Pure writing. Writing without a subject matter, writing just to write, writing that doesn't adhere to any prearranged conceptions concerning its origin, writing for the hell of it, writing because you've got nothing better to do, writing right now, at this very moment, and not waiting for the outside world to deliver a subject worthy of your available attention span, writing about itself, writing where you trust your instincts, sure in your talent, writing that takes time to catch up with your thoughts which refuse to stop, writing like a Clapton solo, like Keith Jarrett, a hint of jazz, total improv, writing wrongs, using established guidelines of communication to convey something new, that you've never written before, that you've never thought before, writing so distinct in its clarity of passion that it puts you in a dream state, refusing to adhere to any map with a big X saying dig here, wandering into unknown territory in search of treasure, never knowing what you'll dig up, finding fulfillment in the quest, very much avoiding the subject because there is none. Oh sure, I may stumble across something resembling a premise, but that doesn't mean I have to tell you about it. I can delegate everything to subtext, refusing to acknowledge the point, making you work for it so it'll mean more, deliberately leaving out what I'm trying to make obvious, because I can't help it, I've got to type, even though it's not a novel, not journalism, not a memoir, not anything but a train of thought without even the slightest potential for remuneration, writing specifically because no one's paying me to do it, because it feels good to pound the keys, because of the tenuous connection between brain and hand and computer and internet to another computer and brain, delivering a message, passing it along, whatever it may turn out to be. I used to know what I was going to write about before I actually started writing until I discovered an inconvenient quote by Hemingway that brought me to a standstill. He said "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." I'm a writer of prose. I know enough about what I'm writing about. Damned if it didn't look like Hemingway was talking right to me. I took him to mean that if the subject of your piece is "love conquers all," you never actually mention it. Instead you write a piece IN WHICH "love conquers all," and you write it so strongly that the reader will inevitably come to the right conclusion, that love does indeed conquer all, without your ever having to come right out and state it. In other words don't just bury the lead, cremate it. Make the headline ANYTHING BUT the lead. Make the headline the punchline that doesn't make any sense until you finish reading the article. A casual browser through your average news source is much more apt to read an article called "What's that Stink?" than one called "Mix-up at Garbage Processing Plant" because the former headline will never make any sense unless they actually read the article. Who says you have to think of the headline first. Make it the last. So after that goddam Hemingway quote, I write another way. Call it subterfuge by proxy. "Pick what you've got to say and then don't say it" has been my recent motto, going entirely against the constant flow of so-called journalism that always tells you exactly what it's talking about. I only talk about whatever it is I'm not talking about. I dance around the subject with impenetrable pirouettes, adding more and more subjects to be avoided that should more reasonably be openly stated. After all, it's a literary conceit, not a real iceberg. There's no reason to adhere to the actual physics of how icebergs float. Who says you've got to stick to burying seven-eighths? How about four-eighths? I figured 50/50 text/subtext is just about manageable. Fuck Hemingway's iceberg. How about picking five things you're not going to say, then pointing to only four of them, just to keep the reader guessing. Forgive me but I've been subconsciously applying this absurd rule to my writing, in novels, letters, and journalism, for longer than I can try to remember. Something just like what you're reading right now. I buried the lead so far I can't even remember what it looked like, but like I said, fuck Hemingway and the imaginary iceberg he's standing on. Some things deserve to be buried. Soon global warming will melt the polar icecaps and there will be no more Hemingway.
MD
Don't Take My Word For It
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."
