Opera and Opry

The Fat Lady Sang

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Rigor Fortissimo
(Props to Monty)

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Finale
(Further kudos for Monty)
Sarah Caldwell, the opera producer woman who paired Beverly Sills with a mechanical singing bird, has died of heart failure at the age of 82. Caldwell developed a reputation as the first lady of opera for emphasizing the dramatic elements of opera, for including stunning visual effects and for producing complete versions of rarely performed operas. All this while trying to cope with a country whose idea of opera is Bugs Bunny in the arms of Elmer Fudd wearing a Viking helmet. Five-foot-three, in excess of 300 pounds, the hard-working Caldwell would keep crews working around the clock to achieve her vision, and spent all day fighting off creditors as her company slowly went baroque. Raised in opera hotbed Fayetteville, Arkansas, Caldwell made Boston her bass of operations, studying at the Boston Conservatory then teaching at the Berkshire Music Center from 1948 to 1952. From 1952 to 1960, she headed the Opera Workshop Department at Boston University. She then founded of the Opera Company of Boston and was the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. In 1983, she became artistic director of the New Opera Company of Israel, highlighted by the Diva Sits Shiva tour.

Monty’s Italian Whine was the only team Gudonov to have Caldwell, and with his second hit in a week moves into 4th place. Monty now holds down 40% of the leaderboard:

The Leaderboard
1st Jennifer 3 hits, 13.52380953 points
2nd Paul - Pushing Daisies 2 hits, 30 points
tie Shawn - Team Three – Old 2 hits, 30 points
4th Monty - Italian Whine 2 hits, 26.66666667 points
5th Monty - Comedy of Terrors 2 hits, 22.85714286 points

Dinosaur victrola, list’ning to Buck Owens
Looking out my hearse’s back door

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Sent off to the cornfield
(Laudatories for Craig)

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Buck Pwn3d
(Cap tip to Joe)

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Pfft! You're Gone
(More honorifics for Joe)
Buck Owens, the flashy "rhinestone cowboy" who shaped the sound of country music looks naturally as he died at the age of 76. Owens put his signature honky tonk twang on more than 20 No. 1 records in the 1960s and 1970s. Hits included "Together Again," "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail," "Love's Gonna Live Here," "My Heart Skips a Beat" and "Waitin' in Your Welfare Line." He’s also the only country singer to be covered by The Beatles, who recorded his “Act Naturally,” in 1965. He also brought a sly wit to his role as co-host of Hee Haw. As sly as haystack puns and signing donkeys get.

Glam, Ma'am, Wham

On his last Olegs

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Oleg Casketini
Oleg Cassini, best remembered as the designer for first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, has died from a broken blood vessel in his brain at the age of 92. Other leading ladies to wear his designs while dodging Isaac Mizrahi and his ilk on the red carpet included Joan Fontaine, Joan Crawford and Grace Kelly, to whom he was briefly engaged. Hard to imagine from a male designer, but Cassini reputedly was as skilled at getting beautiful women out of their clothes as he was in getting them into his own designs. Other conquests included Betty Grable, Lana Turner, Ursula Andress and Gene Tierney, briefly his wife. Cassini’s designs were form-fitting and sexually charged, a contrast to sack dresses favored by many of the 1950s and ‘60s. He also claimed credit for bringing the Nehru jacket to America and designed a suit named for Johnny Carson.

Three of us were expecting Oleg’s next design to be a funeral shroud, and Jen takes over first place for the first time since April 23, 2004. Moving into a tie at 14th are Greg’s Team Matlock and Monty’s Italian Whine.

