R.I.P.

that’s the most brilliant thing our President has promoted… ??

second night of Fireworks ? around lower manhattan…

I believe it’s a somewhat late Labor Day Celebration. A Union thing.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/ken-starr-former-federal-judge-dead-at-76/[/URL]

does this flag ?? bow to other countries,Canada ?? Mexico ??

*The great-great-great-great granddaughter of the king who lost America acknowledged a further debt to Britain’s former colony beyond the wartime alliance. In 1973, the UK government was sounded out on the idea of Elizabeth II attending celebrations three years later to mark America’s bicentennial. One of the prime minister’s advisors wrote a snooty note to Buckingham Palace: “One would wish to consider whether it was right for the Queen to be associated with the celebration of a rebellion from the British Crown.” The Queen would go on to make the trip, though she arrived on July 6, because, as one Embassy official told the New York Times, “July 4th was really pushing it. Forgiveness can only go so far.”

In a speech marking the occasion, the Queen herself would be more gracious. “It seems to me that Independence Day should be celebrated as much in Britain as in America,” she said to a crowd in Philadelphia. “Not in rejoicing at the separation of the American colonies from the British Crown but in sincere gratitude to the Founding Fathers of this great Republic for having taught Britain a very valuable lesson… We learnt to respect the right of others to govern themselves in their own ways. Without that great act in the cause of liberty, performed in Independence Hall two hundred years ago, we could never have transformed an Empire into a Commonwealth.”*

Gotta Admit, those British are really very patriotic bunch of chaps… they were defiant during the Blitz, part of the turning point in WWII… Hip, Hip, Hooray…
.

maybe that’s some of the reasons why she was so humble …

.

Gotta Admit: the formality is over the top…

good thing the Queen wasn’t Jewish, she would need to be buried in day one… cellie…
.

[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Fred Franzia, 79, Dies; Upended Wine Industry With Two-Buck Chuck[/SIZE][/HEADING]
An unorthodox businessman, he took on the wine industry and its high markups, selling wine at prices many families could afford every day.

Fred Franzia, the iconoclastic businessman who turned the wine industry on its head with his inexpensive Charles Shaw label, better known as [Two-Buck Chuck]('https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/dining/wine-talk-raising-a-glass-to-affordability.html'), died on Tuesday at his home in Denair, Calif. He was 79.

His company, Bronco Wine, announced the death in [a statement]('https://www.broncowine.com/home'). Neither the statement nor Mr. Franzia’s family gave the cause of death.

“Core to his belief was a vision that wine should be enjoyed and consumed by every American table,” the statement said. But Mr. Franzia, like his wines, was more down to earth.

When asked how he could sell wine for less than a bottle of water, he famously replied: “They’re overcharging for the water — don’t you get it?”

Mr. Franzia’s unorthodox business practices rattled many in the wine industry. He did not care.
“Take that and shove it, Napa,” he said in a 2009 [profile]('https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/18/drink-up') in The New Yorker, after selling his 400 millionth bottle of Charles Shaw.

Bronco Wine Company was better known as a wine repackager than as a producer. Mr. Franzia would buy surplus product from winemakers, or buy businesses that were going bankrupt, and sell the wine for a bargain.

His most famous acquisition was Charles Shaw, a label with a strong reputation among winemakers that filed for bankruptcy in 1995. In 2002, Mr. Franzia started selling the wine exclusively at [Trader Joe’s]('https://www.traderjoes.com/home') for $1.99 a bottle (in some cities, it can now cost up to $3.99). The wine became affectionately known as Two-Buck Chuck.

The company says it has sold over 1 billion bottles.

While the business was financially successful, Mr. Franzia had many critics in the wine industry, who thought his approach denigrated the winemaking practice.

“To take a formerly respected brand and sell it for $2 where the wine had previously sold for many times that,” said Vic Motto, a wine industry consultant. “Charles Shaw was embarrassed by that, which didn’t bother Fred.”

Karen MacNeil, the author of “[The Wine Bible]('https://www.karenmacneil.com/product/the-wine-bible/'),” said Mr. Franzia did a great disservice to the wine business. His Charles Shaw wines “implied to basic consumers that there was no value in wine, there was no difference,” she said.

“You may as well spend $2 because it won’t make any difference if you spend $2, $20 or $200,” she added. “Anyone who knows anything about wine knows that is not true.”

Yet Charles Shaw wines won several [industry awards]('https://www.npr.org/2004/06/18/1963794/two-buck-chuck-snags-top-wine-prize') and [helped reverse]('https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110902677306360253') a long slump in wine sales throughout the United States.

Zach Geballe, a host of the [Vinepair podcast]('https://vinepair.com/tag/podcast/'), which focuses on the drinks industry, said that when he entered the wine business, “I looked at stuff like Charles Shaw with a lot of condescension.”

But the label, he added, “really helped create in this country what had long existed in Europe: this very affordable, very accessible, widely available wine that people who wanted to drink wine essentially daily could afford to do almost no matter their income.”

Fred Thomas Franzia was born on May 24, 1943, in Modesto, Calif. His grandparents Giuseppe and Teresa Franzia started a winery in California in the 1910s after immigrating from Italy. In 1949, their sons, including Mr. Franzia’s father, Joseph, took over the company, Franzia Brothers Winery. Mr. Franzia’s mother, Helen (Rossini) Franzia, was a homemaker who assisted with the winery.

Fred grew up helping out with the family business, and after graduating from Santa Clara University in 1965, he took a sales position at the company. Franzia Brothers Winery was purchased by [the Coca-Cola Company]('https://www.coca-colacompany.com/home') in 1973, prompting Mr. Franzia to start his own venture, Bronco Wine Company, with his older brother, Joseph, and his cousin John Franzia.

Coca-Cola eventually sold its wine business to [the Wine Group]('https://www.thewinegroup.com/'), which now produces [Franzia]('https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizthach/2022/03/03/the-immigrant-woman-who-launched-the-worlds-largest-volume-wine-brand--franzia/?sh=2778eef57eee'), one of the best-known box wines in the country.

At Bronco, Mr. Franzia gained a reputation for cutting corners. In 1993, he [pleaded guilty]('https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/12/09/Bronco-Winery-head-steps-down-to-settle-wine-fraud-case/1564755413200/') to mislabeling around 1 million gallons of wine, having for five years used less expensive grapes to make wine sold as zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon. Under a plea agreement, he stepped down as president of Bronco Wine but then became the chief financial officer. He later returned to the top as chief executive.

Mr. Franzia angered Napa Valley vintners for labeling his wine a Napa product, even though it was only bottled there. In 2000, those winemakers persuaded the California State Legislature to pass a law stipulating that for wine to be labeled Napa, at least 75 percent of it had to come from grapes grown in the valley. Mr. Franzia was unsuccessful in reversing the decision.

“He was in the cheap beverage with alcohol business,” said Ms. MacNeil, who lives in the Napa Valley. “Napa is in the fine wine business.”

Mr. Franzia is survived by his five children, Renata Franzia Price, Roma Franzia, Giovanna Franzia and Joseph and Carlo Franzia; his brother, Joseph; his sisters, Joellen D’Ercole and Catherine McFadden; and 14 grandchildren.

Mr. Franzia did more than poke a proletarian finger in the wine industry’s elite image.

Mr. Geballe, the Vinepair podcast host, argues that Mr. Franzia altered the course of American wine consumption. Charles Shaw is often the first wine that budding drinkers taste, Mr. Geballe said, and it remains a staple of many American households.

“For a lot of people, that is essentially synonymous with what wine is,” he said.

Even Mr. Motto, the wine consultant, offered tempered praise for Mr. Franzia’s business: “I thought it was imaginative, creative, somewhat distasteful but ultimately quite successful.”

I drank his boxed wine for years Merlot. Not a bad table wine until about about a year ago. Then i got 3 bad boxes in a row. So now on to Peter Vella.

.

Nurse Ratched has passed...

[HEADING=2][SIZE=6]Louise Fletcher, 88, Dies; Oscar Winner for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’[/SIZE][/HEADING]
She was largely unknown when she was cast as the head administrative nurse at an Oregon mental institution, in the 1975 film, which won multiple awards.

The American Film Institute named Nurse Ratched as one of the most memorable villains in film history and the second most notable female villain, surpassed only by the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.”

l Miner's Daughter Passes @ 90

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/musicians-fans-react-death-country-163603658.html[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/angela-lansbury-screen-broadway-icon-192927402.html[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/14/entertainment/robbie-coltrane-death[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://pagesix.com/2022/10/24/leslie-jordan-dead-at-67-report/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons[/URL]

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/jules-bass-producer-director-known-194629764.html[/URL]

[Jules Bass]('https://variety.com/t/jules-bass/'), the animator, producer, director and composer whose work included stop-motion holiday television specials like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” died at the age of 87 on Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Rye, New York, publicist Jennifer Fisherman-Ruff confirmed.

