Actor Charlie Sheen, who once bragged that he had sex with more than 5,000 partners, will announce on Tuesday’s NBC “Today” show that he is HIV-positive.

Apparently his role on the “Two and a Half Men” sitcom was typecasting to real life.

Sheen's personal life has made headlines, including reports of alcohol and drug abuse and marital problems, as well as allegations of domestic violence. And his feud with “Two and a Half Men” producers went viral in 2011.

Former partners who threatened lawsuits seem to be prodding Sheen – born Carlos Irwin Estevez – into the public announcement. If Charlie’s 5,000 claim is anywhere near the truth, they are going to need a much bigger courtroom.

Besides being Michael J. Fox’s replacement in the “Spin City” sitcom, Sheen was in such movies as “Major League” (1989) and “Eight Men Out” (1988).

Sheen is the youngest son of actor Martin Sheen, who was born Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estevez, and artist Janet Templeton. His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Galicia, on the Iberian Peninsula with Spain and Portugal, and Ireland.

Charlie’s brothers, Emilio and Ramon, and sister, Renée, also are actors.

After his parents moved to Malibu, California, the setting for “Two and a Half Men,” Charlie was a pitcher/shortstop for the Santa Monica High School baseball team.

As a marketing ploy that was a tribute to a classic “WKRP in Cincinnati” TV sitcom episode, White Castle had a helicopter drop turkey sliders toward 15 customers/targets in West Chester, Ohio on Friday.

There were no reports of mass hysteria in southwest Ohio so the marketing plot did not equal the calamity of the live-turkey drop orchestrated by WKRP management in the TV episode. Turkeys plopped onto the mythical Pinedale Shopping Mall with disastrous results for the birds. An oven would have been a kinder fate. Car windshields were smashed. People scrambled for cover.

And Johnny Fever announced after Les Nessman’s frantic descriptions: “Pinedale Shopping Mall has just been bombed with live turkeys.”

Flustered station owner Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson sputtered one of the all-time classic TV sitcom lines: “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

Gordon Jump, in real life, once had been a Dayton, Ohio radio personality.

It was one of the most hilarious TV sitcom episodes I’ve ever watched in my life. “WKRP,” for you youngsters, was about a mythical Cincinnati radio station that barely survived with a bumbling station owner whose overbearing mama put him in charge. It aired in 1978-1982.

The cast included buxom, in every sense of the word, Loni Anderson as the secretary who overwhelmed the testosterone gender and won her two Emmy nominations and eventually a marriage to Burt Reynolds; Dayton native Gary Sandy as Andy Travis; Dayton native Gordon Jump as Arthur Carlson, put in charge by his mother, who later regained fame as the lonely Magtag repairman in TV commercials; Oregon native Howard Hesseman as the drug-loving DJ Johnny Fever, who later starred in the classic 1984 movie, “This Is Spinal Tap”; Harrisburg native Richard Sanders as the wannabe famous newsman Les Nessman; Little Rock native Frank Bonner as Herb Tarlek, who had an Arkansas Razorbacks coffee mug on his desk in the series and was married and divorced four times (must have been the outrageous suits he wore on the show); Norfolk native Tim Reid as Venus Flytrap, the cool black guy who in real life with wife Daphne Reid performs in the Hollywood Black Movie Festival; and Jan Smithers, born in the Woodland Hills section of the San Fernando Valley in California and married to and divorced from James Brolin, as Bailey Quarters.

You can watch the classic scene by clicking on

http://entertainthis.usatoday.com/2014/11/27/watch-the-classic-turkey-drop-scene-from-wkrp-in-cincinnati/

Two who had a common Features Department editor at the BJ were inducted into the Press Club of Cleveland 2015 Journalism Hall of Fame Saturday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Cleveland.

Former BJ and current PD entertainment critic Mark Dawidziak and BJ columnist Bob Dyer were honored. A few decades ago their words passed before my eyes as their editor in the Features Department of Ol’ Blue Eyes.

Also inducted were Tom Hamilton, Cleveland Indians broadcaster; WTAM’s Ken Robinson; Reader’s Digest editor in chief Liz Ludlow Vaccariello; and, for the Chuck Heaton Award, WKYC meterologist Betsy Kling who, like Dyer, is from Copley.

Auerbach concert in Paris on day of mass killings

Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach, the Firestone High graduate, and his band The Arcs were to perform at Le Trianon in Paris on Friday night. Le Trianon is a theatre and concert hall in Paris at 80 boulevard de Rochechouart in the 18th district at the foot of Montmartre, where Paula and I strolled during our 2012 8^th-anniversary visit to Paris.

Auerbach reported to friends that the band was safe and heading for the border after terrorists slaughtered nearly 200 people that day, including at a concert by the American Eagles of Death Metal band at the Bataclan concert hall.

The Arcs Tour, which began in Cologne, Germany, on Nov. 5, moved to Berlin, Zurich, Switzerland, Brussels, Belgium, London and Amsterdam before getting to Paris and Le Trianon.

The next stop is Nov. 16 at Alcatraz in Milan, Italy before the group returns to America for performances, including Dec. 4 in Columbus and Dec. 8 at Akron’s Civic Theatre.

Auerbach and Patrick Carney perform as The Black Keys. Patrick is retired BJ reporter Jim Carney’s son.

New year, new Rx vendor for BJ

There are three things you can be sure of:

1. Death.

2. Taxes.

3. The BJ changes medical vendors for the new year.

So it’s nothing alarming or new to get the notification that EnvisionRx in Twinsburg will be handling prescription drugs for BJ retirees. And it’s understandable. Every year every company seeks bids from competing vendors and takes the one that the company thinks will be least costly to it.

EnvisionRX affiliate Orchard Pharmaceutical Services in North Canton will handle the mail-order prescriptions. You need to fill out the enrollment form, of course, and mail it in.

I checked the list of approved local pharmacies you can use and my Walgreen’s Drug Store on Howe Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls is on the list, so that shouldn’t be a problem either. You can go online to the EnvisionRX web site and see if your local drug store is on the approved list.

Then there’s ABJMeds, which will get the drugs from Canada, United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand, just as I did for years after I hit the donut hole each year. It saved me thousands of dollars on name-brand drugs, which are outlandishly priced if you buy them in America.

As for the survivors among the 50 BJ retired printers and Guild retirees who won the 2012 healthcare lawsuit, there should NOT be any changes in benefits. But I emailed the Chandra law firm in Cleveland that won the lawsuit for the 50 retirees a copy of the BJ letter, just in case. Chandra assures me that the BJ attorneys will be courteously reminded that they cannot change benefits for the healthcare lawsuit survivors.

If you are among those who won the lawsuit, and there are ANY changes in your benefits from what you are getting now, email me at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com or phone me at (330) 388-4466 so I can alert the Chandra law firm.

The doctor and hospital benefits are paid through Medicare and AARP secondary coverage for the healthcare lawsuit winners. The BJ pays the premiums for the AARP coverage. There should be no change in that situation for the retirees who won the lawsuit.

The late Dave White, once BJ Composing foreman, filed the first healthcare lawsuit against the BJ, in 2009. Newsroom retiree John Olesky filed on behalf of the Guild retirees.

In 2012 U.S. District Judge David Dowd ordered the reimbursements and restoration of healthcare benefits at least equal to the retirement-day benefits the printers and Guild retirees had. That included the $2 co-pay for Guild retiree prescriptions and $5 co-pay for the retired printers.

As part of the settlement, the BJ paid the retirees’ legal costs by cutting a check to the Chandra law firm for $772,500.

