No More Mr Warmth

Or

Cold as a Hockey Puck

Don Rickles, who narrowly survived breaking Johnny Carson’s cigarette box, has died of kidney failure at the age of 90. After years as a struggling actor in Run Silent, Run Deep, Bikini Beach, Muscle Beach Party and Pajama Party, and Beach Blanket Bingo, Rickles tried to make It as a stand-up comic. Early gigs had him performing at strip clubs between the dancers, but he found he got bigger laughs yelling at the hecklers who wanted him off the stage than from his actual jokes, and he found his voice. He spent the next half century ensuring that no audience member never left unoffended by mocking the appearance, ethnicity, spouses, sexual orientation, religion, hometowns, jobs and whatever other foibles he might happen upon. His big break came when Frank Sinatra happened to sit in on an appearance. Rickles seized the moment: “Make yourself at home, Frank, hit somebody.” Sinatra laughed so hard, he fell out of his seat. With Sinatra, Dean Martin and the rest of the Rat Pack singing his praises, he secured steady work in Las Vegas, where he made enough of a name for himself that he earned a spot on The Tonight Show, where Johnny Carson took the brunt of his trademark disdain. Rickles was a perfect fit when Martin began hosting celebrity roasts: “What’s Bob Hope doing here? Is the war over?” "Clint [Eastwood], I'm sorry, but I just gotta say what's on everybody's mind here tonight: You're a terrible actor." Though a hit with the casino crowd, other media were less suited to his style, and a variety show and a sitcom both called The Don Rickles Show, a father and son sitcom with Richard Lewis called Daddy Dearest and his longest running success, CPO Sharkey. Rickles found a new fan base insulting toys as Mr. Potato Head in the Toy Story films.

Cessation of a Dangerous Mind

Chuck Barris, America’s best known secret assassin, has died at the age of 87. Developer of a reality show empire 40 years and possessor of a fluid relationship with the truth before those were qualifications to be president, Barris is best known for hosting the original version of America’s Got No Talent, The Gong Show. Despite its craptastic production values and “celebrity” judges like Jaye P. Morgan who couldn’t have booked the C story on an episode of The Love Boat, the show lasted 6 years on network TV and in syndication and landed in the pop culture firmament, in part thanks to Barris’ performance as the antithesis of the composed host, with exaggerated clapping between sentences and leading into commercial breaks with the promise that "We'll be right back with more er ... stuff.” Other shows Barris created that didn’t take advantage of his matinee idol looks and charisma included The Dating Game, setting up ill-conceived romantic pairings, and The Newlywed Game, mocking same, while determining the most embarrassing place they’ve made whoopee; and the $1.98 Beauty Show, where unattractive women endured the witty musings of Rip Taylor and Marty Allen to earn a plastic tiara, rotten vegetables and bus fare. Barris also was a songwriter, with his biggest hit being Palisades Park for Freddy Cannon. He came to this life of pseudo-reality by way of the Central Intelligence Agency, at least to hear Barris tell it. In his autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, he claimed to have been a CIA assassin in the 1960s and ‘70s, notching at least 33 kills. The resulting movie of the same name directed by George Clooney took a decidedly tongue-in-cheek look at his clams. The CIA denies his claims, as one would expect.

