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dynamoe · 3 years

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Boy Genius on AO3 | Prologue | Ch 1 | Ch 2 ←You Are Here | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5

Billy muttered, “You’ve had that corporate day job too long.” (This entire chapter is a PowerPoint presentation)

more words from an episode of a Billy & White prequel. It's easier on your eyes to read on A03, but share, comment and post anywhere that suits you.

↓ Chapter 2 is below the fold ↓

Assume trigger warnings comparable to source material — adult language, nihilism, cruel jokes at the expense of an innocent, body horror, bad parenting, etc.

The sound of the generator clicking on and the porchlight shining through the slats of the bathroom window jarred Billy awake. He was on the floor, stagger-step from the toilet, as his brain fog slowly receded allowing him to piece together the last few hours.

He definitely threw up– he remembered (and still tasted) that – a firehose spurt of almost purely Zima clearmalt alternative beverage. Maybe could resell his output as Crystal Vomit™. Quaking with panic-sweats, he crawled onto a pile of towels on the floor and dropped off into dead-to-the-world sleep for three– maybe four hours. Very dignified.

He had really weird dreams. He dimly remembered his mother strapping him head-first into some contraption that was halfway between a supermarket shopping card and a wire Orgone meditation pyramid. Then she chased him around that apartment they lived in back then, screaming at him... did that really happen or was it an overloaded Jungian symbolic salad his subconscious just threw together? He had a headache.

The least he could do is brush his teeth, so he did. Catching his reflection in the medicine cabinet, he looked like death warmed over. But now his mouth tasted better.

A sheet of 8.5 x 11 slipped under the bathroom door. Under an embossed, glitter-flake Conjectural Technologies letterhead (White, you idiot. How much did this cost us?), the following memo:

ATTN: All senior staff Conjectural Technologies, LLC.

Please convene in the executive boardroom (aka breakfast nook) at the at 4:00 PM (aka now) for an essential status meeting and presentation regarding next quarter’s new initiative.

Promptness is appreciated.

Regards, K. Peter White, Jr. CEO Conjectural Technologies, LLC

“Now that our esteemed CTO has arrived, let’s start call this meeting to order,” CEO K. Peter White, Jr., (the “K.” and the suffix being a new affectation he was beta-testing) said judgmentally and Billy crawled into the booth across from him.

“Where the hell did you get all this?”

A projector tethered to a mile of cable plugged into an IBM ThinkPad 300-something, a suitcase-sized plastic brick of a laptop, sat on the built-in table. The room smelled like ozone and melted plastic, usually a bad sign.

“Lifted it from work,” Pete smirked, fiddling with the folding screen he had set up in the kitchen. He leaned back to the laptop computer and clicked enter on Microsoft PowerPoint 3.0.

A blue gradient appeared with bold yellow Helvetica title: “SO YOU WANT TO PASS AS SOMETHING YOU’RE NOT.”

Pete stood next to the screen to redundantly read aloud, “So you want to pass as something you’re not. A detailed expert guide from a professional who’s been there.” He pointed at himself and flashed his shit-eating game show grin.

Billy muttered, “You’ve had that corporate day job too long.”

“Tell me about it,” White agreed, “I would have fired me by now,”

Pete White was a master at nailing job interviews (performed in full “melanin-drag,” naturally), but a nightmare of an employee (he gave up the make up soon after being hired, claiming ‘I’ve been sick.’). He was pushing new boundaries in the 2-3 hour lunch hour, making long distance calls on the company dime and hiding in the employee bathroom playing GameBoy (he’d easily logged 10,000 hours on Adventure Island II alone). Despite this, White somehow made twice as much as Billy did, as if height, stupid confidence and a college degree were all that mattered.

“If you’re passing, you’re filling a role,” he lectured, “You meet the viewers’ expectations enough and their brain blocks out contradictory evidence. “

He walked back to the laptop. He pressed enter. A wipe cleared the old slide in a flurry of chunky pixels as a new slide appeared:

“OBJECTIVE: POSING AS A BOY GENIUS AFTER THE AGE OF MAJORITY” was flanked by unnecessary Jr. High Sex Ed textbook diagrams.

White scrambled back to stand next to the screen, regretting he forgot to steal a remote.

“FACT: for the future success of our scientific think tank and independent research facility— Conjectural Technologies, LLC— we need to attend the World SuperScience Conference being held in Seattle.”

A bullet point faded onto the slide as he narrated, followed by text repeating everything he just said aloud. A second one appeared as he continued.

