Alan Myers 1955 to Monday
Myers played drums for the coolest thing ever to come out of the city of Akron, OH (a certain forward from the Miami Heat excepted): DEVO! He leaves behind this immortal video:
Bill O’Hagan 1945 to six-weeks-ago Wednesday
What could possibly be more enticing than “minced lean pork, rolled oats, fresh eggs, sea-salt, chervil and winter savoury, generously dosed with real ale” and stuffed into porcine intestinal lining? To Mr. O’Hagan, nothing. Billy was sausage king of England. Plump, jovial and black-caped, he was said to resemble “a ruddy-cheeked vampire.” All kinds of sausage were the work of his hands–seasoned with blue cheese or honey, made from a 600-year-old Spanish recipe for Chorizo or a cheeky 2005 recipe for rum-soaked variety celebrating Nelson’s victory at Trafalger. Though copycat sausages from more business-minded makers crowded his own creations out of the supermarket aisles, they could not dispel his sunny disposition. Indeed, he leaves behind a better banger, perhaps the only edible British dish outside of fish and chips or Indian food.
James Gandolfini 1961 to last Wednesday
In the words of the NYTimes’s David Itzkoff, “the Emmy Award-winning actor shot [his pun, not mine. seriously.] to fame on the HBO drama ‘The Sopranos’ as Tony Soprano, a tough-talking, hard-living crime boss with a stolid exterior but a rich interior life.” So you could say that he personified New Jersey. “Like Mozart” was how Sopranos’s creator David Chase described Mr. Gandolfini’s acting. But a child prodigy James was not. His acting career got a late start in this, 1987’s “Shock! Shock! Shock!” in which he starred at 26. He leaves behind this, well, indescribable debut:
George Zimmer’s guarantee 1986 to last Wednesday
The founder and voice of The Men’s Wearhouse last week met his maker (or at least a hostile Board of Trustees). Abruptly firing George and his soothing baritone, the Board deprives us of a chance to be affirmed as we ‘like the way we look.’ His guarantee leaves behind that trademark line:
