This Bud’s on View

Or
Can’t See DeForest for DeTrees
TV Legend Larry “Bud” Melman, the file clerk turned cult icon, has died at 85 following a long illness. At 12:30 a.m. EST on Feb 1, 1982, NBC viewers were greeted by the balding gnomish Melman warning viewers about what they were about to behold in a parody of the beginning of Frankenstein. Moments later, David Letterman emerged from behind a Vegas-style chorus line. Although never a series regular, Larry Bud was the most lasting emblem of the glorious anarchy of the early days of Letterman. Melman carved out a niche with his screeching delivery, ill-fitting suits, horn-rimmed glasses and inability to read cue cards in dozens of appearances over the next 20 years, first as his nom de Peacock’s plume Larry “Bud” Melman, then his given name, Calvert DeForest, when NBC claimed the former as intellectual property. That was the only thing intellectual about the character as Melman stumbled about through hysterically inept impersonations of Elvis, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and Johnny Carson, most ending with him cutting Letterman off, calling him “Pinhead,” then storming off. Letterman updated and twisted the old Steve Allen man-in-the-street bits, sending Larry “Bud” down NBC hallways in a bear suit trying to get change for a $10, dispatching him to hand out hot towels at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, letting him represent Late Night in Lillehammer at the 1994 Winter Olympics and the Woodstock reunion where he introduced Nine Inch Nails, and having him lead a goodwill tour to Mexico and Guatemala that ended with Larry Bud looking into the camera and begging Dave to let him come home. Other highlights included a Mary Tyler Moore impersonation on a visit to Minneapolis and a duet of I Got You Babe with Sonny Bono.

A compendium of Larry Bud’s greatest moments, or at least what I could find on youtube last night, for your viewing pleasure:

Out of Commission

Bowie Kuhn, the man who got to kick both George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner out of baseball, has died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 80. Hank Aaron immediately announced he would not attend the memorial service. In 15 years as commissioner of major league baseball, Kuhn managed to avoid making any friends among players, overseeing 5 work stoppages even as the average major league salary went from $19,000 in 1969 to $330,ooo in 1984. He also had it in for the game’s greats, barring Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from the game for working at casinos while skipping the game in which Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record because he had to be in Cleveland. No one has ever had to be in Cleveland. He had his battles with owners as well. In addition to his problems with Steinbrenner and Turner, Charles Finley dubbed him the village idiot after Kuhn voided the sales of star players Joe Rudi, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers while Ray Kroc got fined for tampering, and en masse major league owners kept him out of the negotiations to end the 51-day work stoppage in the middle of the 1981 season. He didn’t do much for fans either, as it was his bright idea to schedule the first night baseball game in 1971, starting a tradition that keeps most casual fans from seeing the ends of Series games.

Kuhn also pissed off Tom by dying two years after he had de-listed him, costing him the solo hit.

What we have here is a failure to resuscitate

(Kudos to Greg)

Or
My heroes have always been dead guys
(Props to Craig)
Stuart Rosenberg, best remembered as the director of Cool Hand Luke, has died at the age of 79. Most of his best films capitalized on anti-authoritarian themes, most notably in Newman’s inmate who had a failure to communicate with Strother Martin, as well as The Laughing Policeman, Brubaker and The Pope of Greenwich Village. Other films included The Drowning Pool, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, his last film, and his most financially successful film, The Amityville Horror. Rosenberg also directed several episodes of The Twilight Zone, including the classic I Shot an Arrow Into the Air, where after a crash landing an astronaut kills two crewmates because he fears they don’t have enough food and water only to find out he has crashed in Arizona.

She Can Do Anything Deader Than You

Or
Dead, Cold and Blue
(Stolen from The Derby Dead Pool, where I am languishing in 106th)
Betty Hutton, star of classic musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, has died of complications of colon cancer at the age of 86. Most famously, Hutton was the bridge between Ethel Merman and Bernadette Peters in the role of Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, in which she sang “Anything you can do, I can do better” with Howard Keel, which can now be heard as Claire Danes and Patrick Wilson try to sell Gap pants. Other roles included Chuck Heston’s high-wire girlfriend in The Greatest Show on Earth. Her acting career interrupted bouts of poverty. As a child, she sang on street corners to support her alcoholic mother and in the 1970s was working as a cook and housekeeper in the rectory of a Roman Catholic church in Portsmouth, R.I. after she had become addicted to sleeping pills and alcohol and had lost what she estimated to be a $10 million fortune.

Sylvia Platypus Man

(Adulations for Don)
Or
Invert Jeni
(Laudatories for Joe)
Richard Jeni, the poor man’s Kevin Pollak, thanks you – you’ve been a great audience, but his time is up, as he shot himself in his West Hollywood apartment. He was 45. Jeni played to sold-out theaters, earning comedy specials on HBO and Showtime and eventually his own awful sitcom, Platypus Man, and was ranked the 57th best stand-up comic ever by Comedy Central.

Less Than a Feeling

(Props to Dawn)

Or
Once more with no feeling
(Kudos for Craig)

Or
Moribund feelin’
(Jon, rocking on)

Or
Croakin’
(Cap tip to Jon)

Or
Final Stage
(Another whoop whoop for Jon)
Brad Delp, lead singer for Boston, was found dead at his home at the age of 55. Delp’s vocals helped give Boston their distinctively derivative flavor with such hits as "More Than a Feeling" and "Let Me Take You Home Tonight." For those planning ahead, another member of Boston will announce a terminal condition in 5 or 6 years, but it will be 10 years before another member of the band dies.

