Entry 79: "When Legends Fall"

Yo!

As you all know by now, Meet the Press host Tim Russert passed away over Father's Day weekend. On Friday the 13th, of all days. I never watched a whole lot of MTP except for the split-second I'd catch while surfing through channels since MSNBC and CNBC are right between FX and Comedy Central. This reminds me of when Peter Jennings died, the internet news sites and message boards were in total disbelief and ABC was racing to do their own American Anchor-ish competition behind the scenes to see who would take over World News Tonight before settling for Charles Gibson, dawg. That last frame of MSNBC's MTP retrospective/memorial special Brokaw hosted Sunday night says it all. The set lights were dimmed down and Russert's empty chair was in center frame... Truly then we all knew that chair would never quite be filled the same way again. Mr. Tim Russert, you wil-- are missed.

As slightly less of you may know (since Russert obviously got all the mainstream media attention), special effects master Stan Winston also passed away this past weekend. The man who gave believability to Aliens, Predators and Terminators left us Sunday, leaving a legacy of unreality for us to share for generations to come. I read one message board post Monday claiming Winston faked his death somehow. Yes, I'm sure he's off playing shuffleboard with Steve Irwin, Tupac Shakur, Elvis Presley and all the other celebrities who "aren't really dead" until he decides to quit his self-imposed identity abandoning and get back to work. Mr. Winston's work made cinema fun, and CG almost unnecessary. In today's world, that's indispensable; knowing the actors are interacting with something extraordinary on-set, instead of noticing barely miscued glances and eye paths toward a CG character that's added in post-production. Mr. Stan Winston, you are missed.

Hmm. I've never eulogized two people at once before...

Also, if you don't believe the part about Steve Irwin faking his death, you clearly didn't see this grossly overlooked clip from the E! Network's The Soup a couple months ago:



Bottom Line: Understandably, a heck of a lot of people have taken these deaths pretty hard. Not to mention the fact that this couldn't possibly have been a worse time for these guys to move on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky. The November Obama vs. McCain election coverage begs to have some of that polygraph-ish talking point dissolving style of Russert's interviews and analysis. Winston was still doing work on McG's Terminator 4 movie but not until after Favreau's Iron Man suit was made EXTRA crimson-ey, which is something only Stan the Man could've done right. What if it was the other way around, and Winston passed during production of Iron Man, but after his legendary work on the Terminator franchise successfully lived on through the whole production? A man can dream...

...But that's just me.

God, Winston was gonna do Jurassic Park 4 too.....

BY THE WAY! Some of you readers may remember that top-secret television project I've been working on and hinting at all this time. Now you get to see a small sampling of what's in store. I'm personally hosting and producing an internet talk show on YouTube, MySpace & Facebook called The Rant, where I go around Virginia asking random people what's on their minds. New episodes will be released all summer through September, 1-2 shows a month, on top of the established 3-4 blog posts a month. Phew! So what are you doing for summer vacation?

Here's what to bookmark:

YouTube: http://youtube.com/therantonline
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/therantonline (I know, it's not visually stunning; it's a work-in-progress.)
Facebook, you have to search for it right now, but I'm working on a decent standalone site just like the other two.

More soon.

-D.