Welcome to the 2009-2010 GHI Dead Pool – the morgue the merrier

Halloween, All Saints Day, Day of the Dead and Election Day - what better time of year than to ruminate on mortality and the fun one can have gambling on it? Time once again to start compiling those lists for America’s second fastest growing game sensation, the George Harrison Invitational Dead Pool.

The concept is simple: put together a list of 10 celebrities you expect to walk toward the light in the next year. Submit as many lists as you want and give me $5 for each and your karma is likely to run over your dogma. What more motivation could you possibly need? Fine you greedy bastards, whoever has the keenest understanding of the actuarial tables also gets to keep the whole kitty ($270 in ’08) and claim all the bragging rights that come with being the reigning Angel of Death.

Entries are due by 11:59 p.m. on November 30, and the competition starts at 12 a.m. December 1. I'll probably send out a few nags between now and then, so if you want off the list, let me know, spoilsport.

Now the fine print…
The number of overall hits will determine the champion, but in the event of a tie, the GHI rewards original thinking: the tie-breaker system is as follows – everyone on the planet is worth 20 points. Those points will be divided by the total number of contestants who share that pick. For example, 6 of us expected Walter Cronkite’s sign-off – 3.33333333 points each; 9 of us expected Karl Malden to leave home without a pulse – 2.22222222; 1 of us picked Ed McMahon – heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s your 20 points.

For the record, your mother doesn’t work here. While I review lists as best as I can for duplicates or eligibility, procrastination tends to run strong with this group, and I generally get 50 lists at 11:55 p.m. on November 30. If in your haste, you list the same person twice on the same list, as has happened, or if you list someone who died 16 years earlier, as has happened, or you submit a list with 9 names on it, as has happened, and I don’t catch it, you’d better hope your special teams are up to snuff on your year-long power play.

With reality television and the vice-presidential selection process having made 15 minutes of fame a birthright, eligibility for selection for the Dead Pool will be based on inclusion on http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/, or trying to convince me of that candidate’s worth and hoping I’m in a good mood. For the record, if the first line of your intended’s Wikipedia entry includes the words “turntablist,” “meteorologist,” or “Portuguese,” you may want to re-think things. Being the last remaining anything or being on the oldest living list doesn’t cut it – not having the sense to die in a timely fashion does not celebrity confer.

The Saddam Hussein Codicil
The rule for potential picks on trial or awaiting trial with a capital sentence in their future: Death row inmates, whether domestic, of the Old Country, the Fertile Crescent or parts unknown, are not eligible, unless they die of natural causes, get shivved or take a short walk off a tall bed while modeling the latest rope necktie. Scheduled deaths don’t count.

The D. B. Cooper Decision
Confirmation of expiration must take place within the timeframe of the GHI. In 2007, if I had selected Steve Fossett instead of that big faker Steven Hawking, I could only have collected points if his body is found by the first week of December 2007 - I always allow a little leeway in case it takes the neighbors a few days to figure out that strange smell isn't a squirrel in the crawlspace - or if he were to be declared legally dead in that calendar year. If it’s good enough for a billion-dollar inheritance, it's good enough for my dinky little dog and pony show. If a DNA test of coyote scat recovered in January 2008 had revealed traces of Mr. Fossett, I would be SOL, though admittedly less so than he is.

This August Body Amendment (so named because much like August, they are only in Washington about 31 days a year)
All current members of the House of Representatives and Congress are eligible. In a nation of 305 million, 535 seems like an exclusive enough group, and they are exhaustively covered, so this is fair game. To maintain eligibility once out of office, they must have done something of note while in it. Newt Gingrich distinguished himself from the pack; his predecessor Jack Flynt did not.

The Pet Proviso (aka Man’s Best Friend Memorandum)
I would assume it was clear by this point that eligibility also requires membership in the human race. No Flippers, Lassies, Air Buds, Marleys or Willies, free or otherwise, will be considered. Darwin be damned, this includes Tarzan’s little buddy Cheeta. Celebrity animals must be considered characters, as there are numerous stand-ins in the animal world, plus CGI can turn any menagerie into a virtual tabernacle choir. Finally, PETA says that animals are people too, and outside of the Ku Klux Klan, the Republican National Committee (but wait, I repeat myself) and Al-Qaeda, there are few organizations I want to distance myself from more.

