“Mom always said she wanted a parking meter with ‘time expired,’ ” explains Barbara Sue’s daughter, Sherri Ann Weeks, who along with brother Terry crafted this charming tombstone in Oklahoma. “And she wanted to be on the front row of the cemetery so she could see what was going on. … We gave her what she wanted.”
Some suspected Phtotoshop tomfoolery, but the tombstone has been verified by several newspapers and today by Snopes.com. “These are true pictures,” wrote son Terry in response to a blog discussion where the validity of the tombstone was called into question. “Notice that she passed away on her 64th birthday, so the meter reads 64 year time limit. It is located in Okemah, Oklahoma. I KNOW she is loving the attention. She wanted to make people smile even after she was gone.”
Me personally, I can’t imagine I’ll ever have a tombstone of my own, though I can appreciate a work of art such as the above. By the time I die (if I die of natural causes), I imagine that the world will be so over-populated that spending on a grave plot is going to be something way too expensive and frivolous for me to ever inflict on my loved ones. Plus, I’m sure eventually someone will build high-rises over it which means that I’ll have to go back and haunt them, a pain in the ass for me as a ghost. No, I’d much rather be buried in a forest somewhere, so that I can turn into trees. Or bird poo.
But you guys! How would you like to go? Karaoke funeral, anyone? Internet gravesite? Tell all.
Gamers everywhere are mourning the loss of Gary Gygax, godfather of RPGs. After recovering from the initial shock, my thoughts turned immediately to an old friend, author Wayne Chambliss, who knew the man personally. I’d like to thank Wayne from the bottom of my polyhedral heart for taking the time to share some of his memories of Gygax here on Coilhouse. ~Mer
E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died on Tuesday. He was 69.
I can’t say I was surprised to hear the news. Last July, Gary told me he was already a year over his “expiration date”—the six months doctors gave him upon diagnosing his abdominal aneurysm. So, I wasn’t surprised. But I am hurting.
I don’t know why I miss him so much. I didn’t know him well. I spent maybe sixteen hours with him altogether. Sixteen hours on the porch of his house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Two long, summer days. Even so, Gary was an easy guy to like. He looked like a cross between Gandalf and Stan Lee, with a Lucky Strikes voice and a big laugh. He was a marvelous storyteller, an autodidact with wide interests, and, of course, the developer of an incalculably influential game system millions of people have been playing all over the world since 1974—including myself and at least 33% of this blog’s masthead.
The original Dungeon Master.
There are plenty of obituaries online right now that cover the basic facts of his life. The one in the New York Times seems representative: it contains no misspellings, but also very little of the man I knew, however slightly.
My friend Paul La Farge does a much better job. In a 2006 issue of The Believer (“Destroy All Monsters”), he tells the story of our first trip to Lake Geneva in a way that gets Gary Gygax right. For anyone even vaguely interested in Gary’s biography, Dungeons & Dragons or TSR, I strongly recommend Paul’s article. In my opinion, it is the last word on the subject. Moreover, its postscript is a more fitting eulogy for Gary than anything I could write myself—or have read anywhere else about him.
Maybe it’s simple. Maybe losing Gary is simply part of losing something even larger I will not, cannot, get back.
Angel City is a strange place, a concrete sprawl with hidden oases of wonderful things not found anywhere else. These things are what makes this city worth inhabiting and tonight my favorite of all closes its doors forever.
Nova Express, presumably named after a William S. Burroughs book and decorated accordingly, opened its doors in the early 90s, the same year, in fact, that I landed in this country. It knew all the ways to my heart - excellent food, spectacular space-decor, low lights and late hours. I’ve now been going to Nova ever since my pre-teens, celebrating, mourning and meeting for, yes, fifteen years. In fact, the very first official Coilhouse staff meeting was held there, over some cosmic pizza and alarmingly powerful martinis.
I’ll miss the vintage anime projections, the hundreds of old plastic robots, the all-seeing Cthulhu in the corner, my favorite amoeba-shaped table in the window with its lava lamp askew, every last bit of the place, damn it. Cary Long is the owner and artist behind the awesome SciFi decor, to whom I tip my hat and say “Well done”. This was the first place I would name when asked about the best spots to visit in LA, the only place of its kind and it will be missed more than Cary may ever know. Please don’t go, Nova.
We’ve never met, and your ashes have long since been scattered above Manhattan, so I guess it’s pretty weird for me to be writing you this letter. Then again, everyone always says you seemed to hail from another planet. Let’s pretend for a minute that you didn’t die alone in a hospital bed in 1983. It’s comforting to imagine that you simply returned to your home world and maybe, somehow, you can read this.
