No one at the Helm

Turns out that death, like taxes, aren’t just for the little people
(With an assist from the First Lady of the Dead Pool)

Or
Checked Out
Leona Helmsley, the New York hotelier who proved that ugly isn’t only skin deep, has died at the age of 87. With her husband, Helmsley was one of the leading real estate investors in the city, with an empire worth $5 billion. Leona managed the hotels, extolling their luxury in a series of ads. Turns out, its easy to run an empire when you steal from investors and ignore legal liabilities. When asked about her tax bill, Leona allegedly said, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” She was sentenced to 4 years in jail and more than $7 million in fines for tax evasion. She was also known as the Queen of Mean for her treatment of her staff, casually firing employees while getting fitted for a dress and after the death of her only son, evicting his widow and her grandchildren and bankrupting them in the ensuing legal proceedings.

Off Track
And now a public service announcement. If someone named Eddie Griffin asks to borrow your car or give you a lift, say no. In fact, if you’re aware of anyone named Eddie Griffin driving anywhere in your general vicinity, stay inside, away from any doors or road-facing walls. Last year, while promoting his blink and you’ll miss it movie Redline, comedian Eddie Griffin managed to wreck a $1 million Enzo Ferrari. Last week, former Seton Hall star Eddie Griffin tried recreating the opening credits of The Fall Guy, colliding with a freight train in his SUV. Griffin had played in the NBA with the Houston Rockets, New Jersey Nets and Minnesota Timberwolves, generally disappointing fans when he wasn’t smacking around his girlfriend, missing team flights and spending time at the Betty Ford Center.

One Kulimoetoke Over the Line

Tomasi Kulimoetoke II, king of a Pacific island smaller than Boston, has died at the age of 91. Actually he died May 7, but my subscription to Uvea Mo Fotuna must have lapsed, so I’m a bit tardy, but better late than never. Kulimoetoke was the 50th King of Uvea, part of the French overseas territory of Wallis and Futuna. The latter-day Urulu* had been a subsistence farmer and pig breeder when he was elected president, and quickly realized the key to his island’s economic success lay not in their lone export – trochas, a seashell used for making buttons – but in sucking off the French welfare teat. He almost his throne when he caused a hula-skirted Butter Battle between supporters and detractors when he sheltered his grandson, who’d killed a pedestrian in a drunk driving accident, in the royal palace. Among his more significant rulings as sovereign of 14,000 extras from Joe vs. the Volcano were that islanders had to dismount their bikes when riding past the palace and shutting down the island newspaper for an unflattering editorial. Uvea’s is not a heriditary monarchy, so feel free to toss your hat in the successionary ring.

Mark’s latest crowning achievement gives his Royally Old squad another 20 points and moves it into 25th place.

* Urulu was the conniving chief of a tribe on an island near Taratupa on McHale’s Navy. I’m old.

Scooted

In news that adds extra shine to even a Yankee blowout loss, Phil Rizzuto, until Tuesday the oldest and least deserving living Hall of Famer, died at the age of 89 of pneumonia. Nicknamed the Scooter for his speed on the bases and in the field, Rizzuto was a slap-hitting, slick fielding shortstop for the great New York Yankee teams of the 1940s and 1950s, thus inflating his worth far beyond how he’d be regarded had he played in any other city. His career was almost over before he started, as in one tryout, Casey Stengel dismissed the 5-4, 150 pounder telling him to “Go get a shoeshine box.” Rizzuto got his revenge years later by beating the hell out of Stengel with two boyhood friends, throwing him in a trunk and dumping his body… wait, sorry, wrong shoebox story. He played 13 full seasons in the majors, made the All-Star Game just 5 times, and only earned two starts as the best shortstop in his league. He won the 1950 American League MVP in part for scoring 125 runs for a team that scored almost 6 a game. Even the Yankees, a team that retires numbers like they’re infinite, didn’t see fit to hang up his number 10 until 1985, 29 years after he played his last game. He was named to the Hall of Fame in 1994, after being passed over for 15 years by the baseball writers and another 11 by the Veterans Committee before pity settled in. Rizzuto also developed a reputation as a quirky broadcaster, known for bellowing Holy Cow! at the drop of a hat, two-out innings, when his rambling stories took precedence over game action and he neglected to inform viewers that a batter had grounded out to short and innings suddenly ended, and for being on the bridge to Jersey before the 7th inning was over. An unapologetic Yankee rooter in the booth, in 1978 Rizzuto wrapped a broadcast by announcing that Pope Paul VI had died, concluding, “Well, that kind of puts the damper on even a Yankee win.” Rizzuto worked his way into pop culture with the play-by-play section of Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights,” and as the voice of the Money Store, a gig he lost when someone noticed you could see the reflection of the cue cards in Rizzuto’s glasses.

