The Other Side of Midnight

Sidney Sheldon, who found success on Broadway, on the best-seller list and screens big and small, has died at the age of 89. He won an Academy Award for Best Orginal Screenplay for the Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer, and wrote Annie Get Your Gun. He won two Tonys for the musical Redhead. He created and wrote nearly episode for 7 seasons of The Patty Duke Show, created and won an Emmy for I Dream of Jeannie and created Hart to Hart. Then he decided to become a best selling but critically panned author with The Naked Face, which sold 3.1 million copies in paperback, showing men will buy anything with “Naked” in the title.

Barbaro at the Pearly Gates

Or
Turfed
(Equine Eructations for Monty)

Or
Status Has Been Downgraded to Glue
(Stolen from the fine people of Fark.com)
Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro has finally been put to rest after a nearly year-long desperate attempt to realize millions of dollars in stud fees. After winning last year’s Derby by the greatest margin in 60 years, Barbaro faltered 200 yards into the Preakness, his limp left hind leg dragging behind him. Fifteen surgeries to repair the leg and the complications associated with the recovery ensued. This week, doctors reported that the stress of supporting his full body weight was damaging the horse’s front legs and that the originally damaged leg wasn’t healing properly and decided the horse had to be euthanized. Something to consider next time you try to take the day off for a sprained ankle.

For Rest: Gump

Or
No Worsley for the Wear

Or
He’s Gump, He’s Gump, He Might be Dead
Since he’s second lead in the latest dead pool update, you can pretty much be assured that he is. Gump Worsley, the losingest goaltender in NHL history, has died at the age of 77. But to paraphrase Roger Craig, it takes a pretty good goaltender to lose 353 games. Worsley accumulated a lot of those losses playing behind some awful Ranger teams, but won 4 Stanley Cups and two Vezina trophies after a trade to Montreal. Worsley also earned some notoriety as one of the last goaltenders to wear a mask, despite having been hit by objects throwing everything from a dead rabbit to a folding chair fans and having been knocked unconscious by a puck to the face. Although he likened goaltending to being one step above javelin catcher, he resisted the mask until the final 6 games of his career in 1974 at the age of 45.

Greer and Present Danger

Or
What shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart?
(A Don duo)
Tige Andrews, the captain who corralled those wacky hip kids on The Mod Squad, has died at the age of 87. He was “hey, it’s that guy” in cameos on dozens of TV shows from the 1960s through the 1980s, and was the lamest lycanthrope ever as Bert/The Werewolf in The Werewolf of Woodstock.

Old Lang Synes Off

Jack Lang, who had one of the best jobs in the world for more than 20 years, has died at the age of 85. From 1966 to 1988, Lang served as the secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers of America Association, and got to inform newly minted baseball Hall of Famers of their selection. In 1986, Lang was inducted to the writer’s wing himself, having covered baseball since 1946.

Third-Rate Corpse

E. Howard Hunt, the most ineffective covert operative this side of Maxwell Smart, has died at the age of 88. After orchestrating a successful coup in Guatemala, he was the architect of the Bay of Pigs invasion that was thwarted by Edward Bell Wilson’s horny big-mouthed son. Hunt did manage to bring down his second government when his bungled planning of the break-in at Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. His role in the Kennedy assassination has been the subject of much speculation and Congressional investigation. Hunt recruited 4 former operatives whose resumes included the Bay of Pig fiasco to break into Democrat headquarters in search of evidence that Fidel Castro had been donating to the McGovern campaign. When the burglars were caught, one had the White House number of Hunt, one of Nixon’s top “plumbers.” Nixon was then caught on tape discussing how to fund Hunt’s blackmail demands. Hunt was eventually convicted of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping, serving 33 months in prison. Other highlights, hiring William F. Buckley, Jr. as a CIA operative to slip quietly into Mexican student organizations and breaking into the office of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.

Two of us expected the liquidated plumber and Mark’s Beltway Boneyard IV: Foreign Exchange retakes first place while Michelle’s Death in the Afternoon pulls into a tie for 11th.

The revised leaderboard:
1st Mark – Beltway Boneyard IV: Foreign Exchange 3 hits, 14.395604398 points
2nd Monty - The U.N. Dead 2 hits, 30 points
3rd Greg - Team Quincy 2 hits, 21.53846154 points
4th Shawn - Team One – Oldest 2 hits, 11.53846154 points
(tie) Dawn - Go for the light, it's right there damn it 2 hits, 11.53846154 points

Date with Death

A fascinating life came to an end last month as Liz Renay died at the age of 80 of internal bleeding. The child of religious fanatics, she ran away from home to win a Marilyn Monroe lookalike contest. Joe DiMaggio certainly thought she was a dead ringer, as he was one of her conquests, along with Regis Philbin and Cary Grant. She became LA mobster Mickey Cohen’s girlfriend and did two years in prison for lying for him in court. After she got out, she became a stripper, touring along with her daughter, and she is probably the first grandmother to streak down Hollywood Boulevard. Such a life had to include a visit to John Waters cinematic world, and he cast her in Desperate Living. Other films included Blackenstein, The Corpse Grinders 2 and Mark of the Astro-Zombies.

Ruhled Out

Vern Ruhle, whose fraudulent claim of having caught a Garry Maddox line drive turned into a double play during the 1980 NLCS while he was pitching for the Astros killed a Phillies rally and nearly cost the team their only world championship, has died of cancer at the age of 55. His penance came in 2001, when while serving as the team’s pitching coach, he had to watch Dave Coggin make 17 starts as the Phillies 4th starter in 2001 .

Grappling with Death

(Props to forgetful Jon)

Bam Bam to meet the Undertaker
(More from the sidelines)
Flame-tattooed former WWE Superstar Scott “Bam Bam” Bigelow will be placed in the squared hole at the age of 45. In his 20 years in wrestling, the 400-pound behemoth employed the flying headbutt he called “Greetings from Asbury Park” to win the ECW World Championship, ECW World Television Championship, WCW Hardcore Championship and the WCW World Tag Team Championship, an array of titles that make professional boxing look legitimate. He was around long enough to have been pinned by the late Andre the Giant. He also had a legendary – WWE.com’s word, not mine – feud with Lawrence Taylor – yes, that one, that culminated in a bout at WrestleMania XI, presumably during one of LT’s drug-addled spells.

The Buch Stops Here

Art Buchwald once said that the hardest job was the New York Times obituary editor because he had to decide what 4 people were important enough to make the obits that day. Pretty sure it wasn’t a tough call on Jan. 18 as the comical columnist succumbed to kidney failure at the age of 81. Buchwald spent 50 years holding up the mirror to the rich and powerful and capturing the condensation of their absurdity. Lampooning the detailed daily briefings by President Eisenhower’s press secretary, Buchwald wrote about a faux press conference in which a reporter asked, “And at what time did the president begin eating his morning grapefruit.” Dismissed as unadulterated rot by the press secretary, Buchwald insisted he had never written anything more than adulterated rot. He chased goats in Yugoslavia, searched fruitlessly for a Turkish bath in Turkey and toured Eastern Europe in a chauffeured limo to show what a bloated plutocrat looked like. He told readers that he was not invited to the Grace Kelly-Prince Rainier wedding because of a family feud: “The Buchwalds and the Grimaldis have not spoken since Jan. 9, 1297.” He created the Louvre race in which a tourist saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo in four minutes under perfect conditions: a smooth floor, good lighting and no wind. He bragged about never having picked up a phone to write a column: "I never talk to anybody. Facts just get in my way," relying instead on watching interviews and a pocket full of newspaper clippings for material. He established a scholarship for “the most irreverent student” in journalism at U.S.C., the school he attended on the G.I. Bill and that allowed him to continue classes even after it learned he had no high school diploma and was ineligible for a degree. One of the most widely read writers of all time, appearing in as many as 500 newspapers Buchwald won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Last year, he refused dialysis and was given a few weeks to live. His kidneys began functioning again, allowing him a year-long victory lap.

