Sunday Reads

 Obituary: Soap actress Eileen Fulton, 91, a mainstay of the serial As the World Turns from her debut in 1960 as "Lisa" to the final episode in 2010, has died.  Oftentimes she was a villainess, but other times she was considered good.  It depended on the decade and the writers.

Her character for years pined for Bob Hughes, a doctor from the central family of the show, the Hugheses, played by Don Hastings, who also began his stint on the show in 1960.  Lisa (her character) finally gave it up when Bob finally paired up with Kim Reynolds (Kathryn Hays, who passed away at the age of 87 in 2022 and mentioned on this blog).  Don Hastings is still alive and is 91 years old.

Snip:

Fulton earned a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2004 Daytime Emmys, telling the Academy with a laugh, “I don’t mean to sound ungracious, but I felt it was about time. I wanted it 10 years ago, I really did, and I’m very happy to have it. … I have it standing right here in my entranceway. I could have said, ‘Oh, I’ll just put in the closet.’ Hell no! I’m going to put it right out here where everyone can see it and lust after it.”

People has a more detailed obituary. Fulton died on July 14.

Funeral home obit

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Another obit:  Edwin Feulner, one of the "three stooges" who founded the despicable Heritage Foundation, has died. He was 83.

He was less well-known than other co-founders Joseph Coors, who put up the money to start it, and the ubiquitous Paul Weyrich, who was really the "brains" behind the rise of the religious right.

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Journalism, the Preakness Stakes winner, won this year's Haskell:

Friday Night Reads

 Obit:  Daredevil, skydiver, BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner, 56, died in a paragliding accident.  He tempted fate once too many times.

I mentioned him here on this blog previously, when he made his 2012 record-breaking stratosphere jump.

The accident happened in Italy:

The city’s mayor confirmed the death of 56-year-old Baumgartner, who was renowned as the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound. The cause of the paragliding accident was under investigation. Police did not return calls asking for comment.

“It is a destiny that is very hard to comprehend for a man who has broke all kinds of records, who has been an icon of flight, and who traveled through space,” Mayor Massimiliano Ciarpella told The Associated Press.

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Being 56, some have speculated he may have had a health issue, thus causing the crash.

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Obituary: Connie Francis

 Popular female vocalist of the 1950s-1960s Connie Francis, 87, died from undisclosed causes.  A few days ago, as I recall, her close friend, Darlene Love, had wanted people to pray for her because she was having some health issues. Her health rapidly deteriorated in recent days.  She passed away yesterday.

Life wasn't always easy for her.  She had been one of the leading female vocalists of her era, with songs like the one she hated, "Who's Sorry Now?" and those she didn't have such a negative reaction to like "Lipstick on Your Collar," "Where the Boys Are," "Stupid Cupid," and maybe her best one, "Everybody's Somebody's Fool."  My oldest sister played her records all the time when I was a little girl, so I was well familiar with Connie Francis.

She was born Concetta Franconero in Newark, New Jersey, of Italian and Jewish descent.  Her father, who was a blue collar worker,  pressured Connie to get into music from the time she was around three years old.  He was domineering to the point where he completely disallowed his daughter from dating the guy she would always be in love with, singer Bobby Darin. Given he died so young (suffered from heart problems and died following surgery in 1973), it may have been just as well she never married him.  She did, however, end up marrying four times and had a long-term partner, Tony Ferretti, from 2003  until his death in 2022. She also adopted a son in 1974, shortly after the horrific rape she endured at a Howard Johnson's hotel.  The rapist was never found, and she suffered from trauma, most likely PTSD, for many years afterward.   She brought a suit against the hotel and won a judgment of over $2 million.

She further suffered tragedy when her brother, attorney George Franconero, Jr., , with whom she was close, was murdered in a mob hit in 1981.

Connie also battled mental illness including bipolar disorder (so-called "manic depression" as it was known way back).  She did somehow claw her way back and resumed her career although at a couple of points her voice was either negatively impacted thanks to surgery or she lost her voice completely at one point.

Here is a transcript of an interview she gave with Larry King way back in 2002.

New York Times obit:

At 11, she was a regular on “Marie Moser’s Starlets,” a local television variety show. After she appeared on Ted Mack’s “Original Amateur Hour” and “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” Mr. Mack advised her to lose the accordion, and Mr. Godfrey advised her to change her last name to Francis. She then embarked on a four-year run as one of the child entertainers on the anthology series “Startime.”

As she outgrew the child-star category, Ms. Francis obtained forged documents and began singing in clubs and lounges. Imitating the vocal styles of stars like Patti Page and Rosemary Clooney, she made demonstration tapes for music publishers who wanted to place their songs with famous singers.

In 1955 she signed a contract with MGM Records, and over the next two years she recorded 10 singles, all of them flops. “The bombs just kept a-comin’,” she wrote in “Who’s Sorry Now?,” her 1984 memoir. “They were becoming my trademark, a foregone conclusion.”

Some Wednesday Reads

 Is there any doubt the Roberts/Leonard Leo USSC is the worst in modern times if not in American history?

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I feel sorry for any neighborhood, even gated, that has to tolerate the Canadian crackpot and misogynist Jordan Peterson.

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Some Tuesday Reads

 Just because Trump had some involvement with Jeffrey Epstein doesn't mean it is going to hurt him in any way.

This man helped instigate an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, and he still got away with it.

Epstein is small potatoes compared to that.

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Some Monday Reads

 Paranoid dipshittery explains a lot of the destructive proposals of this administration.

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Jessica Valenti is right  as to the purpose of this idiocy of disposing of fetal/embryonic remains.  It is all about shaming women so these jackasses can call them sluts and whores outside of clinics.

These people are clinically insane in their pushing the old sexual double standard that should have died out sixty years ago.

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Some Sunday Reads

 It is a safe bet that, assuming we have any real elections anymore in this country, at least on the federal level, no woman will ever be elected president of the United States in my lifetime or ever.  This person wouldn't surprise me if he is the Democratic nominee in 2028.

No way should Gavin Newsom be considered.

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