Three of us expected Rizzuto to be petting the holy cows and score 6.66666667 points a piece: James moves into 8th with my The Family Plot Thickens close behind in 9th and Joe’s Drop Dead, Gorgeous climbs into 30th.

And yay to us, with the hit, we set a new record with 38 hits and set a new slugging percentage record (total hits divided by total selections) at 34%.

If it Ain’t Brooke, Don’t Bury It

Or
Going for Brooke

Or
Brooke Stops Babbling
(Props to Michelle)
Brooke Astor, who went from Bailey, Banks and Biddle to smelly, rank and dog piddle, has died (finally) at the age of 105. One of the last holdovers of the old moneyed families of New York, the society matron spent the last 50 years giving away the fortune of third husband Vincent Astor, heir to the fur and real estate fortune of Titanic victim John Jacob Astor. Rather than hoard her riches, she doted both on her pet art projects, as well as the less fortunate of the Big Apple, which would be pretty much anyone stuck living in that cesspool. She truly was a woman of the people, visiting many of the tenements the Astor Foundation supported in furs while dripping with jewelry. Her advancing years had taken her from the limelight until last year, when her grandson charged his father with pillaging the family fortune while Brooke slept in a tattered nightgown as the first millionaire to sleep on a urine-soaked couch since Howard Hughes. In keeping with one of her favorite sayings, “Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around,” Astor is to be cremated so she, too, can be spread around.

Fourteen Pooligans cash in on Astor, with Greg’s Team Quincy taking 2nd, Kirsti’s You’ve Got a Date with an Angel (of Death) moves into 7th, Holdout deadbeat Monty’s D.C. Dead assumes 9th, Mike’s Math Squad climbs into 10th, Jen slides into 11th, Shawn’s Team One – Oldest – leaps into 17th, doubling down on this one, Kirsti’s You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby (circa Nineteen Aught Two) is in 19th, Michelle’s Quick and the Dead is in 21st, my They Are Become Death is in 22nd, Michelle Dalton takes 23rd, Paul’s Pushing Up Daisies rallies to 24th, Steve is proud possessor of 29th, Mark’s Crafty – and Possibly Undead – Nonagenerians are in 38th and Dawn’s Chris Cardinal Rule squad holds fast at 39th.

Dubious decision-making by Jenni and Joe, both of home dropped the doddering doyenne after last year, because the second 104 years are cake.

With the hit we tied last year’s record with 37 dead with 11 weeks to go. By appearing on 14 lists this year, Astor ties Lady Bird Johnson as the 3rd most prolific hit in GHI history, trailing only Ronald Reagan (18) and Pope John Paul II (16).

Out of Jeopardy

Or
Oooooo No
Merv Griffin, best remembered as the Elevator Killer, for the hit “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,” and for providing Cosmo Kramer’s apartment a much needed redecoration, has died of prostate cancer at the age of 82. He started as a night club crooner before becoming a fill-in host for Jack Paar, which led to his own daytime show, coincidentally debuting the same day Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show. Carson outlasted him by only 29 years. Starting his own production company, Griffin developed a quiz show, which had been almost non-existent since the scandal surrounding 21. His twist: give everyone the answers and let the contestants provide the questions. Jeopardy lasted 11 years, took a decade off, and was revived in the 1980s. For the other end of the intellectual spectrum Griffin gave us Wheel. Of. Fortune, the longest-running game show in syndication, which proved that turning illuminated boxes could be a career. Griffin returned to the talk show circuit, reprising The Merv Griffin Show in syndication as a forum for the famous and the creepy, introducing incest and transsexuals to the daytime audience. Through it all, Griffin was an ingenius businessman, with a real estate, hotel, casino, broadcasting, horse-breeding and investment empire that ultimately made him a billionaire. Hell, the 4-note Final Jeopardy theme netted him more than $70 million in royalties. The vast fortune came in handy for legal fees when he was accused of playing grab-ass with “Dance Fever” host Denny Terrio and a male employee who filed a $200 million palimony lawsuit.