Monty, Joe and I were prepared for the beginning of the unadulterated rot and score 6.6666667 points each, with my The Family Plot Thickens and Monty’s D.C. Dead taking 5th and Joe’s Drop Dead, Gorgeous moving into 12th.

The completely redrawn leaderboard:
1st Monty - The U.N. Dead 2 hits, 30 points
2nd Greg - Team Quincy 2 hits, 21.53846154 points
3rd Shawn - Team One – Oldest 2 hits, 11.53846154 points
(tie) Dawn - Go for the light, it's right there damn it 2 hits, 11.53846154 points
5th Me - The Family Plot Thickens 2 hits, 8.20512821 points
(tie) Monty - The D.C. Dead 2 hits, 8.20512821 points

With 10 hits in less than the first 2 months, we’re on pace for more than 60 hits, and we are 6 weeks ahead of the previous earliest date for achieving double digits, topping last year, on Feb 24. Also of note, with 10 hits in 6 weeks, 3 days we have already topped the output for the entire first year.

And that's why it isn't the Winston Cup anymore...

(Laudatories for Dean Shawn)
Benny Parsons has made his last left turn as the 1973 Winston Cup Champion died of lung cancer at the age of 65, despite not having smoked a cigarette since 1978, 9 days after fellow NASCAR champion Bobby Hamilton died of cancer. Forget the restrictor plates and HANS systems – maybe the gearheads ought to look at the exhaust. By his count, he completed 134,870 laps, which seems like a monumental testament to futility, but NASCAR was impressed enough to name him one of the top 50 drivers in history. He also won the 1968 and 1969 Automobile Racing Club of America championships, 1975 Daytona 500, 1980 World 600 and was the first driver to top 200 miles per hour in qualifying. All told, he drove in 526 races, winning 21, pretty weak by Ricky Bobby standards.

Shawn’s Team One and Dawn’s Go For the Light, It’s Right There, Damn It, anticipated the pit stop and take 10 points to share third, although they got a scare from…

He Ain’t Got It

Ron Carey, best remembered as wannabe detective Carl Leavitt on Barney Miller, has died of a stroke at the age of 71. In his pursuit of a detective position, Officer Leavitt would offer unsolicited advice on how to handle a suspect in the holding pen, be the butt of a short joke from Dietrich, then leave the squad room in an overly dramatic fashion He also was a member of Mel Brooks' comedy troupe in Silent Movie, History of the World, Part I and High Anxiety, where in a recurring gag, he would try to lift something heavy and announce “I got it, I got it, I got it, I ain’t got it,” as whatever ‘it’ was tumbled to the ground.

The Cold and the Beautiful

Darlene Conley, best remembered as the feisty fashion mogul Sally Spectra on The Bold and the Beautiful has died of stomach cancer at 72. She earned two Daytime Emmy nominations for best supporting actress and six Soap Opera Digest award nominations.

Pinin' for the fnords

(Word to Greg)

Or
23 Skidoo
(Further florals for Greg)
Lunatic cult author Robert Anton Wilson, has died of complications from post-polio syndrome at the age of 74. Wilson is best known for the Illuminatus! Trilogy, the story of the Illuminati, elite authoritarians who pull the puppet strings of the world’s political establishment while seeking to become super-beings by sucking the souls from the masses. They are countered by the Discordians, who resist through convoluted tactics that include a network of double agents. Postulating that every conspiracy theory ever was true, mixed in with drug culture, theology, philosophy, occultism, chaos theory and nonsense, the comic novels caught on with sci-fi shut-ins and hippies. Like the rest of the population of California he ran for governor, representing the Guns and Dope party, with the platform plank including equal rights for ostriches. He was American director of the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal and helped found two "religions:" Discordianism and the Church of the Subgenius, whose high priest Ivor Stang called him "the Carl Sagan of religion, the Jerry Falwell of quantum physics and the Arnold Schwarzenegger of feminism". Other works included the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy, a science fiction series inspired by quantum theory, The Sex Magicians, Neuropolitics, Quantum Psychology, Chaos and Beyond, TSOG: The Thing that Ate the Constitution and an article entitled Whoever Controls Princess Diana, Controls the World. In his autobiography, he describes episodes when he believed he had communicated with extraterrestrials — while admitting that he was experimenting with peyote and mescaline. He had been updating his worshippers on his blog and in his final post, he wrote: “I don’t see how to take death seriously. I look forward without dogmatic optimism, but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.”

While sitting in his basement under a bare bulb writing letters to the government, Greg came up with this one and scores a solo hit to move Team Quincy into second place, where he would remain, despite…

Ponti of No Return

Or
Sophia's Choice
(Kudos to Monty)

Or
Loren’s Lament
(Additional Accolades for Monty)

Or
Paging Dr. Zhivago... never mind
(Further honorifics for Mark)
Carlo Ponti, the man who inflicted Lara’s Theme on viewers 47 times during the interminable Dr. Zhivago, had died at the age of 94. The Italian producer of more than 100 films won two Oscars for best foreign language film, for La Strada and Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow and was nominated for a real Oscar for Doctor Zhivago. His partnership with Dino DeLaurentiis yielded Europa ’51, Mambo, the Kirk Douglas vehicle Ulysses and War and Peace starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda. He also had the busiest casting couch in Rome, “discovering” every Italian starlet from Gina Lollobrigida to Sophia Loren, who he began courting despite her being 16 and he having a wife and two kids. As Italy didn’t recognize divorce, he got one in Mexico and married Loren by proxy, with two male lawyers standing in, earning condemnation from the Vatican and a bigamy conviction for him, while she was accused of being a concubine. They split for France for its scenery and laws prohibiting extradition for prosecution. He got his revenge with Massacre in Rome, which criticized Pope Pius XII for not doing anything about German executions of Italian prisoners. He also collaborated with such directors as Federico Fellini (La Strada), Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt), Claude Chabrol (Bluebeard), Jacques Demy (Lola) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Blowup). In addition to these excursions into Italian neo-realism, French New Wave there was also plenty of Italian soft core splatter (Whisky and Ghosts, Secrets of Sensuous Nurses, The Schoomistress and the Devil Carnal Violence.

The solo hit means 20 Pontis for Monty, who takes first place, which he held onto despite…

Yvonne, But Not Forgotten

Or
Vaya Yvonne Dios

Or
More business for Gateman, Goodbury and Graves
(Obscure props to Mark)
Yvonne De Carlo, accidental matriarch of one of TV’s oddest families, has died at the age of 84. She started out in the 1940s as eye candy in such meaty roles as Secretary (Standing Room Only, The Crystal Ball), Showgirl (Rhythm Parade, This Gun for Hire) and Girl (So Proudly We Hail!,Lucky Jordan, occasionally showing range as Girl in Singing Quartette (Salute for Three), Girl in Café (For Whom he Bell Tolls), Native Girl (The Story of Dr. Wassell) and Bathing Girl (Harvard, Here I Come!). She was eventually allowed to speak and had carved out a career for herself with dozens of film credits, largely as a screen siren, but also including Moses’ wife Sephora in The Ten Commandments and maid to John Wayne’s titular McClintock! To pay for her stuntman husband’s medical bills after he was nearly killed on How The West Was Won, she took her most famous role as Lily Munster, a combination of the Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula’s Daughters in The Munsters. While not as hot as the Ginger/Mary Ann or Samantha/Jeannie debates, The Munsters vs. The Addams Family is one of the defining TV classic arguments. With Lily, Fred, Grampa, Morticia and Uncle Fester gone to the great beyond, only Gomez (John Astin) is left to carry the flag. De Carlo parlayed the cult icon status into rent-paying roles in such horror dreck as American Gothic, Silent Scream, Nocturna (aptly playing Jugula) and Satan’s Dog.

