Stargate Closed

Character actor Don S. Davis, best known as MacGyver’s boss on Stargate: SG-1, has died at the age of 65. The former stunt double for Dana Elcar put his military record to use, playing Major Garland Briggs on Twin Peaks, Scully’s dad, Captain William Scully, on The X-Files, and Major General Hammond on Stargate. Other roles included Charlie Collins, coach of the Racine Belles in A League of Their Own, Everett Bainbridge, a Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show judge in Best in Show and Reverend Don Butler, briefly a contender for Arnie Vinick’s VP on The West Wing, but ultimately a critic from the right.

Hale and Hardee

Wilber Hardee, a far better grill cook than a businessman, has died of a heart attack at age 89, as Mark’s Eat, Drink and Be Buried once again proves to be better in concept than execution. Hardee opened his first hamburger stand near the campus of East Carolina College in 1960, selling burgers for 15 cents a piece. He sold his 5 franchises in 1963 for $37,000. Last year, Hardee’s had revenues of $1.8 billion.

Turns Out He Was The One Who Was Diseased

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It Was Bad For Him

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Hope he Enjoys the View from the Roof

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Baseball Is Played in a Park, Taps is Played at a Graveyard
(Props to Joe, laughing through the tears)
George Carlin has not passed on, like a driver going around another car; expired, like a magazine subscription, experienced a terminal episode or taken a therapeutic misadventure. He simply died, at 71 years old, seven words even more unpleasant than his single most famous routine. Starting as a typical comedy act with characters like Al Sleet the hippy-dippy weatherman: “The weather was dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high. Tonight’s forecast . . . dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.” When his act took a counterculture bent with biting and profane social satire, observations on absurdities of life, the joys of drugs and the an all-out assault on the euphemisms and complexities of the American language, he emerged as one of the most influential comedians of all time. He was to have received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in November. Few things escaped his wrath, especially religion – where he gave up his Roman Catholic upbringing for his own religion: Frisbeetarianism, where when a person dies, his soul gets flung up on a roof, never to be retrieved. He worshipped the sun, because he could actually see it and prayed to Joe Pesci because "he's a good actor", and "looks like a guy who can get things done!” He also actively rooted for natural disasters as the planet’s revenge for pollution, deforestation, strip mining and overfishing.

Goodman Tells No Tales

Dody Goodman, professional twit, has died at the age of 93. With a voice she described as a “tweetie pie cartoon bird strangling on peanut butter,” she made a career for herself by playing the delightfully unaware airhead, starting as a frequent guest on The Jack Paar Show before the cranky old bastard got tired of being upstaged, then on stage, and in films, TV guest stints and voice overs. Best known roles included Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’s mother mother who talked to plants and slept with hot-air balloonists who crashed into her house, Rydell High’s secretary Blanche in Grease, the voice of neighbor Miss Miller on The Chipmunks cartoon, and, if you’re like me, and I know I am, Phillip Drummond’s beloved sister Sophia in a handful of Diff’rent Strokes episodes and one of Henry Warnimont’s neighbors on Punky Brewster.

Shepard Flocked

Bert Shepard, an amputee who became a war-time major leaguer, showing how lazy most crips really are, has died. Shephard was a fighter pilot in World War II when he was shot down over Germany. He awoke as a prisoner of war and his right leg had been amputated. A minor league pitcher before the war, he got a tryout with the Washington Senators, which was absolutely not a publicity stunt by an awful franchise enjoying another pointless season. Fitted with an artificial leg, Shephard took the mound in a few exhibition games, then with the Senators trailing the Boston Red Sox 14-2 on Aug. 4, 1945, he took the mound, escaping a bases-loaded jam. He pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing 1 run on 3 hits, and the Senators, showing the astute judgment that kept them in last place for most of their existence, never used him in another game.

Cyd and Rancid

Cyd Charisse, graceful musicals star of the 1950s, has died at the age of 86 of a heart attack. In an era where musicals starred graceful song and dance men and women rather than ex-TV spies and dingo-feeding Aussies, Charisse was a star in such films as Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon and Brigadoon.

Mark will be high-kicking himself, having dropped Cyd after 2004.