The Year of Dying Dangerously
(Props for Monty)

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Bye Bye, Birdie
(Additional honorifics to Monty)

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No Mo
(Monty, a little too into Maureen Stapleton)

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Dead Emma
(Kudos to Michelle)
Maureen Stapleton, feisty old broad in movies, on television and on Broadway for the last 40 years, has died at the age of 80. She won an Academy Award as anarchist Emma Goldman in "Reds,” after nominations for “Interiors,” “Airport,” and “Miss Lonelyhearts.” This on top of Tonys for 1951’s “The Rose Tattoo,” the role that made her a star and a drunk, and 1971’s “The Gingerbread Lady,” 6 Emmy nominations with a win for “Among the Paths to Eden,” and a 1975 Grammy nomination for spoken word for her recording of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Other notable roles included an alien-loving retiree in Cocoon, a Barbra Streisand-neglecting mother in Nuts, Liberace’s mother in a TV-movie and Weird Al Yankovic’s Ma Kelly in a couple videos. Her acting career masked any number of psychoses – she routinely vomited before performances, was convinced that someday, someone in the audience was going to kill her and never traveled by air, rail or elevator, and spent time in a psychiatric facility.

No Whammies. No Whammies. No Whammies. Splash.

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That’s Going to Leave a Tomarken

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Luck Pressed
(From still-mourning game show fan Craig)

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Going up to the Big Board in the Sky
(More from Craig)

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No Whammies, No Whammies...Oh No, Whammy!
(Tom, and I detect a theme)

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Whammy
(Monty continuing the run)

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He Pressed His Luck
(A whiff of variety from Monty)

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Whammied
(Back to the trail from onlooker Jon)
Former game show host Peter Tomarken was killed when his small plane plummeted into Santa Monica Bay. He was 63. Best remembered as the host of the 1980s game show “Press Your Luck,” his toothy smile and fake sincerity also cheered winners and consoled losers on “Hit Man!,” an inexplicable mess of a show, “Price is Right” wannabe “Bargain Hunters,” “Wipe-Out” and “Paranoia.”

Sloppy, Slobby, Hockey

Cold Corpse, Keeler’s X,
British Politician Sex,
Old Tory DOA,
What else do I have to say?
John Profumo, whose schlong did more to bring down a Conservative Prime Minister than the Labour Party, has died at the age of 91. In 1961, Profumo was a well-respected and high-ranking Conservative holding the office of the Secretary of State for War. Then the married pol had an affair with a showgirl named Christine Keeler, who had previously had a fling with the senior naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy. The story broke in 1962 and by 1963, Profumo had resigned after lying to the House of Commons, Prime Minister Harold MacMillan had resigned citing health issues which were exacerbated by the scandal, and the pimp who organized the sex parties where Profumo met Keeler had killed himself. By 1964 Labour was running the show. The scandal in staid England was a big enough deal for Billy Joel to immortalize: Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician Sex, JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say – right before chronology became too difficult and the next 25 years are treated as a single entity. After resigning, Profumo spent 40 years raising money for a welfare center, earning the CBE in 1975.

For those scoring at home, because Mark certainly isn't, that's his 4th premature evacuation of a previous listee.

You got Serbed!
(Props to Joe Wright)

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Yugone
(Kudos to Craig Barker)

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See – I told you I was sick
(From the Derby Dead Pool, where I am now in an 8-way tie for 36th)

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He got no feel, his sinus wave got no rhythm
His heart just kept losing its beat.
He’s not OK, he’s not alright
But he ain’t gonna face no defeat.
Slobodan just had to get out of his prison cell.
Saturday Slobby set himself free.
Against all odds, the United Nations finally accomplished something productive in the Balkans as former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic died in a UN jail cell while undergoing a war crimes tribunal at the Hague that had, ironically enough, been delayed by Milosevic’s repeated claims of ill health. Milosevic wasn’t known as the “Butcher of the Balkans” for his skill with a lamb shank. As the leader of the Yugoslav Republic, Milosevic ordered the deaths of thousands, ahem, allegedly ordered, in the ethnic cleansing campaign against non-Serbs as the former Yugoslavia went through the messiest break-up since Creedence Clearwater Revival. All told, he had been indicted on 66 counts for crimes ranging from unpaid library fines to genocide and had the distinction of being the first sitting head of state to be tried for such crimes. With his death before a verdict was handed down, many feel that justice was not served, but there’s at least a little justice in one of the worst humans on the planet dying alone on the floor of a jail cell.

Showing Mark’s not the only one with bad instincts, Tom had Slobby in 2004 and decided the UN couldn’t be as wrong about a man’s health as it is about genocide in Africa.

