In a gesture as perfect as it was unintentional, the news of Pekar’s death was posted on the Los Angeles Times site, right under a handy pull-down menu labeled “Foreclosures.”  Harvey would have approved.

Harvey Pekar ("pee-kar") would not be surprised that people are posting his stuff without his permission.

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When your time is up, and you move on to whatever comes after this life…who will cancel your Facebook page?

Fortunately, the folks at Legacy Locker are on the job. This company offers a way for your designated beneficiary (and I’m using that word loosely) to access all your online services, pages and auto-payments…in order to protect or remove them.

I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, wouldn’t it be nice to know that Type Like The Wind would live on forever, its name renewed year after year? But, on the other hand, do my heirs really need to go through those 9,678 archived Gmail messages? It seems like a lot to ask.

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New York (AP) – Subs Lede, the veteran overseer of Associated Press wire-service jargon, died last night in New York City after plunging from an office building at 450 West 33rd St.  He was 90.

A statement released to media outlets this morning by the New York City Police Department’s Tradition Protective Unit (TPU) said that the fall appears to have been the result of a deliberate push by an editor or group of editors working in the building.  No suspects have been named, but one source close to the investigation said that TPU is “looking for a gang of youthful offenders.”

Mr. Lede was well known for his years in the front lines, where he fought alongside his stalwart partner, Recasts Hed, who at this writing is also near death from an accident last week. Police will not comment on whether the incidents are related.

Mr. Lede took countless newcomers under his wings in the field and the newsroom, training such crucial figures as Previous Cycle and the controversial Note Contents.

In 1978, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News with colleagues Fixes Typos and Will B. Led. The trio covered the tragic collision between a Misplaced Simile and a Clumsy Metaphor in airspace over the city. Following the crash, commas and semicolons rained down for a 48-hour period. The prize-winning stories resulted in parentheses being added to unclear phrases throughout the United States.

Mr. Lede was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, New Throughout; a sister, Adds Graphic-Slug; and a nephew, Adds Byline.

At. Mr. Lede’s request, no funeral service will be held. Donations may be made to Updates with Color.

(Staff report moved on wire 20:38 2 July 2010. This obituary written by Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett was sent by the service late on July 2, 2010.)

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Byrd himself exemplified that change, moving from membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young West Virginian to a supporter of civil rights measures as a seasoned statesman.

The comment no doubt gave a lot of other people pause as it did me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would have thought longer and deeper about the thesis had the footage of Byrd not been followed by a live studio shot about the oil spill.  On the set was one of the new news-hotties stretching her long legs from a tall chair facing the camera, chatting with Phillipe Cousteau Jr, grandson of the revered Jacques Cousteau.

Yes, Senator Byrd lived a long life. Long enough to die on a day when “news” comes from a nitwit in snakeskin high heels schmoozing a low-wattage, high-ancestry bullshitter about one of the worst environmental disasters on record.

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“On election night 2000, when Byrd, then 83, was reelected with his largest margin ever — a 78% majority, carrying all 55 counties and all but seven of the state’s 1,970 precincts — he remarked: ‘West Virginia has always had four friends: God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and Robert C. Byrd.’ (He later dropped Sears from the list, complaining about inadequate service on a heater.)”

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“Mr. Haney fought and won a 13-year legal battle against a man who said he had given him the idea for Trivial Pursuit when Mr. Haney picked him up hitchhiking. He won another suit against an author who claimed that Mr. Haney had taken questions from his books, something Mr. Haney readily acknowledged.

The judge’s reasoning: “You can’t steal trivia.”

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According to The New York Times, Doris Eaton Travis died at age 106, the last of the famed and comely (36-26-38) performers hired in the early 1900s for the famous Broadway troupe.

She was part of a famous stage family, the Seven Little Eatons, and began dancing in public at age 5. The obit in the NYT by Douglas Martin is a minor masterpiece of factual yet gentlemanly reporting:

“Doris began as a chorus girl and understudy to the show’s star. In 1919, she wore a red costume and played the paprika part in the salad dance. ”

“While appearing in the show she fell in love with the songwriter Nacio Herb Brown…Mrs. Travis’s relationship with Mr. Brown lasted intermittently for eight years but never led to marriage. Mr. Brown himself married five other women all told, divorcing all of them.”

“..Arthur Murray hired her to teach ballroom dancing in Manhattan. She taught 70 hours a week until moving to Michigan to start the new franchise.One student was …Paul Travis, who made a fortune by inventing a door jamb for cars. She and Mr. Travis married and later moved to Norman, Okla., where they bred quarter horses.”

And, my favorite, the ending to the story of the last Ziegfeld Girl:

“A little more than two weeks ago Mrs. Travis returned to Broadway to appear again at the annual Easter Bonnet Competition held by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, this time at the Minskoff Theater. She did a few kicks, apologizing that she no longer performed cartwheels.”

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And, Food writer Mark Bittman has launched his new site. Check it out, here.

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Say “Beatles” and we think “Ed Sullivan.” Only recently have we discarded “Walt Disney” and taken up “Pixar” as the name that comes to mind for all-things-animated.

When I saw the obit for Forsythe I also remembered his brief role as a retired Air Force major running a private school for girls.  “The John Forsythe Show,” kept me riveted each week of the 1965-66 season that it ran. It convinced me that boarding school would save my life, and indeed it did a few years later.

Much is made of the mind-melting properties of too-much television. We all cluck and shake our heads when we read those stories about how many hours Americans–especially kids–spend in front of the tube. But now and then, an idea from a silly sitcom takes root and grows into something good. So, here’s hoping that Mr. Forsythe’s heirs live long and prosper with the fruits of his TV labors.

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Escalante is the man portrayed in the 1988 movie “Stand and Deliver,” which I happened to see last week. . (It met two of my movie requirements: It allowed me to avoid doing actual work; and it stars Edward James Olmos.)

The movie is a Hollywood-ized take on the East Los Angeles high school teacher who refused to believe poor Hispanic kids were doomed to fail in school. He taught them calculus, they learned, they passsed the Advanced Placement Exam with flying colors. They even survived an erroneous charge of cheating one year.

Most of us have one teacher who gave us a push that changed our life direction; sometimes it was a slight veer, other times it was an about-face. Mary Donovan was mine. I was in her third-grade class in 1965-66. It was her last year before retirement, and if her energy or love of teaching had waned over her long public-school career, it didn’t show.

I was not a model pupil. Very small and scrawny for my age, hopeless in math and science, not yet confident in schoolyard sports. I missed school days often, and when I was present I was preoccupied with my parent’s exploding marriage.

In the spring of that year we were assigned our first “paper,” an independent project meant to be a page or two. I wrote a five-page draft (in pencil, yellow lined paper) and my theme was “How someone becomes a good person.”  (I dimly recall making a connection between Easter and heroics, which would now cause considerable turmoil in the very secular world of public education.)

Mrs. Donovan was effusive. She showed my final paper (blue ink, white paper) to the principal. She pinned it up on the bulletin board right next to the A-plus math papers of my classmates.

On the last day of school, we lined up to hug our teacher–another thing that is probably not okay anymore. When my turn came, Mrs. Donovan held me by both shoulders and said, firmly, “Kimmie, I just know you’re going to be a writer.”

We corresponded long enough that she saw her prediction come true. When she died in the late 1980s, her niece answered my last letter. “I know Aunt Mary loved hearing from you,” she wrote. “And I know she would have wanted me to send you the enclosed.”

It was the draft of my five-page paper.

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