Axed

Donald E. Westlake, one of America’s most successful mystery writers, has died of a heart attack at the age of 75. Westlake said he relied on manual typewriters rather than have an electronic model or computer humming back at him while he thought, and had to keep a collection of back-ups to cannibalize for parts for his discontinued model. He turned out more than 100 books and 5 screenplays over the course of 50 years. At his peak, he put Steven King to shame, producing 4 books a year, but some publishers think that it takes more than 3 months to turn out a quality book, so he used a plethora of pseudonyms to mask his prolificity, eventually settling on using his own name for stories about an unintentionally comical criminal named John Dortmunder, and as Richard Stark wrote a series about an anti-hero and criminal named Parker. Another character was Burke Devore, the downsized executive turned murderer in “The Ax,” whom The New York Times described in 1997 “as emblematic of his time as George F. Babbitt and Holden Caulfield and Capt. John Yossarian were of theirs.” He earned an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for The Grifters, three Edgar Awards and the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.

Captain Dobey, You’re Dead

Or
Let No Man Write My Epitaph
Bernie Hamilton, archetype for the gruff, but beloved black police captain, has died of cardiac arrest at the age of 80. Best remembered for threatening to assign goofball detectives Dave Starsky and Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson to meter maid duty as Capt. Harold Dobey, Hamilton’s career started in The Jackie Robinson Story in 1950. Other films included a cutting edge 1964 drama One Potato, Two Potato, about a white woman who loses custody of her child for marrying Hamilton, and Scream Blacula Scream, about a black vampire. He largely gave up acting after S&H, focusing on his record label, Chocolate Snowman, which produced R&B and gospel records, including his own album Capt. Dobey Sings the Blues.

Sky Dive into the Red Clay

(Props to long-time fence-sitter Tim for the deadline and the recommendation)
Jazz trumpeting legend Freddie Hubbard has died at the age of 70 following a heart attack. Starting his career in the 1950s, Hubbard’s career earned critical praise early, then commercial success later. He was a member of the Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey, performed with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, participated in several prominent recordings of the 1960s jazz avante-garde with Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane and was regarded as one of the best trumpeters of the 1960s. Later, he incorporated more funk, and more pop, and found a larger audience, while earning the enmity of jazz critics. His career ended when he seriously injured his upper lip by playing too hard without warming up too often, and the lip became infected, one of the few non-porn careers that could be ended by a lip infection. He won a Grammy Award for the album “First Light” in 1972 and was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2006.

Eartha to Earth, Dust to Dust

Or
Earthen Kitt
(Kudos for Monty)

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Nine Lives Are Up
(Whoop whoop for Monty)

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Santa Corpsey
(Additional honorifics for Monty)
Holy return to the cemetery, Batman. The second ex-Bat baddie this month has gotten thwacked as Earth Kitt, the third Catwoman, has died at the age of 81, fittingly enough on Christmas Day, as so many of us were sick and tired of hearing Santa Baby on the all-Christmas every day since Halloween radio stations. The sultry chanteuse and self-proclaimed "sex kitten," made the catlike purr her signature, and was dubbed the "most exciting woman in the world" by Orson Welles. A versatile performer, she won two Emmys (for the Disney concoction The Emporer’s New School) while nabbing a third nomination as well as nominations for several Tonys and two Grammys. She also had a cameo as Freya in the Tim Robbins’ opus Erik the Viking.

Harold….……Pinter……….Is……….Dead

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None for the Road

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Exit Stage Left
(Props to Monty)
Harold Pinter, whose gift for finding the disturbing in everyday life rivals only the “what’s in your refrigerator that could kill you” mentality of the evening local news, has died at the age of 78 of esophageal cancer. Pinter’s dialogue was renowned for milking silence with dramatic pauses, so essentially Shatnerian delivery, minus the green-skinned babes and blinking array of lights makes a play Pinteresque. Pinter wrote more than 30 plays, including “The Birthday Party,” “The Caretaker,” “The Homecoming” and “Betrayal,” earning the 2005 Nobel Prize and great acclaim for his ability to capture the anxiety and ambiguity of modern life – the weasel under the cocktail cabinet,” as he called it – and his terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence. With this forum, he denounced U.S. foreign policy for lying to justify war in Iraq and for supporting or creating every right-wing military dictatorship around the world in the last 50 years.

