Boldly Gone

Or

He Is Not Spock

 

Or

He's Dead Jim

 

Or

In Search of… My Pulse

 

Or

To Boldly Go

(Props to Patrick)

 

Or

For Whom William Bell Tolls

(Don, going the long way in the surrey for this one)

Leonard Nimoy, serenader of hobbits, photographer of fat naked women, driver of an unpaid-for-cab ride for JFK, has stopped living long and prospering, dying of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the age of 83. The 2012 honorary degree recipient from Boston University (60 years after having the good sense to drop out of Boston College) was a working actor with dozens of bit parts to his credit before donning silly pointed ears for a sci-fi pilot called The Cage. Original captain Jeffrey Hunter didn’t have the right stuff and got pon farred when the show went to series as Star Trek with William Shatner stepping into the starring role. (As an aside, Hunter died as a result of an accident on the set of a film in 1969. If not for that casting decision, he might still be alive, or he could have still done that film, and his death may have pre-empted the films and decades of reboots and thousands of dorks may have left their parents’ basements.) What didn’t change through 3 years on the original series, an animated series, 8 movies, several episodes of the sequel series, and 3 video game was Nimoy stealing the show as logical Vulcan First Officer Mr. Spock, raising an eyebrow at the antics of walking id James T. Kirk and handling confrontation with a nerve pinch rather than a classic Kirk disarm. In creating one of the most iconic characters in TV history, Nimoy scored 3 straight nominations for Best Supporting Actor, which given the Emmy voters’ attitude toward anything outside standard dramas and sitcoms is truly the stuff of science fiction. Later roles included master of disguise Paris on Mission: Impossible, the psychiatrist on the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, host of paranormal exploration series In Search Of…, a real-life Stonecutter in trying to make Steve Gutenberg a star as the director of Three Men and a Baby, Walter Bishop’s lab partner and brain curator Dr. William Bell on Fringe (though in the alternate timeline, Nimoy may still be alive), a cameo where he gets to share his enthusiasm for the Monorail on The Simpsons and as the voice of a vintage Mr. Spock action figure on The Big Bang Theory because every male role model in Sheldon’s life has to die.

No Mayor, No Less

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Or

What's all the Hub-bub, Bub?

Thomas Menino, the longest serving mayor of the greatest city in America, has died of cancer at the age of 71. The accidental mayor took office in 1993 when Ray Flynn was named Ambassador to the Vatican and Menino, as President of Boston City Council, automatically ascended to the throne. He then steamrolled through 5 landslide re-elections. Though not a grand visionary, no one loved the city more, and he proudly called himself a “people-loving urban mechanic” as devoted to fixing the little things like potholes and parking that can make city life irritating as to recruiting new business to the city. Financially and fundamentally, the city flourished under his reign. After ascending to the mayor’s office, he promised to appear on Neighborhood Network News, a shitty low-rent community affairs TV show populated by two professionals and an ever-changing coterie of inept interns, once a month as long as he was mayor. I don’t know how long he kept that promise, but for the two years I was one of those interns, once a month the affable, if somewhat unintelligible, mayor good-naturedly endured cameramen moving at the wrong time and producers forgetting to hit record to talk about local issues to the 4 people tuning in. Other highlights of his tenure included telling architecture-obsessed Boston University President John Silber that the façade of a hotel the university had built was too ugly and had to be replaced, boycotting Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade for its ban on LGBT involvement while marching in the city’s Gay Pride Parade, and after leaving the mayor’s office, teaching Political Science at BU. Last year, on the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, he left the hospital against his doctor’s advice to attend the first press conference and coordinate search efforts, then rose out of his wheelchair, the pulpit obscuring his catheter, 3 days later at an interfaith service to comfort his beloved city. 

