Jim Johnson, defensive coordinator emeritus for the Philadelphia Eagles, has succumbed to melanoma at the age of 68. Renowned for his blitzing techniques, his defenses led the Eagles to 5 NFC Championship games in the 10 years since being named defensive coordinator. In 2001, the defense became the 4th team in NFL history to not allow 21 points in a game, and eventually ran their streak to 34 games, second best in history. Over the course of his tenure, Eagles defenders racked up 26 Pro Bowl selections. Prior to joining the Eagles, he helped Notre Dame win the 1977 National Championship as defensive backs coach, and was later promoted to defensive coordinator and assistant head coach.
Or Yo Quiero Coumadin Gidget, the Chihuahua from the Taco Bell commercials, has died of a stroke at the age of 15, 73 in dog years. In the most racist thing to hit TV since Slowpoke Gonzalez and the Frito Bandito, the annoying little rat dog was depicted as a Mexican revolutionary and a bandit, among other things, with its catchphrase "¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!"entering the pop culture lexicon. Gidget’s handlers kept her in the annoying aisle, appearing in a GEICO commercial with the gecko, and a cameo in Legally Blonde 2 as Reese Witherspoon’s Chihuahua Bruiser’s mother. How you could possibly tell these stupid dogs apart is beyond me, but the commercials and other appearances helped make them de riguer arm candy for idiots.
Or Whaddya thinks in the burgers? (More merit for Phil)
Or Mr. Shidler is in a World of Shit (Additional accolades for Phil)
Or Another Blip in the Wall (Further fanfare for Phil) Les Lye, the only adult in the greatest Canadian children’s sketch comedy show in television history, has died at the age of 84. You Can’t Do That on Television!, essentially Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In as populated by Canadian teenagers and with slime instead of double entendres, drew an international audience when picked up by Nickelodeon, and Lye, a veteran of the long-time Canadian comedy duo of Uncle Willy and Floyd, was the only actor to appear in every episode. Recurring characters included Barth, Canada’s Mel Sharples; El Capitano, conductor of a firing squad that never quite gets its man; Mr. Shidler, an authoritarian teacher with a passing resemblance to a certain Reichmaster; Senator Lance Prevert, a drunk ne’er-do-well based on the stereotypical Canadian Senator; Ross Ewich, studio director of the show within the show; Snake Eyes, a live action Otto from The Simpsons; and Blip, the money-grubbing of the video arcade.
Or 'Tisnt (props to Monty) Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning pity party has ended at the age of 78. Boo hoo – drunk Dad abandoned the family, mom begged on the streets of Limerick, living in a basement with no bathroom but plenty of rats, three dead brothers, almost died of typhoid fever. When we were kids, we had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before we went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah, and you don’t hear me complaining about it.
Winner of the Mortician's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes
(Additional accolades for Don)
Ed McMahon, who sat next to some of the most accomplished entertainers of the last half century, chuckling or chortling on demand, has died at the age of 86. Best remembered as Johnny Carson’s living laugh track, McMahon also let people know when funny things were said Jerry Lewis during his Labor Day Parade of the Unfortunate and Dick Clark in TV’s Bloopers and Punk’d-ings. Lowell’s favorite adopted son first met Carson in the late 1950s on the ABC quiz show, “Do You Trust Your Wife?” later “Who Do You Trust?” which Carson hosted while McMahon announced and read commercials, and when Carson was tapped to replace Jack Paar as host of The Tonight Show, he took McMahon along for the ride. Ultimately making $5 million a year, McMahon wasn’t about to upset the apple cart and absorbed Carson’s slings and arrows for outrageous fortune with rarely a peep, projecting the image of America’s drinking buddy, complete with war stories as he served as a member of the Marine Air Corps, flying 85 combat missions during the Korean War, earning six Air Medals. Self-respect long since gone, McMahon served as the Billy Mays of his day, shilling everything from Alpo to Bud Light, and from Sara Lee to Sinbad. He also sold magazines as spokesperson for the American Family Publishers and later added McMahon Perfect Vodka to his portfolio, and was most recently seen promoting the gold-buying business Cash4Gold with MC Hammer while stroking a golden toilet.
Gordon Waller, half the British Invasion duo that rode the charts while Paul McCartney was riding his partner’s sister, has died of a heart attack at the age of 64. Together with Peter Asher, Waller formed the creatively titled Peter and Gordon. With such a flair for words, the duo was dependent on siphoning off Paul McCartney’s cast-off songs, which he provided as he was dating Asher’s sister, and scored a string of hits in the UK and U.S., most notably “A World Without Love.”
