Peter Frampton talks about a moment that sticks in your memory. In the middle of the 2010s, he is hiking in Big Sur with his son Julian, who climbs the hill in a matter of seconds. When Frampton finally arrives, he tells his son that something feels off while breathing more forcefully than he should. Turn off. heavier than normal. He attributed it to ageing, decades of touring, and the basic physics of a body that had been used extensively. In that regard, he was mistaken. It would take several more years, two-stage falls, and a visit from a neurologist…
Author: Michael Martinez
A voice going silent has a subtle, devastating quality. A gradual, uncertain fading rather than a sudden conclusion, the kind that makes people check their phones for updates and find themselves praying for someone they’ve never really met. That’s what Nashville and the larger country music scene, which grew up listening to Bill Cody’s voice reverberate through the Grand Ole Opry’s corridors and over WSM Radio’s AM waves, have experienced as a result of his illness. About three weeks ago, Cody was admitted to the intensive care unit due to what his daughter Hannah Davis called “simultaneous heart and kidney…
A yellow Noah Shebib once gave a journalist an explanation of his own brain using a Post-it note. Two oval shapes. The 2007 one was empty. The other, from 2019, was dragged through with a thick line of charcoal. He claimed that the dark smear represented dead tissue, or areas where the inflammation had become so severe that the brain simply stopped. Drawing for a stranger with a joint hanging from your mouth and your own decline is an odd thing, but that’s the type of man 40 seems to be. He transforms the intolerable into something you can view.…
When the wrong question is asked during a television interview, a certain silence descends. One of those silences has happened to Michael Sheen. During the Good Omens press run, a journalist seated across from him inquired as to whether he had dressed in a bulky suit to portray the gentle, bookish angel Aziraphale. He hadn’t. He owned the body. Furthermore, the conversation never fully recovered after his story on The Graham Norton Show. Even though it’s a brief moment, you remember it. In part because of the awkwardness, and in part because it shows us how we currently interpret actors’…
Recently, a certain type of photograph from Oslo has been making the rounds. The Crown Princess is grinning, appropriately attired, and surrounded by family when you notice the thin oxygen support tube next to her face, which she now wears to public gatherings. It’s a minor detail. However, once you become aware of something, it is difficult to ignore it. In 2018, Mette-Marit, 52, received a diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that gradually stiffens and scars the lungs until breathing becomes laborious. She was able to do it for years. She continued to go skiing and hiking with Haakon,…
Earlier this year, Fury shared a video of himself sweating and swatting away the obvious while shirtless at a gym in Thailand. “I’m looking a little hench, chubby, and fat after reading a few comments. Welcome to my world, then. never been any different. He says it with almost a smile. The odd thing is that he is correct. The man has been told that his body is the issue for his entire career, and at some point, he stopped recoiling. You have to go back to 2015, when he defeated Wladimir Klitschko in Düsseldorf and won three world titles…
The tale has been floating around movie sets and message boards like a bit of industry lore for nearly 20 years. An ambitious young actor believes his role needs to be heavier. He then consumes food. Instead, he consumes glass after glass of melted pints of Häagen-Dazs until the weight starts to build up. By most accounts, sixty pounds. Then he transforms and appears on set, only to be sent home. The main details of this anecdote have remained consistent for sixteen years, despite the fact that it sounds too tidy to be completely true. Ryan Gosling was the actor.…
The news came through TMZ on a Tuesday night in May, secondhand and a little surreal, as is the case with most celebrity deaths these days. According to his son, Travis, Donald Gibb passed away in front of his family at his Texas home. He was seventy-one. And that was all anyone knew for a few hours. The details emerged more slowly and later, as grief typically does in real life rather than in the news. We eventually discovered that Gibb had been fighting throat cancer and had had a heart attack just a few weeks before his passing. Although…