2016 memorials

  I mentioned about Prince in my blog post "Legacy of a Prince"

http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-legacy-of-prince.html


I also mentioned about Muhammad Ali and his impact on sports & civil rights.
"The Life & Legend of Muhammad Ali"
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2016/06/muhammad-ali.html


There's been more celebrity deaths in 2016! I don't have much time to go over all of them.


But I do want to mention about David Bowie, George Michael & LaVell Edwards

David Bowie

I briefly mentioned David Bowie in my blog post about Prince, on the part of how they show that men don't have to conform to traditional masculinity to attract the most beautiful women on the planet. I also mentioned how having  stereotypically "feminine" tendencies doesn't mean that man is homosexual (not like there's anything wrong with that).


I don't have much familiarity with David Bowie's muscial catalog, except for the ones that were sampled by rap artists, the most obvious being "Under Pressure" (collabo w/Queen) was sampled by Vanilla Ice for "Ice Ice Baby".

I also know David Bowie's "Let Dance" for being sampled by Puff Daddy's "Been Around the World" (featuring Ma$e and Notorious BIG).  It was later in life that I appreciated "Let's Dance" not only for being sampled by rap songs, but a great song on it's own, as well as that song's video in which David Bowie explored Australia and partied with that country's Aboriginal population.  At the time, this was a revolutionary act of solidarity with a historically oppressed population.  This later inspired Midnight Oil's "Beds are Burning" which was a more overt show of solidarity with the Aboriginal peoples.


David Bowie's other anti-racist activism included (but nowhere near limited to) his demand that MTV start playing music videos by non-white artists.   Sony Records later took a bigger step and withdraw all their videos until MTV played one by Sony's African-American artist: Micheal Jackson!

Something like that is so hard to imagine by today's younger generation who grew up listening to radio stations that mix mostly-white EDM artists and mostly-black hip-hop artists in the same rotation!  Add to that many musicians are crossing racial boundaries where the biggest EDM songs have African-American singers, and white hip-hop artists are generally accepted by their African-American peers.  Latin@ artists are making major hits not only in traditionally Latin genres but also in hip-hop, pop,  EDM and rock. Add to that, so many mixed-race singers  from Hawaii (ie. Bruno Mars, Nicole Scherzinger) fit in so well within the mainstream that today's young people take it for granted.


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George Michael

For George Micheal, the first song I remember from him was "Freedom" which came out in 1990. I was in elementary school that time, so I didn't remember his earlier hits when they first came out! Because the word "freedom" is so associated with the USA, I assumed that he was an American, but was actually from the United Kingdom!  The video for "Freedom" had so many female supermodels (including big names like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell) that everyone assumed he was the stud who was able to get the hottest women into his bed.


But years later in 1998, George Micheal was caught found by the police in a sexual act in a public restroom in Los Angeles.  At that point, George Micheal had to confess that he was homosexual. But at that point, so he was so rich & famous that it didn't ruin his career, just made him a butt of jokes about doing things in a public restroom when he had more than enough money to rent a room!

Also, by that time, Elton John was already out of the closet, Ellen made her announcement, and people eventually became more tolerant about the LGBT lifestyle (well, at least in the Western world).

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LaVell Edwards

 LaVell Edwards was the legendary football  coach for BYU!  Before he came on the scene in the 1970s, BYU was an average team and many assumed that the school's Mormon affiliation was limiting its attraction to football recruiting. But while many people in the USA stereotype Mormons as being "mostly white", their religion did gain a lot of Polynesian converts. LaVell Edwards used that as an advantage in recruiting Polynesian talent to his teams.  That gave many UH  football fans headaches because some of our  local players played for BYU!   BYU's success with Polynesian players got the attention of other college coaches who poached on Hawaii's football talent, which gave UH football fans even more headaches

To add insult to injury, UH kept losing to BYU in the 1970s and 1980s. Urban legend had it that elderly UH football fans begged UH football coaches to at please beat BYU before they pass away!
Those who survived to 1989 & 1990 got their wish as UH beat BYU two years in a row!


BYU also had an impact for college football in the interior West. Much of college football's attention was towards the South (SEC, ACC), Midwest (Big 10), Great Plains (Big 8 which became Big 12) and the West Coast (PAC-10)

But the Rocky Mountain region with it's small population was long ignored until BYU made major waves in the 1970s and 1980s. LaVell Edwards and his assistant Norm Chow had innovative offenses that gave big-name opponents headaches.  Other schools in the Rocky Mountain region (ie. Utah, Air Force Academy, Boise State) eventually stepped up their games with their own innovative offenses and became teams with great reputations for working with under-rated talent

BYU not only had under-rated talent, but also NFL-bound talent, some of whom included Super Bowl winners Jim McMahon & Steve Young!



To learn about LaVell Edwards and his legacy, check out these articles

Honolulu sports journalist Ferd Lewis on LaVell Edward's relation to Hawaii and Polynesian athletes
http://www.staradvertiser.com/2016/12/30/sports/ferds-words/edwards-left-a-lot-of-fond-memories/


ESPN on LaVell Edwards, his Mormon mission and his impact on football in the interior West
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/18373089/college-football-lost-legend-former-brigham-young-cougars-coach-lavell-edwards


LaVell Edwards retired in 2000. His assistant Norm Chow was expected to take over the head coaching position but didn't get it!  The race card was pulled out, being that Norm Chow was of Chinese & Hawaiian ancestry.   But as UH learned the hard way from 2012-2015 that Norm Chow just wasn't head coaching material! Maybe BYU knew that all along, but the race card is so easy to play!