Enotes

My memories of Lynn Anderson are rather sardonic, but that's not her fault, necessarily. Singer Anderson, 67, passed away the other day of a heart attack in a Nashville hospital while being treated for pneumonia. She was best known for her song, "Rose Garden," which peaked at no. 1 on the country charts and no. 3 on the Billboard charts in early-1971. But around the campus of Eastern Michigan University in the 1980s, Lynn Anderson became a notorious figure, forever linked to the school's outrageous efforts to keep its football program in the Mid-American Conference (MAC). Let me explain. By 1983, MAC officials were considering kicking EMU's football program out of the conference, because of poor performance on the field and more importantly, poor performance at the turnstiles. The latter was a direct effect of the former's cause. The conference pretty much gave the university an ultimatum: lift attendance to a minimum threshold (I can't recall...

Which Dick Van Patten would you like to remember and mourn today? Is it the actor Van Patten, who most famously seeped into our consciousness as Tom Bradford, the patriarch of the TV family on ABC's "Eight is Enough" from 1977-81? Is it the tennis player Van Patten, whose sons got some of the old man's genes and did pretty good on the court as well? Is it the animal activist Van Patten, who worked tirelessly for our furried and feathered friends, including founding National Guide Dog Month in 2008? Is it the entrepreneur Van Patten, who co-founded Natural Balance Pet Foods in 1989? Take your pick---or take them all, if you'd like. Van Patten passed away on Tuesday at age 86. Some reports blame the cause of death on complications related to diabetes. There was some juice to the Van Patten name in the entertainment industry. There was Dick, of course, and there was his younger sister Joyce, a fellow actor. There were the Van Patten boys---Vincent, Nels...

Comedians/actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were married for 61 years, but had they not heeded warning signs, the marriage might have ended some 44 years ago. The comedy team of Stiller & Meara was seemingly cruising along in 1970, having just enjoyed a nice run of 36 appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show"   in the 1960s, when both members of the team/marriage sensed that something was amiss. With an act based largely on their real-life domestic trials and tribulations, Stiller and Meara found that despite their success---or maybe because of it---the line between life at home and life on stage was getting further blurred as the years went on. "I didn't know where the act ended and our marriage began," Meara told People  magazine in 1977 . "We were like two guys," Stiller said in the same article. With Meara questioning things and Stiller worried that he might lose his wife, the act was disbanded in 1970. But they never stopped working ...

It's all a big joke to Justin Bieber. Dangerous drag racing, drugs, alcohol, resisting arrest? Pfft! The mug shot says it all. Bieber, another young entertainer sliding down the slippery slope of hubris and spoilage, was arrested early Thursday in Miami . With the aiding and abetting of his own father and mother--- TMZ reported that Jeremy Bieber, 38, helped block off traffic for the drag race and may have supplied the alcohol, and that prescription drugs Justin Bieber allegedly used came from his mother---the odds are even longer that the youngest Bieber will get his act together anytime soon. In the mug shot after Thursday's booking, Justin Bieber looks like he doesn't have a care in the world---giddy, almost. It's hard to blame him for thinking that way. He's 19, making loads of dough, has the usual protective inner circle that stars often have, and has parents who are his pals rather than his mom and dad. He's indestructible, right? The ch...

Bob Denver is still dead. The other day on Facebook, I came across a link "announcing" the death of Denver, who most famously played Gilligan on TV's "Gilligan's Island." I'm usually pretty up on who's alive and who's dead, celebrity-wise, but in this instance I dropped the ball. So I shared the link. The story, which appeared to sprout from "The Today Show" web site, announced Denver's age at death as being 70. That should have been my first red flag. A quick calculation told me that Denver must have been born in  1943, or in December of 1942, for him to have died at age 70. After I shared the link, a Facebook friend commented that he was surprised Denver was that young. "Yeah, me too," I commented back. "That meant he was in his early-20s when 'Gilligan's Island' first started on the air." That by itself is semi-plausible, but I had neglected to take into account Denver's years p...