The original 50 retirees in the lawsuit:

Gina White, of Venice, Florida, who with the late Dave White, her husband, began the lawsuit on behalf of the printers; Bob and Linda Abbott, Massillon; Ruth and Tom West, Rittman; Sid Sprague, Loveland, Colorado; Hugh and Sharon Downing, The Villages, Florida; Larnie and Stephanie Greene, Hartville; Joe Catalano, Akron; Lloyd and Claudine Bigelow, Cuyahoga Falls; John Costello, Akron; Dick Gresock, Medina; Henry and Kathleen Heinbuck, North Canton; Denzil Parker, Wadsworth; Rita Reeves, Akron; Bob Walker, Medina; Cecil and Josephine Santaferro, Akron; Isabel Watson (Blanton’s widow), Naples, Florida; Janice Hogg (Trammel’s widow), Waynesville, North Carolina; Russ and Martel Bendel, Wadsworth; Eunice and Bonnie Collins, Copley; Richard and Patricia Fair, Akron; Marjorie Hanna, Wadsworth; Bob Kendall, Berlin Center; Harriet Ledbetter, Canton; Norm and Naomi Mattern, Wellsville; Charles O’Neill, Akron; Fred Pollack, Akron; Don Reppart, North Canton; Ron Sanderlin, Canton; Charles Stadelman, Tallmadge; and Ray and Amaryllis Wolfe, Greentown.

Guild retirees John Olesky, of Tallmadge, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Guild retirees; retired reporter Dick McBane, Lilburn, Georgia; maintenance retiree Harold Bailey and wife Elizabeth, Kent; copy desk retiree Dick McLinden, North Canton, and retired photographer Don Roese, Cuyahoga Falls.

McLinden passed away in 2015, Reppart in 2013 and Dave White in 2012. There may be others on this list who are deceased. If they are, let me know at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com and I’ll update my records.

This is one of retired BJ photographer Ott Gangl’s photos that’s famous without nudity, and brings back a lot of good memories.

The late Michelle LeComte, then head of the Features Department and later an editor in Maryland till her 2010 death, was on a cruise.

So her Features Department minions concocted this photo to let her know that WE also were having fun in “The Caribbean.”

Alas, the only one in that photo who still works at the Ol’ Blue Walls is muscle beach boy Bob Dyer, who is Ohio Columnist of the Year so often that they should just name the trophy for him.

Taking them as they are in the photo, from the left:

BACK ROW

Mark Dawidziak is applying his entertainment critic skills at the PD when he’s not in a library somewhere portraying Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe or Charles Dickens.

Andrea Louie, a BJ reporter who saw the 9/11 Twin Towers come down from her Brooklyn apartment. Andrew delivered flowers and artwork in the World Trade Center many a time. She also wrote books and at least as of 2011, and maybe still, executive director of the Asian American Arts Alliance in New York City.

Betty Lammerding, who was stuck with the technology overload of putting out the Channels TV guide when I went on vacation, also retired.

MIDDLE ROW

Joan Rice is in Rootstown with her policeman husband, Larry Momchilov.

Jewell Cardwell got out a while back after writing columns have helped nearly every large and small charity in Northeast Ohio.

Bob, still bob-bob-bobbing along at his BJ computer.

Connie Bloom went from Features editor/pet columnist to Ohio fabric art (quilt) guru and has a studio in downtown Akron.

Elaine Guregian, former BJ arts and culture critic, is assistant director of Public Relations and Marketing for Northeast Medical University, which includes my grandson Dylan among its graduates (he’s interning at Akron Children’s Hospital).

BOTTOM ROW

Jane Snow still is the best food writer in Ohio, maybe in America, but she does it in recipe books and on her web site when she isn’t sharing food with her husband at his Sushi restaurant in the Merriman Valley.

John Olesky, the cowboy with the weird sunglasses and the legs that later were described as “not bad for an old guy,” has been away from Ol’ Blue Walls for more than 19 years and has traveled with Paula Tucker, his former reporter on the BJ State Desk, to 53 countries and 43 states in the 11+ years they’ve been together.

Thanks for the memories, Ott. You give us all hope that we’ll be around for another of your famous photo shoots. With our clothes on, of course.

Ott’s photo and his commentary also appeared in this BJ Alums blog in 2005, when the late Harry Liggett will still running this journalistic real estate. And pops up from time to time on social media.

