Hyde and Go Reek

Henry Hyde, Republican hypocrite and Ann B. Davis lookalike, has died of complications from open-heart surgery at the age of 83. The former Illinois Congressman spearheaded the campaign to impeach President Clinton for perjury after he lied about the Billion Dollar BJ. During these proceedings, it was revealed that Hyde himself had a 4-year affair with a married woman in the late 1960s. Although he was 41 and married when that affair occurred, he chalked it up to a youthful indiscretion. As a Republican, he preached fiscal responsibility, but was the only member of Congress sued for gross negligence in the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s after an S&L where he had served as a board member was closed for creative bookkeeping and its establishment of an offshore bank in the Cayman Islands. For such devoted service to the country, he received the Presidential Medal of Screwed Up Worse than I Have So Far from President Bush in October 2007.

Piss and Roan

It’s No Longer in Him
(Props to Craig)

Or
More Accurately, It Was in Him and He Couldn’t Get it Out
Robert Cade is in serious need of electrolyte balancing after his kidneys failed to produce the substance with the color and taste of the product he invented. Former University of Florida Gators coach Dwayne Douglas asked Cade “why don’t football players wee wee after a game?” Cade and colleagues concocted a formula that tasted like toilet bowl cleaner. In honor of the university, he dubbed the beverage Gatorade and there have been scant improvements in the 40 years since. Less successful was a fruity alcoholic drink called Hop’n Gator. And the legend continues.

Hart-a-tack
Bill Hartack, 5-time winner of the Kentucky Derby, has died at the age of 74. Apparently, he was saddled with a bad heart. With his wins aboard Iron Liege in 1957, Venetian Way in 1960, Decidedly in 1962, Northern Dancer in 1964 and Majestic Prince in 1969, he mounted a successful campaign to become the youngest member of the Racing Hall of Fame at 26. His first win was aided significantly when race leader Bill Shoemaker aboard Gallant Man started horsing around and eased up coming down the stretch. Tracking his annual numbers, he led the country in wins from 1955 through 1957 and again in 1960. No one in the GHI had this one, so there’s no jockeying for position in the Dead Pool.

Even Quieter

Or
In Poor Metal Health
(An epitaphany independently arrived at with Phil)

Or
Condition Not So Critical
(Another epitaphany shared with Phil)
Kevin DuBrow, leed singer of Quiet Riot, wuz found ded at his hohm at the aige of 52, of natural cozzes, I’m sure. Bessed remembered for Cum on Feel the Noize, the hevy metal barbershop quintet allso produced Mama Weer All Crazee Now, Coppin’ a Feel and Itchycoo Park.

Nux, Nurse, Nazis, NBC sucks

The Ol’ Left Hander is Rounding Third and Heading for Home
Joe Nuxhall, the youngest player in major league history, has died at the age of 79. In 1944, with mosto f the talented players serving in World War II and no-talent hacks like Hal Newhouser taking advantage of the old, the young, the infirmed and the one-armed, the Cincinnati Reds took a shot on the 15-year-old Nuxhall. In his major league debut, he turned a 13-0 Cardinals lead into an 18-0 lead while recording just two outs. But he did get to write one of the coolest “What I Did With My Summer Vacation” essays ever. After eight years in the minors, he returned and won 135 games in a career highlighted by two All-Star selections before starting a 40-year career broadcasting Reds games.

Lip Funeral Services
Laraine Day, star of a series of B movies in the late 1930s and 1940s and briefly wife of Hall of Fame manager Leo Durocher, has died at the age of 87. Best remembered as nurse Mary Lamont in several Dr. Kildare movies, she also played opposite John Wayne in Tycoon and The High and the Mighty, the first of the disaster movies, and played Jessica Fletcher’s sister on Murder, She Wrote.

Deathtrap
Ira Levin, the novelist who taught the world to fear babies, perfect women and Josef Mengele, has died at the age of 78. Never regarded as a great stylist, many of his books were best sellers that were later turned into hit movies, most notably Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil. He also wrote the long-running play Deathtrap, which ran for 1,793 performances and the short-lived Drat! The Cat!, which ran for 8. He also wrote the play No Time for Sergeants, which when turned into a 1958 film gave Andy Griffith his big break.

