Wednesday

vic fortezza
3 min readOct 2, 2024

Eden Dock, London, photo by David Parry/ PA Media Assignment, posted at standard.co.uk

RIP actor John Amos, 84. Born in Jersey, he was a Golden Gloves champion and played football at Colorado St. He first worked as an advertising copywriter, social worker and semi-pro football player. He did some standup, which led to a writing gig for Leslie Uggams’ variety show. He did a lot of stage work, including Broadway. Always a likeable presence, he shot to fame as the head of the clan in 61 episodes of Good Times. He appeared in eleven episodes of The Tim Conway Comedy Hour, 13 of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, 13 of Hunter, twelve of In the House, ten of The District, 16 of All about the Andersons, 22 of The West Wing, 27 of Men in Trees, and he did many guest shots on popular primetime fare. He was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor for a Single Appearance in a Drama or Comedy Series, Roots. There are 118 titles under his name at IMDb, screen career spanning 1970-present, three works to be released posthumously. On the big screen he was in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), The Beastmaster (1982), Coming to America (1988) and its 2021 sequel, Die Hard 2 (1990), Ricochet (1991), Uncut Gems (2019), to name a few. Married and divorced three times, he was a father of two. Awesome run, Sir. Thank you. Photo from Google Images:

The consensus seems to be that Vance walloped Walz in the debate. Fine, but remember that Trump was dubbed the loser in his debate with Harris, and polls interpreted the opposite. I still believe mail-in voting will be his undoing, unless he has commissioned his own troops to gather votes. Is anyone questioning his VP pick now? It seems Vance has shot to the top of the list of Republican 2028 presidential candidates.

Government in a nutshell. Headline from nypost.com: “Medicaid expansion cost $1 trillion, double the estimate: study.”

Medicine keeps advancing. From NYP: “Tech Surgeons use PlayStation controller for long-distance endoscopy in groundbreaking experiment.” According to the article by Kurt Knutsson of Fox News: “…surgeons in Switzerland successfully performed an endoscopic procedure on a pig 5,780 miles away in Hong Kong.” The hope is that the innovation will make procedures common for folks in rural areas.

Man, I hate this. Headline from newsmax.com: “US Has Paid Out $2B in EV Tax Rebates in 2024.”

Headline from foxnews.com: “LAPD: Parents turn in their kids for flash mob robberies at 7-Eleven stores.” Kudos.

I finally caught up to Joe Kidd (1972), which aired last night on the Grit channel, 31–3 on OTA in NYC. Standard Eastwood, only okay, disappointing considering the original screenplay was by Elmore Leonard and it was directed by John Sturges, who helmed Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963).

This morning while restocking the free books kiosk I’ve set up, I noticed the two big bags of law books were gone. I hope they save a student a lot of money.

Not much action at the Anti-Inflation Book Shop on this pleasant though cloudy day. My thanks to the ladies who donated books, and to the gentleman who bought a travel guide on Vienna, and to the woman who chose Fallen Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah; and to the couple who purchased two 3D Batman portraits.

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vic fortezza

I was born in Brooklyn in 1950 to Sicilian immigrants. I’ve had more than 50 short stories published world wide. I have 13 books in print.