Curtailed Bevel-aqua

Or
Funeral March
James Bevel, whose guiding hand helped lead the Civil Rights movement, then landed him in prison when it ended up in his daughters’ pants, has died at the age of 72. Bevel was the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC’s three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, and the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement, as well as being involved in the 1963 March on Washington, and the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. He left the SCLC to direct the anti-Vietnam War Movement, then stayed out of the limelight until he ran as Lyndon LaRouche’s vice presidential candidate in 1992. He apparently left the organizing business until helping put together the Million Man March in 1995. Unfortunately, it later turned out that he was organizing much smaller events in the 1990s– him and 4 of his daughters in the Daddy’s Special Secret Club, for which he was convicted in April 2008, because, ironically, Virginia has no statute of limitations on incest.

The Dock-tor is Out

Dock Ellis, the only major leaguer to have co-authored his autobiography with a future U.S. Poet Laureate, has died of liver disease at the age of 63. Renowned for his colorfulness, such as showing up at ballparks with his hair in curlers, Ellis’ most famous day on the mound came on June 12, 1970, when the Pirates’ ace no-hit the San Diego Padres in a game he later claimed to have pitched while high on LSD because he thought the Pirates had an off day. On another occasion, when he didn’t think the Pirates were playing tough enough, he vowed to hit every player on the Reds. He hit the first three batters, narrowly missed the 4th with 4 pitches, forcing in a run, then just missed the head of the next batter and got lifted. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Champions and started the All-Star Game, where he gave up Reggie Jackson’s HR off the light tower in Tiger Stadium. That auto-biography, co-authored with Donald Hall, was Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, published in 1976.

Follow the Mortician

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Felt Down
(Kudos to Craig)

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Deep Sixed
(An epitaphany shared by Craig and Dawn)

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The W. Mark Felt Memorial Parking Garage is now open
(Can I get a whoop whoop for Craig?)

Or
Six Feet Deep Throat
(Greg, Monty and I, recycling Gerald Damiano)

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Six Feet Deep Throat 2: Throat Harder
(Greg, freshening said recycling)

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Garage Freak? Jesus, what kind of a crazy funeral is this?
(Surreal suggestion from Peter)

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Follow the hearse
(Another tip o’ the cap for Peter)

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Mark Felt Pretty Cold
(More congrats for Monty)
W. Mark Felt, the bitter FBI tattletale whose personal vendetta lost the war in Vietnam and caused the Cambodian genocide, has died at the age of 95, a mere 4 years after being named GHI Rookie of the Year. The number two man at the FBI, Felt was passed over by Richard Nixon to replace J. Edgar Hoover after his tragic girdle accident, sowing the seeds for his desire for vengeance. After the modern-day Apple Dumpling Gang botched the break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, Felt resisted the White House’s efforts to shut down the FBI investigation into this and a small litany of abuses of presidential power. The stoolie also fed info to Bob Woodward, the most important journalist in the history of the world(tm), and Carl Bernstein, the Art Garfunkel of the media elite. Dubbed Deep Throat by Woodward, who he’d met in a chance encounter at the White House when Woodward was in the Navy, the G-man forced him to take two cabs, then walk 4 blocks to a parking garage for rendezvouses he arranged by filling in Woodward’s morning crossword puzzle. Nixon was forced to resign in 1974, and with him left any hope of victory in Vietnam, and with the United States turning tale and running, the Khmer Rouge was free to control the population of Cambodia the old-fashioned way. Felt was more OK with illegal wire-tapping later, ordering break-ins and bugging of the homes of members of the early Barack Obama Political Action Committee, the Weather Underground, in the name of national security. But Ronald Reagan liked his moxie and, acknowledging the precedent, pardoned Felt in 1980. Other highlights of Felt’s career included time at the Federal Trade Commission investigating whether Red Cross toilet paper was defrauding people who thought it was affiliated with the American Red Cross and time as special agent in charge of the FBI office in subversive stronghold Salt Lake City. Woodward and Bernstein had vowed to take Felt’s identity to the grave if necessary, but Felt’s family, feeling a potential payday about to slip away, pushed the ailing agent into the public spotlight in 2005.