Higher Deaducation

(Props to Greg, who informed me of this passing, fittingly enough while I was on Long Island, point of origin of so many Boston University scholars)

Or
You Kant Take It With You
John Silber, scourge of the intellectually unrigorous, has died of kidney failure at the age of 86. He led the transformation of Boston University from a commuter school almost $9 million in debt in 1971 when he arrived to a top academic research institution and the finest college in America’s finest college town* in his 25 years as President, 7 as Chancellor and 9 as President Emeritus. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a huge prick about it. In a 1977 piece, Nora Ephron called him “the meanest SOB on campus.” The faculty twice voted for his removal by wide majorities. He toyed with the idea of taking out life insurance policies on students as a potential revenue source. He also attracted Nobel laureates Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow and Derek Walcott and future US poet laureate Robert Pinsky to the BU faculty. In 1990, he went on sabbatical to try to win the governorship of Massachusetts. With his blunt assessments of the state’s problems, which came to be known as “Silber Shockers,” he held a 9-point lead a week before Election Day when he exploded at an interviewer who asked a stupid, if innocuous question during what should have been a puff profile. He ended up losing to Bill Weld by 4%. He returned to the university as pleasant, uncompromising and well compensated as ever.

* Shut up, Harvard and MIT are in Cambridge 

Roamin' no more

(Kudos to Monty)

Or

Totes Cadev

(Additional accolades for Monty)

Roman Totenberg, the greatest Polish violinist ever, has died at the age of 101. The former Boston University professor of music and Head of the String Department also was the father of NPR legal affairs doyenne (and giveaway tote bag namesake) Nina Totenberg and federal district court judge Amy Totenberg.

Bus-ted

Kevin H. White, the Boston mayor who launched the most successful PBS pledge drive ever, has died at the age of 82. A four-term mayor of Boston from 1968 to 1984, the Democrat was among the last of the big-city liberal mayors, and helped beat back at times violent public outrage over court-ordered busing to desegregate schools by stepping up police protection to restore order. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, White pressed the local PBS affiliate to televise a James Brown concert scheduled that evening in Boston Garden. While riots ripped through many inner cities, Boston remained quiet as the populace tuned in to hear Brown call White “a swinging cat.” White could have been a concert promoter, securing the release of The Rolling Stones from the Rhode Island State Police so they could make a gig in Boston before the crowd turned violent. White gave generations of college students a place to take their visiting families by reopening Quincy Market as part of his economic revitalization efforts that prompted the comment “[Boston’s] not Camelot, but it’s not Cleveland either.” He nearly had the 1972 VP nomination, but his support for Ed Muskie came back to bite him, as it did so many others, and the nod briefly went to Crazy Tom Eagleton, and then Sargent Shriver. Corruption allegations dogged many in his administration, but nothing was ever directly tied to White, who emerged largely unscathed to become the director of the Institute for Political Communication at Boston University.

He Lies… in State

Or

Seamy Valley

Former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85 of complications from lung cancer, 3 months after he could have gone out a legend. Fittingly, he died on a Sunday, because we know how much he hated to inconvenience anyone on a Saturday. Terry Gilliam films had better endings than Paterno’s life. On Oct. 29, 2011, he won his 409th game to become the all-time winningest coach in Division I college football history. On Nov. 5, his long-time defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was revealed to be a pedophile in good standing, and that it had been reported to Paterno, and that he had essentially left a Post-it Note on his boss’ desk saying: “Jerry. Shower. Kids.” and forgotten about it. Then he got fired (by a phone call, the gutless bastards), got cancer, broke his hip and died. Prior to giving enabling a bad name, Paterno had established a football factory in the insignificant town of State College, Pennsylvania. Passing up a scholarship to Boston University School of Law, Paterno moved to Happy Valley in 1950 to become quarterbacks coach before taking over as head coach in 1966, where he implemented an offense as conservative as his horn-rimmed glasses, rolled up pants and white socks. In his record-setting 46-year career, he led 2 national champions, 5 unbeaten teams and finished in the top 5 11 other times, and made 37 bowl games, winning 24 of them – both records for any head coach. And doing so all the while with no recruiting scandals and with some of the highest graduation rates among major college programs.

Zinn's History
(Fist bump for Monty)
Or
The Right Breathes a Collective Sigh of Relief
(More Monty Missives)
Or
Silber triumphant!
(Greg curries favor with the one-armed bandit)

Or
CitiZinn Howard
(Joe M. joins the party)
Howard Zinn, historian and activist who opposed dictatorships established in Vietnam by the United States and at Boston University by John Silber, has died of a heart attack at the age of 87. Zinn’s best-known book, "A People's History of the United States," name checked by his neighbor Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, espoused the positions that Christopher Columbus was a genocidal madman, Theodore Roosevelt was a warmonger, Abraham Lincoln was racist and the Founding Fathers were slaveholders with no real interest in freedom. Instead, Zinn championed feminists, the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s. His antiestablishment leanings put him at odds with BU president Silber, and Zinn twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn accused Zinn of arson and cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe."