Michelles was the only one to remember how apropos Lily’s were for a funeral and scores a solo hit to move into 4th place briefly because…

Rut Ro, Raggy

Or
Scooby Dead
(Props to Michelle)

Or
Scooby Dirt Nap
(More malevolence from Michelle)
Iwao Takamoto, the creator of cowardly (and anatomically incorrect) Great Dane Scooby Doo and the equally speech impaired Astro; brain dead, female driver stereotype reinforcer Penelope Pitstop, Hanna Barbera time-filler Atom Ant and asthmatic Muttley, among others. His is a cautionary tale. He learned his craft in a Japanese Internment Camp, so as we debate the morality of detention centers like Guantanamo Bay, consider that the seeds of Scrappy Doo were sown behind razor wire under the gaze of military sharpshooters.

Rut Ro, Raggy

Or
Scooby Dead
(Props to Michelle)

Or
Scooby Dirt Nap
(More malevolence from Michelle)
Iwao Takamoto, the creator of cowardly (and anatomically incorrect) Great Dane Scooby Doo and the equally speech impaired Astro; brain dead, female driver stereotype reinforcer Penelope Pitstop, Hanna Barbera time-filler Atom Ant and asthmatic Muttley, among others. His is a cautionary tale. He learned his craft in a Japanese Internment Camp, so as we debate the morality of detention centers like Guantanamo Bay, consider that the seeds of Scrappy Doo were sown behind razor wire under the gaze of military sharpshooters.

He’s Finished

(Kudos to our game show celebrants)
Magnus Magnusson, the only man named Magnus not on the World’s Strongest Man circuit, has died of cancer at the age of 77. Magnusson hosted the BBC quiz show Mastermind, a “one-off little undemanding programme for insomniac academics late at night" for 25 years, reaching a peak of 22 million viewers who had no other options, and coined the catchphrase: "I've started, so I'll finish."

Dying Burrito Brother

“Sneaky” Pete Kleinow, a steel guitar prodigy who rose to fame as one of the original members of the Flying Burrito Brothers, has died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 72. Prior to his stint as a Mexican entrée, he directed and performed the theme song for the original Gumby shorts.

Drop Kicker

University of South California kicker Mario Danelo was found dead at the bottom of a rocky cliff. There were signs of traumatic injury, although it’s unclear whether this was before or after he bounced down the cliff face. Police had no information related to motive, but the suspect list started with Mitch Cozad.*

* The back-up Northern Colorado University punter accused of stabbing the starter in a push for more playing time.

Much like his invention, he is now a dried up thing in a box

Momofuku Ando, inventor of the other salty thing college students slurp in dorm rooms, has died at the age of 96. For almost 50 years, destitute collegians have been preparing the noodles in chicken broth concoction that was originally intended to feed the starving post WW II Japanese population.

Autocratic Asphyxiation

(Stolen from The Daily Show)

Or
Happy Noose Year

Or
End of His Rope

Or
Swing and a Miss

Or
Rope-a-Dope

Or
King of Swing

Or
Public Noose-ance

Or
Say Hi to Hitler
(Stolen from the understated Philadelphia Daily News)
Iraq started a new New Year’s tradition with the dropping of the dictator, Saddam Hussein. Hussein finished his career at 2-2, with wins over Iran and Kuwait, but was 0-for-2 in non-regional contests with two losses to the United States. You can debate whether the U.S. is winning, but I think getting dragged out of a spider hole, paraded around in your underwear, the best courtroom sideshow since O.J. and rope burn in the jugular region are pretty clear indicators of not winning. Hussein’s gallows walk resulted from having ordered the deaths of 148 citizens in the town of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt. Other highlights include the aforementioned unprovoked attacks on Iraq and Kuwait, chemical weapons attacks on the Kurdish minority, delivering the chopped up body of a health minister that had criticized his conduct of the Iran-Iraq War to his wife and a thwarted assassination attempt on former President Bush. On the plus side, he was an enemy of Communism and Islamism, making him a good friend of the Reagan era White House, which supplied weapons later used against Bush-era troops in Gulf War I. He also made several contributions to several Detroit Catholic churches, earning him a key to he city in 1980.