9 Pooligans Felt the time was nigh, but Dawn dumped him 19 days too early. Benefiting the most is Jon, who moves into second, while Jen, Michelle’s Political Suicide, Kirsti’s People Who Aren’t Renewing Their Magazine Subscriptions, Greg’s Team Quincy, Craig’s The Killer’s Greatest Hits, Vol 2., Shawn’s Team Oldest, my Ex-Parrots, and Mark’s Beltway Boneyard V: Code Blue State form one big dogpile at 10th, for a time, because then….

Boldly Gone
Gene Roddenberry’s money grubbing widow, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, has died at the age of 76. She never used his last name until after he died, as brazen as it was moronic to think the lonely shut-ins who populate Trek conventions wouldn’t know Roddenberry’s grandmother’s maiden name, let alone his wife’s. In a fairly obvious bit of nepotism, she is the only person to appear in all 5 Star Trek series, starting as Number One in The Cage, the original pilot, then moving on to become the forever pining Nurse Chapel on the original series, where she met Gene, and two of the movies, and played Betazoid ambassador Lwaxana Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She provided the voice for the Enterprise’s computer from the original series through 7 of the 11 movies, including the upcoming J.J. Abrams take on the franchise, and parodied that role on The Family Guy as the voice of Stewie’s sperm-shooting miniaturized sub. Taking notes she found after his death, she jump-started Several years after her husband's death, Roddenberry discovered a pilot script and turned them into syndicated series Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, with her serving as executive producer and playing a recurring role. She later did the same to become executive producer of the syndicated Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.

Baugh, Humbug

(Accolades for Don)

Or
When the Baugh Breaks

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Sling Low, Sweet Chariot
(Kudos to Mark)

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Passed and Kicked
(Props to Shawn)

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The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune
(More merit for Don)

Or
Stinkin’ Sammy Baugh
Former mediocre minor league shortstop Sammy Baugh, starting quarterback for the loser of the worst blowout in pro football championship history, has died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, double pneumonia, kidney problems and low blood pressure. Baugh is best remembered as the Washington Redskins quarterback who revolutionized the novel concept of the forward pass, somewhat akin to the landmark decision to use a stick in hockey, or to pitch overhand in baseball. In 1937, he set a record with 81 passes, about the number that Andy Reid attempts in a game and a half. Baugh was a one man pass, punt and pick competition, adding defensive back to his duties as quarterback and punter, once throwing 4 TDs and intercepting 4 passes in the same game. He still holds the record with a 51.4-yards-per punt average in 1940, one of his record 4 punting titles, to go with his record 6 passing titles. The last surviving member of the inaugural class inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, Baugh led the Redskins to the 1937 championship over the Chicago Bears, the aforementioned 73-0 pasting by the Bears in 1940, the measure of revenge against the Bears in the 1942 title game, and the equalizer as the Bears beat them again in 1943. Baugh holds the Redskins record with 187 career TD passes, and his #33 is the only retired number in team history.



Baugh was the 200th hit in GHI history, and 6 Pooligans expected Baugh to touch down, Jon, Terry’s While My Heart Gently Stops, Shawn’s Team Old, my Peace Corpse, Joe’s Drop Dead, Gorgeous and Mark’s Team Life Alert move into a 4th place tie.