Parker for Mire

(More merit for Monty)

Or
Death in Paradise
Robert Brown Parker was found slumped at his desk, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray, a glass of 25-year-old Scotch left criminally abandoned, a blonde with legs that didn’t stop, but a heart that had looming nearby, the slightest hint of a smile dancing across her lips, as though she’d just watched Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Some of that may have been writer’s embellishment. Best remembered for his tough, witty Boston detective Spenser, “with an ‘S’ like the English poet,” the former Boston University undergrad, PhD and professor also found success with Paradise, Mass.-based police chief Jesse Stone and trendy, lovelorn PI Sunny Randall, intended to create an action franchise for Helen Hunt.

Names Escape Me, But I Never Forget a Fazio

Foge Fazio, former assistant football coach at Boston University, has died of leukemia at the age of 71. After the 1966 and 1967 seasons with the Terriers, he couldn’t keep a job, but had no problem finding the next one, moving on to Harvard (1968), Pitt (1969-1972), Cincinnati (1973-1976), back to Pitt (1977-1985), where as head coach from 1982-1985 he went to two bowl games, Notre Dame (1986-1987), the Atlanta Falcons, (1988-1989), New York Jets (1990-1994), Minnesota Vikings (1995-1998), Washington Redskins (2000), Cleveland Browns (2001-2002) as defensive coordinator of the only playoff team of the second incarnation of the Browns. Ironically that playoff game effectively ended Fazio’s career, as Cleveland proved worthy of the Browns name, choking up a 33-21 lead with 4 minutes remaining, with head coach Butch Davis taking the headset and calling the defensive signals himself. He had been the color broadcaster for Pitt until October of this year, when he stepped down due to illness. The team honored his memory by blowing leads of 38-24 in the 4th quarter and 44-38 with under 2 minutes left.

Cusick as a Dog

Fred Cusick, who did more in hockey than any other Northeastern hockey alum, has died at the age of 90, on the eve of his induction into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Broadcasters inducted prior to Cusick include Tom Bergeron, best known for evoking the emotion and import of getting punched in the groin, Bozo the Clown and hairdo Joyce Kulhawik. Good call guys. Between radio, television and cable, Cusick called Boston Bruins hockey for 45 years. He also called the first network NHL broadcast, for CBS in January 1957 and the first game in the history of the second incarnation of the American Football League, between the Denver Broncos and the Boston Patriots from Boston University’s Nickerson Field. The first American named to the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Broadcaster Wing in 1984, he came out of a brief retirement to spend 5 seasons as the home voice of the American Hockey League’s Lowell Lock Monsters.

Lit Fans Bid Bun Adieu

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It’s Rabbit Season

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Rabbit at Rest in Peace – Mark
(Meritorious mention for Mark)

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Rabbit Fur Coded
(Accolades for Phil)
John Updike, champion of the insignificant, chronicler of suburban adultery, ghost writer for Krusty the Clown’s memoir “Your Shoes Are Too Big to Kickbox God” and former Boston University professor, has met the little death that awaits athletes; he has died, of cancer at the age of 76, and has a lyric little band box all to himself. Best remembered for his 4 novels about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a middle class salesman who hates his job and his wife and whose life is traced across the major events of the century, Updike’s resume included 61 books and countless essays, short stories, poems and critiques, all written in a lyrical, detailed style. He also contributed The New Yorker’s best sports reporting, an essay on the baseball star Ted Williams’s last game, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” Early in his career, some suggested his Protestant faith kept him from receiving the Pulitzer, because God does not answer men of letters, but he eventually picked up a couple in 1982 and 1991.

