Adam West, star of the 1960s TV Batman and later a voice actor playing a lunatic version of himself as Mayor Adam West on Family Guy, has died at age 88.
Though far from my favorite version of the character, the TV Batman was silly fun.
Mainly this post is just an excuse to throw up a few random videos:
Howard Waldrop called to inform me that SF writer Ed Bryant has died at age 71. This is a shame but not a surprise, as Ed had been ailing for many years.
Ed was in the category of “friends you only see once or twice a year.” He was a regular Armadillocon attendee in the early days, and I saw him read “A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned” before it appeared in Skipp & Spector’s The Book of the Dead. He was also an astute reviewer in the field for many years.
He will be missed.
I will update this when I have a suitable link to a proper obituary.
In way of remembrance, here’s Joan jett covering the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show (“Love is All Around”) live on Letterman.
It was either that or the entirety of the “It May look Like A Walnut” episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show…
William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, has died at age 89.
I remember about a quarter of a century ago, I finished one book before bedtime, and went “I know! I’ll read the first chapter of The Exorcist and then go to sleep.”
At 3:30 AM I finished the book. It was that good. William Friedkin’s very faithful movie adaptation was also great (indeed, arguably the best horror movie of all time), but it helped that he had great source material to start with.
Musician Greg Lake, of Emerson, Lake and Palmer and King Crimson fame, has died.
In my youth I drove my parent’s old 8-track equipped Dodge Monaco, with The Best of Emerson Lake and Palmer one of the few 8-track albums I possessed and thus in very heavy rotation. (Among the annoyances: All but 10 seconds of “Tiger in a Spotlight” was on one track, and then a KERTHUNK for the very end.) I never saw one of their elaborate live shows, but I did had tickets for the Austin leg of the Emerson Lake and Powell tour before it was cancelled.
Here’s the obligatory Emerson, Lake and Palmer track:
Alas, there does not seem to be a full version of the original “In the Court of the Crimson King” on YouTube, or that would be here as well…
Gene Wilder has died at age 83 of Alzheimer’s.
He was one of his generation’s great comic actors, with a natural gift for underplaying a straight man and perfect deadpan delivery, and was in some of the greatest comedies of the 1970s.
Blazing Saddles, of course:
And who can forget the freaky boat ride from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:
And here’s an animated overview of his life in his own words:
Former Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali has died at age 74.
As the young Cassius Clay, Ali combined the power of a heavyweight with the speed of a middleweight. He was so good for so long that he earned his self-anointed title as The Greatest of All Time.
Growing up I actually saw Ali box on TV, back when they still showed boxing on broadcast TV. Alas, Ali was far past his prime when I saw him lose to Leon Spinks.
The late fights took a serious toll on Ali, eventually robbing him of his previously celebrated eloquence, and he became a sad example of a great fighter who stayed in the ring too long.
Rest in Peace.
Musician Prince, AKA Prince Rogers Nelson, AKA The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, AKA 
is dead at age 57.
Imagine there’s an embedded video of “Paisley Park” here, since Prince was evidently extra diligent in keeping his music off the Internet…
Keith Emerson, the keyboardist for Emerson, Lake and Palmer, has died at age 71.
Along with Rick Wakeman and Tony Banks, Emerson was one of the great progressive rock keyboardists, and was one of the first players brave (or foolhardy) enough to take the massive, temperamental modular Moog synthesizer on the road.
(Note the shout-out to everyone’s favorite rock documentary…)
Here’s more on Emerson’s modular Moog for the analog hardcore:
Their song “Lucky Man” ends with Emerson’s classic Moog solo:
Here he is doing “America” from West Side Story on David Letterman:
In 2011, Emerson actually let keyboardist Rachel Flowers borrow his modular Moog to play a cover of ELP’s “Trilogy”:
Now that the New York Times has finally bestirred itself to publish a David Hartwell obituary, it offers me a chance to throw up a few more Hartwell-related links from:
I would have had this up earlier, but I was distracted by shiny objects. But Dwight’s post jogged my memory…