- Pablo Picasso -
"A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them. They are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world." - Sigmund Freud -
"When you start writing you're 98% pure writer and 2% critic. After you've written for a length of time, you've learned a great deal about your craft, and you've become 2% pure writer and 98% critic. It's like writing uphill." - David Westheimer -
"Art is a moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television." - Rita Mae Brown -
"Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are." - Rod Serling -
"If Hitler's still alive, I hope he's out of town with a musical." - Larry Gelbart -
"A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer." - Karl Kraus -
"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." - Pablo Picasso -
"Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden." - Karl Kraus -
"To escape criticism - say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." - Elbert Hubbard -
"Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value." - Arthur Miller -
"I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand." - Chinese proverb -
"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." - Robert Frost -
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
- Pablo Picasso -
"I write because I hate. A lot. Hard." - William Gass -
"Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none." - Jules Renard -
"Fifty years old and still only a writer!" - F. Scott Fitzgerald -
"After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to write for posterity." - George Ade -
"Write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after." - Ernest Hemingway -
"Writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon one can neither resist nor understand." - George Orwell
"People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad." - Ralph Waldo Emerson -
"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it, that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don't have to worry about making it. They can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it...when others make it after you." - Picasso -
"The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work." - Janet Frame -
"Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is." - Anne Rice -
"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." - Edgar Allen Poe -
"It is the task of the scenarist to invent little pieces of business that are so characteristic and give so deep an insight into his creatures, that their personalities clearly and organically unfold before the eyes of the audience so that the latter feel that the actions of these people are contingent upon their characters, that there exists some kind of a logical fate, and that nothing is left to mere accident or coincidence." - Ernst Lubitsch -
"Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment thereafter." - Jessamyn West -
"Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth." - Pablo Picasso -
"Every great man has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography." - Oscar Wilde -
"A writer is a controlled schizophrenic." - Edward Albee -
"The first draft of everything is shit." - Ernest Hemingway -
"Television - a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done." - Fred Allen -
"When I am out of blue, I use red." - Picasso -
"You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart." - Fred Allen -
"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast." - Oscar Wilde -
"An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff." - Adlai E. Stevenson -
"The director is the most overrated artist in the world. He is the only artist who, with no talent whatsoever, can be a success for 50 years without his lack of talent ever being discovered." - Orson Welles -
"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves." - Don Marquis -
"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." - Thomas Mann -
"The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error." - William Jennings Bryan -
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."
- Pablo Picasso -
"The liberal claim that 'Clinton lied, nobody died' was proven false today when Ken Gyro, a 16 year old student at Grover Cleveland High School in Cincinnati, was blown to death by his biology teacher, Cynthia Fathers, an avowed Democrat."
kingubu: Grassroots Media: Help Make This Anti-Torture Video Go Viral (Update: ITS WORKING!) (dailykos.com)
Whatever the Democratic leadership may or may not have planned to put a stop to the despicable McCain Torture Compromise I could not look myself in the eye without trying to do something, however small, to stand up for what I believe is right. The following anti-torture video (linked below the flip) is that small something.
Video: Osama bin Forgotten (onegoodmove.org)
Bush (2002): "Not That Concerned" About Bin Laden. In a news conference, President Bush was asked about Osama bin Laden. "I don't know where he is. I-I'll repeat what I said. I am truly not that concerned about him." [White House Press Conference, 3/13/02]
Words by Leonard Cohen (telegraph.co.uk)
Leonard Cohen -- described by Prince Charles as 'wonderful' and Bono as 'our Byron' -- has published his first book of poems for 20 years. Tom Payne introduces an 'awe-inspiring' selection.
Leo Benedictus: The eBay lots that got away (guardian.co.uk)
The world's media reacted with surprise this week to the news that three-year-old Jack Neal had taken the opportunity, when his eBay-using mother's back was turned, to purchase a pink Nissan Figaro for £9,000. Yet this is far from the most remarkable auction in the site's history. Here are some of the great eBay sales that you may have missed:
'I used to Google my name to see what came up -- it hurt' (arts.guardian.co.uk)
He was one of the original brat-packers whose films defined the 80s. Then Emilio Estevez's career dived and the tabloids attacked. As he returns with an Oscar-tipped movie about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, he tells Geoffrey Macnab about the good times and the bad.
Roger Ebert: "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967; A Great Movie)
"Bonnie and Clyde" is a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life.
I had just seen a replay of Bill Clinton Skewering Chris Wallace on "FOX News Sunday" concerning his administrations handling of Bin Ladin and then I saw the President of Pakistan, Perv Musharraf being interviewed on "60 Minutes" by Steve Croft and saying after 9/11 the US told him that they would "Bomb him back to the Stone Age" if he didn't cooperate with getting Bin Ladin….I had had my fill of politics….I needed some innocent escape…….
Thank God for TCM….tonight…never before seen on cable TV (I had gotten a hot tip from "Mick LaSalle" (S.F. Chronicle movie reviewer) that the 1925 (pre Hollywood code) Black and White Silent classic "Lady of the Night" starring a 22 year old Norma Shearer would be premiering at 9 o'clock….Thank God for TCM !!!!
Oh the joy of a Silent Movie after all the political harangue and TV spots for California Attorney General and California Governor and even …."POMBO"…..
