Another beloved celebrity gone.

The cruel summer of death marches on, this time claiming a beloved star of the small screen. Gidget, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, died from a stroke on Tuesday night in Los Angeles. She was 15 (105 in dog years.)

“She made so many people happy,” said Gidget’s trainer, Sue Chipperton.

According to People Magazine:

The mostly retired actor lived out her days laying in the sun – “I like to joke that it’s like looking after a plant,” says Chipperton – and entertaining at shoots when her trainer brought her along. “Gidget,” says Chipperton, “always knew where the camera was.”

Wow.  Two icons in one day.  Michael Jackson died today after being rushed to the hospital here in Los Angeles in cardiac arrest.  When he arrived at the hospital, he wasn’t breathing and they couldn’t revive him.

What a shocker… probably more to him than us.  He was just days away from starting his big tour in London and given his penchant for eternal youth, something must have gone terribly wrong.  He forever changed music and really fueled the rise in music videos with his amazing performances.

He was a character. I’m gonna miss him.

My 8th grade Le Conte Junior High class picture is all feathered hair, a smile full of braces, and my favorite shirt, a pale blue tee with an iron-on of Farrah Fawcett’s iconic poster.

Farrah and I wouldn’t meet in person, until four years later in 1981. I was working at Hunter’s Books on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. You folks would’ve loved Hunter’s. They had a smaller branch in Sherman Oaks, but the Beverly Hills store was the flagship. There was a loft-like upper floor for management overlooking a vast amount of always bustling floorspace surrounded by dark wood shelving, beneath which was the equally large stockroom — or “dungeon,” as we stockboys called it.

Being on Rodeo Drive, naturally the store drew a sophisticated and monied clientele, and more than a fair share of celebrities. Not to boast but I was a fave of Barbara Stanwyck who’d every other month or so would come to the backdoor and ask for me with a list — sometimes just for her, sometimes for her and her good friend Henry Fonda.

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Farrah Fawcett died this morning in Santa Monica after a long battle with cancer. She was a shining star, who, when she was on, blazed pretty hot. Best known as THE pin-up girl of the seventies in that red bathing suit, with her long, blonde tresses flowing, she captured many boys hearts for the decade. As a little girl, I remember every guy I knew had her poster up in their room.

On the television screen, she was the interesting one to watch in Charlie’s Angels, running around in the sexiest outfits possible, fighting crime with a wide smile and kitten-like sexiness. As girls, we all secretly wanted to be like her.

As an adult, I had an opportunity to work with her.  All my images of her as a vapid, blonde bombshell vanished the minute I met her.  She saw her powerful sexuality simply as a vehicle to ride to foster her work as an actress.  She was an artist to the core. Not only was she a really fine painter, but in her acting and even in controlling her image, she came from a place of creativity, deep vulnerability and rawness.

Her blonde hair and blazingly bright smile were an easy decoy which frequently made people miss the depth of her soul and what she had to say. Yes, she could be difficult and several times on the set I cursed her. However, there was always a reason that turned out to be justified for the delays and the end result was simply stunning.
When I heard she had cancer, I hoped she would beat it. She was an intensely determined woman and I thought she might sail through this one with grace.  Maybe the truth is…. she simply left this dimension for a place where Angels really do rule.  And no Charlie’s tell her what to do!

RIP Dom DeLuise you were my favorite actor in the screwball comedies as I was growing up.  Between all the Mel Brooks and “Smokey and the Bandit” movies you added a lot of laughs to my life.  

I’ve attached one of my favorite clips from “Blazing Saddles” to bring a smile to some faces today.  I ask, what greater achievement in ones life than to bring in laughter and a smile? 

He passed away quietly in his sleep Monday night in his LA home according to his son. All the details and bio in the MSN Movies article that ran moments ago.

(Updated just for lezgull, I searched and found an out takes insanity clip for you, but you have to make the jump). (more…)

Not much else to say… Photo by Mr. Rollers.

Jack Wrangler, the Beverly Hills-born porn superstar, has died. He was 62. The reported cause of death was from complications from emphysema.

Although he performed in both gay and straight adult films, he was always open about his homosexuality and considered a hero of the Gay Liberation movement.

Born into a Hollywood film industry family, he first worked in early Christian television before studying theater in college.  After stints  bartending and go-go dancing at West Hollywood gay bars, he went on to achieve icon status in 1970s gay porn.  In the early ’80s he switched to starring in straight porn, eventually leaving porn altogether to marry Margaret Whiting, the film actress and singer (known for her hit, “That Old Black Magic,”) and began producing her cabaret shows.

The first Wrangler film I recall seeing, as an impressionable, newly-out gay youth, was Kansas City Trucking Co., made in 1976. With its hyper-masculine performers and the athletic abandon with which they threw themselves into their work, KCTC is  credited with setting the standard for all-male gay porn.

Photo: courtesy of TLA Releasing

This came to my inbox.

If anyone knows who took this photo, please let me know in the comments

John Leech, the founder of the Onyx Cafe in Silverlake/Los Feliz/Echo Park and beloved patron of the arts and truth in general has passed away.

It apparently happened around Monday or Tuesday March 17th or 18th and has been confirmed by the County Coroner. He apparently has no family but he has a trust and its executors have been notified. There is a votive memorial in front of the former location of the Onyx on Vermont Avenue (now Cafe Figaro) in Los Feliz. Initial planning for a fitting memorial to John has begun. More on that soon.

John was one of the rarest things in this world: a genuine philosophical Bohemian in the very best sense of the word who created an austere unpretentious Cafe which was, by his design, a magical safe zone for artists, musicians, poets, scientists, intellectuals and outsiders of all stripes…

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I just heard this, and don’t know what else to say except… shit. Lux died this morning from a pre-existing heart condition, he was 62. I met him a few times through friends and he was incredibly cool, and there’s no arguing how important The Cramps are. He’ll very truly be missed. From MTV.com:

Born Erick Lee Purkhiser, Interior started the Cramps in 1972 with guitarist Poison Ivy (born Kristy Wallace, later his wife) — whom, as legend has it, he picked up as a hitchhiker in California. By 1975, they had moved to New York, where they became an integral part of the burgeoning punk scene surrounding CBGBs.

Their music differed from most of the scene’s other acts in that it was heavily steeped in camp, with Interior’s lyrics frequently drawing from schlocky B-movies, sexual kink and deceptively clever puns. (J.H. Sasfy’s liner notes to their debut EP memorably noted: “The Cramps don’t pummel and you won’t pogo. They ooze; you’ll throb.”) Sonically, the band drew from blues and rockabilly, and a key element of their sound was the trashy, dueling guitars of Poison Ivy and Bryan Gregory (and later Kid Congo Powers), played with maximal scuzz and minimal drumming.

Because of that — not to mention Interior’s deranged, Iggy Pop-inspired onstage antics and deep, sexualized singing voice (which one reviewer described as “the psychosexual werewolf/ Elvis hybrid from hell”) — the Cramps are often cited as pioneers of “psychobilly” and “horror rock,” and can count bands like the Black Lips, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the Reverend Horton Heat, the Horrors and even the White Stripes as their musical progeny.