Brigadoomed

Or
Living in a Van Down by the River Styx
(Props to Monty, gone but not forgotten)
Van Johnson, Hollywood’s Hal Newhouser, has died at the age of 92. His boyish charm and good looks made him a star in the 1940s while the prime acting talent was overseas in uniform. He was so popular with the bobby-soxer set that he was called the Voiceless Sinatra. But he found himself on the back bench when the war ended. His first major role was a pilot with Spencer Tracy as his guardian angel in A Guy Named Joe. During filming, Johnson was nearly killed in a car crash, and the steel plate in his head kept him from serving during World War II. Johnson belied his boy next door image when he seduced the wife of his best friend, Keenan Wynn, in 1947; the former Mrs. Wynn later said she loved Van, but would have never married him if she knew he was gay, and they divorced in 1968. He turned down the role of Elliott Ness in The Untouchables, and had a less glamorous role in another TV cops and robbers creation as one of the worst Batman baddie this side of King Tut: lute-playing electronics wiz The Minstrel. Other roles included a pilot in Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, and played the lieutenant who enacted The Caine Mutiny and a tourist who stumbles upon the enchanted Scottish village of Brigadoon.



Steve’s 5 year wait pays off, as he is the first Pooligan to have the first two hits of the year on the same list and Steve@themovies takes an early lead, while my Digger Detmuller’s Traveling Caravan rolls into second.

Pinned Down

Bettie Page, the sweet, angelic face of leather-clad, ball-gagged spanking, has died following a heart attack at the age of 85. The most famous pin-up girl after WWII had her spreads in Wink, Eyeful and Titter plastered on lockers, garage walls and pool halls, while her leather-and-lace 8- and 16-mm films were bachelor party staples. She approached respectability as Playboy’s January 1955 centerfold, but that helped earn her a spot in front of Sen. Estes Kefauver’s commission on juvenile delinquency, and by 1957 she had left the business for a descent into insanity, and then hit bottom by joining a Billy Graham crusade.

Polo Grounded

Sal Yvars, the best catcher spy since Moe Berg, has died at 84. A middling reserve catcher for 7 major league seasons with the New York Giants and St. Louis Cardinals, Yvars made an indelible mark on major league history by stealing opposing teams’ signs and communicating incoming pitches to batters at the Polo Grounds in the 1940s and 1950s. According to legend, Yvars let Bobby Thomson know what was coming, enabling him to hit the game-winning HR in the 1951 playoff against the Brooklyn Dodgers where the Giants won the pennant, the Giants won the pennant, the Giants won the pennant.

Not Careful Enough In There

Character actor Robert Prosky has died at the age of 77 following complications from heart surgery. Best remembered as desk sergeant Stan Jablonski on Hill Street Blues, other roles included the pennant game-throwing, darkness-loving Judge in The Natural, the priest that didn’t have the heart to tell Daniel Reuttiger to give it up in Rudy, Kirstie Alley’s father on Cheers and Veronica’s Closet, the station exec who gives Robin Williams his big break in Mrs. Doubtfire, daytime horror movie host Grandpa Fred in Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and the evil garage owner in Christine. On stage, he originated the role of Shelly Levene in David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, winning a Tony nomination.

Reversal of Metabolic Processes

Or
Forecast for tomorrow: a little less Sunny than today.
(Stolen shamelessly from stiffs.com)
Socialite heiress Sunny von Bulow has emerged from her coma after 27 years, 11 months and 15 days, suffering a fatal heart attack at 76. She was found unconscious at her Newport mansion in 1980, and prosecutors tried and convicted her husband, Austrian playboy Claus von Bulow of attempting to kill her with an insulin overdose before an appellate court ruled that if you marry an Austrian playboy named Claus, attempted murder is a foreseeable consequence.

New Vacancy at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn

(Props to Craig)
B-movie starlet and Mystery Science Theater 3000 fave Beverly Garland has died at the age of 82. Any number of her oeuvre, especially those in the Roger Corman catalog, would have been deserving of the Joel/Mike and The Bots treatment, but just three earned the honor: Swamp Diamonds, with Garland as one of 3 escaped prisoners trying to locate stolen diamonds in a swamp with kidnapped pre-Mannix Touch (Mike) Connors, in tow; Gunslinger, a Western with Garland providing the inspiration for Suzanne Somers as a female sheriff; and It Conquered the World, where Garland got killed by an angry space artichoke. Other highlights included Not of This Earth, Curucu, Beast of the Amazon, and the Alligator People. Later, she became stepmonster to Robbie, Chip and Mike as Steve’s second wife in the post shark-jump seasons of My Three Sons, Bing’s wife on The Bing Crosby Show, an ex-girlfriend of Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and mother to Laura Holt (Remington Steele), Amanda King (Scarecrow and Mrs. King), and Lois Lane (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman).

