Lena Horne, 92.

The incomparable Lena Horne, 1917-2010.

We've lost so many of the great interpreters of the American songbook that I fear we'll lose our connection to that great music. I hope one of the younger jazz singers takes up the mantle and keeps these wonderful old songs alive. Gays can't do it all by themselves, can we?

Traveling abroad.

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad. ~ Marcel Proust

Happy 44th birthday, Robin. I miss you.

Michael Jackson, 50.

I hope his troubled soul rests in peace.

These things happen in threes. Who's next?

Farrah Fawcett, 62.

Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with anal cancer today. Strange how she started out so vigorously in the 70s and then later in life she sort of lost her way. Her family seemed to unravel too, which couldn't have been easy. I'm glad her suffering has ended. Good night, Angel.

Blossom Dearie, 1924-2009

Bettie Page, 85.

From Yahoo News comes this sad report:

Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controverisal photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85. Page suffered a heart attack last week in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, said her agent, Mark Roesler. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia. "She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."

Wow. They just don't make 'em like that anymore.

Gus the fugly dog, 9.

I just don't know why this bothered me... I have no pets, though I can easily fall for the right dog. I just like the fact that this fugly pooch had his 15 minutes of fame.

A one-eyed, three-legged dog that won the title of world's ugliest pooch this summer has died.

The St. Petersburg Times in Florida reports that Gus, a Chinese crested dog, had cancer. He was 9.

Gus was rescued from a bad home and went on to win the annual World's Ugliest Dog contest at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in northern California. Gus came from humble origins. According to the fair, his adopted family in Gulfport, Fla., rescued him after learning he was being kept in a crate inside someone's garage. He had one leg amputated because of a skin tumor and lost an eye in a cat fight.

Gus' owner had said the prize money from the contest would be put toward the dog's radiation treatment.

Madeline Dunham, 86.

Mrs. Dunham (seen here with her husband and Obama) passed away peacefully, just hours before the election. How terrible that Sen. Obama's grandmother didn't live to see him elected as President of the United States. I'm sure it's a terribly difficult time for the Obama family right now. I'm happy for Obama that he at least had a chance to visit her one last time, despite the squalid criticisms from his right-wing opponents. May Mrs. Dunham rest in peace in the knowledge that she did a great job in raising her grandson.

Maybe Eleanor Clift wasn't wrong after all.

William F. Buckley, Jr. has died... finally. Revered by neoconservatives as one of the pioneers of their movement, he was admittedly a brilliant and eloquent man. Unfortunately, he spent his considerable talents attacking the civil rights movement, supporting and apologizing for anti-Semitism and McCarthyism, and sported a public persona that was both homophobic and bigoted.

Born into a wealthy Connecticut family, Buckley was educated in England, France, and Millbrook School, followed by stints at the University of Mexico, the military, the CIA, and Yale. He founded The National Review, a stalwart of conservative media. He also eventually became the host of the long-running and often contemptible television show, "Firing Line".

From CampusProgress.org:

"Buckley’s most infamous TV moment occurred in 1968, during a debate with writer Gore Vidal. Vidal, who is gay, called the conservative a “pro-war-crypto-Nazi,” to which Buckley replied, “ Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in you goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered."The exchange led to a series of counter-essays in Esquire magazine and then a series of libel lawsuits. Buckley apologized to Vidal, but wrote that “the man who in his essays proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher.” Well-known as a fervent follower of Roman Catholicism (except when it comes to the Pope’s teachings about social justice and fighting poverty), Buckley apparently bought into its interpretation of homosexuality. He vehemently opposed gay marriage and until his death supported a constitutional amendment to ban it."

It's time for people like Buckley to get out of the way and allow society to evolve just a bit. I wish him well in his afterlife... whatever form it takes... but I can't help but say "good riddance to bad rubbish".

In memoriam Suzanne Pleshette, 70

(AP)

Suzanne Pleshette, the husky-voiced star best known for her role as Bob Newhart's sardonic wife on television's long-running "The Bob Newhart Show," has died at age 70.
Pleshette, whose career included roles in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and in Broadway plays including "The Miracle Worker," died of respiratory failure Saturday evening at her Los Angeles home, said her attorney Robert Finkelstein, also a family friend.

Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006.

"The Bob Newhart Show, a hit throughout its six-year run, starred comedian Newhart as a Chicago psychiatrist surrounded by eccentric patients. Pleshette provided the voice of reason.

Four years after the show ended in 1978, Newhart went on to the equally successful "Newhart" series in which he was the proprietor of a New England inn populated by more eccentrics. When that show ended in 1990, Pleshette reprised her role — from the first show — in one of the most clever final episodes in TV history.

It had Newhart waking up in the bedroom of his "The Bob Newhart Show" home with Pleshette at his side. He went on to tell her of the crazy dream he'd just had of running an inn filled with eccentrics.

"If I'm in Timbuktu, I'll fly home to do that," Pleshette said of her reaction when Newhart told her how he was thinking of ending the show.

Born Jan. 31, 1937, in New York City, Pleshette began her career as a stage actress after attending the city's High School of the Performing Arts and studying at its Neighborhood Playhouse. She was often picked for roles because of her beauty and her throaty voice.

"When I was 4," she told an interviewer in 1994, "I was answering the phone, and (the callers) thought I was my father. So I often got quirky roles because I was never the conventional ingenue."

She met her future husband, Tom Poston, when they appeared together in the 1959 Broadway comedy "The Golden Fleecing," but didn't marry him until more than 40 years later.

Although the two had a brief fling, they went on to marry others. By 2000 both were widowed and they got back together, marrying the following year.

"He was such a wonderful man. He had fun every day of his life," Pleshette said after Poston died in April 2007.

Among her other Broadway roles was replacing Anne Bancroft in "The Miracle Worker," the 1959 drama about Helen Keller, in New York and on the road.

Meanwhile, she had launched her film career with Jerry Lewis in 1958 in "The Geisha Boy." She went on to appear in numerous television shows, including "Have Gun, Will Travel," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Playhouse 90" and "Naked City."

By the early 1960s, Pleshette attracted a teenage following with her youthful roles in such films as "Rome Adventure," "Fate Is the Hunter," "Youngblood Hawke" and "A Distant Trumpet."

She married fellow teen favorite Troy Donahue, her co-star in "Rome Adventure," in 1964 but the union lasted less than a year. She was married to Texas oilman Tim Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000.

Pleshette matured in such films as Hitchcock's "The Birds" and the Disney comedies "The Ugly Dachshund," "Blackbeard's Ghost" and "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin." Over the years, she also had a busy career in TV movies, including playing the title role in 1990's "Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean."

More recently, she appeared in several episodes of the TV sitcoms "Will & Grace" and "8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter."
In a 1999 interview, Pleshette observed that being an actress was more important than being a star.

"I'm an actress, and that's why I'm still here," she said. "Anybody who has the illusion that you can have a career as long as I have and be a star is kidding themselves."