In Memoriam 2023

Arleen Sorkin 

(October 14, 1955 – August 24, 2023)

I inherited one significant relationship from my late sister and that was the twenty year or so run I had with Arleen after Marjorie’s passing. I had met her, or received the blessings of her incredible generosity, when she engineered a staff writing job for me on America’s Funniest People over thirty years ago. She was the co-host of the America’s Funniest Videos spinoff with Dave Coulier and Marjorie called her and said her brother had eaten the requisite amount of shit in LA and could she throw him a bone as a favor. And Arleen did and it was a great year. Arleen was shitcanned from the show after that season and I was not picked up as a result but that’s not important. Meeting Sorkin, a self-described ‘empath’ was the takeaway from that experience. I might have been Marjorie’s brother but Arleen was her family. From traipsing around New York in the 70s as part of the cabaret scene to Arleen sitting with my sister at Cedars Sinai through another serious decline in her health, they had real history. Sorkin had a pretty good run prior to AFP as Calliope Jones on Days Of Our Lives and the obits were quick to mention that she was the original voice of Harley Quinn on the brilliant second gen Batman cartoons written by her old Emerson pal Paul Dini who, for a time, was my neighbor in LA. Small world. However my favorite Sorkin credit was when she had the coveted center square on Hollywood Squares! And speaking of Emerson College in Boston, Sorkin was responsible for my son getting accepted. This was decades after Marjorie was gone. Thanks to her spotless reputation in Hollywood and her marriage to the legendary showrunner Chris Lloyd (Modern Family for one), Arleen would run annual breast cancer awareness fundraisers featuring entertainment by the biggest sitcom stars in what was a fun night – got to hang with Lucy Lawless – as a donor for many years. The last time I was there, several years ago, I noticed she had trouble walking onto the stage. And I remember coming to her house and noticing she didn’t move around too much. She suffered from MS and kept it very very private. Even though I knew she was ill, the news of her passing hit me hard. We hadn’t spoken in a while thanks to me overstepping on a favor to save a relationship. But there was no anger. She had two wonderful sons to spend her last years with, let alone Chris who wrote a fittingly upbeat public eulogy for his wife which you can read here. I don’t refer to many people as angels but Arleen…

Rob Bennett 

(died March 14, 2023)

I don’t know Rob’s exact birthday but he died of ALS at age 71 and perhaps another example of someone who was a better friend to me than I was to him. Perhaps the most curatorial concert promoter in Canada over the last fifty years, Rob played a major role in creating Canadian audiences for everyone from Pat Metheny to Dire Straits to Bonnie Raitt and more. If you ever saw a show at Convocation Hall at U of T it was Rob’s, if you ever saw Robin Williams in Toronto, Rob promoted that show. I go back with Rob to my early days as a critic 45 years ago when he would regale me with stories and many tips for the old column. Even pointed out a few of my faux pas. Years later we did a little business when he helped me bring, for the first time to Canada, Kid Creole & The Coconuts in a show that wouldn’t have happened without him. Years after that he organized a western Canada swing for Chicago when I was involved with the band, having produced a greatest hits package for Canada. He didn’t have to do this. He was a friend with whom I didn’t spend enough time in later years. We did manage some golf but I never got my shit together to visit him in Muskoka in spite of several invitations. When music industry vet Bob Roper wrote on Facebook a year ago September that he had just helped the ailing Bennett with his last concert, fittingly Metheny, I reached out to Rob and we exchanged some messages but by then he was suffering and had lost his voice. He faced his fate with no lack of courage. I was in Florida and missed his passing to the point where I wrote to him after he was gone. Swell. Those of us who were into music in its “golden era”, either professionally or casually, know that Rob was a big part of the concert culture in Toronto, and in many cities across the country. Yes, he made some good dough but it always seemed to be about more than that. Sort of the way Canada used to be. In my short stint as a promoter I wanted to be like Rob. Not sure I ever told him that. Damn.

Bob Segarini 

(August 28, 1945 – July 10, 2023)

Bob was the first rock n’ roller who let me hang out with him. Back in ‘78 I was a young critic spending my time many rows or tables back from the talent I was assigned to either eviscerate or celebrate in print. Perhaps Bob cultivated the relationship because he wanted more press but I’m not sure I cared. He was this older cooler brother type who had been part of the late 60s pop rock scene on Sunset Strip and had had a few kicks at the can with various label deals by the time he moved to Canada. For a short period, Bob was the guru for the post-punk new wave crowd on Queen Street. He was the first guy I ever knew who had first person Beatle and Stones stories including the bootleg rehearsal tapes. He let me come into the studio when he was mixing his last great recording titled Goodbye LA. When I sang in a stunt punk media band called Deadlines he volunteered to mix the live sound. Bob was American in the best sense of the word, generous to a fault when he could afford it. He was a huge fan of my sister and even asked her to open for him for a couple of nights at the El Mocambo. Good times always started with Bob, whose musical education had more to do with Phil and Don than John and Paul. But days and years went by and Bob’s career turned in a different direction as did mine. He spent a long time on radio and the internet as “The Iceman” and I remember a night in Yorkville at least twenty years ago when he and the equally legendary local Greg Godovitz duetted perfectly through a set of Beatles obscura. Everybody loved Bob but his recklessness used up a lot of Get Out Of Jail Free cards. I hadn’t spent time with him in decades but his last few posts on social media were at times desperate and grateful. We live episodic lives. I’m thankful that Bob was one of my favorites.