Rockefeller of Aged

Or

Come let's mix where Rockafellers

Cross the Styx with umbrellas

In their mitts

David's on the fritz

David Rockefeller, who knew he couldn’t take it with him so he held onto it as long as he could, has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 101. The grandson of John D and son of John D Jr., David was the patriarch of the crazy loaded Rockefeller clan and was worth an estimated $3.3 billion when he died. David had been chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation, a position held in the family since Chase acquired the Equitable Trust Company of New York – which John Jr was the largest stakeholder of - in 1930. Chase National Bank traces its history back to the founding of The Manhattan Company in 1799 by Aaron Burr as a rival to Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of New York, because in 2017 everything ties back to Hamilton. After graduating Harvard, Rockefeller spent a year at the London School of Economics where he met future President John F. Kennedy, which led to his briefly dating Kennedy's sister Kathleen, a familial merger that could have replaced the Pentaverate as the ruling force of the planet. He served as an intern for New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, then worked at the United States Office of Defense, Health and Welfare Services before enlisting during World War II to establish political and economic intelligence units in North Africa and France. After the war, he went to work for Chase Manhattan, rising to become chairman and chief executive, during which time it developed the largest network of banks in the world, including the first American bank branches in the Soviet Union and China. Rockefeller relished his reputation as an international mover and shaker, hobnobbing with oil-rich dictators, Soviet party bosses and the leaders of China’s Cultural Revolution, favoring the company’s interests over anything that might resemble morality or even common decency. He played a significant role in convincing Jimmy Carter to allow the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the United States for hospital treatment for lymphoma, which led to the Iran hostage crisis, without which Ben Affleck wouldn’t have won a Best Director Oscar, but did he thank Rockefeller during his acceptance speech? Of course not. After leaving Chase, he and his brothers organized the family’s vast financial and philanthropic efforts, with David taking a more active role as each brother died off. In 2005 he gave $100 million to the Museum of Modern Art and $100 million to Rockefeller University, two of the most prominent family institutions; as well as $10 million to Harvard and $5 million to Colonial Williamsburg, and he pledged $225 million to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund upon his death, so there was motive…

Cold Off the Presses

David Berkowitz’s pen pal Jimmy Breslin, best remembered for hosting Saturday Night Live in its disastrous 1985-86 season when it had no idea what it was doing, has died of complications of pneumonia at the age of 88. Breslin spent 50 years with the New York Post, New York Daily News, and New York Newsday laying siege to the occupants of New York’s gilded towers and championing the nobility of the working class, preferably its white male members, one hunt and peck at a time. With a straightforward, blunt style, his columns felt like the meanest kid’s readers ever, such as the famous profile of Clifton Pollard, the man who dug John F. Kennedy’s grave: Pollard is forty-two. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II”. Breslin kept working almost to the end, because he never ran out of the motivation to keep filling column inches: “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.” Among the things that angered him, the plight of David Camacho, struggling with AIDS when no one outside the gay community really noticed or cared about its impact, in a column from 1986, the year he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. That same year he broke a story that Queens borough president Donald R. Manes had been implicated in a payoff swindle involving city officials; two months later, Manes committed suicide. Breslin bragged about applying the sportswriter’s creed – skip the winner’s locker room; the best stories are in the loser’s – from the early days of his career. As a sportswriter for The New York Journal-American, Breslin chronicled the foibles of the first season of the inept New York Mets in the book “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” From there he got a chance to become a news columnist, where he fostered his image as the Everyman with the dark wit that everyone wanted to tell their stories to over a beer, even as he befriended many of the city’s elite, who then had to wait for the fountain pen in the back when Breslin felt he had been slighted or that his pals had gotten too big. Breslin shared the real and fictionalized stories of union gangster Anthony Provenzano, the assassination of Malcolm X, Mafia boss Un Occhio, arsonist Marvin the Torch, bookie Fat Thomas and Klein the lawyer. He took a tongue-in-cheek stab at politics in 1969, running for City Council president on the oddest ticket ever with Norman Mailer for mayor. In 1977, Breslin received a letter from the serial killer known as Son of Sam, who had already killed five people in New York and wounded several others with a .44-caliber revolver, and who signed off: “P.S.: JB, Please inform all the detectives working the case that I wish them the best of luck.” Breslin published the note with an appeal for Son of Sam to surrender, but the killer, David Berkowitz, struck twice more before being captured. Though he was criticized for publishing the note, he actually had done so after consulting with detectives, who thought it could encourage the killer to write another note that might bear clearer fingerprints. Not everyone was as big a fan, and Breslin received a concussion in a beating from Jimmy Burke in Henry Hill’s restaurant after a column mocking another underworld associate, in a scene that didn’t make Goodfellas.