The three prominent holiday specials, “Rudolph,” voiced by Burl Ives, “Frosty” starring Jackie Vernon and Jimmy Durante and “Santa Claus,” voiced by Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney, all debuted during the 1960s and 1970s. In the decades since, the specials have become staples of seasonal holiday programming on television.

Bass was known for his longstanding creative partnership with director Arthur Rankin Jr., who died in 2014 at 89. The two pushed many productions through their banner Rankin/Bass Productions, which was known for its laborious cel-animated, stop-motion films that took long periods of time to turn into full-length features.
==========
I loved these shows as a kid & then got my daughter hooked on them.
:cry:

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/jules-bass-producer-director-known-194629764.html[/URL]

[Jules Bass]('https://variety.com/t/jules-bass/'), the animator, producer, director and composer whose work included stop-motion holiday television specials like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” died at the age of 87 on Tuesday at an assisted living facility in Rye, New York, publicist Jennifer Fisherman-Ruff confirmed.

The three prominent holiday specials, “Rudolph,” voiced by Burl Ives, “Frosty” starring Jackie Vernon and Jimmy Durante and “Santa Claus,” voiced by Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney, all debuted during the 1960s and 1970s. In the decades since, the specials have become staples of seasonal holiday programming on television.

Bass was known for his longstanding creative partnership with director Arthur Rankin Jr., who died in 2014 at 89. The two pushed many productions through their banner Rankin/Bass Productions, which was known for its laborious cel-animated, stop-motion films that took long periods of time to turn into full-length features.
==========
I loved these shows as a kid & then got my daughter hooked on them.
:cry:

These people were amazing and created content that has and should serve many and many more generations.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/rock-n-roll-pioneer-jerry-lee-lewis-dead-at-87-175607051.html[/URL]

[HEADING=2]Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis dead at 87[/HEADING]

Jerry Lee Lewis, the last originator of rock ‘n’ roll, has died in his home Desoto County, Miss., at age 87. His death was previously erroneously reported by TMZ on Oct. 26, but the outlet quickly retracted that story, apologizing and explaining that it had been misled by someone claiming to represent the musician. On the morning of Oct. 28, news of Lewis’s passing was confirmed by his publicist, Zach Farnum of 117 Group.

According to Farnum and Lewis biographer Rick Bragg, Lewis’s seventh wife, Judith, who was by Lewis’s side as he passed, said, “He is ready to leave. … He said he was ready to be with Jesus.” Lewis had been reportedly battling the flu and had been unable to attend his Oct. 19 Country Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony, as stated in a Facebook post on his official page that day. Lewis’s longtime friend Kris Kristofferson accepted the honor on Lewis’s behalf and brought the award to Lewis’s bedside.

Jerry Lee Lewis, who went by the nickname “The Killer,” was born Sept. 29, 1935, in Ferriday, La. He began playing music at age 10, after his parents Elmo and Mamie mortgaged their farm to buy him a piano, and attended piano lessons with two of his cousins, fellow future stars Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart. After gigging around Louisiana and Mississippi during the dawning era of rock ‘n’ roll, he got his big break in 1955 when he traveled to Memphis, Tenn., to audition for Sun Records. (Sun Records founder Sam Phillips would later declare Lewis the most talented person he had ever seen.) With that seminal label, Lewis began not only recording as a solo artist but also working as a session musician for other artists on the Sun roster like Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. Lewis was the last surviving member of Sun Records' Million Dollar Quartet and the album Class of '55, which also included Cash, Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley.

Lewis’s dynamic, boogie-woogie playing style (which often involved him pounding the keys with his fists, elbows, feet, and backside and kicking over his piano bench) and wild-eyed, bad-boy persona established the Killer as an architect of early rock ‘n’ roll, alongside the likes of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Presley, and he influenced countless rock pianists who followed him. In a 2013 interview, Elton John said that before he discovered Lewis, “the piano playing that I had heard had been more sedate. My dad collected George Shearing records, but this was the first time I heard someone beat the shit out of a piano. When I saw Little Richard at the Harrow Granada, he played it standing up, but Jerry Lee Lewis actually jumped on the piano! This was astonishing to me, that people could do that. Those records had such a huge effect on me, and they were just so great. I learned to play like that.”

Lewis’s first big solo success for Sun Records came in 1957 with the top three Billboard hits “Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On” (which was selected for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005) and “Great Balls of Fire” (which later inspired the title of his 1989 biopic starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder).

Lewis was the last surviving member of Sun Records' Million Dollar Quartet and the album Class of '55, which also included Cash, Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley.

[MEDIA=youtube]Fw7SBF-35Es[/MEDIA]

Well he lived a long life ??

Well he lived a long life ??

it's almost never long enough...........