Everyone once in a while, something makes me realize how very grateful I am to have grown up in the 1970s. People who were adults during that period may remember it as a hellish time of political scandal, long gas lines, runaway inflation, and impractically wide lapels — I believe Jimmy Carter described all of the above as “malaise,” which sums up the historical circumstances of that decade about as well as any other single word — but it was a great time to be a kid. It was before everyone got so paranoid, before anyone coined the term “play date,” before you had to armor up just to go ride your bike. We had real sugar in our Coke, Slurpees came in flavors that weren’t made by Coke, and candy cigarettes were actually called candy cigarettes and not candy sticks or whatever they’re called these days (can you even still get those things?). And to top it off, we had the live-action kid-vid television shows of Sid and Marty Krofft.

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It’s been a rough couple of days for fans of classic (i.e., ’60s and ’70s vintage) TV. Over the weekend, we learned of the deaths of Don Knotts and Darren McGavin, and just yesterday afternoon I heard that Dennis Weaver has died as well.

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Well, this is a bummer: Peter David is reporting that Andreas Katsulas has died of cancer at the age of 59. Katsulas is one of those terrific character actors whose name you probably don’t know, but whose face ought to be instantly familiar. He’s done dozens of film and TV roles over the years, usually playing a heavy of some kind. Genre fans will remember him as Ambassador G’Kar on the cult-fave series Babylon 5, as well as the recurring character of Romulan Commander Tomalak on Star Trek: The Next Generation, while more mainstream movie-goers know him as the dastardly One-Armed Man in the Harrison Ford version of The Fugitive.

I wasn’t a regular viewer of B5, but I caught it frequently enough to be impressed by Katsulas’ talent. The character he played was a reptilian alien, requiring him to all but bury his distinctive features under make-up appliances, but his great power as an actor shone through all the latex, making G’Kar, curiously, one of the most sympathetic and emotional characters on the series. The character was tragic, filled with frustration and rage at the fate of his species but essentially noble and haunted by the things circumstance forced him to do. Katsulas was utterly convincing in the part, and that’s saying something; not many actors are that good in extensive make-up, and most aren’t any good at all.

I haven’t found much in the way of official obituaries for him, but his B5 co-star Bill Mumy has a brief, fond note on his website, and Peter David’s wife Kathleen tells a heartwarming tale that I think explains what kind of man he must’ve been as well as anything could.

By now, I’m sure everybody has probably heard about the death of actor Pat Morita over Thanksgiving weekend. The standard obits all highlight his role as the noble sensei Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, which I guess is appropriate since that film was such a huge pop-cultural landmark, especially for anyone who came of age during the ’80s. (Come on, admit it: all of us ’80s-kids experimented with Daniel-san‘s flying crane kick, didn’t we? Or at least fanatasized about using it against those jerks who mocked us in gym class. Or am I revealing way too much about my own pathetic history?)

Oddly enough, however, the roles that come to my mind when I think of Morita are all smaller and more obscure.

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The death of Rosa Parks is already old news at this point. A week in today’s 24-hour journalistic environment may as well be six months, and I’ve probably let the iron grow cold when it comes to writing this entry. Even so, I’d still like to say a few words about the passing of this remarkable woman.

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