Move Over Beethoven

or

Chucky B Not So Good

(An epitaphany shared by Monty and Pat Burns)

Chuck Berry, who basically invented rock n’roll with incredible guitar licks, fancy dance moves, brash confidence and songs good enough to represent the planet to the deepest reaches of the cosmos, all of which he stole from a 5-foot-nothing time traveler, has died at the age of 90. His predilection for watching ladies pee, which cost him $1.2 million after cameras were discovered at several restaurants he owned, was all his. While the slightly more acceptable white Elvis Presley became rock’s first star and teenage heartthrob, Berry was it’s heart, soul and wit, elevating music from pop pap with songs like Johnny B. Goode, Roll Over Beethoven, Rock and Roll Music, and Sweet Little Sixteen. The true OG, Berry spent three years in reform school after a spree of car thefts and armed robbery, but redeemed himself with a degree in hairdressing and cosmetology. Eventually, he picked up a guitar, first singing R&B, pop and country, all of which he melded with his signature sound: bending two strings at once that he would rough up, the Chuck Berry lick, which would in turn be emulated by the Rolling Stones and countless others. Toss in the duck walk, a guitar-thrusting strut that involved kicking one leg forward and hopping on the other, and a legend was born. His sound influenced – or more – countless later performers. The Rolling Stones and Beatles covered many of his hits, and The Beach Boys reworked Sweet Little Sixteen into Surfin’ USA, at which point Berry sued and got a songwriting credit. For all his songwriting prowess, his biggest hit and only #1 single was 1972’s My Ding-a-Ling, a cover of a novelty song with a single entendre. Although he never won a Grammy, he did receive a lifetime achievement award in 1984 and was in the first group of musicians inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. In 1977, when NASA launched the Voyager I and II spacecraft, they included a gold record including a wide range of information about life on earth to serve as a roadmap to alien invaders, and alongside Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and various regional music forms, there’s Berry’s Johnny B. Goode. So if you happen to see a phalanx of duckwalking aliens in search of someone who can play a guitar just like ringing a bell, you’ll know why.

Don't Take the Dead Into Your Own Hands, Take Them to A Cemetery

Or

Judgment Day

Or

Time for Wapner.

(Props to Don)

Judge Joseph Wapner, best remembered for his decision in the landmark case Carson v. Letterman, aka The case of the Creased Clunker, has died at the age of 97. Born and raised in Southern California and having dated Lana Turner in high school, Wapner was well suited for a celebrity-obsessed nation even then so willfully ill-informed that he was more well-known than any member of the US Supreme Court. After earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in the Pacific during World War II, Wapner graduated from USC Law School, spent 10 years in private practice, 2 years on the Los Angeles Municipal Court then 18 years on the LA Superior Court. After retiring, he assumed the bench of The People’s Court, where low-income, poorly educated, inarticulate citizenry argued for the amusement of the masses, in what was essentially televised arbitration set up to look like a small claims court. With trusty Rusty as his bailiff at his side, Wapner genially, and occasionally angrily, grilled the downtrodden as they squabbled over petty loans and minor damages, while professional hairdo Doug Llewelyn waited in the wings to exult in triumph with the victors and console the losers. Wapner donned the robes for 12 seasons before being unceremoniously, and unknowingly, dumped when the producers tried to revamp the show to improve floundering ratings. Unable to leave the limelight behind, Wapner presided over for Animal Court – kind of an Stupid and Illegal Pet Tricks where people would sue each other over damage their animals had caused. In an episode of Sliders, he played Commissar Wapner, where The People’s Court was actually a criminal court in an alternate world where the Soviet Union had defeated the United States. 