Rounded Third

John Vukovich, the longest serving coach in Phillies history, has died of brain cancer at the age of 59. The Phillies flashed their unique insight by making Vukovich the 10th overall pick in the 1966 amateur draft, and he rewarded them with a .161 lifetimeaverage. Hard to believe this team has won only one world championship in 123 seasons. Vukovich was there for the world championship, earning a ring to go with one he earned as a member of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds.“Vook’s” glove kept in the majors and yielded his career highlight, preserving Rick Wise’s 1971 no-hitter with two great plays, including a line drive off the bat of Pete Rose for the game’s last out. After the 1981 season, Vook followed Dallas Green to Chicago to start his coaching career and in 1987 was named manager of the Chicago Cubs. Unfortunately a few hours later, the Tribune Company fired Green as GM and Vukovich lost his dream job. He came back to Philadelphia and served as a coach for 17 seasons under 6 managers and posted a 5-4 record as interim manager, the only Phils manager with a composite winning record from 1984 to 2000. Seriously, my team sucks. On a team whose fans haven’t loved many people who don’t wear furry green costumes or hit 58 homers,Vukovich became a fan favorite and received a standing ovation in his first game in the coach’s box after returning from cancer surgery in 2001. Vook later admitted that the surgery had left him susceptible to light and during day games, he was basically guessing when he sent runners from third base.

Are You Being Buried?

Or
He’s Free
John Inman, the buggering cheeky monkey from the BBC hit Are You Being Served?, has died of hepatitis A at the age of 71. Originally intended as a minor role, Inman camped Wilberforce Claybourne Humphries into a starring spot with the mincing, limp-wristed characterization, complete with the high-pitched catchphrase “I’m free.” Running for 13 seasons, the series at its peak attracted 20 million viewers a week and Inman was named comedy performer of the year in 1976.

The Casket of A Morti Gallo

(A collaboration with the first lady of the GHI)

Or
He’ll Sell No Wine Now That it Was His Time
Ernest Gallo, who with his brother Julio churned out millions of gallons of bad wine in giant jugs, has died at the age of 97, just weeks after the death of the younger brother the elder Gallos stiffed out of the family name. Ernest combined an Old World courtliness with a tenacious business acumen as the brothers turned $5900 and a book on winemaking into a grape empire. A few months after the murder-suicide of their parents in 1933, the boys started selling wine for 50 cents a gallon, half the going price at the time. The Gallos brought wine to the masses, and kept prices down by exploiting the masses according to Cesar Chavez, whose United Farm Workers union targeted the wineries in the 1960s. As of last year, the Gallo Empire was selling 75 million cases a year under 40 labels and Ernest was ranked 297th on the Forbes 400 list of billionaires.

2007 was an excellent vintage for Gallo, and 10 Pooligans score 2 pinots each, with Nancy taking second, Matt taking third, Michelle’s Take My Life Please moving into 5th, Joy jumps into 16th, while Warren’s List 1, My The Die is Cast, Mark’s Crafty and Possibly Undead Nonagenarians, Mike’s Math squad, Jeannie’s Team One and Michelle dogpile at 30th.

The Rewritten Leaderboard
1st Mark - Beltway Boneyard IV: Foreign Exchange
3 hits, 14.395604398 points
2nd Nancy
3 hits, 13.53846154 points
3rd Matt
3 hits, 10.20512821 points
4th Monty - The U.N. Dead
2 hits, 30 points
5th Michelle - Take My Life, Please
2 hits, 22 points

The Eagleton Has Been Planted

Or
Electroshock and Awww
Thomas Eagleton, one of the world’s most famous electroshock recipients has died at the age of 77. While many think you’d have to be crazy to want to be vice president, after it was revealed he had been institutionalized for mental illness three times and had received electroshock therapy, Eagleton withdrew as the Democratic nominee for vice president in 1972 to spare taxpayers the cost of fitting Blair House with a rubber room. Constitutional scholars also were unclear on how Eagleton would place his hand on a Bible to take the oath of office if he were wearing a strait jacket. Eagleton was a first-term senator from Missouri when presidential candidate George McGovern tapped him as his running mate. When news of his crazy days came to light, Eagleton was forced to resign after 18 days as a candidate, and McGovern and replacement VP nom Sargent Shriver got their sane brains beaten in by Richard Nixon. Missouri was more supportive of its native loon and re-elected him to the Senate twice more, where he took a leading role in stopping the US bombing of Cambodia in 1973 and sponsored the War Powers Act which sought to limit Nixon’s Imperial Presidency before going bipolar and voting against the watered down final bill.

My Darling Clem Labine

Clem Labine, winner of two of the biggest shutouts in Brooklyn Dodger history, both of which were squandered in the “wait ‘til next year Dodger mystique,” has died following brain surgery at the age of 80. Labine threw a shutout in game 2 of the 1951 NL playoff before the Giants won the pennant, the Giants won the pennant, the Giants won the pennant on Bobby Thomson’s Shot Heard ‘Round the World. The day after Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history to get the Yankees within a game of the 1956 world championship, Labine gave the Dodgers life with a 10-inning, 1-0 shutout. Then they lost game 7. Again. Labine was also there for the lone championship in Flatbush, winning 10 and saving 11 in relief, then winning 1 game and saving another in the 1955 World Series.