(An epitaphany shared with Mark, in spirit, anyway)
Or And That’s the Way It Was
Or Dead: That’s the Way He Is (Further flourishes for Mark) Walter Cronkite, former straight man to a sock puppet lion named Charlemane, has died at the age of 92. Reportedly, he was knocked off by NASA officials on the eve of his planned blockbuster admission that the moon landing was a hoax. He was blessed not to have had to lend his authoritative voice to the 24-hour news cycle obsessed with Octomoms, Britney Spears’ lack of underwear and Jon & Kate Minus Self-Awareness. His presence and ability to convey the moment are inextricably linked to two of the most significant moments of the 20th century – the JFK assassination and man walking on the moon. Less renowned was his coverage of the 1972 national farm report. Cronkite also told America he thought the Vietnam War was unwinnable, helping LBJ to make his decision not to run for re-election, which led the Democrats to nominate Hubert Humphrey, ensuring the election of Richard Nixon, whose creative interpretation of executive powers led Cronkite to be considered the most trusted man in America. So Uncle Walter’s proclamation was less a statement of conscience and more a sleeper attempt at self-aggrandizement. Cronkite’s time in television began when he was 16 and he helped in a demonstration of an experimental version of television at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. After covering World War II up close for United Press, he went into television, and was literally television’s first anchorman – the term ‘anchor’ was first used to describe his role at the 1952 Republican and Democratic Conventions. He only missed one over the next 30 years. He hung it up in 1981 as he approached CBS’ mandatory retirement age of 65; CBS made amends for this short-sightedness by ignoring all viewers under that age.
Arturo Gatti, a former Canadian boxing champion renowned for several brutal bouts, has committed suicide by hanging himself with his wife’s purse strap, which tells you all you need to know about Canadian boxing.
The No Fog on the Mirror: Eleven Lessons From the Death of Robert S. McNamara
(Kudos to Mark) Robert Strange McNamara, beloved warchitect, has died at the age of 93. His ill-advised and ultimately unsuccessful expansion of the Vietnam War torpedoed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, a thwarting of liberal idealism that Rush Limbaugh could only (wet) dream of. McNamara helped to rebuild a struggling Ford Motors – where he achieved his life’s greatest success, stopping production of the Edsel, and 6 weeks after being named President, was tapped as JFK’s Secretary of Defense. He served as secretary from 1961 to 1968, continuing under LBJ, greatly expanding the powers of the office to include diplomacy, increasing the budget of the Department of Defense from $40 billion to $75 billion within 6 years and sowing the seeds that gave us Donald Rumsfeld. More than anyone else, the Vietnam War was his baby, but the eventual accomplishment of the stated war objectives were small consolation. Act 2 was his attempt to make good, serving as Director of The World Bank and doling out money to impoverished Third World nations, where the smartest man Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had ever met started massive infrastructure programs without considering ecological costs, fueled corrupt foreign governments and saddled the poorest nations on the planet with unrepayable debt. Then in a Nixonian attempt at career rehabilitation, he published a memoir in 1995 where he disclosed that he had come to the realization that the war had been a giant mistake. His mea culpa was a bit disingenuous, as he admitted that he had come to that realization while he was still sending tens of thousands of soldiers to their deaths in a war he had given up hope of winning.
Steve McNair learned the hard way to follow the rule on younger woman – half your age plus 7, as the 36-year-old former quarterback found himself on the front end of a murder-suicide courtesy of his 20-year-old girlfriend. McNair was one of the great Division I-AA success stories, riding his arms and legs from Alcorn State University to the NFL, as Air McNair shared the 2003 NFL MVP award and led the Tennessee Titans to within a yard of a win in Super Bowl XXXIV.
Karl Malden, who spent 20 years admonishing Americans against using cash, has died at the age of 97. One of Hollywood’s lazier actors, Malden won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1951 for A Streetcar Named Desire, doing the same thing he had already done on stage, and then coasted for 50 years. His crooked, bulbous, twice-broken nose kept him out of leading roles, and he channeled the bitterness into character roles where he slapped around Hollywood stars. He played the angry priest that slapped Terry Malloy into shape in On the Waterfront, as Gen. Omar Bradley, he got to order George C. Scott around in Patton, he kept Burt Lancaster in line as the warden in The Birdman of Alcatraz, screamed at Anthony Perkins in Fear Strikes Out, and dragged Sean Connery into saving the earth from Meteor. He found a new audience starring with a pre-insufferable Michael Douglas in the TV detective show The Streets of San Francisco. His next attempt at TV was less successful, starring in Skag, a feel-good romp about a Pittsburgh steel mill foreman partially disabled by a stroke. Although critically lauded, the show didn’t attract much of an audience, and a save the show campaign of mailing steel ingots to NBC started by a fan named Sekulovich was unsuccessful. Other roles included the bartender friend of Gregory Peck’s The Gunfighter, Barbra Streisand’s stepfather in Nuts, Herb Brooks in Miracle on Ice (including Steve Guttenberg as Jim Craig – the sacrilege), and Leon Klinghoffer, the American Jew murdered in The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro. His last screen appearance was as Jed Bartlett’s parish priest who hears the president’s confession in a first season episode of The West Wing, using the same Bible he had used in On the Waterfront.
Mollie Sugden, the horny old bird Mrs. Slocombe of the double entendres and ever-changing hair color from the Britcom Are You Being Served?, has died at 87, the second former Grace Bros. employee to kick this year after Wendy Richard. She was paid a tribute of sorts on Little Britain, where Liz insists she was Sugden’s bridesmaid. Sugden had a cameo and said she’d never seen her before, earning a knife in the back.