You Never Hear the Metastasis

James T. "Jimmy" Callahan, best known for playing the cranky grandfather on "Charles in Charge," has died of esophageal cancer at the age of 76. Other roles included a deranged military man trying to put zombies to good use in Return of the Living Dead III and Hawkeye’s boyhood friend, a war correspondent who is writing a book about war called “You Never Hear the Bullet” when he is killed in an ambush by a bullet that he did, in fact, hear.

No Tomorrow

(An epitaphany shared, more or less, with Shawn)

Or
The Late Late Host
Hoist a colortini in honor of Tom Snyder, the man who broke up KISS, as he has died of leukemia at the age of 71. The chain-smoking former Philadelphia anchorman became a punchline for his chortling laugh and complete lack of hipness in interviewing such disparate guests as Sterling Hayden and Johnny Rotten. On every show, there was a distinct impression that the guests didn’t want to be there. Hayden refused to talk about his Hollywood career, instead discussing toy trains. Rotten barely understood that he was there to shill his own band, preferring to angrily debate semantics and call anyone who enjoyed his music senile animals. The Plasmatics had such little interest in their performance they blew up a television, disrupting a live news broadcast two stories above Snyder’s studio. Alfred Hitchcock blathered on about his fear of traffic tickets. KISS had to get liquored up before appearing, with Ace Frehley capturing a space bear and proclaiming himself a plumber in the band’s last public appearance before breaking up. Perhaps that was because Snyder always seemed to enjoy his conversations with off-stage help more than his guests. Other lowlights included a momentary freakout by an otherwise lucid Charles Manson, The Clash’s incoherence while playing with a stuffed bear (the question being why did Tom always seem to have stuffed bears lying around) and putting stickers on Snyder’s jacket and U2’s first US appearance, in which Snyder referred to them as being from England. Snyder was dumped in 1981 in favor of up and comer David Letterman, but Dave eventually found him work as host of The Late Late Show.









Mike was the only Pooligan to expect the end of this colorcast, and takes 20 points to put his Trash squad in 19th.

Check Mate

Or
Sista skriket
(aka The Last Gasp)
The unremitting torment of Ingmar Bergman’s life has come to an end after 89 unbearable years. Berman did more than any other man to reinforce the image of Scandanavia as a bleak and depressing land of perpetual sorrow. Director of more than 50 films, seemingly every one of them about loss and lonelines, each more bleak, boring, inscrutable, soul-sucking and depressing than the last, he was a master of the oeuvre of films to kill yourself by. He was widely regarded as a visionary and influential filmmaker, because if you don’t understand it and its European, it must be genius. He was nominated for 9 Oscars, winning 3, and entertaining about 14 people in a career spanning 40 years.

SCTV’s take on The Master



And another parody
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3803584387889303730

Three Pooligans left their quarters on the chessboard and Dawn’s Go for the Light, It’s Right There, Damn It moves into 3rd while Steve @ the Movies and Greg’s Team Matlock join the dogpile in 40th. Paul and Jenni have a real reason to be depressed, removing the octogenerian auteur after ’05 and ’06, respectively. With this hit we posted our 2nd best year ever with 33 hits and still have 3 months to go. Bergman is the 3rd member of the Dirty Baker’s Dozen that had been selected in each of the GHI’s first 6 years to die this year (Lady Bird Johnson, Augusto Pinochet). But wait, there was to be still more…

West Ghost Offense

Or
Not so Quick Out
(An epitaphany shared with Shawn)
Bill Walsh, NFL Hall of Famer and inventor of the West Coast Offense, has died of leukemia at the age of 75. After two years at Stanford, Walsh took over a 49er franchise that had won two playoff games in the previous 29 years and just 2 games the previous season. Three years later with Joe Montana perfecting the short pattern and Jerry Rice adding 80 yards to 5-yard dump-offs, the 49ers were Super Bowl Champions. A three-point loss to the Steelers was the only thing that kept the 49ers from a perfect 1984 season en route to another title in Super Bowl XIX. A thrilling victory in Super Bowl XXIII over the Cincinnati Bengals closed out Walsh’s pro career and cemented San Francisco as the team of the ‘80s. Walsh’s lasting legacy is his coaching progeny – 6 of his assistants became head coaches, and from their coaching staffs came another 23 disciples of the West Coast offense.

Shawn’s draft choice yields 20 points and vaults his Team One - Old into 4th place. This marked the 4th 2-hit day in GHI history and was the fastest we’ve ever notched 3 hits. But there was still to be more as…

La Not

Or
Blown Up
Love depressing, experimental theater with lots of overly stylized pointless characters and meandering plots that lack cohesion and clarity, but prefer it in one of the Romance languages? Then Michaelangelo Antonioni, who died Monday at the age of 94, was the director for you. His most famous film and only commercial success was “Blowup,” about a photographer who accidentally discovers evidence of a murder. His arthouse rep is best typified by his trilogy exploring modern man’s inability to connect on an emotional level: “L’Avventura” (1960), “La Notte” (1961) and “L’Eclisse” (1962). The first installment was so dense most of the audience walked out on its premiere at Cannes. Those that stayed booed like it was a Pauly Shore marathon, but the next year, in an apparent practical joke that no one got, the British film journal Sight and Sound declared it the second greatest film ever made. Even Ingmar Bergman said that he didn’t understand the regard for Antonioni and found his films boring, and if there was ever someone who knew from boring movies…



Three Pooligans scored with this spicy meatball, with Monty’s The U.N. Dead taking 3rd, Steve @ the Movies moving into 22nd, and Jeannie Magner giving up the basement for 27th.

This was the first 3 hit day in GHI history, the 2-day total was the fastest we’ve ever notched 4 hits and makes July 2007 the 2nd best month in GHI history. Steve @ the Movies also became only the 2nd Pooligan to record 2 hits on one day, matching Mark’s March 27, 2002 bonanza.

At the three-quarter pole, the leaderboard:
1st Mark Coen - Beltway Boneyard IV: Foreign Exchange 5 hits, 35.82417583 points
2nd Nancy 5 hits, 17.46703297 points
3rd Monty – the U.N. Dead 4 hits, 39.16666667 points
4th Dawn - Go for the light, it's right there damn it 4 hits, 38.20512821 points
5th Shawn - Team One – Old 4 hits, 31.74603173 points

And at the three-quarter pole, take a look at column H on the attached spreadsheet – if there is no X there, or if your name is Monty, you’re a deadbeat and should be rapidly figuring out how to send me funds.

They Don’t Makem Like That Anymore

Or
Faith and Be Gone Ah
Irish eyes are crying as the legendary Tommy Makem, the Bard of Armagh, the Godfather of Irish music, has died of lung cancer at the age of 74. Makem was renowned as a tireless champion for carrying the music, culture and history of Ireland around the world, despite the fact that he’d lived in New Hampshire for the last 52 years. Best remembered for his partner ship with the Clancy brothers – Paddy, Tom and Liam, of Carrick-on-Suir, Tipperary, Makem endeavored to show that Ireland was an actual place and not some Tolkein-ian folk legend, despite the existence of guys named Paddy Clancy from towns called Carrick-on-Suir. Makem also worked to dismiss the stereotypes of the Irish as drunk hooligans with such albums as "The Rising of the Moon: Irish Songs of Rebellion" and "Come Fill Your Glass With Us: Irish Songs of Drinking and Blackguarding."

Tom Magner’s Knock, Knock, Knocking shows there is no shamrock, only points, and takes 17th with the solo hit.