Gene Wilder, star of Willy Wonka, dead at 83!

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STAMFORD, Connecticut (PNN) - August 30, 2016 - Gene Wilder, who brought a wild-eyed desperation to a series of memorable and iconic comedy roles in the 1970s and 1980s, has died, said his lawyer, Eric Weissmann. He was 83.

Wilder is best known for his collaborations with director Mel Brooks, starring as the stressed-out Leo Bloom in Brooks' breakout 1967 film The Producers, and later in the monster movie spoof Young Frankenstein. He also portrayed a boozing gunslinger in Blazing Saddles.

For many people, Wilder might be best remembered for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, playing the mysterious candy tycoon in the 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl's book.

In a statement to CNN on Monday, Brooks called Wilder, "One of the truly great talents of our time. He blessed every film we did with his magic and he blessed me with his friendship," Brooks wrote.

Wilder died due to complications from Alzheimer's disease, which he struggled with for three years, his nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman said in a statement.

Wilder chose not to disclose his illness, the statement added.

"He simply couldn't bear the idea of one less smile in the world," Walker-Pearlman said. In the years after Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Wilder continued to star in numerous comedies, with less consistent success. That included several films with Richard Pryor, including Stir Crazy and Silver Streak, as well as solo vehicles like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother and The World's Greatest Lover, which he also directed.

In a 2005 interview with CNN, Wilder discussed how he met Brooks, having been cast in a play opposite the director's then-girlfriend, Anne Bancroft.

"That led to The Producers and Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, because I was miscast in a play," Wilder said, "and it changed my life."

He said he was happy to be cast in primarily comedic roles throughout his acting career. “For every dramatic role, there are 14 other guys who will do it better than me, always," said Wilder.

He was married to Saturday Night Live regular Gilda Radner for five years until her death in 1989.

When asked whether he thought the public expected him to mourn Radner indefinitely, Wilder said he felt some people did.

Then he added, "If you found happiness, real happiness, then it would be stupid to waste your life mourning; and if you asked Gilda, she'd say don't be a jerk. You know, go out, have fun. Wake up and smell the coffee."

He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Karen Wilder.

Wilder's friends, co-workers and admirers were quick to pay tribute to the actor after the news of his death.

"Bless you for all these years of laughter and love, such warmth and humanity," wrote film critic Leonard Maltin.

Debra Messing, former star of Will & Grace, a show on which Wilder guest-starred, said,

"A man who lit up the world with his joy and genius. I can't say what it meant to act with him and get to know his heart."

Muhammad Ali, “The Greatest,” dies at 74!

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PHOENIX, Arizona (PNN) - June 4, 2016 - Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer who proclaimed himself "The Greatest" and was among the most famous and beloved athletes on the planet, died Friday in Arizona.

Ali had been at HonorHealth Scottsdale Osborn Medical Center in Scottsdale since Thursday with what spokesman Bob Gunnell had described as a respiratory issue.

"After a 32-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74. The three-time World Heavyweight Champion boxer died this evening," Gunnell said in a statement. "The Ali family would like to thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers, and support and asks for privacy at this time."

Rock and roll chameleon David Bowie dies at 69!

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NEW YORK (PNN) - January 10, 2016 - David Bowie, the genre- and gender-bending British music icon whose persistent innovations and personal reinventions transformed him into a larger-than-life rock star, died Sunday after a battle with cancer, his rep confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 69.

"David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief," read a statement posted on the artist's official social media accounts.

The influential singer-songwriter and producer excelled at glam rock, art rock, soul, hard rock, dance pop, punk, and electronica during his eclectic 40-plus-year career. He just released his 25th album, Blackstar, January 8, which was his birthday.

Bowie’s artistic breakthrough came with 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, an album that fostered the notion of rock star as space alien. Fusing British mod with Japanese kabuki styles and rock with theater, Bowie created the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust.

Three years later, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the No. 1 single Fame off the top 10 album Young Americans, then followed with the 1976 avant-garde art rock LP Station to Station, which made it to No. 3 on the charts and featured top 10 hit Golden Years.

Other memorable songs included 1983’s Let’s Dance - his only other No. 1 U.S. hit - Space Oddity, Heroes, Changes, Under Pressure, China Girl, Modern Love, Rebel Rebel, All the Young Dudes, Panic in Detroit, Fashion, Life on Mars, and a 1977 Christmas medley with Bing Crosby.

With his different-colored eyes (the result of a schoolyard fight) and needlelike frame, Bowie was a natural to segue from music into curious movie roles, and he starred as an alien seeking help for his dying planet in Nicolas Roeg’s surreal The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Critics later applauded his three-month Broadway stint as the misshapen lead in 1980’s The Elephant Man.

Bowie also starred in Marlene Dietrich’s last film, Just a Gigolo (1978), portrayed a World War II prisoner of war in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), and played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He also starred opposite Jennifer Connelly as Jareth the Goblin King in the 1986 cult favorite Labyrinth, directed by Jim Henson. In another groundbreaking move, Bowie, who always embraced technology, became the first rock star to morph into an Internet Service Provider with the launch in September 1998 of BowieNet.

Born David Jones in London on January 8, 1947, Bowie changed his name in 1966 after The Monkees’ Davy Jones achieved stardom. He played saxophone and started a mime company, and after stints in several bands, he signed with Mercury Records, which in 1969 released his album Man of Words/Man of Music. That featured Space Oddity, his poignant song about an astronaut, Major Tom, spiraling out of control.

