Coffin corner kicker

Long-time NFL punter and cookie magnate Reggie Roby has died at the age of 43. I couldn’t put it any better, so without permission, I’m stealing Mark’s tribute. He hasn’t paid up yet, so he really shouldn’t complain. Roby had a long and highly successful career as a punter in the NFL, and even though he played many years for the hated Miami Dolphins, I always enjoyed watching Roby kick. Not only did he have tremendous leg extension – often looking like he was going to knee himself in the face - but his punts had amazing hang time. As has been often mentioned in articles about him, Roby liked to wear a watch during games so he could measure hang time. Don Shula also noted that when the Dolphins played in domed stadiums, Roby liked to try to hit the roof with a punt, and was successful more than once. Roby did something that none of the guys who punt today can do - make punting fun to watch.

Riding the slimy chute to hell

Gene Scott, the wackiest, most entertaining televangelist ever, has died at the age of 75 after suffering a stroke. Most of us stumbled upon him while flipping the late-night channels to find his ranting, rambling sermons which amounted to little more than begging for money, much like any other televangelist, but the sheer lunacy made it worth watching. In order to pump up the donation, he might sit silently smoking a cigar, or let viewers know that "A skinflint may get to Heaven, but what awaits him are a rusty old halo, a skinny old cloud, and a robe so worn it scratches. First-class salvation costs money," or simply yell into the camera, "Get on the telephone!" For those who didn't send money, Scott suggested: "Vomit on yourself with your head up in the air." Through his efforts, the Protestant Los Angeles University Cathedral grew to 15,000 members and raised millions of dollars, all of which Rev. Scott could use however he saw fit, as dictated in the pledge slips donors signed. He spent lavishly on himself, with a private jet, mansion, horse farms and chauffeured limos, and on charity, raising $2 million for the fire-damaged Los Angeles Central Library and donating $20,000 to save the Museum in Black from eviction. Unlike his brethren, he did not condemn homosexuals, arguing that Jesus accepted him as he was, so he would accept them as they are. But he could take a political stand, as during the first Gulf War, he encouraged President Bush to "Nuke 'em in the name of Jesus!"

Look at me, I’m Dead

Look at me, I’m Dead
Sandra Dee was 63,
Pneumonia and bad kidneys,
Took all her breath and just dealt her a death,
She’s dead, she’s Sandra Dee
(Kudos to Monty)

Or
Gidget goes to hell
(Stolen without regret from stiffs.com)
Former squeaky clean teen star Sandra Dee has ended her Imitation of Life, succumbing to kidney disease at the age of 63. Dee was the Jennifer Lopez of her day, with a celebrity wedding and divorce and a middling musical career and in the end, all she had were her looks. Dee also made headlines with the celebrity wedding of the time to Bobby Darin. Her celebrity divorce 7 years later helped kill her screen career. Dee earned her reputation as the blond beauty in Gidget and the Tammy movies of the 1960s, while also recording a number of musical trifles to cash in on her screen success. Tammy needed her own doctor in recent years, as she had been on dialysis for four years, and lived as a virtual recluse in Los Angeles.

Are you ready for a thing called death?

(stiffs.com)

Broadway star John Raitt’s Carousel ride has come to an end at the age of 88. Raitt created the role of Billy Bigelow in the original New York production of "Carousel," played Curly in the Chicago company of Oklahoma! and sang with Doris Day in the movie "Pajama Game." He also spawned singer Bonnie Raitt.

Gone-zo

Or

Fear and Loathing and Ballistics in Aspen

Or

Looks like his loathing finally overcame his fear

(stiffs.com)

The Hunter became the hunted, as lunatic writer and journalist Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide rather than continue a telephone conversation with his wife. Thompson’s prose was fueled by random rage and enough narcotics to stun a brace of oxen, and he used profanity-laced tirades to bring readers inside his stories as Rolling Stones’ “gonzo” journalist. Ideally timed to appeal to a generation growing cynical by assassinations and the war in Vietnam, Thompson hit the peak of his fame as Rolling Stones national political correspondent covering the primaries and the presidential campaign of 1972 in a style unseen before in the staid, conservative world of political journalism. That year also saw the publication of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” chronicling his coked-up drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Such an outlandish figure seemed almost cartoonish, especially to Garry Trudeau, who based the character Uncle Duke on Thompson, prompting Thompson to say that if he ever met Trudeau, he would set him on fire. Other people Thompson hated included Hubert Humphrey, "a hopelessly dishonest old hack who campaigned like a rat in heat,” Bill Clinton, "It's almost embarrassing to talk about Clinton as if he were important. I'd almost prefer Nixon. I'd say Clinton is every bit as corrupt as Nixon, but a lot smoother," and Richard Nixon, to whom he offered the epitaph: "If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin." As befits a man of his caliber, Thompson’s ashes will be fired out of a cannon on his Aspen ranch.

RoboCop Top Stopped

Veteran Irish stage actor Dan O’Herlihy has died at the age of 85. An Oscar nominee for Best Actor in 1954 in Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, he may be best remembered as the CEO of Omni Consumer Products in RoboCop, was the unrecognizable alien Grig in The Last Starfighter, and was the head of the Silver Shamrock Corporation who implanted pieces of Stonehenge in Halloween masks as part of a plan to rid the world of children in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Of course, my favorite performance was as the Brigadier General who dropped a nuclear bomb on New York City in Fail-Safe.

