Show Me That Smile Again… Or Not

(Mad props to Lori Ann for her first suggested deadline)

Or
Boned
Andrew Koenig, best remembered… only remembered, as Richard “Boner” Stabone, Mike Seaver’s best friend on Growing Pains, has killed himself at the age of 41 after eluding the cross country skiers and biathletes in Vancouver. Koenig was the son of Walter Koenig, Star Trek’s Pavel Chekov, which, while cool, isn’t as cool as his TV dad: Sylvester Stabone. Who knew?

No Longer in Charge

Or
I’m in the Ground

Or
Chief of Staph
General Alexander M. Haig Jr., the walking Constitutional crisis, has died of a staphylococcal infection at the age of 85. In the hours after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981, the then-Secretary of State declared “I am in control here, in the White House,” in a shaky, disturbing press conference, ignoring the Speaker of the House, the President pro tempore of the Senate, and, oh yeah, the Vice President. Course, overlooking George Bush was never a problem. At least that attempted coup was overt. As Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, Haig had planned the assassination of Vice President Spiro Agnew if the VP had not resigned after being charged with accepting bribes. That cleared the way for Haig to run the White House and the transition during the final months of the Nixon administration while the embattled president sulked and Jerry Ford golfed. Fearing for his own safety, as well as being stunned by Haig’s ability to orchestrate a cover paramilitary campaign in Central America, heighten tensions with the Soviet Union and frighten U.S. allies throughout Europe in just 18 months, Reagan dismissed Haig from the Cabinet in July 1982. Haig’s attempt to enter the White House through the front door in 1988 was laughable, as he almost got doubled up by Pierre DuPont in the Iowa caucus, before withdrawing quietly. In addition to his political ambitions, Haig enjoyed a meteoric rise in the military, having learned from such luminaries as General Douglas MacArthur, serving on his staff during the Korean War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, serving as his military assistant during the Vietnam War, and General William Westmoreland, who awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross following the battle of Ap Gu. Haig entered the Nixon White House in 1969, quickly elevating from colonel to 4-star general by 1974, when he left the White House to become Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

R.I.P. Dr. Butts

(Kudos for the headline and the heads up to Terry)
Jamie Gillis, one of porn’s most enthusiastic and gifted thespians, has died of cancer at the age of 66. Trained for the stage in New York, Gillis, aka The Hebrew Hammer, aka Buster Hymen, aka Jamie Rugman, found his talents lay elsewhere, and began doing live sex shows while reading poetry and reciting Shakespeare so the shows would be considered socially redeeming and would not be raided by the police. Earning a reputation as “very wild and horny,” or more eloquently “his range [was] elastic, his performances visceral. He effortlessly conveyed gravitas and ease onscreen,” he starred in more than 400 films in the 1970s and 1980s, including Mummy Dearest, Last Rumba in Paris, Terms of Endowment, Cherry-etts for Hire, For Your Thighs Only, Golden Girls: The Movie, On Golden Blonde, Wanda Whips Wall Street (aka Stocks and Blondes), Carnal Encounters of the Barest Kind, Invasion of the Love Drones, and Wine Me, Dine Me, 69 Me. His On the Prowl series of films inspired the On the Lookout scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights.

You Bet Your Sweet Bibby

(Jon S., laughing through the tears)
The family just got a little smaller, as former Pittsburgh Pirate Jim Bibby has died at the age of 65. Bibby started 2 games in the 1979 for the World Champion Pirates, including the first 4 innings of the over-managed Game 7, then won 19 games in 1980. Bibby also pitched for the Texas Rangers, throwing the first no-hitter in team history in 1973 and following it up with an incredible 19-19 season in 1974, and the St. Louis Cardinals and Cleveland Indians, where he did nothing of interest. After retiring, he spent 15 years as the pitching coach for Lynchburg in the Carolina League under three different parent clubs and helping in the development of such notables as Mickey Weston, Kip Gross, Gar Finnvold, and 1993 NL Champion Philadelphia Phillie David West.

Muh-muh-muh My Sarcoma

(Huzzah for Mark)
Doug Fieger, best remembered for singing about his penis, has died of lung cancer at the age of 57. With Fieger as lead singer and guitarist, the Knack hit No. 1 in 1979 with “My Sharona,” but instead of becoming the next Beatles, as the band members aspired to with white shirts, skinny black ties and an album jacket pose recreating a pose from A Hard Day’s Night, the group didn’t even have the staying power of The Be Sharps, as their next biggest hit was “Good Girls Don’t” at No, 11, then “Baby Talks Dirty,” at No. 38. They released another album, then disbanded in 1981, enjoying a brief resurgence in 1994 when My Sharona appeared on the soundtrack of Reality Bites, but not in Pulp Fiction, during the scene where Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames meet the Gimp, as Quentin Taratino intended, but was denied by Fieger.

