Gee. Shelley Berman was probably the first standup comedians I ever heard â at age 6. My parents bought his LP âInside Shelley Bermanâ and I used to play it over and over (to their dismay). At first, there was little that I understood, but over the years I got it more and more. His take on airline travel back then was hilarious. And what a voice he had!
Harry Dean Stanton, headinâ north at 110 per, aged 91
Last words: âGoddamit! Things ainât workinâ out for me today!â
(clip NSFW, itâs from âRepo Manâ)
Aw man. I thought heâd beat the mortality rap for sure.
obit.
Sadly repeating the falsehood that he may have been the first person to write a novel on a word processor. Len Deighton beat him to it by several years with Bomber.
Sadly?
Wouldnât go that far. (Perhaps you could go so far as to write a letter to the times correcting the record.)
Jerry Pournelleâs response
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/early-days-of-word-processing/
Be wary of clicking on that Joss Whedon interview link, it has malicious javascript,.
And slateâs article about Lee Deighton.
It depends what is meant by word processor.
(quoting Pournelle)
As to the origins of word processing, the main contenders in the 1978-1981 era were WANG dedicated word processors and S-100 computers running the CP/M operating system. Barry Longyear wrote his SF works on a Wang, and Asimovâs published an article by Longyear and me in the form of a disputation. I contended that it was better to use a general purpose computer rather than a dedicated word processor. Events proved me right.
I did find this bit:
This unit sold in the 1960s for $10,000. Thatâs obviously quite a lot of money, and IBM used the term word processing as a marketing device. And Deighton was the first and one of the very few individuals who had one in his home. The real market, of course, was the business world.
Meyer: Does that mean Deighton dictated the novel?
Kirschenbaum: He had a regular Selectric that he used, then he would hand his drafts to Ellenor Handley, the secretary. She would retype them on the MT/ST, and do all of the subsequent editing, revisions, correcting there, because it made it so easy to do that revising and to produce clean copy on demand.
what I think Pournelle was referring to was his process of sitting down at a computer, and composing a novel, without relying on a secretary. Itâs the process that weâd recognize today. (Or perhap think weâd recognize. Software is still trying to emulate traditional writing tools like the corkboard.)
One of the best bits from The Martian Chronicles:
Hugh Hefner, age 91
American Icon and Playboy Founder, Hugh M. Hefner passed away today. He was 91. #RIPHef pic.twitter.com/tCLa2iNXa4
â Playboy (@Playboy) September 28, 2017
Cum and gone.
The blondest funeral ever.
Remove the blue pill and heâs just gone.
I dreamed I saw the ghost of John Candy reposing in an easy chair and I stood over him at the back of the chair and moaned âI miss you so very much, John. Youâve been gone a long time but you went too soon. I still miss you.â Everyone else (there were about five) saw the ghost, one of us seemed not to at first, and murmured âJohn Candy! Good to see you! We miss you. Why did you have to leave us?â As more of us spoke to the ghost the one who remarked âoh! I see who youâre talking to! John Candy!â
This morning on the radio they kept talking about how Playboy introduced generations of young people into sex. I wanted to stop my car, dive into the tuner, swim across the airwaves and tell the announcers, âNo, it introduced them to PORN. Not the same thing.â
Not necessarily great porn either.
as in all things, he and his legacy are both complicated.