Meet the Maker

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If its Friday, It’s a Massive Coronary
Backstabbing fat bastard Tim Russert has died of a heart attack at the age of 58, ironically enough on “take out the trash day” when politically unpleasant news gets dumped on an even more disinterested than usual populace. Russert, Buffalo’s favorite son and first cousin to Baltimore homicide detective Megan Russert, spent 17 years annoying politicians and pundits by asking direct questions until he got either an actual answer or enough rope with which to hang them later each Sunday morning as host of Meet the Press. He also eschewed fancy schmancy technology for the Electoral College Whiteboard, starting with Election Night 2000 when he showed how hard it was to count to 270. He was considered the definitive interviewer of the political process and scored the first U.S. solo interview with John Paul II. He also proved to be a big pansy coward, turning his back on long-time friend Don Imus, who had shamelessly and annoyingly plugged Russert’s book about his father, “Big Russ and Me,” after Imus questioned the follicular stylings of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

He's All Gone

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Agony of De Old Age
Jim McKay, who spent a lifetime spanning the globe to bring back a constant variety of sports that no one cared about, has died at the age of 86. As host of the Wide World of Sports from 1961 to 2001, McKay helped bring viewers the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat while watching log rolling, cliff diving and, of course, downhill skiing. He recalled when he was first given the assignment, it would involve “a little travel.” Between Wide World and his other assignments, McKay covered more than 100 different sports in 40 countries, traveling more than 4.5 million miles. McKay broadcast 12 Olympics, none more significant than his work at the 1972 Munich games, when he showed a sportsman could handle the news, anchoring 16 consecutive hours of coverage of the kidnapping of 11 Israeli athletes, and, when the rescue attempt failed, announcing to the world, “They’re all gone.” His skilled handling earned him both news and sports Emmy Awards, as well as the prestigious George Polk Memorial award. He earned a total of 13 Emmys, including his last, in 1988, for writing the openings for ABC Sports' coverage of the 1987 Indianapolis 500, the British Open and the Kentucky Derby.

We’ve got to help George Bailey… Oh, Too Late

Clarence Odbody was nowhere to be seen as Bob Anderson, best remembered as the young George Bailey who got slapped around by Mr. Gower in It’s a Wonderful Life, has died of melanoma at the age of 75.

Fade Away

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Bo Knows Congestive Heart Failure

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Bo Deadley
Bo Diddley, a member of the Louisiana Gator Boys whose best moves and material made a lot of other people rich, has died at the age of 79 of heart failure. The music pioneer helped invent rock and or roll, employing a reliance on his R&B background and his signature beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes, which was ripped off on Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive,” the Who’s “Magic Bus,” Bruce Springsteen’s “She’s the One” and U2’s “Desire,” among hundreds of other songs. As one of the first to develop a custom guitar, a square model intended to give him more freedom of movement on stage after an early performance left him with a groin injury, Diddley’s shows and songs were heavy on guitar work with witty, slangy, edgy lyrics, while jumping, lurching, balancing on his toes and shaking his knees as he wrestled with his instrument, sometimes playing it above his head, moves later pirated by Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix.

Fashionably Late

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Yves of Destruction

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Yves Sans LaBreath
(Props to Phil)

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Yves Saint Laurent - Already?... A little presumptuous, huh?
(Kudos to Phil)

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On the Concrete Slab, on the Concrete Slab, I do my little turn on the Slab…
(More Phil, deciding that you all deserve to have Right Said Fred as today’s earworm.)

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You’re Shittoutta Luck
(From Ern, his initial offering, pun, as always, intended)
Black will be the in color this spring in The Yves St. Laurent Line this Year as the titular founder has succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 71. The passing of the godfather of the pantsuit added to a really bad week for Hillary Clinton. The oddly spectacled boy wonder was Christian Dior’s protégé when the elder master “died suddenly,” and in the cutthroat world of fashion, you are either in or you are out. In addition to his obsession with pantsuits, St. Laurent had an Africa fetish, bringing safari jackets and leopard prints into the closets of the slaves to fashion. Other creations included the avant garde uniform of turtlenecks and leather jackets, the thigh high boots favored by the best hookers everywhere, and Le Smoking suit, to promote androgyny.