Cold Hard Cash

(Props to Don for the headline and the heads up)
Scott Cashman, former goalie at Boston University who helped lead the team to the NCAA Frozen Four twice, helping to revive the program after two down years, has died of a heart attack at 39. Cashman was the 1989-90 Hockey East Rookie of the Year, three time team MVP, three time Eberly Award winner as outstanding goaltender in the Beanpot and in 2005 was inducted into both the Beanpot and Boston University Halls of Fame. After graduation, his pro career ended due to a spinal injury, but he still would have been the second best goalie wearing the Terriers red and white this season.

That's what you get for scheduling 8 a.m. classes

(Props to Jon)

Or
He’s Late, Far Too Early
Boston University professor, sportswriter and backyard hockey rink enthusiast Jack Falla has died at the age of 62. Having long since given up jocks for docs, I had fallen off his radar – a point embarrassingly brought home at a friend’s wedding a few years back – but his 8 a.m. classes – scheduled to weed out the weak – were among the few I looked forward to at BU, and the litany of tributes to sportswriters for whom he had been a mentor are testament to his influence as a professor. He loved sharing stories of the backyard hockey rink he had built – the Bacon Street Omni – which found its way into many classes, stories, books and even his recent novel. An inveterate name-dropper, he twice got to interview Wayne Gretzky, the second time getting to skate with the Great One in a passing drill. My favorite story, though, was when he visited the home of retired Hall of Fame goalie Gerry Cheevers, who had one of his trademark goalie masks, with stitches marking where pucks had hit, on display in the foyer. After Cheevers’ had answered the door and left to find Gerry, Falla was left alone with the mask. Unable to resist, he put it on, and as he turned to look at himself in the mirror, he found himself goalie masked face-to-face with Cheevers. Through it all, he was still a fan. Falla also was a stickler for punctuality, and one of his mantras was “If you’re on time, you’re late.” In his honor, I was not late for a meeting all week.

Kamel Went

Adrian Monk is screwed. Stanley Kamel, best known as Dr. Charles Kroger, over-matched psychiatrist for Tony Shaloub’s obsessive-compulsive, poly-phobic detective Adrian Monk, has died of a heart attack at the age of 65. The Boston University alum also played crooked psychiatrist Graham Lester on Murder One, pansy mob boss Tony Marchette on Beverly Hills, 90210, delusional engineer Kosinski who thought that he was the one responsible for the Enterprise achieving astronomical speeds, when actually an alien was taking the ship for a joy ride and Stanley, an incredibly boring flunky from the Commerce Department.

Hearseog

Or

The Adventures of Augie Funeral March

Or (The Monty act)

Saul Whimper

Or (In the Michelle portion of the program)

Henderson the Remains King

Or

Dangling Dead Man

Or

Pall Bellow

Saul Bellow, one of the most honored authors in American history, has died at the age of 89. Alternately praised as one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century or criticized for writing "a travelogue for the timid mind," Bellow instilled his intellectual curiosity and insight, wry and sometimes dark humor and Midwestern sensibility in his characters. Bellow is the only author to have won the National Book Award three times, in 1954 for "The Adventures of Augie March," in 1965 for "Herzog" and in 1971 for "Mr. Sammler's Planet." In 1976, he won the Pulitzer Prize, for "Humboldt's Gift," as well as the Nobel Prize in literature. He continued producing novels (and children – he leaves behind a 5-year-old daughter) through the end of his life and since 1993, he had taught a literature course at Boston University. This has been a rough month for Boston University, who lost former first lady Kathryn Silber and Dean ad nauseum George Mackechnie, who had been affiliated with the school since 1929, in March.

Star Crossed

Joyce Jillson, author of a nationally syndicated astrology column who read the stars to guide the Star Wars program for former movie star turned president Ronald Reagan and to guide the opening date for Star Wars in 1977, has been eclipsed at the age of 58. She also provided astrological forecasts for Ford Motor Co. and the Los Angeles Dodgers and claimed to have directed Reagan to the selection of George H. W. Bush as vice president, probably getting more out of a Boston University opera scholarship than anyone has a right to.

Holy Roller Crossed Off

(props to Chris)
Dan Allen, 48, former football coach for the likes of Holy Cross and Boston University, passed away from the effects of multiple chemical sensitivity. His success at BU - earning the team an unparalleled record of 11-0 in 1993 - can entirely be attributed to Rob Dougherty.
(Monty on special assignment)