Silent Minority

Robert Michel, one of the last remaining vestiges of political bipartisanship, has died of complications of pneumonia at the age of 93. A World War II veteran who earned two Bronze Stars and four Battle Stars plus the Purple Heart when he was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, Michel was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois and served for 38 years. A conservative by nature, Michel sought to govern through compromise rather than confrontation. Elected during a four-decade period of Democratic control of the House, the courtly Michel maintained friendships on both sides of the aisle, including House Speakers Tip O’Neill and Tom Foley, which served him well when he became minority leader in 1981 and was tasked with shepherding the policies of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush through Congress. He was dismayed by the late ‘80s-early ‘90s rise of conservative firebrands like Newt Gingrich more interested in winning than governing, more interested in slogans and sound bites than common ground. When Gingrich indicated he planned to challenge Michel for the Republican leadership position in 1994, Michel chose capitulation rather than trying to preserve the integrity of the party and retired from the House, helping to set the United States on the path to the dysfunctional mess that we currently call our political system. On his way out the door, he criticized the growing incivility of Republicans who focused on “trashing the institution” for political gain. Bill Clinton honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for “[serving] our nation well, choosing the pragmatic but harder course of conciliation more often than the divisive, but easier, course of confrontation.”  

Passing. Passing.

Or

Got the Tigers by the Toe Tag

Or

Ilitch Scratched

Mike Illtch, owner of the worst wig in professional sports, has died at the age of 87. A minor league second baseman with the Hot Springs Bathers, Jamestown Falcons, Tampa Smokers, Miami Beach Flamingos, Charlotte Hornets, Norfolk Tars and St. Petersburg Saints, Ilitch was forced to retire because of a knee injury, so he and his wife started making pizza. A lot of pizza. As of 2007, annual revenue for Little Caesar’s Pizza was $1.8 billion. As of December 2016, Ilitch was the 86th richest man in the United States with a net worth of $6.1 billion. He chose to take that dough and invest in professional sports, first with the Detroit Caesars of the American Professional Slow Pitch Softball League, winning two World Series titles before the league folded, then the Detroit Red Wings, buying the team in 1982 for $8 million. The Red Wings had missed the playoffs in 13 out of 15 seasons before Ilitch bought the team, but he threw enough money at it to make the playoffs in 30 of the last 32 years, including the last 25, the longest active streak in North American sports and 3rd longest of all time, and racking up 4 Stanley Cups – the team’s first since 1955. He was an early owner in the Arena Football League, with the Detroit Drive, who made the ArenaBowl in each of the team’s 6 seasons, winning 4, before being sold and moving to Worcester, Massachusetts to free up time and attention for Ilitch’s next big purchase. He bought the Detroit Tigers in 1992, and he inspired the team to 12 losing seasons over the next 13 years, including an AL-record 119 losses in 2003, though over the last 11 years they won 4 AL Central titles and 2 pennants. He also bought up a lot of depressed real estate in Detroit when everyone in the city left, keeping it depressed while waiting for the investment to pay off. He was lauded for his philanthropic efforts, and after his death, it was revealed that after Rosa Parks was beaten and robbed in her own apartment, Ilitch quietly had her moved into a nicer neighborhood and paid her rent for the last 11 years of her life, ensuring that the civil rights icon would live long enough to win me the 2005 GHI.

Slicing his way to the dogpile at 12th is Mike’s Trash List. 

This is the 2nd fastest year to 15 hits (2007).

The World’s Compost Authority

Irwin Corey, who was reportedly funny at some point, has died at the age of 102. As a stand-up comic, film actor and activist, Corey was renowned for his unscripted, improvisational style, which convinced Lenny Bruce that Corey was "one of the most brilliant comedians of all time.” It is worth noting that Bruce ingested enough drugs to kill a wildebeest. Corey’s best known shtick was his Professor character, wearing a black swallowtail coat, string tie and sneakers, which he also appeared to have used to comb his hair, and spouting long streams of nonsense and doublespeak. Offstage, the lefty supported Cubans, cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the American Communist Party. He was blacklisted in the 1950s and claimed that dogged the rest of his career. He appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982 and never returned, which he attributed to the blacklist, which makes sense with the notoriously establishment-friendly Letterman. In 1974, Corey accepted the National Book Award on behalf of the publicity-averse Thomas Pynchon, with many thinking they were finally seeing the reclusive author, only to be confused by his mangled syntax and bad jokes. Perhaps his best bit came at the end of his life as he was living in a $3.5 million-dollar house in New York while panhandling for change from motorists exiting the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, then donating the change to charity.