The Last Days of Delbert
Delbert Mann, who won an Oscar for his first movie, then coasted for four decades, has died at the age of 87. He directed the TV version of Marty, the story of a shy Bronx butcher and his shy girlfriend starring Rod Steiger, then took it to the silver screen with Ernest Borgnine and won McHale an Oscar. He also directed the version of Bachelor Party that didn’t include Tom Hanks and Monique Gabrielle, That Touch of Mink, starring Doris Day and Cary Grant, and the TV-movie The Last Days of Patton, featuring George C. Scott lying in bed for 2 hours with hooks in his skulllike a G-rated version of Hellraiser. He also directed the NBC TV-movie Heidi that cut off the end of the 1968 Jets-Raiders game where Oakland scored twice in the final minute to pull out a thrilling victory that most of the country didn’t see.

And with 11 days, 1 hour and 41 minutes to go in the 2007 GHI, the 10 of us within 1 hit of our leader, Shawn, are still waiting for that hit. And for those math-challenged, that means there are 11 days, 1 hour and 40 minutes to get those lists in.

Pinko and Ringo

Better Dead Than Red
Milo Radulovich, a symbol of the excessive anti-Communism of the 1950s, has died at the age of 81. Radulovich had spent 8 years in the Army Air Force, including top secret work in Greenland, and was serving in the Air Force Reserve when he was removed as a security risk. Radulovich’s offenses: a father who had read a Slavic language newspaper considered to be pro-Communist and a sister who had picketed a Detroit hotel that refused to admit Paul Robeson, who had publicly praised Stalin. Radulovich’s story was told by Edward R. Murrow on See It Now, although the program’s sponsor was nervous and pulled advertising, leading Murrow and producer Fred Friendly to spend their own money to promote the show. Viewer response was overwhelmingly in favor of Radulovich’s case, helping to earn his reinstatement, and buoyed Murrow and Friendly to take on Joe McCarthy in two more broadcasts. Now, this is just a historical footnote, because no modern politicians would ever falsely overstate a serious situation to inflate American’s fears for the purposes of political gain nor would they create enemies of the state out of thin air. And if they did, surely America’s media would have the courage to expose such actions.

Late that Night, No One Could Save the Life of Ringo
Jim Ringo, an undersized center who set a record for consecutive games played and went on to be named All-Pro seven times for the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles has died at the age of 75. Ringo’s contributions to the power sweep helped the Packers to championships in 1961 and 1962, but his attempt to gain a raise from $12,000 to $15,000 before the 1963 season made for one of the great negotiation stories. Ringo brought an agent to his negotiation, surprising Lombardi, but the Packer legend encouraged the men to make themselves comfortable in his office while he took a quick phone call. Moments later he told them, "Gentlemen, you're talking to the wrong team. Jim Ringo now belongs to the Eagles."

Wipe Out

(Props to Jon)

Or
Squeezed Out
(An epitaphany shared with Mark)

Or
The Final Squeeze
(Accolades for Dawn)
Dick Wilson, who’s been wiping his ass for free for 40 years, has died at the age of 91. Wilson is best known as a face on the commercial Mount Rushmore, between Madge the Palmolive Lady and Clara “Where’s the Beef” Peller as anal retentive grocer George Whipple, forever admonishing his clientele from squeezing the Charmin in more than 500 commercials, usually before being caught giving the rolls a little squeeze himself. For his service for king, country and bunghole, Proctor & Gamble gave him a free lifetime supply of Charmin. Other roles included a recurring drunk on Bewitched, occasional POW Captain Gruber on Hogan’s Heroes, and Dino Baroni, second in command to Mayor Mario Lugatto when McHale’s Navy made the counter-historical move from the South Pacific to Voltafiore, Italy.

For those still feverishly checking the roster at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, 10 days, 1 hour, 2 minutes.

