Johnathan Winters Was More Than a Comedian

Jonathan Winters passed away today at 89.

Most of the articles today in print and online will focus on Winters tremendous improv skills as a comedian, but the last role in saw the talented Mr. Winters in  was a dramatic one. 

Over Christmas, I saw a great 1969 episode of the Twilight Zone with him and Jack Klugman and Winters  called "Game of Pool." was in serious drama mode. 

I won't spoil the episode for you, but it was quite gripping as both Klugman and Winters worked only with themselves and a pool table. While Winters is mostly known as a comedian that Twilight Zone episode showed no hint of  the thousands of characters than came out of his egg shaped body.

On that episode, Jonathan  Winters was just as fascinating as a dramatic one as he was a comedic one, when I was kid watching him ham it up as Robin William's  son on "Mork & Mindy".

I never understand why the Oscars has been so stingy in giving out Oscars to comedians. 

Most dramatic actors will tell you going from drama to comedy is one of the hardest things to do. However, ever since Charlie Chaplin, comedians, the goods ones, always had that ability to show a dramatic side.

Over the years,  non-Oscar winners Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and Jim Carrey and others has shown that they can give a performance best dramatic actors, yet can still tell a joke that would keep you laughing for days. 

Jonathan Winters had that type of  talent and though he is gone now, his legacy lives on in every comedian who can make you laugh with a twist of face or simple wink with a smile.

RIP funny man.


Jonathan Winters on Dean Martin Roasts Frank Sinatra.

Sad! Roger Ebert, Popular Film Critic, Dies at 70

(Via New York Times) 

Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday. He was 70.

His death was announced by The Chicago Sun-Times, where he had worked for many years.

Mr. Ebert’s struggle with cancer, starting in 2002, gave him an altogether different public image — as someone who refused to surrender to illness. Though he had operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, lost his ability to eat, drink and speak (he was fed through a tube and a prosthesis partly obscured the loss of much of his chin) and became a gaunter version of his once-portly self, he continued to write reviews and commentary and published a cookbook he had started, on meals that could be made with a rice cooker.

“When I am writing, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was,” he told Esquire magazine in 2010. “All is well. I am as I should be.”

In recent years, Mr. Ebert had written extensively about his illness on Twitter.

It would not be a stretch to say that Mr. Ebert was the best-known film reviewer of his generation, and one of the most trusted. He liked to say his approach — dryly witty, occasionally sarcastic, sometimes quirky in his opinions — reflected the working newspaper reporter he had been, not a formal student of film. His tastes ran from the classics to boldly independent cinema to cartoons, and his putdowns could be withering.

“I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of ‘The Brown Bunny,’ ” he wrote.

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Eulogy to The Beastie Boys Adam Yauch (RIP MCA)

When I awoke to the news that Adam Yauch aka MCA died this morning, I was in disbelief.

Yet another icon from my "Wonder Years" of the 1980s is now gone.

Yauch's death like Heavy D has had a greater effect me now than when I was younger.

When 2Pac, Kurt Cobain and Biggie Smalls died in my 20's, it really sucked because I was a fan of their music and I felt like a part of my musically soul passed away as well.

But their deaths were part of horrible situations:

Big and Pac were shot and Cobain killed himself.

When Aaliyah and Lefteye died in my 30's, I felt the same musical loss but once again, both of these talented performers died tragically in a crashes, one  in a plane and another in a car.

When Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston passed, the loss was further deepened, but due to their misuse of prescription and hard drugs, the feeling was that they might have lived if they only could have saved themselves.

However, Yauch's death by Cancer and Heavy D's by a heart failure were different.

Both died of natural causes.

Not by a gun, a crash or drugs, but they died naturally which is the scariest of all.

When you are younger, you think you and your friends and family will be around forever.

That myth went away when my mom passed away during my adulthood.

When my mom died, I forever knew tomorrow was no longer promised and we have no idea when it will be time our time to go.

Adam Yauch's death further reinforced my thoughts of imortality because  I am at an age where more of the people I grew up listening will soon pass away  as will my friends, more family members and one day myself.

Although Adam Yauch died too young at a ripe age of 47, how many of us can say that we have left a legacy behind?

This is not say that you need do some extreme skiing or try to become the next Steve Jobs (although there is nothing wrong with that) but we should embrace everyday to make ourselves and our surroundings abetter:

So try new things.
Make new friends.
Eat new dishes
Visit new places.
Trying a new career.

Pushing yourself find out who we really are; just like Adam Yauch did going from a frat boy rapper to a person who not only cared about the world, but also leaving behind a musical legacy that led him and fellow Beasties to the Rock and Roll of Fame and Hip Hop Honors.

I know trying live life to fullest everyday is not easiest thing to do and far often we yet the complexities of life overtake our dreams and goals of grandest life....but the best way you can live a life like Adam Yauch is Strive To Become A Better You.

R.I.P. MCA