Springbok Forward Falls Back

Or

Pulled the Rugby Out

Joost van der Westhuizen, South African rugby legend, has died of motor neurone disease at the age of 45. van der Westhuizen appeared in 89 test caps for the South African national team, scoring 38 tries – both national records at the time of his retirement. He played mostly as a scrum-half, where he was renowned for penetrating tiny gaps in the defense, his savage aggression and his heroic game-defining tackles. He was the first to participate in three Rugby World Cups, including the win in 1995 ordered by Nelson Mandela and depicted in the movie Invictus, where van der Westhuizen played a vital role in shutting down unstoppable New Zealand wing Jonah Lomu. He played in a record 111 matches for the Springboks, captaining 10 times and scoring 190 points, and was on the team that won South Africa's first Tri-Nations title in 1998. With the local Blue Bulls from 1993 to 2003, he won two domestic Currie Cup trophies in 1998 and 2002. For this bizarre set of accomplishments, he was inducted into the International and World Rugby Halls of Fame, because apparently these needed to be separate things.

Hale and Not-so Hearty

(Props to Monty)

Or

Dead-end Street

(Additional accolades for Monty)

Barbara Hale, best remembered as a randy middle-aged astronomer trying to combat The Giant Spider Invasion in the MST3K classic, has died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the age of 94. She had some high-profile roles opposite top leading men, most notably headlining Lorna Doone, then spent 13 years in Raymond Burr’s shadow as Della Street, his ever-capable legal secretary, on Perry Mason. Twenty years later, Street put all the tricks she learned to good use, committing a murder that forces Mason to give up his job as an appellate court judge so that he can come to her defense. Other roles included Dean Martin’s wife in Airport, and playing William Katt’s mother in real life and in The Greatest American Hero and Big Wednesday.

Man-Nix

(Props to Monty)Or

Dead Mannix Walking

Or

Touched

Mike Connors, best remembered as an undercover FBI agent tagging along with escaped women prisoners to recapture diamonds in the swamp in the MST3K’ed “classic” Swamp Diamonds, has died of leukemia at the age of 91. A high school standout basketball player, where he earned the nickname, and occasional screen name, “Touch,” Connors played briefly at UCLA under John Wooden, where his expressive face gained notice and he found work in a bunch of cheapie Westerns and thrillers before ending up as a crewman trying to find John Wayne’s downed plane in Island in the Sky. His big break came in 1967 with Mannix, with Connors first the old-school oddball in a high-tech detective agency, then as the more traditional solo PI. The show was non-descript and stuck to the formula, with Mannix’s quirks consisting of a trove of Armenian proverbs to sum up any circumstance and a tendency to get his ass kicked in every episode, by one estimate getting shot 17 times and knocked unconscious 55 times over the course of the series. Connors became one of the top paid stars on TV, and scored 4 Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe win. His last role was as a love interest for Holland Taylor on Two and a Half Men before we knew her preferences were younger and with firmer breasts.

x

No Longer in a World O'Hurt

Or

Hurt's Empire of Dirt

John Hurt, who was so good an actor it was worth screwing up the careful numbering system of Doctor Who, has died at the age of 77. Best remembered for getting face raped and giving birth to an angry jumbo shrimp in Alien and having the sense of humor to do it again for Spaceballs, Hurt was generally regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation. He was the far less entertaining (aka non-Bob Guccioned) Caligula in BBC’s I, Claudius. He earned Oscar nominations as a smack-addicted inmate in a Turkish prison in Midnight Express and allegedly as the guy under all the makeup in The Elephant Man. He was also the rat-averse Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Hellboy’s handler, the only thing worth watching in Contact as a brilliant and reclusive terminally ill billionaire, and Indy’s alien-addled friend Harold Oxley in the shark-jumping, fridge-nuking, franchise-killing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Hurt’s cancer diagnosis was one of many catastrophes to befall Terry Gilliam’s legendary development disaster The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, as he had been slated to star in the 8th attempt to make the movie. He was revealed as the man who ended the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks as the War Doctor in The Time of the Doctor, though all 13 of The Doctor’s incarnations were later able to hide Gallifrey in a moment in time (even if the War Doctor tragically would not retain the memory when he returned to his own time stream and still thought he had killed billions in order to end the war. Yes, I am that big a geek.) Upsetting such a critical element of the long-running show’s mythology required an actor of Hurt’s stature to quell the show’s vocal lunatic fans, while seeing Hurt’s world-weary doctor rolling his eyes at the youthful overexuberance of Matt Smith and David Tennant was just great fun. His last performance will be in later this year in Darkest Hour, as Nazi-appeasing British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Petrie-fied