While not specifically prohibited, whacking the members (uh huh huh, huh huh huh) on your list is neither encouraged nor endorsed.

Lists can be sent to me at ckr1024@yahoo.com at any time. You can send them to other people as well, but you’re not helping your original thinking points. If someone on your list dies before the kick-off or if you’ve got good information that John Wooden is taking a trip to the Bunny Ranch in December, you can replace names up to the deadline.

This is also the Annual Meeting of the George Harrison Invitational Rules and Competition Committee, so if you’ve got comments or suggestions, now’s your chance.

Since we now have Pooligans spread out across at least 7 states (NJ, PA, VA, IL, MA, GA, MI, for the geographically curious) payment can follow list submission. I can receive bank transfers (not credit cards) at my PayPal account. E-mail address: ckr1024@yahoo.com. Other options include the USPS or delivering it in person to me in New Jersey - email me for details.

Feel free to extend the invitation to anyone who is sicker than I realized, friends, family members, the Jehovah’s Witness you are trying to get off your front porch.

Drummed Out

Jerry Fuchs, noted indie drummer with such bands as LCD Soundsystem, !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk), Turing Machine, MSTRKRFT, and The Juan MacLean, was successful in his Spinal Tap audition, falling down an elevator shaft at a benefit party in Brooklyn. Steven Bochco, also at the gathering, after being told of the accident, shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s been done.”

And We Call It Ballantine Note

Carl Ballantine, best remembered as Lester Gruber, the conniving leader of the crew of the PT 107 on McHale’s Navy, has died at the age of 92. He got his start as a comic magician in vaudeville style routines where his routines were either obviously staged or failed gloriously. His running comedic commentary was still good enough for him to boast that, although he never actually performed a trick, he was the first magician to headline in Las Vegas. He also played Lycus the slave merchant in the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, starring Phil Silvers, he played a friend of Buddy Young, Jr. at the Shriners Club in Mr. Saturday Night, and had cameos as a magician on The Cosby Show, Night Court, Blacke’s Magic, Alice, Fantasy Island, and BJ and the Bear.

Faded Genes

Claude Lévi-Strauss, chronicler of primitive man and cultural forensic dietitian, has died at the age of 100. Being French gave him a unique insight into the great unwashed, and he transformed Western thinking about the indigenous peoples they had been exploiting for millennia. He identified “structures” that underlie all human behavior, regardless of culture. His reinterpretation of the native mythology of the Americas was captured in his 4-volume work, where he pondered the differences in meaning between roasted and boiled food, reasoning that cannibals tended to boil their friends and roast their enemies. The wishy-washy genius at the same time championed the native tribes as not being intellectually unimaginative and temperamentally irrational, as had been the prevailing thought, while worrying about the homogenization of the world, as in their development these primitive cultures grew closer to modern Western ways. For all his intellect, he apparently was unfamiliar with the theory that nothing can be measured without being affected, so if he’d kept his big trap shut, Mabobo and his friends could have kept their sophisticated and distinct culture, blissfully unaware of the siren call of the Big Mac. Levi-Strauss had an abundance of critics, and he conceded he did little field work, preferring to think about primitive tribes than interact with them. His staggering genius was best captured in the slightly fictionalized cinematic biopic Krippendorf’s Tribe.

Coyote Ugly

Taylor Mitchell, 19-year old Canadian folk singer, has been eaten by a coyote on a Nova Scotia hiking trail, suggesting that Wile E. Coyote may have been overthinking things. As she was not a former president, there is no word on whether she was delicious.

The Sacking of Troy

Troy Smith, the man who built a cult drive-in empire on a menu of foods and drinks seemingly based on a dare, has died at the age of 87. If you’re in the mood to have a roller-skating carhop deliver a Fritos chili pie at midnight and wash it down with a chocolate Dr. Pepper, Smith is the man to thank for making it happen. Originally planning on building an upscale steakhouse in his hometown of Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1953, he noticed that a root beer stand already on the property was raking in a good business, and that he lived in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and focused on developing a drive-in diner. Fifty years later, the chain has 3,500 restaurants in 41 states.