If you were still here, you’d be 64 years young today. No doubt your friends would be gathered around you at the piano to sing Kurt Weill and Chubby Checkers tunes. Perhaps you’d share some of your delicious homemade pastries with them and spend hours reminiscing about those hazy, crazy post-punk days in NYC.
Ruff and ready.
I wish I could fold time and space to sit in the balcony at Irving Plaza the night your brief, bright star ascended during a four night New Wave Vaudeville series. It was 1978. Up until then, you’d been supporting yourself as a pastry chef for well-to-do Hamptons types. They say that you emerged from the fog machine vapors like an alien from another planet, stiff and somber in a silver space suit and clear vinyl cape. My old friend Jim Sclavunos was there, manning the spotlight. He once told me that when you opened your Clara Bow mouth and sang, no one believed it was really you. The MC had to keep assuring the audience that you were not lip-syncing…
“I have a fairly adequate knowledge of satanic forces, and I was interested to find out if this girl was obsessed with such a force.”
- James Dean, on befriending Maila Nurmi
Finnish-American actress Maila Nurmi, famous for having created the character Vampira, passed away yesterday in her sleep at age 86. Born in Finland and raised in Ohio, Maila moved to LA at age 17 to pursue modelling and acting. As a model she appeared in numerous pin-up magazines, and her photographers included Man Ray and Alberto Vargas. At age 35, Maila made her most notable appearance as The Ghoul’s Wife in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space - the clip can be seen here. For $200, Ed Wood got Maila to stalk around a graveyard as a glamorous, wasp-waisted zombie. The mute portrayal was Maila’s idea, as she reportedly couldn’t abide the dialogue that Ed Wood had written for her. In subsequent years Maila was the first horror movie hostess in television history, and in later life she made jewelry and clothing, which she sold though a shop on Melrose that she called Vampira’s Attic.
As one fan writes over at her obituary at LA Metroblogging, “I hope her, Ed, Bela and Tor are havin’ a coctail somewhere.” Maila may be gone, but Vampira will live on.
Left: Maila, the golden pin-up star.
Right: Maila in recent years, by Gabrielle G.
“This is a new secret science, to master the emptiness and turn it into something that is filled with sound and visual images.”
- Karlheinz Stockhausen Stockhausen has died, aged 79. Depending on who you talk to, he was either one of the most revered or reviled composers of the 20th century. A student of Olivier Messiaen with little interest in conventional “classical” modes of composition, Stockhausen’s sonic innovations range from the sublimely understated (Mantra, 1970) to the grandiose (Spiral, 1968) to the bombastic and beautifully absurd (Helikopter-Streichquartett, 1993).
Throughout his life, Stockhausen was obsessed with the concept of flight. As early as the 1950s, he was already discussing his desire to “liberate musicians from the constraints of gravity.” He even consulted with recording technicians to see if there was a way to harness performers in specially rigged chairs that could be swung through the studio on ropes. The aforementioned Helikopter Streichquartett was in many ways a culmination of his lifelong dream to see music truly take flight. Many people have said, will undoubtedly continue to say “I don’t get it.” Indeed, not long ago the entire world shouted in disbelief at the aging iconoclast when he dared to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center as “the greatest work of art imaginable.”
Regardless, even Stockhausen’s harshest detractors can never argue that he was not a swashbuckling pioneer of sound and vision. A relentless seeker, he never allowed the circumscriptions of others to stand in his way. Somewhere in the expansive aleatory of the cosmos, an echo of Stockhausen’s voice speaks with more conviction than ever: “I no longer limit myself.”
In a devastating turn of events Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge has died due to a “previously undiagnosed heart condition.” She died in the arms of her other half, legendary industrial music pioneer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
The sad news was broken yesterday but we didn’t find out until today and I’m honestly heartbroken. Thanks to my once-spooky brother I grew up with Psychic TV and later, of my own accord, Throbbing Gristle, so Genesis’ dealings have always been on my brain’s periphery. My interest was especially re-kindled in 2003 when he and his partner of over 10 years, Lady Jaye, embarked on their radical body modification mission known as Breaking Sex or the Breyer P-Orridge Project. I saw them perform here in Hollywood just a couple of short years ago and witnessed their physical progress first-hand. Redefining gender and becoming of the same & superior sex, a physical representation of their psychological bond as well as a potential new step in human evolution.
Few grander testaments of love have been made, in my humble opinion, ever.
We extend our sympathy and condolences to Genesis and offer you a few links to information about Breaking Sex.