Oh the joy of being able to study the nuances in the beautiful face of Norma Shearer…..without dissonance and any verbal interruption…..you begin to notice the incredible lighting, make up, hair and wardrobe…..and direction from Monta Bell (who happened to be sleeping with his lovely young starlet)…..
"Lady of the Night" is a classic "Rich Girl…Poor Girl" story with a twist….Florence, the wealthy Society Debutante, is played by Norma Shearer….Molly, the "other side of the tracks" gangster's girl friend, is also played by Norma Shearer and they both think they're in love with the same gentleman….there is also a classic cameo in this movie where Florence and Molly are in the same scene and the character who was playing Molly was a stand in....an up and coming actress with a very similar face….it is Joan Crawford (Lucille Le Sueur) with all the same hair and make up as Norma……
The film print that I viewed last night had an odd addition to its black and whiteness….someone added a blue color wash to some of the scenes with Florence and they added a sepia tone wash to some of the scenes with Molly…hmmm….I think it worked……(is this what someone call 2 strip technocolor ?)
THE STORY:
Molly, who is hanging out with a small time criminal named "Chunky" Dunn, meets an inventor named David at a night club. David is trying sell his invention and needs an investor….when he gets connected with the banker, he finds out she has a daughter named Florence who is a quite interested in him…..what ensues is a love triangle with Rich girl Florence and Poor girl Molly vying for David's affections…while Chunky keeps looking like a fool…..The ending is a bit of a twist with an unexpected and yet charming conclusion…..a little like "they all lived happily ever after" !
You can't miss Molly's amazing egret feather hat over her wild 20's hair do!
Purple Gene gives "Lady of the Night" 9 wonderful and wild roaring twenties dance kicks out of 10 for reminding me of the classic beauty of early American cinema.
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'Survivor: Cook Islands', followed by a FRESH'CSI: The Original One', then a FRESH'Shark'.
Scheduled on a FRESHDave are Dane Cook and Monica.
Scheduled on a FRESHCraig are Billy Connolly, Michael Ian Black, and M. Ward.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'Earl', followed by a FRESH'The Office', then a FRESH'Deal Or No Deal', followed by a FRESH'ER'.
Scheduled on a FRESHLeno are Ashton Kutcher, Jenna Fischer, and Amos Lee.
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are John Stamos, Amy Poehler, and Nigella Lawson.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson Daly are Jon Heder, and Living Things.
ABC starts the night with the SERIES PREMIERE'Ugly Betty', followed by a FRESHGrey's Anatomy', then a FRESH Six Degrees'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Evangeline Lilly, Anthony Anderson, and Ludacris.
The CW offers the SEASON PREMIERE'Smallville', followed by the SEASON PREMIERE'Supernatural'.
Faux has a FRESH'Til Death', followed by a RERUN'Til Death', then a FRESH'Celebrity Duets'.
MY has a FRESH'Desire', followed by a FRESH'Fashion House'.
A&E has 'Crossing Jordan', 'CSI: The 2nd One', followed by a FRESH'The First 48', and a FRESH'Dallas SWAT'.
AMC offers the movie 'Hoodlum', followed by the movie 'Jaws', then the movie 'Jaws 2'.
BBC -
[2:00 pm] As Time Goes By - Episode 3;
[2:40 pm] Are You Being Served - The Old Order Changes;
[3:20 pm] Keeping Up Appearances - Episode 9;
[4:00 pm] The Avengers - All Done With Mirrors;
[5:00 pm] Footballers Wives - Episode 4;
[6:00 pm] BBC World News;
[6:30 pm] Cash in the Attic - Mitchell;
[7:00 pm] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 4;
[8:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 9;
[8:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 6;
[9:00 pm] Murder City - Ep 1 Wives and Lovers;
[10:30 pm] Crimefighters - Ep 1 Under the Influence;
[11:00 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 10;
[11:30 pm] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 7;
[12:00 am] The Benny Hill Show - Episode 5;
[1:00 am] Murder City - Ep 1 Wives and Lovers;
[2:30 am] Crimefighters - Ep 1 Under the Influence;
[3:00 am] Monarch of the Glen - Episode 4;
[4:00 am] Jonathan Creek - The Seer of the Sands;
[5:00 am] Murder in Suburbia - Episode 4;
[6:00 am] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Inside The Actors Studio', 'Cirque du Soleil: Corteo', and 'Cirque du Soleil: Varekai'.
