Was it something that they said? Is there a faulty blood vessel in your head?

Or

Final Gloria

Or

How are we supposed to live without her?

(Props to Joan-Marie)
America has another reason not to call, as one-hit ‘80s wonder Laura Branigan died of a brain aneurysm last week at the age of 42, a performance Tammy can’t wait for Michael Bolton to cover. She earned a total of 4 Grammy nominations among her 7 albums, but the only reason you’re reading this obit right now is the 1982 hit Gloria, which somehow stayed atop the charts for 22 weeks. She also recorded Solitaire, How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?, Self Control, acted in an off-Broadway musical about Janis Joplin, had guest spots on ChiPs and Automan and contributed songs to the score of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. She also performed the last song ever on American Bandstand, Shattered Glass in 1987, and was working on material for a new album. But in the end, her time in the spotlight was short, for B-R-A, single-N I, G-A-N, you see, is a name that lasting fame never has been connected with. Bran-i-gan, she's dead.

Accepted

Or

Elisadeath

(props to Kirsti “Angel of Death” MacPherson)

Noted psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has started research on the final chapter of her best seller 'On Death and Dying' at 78, and will enter the 6th phase of coping with death: decomposition. Really, though, I can’t believe she’s gone. I’m so pissed she’s gone. I’d do anything to bring her back. I don’t know if I can go on. Marge, change the channel, this is boring. Kübler-Ross’ 1969 best seller changed the way people think of the terminally ill, and she later became a pioneer for hospice care. Although lauded for her humanitarian work, a closer look reveals her seemingly altruistic efforts were clearly self-serving, as in her later years she had been in hospice and was terminally ill, the culmination of a 35-year scheme for a cushy end-of-life.

(with some inspiration from Monty)

Got his Scapegoat

Hank Borowy, who lost the last World Series game the Chicago Cubs have played in the last 59 years, has died at the age of 88. Just two years after helping the Yankees win the 1943 World Series, Borowy was traded to the Cubs in midseason, and became the first pitcher to win 10 or more games for two different teams in the same season. He also was the last man to record 4 decisions in a single World Series, with a shutout in game 1, a loss in Game 5 and a win in relief in Game 6 before getting knocked out in the first inning of Game 7 at Wrigley Field. For the record, this was the World Series in which animal-loving William Sianis was asked by ushers to take his foul-smelling goat out of the park, and he responded by cursing that they never win again. So far, so good.

Albert has left the planet

Albert Dvorin, who made a career out of providing updates on Elvis Presley’s location was killed in an automobile accident. Dvorin was a bandleader and talent agent in Chicago when he first booked Elvis Presley as an opening act. Dvorin then became a permanent member of Presley's road show staff and promotional team. He wasn’t the first to say “Elvis has left the building,” as a sign that Elvis was not going to do another encore and fans should go the hell home already, but he made it his signature sign-off starting in 1954, in the days when it meant Elvis was getting some tender lovin’, and continued to Elvis' final tour in 1977, when the phrase meant Elvis was too busy inhaling his own personal 40-yard line to remember the lyrics to Heartbreak Hotel.

Code Broken

Frank Sanache, the last surviving member of the Meskwaki Indians who beat the Nazis by talking gibberish, has died at the age of 86. The code talkers were trained to use their native language as an unbreakable code during World War II. Their work was largely unheralded, as the code remained classified until 1968, before many Native Americans were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2001. Sanache received the honor in 2002. Sanache spent 2 months training to use a walkie-talkie, then a year of jungle training in Louisiana to prepare him for the North African desert. After 5 months as a code-talker with no one to talk to and a broken walkie-talkie, Sanache was captured and spent 28 months as a POW.

To Kill a Film Composer

(Kudos to Monty)

Elmer Bernstein, one of the most prolific film composers of all time with more than 200 movies to his credit, has died at the age of 87. Nominated for 14 Oscars, winning for Thoroughly Modern Millie, Bernstein’s scores were the glue that held together such classics as The Ten Commandments and Bernstein’s resume reveals he could score anything, from the aforementioned dramas to action hits like The Magnificent Seven, Hud, The Great Escape and True Grit to screwball comedies like Ghost Busters, Airplane!, Animal House and Trading Places. His resume also reveals he was a man who knew how to just collect a paycheck: Going Ape!, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, Guyana Tragedy: the Story of Jim Jones, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, Leonard Part 6, and Canadian Bacon.

Bewitched

Three filmmakers entered a plane in the Florida Keys in pursuit of the bitching wave. Five hundred feet later, their camera was found among the wreckage. Cinematographer Neal Fredericks, best known for his work on The Blair Witch Project, was killed in a plane crash while filming the independent film Cross Bones. Ironically, Fredericks was trapped in a safety harness while the other three men escaped the sinking plane.

The Isn’ta Valley

Or

Testimony to the Invisible

Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, has died at the age of 93. He witnessed the horrors of World War I in Lithuania, fought in the Resistance in World War II, then saw the Communist takeover of Poland, giving him a first-hand view of man’s inhumanity, yet still imbued his work with a love of the world’s beauty. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, and during the Solidarity union uprising of the 1980s, his poetry inspired his countrymen, and he was regarded as an icon of the movement with Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II.

Boneyard Appetit

Or
Goose is Cooked

Or
Mastering the Art of Dying
(Monty)

Or
Cooking with the Dead Chefs
(Monty)

Or

Who's Killing All the Great Chefs of PBS?

