Packed like Lemmings into Shiny Metal Boxes/Contestants in a Suicidal Race

The Best and the Deadest
David Halberstam was killed while drag racing in Menlo Park, CA at the age of 73. The Pulitzer Prize winner’s later years were of great concern with friends and family as his thrill-seeking became more and more dangerous. “I was in Vietnam. I talked to DiMaggio. How can I spend my days at a typewriter?” Halberstam brought home the failures of the military in Vietnam as a reporter for The New York Times, upsetting Army officials and the White House with his stark, but accurate, depictions of life at the front of a war slowly slipping away and earning him a share of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize. He eventually summed up these failures in The Best and the Brightest, and later wrote about the Korean War - The Coldest Winter - and U.S. military policy in the 1990s - War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals. In addition to his high-minded books, Halberstam was also a hell of a sportswriter, writing about basketball in The Breaks of the Game, the lasting bond between Red Sox teammates Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky and Bobby Doerr in The Teammates, the epic 1949 battle between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees for the American League pennant before everyone was sick of those matchups in The Summer of '49 and he was killed while on his way to interview Y.A. Tittle for a book on the 1958 NFL Championship Game, often called the greatest football game ever played. Halberstam's experiences in Vietnam and his untimely demise reminds one of the utopian vision of young Akio in the Anglicized version of the Akira Kurosawa classic Gamera vs. Guiron: "I looked in my telescope every day, and I thought there'd be a perfect planet, without work, and wars, and traffic accidents... "

Rated D for Dead
Jack Valenti, who aided in Lyndon Johnson's White House coup, became one of those Hollywood pretty boys like Mel Gibson who can have any woman they want, then tried to make America feel guilty for stealing brie and caviar out of the mouths of soulless movie executives, has died of complications of a stroke at the age of 85. After John Kennedy's assassination, Valenti, a Texas-based political consultant, became the first new hire of the Johnson administration, living at the White House for several months. In 1966, he moved to LA to become president of the Motion Picture Association of America, where he established today's arbitrary movie rating system where studios can show films where a teenager gets disemboweled by a garden rake but an independent movie with a bare set of boobs can sit in review interminably. He also railed against VHS/Betamax and digital file sharing, proclaiming they would be the death of the motion picture industry, telling Congress: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone."

He’ll be a Graveyard Smash
Bobby "Boris" Pickett, creator of the greatest Halloween song ever, has died of leukemia at the age of 69. With Pickett delivering a spot-on Boris Karloff impersonation, "Monster Mash" hit #1 in 1962, then returned to the top of the charts in August 1970 and again in May 1973. The fact that an 8 and then 11 year-old Halloween novelty song topped the charts in spring and summer pretty much speaks to how bereft of musical quality the '70s were. Pickett recognized his one-hitness, jokingly offering to "play a medley of my hit." He performed at Halloween concerts for years, including a 1973 gig where his bus broke down in Frankenstein, Missouri.

There's Always Room for Cello
Mstislav Rostropovich, master cellist turned political dissident, has died of intestinal cancer at the age of 80. Taking up after his father and grandfather, Rostropovich began playing the cello at 7 was performing in public at 15 and by 24 was being used by the Soviet Union as a public relations pawn in international conceBut Rostropovich chafed under Soviet repression and became a national embarrassment with his calls for free speech, art without borders and democratic freedoms. He hid Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his home when the Soviets began pressuring the dissident author and wrote an open letter to the Soviet media protesting the official condemnations when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He left the country in 1974 and his citizenship was revoked in 1978. As Communism collapsed, he came to perform Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall and his Soviet citizenship was restored the next year. While ostracized by his home country, he became musical director and conductor of the U.S. National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.

Going Off Half Hancocked
Josh Hancock, a member of the 2006 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals bullpen, was killed in a car accident at the age of 29. Hancock drove his SUV into the back of a flatbed tow truck and was killed instantly, so I'm guessing it'll be a closed casket. Hancock, a former Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillie and Cincinnati Red, is the second active Cardinal pitcher to die in midseason in the last 5 years, following Darryl Kile's heart attack in 2002 and is the second former Phillie pitcher to die vehicularly in the last 6 months. Hancock was driving at or near the speed limit, and there was no evidence of alcohol, he simply drove into the truck. As Don noted previously, proving that it is location, not speed, that matters most. On the plus side, the Cardinals now have a built-in excuse when they don't repeat as champions.

Stolichnaya Con Dios

Or
Sobering News
(Kudos to Tom)

Or
We Will Bury Him
(More Props to Tom)

Or
Boris Badenov

Or
Got His Pinko-slip
Boris Yeltsin, the second nesting doll in Russia’s transition from Communist oppression to democratically elected oppression, has died of vodka-soaked heart failure at the age of 76. If Mikhail Gorbachev sipped from the snifter of democracy with his proposed reforms, Yeltsin did a keg stand, shutting down the Communist party, seizing its assets and then ceding power to the “independent” states. Yeltsin approached reforms like a drunken yak, eschewing measured reforms for a wide-open approach that led to uncontrolled prices that impoverished millions. Luckily, the already lagging state health care suffered dramatically and in a population purge that would have made Stalin proud more than 2 million Russians died, helping to eliminate those beneath the poverty line. The image of Yeltsin as the crusading reformer quickly was replaced with that of a drunken, ailing crank prone to rambling, incoherent public statements as he watched helplessly while the newly formed private sector walked away with everything from real estate to oil rights to nuclear weapons. In a bit of irony, he brutally put down several Communist coup attempts and tried to crush a rebellion in Chechnya, eventually creating a new Constitution that gave the president wide and virtually unassailable powers, which his chosen successor Vladimir Putin has used to great advantage. When he stunned the world by resigning in 1999, his approval rating was down to about 2%.

Two Pooligans saw this commie-ing and take 10 points each. Paul’s Bunch of Stiffs scores its second hit in a week to pull into a tie at 4th, while Tom’s Addition by Subtraction benefits from his 3 years of patience to move into 14th. Less patient: Monty, who dropped him two years ago, his 4th premature evacuation of the year.

Kurt Nap and Dirt Naps

From the Cat’s Cradle to the Grave
(Kudos to Don)

Or
Gut Shot
(Further props to Don)

Or
The Final Kurtain
(Stolen from the Derby Dead Pool, where I continue the lulling phase in 110th place)

Or
So It Goes
Kurt Vonnegut, ghostwriter for Krusty the Clown and Thornton Melon, who clearly did not know anything about the novels of Kurt Vonnegut and cost Melon a chance to graduate summa cum laude, has become unstuck in time following brain injuries suffered after a fall at his apartment in Manhattan at the age of 84. One of the foremost literary satirists since Mark Twain, Vonnegut wrote 14 darkly comic novels, most notably Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse-Five, a semiautobiographical work referencing his time as a POW during the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Vonnegut often used science fiction as a means to explore themes such as authority, militarism, man's place in the universe and sex.

One Pooligan celebrates with the Breakfast of Champions, or at least the Breakfast of 18th Place, as Don Nee, the Russell Branyan of the Dead Pool with his go big or go home approach scores his second hit in 4 years. Dawn and Monty both elected to remove the suicidal chain-smoking octogenarian from their lists prematurely, the third missed hit for Monty.

Dirt Nappy Ho
(More merits for Don, finding a silver lining in the unfortunateness of the last couple weeks)

Or
Leid to Rest
Don Ho, best known for his 1997 cover of Shock the Monkey, has died of heart failure, despite the finest health care Thailand has to offer, at the age of 76. In the 1960s, he introduced Hawaiian music to mainlanders curious about this new state, although there was later backlash from native Hawaiians for his slick commercial approach. He created a niche for himself as the Wayne Newton of the islands, with no trip to Waikiki being complete without a visit to his nightclub for his laidback, half-drunk slurred charm and all the flower-shirted schmaltz you could stand, including opening and closing every show with his signature tune: Tiny Bubbles. At the peak of his popularity he also showed up everywhere from a building Batman and Robin were climbing to cameos when Jeannie and Major Nelson, the Bradys, Charlie's Angels or Sanford and Son went on vacation as a human prop to show - no, really, we're in Hawaii.