The final horn sounds
(More laudatories for Craig)

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The Flame goes out
(And another tip ‘o the cap for Craig)

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Doomed Doomed
Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion, apparently the first hockey player to think to hit the puck really hard with his stick, died at the age of 75, hours before his number was retired by the Montreal Canadiens. Geoffrion was credited with inventing the slap shot en route to helping the Canadiens win 6 Stanley Cups, including a record 5 straight from 1956-1960. His nickname came from the sound of the stick blade hitting the puck followed by the sound of the puck slamming into the boards. He didn’t hear the second boom very often during the 1960-61 season, as he became the second player ever to score 50 goals in a season en route to the Hart Trophy as league MVP. In 1972, he made the Hall of Fame and was named the first head coach of the expansion Atlanta Flames, making the playoffs in the team’s second season, 1973-74, getting swept by the Philadelphia Flyers. Other highlights included getting booed by his home fans for winning the 1954-55 scoring title after surpassing teammate Maurice Richard who had been suspended for a stick swinging incident, the 1951 Calder Trophy as rookie of the year, being forced into retirement by the Canadiens to make room for Yvan Cornoyer with the promise of succeeding Toe Blake, who really wasn't ready to move on after all, a week as head coach of the New York Rangers before ulcers forced his retirement and a decades long schism with his beloved Canadiens.

Superwidow, Superfly

Dana Grieve

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Woman of Steel, Stolen
(Props to Monty)
Dana Reeve, Superwidow, has died of lung cancer at the age of 44. The Superman curse has outdone itself with this one, turning the Reeves into the unluckiest family on the planet. After Christopher Reeve, a veteran rider, was paralyzed in a horse riding accident in 1995, Dana Reeve became a leading advocate for research into the treatment of spinal cord injuries. Christopher Reeve died in October 2004, and less than a year later, Dana Reeve announced that she had developed lung cancer despite never having smoked in her life. Reeve also continues the curse of the NTI Keynote Speaker, joining Robert Urich on Heaven’s Puffery Clouds. Dana had an acting career of her own and appeared on Oz as Gov. Devlin’s campaign manager in several episodes, including one titled “Obituaries.”

Two of the pooligans expected this family reunion and take 10 points each – Tom’s Knock, Knock, Knocking moves into 4th and Shawn’s – Team Three – Old moves into 11th.

But only briefly, as ….

Shafted

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Deadbelly

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Gordon Parks: He's a zombified man and no one understands him but his embalmer
(Kudos to Joe)

Or
The Urn-ing Tree
(Further honorifics to Joe)
Gordon Parks, who captured the black experience in pictures still and moving, has died at the age of 93. Parks spent 20 years as a photographer for Life magazine, and was best known for his gritty photo essays on the grinding effects of poverty in the United States and abroad and on the spirit of the civil rights movement. In 1969, Parks became the first black to direct a movie for a major studio, helming The Learning Tree, a chronicle of black life in the rural U.S. during the 1920s that was among the first 25 films selected for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Parks also created the blaxploitation genre with 1971’s Shaft. Parks also directed Shaft’s Big Score, but his goal of bringing Shaft Among the Jews to the big screen was thwarted by the Man. Parks other intellectual exercises included The Super Cops and Leadbelly. Parks also wrote fiction, poetry, was an accomplished composer and wrote “Martin,” a ballet about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., because if any medium captures the black experience in America, it’s ballet.

Gordon Parks’ death proved to be Shawn’s Big Score as he takes 20 points to climb into a tie atop the leaderboard.

The Leaderboard
1st Paul - Pushing Daisies
2 hits - 30 points
(tie) Shawn - Team Three – Old
2 hits - 30 points
3rd Monty - Comedy of Terrors
2 hits - 22.85714286 points
4th Me - Our Hearse Is a Very, Very, Very Fine Hearse
2 hits - 14 points
5th Tom - Knock, Knock, Knocking
2 hits - 12.85714286 points

Drop the Puckett

Or
The Puckett Stops Here
Kirby Puckett, who gave short, barrel-bodied center fielders everywhere reason to hope, died yesterday after suffering a stroke on Sunday at the age of 44. In the course of a Hall of Fame career, Puckett led the Minnesota Twins to World Series titles in 1987 and 1991. In 1987 a team that finished the regular season barely over .500 topped the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals. In 1991 Puckett earned ALCS MVP honors as he notched the game-winning hit in game 5 over the Blue Jays. In an epic World Series, after a crushing loss in Game 5, Puckett told his teammates to climb on his back, then hit a game-winning sayonara shot to tie the series at 3 games to set the stage for Jack Morris’ Game 7 masterpiece, and starting the Atlanta Braves on their course to the emptiest dynasty ever. Along the way, Puckett made 10 All-Star teams and won six Gold Gloves while becoming a SportsCenter fixture in robbing homer after homer in front of the garbage bags in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. On and off the field, Puckett earned a following, and a namesake in Bob Costas’ son after winning a bet with the 1989 AL batting title, for his unbridled enthusiasm for the game and life. All of which let him get away with nailing anything that moved during his marriage, threatening to kill his then-wife and sexually assaulting a woman at a restaurant.

Codger, Dodger, Protest Lodger

Duel to the Death

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Dream Weaver

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In the McClouds
(Shared approximate epitaphany with Mark and Craig)

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The truck finally got him
(Props to Craig)

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Gunsmoked
(More kudos to Craig)
Dennis Weaver, the most famous TV deputy until Enos handcuffed himself in Hazzard County, has died of complications of cancer at the age of 81. Weaver first hit the big-time as dim-witted, limping deputy Chester Goode, who became a hit with audiences despite the grating, drawling “Mis-ter Dil-lon,” spending 9 years on the longest running program of all time and winning an Emmy. After a litany of failed series – including two seasons as caretaker to Clint Howard and the world’s first domesticated black bear on Gentle Ben – Weaver hit the big time again as part of the CBS Mystery Movie amalgam as Sam McCloud, New Mexico deputy who through the miracle of plot contrivance transfers to New York and wears his cowboy hat and rides his horse through traffic jams like he’s Don Imus. Other roles included the classic Twilight Zone episode Shadow Play as a convicted man who keeps reliving his final day, a parody of his western roles as Buck McCoy in The Lastest Gun in the West on The Simpsons and just when you thought it was safe to play chicken with a menacing truck on a desolate road, Weaver, in Steven Spielberg’s feature directorial debut, proved otherwise in the 1971 TV-movie Duel. Off-screen, he was a loopy environmentalist living in a house made of trash and eating lichen and grubs.

Wild’s Heart Can Be Broken

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Grubs Go Wild

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Dead Man, What Now

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Jack in a Box
(From the Derby Dead Pool, where I have fallen to a 4 way tie for 35th)
Jack Wild, former child actor best remembered for his time on Living Island, has died at 53 of mouth cancer, because when it came to booze and cigarettes, he couldn’t do a little cause he couldn’t get enough. Wild’s big break came when he scored the lead in the stage version of Oliver!, then followed up as the Artful Dodger in the film version, scoring an Oscar nomination. Horribly dated musicals aside, Wild is best remembered for a boat trip to the island of misfit boys as part of the Sid and Marty Krofft LSD haze with H.R. Pufnstuf, the love child of Mayor McCheese and an iguana while wailing away on a carcinogen-laden talking flute. Wild spent the rest of the 1970s chasing away those memories with alcohol and cigarettes, and despite being clean for a decade, when mouth cancer was diagnosed in 2000, it required the removal of his voice box and tongue, and he was left unable to speak, drink or eat.

Free at Last
(Kudos to Monty for digging this one up)

Or
The Anarchist’s Condolence Book
Harry Browne, two-time Libertarian candidate for president, has found all the personal freedom he wants, succumbing to amytrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 72. A motivational speaker and investment analyst, Browne carried the Libertarian flag to 5th-place finishes in 1996 and 2000, collecting almost 900,000 votes from people who did not heed Kang’s voting advice. Surprisingly, Brownes’ platform of eliminating the NEA, EPA, HUD, FBI, DEA, IRS and BATF, Social Security, welfare, federal income tax and the U.S. military in favor of a missle shield did not strike a chord with most voters. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Browne decided that anarchy in the U.S. might not be the most effective way of protecting its citizens and became a Republican.