(Props to Mark)

Or

You're not going to make it after all

(Kudos to Phil)

Or

You’re gonna wake it after all

(Fraternal variation from Peter)

Or

Who can turn the ventilator off, with a smile?

Or

Mary Tyler Less

(Additional accolades for Mark)

Or

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants

(Historical huzzahs for Steve)

Or

Chuckles Got the Last Laugh

(A technically correct, as the last actor to play Chuckles is still alive, though the character and the first actor to play him are in that great TV studio in the sky, observation from Peter)

Or

#meow

(Update on a theme, from Phil)
Mary Tyler Moore, best remembered for showing off her working breasts in Flirting with Disaster, has died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 80. In her honor, her family is preparing a dreadful dinner party. After several years of bit parts in sitcoms, Moore scored the role of Laura Petrie, wife of comedy writer Rob, mother of incredibly dumb and annoying son Richie, in The Dick Van Dyke Show, where she was one of the first TV wives allowed to be smart and funny. And wear capri pants. Well known for her addictions, one classic sitcom wasn’t enough, so she created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and her intelligent, ambitious, independent, and regretfully spunky Mary Richards became a feminist icon, in addition to being hilarious. The show also showed Moore’s business acumen, as she and husband Grant Tinker’s production company, MTM, also developed Newhart, St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, WKRP in Cincinnati, and, of course, The Texas Wheelers, starring Gary Busey, Mark Hamill and Jack Elam. All under the watchful eye of Mimsie. MTM also produced Mary, an ill-conceived and ill-fated variety show starring Moore, which also featured Michael Keaton and David Letterman, whose disbelieving smirk and thinly veiled contempt for the goings-on are the show’s lone redeeming qualities. Later projects sought to counter her image by putting her in roles that were more dramatic; like her Oscar-nominated turn as an icy housewife in Ordinary People and as Mary Todd Lincoln, opening the door for fellow sitcom star Sally Field to not get to see the end of Our American Cousin; caustic, like in Flirting with Disaster and in cameos as Jackie’s bitchy boss on That ‘70s Show; or not funny, like in Mary and Annie McGuire. 

No Way, Jose

Miguel Jose Ferrer, best remembered as the man who designed RoboCop, but wasn’t smart enough to not cross Ronny Cox, has died of throat cancer at the age of 61. The son of Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, cousin of George Clooney and brother-in-law of Debbie Boone, Ferrer’s first major role was as a deck officer of the USS Excelsior, sabotaged by Montgomery Scott in its pursuit of the stolen Enterprise in Star Trek III. He took over the DeepStar Six when it was attacked by a sea monster in 1989, the summer of the sea monster movies, and tried to sell Gordon Shumway in the TV movie Project: ALF. He played abrasive forensics expert Albert Rosenfeld in Twin Peaks, was the head of the Office of the Criminal Examiner in Crossing Jordan and until his death, was assistant director on NCIS: Los Angeles. Ironically, the cigarettes that led to his cancer also contributed to his gruff voice, which kept him in high demand as a voiceover specialist, especially with superheros, as he voiced Sinestro, Aquaman, J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, thought he also found himself on screen rubbing elbows with the Justice League of America as The Weather Wizard, the Bionic Woman, and Iron Man as Vice President Rodriguez.