Pine Box Office

John Kenley, who said there are no small towns, only actors with small talent, has died at the age of 103. Deciding that hicks and rubes were every bit as deserving of an overpriced, overrated cultural experience starring washed up actors as big-city folk, he set himself up as the George M. Cohan of the Ohio Valley, bringing large-scale productions headlined by Mae West, Gloria Swanson, Burt Reynolds, Florence Henderson, Ethel Merman, Pam Dawber and William Shatner to places unaccustomed to professional theater, like eastern Pennsylvania’s coal country and Cleveland. He also virtually invented stunt casting of unlikely stars for their box office potential, like Hugh Downs in Under the Yum Yum Tree, Merv Griffin in Come Blow Your Horn, Jayne Mansfield in Bus Stop, filling the role Marilyn Monroe played on screen, and Joe Namath in Picnic. Kenley was the ultimate enabler, rewriting scripts on the fly, adding or subtracting musical numbers – whatever it took to keep the talent happy. That is, until the cast party on opening night, when he would put on a dress and take the first dance with the show’s leading man, a quirk that surprised first-timers who didn’t know that Kenley spent his theatrical off-seasons in Florida as “Joan.”

No Soupy for You

Or
From Soupy to Nuts

Or
Over the hill
After the puns
Look out Reaper
Here he comes

Or
That Soup Has Sailed
(Props to Phil)

Or
Hang on Soupy....Soupy? Soupy!???
(Kudos to Phil)
Soupy Sales, a comedy legend when comedy consisted of taking a coconut custard pie in the face, has died at the age of 83. Sales had a more cerebral take on the kiddie show, with bits such as “lunch,” when he would bite into a hot dog, which was accompanied with the sound of squealing pigs, or drink milk, which was accompanied by the sound of mooing. His menagerie included White Fang, the meanest dog in Detroit, Black Tooth, an overly affectionate dog, Pookie the Lion, Hippy the Hippo and Willy the Worm. Sales was popular for his unpredictability, often leaving the set of his own live show, with camera following, to harass other show’s hosts, including Edythe Fern Melrose, a woman of unyielding dignity who was known as “The Lady of Charm,” who got blasted by a pie she had no idea was coming. He later moved to LA, where the show was so popular such celebrities as Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Martin, Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra would drop in just to get hit in the face with a pie, much the same way they later lined up to have it socked to them on Laugh-In. Later he moved to New York City, where he got suspended for encouraging kids to go into mom’s purse and dad’s wallet and send him the green paper with the pictures of the guys with beards. He was quickly reinstated after massive protests in front of the studio. In the 1980s, he managed to unite legendary enemies Howard Stern and Don Imus in one thing – their hatred of him – when the three hosted back-to-back-to-back shows on the NY radio station WNBC, with Imus and Stern mocking him from both ends. He also was the victim of one of the great practical jokes of all time. A recurring gag on his show called for him to open a door to random visitors, much as Dean Martin later would. On one show, the crew brought in a naked woman, just out of the view of the audience. Sales checked the on-air monitor, which had been re-routed by the engineers, and thought that day’s episode was being brought to Detroit’s kiddies by the letters T & A.

Only one Pooligan ordered the Soupy of the Day, fittingly a Michigander, and Mike’s Trash List sits in 5th place with a ton of points. James passed up the top 10 by taking Soupy off the menu after the 2006 GHI.

No Doctor

Or
The Doctor is Out

Or
Physician, Heal Thyself

Or
No, Mr. Bond, I Expect to Die
Joseph Wiseman, best known as the portrayer of a summa cum laude graduate from Evil Medical School, has died at the age of 91. As Dr. Julius No, Wiseman set the template for the refined, megalomaniacal overly talky ubervillian hidden in a semi-secure lair in an exotic locale who can’t quite put away James Bond. He had been the last living Bond nemesis from the Sean Connery canon films. Other roles included the titular Mr. Minsky in The Night They Raided Minsky’s, mobsters on MacGyver and The A-Team, and a starring role in The Twilight Zone episode One More Pallbearer, as a wealthy man trying to get revenge on those who had wronged him by offering space in a bomb shelter during a fictional nuclear attack in exchange for apologies. They refuse, leaving him alone in the shelter and in his psychic break from reality (or stresser, as they would say on Criminal Minds), he imagines an actual attack has occurred.

