"I begged you to get therapy."

Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.


Also "The Firm", "Absence of Malice", and many, many others.

He was most recently seen in The Sopranos final season as the doctor/janitor in the prison hospital where Johnny Sac was dying (of cancer, as well), double-checking the diagnosis between passes of the mop on the floor.

And he directed one of the seminal movies from my high school youth, "Jeremiah Johnson".

One of the cinema's titans departs.

Memorial Day Wrangle

Here's the Memorial Day round-up from the Texas Progressive Alliance's member blogs ...

refinish69 at Doing My Part For The Left is trying to understand why John Cornyn is such a.....

McBlogger takes a look at an email from Republican Chair TinaFish begging for money.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders how the Webb County elections administrator can claim one recount where the votes didn't change vindicates their work on the Sheriff's recount where 160 votes flipped.

BossKitty at BlueBloggin tell us how truck owners and operators are delving into long-ignored gas saving subjects like aerodynamics, slower cruising speeds and all the snake oil scams to increase mileage. This could lower your food prices and consumables: Ten mpg is now feasible … may save you money!

Lightseeker of Texas Kaos applies his powers of analysis and persuasion to the question of What Can Be Done to Keep the Momentum for Change Going? What's going on in your precinct to organize for November?

WhosPlayin's grbtexan posted some "rules" guaranteed to invite feminine wrath.

State Rep. Myra Crownover wants West Texas to have their very own radioactive waste dump. North Texas Liberal has the story.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that the word around Austin is that Rick Perry is planning on calling a special session of the Texas Legislature prior to the November elections. You won't believe why.

Chris Bell is widely rumored to be considering a run for the Texas Senate seat being vacated by Kyle Janek, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs joins the call to encourage him to do so.

Social wing nuts are up to their old tricks, as the TX State Board of Education give the finger to teachers and parents alike this past week. On a 9-6 vote, your kids get a decade's worth of grammar lessons etched on a napkin.

lightseeker over at TexasKaos takes on the question of what to do with all these new Democratic/Progressive activists and voters? Are they doomed to grow quickly disillusioned , retreating into political cynicsm again ? What can be done to keep the momentum for change going?

Gary D at Easter Lemming Liberal News last week blasted Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Michael Williams, Texas Monthly Blogger Paul Burka and Senator John 'Forget the Alamo' Cornyn because he is not bitter but sometimes he gets angry.

Off the Kuff continues his look at the Harris County races with an early overview of the District Clerk campaign.

Texas soldier dies after 100 surgeries

The young Marine came back from the war, with his toughest fight ahead of him.

Sgt. Merlin German waged that battle in the quiet of a Texas hospital, far from the dusty road in Iraq where a bomb exploded, leaving him with burns over 97 percent of his body.

No one expected him to survive.

But for more than three years, he would not surrender. He endured more than 100 surgeries and procedures. He learned to live with pain, to stare at a stranger's face in the mirror. He learned to smile again, to joke, to make others laugh.

He became known as the "Miracle Man."

But just when it seemed he would defy impossible odds, German lost his last battle this spring — an unexpected final chapter in a story many imagined would have a happy ending. ...

Merlin German died after routine surgery to add skin to his lower lip.

He was already planning his next operations — on his wrists and elbows. But Renz also says with all the stress German's body had been subjected to in recent years, "it was probably an unfair expectation that you can keep doing this over and over again and not have any problems."

The cause of his death has not yet been determined.

"I may no more understand why he left us when he did than why he survived when he did," Renz says. "I don't think I was meant to know."

As people learned of his death last month, they flocked to his hospital room to pay their last respects: Doctors, nurses, therapists and others, many arriving from home, kept coming as Friday night faded into Saturday morning.

German was just 22.

Remember

Arlington National Cemetery workers setting a headstone.

John and Stace, along with many others, made the local Memorial Day display at Hermann Park (you can see it today). No conservatives in sight, sadly.

They must have forgotten to never forget.

Extra Funnies (at the GOP's expense)

Courtesy First Door on the Left (who does it on Fridays):

Make your own Bill O'Reilly tantrum remix

Straight from the FOX Attacks! folks:

No doubt you've already seen this recently unearthed clip of Bill O'Reilly experiencing, um, temperamental technical difficulties on the set of Inside Edition during his pre-FOX days. The O'Reilly Factor really hasn't changed him that much - he's still the same unhinged, unstable, belligerent blowhard.

O'Reilly has tried to laugh this off, but there's plenty more fun to be had. Stephen Colbert released a clip of one of his own past freakouts, and Keith Olbermann invited an O'Reilly-type body language expert to talk about O'Reilly's dictatorial body language. Some terrific remixes of O'Reilly's meltdown have started surfacing, like this hilarious one from Barely Political; there's even been a dance remix.

So we at FOX ATTACKS! thought we'd invite all of you to submit your own O'Reilly Tantrum remixes! As you can see from the clips above, there are a lot of directions you could take this, so go for whatever you think is the funniest, most entertaining and adheres with the Fair Use doctrine. You can find a downloadable Quicktime version of the original clip here - the rest is up to you!

When you have finished your video, post it on YouTube and paste the URL into the comments section of our blog. Once we have enough videos, we'll put them on a page where everyone can view them and vote on them. There will be prizes for winners in multiple categories.

Can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

Billo is going to bust a blood vessel yet.