-dies/2014/07/12/315b0434-0997-11e4-ba5b-b9d8a4daba13_story.html

Quote:James Garner, Witty, Handsome Leading Man, Dies at 86

James Garner, the wry and handsome leading man who slid seamlessly between television and the movies but was best known as the amiable gambler Bret Maverick in the 1950s western “Maverick” and the cranky sleuth Jim Rockford in the 1970s series “The Rockford Files,” was found dead of natural causes in his California home on Saturday night, Officer Alonzo Iniquez of the Los Angeles Police Department told The Associated Press on Sunday. He was 86.

Mr. Garner, who smoked for most of his life, even after open-heart surgery in 1988, had suffered a stroke in 2008.

...Mr. Garner came to acting late, and by accident. On his own after the age of 14 and a bit of a drifter, he had been working an endless series of jobs: telephone installer, oilfield roughneck, chauffeur, dishwasher, janitor, lifeguard, grocery clerk, salesman and, fatefully, gas station attendant. While pumping gas in Los Angeles, he met a young man named Paul Gregory, who was working nearby as a soda jerk but wanted to be an agent.

Years later, after Mr. Garner had served in the Army during the Korean War — he was wounded in action twice, earning two Purple Hearts — he was working as a carpet layer in Los Angeles for a business run by his father. One afternoon he was driving on La Cienega Boulevard and saw a sign: Paul Gregory & Associates. Just then a car pulled out of a space in front of the building, and Mr. Garner, on a whim, pulled in. He was 25.

Mr. Gregory, by then an agent and a theatrical producer, hired him for a nonspeaking part in his production of Herman Wouk’s “Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” which starred Henry Fonda, John Hodiak and Lloyd Nolan. It opened in Santa Barbara and toured the country before going to Broadway, where it opened in January 1954 and ran for 415 performances. Mr. Garner said he learned to act from running lines with the stars and watching them perform, especially Mr. Fonda, another good-looking actor with a sly streak.

“I swiped practically all my acting style from him,” he once said.

Mr. Garner claimed to have stage fright and no desire to act in the theater. He later played Lt. Maryk (the Hodiak role) in a touring company of the play that starred Charles Laughton, but afterward would almost never appear onstage again. Still, it was the serendipitous stop on La Cienega that changed his life.

Quote:Of Mr. Garner’s other forays into series television, “Nichols” was said to have been his own favorite. A dark comic western set in Arizona in the early 20th century that was produced by Cherokee in 1971, it starred Mr. Garner as a retired soldier who becomes sheriff of his hometown. When NBC canceled it after one season, Mr. Garner was so incensed that he had his character killed in the final episode.

Quote:The low ratings also resulted in the decision by the program's producers to kill off the title character in the final episode to retool the series. The pacifist Nichols was shot down, to be avenged by his identical twin brother, Jim Nichols (portrayed by Garner), who arrived in town and administered justice in a stereotypical (and it was hoped, popular) Western fashion. This solution made recasting and retitling the program unnecessary while allowing for considerable changes. However this episode proved to be the final one

Quote:RIP Robin Williams.

First time I recall being truly saddened by a celebrity's death. Maybe it's the nature of it.