Can’t See the Forrest for the Flies

Science fiction lost its biggest fan and first honorary lesbian, as Forrest J Ackerman, the founder-writer-editor of the horror magazine “Famous Monsters of Filmland” who coined the phrase “sci-fi” has died at the age of 92. Over more than 60 years, Ackerman amassed the world’s largest personal collection of science-fiction memorabilia, eventually totaling 300,000 pieces stored at his 18-room home, known as the Ackermansion, which he opened to fans on Saturdays. Among his treasures: a Dracula cape worn by Lugosi, Mr. Spock's pointy ears, Lon Chaney Sr.'s makeup kit, the giant-winged pterodactyl that swooped down for Fay Wray in King Kong, the single remaining Martian machine from the 1953 film The War of the Worlds, Metropolis director Fritz Lang's monocle, and the paper-plate flying saucer used by director Ed Wood in Plan 9 From Outer Space. In the 1930s, Ackerman founded the fan publication for the Science Fiction Society, publishing Ray Bradbury’s first short story, and later became a literary agent for such writers as L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, H.L. Gold, Ray Cummings, H. P. Lovecraft and Hugo Gernsback. Ackerman also lent assistance to the Daughters of Bilitis and wrote several lesbian novels under the pseudonym Laurajean Ermayne, for which he was dubbed an honorary lesbian. He was awarded the very first Hugo Award, the Nobel Prize of science fiction, in 1953. Many readers of Ackerman’s publications became fans, friends and famous directors, including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante and John Landis, who cast Ackerman in cameo appearances in Innocent Blood and as a man eating popcorn behind Michael Jackson in the movie theater scene in his "Thriller" video. Among the highlights of his more than 200 cameos and film appearances included the president of the United States in the science-fiction spoof Amazon Women on the Moon, a man perusing and buying film memorabilia and comic books at a garage sale in B-Fest staple The Wizard of Speed and Time, and Dr. Beaumont in Z-grade horror flick Dracula vs. Frankenstein.

Really Afraid of the Dark

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DO-eh
Today’s cautionary tale comes to us from the NFL, where you cannot mess with tradition without paying the ultimate price. In 2006, thanks to the incessant prodding of Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, the NFL added a third game on Thanksgiving Day, and afforded the Chiefs the honor of the first game not involving Detroit or Dallas. But by that time, Hunt was hospital-bound and didn’t get the NFL network in his room, so he didn’t see the game, and was dead within weeks. Last weekend, the NFL played its first regular season game in Canada, thanks to the incessant prodding of Canadian media mogul and owner of the Rogers Centre, formerly the Skydome, Edward S. Rogers, Jr. Rogers died 5 days before the game. Rogers also owned Canada’s largest wireless phone company, replacing a complex network of cups and string and its largest cable television system, affording Canucks a non-stop variety of Anne Murray specials, Degrassi and Terrence and Philip, and the Toronto F-ing Blue Jays. All told, he was worth $7 billion in Canadian, or roughly $37,000 US.

Dregs Benedict

Paul Benedict, best known for playing British neighbor Harry Bentley on The Jeffersons, has died at the age of 70. Born in New Mexico, but tall and goofy-looking enough to play a convincing Brit, he studied at the Theater Company of Boston alongside Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino. But only Benedict got walked on by Sherman Helmsley. Other brushes with greatness included replacing Sir John Gielgud as Arthur’s humorless valet in Arthur 2: On the Rocks, playing Arthur Fleeber, Clark Kellogg’s Godfather-obsessed film professor in The Freshman who grants him permission to leave after being summoned by Carmine Sabatini, aka Jimmy the Toucan, and playing The Mad Painter on Sesame Street.