The Executed’s Song

Or
Mailer in the Coffin

Or
The Naked and the Dead

Or
Looks Like Playdude Needs Another Aging Libido Author
(Props to Phil)
Aged, racist crank novelist Norman Mailer has died at 84. Best remembered for his cameo on The Gilmore Girls when Sookie realizes she’s pregnant, he also won a couple Pulitzers and a National Book Award. His novels are full of manly men doing manly things, while his personal life was full of a deranged goof doing deranged things. How different the two are is subject to interpretation. He concluded that Marilyn Monroe was murdered by the CIA and FBI who were upset by her dalliances with Robert Kennedy. He also tried to get Lee Harvey Oswald off in his 1995 book Oswald’s Tale. His failed 1969 bid for the mayor’s office in New York City was based on a platform of seceding from the Empire State and declaring New York the 51st state and was bolstered by Jimmy Breslin’s bid for City Council President. He went Mike Tyson on Rip Torn after Torn went Bob Vila on Mailer (Mailer bit off part of Torn’s ear while filming Maldstone after Torn attacked Mailer with a hammer) and head-butted Gore Vidal before taping The Dick Cavett Show. He was the unindicted accomplice of convicted killer Jack Abbott, who, within weeks of securing the parole that Mailer had championed, stabbed a waiter in a New York restaurant. In fairness, the soup was a tad cold. Life imitated art in 1960, when Mailer stabbed the second of his six wives in an incident many critics claimed was the embodiment of his novelized misogyny.

The early delivery of the Mailer probably screwed up a few lists; luckily, there are 16 days, 1 hour and 12minutes left to get those lists in.

Bomber’s Away

Or
Dropped Biggest Bomb Until Cleopatra
(A 5-word summary inspired by Craig, the lone Pooligan to have him)
Paul Tibbets, the man who started his aviation career dropping Baby Ruth bars before moving on to bigger payloads and helping to add a certain glow to the Greatest Generation, has died at the age of 92. Tibbets harkens back to the days when men were men and could lay waste to an entire city and never look back. In the European Theater of World War II, Tibbets was generally regarded as one of the nation’s finest fliers, and was selected to test fly the B-29 Flying Superfortress and then to modify the aircraft and train a flight crew for the Manhattan Project. On August 5, 1945, in one of history’s more Freudian moments, he honored his mother by bestowing her name on the greatest vehicle of mass destruction that he got to ride inside, laying waste to all below. That’s a half season of Criminal Minds right there. The next day he dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima, jump-starting the atomic age. Although he did not relish the deaths of so many civilians, he expressed no regrets, believing that the atomic bomb prevented a protracted invasion that would have led to the deaths of thousands of Allied troops. Now he’s not saying we didn’t get our hair mussed…

Craig’s Killer’s Greatest Hits are up and atom into 8th place.

And with 26 days to go, Shawn’s Team One - Old still holds a less than 1 point lead, and there are 10 entrants within 1 hit of the lead.

In other news…
So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good night
(Props to Tom)
Werner Von Trapp, whose life story was immortalized in one of the few films where you rooted for the Nazis, has died at the age of 91. Von Trapp was the second son of Captain Georg von Trapp, and in the film The Sound of Music, Hollywood decided that Werner was a little too German, and renamed his “character” Kurt. After escaping the Nazis in Austria because they were too good to sing at Hitler’s birthday party, the von Trapps emigrated to the United States, with Werner returning to Europe as a member of the U.S. Army, before resuming the family’s musical tour after the war. He is survived by three sisters and one brother.

Hitch your Wagoner to a Stump

Or
The Cold Hard Facts of Death
Country fans are lucky to have each other, because misery loves company, and they’ll be drowning their sorrow on the rocks as Porter Wagoner, the country music singer best known for his pompadour and rhinestone-encrusted suits that made Liberace wince, has died at the age of 80 and is due to be buried under the green, green grass of home. His 81 charted records earned him induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002, but he may be better known for introducing Dolly Parton on his variety show and for many years was the third part of their duet.

Moolah Rouge
The Fabulous Moolah, the most famous female wrestler in history, has died at the age of 84. World Wrestling Entertainment billed her as having the longest title reign of any female athlete in history, a nearly 30 year run from 1956 to 1984, then she recaptured it and defended it while in her sixties, and continued wrestling in Bra and Panties Gauntlet matches into her eighties, ‘cause there ain’t nothing hotter than watching grannies in spandex rip off young hotties’ tops.