Other Notables

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tina Turner (November 26, 1939 – May 24, 2023) about 40 years ago for either Flare magazine, my Toronto Star column or the CBC. I forget. But what I do remember is her generosity of spirit and the genuine enjoyment she took in the conversation which was more about her fashion than her music. When the publicist gave her a little nudge Turner said she was enjoying our time so much it was a shame to end it. She made an impression on me that, in spite of the decades of suffering and dues, she was possessed of an indefatigable life force – a power trio on stage of legs, hair and voice – she shared with the world….When hockey great Bobby Hull (January 3, 1939 – January 30, 2023) passed away the woke press were quick to point out he had some domestic violence in his past and had referred to Hitler or something in a context that was blown way out of proportion. People forget that playing helmetless for the Chicago Black Hawks in the 50s, 60s and 70s was perhaps the closest thing in professional sports to gladiatorial Rome. Ever. Kids, there were no team psychologists back then to monitor your emotional state, not enough dough to travel with an entourage of trainers and nutritionists. Worse for Hull, he was pretty much the most exciting player in hockey and took to the ice night after night in shitty Depression-era rinks with a target on his back. Not much of an education either so while we can’t excuse the off-ice shit we realize, some of us, anyway, that is more important to thank him posthumously for all the great years. I’m grateful for that one morning in Chicago when he sat for us for a candid, wide-ranging interview as part of a DVD retrospective on the World Hockey Association, the short existence of which can be credited solely to Hull. If you only had one hand to count hockey’s all-time greats, Hull gets the middle finger…. I met Hamilton native Dan Goldberg (March 7,1949-July 12, 2023) for breakfast at the Fran’s restaurant, a Toronto institution for decades, on St. Clair sometime in the spring of 1979 because I was assigned to write a story for the old Famous Players magazine about a forthcoming Canadian comedy called Meatballs that Goldberg had co-written. I remember him whining about the music and the title and the editing until I said, “Hey I spent seven years at the camp where you shot it. Nobody has done a summer camp comedy. This will be huge.” And indeed it was. Goldberg, working for decades with Ivan Reitman, went on to earn producer credits on some of the biggest screen comedies of all time from Stripes to The Hangover and beyond. Many years ago he even asked if there was something we could do together but I suggested we remake an old golf movie titled Banning. Not the best of ideas. Alev asholom….I lost a distant cousin a couple of months ago who wasn’t so distant during a short stint of my life in Ottawa. Steve Goldstein was the grandson of my great grandmother’s second family after her first husband, my great grandfather, ran out of the family when they were still in England. Try to follow. My first job was writing sports for a short lived tabloid in the capital and the only people I “knew” there were Steve and his wife Sandy who adopted me during my time there. The takeaway from his life, beyond his chesed (a deeper Hebrew word for kindness), was that Steve moved up to Ottawa in 1966 fueled by the kind of idealism that saw Canada through the best part of its history, a period of growth, optimism and national commitment to a unique value system that is no longer celebrated in history books. I will miss Steve as I do what was. CATCHING UP….Going through some old business cards – remember those? – I came across a card given to me by one Ward Sylvester way back when I was writing infomercials to supplement my children’s private school tuition. Sylvester was managing Bobby Sherman who was the host of s half-baked 50s compilation I was scripting. Call me anytime he said. Later, when we were in LA with the client, Ward set aside a table for us at the old Billboard club on Sunset to see the complete reunion of a band with which he was once very much involved. Big night too as Costner was sitting at the next table with Spade not too far away. Before you knew onto the stage came Micky, Davy, Peter and Mike. Yeah, Sylvester was one of the three original producers of The Monkees TV show with Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider. When I came across the card I wondered what happened to him but when I Googled the name I found that Sylvester had passed away several years ago. Should have called him way back when just to riff on what must have been an incredible experience. BTW, The Monkees were great that night, promoting what might have been their last album but saving space for Clarksville, Stepping Stone and I’m A Believer…I was out for lunch in New York this past June with a legendary comedy/sports writer/novelist, another bequest from my sister and we touched on the passing of Rick Newman last February, the owner of the seminal standup showcase Catch A Rising Star. He had fallen ill the last year of his life and without a lot of dough he had put up a Go Fund Me page to help out. “I thought it was a scam,” my friend said. “As we did with Zimmerman.” I let that go until I got back to the hotel and thought “Zimmerman?”. The only connection would have to be the comedy writer and my sister’s creative partner and good friend Ron Zimmerman. Sadly, Google revealed that he too had passed in 2022 from cancer and even though we didn’t have a cordial relationship after Marjorie’s passing – he claimed with no backup that her estate owed him for a script they wrote – I would have sent him some of Marjorie’s residuals to help out. She would have insisted on it. I understood his pain. He was the only man to have ever loved my sister. So the year was marked by some missed opportunities to do and say some things to give a little proper closure. A lesson learned and I leave you with the best wishes for 2024 and a timely quote from the late super agent Sue Mengers who said, “Those end credits come up pretty fast.”