(Monty)

Or

Lost her Appetite for Life
(Mark)
Julia Child, known to millions as Dr. Bleeb in the 1993 cartoon “We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story," has died two days shy of her 92nd birthday. She also cooked a little. Capturing the only two things worthy about the French - wine and cooking - Child was a whirlwind, her love of cooking seared into the minds of PBS viewers who had never seen anything like her before. Although her screen presence was panned by some, she brought an unbridled spirit, a warbling voice and a saucy wit to her show. Contrary to urban legend, she never picked a chicken up off the floor during a show. She did admit to tossing a potato pancake onto the stove and returning it to the pan, offering “if you are cooking alone, who will know?” Prior to her cooking career, Child had been a secretary in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA, making her privy to some of the most sensitive material in the country. She put her training to use on the set when she would kill interns who displeased her in a series of “accidents.”

Past Her Primate

Or
Old Actresses Don’t Die, They Just Fay Away
Seventy years late, actress Fay Wray has been brought to justice for her role in the death of King Kong. Able to monkey around with the legal system, due to Carl Denham’s ambiguous eyewitness account, “’Twas beauty killed the beast,” Wray got off scot free. Although Wray appeared in more than 70 films, earning a reputation as an attractive, if limited, leading lady and the first cinematic scream queen, her role as King Kong’s main squeeze is the only reason we remember a career that has featured one acting credit since 1958. After being told her next co-star would be Hollywood’s tallest, darkest leading man, she expected Clark Gable, and instead got an 18-inch statue of a monkey. Although she resented playing second banana for much of her life, she later appreciated the film’s lasting impact. In 1991, she was the guest of honor at the Empire State Building’s 60th anniversary, and this week the building went dark to note her passing.

Fireman in the Hole

Or

Extinguished

Red Adair, 89, the world’s most famous firefighter, has died at the age of 89. Known for his exploits on Texas oil fields, Adair’s life was the subject of a mawkish and gushing 1968 film starring America’s greatest actor, John Wayne, Hellfighters. In 1991, he capped hundreds of oil fires in Kuwait that were set by the Iraqi army. An operation expected to take 3 to 5 years was completed in 9 months, saving millions of barrels of oil for greedy American companies and stopping an air pollution disaster. Adair revolutionized the science of snuffing and controlling wells spewing high-pressure jets of oil and gas, using explosives, water cannons, bulldozers, drilling mud and concrete. In hundreds of well fires around the world, none of Adair’s employees ever suffered a serious injury, dramatic proof that oil's well that ends well.

I’m Dead, Bitch

Or

Cold-Blooded

Or

Get the Funk Out

Funk legend Rick James has died of natural causes at the age of 56. That meaning that a heart incredibly scarred by an out-of-control cocaine habit and a body infested with every known venereal disease after decades of whoring around will naturally give out prematurely. Best known for the 1981 hit Super Freak, James was definitely not the kind you brought home to mother. At one point in the 1980s, he had a $10,000-to-$15,000 a week cocaine habit, then in 1991, James tied a woman to a chair, burned her with a hot crack pipe and forced her to perform sex acts, then was arrested again a year later for a less interesting assault. His later years have been a series of dubious comebacks. MC Hammer ripped off the bass line from Super Freak for his 1990 hit U Can’t Touch this, earning a Grammy for Best R & B song for James and Hammer. A stroke in 1997 derailed his comeback tour after his final album. He’s probably best known today as a Dave Chappelle punch line: “I’m Rick James, bitch.”

Sympathy for a Photographer

Henri Cartier-Bresson, a man of wealth and taste widely regarded as the father of modern photojournalism, has died at the age of 95. Odds are if you happened to run into Cartier-Bresson, you would best be served by leaving the country immediately. He covered the Spanish Civil War and the Battle for France as the blitzkrieg raged during WWII, during which he was captured as a prisoner of war. He escaped and captured vivid images of the French resistance and the liberation of Paris as the bodies stank. He was around when Mahatma Gandhi was killed before he reached Bombay, covering his assassination and funeral in 1948. He was in Beijing when he saw it was time for a change, chronicling the last 6 months of Nationalist China, the fall of Beijing to Chairman Mao, and the first 6 months of Communist China. Cartier-Bresson also was the first foreign journalist allowed into the Soviet Union, a year after the death of Josef Stalin. In all, his images from 23 countries graced the covers of countless magazines. Ironically, Cartier-Bresson was a shy man, preferring his time behind the camera to that in front of it, and there are few photographs of him. He even went so far as to hide behind a sheet of paper when receiving an honorary doctorate at Oxford University in 1975. He will now be eligible for his second posthumous exhibition as the first was held in 1947, presented by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who had thought he was dead, failing to realize he would be around for a long, long year.

Lemon Aid

Raise a glass of lemonade today for Alexandra Scott, the 8-year old Philadelphia area girl who raised nearly $1 million dollars for cancer research through the Alex’s Lemonade Stands program. Alexandra died yesterday at her home. Born with neuroblastoma, Scott began selling lemonade at a stand outside her house at the age of 4, raising $500 for the hospital where she was receiving treatments. She continued after moving to the Philadelphia area to receive treatment at Children’s Hospital, raising $12,000 herself. National exposure over the last few years brought long lines to her stand, and spawned a line of stands in all 50 states, Canada and France for the sale on June 12. She manned her stand this year despite rapidly deteriorating health, and brought in $200,000, and nationwide, stands raised $700,000. Her efforts will continue in her memory, with the Philadelphia School District opening stands this summer, and another national drive this fall supported by Volvo is expected to surpass the million-dollar mark.