Game, Set, Match

(Props to Don)
Brett Somers could not bear life without common law wife Charles Nelson Reilly and succumbed to a broken heart at the age of 83. Colon and stomach cancer didn’t help. Richard Dawson better get a physical. Somers parlayed a bunch of Broadway flops and TV cameos into a permanent spot top center on The Match Game as the raspy foil to Reilly’s camp, with the two providing most of the show’s best moments with double and single entendres. When Somers wasn’t trying to guess what Dumb Donald was doing, she was seducing Adama on Battlestar Galactica as Siress Beloby, was assistant to Monte Markham’s New Perry Mason, and played Oscar Madison’s ex-wife on The Odd Couple, a role she was uniquely suited for, having separated from Jack Klugman in 1974, although the two never consummated the separation with a divorce.

Don was the only Pooligan to fill in the correct blank and notches his 3rd hit in 4 years to take 28th.

With 2 and a half months to go, there are 7 entries within 1 hit, albeit it has to be the right one, from the lead, and 12 more are within 2.

A Wrinkle in Wine

Wrinkled, Out of Time
Madeleine L'Engle, the oft-rejected C.S. Lewis wannabe and plagiarist, has died at the age of 88. Her best known work, A Wrinkle in Time, mixes science fiction, theological claptrap and childhood whimsy, and was rejected by 26 publishers before L’Engle found one desperate enough to start the presses. Opening with the line “It was a dark and stormy night…” lifted from the notorious Edward Bulward-Lytton novel Paul Clifford, the book tells the story of Meg Murray, who, with her psychic baby brother, uses time travel, ESP and love to rescue her father the scientist from a planet controlled by the Dark Thing, in a curious interpretation of Einstein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum theory. On the plus side, A Wrinkle in Time has been one of the most banned books in the United States, with conservative religious reactionaries arguing the book depicted God inaccurately and encouraged an unholy belief in myth and fantasy. Wrinkle won the 1963 Newbery Medal and led to the sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters. A later series of books dealt with the nearly perfect Austin family with a daughter that communicates telepathically with dolphins. But don’t call her a children’s author.

Three Pooligans anticipated overcast skies in Ms. L’Engle’s heart: Michelle Dalton moves into 11th, Dawn’s Chris’ Cardinal Rule climbs into 22nd and my Dead Men Walking saunter into 29th. Time wasn’t on Mark’s side as he dropped Maddy after the 2005 GHI.

Falcon Crest Fallen

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Here Comes the Doom

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Simple Wyman Says Goodbye Man
Jane Wyman, who set the hollywood precedent for easy Oscar nominations for playing crips has died at the age of 93. Between 1947 and 1955, Wyman scored 4 Oscar nods in differently abled roles, as a timid woman with a limp in The Glass Menagerie, a blind widow in Magnificent Obsession, an inbred deer-killing mother in The Yearling, and an emotionally stunted woman in The Blue Veil, winning as a deaf rape victim in 1948’s Johnny Belinda. The resulting fame from that role helped complete the break with her husband, a rather limited contract actor with Warner Brothers, Ronald Reagan. She later found a second life as Angela Chase, tyrannical head of a Tuscany Valley vineyard on the Dallas with grapes soap Falcon Crest who didn’t realize that her archnemesis was the son she thought had been stillborn. Who knew that so many plane crashes, murders, drownings, explosions and sex went into making a good Chardonnay?She ended up wrecking the show, as complications from diabetes limited her availability and Angela spent most of the 1989-1990 season in a coma as Wyman recovered and the show faltered. Her last role was as Elizabeth Quinn, Medicine Woman Mother.

Three of us knew 2007 would be a good vintage for Wyman, and Michelle’s the Quick and the Dead takes 10th, my Dead Men Walking continue marching into 16th to piss me off again about my team composition and Mark’s Angels with Wrinkled Faces III: You’ll Never Draw Breath in this Town Again loses a charter member of the AWF team and pulls into 25th. Michelle Dalton gave up on Janey after the ’05 GHI, which would have been her 6th hit of the year and would have given her the lead. So sad.

If you’re like me, and I know I am, you’re starting to plan your 2007-08 squad(s). Recent events may have you thinking about a certain billionaire pilot, so here’s an explanation of the D. B. Cooper Rule: Confirmation of expiration must take place within the timeframe of the GHI. If I had selected Steve Fossett instead of that big faker Steven Hawking, I'd only collect the hit and points if his body was found or if he were to be declared legally dead by the first week of December. If a DNA test of coyote scat recovered in January reveals traces of Mr. Fossett, I would be SOL, though admittedly less so than he is. The corollary: if I select Steve Fossett in the '07-08 GHI and his well-bleached bones are found in February, again, its no match and the board goes back. The only way Steve Fossett can do anyone in the GHI any good at this point is if he is selected in the '07-'08 GHI and it is determined that he Moses-ed his way around the desert until Dec. 1 before expiring or if he emerges from the desert like Emilio Estevez in Young Guns II and re-enters society.

L'uomo no e mobile

Rose bouquets for Mark

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Pavarotting
An epitaphany shared with Don

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The Fat Man Has Sung
Another epitaphany shared by Monty, Don and Me

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No, Giorgio

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Nessun Dorma? Pavarotti Dorma, That's For Sure.
Molto bene a Monty

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Down for the Tenor Count
La Fama Per Don
Luciano Pavarotti, the tax dodging, wife dumping King of the High Cs, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 71. Clutching a handkerchief in his sweaty paws, Pavarotti earned a reputation as one of the world’s great operatic stars from the 1960s through the 1980s, at one point nailing 9 straight high Cs in a performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera. Although his popularity with audiences ballooned faster than his weight, his stature took a hit with high-brow critics who decreed that anything popular must suck when he toured with Placido Domingo and The Other Guy as the Three Tenors starting with the 1990 World Cup. He holds the Guinness World Record for most standing ovations with 165, and performed before audiences at outdoor concerts in excess of 500,000. He is the only opera star ever to perform on Saturday Night Live, not counting Opera Man. Less well received was his venture into romantic comedy, in Yes, Giorgio as nobody seemed to accept a love affair with the Stay Puft Opera Singer and Pavarotti earned Razzie nominations as Worst Actor and Worst New Star. In later years, Pavarotti showed a greater interest in the all you can eat bar at Sizzler than in learning his roles, or even in showing up for performances, leading to a lifetime ban from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and some audience members booing a performance at La Scala in Milan.