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', last night's 'Jon Stewart', last night's 'Colbert Report', 'Mind Of Mencia', 'South Park', another 'South Park', and another 'Mind Of Mencia'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJon Stewart is Jim McGreevey.
Scheduled on a FRESHColbert Report is Steve Wozniak.
History has 'Non-Lethal Weapons', 'Where Did It Come From?', 'Decoding The Past', and 'American Eats'.
IFC -
[07:25 AM] The Secret Agent;
[09:05 AM] Digging To China;
[10:45 AM] At the IFC Center #17;
[11:15 AM] Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'que Tu Lo Sepas!;
[12:45 PM] The Importance of Being Earnest;
[02:25 PM] The Secret Agent;
[04:05 PM] Digging To China;
[05:45 PM] Secrets & Lies;
[08:15 PM] Magnolia;
[11:30 PM] Samurai 7 Episode #25: The Last Battle;
[12:00 AM] Black Sunday;
[01:30 AM] Murder By Numbers;
[02:30 AM] Samurai 7 Episode #25: The Last Battle;
[03:00 AM] Black Sunday;
[04:30 AM] Magnolia;
[05:35 AM] Garage Days. (ALL TIMES EDT)
SciFi has the movie 'Post Impact', followed by the movie 'The Day After'.
Sundance -
[06:00 AM] Stealing The Fire;
[07:45 AM] The Talent Given Us;
[09:30 AM] In Short: Israel 2;
[10:30 AM] Dust to Dust: The Health Effects of 9/11;
[11:30 AM] September 11;
[01:45 PM] Keep Not Silent;
[02:45 PM] Forty Shades of Blue;
[04:35 PM] Wilbur (Wants to Kill Himself);
[06:30 PM] K directed by Shoja Azari;
[08:00 PM] Signe Chanel: Episode 4: Sleepless Nights;
[08:30 PM] Godly Boyish;
[09:00 PM] House of Boateng: Episode 7;
[09:30 PM] The Nominees: The Nominees: Episode 4;
[10:00 PM] September 11;
[12:10 AM] El Inmortal;
[01:30 AM] Signe Chanel: Episode 4: Sleepless Nights;
[02:00 AM] House of Boateng: Episode 7;
[02:30 AM] Bad Guy;
[04:15 AM] Slam. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel wears a Clay Aiken shirt as he holds a sign for the singer during an appearance at the Virgin Megastore for the release of his latest CD, 'A Thousand Different Ways,' Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
Photo by Lisa Rose
Fox News chief propagandist Roger Ailes says former President Clinton's response to Chris Wallace's question about going after Osama bin Laden represents "an assault on all journalists."
The liberal media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, which has repeatedly criticized Fox News Channel for favoring Republican and conservative points of view, said it could see why Clinton got frustrated. Steve Rendell, FAIR senior media analyst, said it appeared Wallace was trying to cut off Clinton's answer.
"I would dismiss Roger Ailes' complaint as simply whining in an attempt to make Fox News appear the victim in this fight," Rendell said.
The Dalai Lama said Tuesday that violence in Iraq has cost too many lives and soured his view of the U.S.-led war.
The Tibetan spiritual leader initially reserved judgment on the conflict, saying it would only become clear with time whether the invasion was a good idea.
He would not comment directly on the furor aroused in the Muslim world after recent remarks about Islam by Pope Benedict XVI, but the Dalai Lama warned against the misuse of religion to foment social divisions.
"Mischievous people often use religious faith for their own interests and create conflict," he said. "We have to look at the real message of all these traditions."
In this handout photo provided by Warner Bros, actor Jack Nicholson, left, and director Martin Scorsese arrive at the premiere of the film 'The Departed' in New York on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006.
Photo by Dave Allocca
One week after his work was cited by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, demand for Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival" remains strong.
The book, first published in 2003, soon topped the best seller list of Amazon.com, and publisher Henry Holt last week announced a new printing of 25,000. On Wednesday, with Chomsky at No. 2 on Amazon, another 25,000 paperback copies were commissioned.
"Across every account, we are seeing a dramatic increase in sales. Demand is not slowing down," Holt publicist Tara Kennedy said Wednesday.
An unpublished Robert Frost poem, a tribute to a friend killed during World War I, has been rediscovered and will appear next week in the fall issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, the University of Virginia announced Wednesday.
