'Prisoner' actor Patrick McGoohan dies in LA – Yahoo News

LOS ANGELES – Patrick McGoohan, the Emmy-winning actor who created and starred in the cult classic television show “The Prisoner,” has died. He was 80. McGoohan died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a short illness, his son-in-law, film producer Cleve Landsberg, said. McGoohan won two Emmys for his work on the Peter Falk detective drama […]

Oakland cop shoots cuffed prone suspect…on video

I am not an anti-police sort of person. I have a couple of friends who are police and, by large, they and their colleagues do as best they can in a thankless, difficult and probably traumatizing job. I think 95% or more of policework happens within boundaries which are tolerable by society. But then you […]

Celebrity trauma

My RSS feed of entertainment news is full of variations on the same headline: “John Travolta is heartbroken over son’s death, sources say”. As opposed to…? “John Travolta dancing the fucking tarantella over son’s death”? “John Travolta staging massive party to celebrate death of child, hires Katy Perry and Perez Hilton to MC”? “Travolta’s son […]

Cyberpunk in 1996

and, via David Pescovitz over at BoingBoing, here’s a Bay Area TV show called “Net Cafe” episode featuring my friends St. Jude and R.U. Sirius. I was probably already hanging around at this point. It’s nice to see Jude, who died a few years ago. I miss her. And yes, this is all very quaint […]

Bettie Page, Dead Since 1957 < Pop Past | PopMatters

This excellent article pretty much sums up my thoughts on the late Betty Page. It’s a frank examination of her life and her legacy. Whereas Borges was a writer and Monroe was an actress, Page was a body—as pure an object as the pornographer can manage. Page was never really asked to act (unless cat […]