Off Topic Board

Kurt Cobain

Chris Farley

I have never cried when someone I do not know died, you are truly a big ole teddy bear pops. Of course after dad passed I don't really cry when anyone passes now.

I guess I am an ol softy at heart. I cried after the Ok City bombing, I cried after 911, and I cried after the Connecticut shootings, even though I didn't personally know anyone in any of those tradgedies. I'm hit especially hard when children die.

Okey, you caught me in mid-brain fart and I can not think of the girl who was my first celebrity crush. She played Maria in "West Side Story" and was the long time wife of Robert Wagner. She died by drowning (that's the official story anyway) and she also looked a great deal like my old HS heart throb and love of my life up til today. That is what first attracted me to Patti (that and the fact she spoke to me at a battle of the bands held at, believe it or not, the Iowa State Mental Hospital in Mt Pleasant. She was taking the votes and she out of the blue (she lived in Mt P then I lived in Ft Madison and we had never met) spoke to me about my loyalty to the band I was a roadie for. We struck up a conversation then and chatted away the evening. That following fall (1967) she shows up at FMHS as a junior and I was a senior. I was smitten to say the least. I soon discovered, however, that I had a rival for her affections in one of the rich farm boys in our class. She ended up marrying him.

Brain fart over, her name was Natalie Wood. The guy who won Patti's hand was named Kirk and we became good friends some years later after I moved to Burlington from Missouri in 78. He also shared (he is now decease due to a truck wreck coming back from his an AA meeting while loaded with Southern Comfort and pot) a moment and event that still brings shivers to my body. When I screw up enough moxie, I'll tell that story to folks.

Dean Martin