Oh Captain, Bye Captain

“Captain” Lou Albano, star of the comedy classic Wiseguys, has died at the age of 76. The WWF (as in World Wrestling Federation - yeah, suck it panda lovers) Hall of Famer was known for managing such evil-doers as The Iron Shiek, Nikolai Volkoff, Andre the Giant and the British Bulldogs, to 15 tag team and 4 individual championship titles in a “sport” far more organized, and only slightly more orchestrated, than the alphabet soup of professional boxing, all the while taunting audiences and opponents alike. All, only slightly homoerotic. With a long unruly beard, loud outfits and rubber bands dangling from his face, Albano was like a living cartoon, making him the perfect actor to take on the role of a lifetime – Mario in the Super Mario Brothers Super Show! He was adopted by another cartoon-like figure from the 1980s, appearing in videos for Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to Have Fun, She Bop, Time After Time and The Goonies theme song.

You Can Die Like a Man

Al Martino, favorite performer of the Corleone family, has died at the age of 82. The singer produced a number of hits from the 1950s through the 1970s, but is remembered today largely for his portrayal of Johnny Fontane, the simpering singer/aspiring actor, whose blubbering about not getting a role in a war movie at Connie’s wedding earns a stern rebuke from the Godfather, who commanded, “you can act like a man.” The scene was reminiscent of his singing career, when he recorded “Here in My Heart,” then begged his childhood friend Mario Lanza not to record the same song, fearing it would overshadow his debut album.

Powell Outage

Brian Powell, former Jamestown Jammer, Fayetteville General, Lakeland Tiger, Jacksonville Sun, Toledo Mud Hen, Detroit Tiger, New Orleans Zephyr, Houston Astro, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Baron, Fresno Grizzly, San Francisco Giant, and Philadelphia Phillie that I saw pitch 1 inning in 2004, giving up 6 runs, shot himself in the head at the age of 35.

William Safire Died.*

(* Not particularly interesting or amusing, but I wanted to ensure this obituary included at least one sentence with complete grammatical accuracy. Or is it insure…?)

Or
We Didn’t Start William Safire

Or
No more Whoppers Jr. for him!
(Kudos to Michelle)
William Safire, anal retentive grammarian, Nixon speechwriter and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 79. The cunning linguist was an acolyte of alliteration and assonance, delighting in such blunt bon mots as “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” In addition to his 32 years afflicting the comfortable of nations near and far, Safire legendarily leveraged a litany of lexicographical legerdemain into a New York Times column “On Language,” offering such helpful guidance as remember to never split an infinitive, take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors, proofread carefully to see if you words out, avoid cliches like the plague, and don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

Helter Skeleton

Susan Atkins, the reason Roman Polanski is currently residing in a Swiss prison, has died of brain cancer at the age of 61, doing her part to help alleviate the California budget crisis. The classic sexually abused middle child of alcoholic parents turned high school dropout topless dancer, Atkins was working both the nature and nurture sides of the crazy street when she met a wannabe Monkee with an interesting take on life. Joining Charlie Manson’s family, she found a new name (Sadie Mae Glutz) and a place for herself. Unfortunately, that place was holding down Polanski’s wife Sharon Tate during the family’s brutal slaying spree, tasting her blood then using it to write “PIG” on the door. Generous to a fault, Tate stayed in the getaway car the next evening to give others the chance to enjoy another night’s carnage. With Atkins bragging about the killings to anyone who’d listen and taunting the court to lock their doors and watch their kids, it didn’t exactly take Jack McCoy to earn a conviction and the death sentence for the 7 murders. Her sentence was reduced to life imprisonment when California abolished the death penalty. But she did have to give up her baby - Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. In prison, Atkins became a born-again Christian, but kept the crazy coming – a prison marriage to Donald Lee Laisure, a self-described Texas multimillionaire who spelled his name with a dollar sign instead of an ‘s’ and was looking for his 36th wife, then a second one to her lawyer. After being diagnosed with brain cancer, she appealed for compassionate release, ironic after telling Tate that she had no mercy for her and her unborn child.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Selma, Legs and Gregg…)

(A joint effort with Terry)
Lucy Vodden, created by The Beatles publicists to provide a back story for the origin of the classic “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and hide the true nature of the psychedelic anthem, has died of lupus at the age of 46. The classmate of Julian Lennon was allegedly the subject of the little Lennon’s drawing and provided the cure to Papa Lennon’s writer’s block while putting together Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

We turn to Mr. Shatner for the definitive version of the song: