PicoBlog

Photo Courtesy of the Bentley Library, University of Michigan By Steve Kornacki Gary Moeller was a great football coach, no doubt. However, he also was our neighbor in the Dicken Elementary School neighborhood of Ann Arbor. And the smiling face we’d see on bike rides or jogs is what we remembered most about him when news of his death came Monday. Moeller was 44–13–4 for a .771 winning percentage and won three Big Ten titles in five seasons as Michigan’s head coach.

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Michael Anthony Chelini, age 75, passed away on Oct. 31, 2023, at his home in the Napa Valley. He is survived by his wife Kathleen Ann (Ragghianti), the love of his life and the much-beloved members of La Famiglia Chelini to include his daughters, Misha (Scott Harvey) and Missy Gott, and his son Rico (Lindsey) as well as seven grandchildren: Olivia and Sofia Gott; Miles, Oliver, and Frances Harvey; and Mikey and Joey Chelini, as well as his adoring sister Kit Chelini of Sonoma.

Hudson Soft, founded in the 70s, did just about everything a studio and publisher could do in the video game industry before it was fully absorbed into Konami on March 1, 2012. For the next month here at Retro XP, the focus will be on the roles the studio played, the games they developed, the games they published, the consoles they were attached to, and the legacy they left behind. After all, someone has to remember them, since Konami doesn’t always seem to.

With the coverage of hip hop’s 50th anniversary growing this year, my mind wandered back to what was considering rapping back before the explosion of “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979. People site the Last Poets or Gil Scott-Heron or even Pigmeat Markum. But my mind goes to a colorful character who went by the name Jack the Rapper aka Jack Gibson, who’d been radio DJ, a promotion man for labels, publisher of a newsletter and owner of an annual convention both known as Jack the Rapper.

Hello, Over the weekend, the world lost a hero, and the disability community lost its matriarch. It’s impossible to list everything Judy Heumann did for the disability rights movement, so let me give you the highlights. She sued New York for the right to work as the city’s first wheelchair-using teacher, and won. She organised the infamous San Francisco 504 sit in to force Nixon’s government to outlaw discrimination by federal agencies, and then was a driving force behind the US’s first nationwide disability rights law, the ADA.

The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union has a idealized concept of the “Iowa Girl.” It represents a student-athlete who combines the best of character and ability off and on the court. Lisa Brinkmeyer VanDeventer, 48, who passed away Thursday after a fight with brain cancer, was a true Iowa Girl. She was a great high school star at Hubbard-Radcliffe, earning Des Moines Sunday Register Female Athlete of the Year honors in 1993.

The well-deserved tributes have been rolling in for Norman Lear since his death last week at 101. However, the obituaries and think pieces have overlooked his challenging but formative early years. The creative genius who would give us “All in the Family,” “Maude” and “The Jeffersons” was born in my adopted hometown, New Haven, in 1922. It was a long way from Hollywood. What were the odds he would make it there?

I have no ties to Lewis, other than having rooted against him for years every time the Baltimore Ravens played my hometown Pittsburgh Steelers. But one day in 2010, on assignment for The Palm Beach Post, I got to meet his son. Ray Lewis III was just 15 but he was already showing promise as a gifted sophomore running back at Lake Mary Prep, a private school just north of Orlando.

On September 21st, 2023, news broke regarding the passing of Sharon Niesp, an actor, artist and singer who was one of director John Waters’ Dreamlanders (a.k.a regulars in his films) as well as the lover and girlfriend of Cookie Mueller, a fellow Dreamlander, author and actress in her own right. A brief bio of Sharon Niesp’s life is documented in Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller, an oral history compilation on the life of Cookie by Chloé Griffin.