Meet the Maker

Or

Meet St. Peter

(Tip o’ the cap to Monty)

Nicole DeHuff, who appeared in the 2000 film Meet the Parents, has died of pneumonia at the age of 30. Reportedly her condition was the result of repeated sinus infections suffered after breaking a nose while filming the volleyball scene with Ben Stiller. DeHuff had visited the hospital twice for treatment before her death and was sent home both times, but really, medical malpractice is the fault of the legal profession.

Death of a Playwright

Or
Exit Stage Left

Or
It's Miller Time
(Props to Monty for the previous two)

Or
After the Fall(Kudos to Craig)

And of course everyone had the same thought for the main headline

Arthur Miller, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman, challenged Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare in The Crucible and spent 5 years nailing Marilyn Monroe, has died at the age of 89. Miller overcame his University of Michigan education to become one of the leading lights of the American theater with his stories about family, responsibility and morality. Death of a Salesman made him an overnight success and earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1949. He got a taste of the seedier side of fame during his doomed marriage to the blonde bombshell. While the marriage to a woman whose knees should have been captured in the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater surprised many, Marilyn took it as validation: “Arthur Miller wouldn't have married me if I had been nothing but a dumb blonde." He also won the Tony in 1953 for The Crucible, a parable of the Communist hunt set during the Salem witch trials, and the New York Drama Critics’ award for best play for All My Sons, which was later adapted for television as My Three Sons.

In This Death Together

Or

A Raisin in the Ground
(Both from the mind of Monty)

Ossie Davis, an actor who devoted his career and his life to dealing with racial injustice, was found dead in a hotel in Miami Beach, where he had been filming “Retirement.” Acting frequently on the stage and screen with his wife of 57 years, Ruby Dee, the couple also were deeply involved in civil rights causes, and were jointly honored by NCAAP Image Awards Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Kennedy Center in 2004. Davis recently lent his commanding voice to commercials for the United Negro College Fund, spoke at the funerals of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. He tried to carry these messages through his work as well, appearing in Roots, both versions of Malcolm X, King and a number of Spike Lee films. He did have a lighter side, appearing in Joe vs. the Volcano, as the chauffeur who takes Tom Hanks off to die, Grumpy Old Men, as Chuck the bait shop owner who dates Ann-Margret, then dies, and The L Word, as Pam Grier’s father, who dies. He also played President John F. Kennedy (who was dyed black, but didn’t die) and joined Elvis Presley to battle an evil ancient Egyptian entity in the cult classic Bubba-Ho-Tep. Again, the only place you'll see that reference.

Oh I Wish I Had an Ernst Mayr Winner

Ernst Mayr, one of the world's leading evolutionary biologists, has died at 100. Without Mayr’s work, Charles Darwin’s theories may have been selected for extinction. While that lazy ass Darwin sat around theorizing, Mayr used new findings in laboratory genetics with field work on animal populations and diversity in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to prove evolutionary theories. His work led to the formulation of the modern concept of species, showed that species can develop in isolation and spared Darwin from going down in history as some guy with a tortoise fetish. Mayr started his career as an ornithologist in the South Pacific, where after capturing more than 3,000 birds and skinning them for study, he ate them. Many of his early textbooks are half scholarly research, half cookbook, and he in his later years, he bragged about personally eating the last dodo, just because he could.

Boxed In

Or

Put Away the Schmeling Salts
(Props to Don)

German boxing legend Max Schmeling, the first European world heavyweight champ, died at the age of 99. Schmeling took the title from Jack Sharkey in 1930, but is best remembered for his two bouts with Joe Louis. Schemling, a 10-1 underdog, knocked out the previously unbeaten Louis in 1936, which was trumped by the Nazi regime as a sign of Aryan supremacy. Course, Aryan supremacy isn’t what it used to be, and Louis came back to knock out Schmeling in the first round of their rematch in 1938. Losing to a black man didn’t endear Schmeling to the Third Reich, and he lost his favored son status. Although forever branded as Hitler’s boxer, Schmeling never actually joined the Nazi party and used his status to challenge Adolph Hitler repeatedly, demanding a guarantee for the safety of American athletes at the 1936 Olympics, and refusing to fire his Jewish manager or divorce his Czech wife. He also hid two Jewish boys in his apartment during the Nazi round-up of Jews on Kristallnacht. Following the war, Schmeling used his earnings to secure the license to the Coca-Cola franchise in Germany, which made him one of the richest men in the country. He used his wealth to fund philanthropic efforts throughout the country. He also quietly sent money to his friend Louis, by this time destitute, and paid for Louis’ funeral in 1981.

You’re out! Finished! Expelled!

The double-secret probation of John Vernon, who fashioned a long career in character roles as villains and scoundrels, has ended at the age of 72. He’s probably best known as evil Dean Vernon Wormer from Animal House and the short-lived Delta House, a role he got after John Landis saw him as Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales. The commanding presence he displayed there made him the ideal actor to tell Flounder that Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life and put the Deltas on notice that it was time for someone to put his foot down and that foot is me. He made his screen debut in the uncredited role of Big Brother in the 1956 version of 1984, and later lent his commanding voice to Prince Namor, the Submariner and Iron Man. He returned to his native Canada to play a crime-fighting coroner in the series Wojeck. In his later years, he parodied his screen persona in roles as Dr. Stone in Airplane II, who didn’t do impressions, his training was in psychiatry, General Hannibal Stryker in Hail to the Chief and Deputy Curtis Mooney in Killer Klowns from Outer Space. And I can assure you this is the only place you’ll see that reference.