“FACT: For the future health of Super Science as a whole, we need to attend as the voice of the alternative, independent, unconnected, underrepresented—

“—Underpantsed—”

“— Super Scientist. So our act of minor dishonesty is an acceptable sacrifice for the health of our industry.”

On the screen, clip art of a white-haired elderly businessman pointed at a disproportionately huge clip art scales-of-justice.

“Is that guy supposed to be you?” Billy said, bored, his finger up his nose.

“Ehhh, sort of. The image gallery doesn’t have a lot to choose from.”

“And I’m … some kind of a squirrel holding a nut?” Billy asked, pointed at a second clipart figure next to the businessman

“It was either that or a map of Delaware. The squirrel was a better color match,” White shrugged, “We’re getting off topic. We need to outline a plan to get you to convincingly pass as a boy genius for the duration of the event… and possibly for the rest of your life.

A hand-shaped dog silhouette appeared on the screen, open and closing its finger-mouth.

“Mnam mnam nammmm… I’m eating your clip art.”

“Don’t be childish, Billy. I’m trying to explain how you’re gonna pass as a child.”

“I know all this stuff already, White. We talked about it. This whole ‘presentation’ is pointless. I say I’m a child. Get the discount admission. Go to the conference. Done.”

“The conference is full of observant, professional, intelligent scientists– they’re gonna notice. You think you can slide in on a skateboard, wearing a backwards ballcap and say ‘Don’t mind the crow’s feet and my passion for NPR, I’m totally underage! Cowabunga!’”

“Pretty much. Minus the cap. Not much of a ‘hat guy.’”

“We’re not gatecrashing, we’re attending. We need to keep this con believable for three straight days. If we’re ejected as soon as we get there, we won’t be able to network and show off our research, whatever it is.”

Billy sulked. He hated being lectured. Billy hated more when White knew more than him about something (which happened extremely rarely).

A new slide dissolved in. Same gradient, new text “BE THOROUGH!”

“This is the first step in a long-con, so attention to detail is KEY. You can’t be out of character from the minute we get on the plane. No drinking. No smoking. No picking up girls.”

“Ha. Like that was even gonna happen,” Billy muttered sarcastically while rolling another American Spirit.

“I mean it, Billy. No cracks in the armor.”

“If I can pick up girls because I’m supposed to be, like, eight or whatever, what’s gonna be your excuse when you can’t even score with Super Science skanks at an open bar?”

“You’re just being a dick to me because you fell asleep on the floor of the bathroom. You slept in pee.”

“Why would there be pee on the floor? Are you peeing on the floor?”

Stone-faced, White clicked to the next slide.

Next slide: “CONJECTURAL PRAXIS - NOW TO THE FUTURE”

“Praxis?” Billy asked flatly, “Really?

“It means ‘doin’ stuff.’”

An irritating buzz and the tinny clank of tiny gears grinding erupted from Billy’s mechanical hand. He poked around his index finger joint with the end of a ballpoint pen as White listed the next steps for their deception, “We need to get you a new ID, birth certificate, passport, and Social Security card with your doctored age. I know some guys.”

Billy looked up startled, “Don’t use my real name. An alias.”

“Why? Who cares?

Billy looked sheepish, “I don’t want my mother to find out. She has connections, she’ll find me.”

“Paranoid?”

He busied himself with the pen, driving it deep into a crevice between metal plates on his wrist, “Lots of Super Scientists work under nom-de-guerre.”

“Fine,” White relented, “What name do you want?”

“Whatever. Fuck it. Write ‘Quizboy.’”

“‘Billy Quizboy.’ A pretty big giveaway to your real identity isn’t it.”

“It was five years ago. That’s ancient history in tabloid time. No one even remembers that game show,” Billy pulled a mangled ‘resplendent' magnet from inside a joint.

“I think you’ll find it’s a beloved television classic,” White argued, insulted.

“Fine. Consider the name-change a memento mori. ‘Remember thou art mortal.’ Every time I see my name it’ll say ‘Remember thou once got kicked off a crappy game show for cheating even though it totally wasn’t thine fault.’”

“You really know how to wound me, pally,” Pete continued, going back to his to-do list, “Wardrobe and Styling – I can get the outfit, but you’re finally getting that damn haircut.”

Billy sighed, blowing his overgrown bangs out of his face.

“And you gotta shave.”

“No duh,” Billy said dumbly. He hoped he’d look older with a beard but it just doubled the ‘Where’s your pot of gold/gimme your Lucky Charms’ taunts shouted at him at the bus stop. Lucky the Leprechaun (created in 1963 and premiered in a 1964 television campaign by agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample) didn’t even have a fucking beard!

“No, I mean, you gotta shave.”

Pete slid a chunky pink plastic bottle over the conference/breakfast table. Billy read the label: “Hair-Off! Hair Removal Lotion/Chemical Depilatory”

“Oh no fucking way!”

Pete clicked one slide back – “BE THOROUGH!” – and pointed authoritatively, “You’ve got to… BE. THOROUGH.”

“I’m not going to be naked at the World Super Science Forum.”

“What if you get locked out of your hotel room, huh? You’re in the shower and a fire alarm goes off but unbeknownst to you a jealous husband was hiding under your bed because he mistook your hotel room for the Honeymoon Suite where his wife was having an affair with the vicar. So you run in the hallway wearing only a towel and its a red towel and a bull got loose in the hotel and chases you through a glassware exhibition attended by a group of nuns and —”

“I don’t live inside an episode of Benny Hill, White.”

“You don’t know that. Anything can happen.”

Billy crossed his arms back at him, resolute.

“If it was me, I’d do it. For the good of the company.”

Billy scowled harder.

“I’ve put bronzer places no man should,” White said, haunted.

to be continued ⟶

Prologue | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 |

Author's Note

I've never drawn Grunge!Pete with his baseball cap off. ↑ That's probably the outfit he wears to work, but with different shoes. (Bosses use to be real hard-ons about wearing sneakers at work.)

If this was a script, this chapter and the last (and probably the next one) would be cut down to :30 of screen time (3-4 lines), but since this is prose I can dick around doing nothing for another 10 pages. I'm fully committed to: less action, more circular conversations.

Prologue | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5

#rosencrantz and guildenstern of venture bros #ao3 fanfic #AO3 #illustration #master billy quizboy #pete white #microsoft powerpoint #1990s #powerpoint #writing #fiction #venture bros #venture brothers

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passionate-reply · 3 years

Video

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This week on Great Albums: a Great Album that your average rock critic would actually agree with me about! Find out how Kate Bush got her groove back with her fifth LP, Hounds of Love, and whether she ever came down from that hill. Full transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Ever since I first conceived the idea of Great Albums, I’ve always intended it to reflect nothing other than my own personal “canon”--not necessarily a list of albums that were influential, successful, or acclaimed by anybody’s standards but my own. But in this installment, I’m making a somewhat uncharacteristic move, and diving into an album that really doesn’t need me to advocate for it: Hounds of Love, by Kate Bush, often considered Bush’s greatest masterpiece--if not one of the greatest albums of all time.

Released in 1985, Hounds of Love was Bush’s fifth studio LP. Her career had started off surprisingly strong in 1977, with the release of her debut single “Wuthering Heights,” written when Bush was only 19 years old. With a high-concept theme, based around the titular novel by Emily Brontë, it would set the template for much of Bush’s subsequent career: irreverently eccentric, high-concept art-pop with the intensely personal passion of a singular singer-songwriter. But just how much patience for that sort of thing does the general public have, beyond letting the occasional “Wuthering Heights” through as a sort of novelty hit? Bush’s subsequent work in the early 1980s met with inconsistent reception, with her fourth LP, 1982’s The Dreaming, marking a particularly low point. The first album that Bush produced all by herself, The Dreaming took even more radical creative liberties, pushing her sound into increasingly experimental territory.

Music: “Get Out Of My House”

Following the fairly cold reception of The Dreaming, Bush took several years to produce her next album, but it would prove to be the one that redeemed her career, and arguably turned her into a bigger star than ever before. Hounds of Love managed to stay true to the core principles of the Bush aesthetic: moody and introspective, full of rich and complex narratives, as well as musical risk-taking. But it honed and refined that sound into something that was also remarkably pop.

Music: “Running Up That Hill”

“Running Up That Hill” was one of the biggest hits of Bush’s career, and arguably dethroned even “Wuthering Heights” as her signature song. I think the secret to its success is its ability to balance Bush’s experimental impulses with an intuitive, deep-felt emotional quality that makes her best work resonant in an accessible way. On paper, “Running Up That Hill” is as high-concept as anything else in Bush’s catalogue--a song about making a deal with God to swap sexes with your lover, and feel what life is like in another body? But at the same time, the song has an ability to “work” even if you don’t know all of that. Who hasn’t longed for a way to bargain with supernatural forces, for a chance at the impossible? There’s a certain applicability to its themes, which I think is a chief reason why it’s inspired so many covers and reimaginings over the years. But even when one listens to the original, the stately washes of digital synthesiser and the powerful conviction that propels Bush’s vocals make it easy to sympathize with. It feels grounded and physical, rooted in the most carnal aspect of the human body. Positioned as the opening track of the album, “Running Up That Hill” feels like an obvious lead single--in the best way possible. But it’s worth noting that not everything on the album is quite so radio-friendly.

Music: “Cloudbusting”

Perhaps one of Bush’s most compelling narratives, “Cloudbusting” is also, ostensibly, fairly high-concept, portraying a heavily fictionalized episode from the life of Wilhelm Reich. A controversial figure both in life and legacy, Reich is best remembered for his work in psychology, heavily influenced by the spectre of Sigmund Freud. But “Cloudbusting” focuses on his later-life fascination with the physical sciences, and his belief that a mystical energy called “orgone” was responsible for both human emotional woes as well as disturbances in the Earth’s atmosphere. Reich attempted to develop a machine that could manipulate this energy, and hence achieve the longtime dream of technological weather control, but there’s no evidence his “cloudbuster” really worked, or that there’s any such thing as “orgone.” But Bush’s “Cloudbusting,” and its accompanying music video, portray Reich as a tragic hero, silenced by government authorities who sought to destroy what they couldn’t understand, conflating his work with cloudbusters with his censure by the FDA for his questionable medical devices.

The song was inspired chiefly by the memoirs of Wilhelm Reich’s son, Peter, with Bush explicitly portraying Peter’s naive childhood perspective on his father, and that does allow for some substantial nuance here...but at some point we have to ask ourselves what responsibility an artist has to the truth. “Cloudbusting” is the musical equivalent of a film that’s “based on a true story,” and I see no reason why music can’t be just as capable of spreading misinformation as the Oscar-bait biopics of Hollywood. Just how accurate, or how beautiful, does a work of art need to be, for us to allow a bit of playing loose with the facts for the sake of a great story?

Setting aside these quandaries presented by its subject matter, “Cloudbusting” undoubtedly delivers musically. Across its sprawling runtime, it develops and earns a sense of grandeur, building from its infectious percussion and cresting with Bush’s fragile, but assertive prayer: “I just know that something good is going to happen.” If you listen closely to the percussion tracks on the album, you’ll notice that there’s no cymbal or high-hat utilized anywhere, which helps give the album its particular hazy, meandering ambiance.

That effect is perhaps even more pronounced on the second side of the album. Hounds of Love is divided quite sharply into two sides. The first side, also sub-titled Hounds of Love, opens with “Running Up That Hill,” and finishes with “Cloudbusting,” which serves as something of a bridge between the two, combining a singable hook and a pop-like verse-chorus structure with a taste for more visionary narrative. While the first side is home to all four of the album’s singles, the second side, sub-titled The Ninth Wave, strays much further away from the standard expectations of pop.

Music: “Under Ice”

Going by the tracklisting, there are seven tracks that make up *The Ninth Wave,* though their smooth transitions and willful defiance of verse/chorus structure create a seamless oratorio or song cycle feel, not unlike many of the great “album sides” of the prog tradition. The Ninth Wave also departs from the feel of the first side in its instrumentation. While the Hounds of Love side has its fair share of exotic instruments, such as a balalaika on “Running Up That Hill” and a didgeridoo on “Cloudbusting,” The Ninth Wave is more richly baroque, with elements like that jarring violin on “Under Ice.” As it progresses, the breadth of timbres increases, climaxing in the Celtic-inspired “Jig of Life.”

Music: “Jig of Life”

The explosion of folkish, backward-looking sounds of “Jig of Life” and “Hello World,” with their fiddles, whistles, and full choir, represent its protagonist’s return to the realm of the living, after the trauma represented by earlier tracks like “Under Ice.” The abstract, though affecting, narrative presented by The Ninth Wave seems to be a tale of death and rebirth, with a narrator who drowns themselves, only to be reborn--whether literally revived from a failed suicide attempt, or metaphysically reincarnated after a passage through the realm of the dead.

Much more has been written about the themes of *The Ninth Wave* than I’m getting into here, but suffice it to say that many people consider it the relative highlight of the album. But I think it’s worth questioning that a little bit, and taking the time to look at Hounds of Love a bit more holistically. Just because the first side is a bit less overtly experimental doesn’t mean it doesn’t have just as much to offer, artistically, or that it isn’t a part of what makes this album truly great. At the end of the day, I think we can probably agree that far fewer people would have ever heard The Ninth Wave if it weren’t for those more accessible singles on side one, moving copies of the record and adding to Bush’s widespread acclaim. Without “Running Up That Hill,” Hounds of Love might have gone down in history as a fairly niche cult classic like The Dreaming, instead of the era-defining album that it got to become.

On the cover of Hounds of Love, we see an image of Bush reclining and embracing two dogs--who were, in fact, her own pets. The image’s saturation in purplish pink and Bush’s perhaps sultry expression combine to create an impression of traditional femininity, which resonates with the album’s themes of gender and sensuality. Framed in by large white borders, we might read the composition of the cover as evocative of a personal locket or memento, a sort of furtive glimpse into Bush’s more private or intimate essence, fitting for the introspective and emotional focus of much of the music. This “framing” is perhaps also evocative of the idea of the domestic sphere of life--and hence, again, of femininity.

While the title track of the album portrays the “hounds of love” as figures of menace, who are said to “chase” after its narrator, the submissive and comfortable-looking canines portrayed in the cover art seem like a foil to that idea. In the history of European art, dogs are often used as symbols of fidelity, particularly in the context of romance. Titian’s Venus of Urbino, painted in the 1530s, is often considered the progenitor of the Western “nude” as an archetype. Alongside the titular goddess, paragon of eroticism and the feminine, the painter has also included a lapdog, peacefully dozing beside her. It’s tempting to see the composition of the cover of Hounds of Love as doing something similar, invoking confident sensuality alongside a symbol of faithfulness to portray the essence of idealized love.

After the release of Hounds of Love, Bush would once again take several years to produce her next LP, 1989’s The Sensual World. More closely related to The Ninth Wave than the A-side of Hounds of Love, it was nonetheless another commercial and mainstream success for the artist.

Music: “The Sensual World”

From the mid-90s to the mid-00s, Bush took an extended hiatus from music, focusing instead on her family and her personal life. Despite uncertainty surrounding the future of her career, she would eventually return to the public spotlight in the 21st Century, and remains active, if somewhat intermittently, to the present day. At this point, it’s safe to say that Bush has a fairly enviable position, having lived long enough to become a cultural institution, and able to bask in the cult following her unmistakable and distinctive work has earned her. For as much as I’ve praised the more commercial side of Hounds of Love in this piece, I still believe in the power of the truly unfettered creative soul, and I’m still happy for Bush that she’s achieved that kind of freedom.

My favourite track from either side of Hounds of Love would have to be “The Big Sky.” In the context of the album, it stands out for its rousing, triumphant crescendo of energy--a marked difference from the languid, introspective sensibility that dominates most of the material. And it manages that without bringing the cymbals back, either! Thematically, its emphasis on weather and the sky prefigures that of “Cloudbusting,” perhaps providing a more hopeful and naive vision of what weather can do, which resists being “clouded” by political drama. That’s all I have for today--as always, thank you all for listening!

Music: “The Big Sky”

#music #great albums #kate bush #album review #album reviews #classic album #classic albums

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colorsoundoblivion · 6 years

Link

For NIFE’s first cut, Sion Orgon’s newest album “The Black Object”. On the new album, Sion has managed to take the listener on a hauntingly beautiful dark ambient journey to their most vulnerable spaces. Medicine for the mind.

Cassette available for pre-order now. Pre-orders include immediate download of the soothingly jarring new track “The Lizard Is Alert”.

#Sion Orgon #The Black Object #NIFE #Cassette #Ambient #Dark Ambient #Experimental #Cardiff #Wales

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kansascityhappenings · 5 years

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Veteran actor Orson Bean killed in traffic-related crash

LOS ANGELES — Orson Bean, the witty actor and comedian who enlivened the game show “To Tell the Truth” and played a crotchety merchant on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” was hit and killed by a car in Los Angeles, authorities said. He was 91.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office confirmed Bean’s Friday night death, saying it was being investigated as a “traffic-related” fatality. The coroner’s office provided the location where Bean was found, which matched reports from police.

A man was crossing the road outside of a crosswalk in the Venice neighborhood when he was clipped by a vehicle and fell, Los Angeles Police Department Officer Drake Madison said. A second driver then struck him in what police say was the fatal collision. Both drivers remained on the scene, neither was impaired and Bean’s death was being treated as an accident, Madison said.

Bean appeared in a number of films — notably, “Anatomy of a Murder” and “Being John Malkovich” — and starred in several top Broadway productions, receiving a Tony nod for the 1962 Comden-Green musical “Subways Are for Sleeping.” But fans remembered him most for his many TV appearances from the 1950s onward.

“Mr. Bean’s face comes wrapped with a sly grin, somewhat like the expression of a child when sneaking his hand into the cookie jar,” The New York Times noted in a review of his 1954 variety show, “The Blue Angel.” It said he showed “a quality of being likable even when his jokes fall flat.”

Born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1928 as Dallas Frederick Burrows, he never lost the Yankee accent that proved a perfect complement to the dry, laconic storytelling that established him as popular humorist. He had picked the stage name Orson Bean “because it sounded funny.”

Orson Bean during a “Tonight Show” interview on August 04, 1977. (Getty)

His father, George, was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and Bean recalled later that his “house was filled with causes.” But he left home at 16 after his mother died by suicide.

In a 1983 New York Times interview, he recalled his early career in small clubs where the show consisted of “me — master of ceremonies, comedian and magician — maybe a dog act, and a stripper.” It was a piano player in one such club, he said, who suggested replacing Dallas Burrows with some funny name like “Roger Duck” — or Orson Bean.

Bean’s quick wit and warm personality made him a favorite panelist for six years on “To Tell the Truth.” The game required the panelists to quiz three contestants to figure out which one was a real notable and which two were impostors. The dramatic outcome inspired a national catchphrase as the host turned to the three and said: “Will the real (notable’s name) please stand up?”

Bean’s style appealed to both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, and he appeared on “The Tonight Show” more than 200 times.

But his early career was hobbled for a time when he found himself on the Hollywood blacklist in the early years of the Cold War.

“Basically I was blacklisted because I had a cute communist girlfriend,” he explained in a 2001 interview. “I stopped working on TV for a year.”

The blacklist didn’t stop him in the theater. Bean starred on Broadway as a timid fan magazine writer in George Axelrod’s 1955 Hollywood spoof “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” alongside Jayne Mansfield and Walter Matthau. He also starred on Broadway with Maureen O’Sullivan in “Never Too Late” and with Melina Mercouri in “Illya Darling,” based on her hit film “Never on Sunday.”

Guest panelist Orson Bean on “Laugh Line”, 1959. (Getty)

Bean took a break from his career for a time in the 1970s when he dropped out and moved to Australia, where he lived a hippie lifestyle. But he returned to the U.S. and — after a period as a self-described “house-husband” — resumed his career.

“I got sick of contemplating my navel and staring up at the sky and telling myself how wonderful it was not to be doing anything,” he explained in a 1983 interview with The New York Times.

In the 1990s, he played the shopkeeper Loren Bray on the long-running drama “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.” He remained active on the screen in recent years with guest shots in such shows as “Desperate Housewives,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “Modern Family.”

Meanwhile, his politics turned more conservative. His daughter married leading right-wing commentator, Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart died in 2012 and Steve Bannon, later a top adviser to Donald Trump, took over Breitbart’s eponymous website, for which Bean had penned occasional columns.

Bean wrote a memoir called “Too Much Is Not Enough” and a book about a non-traditional therapy called “Me and the Orgone.”

Orson Bean as a panelist on “Tattletales” (Buzzr/Fremantle Media)

He had already shown his interest in non-traditional thinking in 1964 when he bought a building in Manhattan and opened up a school based on the philosophy of Summerhill, the progressive British school founded by A.S. Neill.

“I said to myself, we have to start with the children. Why not start a school?” he told The New York Times.

That same year, he co-founded the Sons of the Desert, an organization dedicated to comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, with chapters around the world.

More recently, income from “Dr. Quinn” and other voice and acting work allowed Bean to finance the Pacific Resident Theater Ensemble in Venice, where he appeared with his third wife, actress Alley Mills.

He had a daughter, Michele, from his first marriage to Jacqueline de Sibour, and sons Max and Ezekiel and daughter Susannah from his marriage to Carolyn Maxwell.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports http://fox4kc.com/2020/02/08/veteran-actor-orson-bean-killed-in-traffic-related-crash/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2020/02/08/veteran-actor-orson-bean-killed-in-traffic-related-crash/

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