I started Kill Fee in 2005 as a kind of clearinghouse for writing clips and blog musings, and now four years later I’ve decided to retire the site’s blog aspect. I’m still planning to maintain the homepage as a static site with links to reviews and updates for new articles—so please do check back—but my [...]
My grandmother was born in 1905 and I don’t remember her having much interest in the popular culture of my childhood. I just don’t think she paid that much attention to a lot of what was on television and the radio in the 70s and 80s. But she always loved to watch Michael Jackson move.
Here [...]
I really assumed she’d live forever. Such amazing delivery and timing.
Bea Arthur, star of ‘Golden Girls’ and ‘Maude,’ dies at 86, LA Times
Golden Girl Bloopers, YouTube
Estelle Bennett, Ronnie Spector and Nedra Talley-Ross
Estelle Bennett, a Singer for the Ronettes, Is Dead at 67, NY Times
I’m very sorry to learn from today’s New York Times that the white-haired gentleman with the elegant beard and wonderful lulling, trilling voice who sold vegetable peelers in Union Square and elsewhere has passed away. I am glad, though, to have learned his name.
From Howard Kaplan’s excellent 2006 profile in Vanity Fair:
Joe pushes his gear [...]
From the New York Times obituary:
The stage direction “pause” would haunt him throughout his career.
Intended as an instructive note to actors, the Pinter pause was a space for emphasis and breathing room. But it could also be as threatening as a raised fist. Mr. Pinter said that writing the word “pause” into his first play [...]
Dock Ellis, who famously pitched a no-hitter while on acid, passed away yesterday.
“Former major league pitcher Dock Ellis dies at 63,” Los Angeles Times
It’s a sad day for the semi-colon.
John Leonard passed away last night and I am deeply saddened by the news. I loved reading him. I don’t watch much television, but I always read his column in New York Magazine. The reviews he wrote there and in Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere [...]
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin
From the Associated Press:
[Mayor] Newsom ordered American flags at City Hall and the rainbow flag in the Castro District to be flown at half-staff.
Lesbian rights pioneer Del Martin dies at 87, San Francisco Chronicle
Hayes performing at Wattstax music festival in 1972, introduced by Jesse Jackson.
Hayes wanted to be a doctor, but got redirected when he won a talent contest in ninth grade by singing Nat King Cole’s “Looking Back.” –Associated Press
Isaac Hayes, 65, a Creator of ’70s Soul Style, Dies