In an attempt to stir interest in Ziggy Stardust, Bowie revealed in a January 1972 magazine interview that he was gay - though that might have been a publicity stunt - dyed his hair orange and began wearing women’s garb. The album became a sensation.

Wrote rock critic Robert Christgau, “This is audacious stuff right down to the stubborn wispiness of its sound, and Bowie's actorly intonations add humor and shades of meaning to the words, which are often witty and rarely precious, offering an unusually candid and detailed vantage on the rock star’s world.”

Bowie changed gears in 1975. Becoming obsessed with the dance/funk sounds of Philadelphia, his self-proclaimed “plastic soul”-infused Young Americans peaked at No. 9 with the single Fame, which he co-wrote with John Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar.

After the soulful but colder Station to Station, Bowie again confounded expectations after settling in Germany by recording the atmospheric 1977 album Low, the first of his “Berlin Trilogy” collaborations with Brian Eno, which was co-produced by Tony Visconti.

In 1980, Bowie brought out Scary Monsters, which cast a nod to the Major Tom character from Space Oddity with the sequel Ashes to Ashes. He followed with Tonight in 1984 and Never Let Me Down in 1987 and collaborations with Queen, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, The Pat Metheny Group and others. He formed the quartet Tin Machine, but the band didn’t garner much critical acclaim or commercial success with two albums.

Bowie returned to a solo career with 1993’s Black Tie White Noise, which saw him return to work with his Spiders From Mars guitarist Mick Ronson, then recorded 1995’s Outside with Eno and toured with Nine Inch Nails as his opening act. He returned to the studio in 1996 to record the techno-influenced Earthling. Three more albums, 1999’s Hours and 2002’s Heathen and 2003's Reality followed.

Bowie also produced albums for, among others, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and The Stooges and Mott the Hoople, for which he wrote the song All the Young Dudes. He earned a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 2006 but never again performed on stage.

Bowie was relatively quiet between the years of 2004 and 2012, re-emerging in 2013 with the album The Next Day. Its arrival was met with a social media firestorm, which catapulted it to No. 2 on the Billboard 200, his highest-charting album.

While demand for a tour by the reclusive rock star had been relentless, Bowie kept a decidedly low profile, maintaining a residence in New York but rarely seen.

In December, Bowie opened the rock musical Lazarus in New York City, in which he revisits the character he played in The Man Who Fell to Earth. The project - directed by Ivo van Hove and starring Michael C. Hall - was initiated by Bowie, who long nurtured the idea of a return to the character he played on screen in the Roeg film based on American writer Walter Tevis' 1963 science fiction novel.

A video of the song Lazarus, which is included on the album Blackstar, was released on January 7.

Survivors include his wife, the model Iman, whom he married in 1992; his son, director Duncan Jones; and his daughter Alexandria.

Famed tax protester Irwin Schiff dies in prison!

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October 17, 2015 – Irwin Schiff, grandfather of the contemporary tax protestor movement, dies Friday, according to the Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator.

Schiff educated those who would listen that the federal income tax was very limited in its application and that ordinary Amerikans are tricked into paying it. He is the author of How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Tax, Federal Mafia: How It Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes, and The Biggest Con: How the Government is Fleecing You.

Schiff, 87, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and his son Peter had been seeking compassionate release. Both Peter Schiff and his brother Andrew believed that their father’s positions were correct but advised people to not follow them.

Irwin Schiff’s position on the extremely limited applicability of the income tax was based on readings of Supreme Court decisions from the period near the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment. Most important were probably Merchants’ Loan and Trust Co. v Smietanka and Brushaber v Union Pacific.

Noted broadcaster Stan Solomon dies!

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INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (PNN) - June 5, 2015 - Stan Solomon, who has graced the broadcast airwaves with his unique form of political humor while pointedly attacking the lies, corruption and injustice of the Amerikan political system, and promoting freedom and constitutional Rule of Law, died of a massive coronary infarction - a massive heart attack - on Friday May 22. He was found in his garden, having collapsed.

Stan hosted the long running Talk to Solomon radio show, heard on the Creative People’s Network. He effectively used the radio airwaves to promote the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution for the United States.

He will be sorely missed.

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Patrick McGoohan
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David Nolan
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Leroy Schweitzer
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Andrew Breitbart
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Ray Bradbury
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Andy Griffith
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Larry Dever
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Brian J. Chapman
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Annette Funnicello
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Margaret Thatcher
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Richie Havens
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Jack McLamb
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James Traficant
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jim traficant

Dr. Stan Monteith
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Leonard Nimoy
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Stan Solomon
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Stan Solomon

B. B. King
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Irwin Schiff
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Irwin Schiff

DAVID BOWIE
1947-2016

David Bowie

Muhammad Ali
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GENE WILDER
1933-2016

gene wilder

phyllis schlafly
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phylis schafly

John Glenn
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Charles Weisman
1954-2016

Charles Weisman

Carrie Fisher
1956-2016

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Debbie Reynolds
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Roger Moore
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Adam West
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JERRY LEWIS
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HUGH HEFNER
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PROF. STEPHEN HAWKING
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ART BELL
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DWIGHT CLARK
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CARL MILLER
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HARLAN ELLISON
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STAN LEE
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CARL REINER
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SEAN CONNERY
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L. NEIL SMITH
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L Neil Smith

JOHN STADTMILLER
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L Neil Smith