And it’s a reminder that, although this gang formed a damn good gaggle of journalists, they also knew how to enjoy life.

 

Somber reprint from 1970

Tom Suchan

Somehow it seems appropriate that I end this Veterans Day with a reprint of a 1970 Veterans Day piece by Tom Suchan, a former BJ editor who passed away Oct. 2 in Wichita, Kansas.

After 13 years at Ol’ Blue Walls, Tom went to Ohio Magazine as executive editor, then in 1978 to the Wichita Eagle.

In 1991, he retired from newspapers even though he was only 49.

The rest of his life was devoted to volunteering and writing a column for the parish monthly newspaper.

I think Tom’s 1970 effort is worth another salvo to wind up Veterans Day.

Pittsburgh layoffs, consolidation

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review laid off 153 of its 1,100 employees and consolidates newspapers as part of a “sweeping restructuring.”

The company founded by Richard Scaife in October sold The Leader Times, The Daily Courier, The Mount Pleasant Journal, The Independent-Observer, The Ligonier Echo, The Times-Sun, The Blairsville Dispatch and The Jeannette Spirit and are in talks with potential buyers for The Valley Independent and The Daily News. If no one bites, those two will be closed and 91 more employees will be out of work.

The Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Valley News Dispatch will morph into one paper, the Tribune-Review, with regional editions and the home delivery area will shrink.

The printing facility in Greensburg will close at the end of the year.

Jennifer L. Bertetto, President and Chief Executive Officer of Trib Total Media and 535 Media, made the announcement.

Vagabond BJ: From Repository to PD

Starting today, the BJ is being printed on Plain Dealer presses in Brooklyn, Ohio.

In 2013, Ol’ Blue Walls’ Canadian owner David Black sold the BJ printing press and began cranking out the BJ on the Canton Repository presses about 30 miles down I-77. New Media Investment Group, which owns the Repository, also prints the Cincinnati Enquirer on its Columbus Dispatch presses.

With all the extra wide space on the right and left edges of the BJ printed on PD presses, maybe Mr. Black can widen the columns a smidge and get free extra space for the words. It may be an optional illusion, but it makes the obituaries seem narrower.

The BJ newsroom, which was crammed with 250 employees at my 1996 retirement, has maybe 60 now – all on the third floor of the 44 East Exchange Street building that sits mostly empty on the other floors. The building began as a Music Hall before the Times-Press took over in 1930.  Scripps-Howard sold it in 1938 to John S. Knight. McClatchy bought Knight-Ridder, then sold the BJ to Black Press of Canada.

Ever since, the Canadian has been frying the BJ’s bacon.

Vagabond printing presses are not unique to the BJ or the Enquirer. Canada’s Transcontinental prints the San Francisco Chronicle, with its hallowed history, on its Fremont, California presses 38 miles south of the Bay Area.

In 2009 alone, at least a dozen Ohio newspapers reduced the number of days they delivered print newspapers. The Internet and lack of ownership foresight to become an invaluable part of the new technology led newspapers into this downward spiral.

It used to be that what was in the newspaper was only 12 hours older than the previous evening’s TV newscasts. Now it’s at least 24 hours older than what’s posted on social media, news organizations’ web sites or on emails.

November 11 important in America and Poland

In America, November 11 is Veterans Day.

In Poland, it is Independence Day.

It celebrates the restoration of Poland as a nation after 123 years of partition by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Empire. All three were losers in World War I, so the Poles seized the opportunity to become a unified country again.

After World War II, the Soviet Union wiped out the day but Poles celebrated privately anyway. By 1989, with the Soviet influence subjugated, Poland restored November 11 as its Independence Day.

In the Early Middle Ages, Slavs migrated to the Polish lands. By 1569 there was a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By 1795 the Russians, Prussians and Habsburgs took over the country and partitioned it.

