RIP Robin Williams

just registering myself as another guy who read all the john irving books in high school.
plus dean r koontz and robert r mccammon and stephen king and vonnegut and a lotta other pulpy stuff

I remember Stuart Dybek talking about taking a class taught by John Irving while he was writing Garp. Irving would basically just bring in the new pages he'd written that week and read them to the class. A part that didn't make it into the book was a long (like 70 pages) Faulknerian tangent about the Rath brothers who ran around Appalachia committing petty crimes and raping women. One of the students said he should cut it from the book, publish it separately and call it The Rapes of Rath.

Watched World's Greatest Dad over the weekend. Unsettling viewing now and even if things go off the rails in typical Bobcat fashion, Williams is tremendous.

otm

the scene where he finds his son & breaks down on the bedroom floor is moving & beautiful in a v haunting way

This guy really, Really, REALLY likes Garp: http://m.hitfix.com/motion-captured/is-the-most-timely-movie-of-2015-a-blu-ray-release-of-a-movie-from-1982

Not the first Caitlyn Jenner/Roberta Muldoon contrast I've had pointed out during the last few months, but I'm pretty sure the first time I've seen it in print.

Robin's widow: He had Lewy body dementia.

“It was not depression that killed Robin,” she told People. “Depression was one of let’s call it 50 symptoms, and it was a small one.” Mrs. Williams gave the magazine an account of her late husband’s struggle with Lewy body dementia, the second-most common type of progressive dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. The disease, which is difficult to diagnose, causes a progressive decline in mental abilities, with hallucinations and muscle rigidity. The disease started taking its toll on Mr. Williams in the last year before his death, with heightened levels of anxiety, delusions and impaired movement. “They present themselves like a pinball machine,” Mrs. Williams said, referring to the symptoms. “You don’t know exactly what you’re looking at.”

The actor’s symptoms worsened in the months leading up to his death. He experienced crippling anxiety attacks, a “miscalculation” with a door that left his head bloodied, and muscle rigidity. And yet still his team of doctors could not pinpoint exactly what was wrong. Mrs. Williams said last year shortly after the actor’s death that he had been suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. But in the People article she said that doctors later discovered the Lewy body dementia when they performed an autopsy. Lewy body dementia is frequently confused with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease. The symptoms can overlap, and many health care professionals remain unfamiliar with the disorder. About 1.3 million people — considerably more men than women — have Lewy body dementia, named for the scientist, Dr. Friedrich Heinrich Lewy, who identified these protein deposits in the brain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/health/robin-williams-lewy-body-dementia.html

so sad. i feel like i read that he something like this a few months ago. was it only made public recently?

this is new

I hope they name that tunnel in Marin after him, that would be cool

Bobcat Goldthwait talked briefly about it a little on the nerdist podcast a month or two back, i dont think he stated the disease specifically but said Williams had something that manifested like parkinsons & gave him a lot of physical & mental difficulty. he didn't believe depression had as much to do with his death as as the disease

This was made public aaaages ago, perhaps when the autopsy results were released.

http://m.neurology.org/content/87/13/1308.full

sorry here's the non-mobile link http://www.neurology.org/content/87/13/1308.full

his wife wrote an editorial for neurology about his symptoms/diagnosis and LBD. it's brutal.

Yeah, saw that yesterday -- a harrowing and powerful read.

man, def. brutal. had no idea he had suffered so much for years leading up to his death

damn

Lewy body dementia is what got my dad. Same sort of slow, quiet start, which he largely kept secret (for at least a couple of years), followed by a rapid decline in the final several months. The paranoia, hallucinations, insomnia, tremors, all of that, though in the end it was the inability of his brain to simply tell him he was thirsty that finally did it.

one of the greatest improvisers/comedians of all time, sorely missed

The new biography by Dave Itzkoff is getting glowing reviews; not sure I have the will to read it.

just watched the HBO special, pretty good, bummed me out

otoh this did actually happen:

I hope they name that tunnel in Marin after him, that would be cool

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, November 3, 2015 1:16 PM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, we totally went through it on the way to San Fran!

I'm saving the doc for after a herculean lump of work I have to get done by monday, looking forward to it tho

there is also a big Robin Williams mural on the laundromat down the street from me, and I guess another fancier one just went up on Market. So he is being commemorated appropriately, which is nice. There was some really funny stuff in the doc, made me miss him

just got the Robin bio out of the library, immediately turned to the passages about the Met special and Waiting for Godot (as noted previously, the two times i saw him perform). The first was considered a career crest, the second an awkward flop (I liked it better than that).

I was just watching something about Robin Williams with my daughter. At the end I asked her what she thought about it, and she said it was good, but she really didn't like Robin Williams. I asked her why, and she said he was kind of a bad guy. I asked her what she was talking about, and she dismissively said "oh, he wrote that really sexist song with Robin Thicke." I was, like, what the hell are you talking about? Robin Williams never wrote a song with Robin Thicke. And then I thought, ooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh ...

You're thinking of Pharrell Williams!

Now she and Robin Williams are cool again, but I guess she's got beef with Pharrell.

Pharrell Thicke otoh

hah.

Funny timing, my son was watching the original Jumanji this morning and was telling me how much he likes Robin Williams (I think he really mostly knows him from the Night at the Museum movies and Mrs Doubtfire). He asked me if I thought he'd ever do another Museum movie and was really sad when I had to break the news.

Pharrell Thicke otoh

Can hear Sylvester saying this to Tweety Pie tbh.

oof

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=258xga9HsjE

At the beginning of "quarantine" we took a drive around to check out some of Chicago's most notable murals, which resulting in this gem of a shot of one kid who is most definitely posing against her will:

https://i.imgur.com/qyZU47f.jpg

pic.twitter.com/me6uYzmtQF

— SNL Hosts Introducing the Musical Guest (@snlhostsintro) October 13, 2022

Why was he never on STar Trek