"War Thoughts at Home" first emerged in 1918 when Frost inscribed it in a copy of "North of Boston," his second collection. The poem was not seen again until a graduate student at the University of Virginia, Robert Stilling, recently spotted "War Thoughts" while looking through some Frost papers.
A 1947 letter, by Frost's friend, Frederick Melcher, referred to an "unpublished poem about the war which has not been reprinted," but had been handwritten inside one copy of "North of Boston." That book, Stilling soon learned, was part of the university's Frost collection.
"There, inscribed by Frost, was a poem that began with a `flurry of bird war' and ended with a train of sheds laying `dead on a side track,'" Stilling writes. Melcher was a longtime friend and supporter of Frost's who became head of Publishers Weekly and helped establish the Newbery and Caldecott medals for children's literature.
As teenagers in northern Minnesota in the late 1950s, Ric Kangas and Bobby Zimmerman would spend hours playing guitar and singing. During one of those sessions, Zimmerman asked his friend to record it.
Kangas had no idea he was recording the man who would soon become Bob Dylan. Years later, he came across the tape, which features Dylan singing three songs and playing guitar on another.
In early October, Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas will offer the tape at auction. Kangas said one Dylan expert appraised the tape at about $100,000, but Kangas has no idea if it will fetch that much.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against "self-censorship out of fear" on Wednesday, a day after a leading Berlin opera house decided not stage a production because of concerns it could provoke Islamic ire.
German leaders widely condemned the Deutsche Oper's decision not to put on a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" with a scene featuring the severed heads of Jesus, Buddha and the Prophet Muhammad, after Berlin security officials said they could not guarantee the opera house's security in the event of violent protests.
"We must be careful that we do not increasingly shy away out of fear of violent radicals," Merkel told the Hannover Neue Presse. "Self-censorship out of fear is not tolerable."
Supermodel Naomi Campbell, accused of assaulting her maid with a cell phone, failed to show up in court Wednesday, puzzling the judge who asked for but never got a reason for her absence.
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge James Gibbon responded by issuing a bench warrant for Campbell's arrest, but then decided not to put it into effect after Campbell's attorney explained that he and the prosecutor had an agreement.
Defense attorney David Breitbart told Gibbon the prosecutor knew Campbell was going to be absent and had agreed not to seek her arrest. Gibbon said he would stay the warrant - not put it into effect - until the next court date, Nov. 15.
Traffic charges against Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje of ABC's "Lost" were dropped after defense attorneys proved he has a driver's license.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who plays Mr. Eko on the drama series, was charged with driving without a license and disobeying a police officer after he was taken into custody Sept. 2 in Waikiki.
Following his arrest, Akinnuoye-Agbaje spent about six hours in jail before being released on $500 bail.
An ostrich chick tries to leave its shell in a hatchery in Villa de Leyva September 24, 2006. Colombia is looking to expand its fledgling ostrich business because the industry takes advantage of every part of the bird from their meat and eggs for food to their skin for leather articles and their feathers for ornamental and cleaning articles.
Photo by Daniel Munoz
As this Boston suburb gets ready for its 11th annual Horatio Alger Street Fair, town leaders are considering dropping Horatio Alger's name from the festival next year because of allegations of pedophilia against the 19th-century children's author.
In the 1860s, Alger quietly resigned as a Unitarian minister at a church on Cape Cod after he was accused of assaulting two boys - an incident that is old news to literary scholars but came as a surprise to some civic leaders in Marlborough.
Marlborough officials said it is too late to change the name of this year's Oct. 1 festival because the promotional materials are already printed, but Mayor Nancy Stevens plans to push for a new name next year, her spokeswoman said.
U.S. actor David Hasselhoff blows kisses for the photographers prior to the UK premiere of his new film 'Click', in central London, late Wednesday Sept. 27, 2006.
Photo by Lefteris Pitarakis
The man who co-wrote the song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" had the unsettling experience this week of reading his own obituary - the result of an impostor who went through life claiming to be the author of the 1960s smash hit.
On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported on the death of a 68-year-old man named Paul Van Valkenburgh of Ormond Beach, Fla., who claimed to have written the song under the name Paul Vance. The story cited the man's wife as the source for that claim.
But the music industry's real Paul Vance, a 76-year-old man from Coral Springs, Fla., is alive and well, and says the other Paul Vance appears to have made the whole thing up.
The Paul Vance who wrote the songs - and provided proof with royalty payments he is still receiving for the hit - said he has been inundated with calls from people who think he died. An owner of racehorses, Vance said two of his horses were scratched from races Wednesday because people thought he had died.