With the solo hit, Dawn Nee's "Go for the light, it's right there, damn it" is poised to take over first place for the first time since 2-2-06. The new leaderboard:

1st Dawn Nee - Go for the light, it's right there damn it 3 hits, 31.53846154 points
2nd Mark Coen - Beltway Boneyard IV: Foreign Exchange 3 hits, 14.395604398 points
3rd Nancy Van Brundt 3 hits, 13.53846154 points
4th Matt Harper-Nixon 3 hits, 10.20512821 points
5th W. Scott Monty - The U.N. Dead 2 hits, 30 points



Hart Stoppage
Johnny Hart, cartoon mastermind behind the bossy chick, the buxom chick, the peg-legged caveman, the clumsy guy with glasses, the grunting hairball and those undistinguishable characters from the comic strip B.C. died of a stroke at his storyboard at the age of 76. Somehow, Hart's poorly drawn ants, dinosaurs and cavemen managed to offend many, such as an Easter Sunday strip that depicted a menorah transforming into a cross, which some took to show that Christianity superseded Judaism, many papers refused to print some religious-themed strips, and a certain Lutheran from Wisconsin who doesn't believe in dinosaurs because they aren't specifically mentioned in the Bible. Hart also employed his weak artist skills to The Wizard of Id, a co-creation detailing the inept leader of a poorly run country.

Boxed
Roscoe Lee Browne, a character actor known for his regal bearing, deep voice and resemblance to Ludwig Von Drake, has died at the age of 81. The Woodbury, NJ native spent most of his career was spent on the stage, but he did make some notable cameo appearances on television, most notably Saunders, Benson's replacement on Soap. Other roles included Mr. Moore's predecessor as head of the IHP class on Head of the Class, an Emmy-winning spot as Cliff and Clair Huxtable's professors at Hillman College, an Emmy-nominated spot as an escaped convict on Barney Miller, Box on Logan's Run, Hilton's brother on Cosby and Rosemont, leader of the evil underworld group The Thirteen that was bent on destroying the world economy on Falcon Crest. Browne also lent his voice to Epic Movie, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties and Babe.

Licensed to Croak
(Accolades for Jon)
Barry Nelson, the first man to play Jimmy Bond on the screen, has died at the age of 86. He spent more than half a century on stage, starring in many Broadway comedies of the 1950s and 1960s, such as The Moon is Blue, Cactus Flower and Seascape and winning a Tony nomination for Best Actor in The Act. In an Americanized version of Casino Royale in 1954, he played Jimmy Bond, 8 years before Sean Connery in Dr. No. He was the manager of the world's worst hotel in The Shining - no guests, just ghosts. And in a cruel irony for Craig, he played Col. Paul Tibbetts, Jr. in The Beginning or the End. He fulfilled two generations' worth of rights of passage for inclusion in a GHI write-up - starring in The Twilight Zone classic Stopover in a Sleepy Town, where he and his wife get drunk at party and try to make their way home, only to discover the town they have ended up in was all set dressing for a giant little girl, and playing Arthur Elrod, Sue Ellen's attorney in one of the many custody battles with J.R. Ewing over John Ross on Dallas.

Death, Here is Thy Stingley
Darryl Stingley, who served 30 years as a living symbol of what can happen when you mix testosterone and over-developed pituitary cases in a violent little Sunday afternoon ritual, has died at the age of 55 of complications related to his paralysis. Stingley was a 26-year-old wide receiver for the New England Patriots playing in an exhibition game against the Oakland Raiders when Jack "The Assassin" Tatum didn't let the fact that a pass intended for Stingley was
completely uncatchable deter him from lowering his shoulder and forearm into the unprotected receiver. Stingley was left a quadriplegic and spent his life working with disabled children, while Tatum's reputation as a dirty player seeking to injure opponents was cemented. They never discussed the incident; the only time Tatum attempted to make contact just happened to coincide with the publication of his autobiography.