In reality there was no Poland from 1795 to 1918. Or in 1939 till the end of World War II. The Third Polish Republic began in 1989 under pressure from Lech Walesa and the Solidarity trade union born in the Gdansk shipyard.

There are links to Polish and American independence.

Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kościuszko, who fought the Russians and Prussia on behalf of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, became a brigadier general in the Continental Army and designed West Point and its fortifications that proved difficult to penetrate because of its location.

Casimir Pulaski is considered the father of the American cavalry. He came across the Atlantic Ocean at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, and saved George Washington’s life during one battle involving his Pulaski Calvary Legion. Pulaski is among eight people given honorary American citizenship.

In Monongah, West Virginia the Polish Catholic St. Stanislaus Church of my childhood there are three photos on the basement walls: Kosciuszko, Pulaski and Christ. In that order.

In America, November 11 first was called Armistice Day, when World War I hostilities ended on the 11^th hour of the 11^th month of 1918 with the signing at Compiegne, France between representatives of the Allies and Germany.

Plane crashes into Akron apartment building; 9 die

Nine passengers were killed when their small, twin-engine plane crashed into an apartment building at Mogadore Road and Skelton Road in Akron around 3 p.m. today.

That makes it the deadliest plane crash in Akron history.

An Ohio State Highway Patrol spokesperson said the plane was a Hawker Siddeley HS-125, a British corporate jet. It was trying to land at Akron's Fulton Municipal Airport.

The flight began in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, stopped in Dayton and then took off for Akron.



It was chartered by Execuflight, a Florida company.  
Augusto Lewkowicz is the owner and operator of the plane. The company owns Staples and Panera on Howe Avenue in the Chapel Hill business complex. The passengers were executives and employees of Florida-based Pebb Enterprises, a real estate company.

The crash caused at least 1,500 customers to lose power and Ohio Edison officials said all but 100 customers were restored in a few hours.


The Akron Fire Department had several units at the scene.

To read Craig Webb’s excellent BJ sidebar on another multi-fatality plane crash in Akron history, click  on

http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/death-toll-from-tuesday-s-crash-is-deadliest-air-disaster-in-summit-county-history-eclipsing-world-war-ii-crash-toll-1.639510

Carney reports on Carney

Retired BJ reporter and sometime radio show sub Jim Carney is home after the fusion surgery on his back.

Like the good reporter that he is, Jim gives an excellent detailed report of his situation:

“Got home from Crystal Clinic: St. Thomas Late Sat afternoon. The surgery went well.

Jim dandy and KT

“Dr. Richard Brower fused my lower back - L3/4 L4/5. My back still hurts at the incision - 6 inches long / and at the 3 inch incision where he took a bone graft from my pelvis. Those are big incisions!

“I have bad spinal stenosis and Dr. Browser straightened the lowest part of my spinal column. Have bad asthma and coughing up stuff from the four-hour surgery has been hard. It is like trying to cough with a bruised rib.

“I am wearing a back brace during the day when sitting or standing or walking. Previous to surgery I could not stand or walk bad nerve pain in my leg that came on in a minute or two. I walked 6 minutes in the house Sunday and there was no pain. A true miracle! No bending, lifting or twisting!

“Thanks to all who said a prayer and to all the bright lights at the hospital from Dr. Brewer to the nurses and aides. Everyone was terrific. The recovery feels like it is progressing steady every day.”

Jim and BJ reporter Katie Byard have been married 28 years and live in Akron.

Final 2015 appearance as Mark Twain

Our Mark playing the other Mark

PD and former BJ entertainment critic Mark Dawidziak will wrap up a fantastic year as author/humorist Mark Twain by, as Dawidziak puts it, “putting on the white suit one last time this year.”

This will be a 7 p.m. performance Thursday, Nov. 12, at the Parma-Snow Road branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library,  2121 Snow Road, Parma.

Mark writes:

“What an incredibly rewarding year it has been, getting to play Mark Twain around the state and around the country, with glorious stops at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Conn., the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Va., and Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, where Twain and his family are buried far from Hannibal, Missouri.