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, who was convicted and later pardoned of being World War II propagandist "Tokyo Rose," died Tuesday of natural causes, said her nephew, William Toguri. She was 90.
Tokyo Rose was the name given by soldiers to a female radio broadcaster responsible for anti-American transmissions intended to demoralize soldiers fighting in the Pacific theater. D'Aquino was the only U.S. citizen identified among the potential suspects.
In 1949, she became the seventh person to be convicted of treason in American history and served six years in prison. But doubts about her possible role as Tokyo Rose later surfaced and she was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1977.
D'Aquino had recently graduated from UCLA and was visiting relatives in Japan when she became trapped in the country at the beginning of World War II, according to a statement Tuesday from a Toguri family spokeswoman, Barbara Trembley.
D'Aquino began working odd jobs to support herself while trying to find a way out of the country. That led to her work on a Japanese propaganda radio show manned by Allied prisoners called "Zero Hour," the statement said.
D'Aquino spent the years following her release from prison living a quiet life on Chicago's North Side.
Ralph Story, a television and radio broadcaster for three decades and host of the hugely popular quiz show "The $64,000 Challenge" in the 1950s, has died. He was 86.
Born Ralph Bernard Snyder in Kalamazoo, Mich., he started his broadcasting career in the late 1940s after serving as an Army Air Corps flight instructor and fighter pilot during World War II.
Snyder got his big break in broadcasting 1948 when he was hired to host and direct an early morning show on KNX radio in Los Angeles. At the suggestion of the station's managers, he changed his name to Ralph Story.
Story later moved into network television, where in 1956 he began hosting the hugely popular quiz show "The $64,000 Challenge." The CBS show was canceled in 1958 while several networks were embroiled in allegations that popular contestants were supplied with answers in advance.
Story, who was not implicated in the scandal, returned to local broadcasting in 1960. He anchored a radio news show on KNX and later joined "The Big News," one of the nation's first hour-long local TV newscasts. His regular feature, "Human Predicament," about people caught in unusual events and situations, became a popular segment. It developed into a local newsmagazine show about the people and places of Los Angeles called "Ralph Story's Los Angeles," which aired for six years.
In the mid-1980s, Story retired and moved with his third wife, Diana, to Santa Barbara County's wine region where they operated an art gallery in Los Olivos. He volunteered for numerous civic groups, serving as a fundraiser for public television stations, narrator for the Hollywood Bowl and judge of the Rose Parade.
Besides his wife Diana, Story is survived by his son, Bradley Snyder.
Born Jan. 4, 1947, in Birmingham, Ala., he was the second son of his famous father. His mother was a former Miss Alabama and singer, Betty Jane Rase, who performed as B.J. Baker.
Rooney suffered from childhood polio that left him paralyzed for two years but he recovered. He was chosen to be one of the original 1955 Mouseketeers for "The Mickey Mouse Club" but never appeared on the show because he was fired for getting into mischief in the Disney paint shop.
His later career included parts in movies such as "Riot on Sunset Strip." He also appeared on TV shows ranging from "Dr. Kildare" to "Bewitched," and commercials and did voice-over work for cartoons.
Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Albert made his film debut at 14. He played a runaway who comes across a disturbed Civil War veteran, played by Anthony Perkins, in the 1965 drama "The Fool Killer."Albert attended Oxford University and studied psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 1972, he appeared in "Butterflies Are Free," playing a blind attorney who attempted to break free from his overly protective mother. The role earned him a Golden Globe as most promising male newcomer.
Albert also was passionate about preserving the environment, serving on both the California Coastal Commission and the state's Native American Heritage Commission. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy named a trail in his honor earlier this year.
Albert spent the last 10 years caring for his father, Eddie Albert, who died in 2005 at 99.
Edward Albert is survived by his wife, actress Kate Woodville; their daughter, Thais; and his sister, Maria Zucht.
A tiger cub is seen at a private zoo in Di An District, in the southern province of Binh Duong, 40 km (25 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh City, September 14, 2006. At the private zoo of a self-described Vietnamese conservationist, beer brewery owner Ngo Duy Tan, adult tigers prowl around an enclosure of grass and rocks, playfully paw at each other or snatch with their sharp teeth at live chickens being thrown to them for lunch. Tan announced in August that he had successfully bred tiger cubs in his compound at Di An.
Photo by Kham
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