Rode Hard and Put Away Dead

(Tip o’ the cap to Mark)
Dick Francis, the most successful steeplechase jockey turned mystery novelist in history, has died at the age of 89. The author of more than 40 novels, or rather the same novel 40 times – meticulously detailed description of life in the paddocks, bad thing happens to jockey/horse/trainer/owner/breeder, modest, decent hero sees justice done by facing off against the antagonist, upper lip as stiff as they come. Francis tried to satisfy his fans with one book a year throughout his career, sort of a Stephen King of the equestrian set, and earned the title of grand master from the Mystery Writers of America. Prior to his writing career, he was the champion jockey of the 1953-54 British racing season, then was retained as “jockey” to the frisky queen mum for four seasons.

Monty had him 2006-2008 before he started spending all his time saving the American auto industry, and Michelle D dropped him after 2008.

Show No Marcy

Caroline McWilliams, best remembered as Benson’s first secretary on Benson has died of multiple myeloma at the age of 64. Her role on Benson was a bit of a bender of the time-space-sitcom continuum, as she had previously played Sally on Soap, the show that spun off Benson. Confused? You won’t be, after this week’s episode of the GHI.

Death of a Fashion Queen

(Can I get a whoop whoop for Monty?)
Alexander McQueen, who thought that Bjork and Lady Gaga dress perfectly normally, has committed suicide at the age of 40. Working in fashion on Savile Row, his clients included Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Charles, in whose jacket lining he once sewed “I am a cunt.” Once he struck out on his own, he introduced the low-rise jeans, which he called “bumsters,” while staging bizarre runway shows, recreating a shipwreck, a human chess game, having car-robots spraying paint over white cotton dresses, and having a double amputee model stride down the catwalk on intricately carved wooden legs. Before he could afford such lavish displays, he went for cheap shocks, with models who appeared to have been physically abused, institutionalized or cosmetically altered, or who simply walked the runway giving the audience the middle finger while McQueen insulted and, on one occasion, mooned the audience. Apparently, at some point he also designed clothing.

Charlie Wilson’s Worms

Or
Charlie Wilson’s Gone
(Props to Kirsti)

Or
Good-Time Charlie's Got the Blues
(More Merit for Miss Kirsti)

Or
Is Heaven as Great as Texas?
(Additional accolades for Kirsti)

Or
Charlie Wilson's Warm... But Not For Long
(Kudos for Mark)
Charlie Wilson, honorary mujahedeen and Taliban bag man, had died of a heart attack at the age of 76. The 12-term Texas congressman’s playboy ways and covert funding of the Afghan insurgency against the Soviets were actually toned down to make the biopic Charlie Wilson’s War more believable. From his seats on the House Appropriations Committee and its Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Wilson funneled more than $5 billion through humanitarian and military channels to the Afghans, plus Tennessee mules to replace those killed by the Soviets and $12,000 worth of Radio Shack walkie talkies after the CIA wouldn’t send field radios for fear of having transmissions intercepted by the Soviets. Where the humanitarian/patriotic streak came from is anyone’s guess, as he was generally known as Good Time Charlie, the hard-drinking, coke-snorting, drunk-driving, campaign fund-skimming party animal with girlfriends he called Snowflake, Tornado and Firecracker.

Ultimate Frisbee

Walter Fredrick Morrison, who helped decorate the roofs of half the homes in America, has died of cancer at the age of 90. At the age of 17 he flipped a popcorn tin into the air, and later recreated the idea in plastic, creating the Pluto Platter and depriving Korean children, Maxwell Q. Klinger, his Uncle Abdul and Charles Emerson Winchester III, out of untold millions. When Wham-O bought the rights in 1957, they rechristened it the Frisbee, a name Morrison hated, until royalties compounding into the millions softened his stance.

Emphatically not running for re-election

(Props to Mark)
John Murtha, master earmarker, has died following complications of gallbladder surgery at the age of 77. The Congressman used his clout as the ranking Democrat on the Appropriation Committee’s military subcommittee to secure $100 million in federal funding a year for his backwater southwestern Pennsylvania district full of, in his words, “redneck” “racist” constituents. Murtha was the first vet from Vietnam, where he earned a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry, to be elected to Congress and ended up as the longest-serving congressman in Pennsylvania history. Murtha was not shy about throwing his weight around, telling reluctant reps: “Let me tell you the facts of life: If you vote against this bill, you won’t have any input at all the next time.” Murtha nearly got nabbed in the Abscam sting in the early 1980s when an undercover FBI agent posing as a sheikh offered him a bribe, which he declined, but said he was willing to talk later. Twenty years later, little had changed, and he was annually rated one of the most corrupt members of Congress (no mean feat, that) for his backroom dealing. So in his first campaign slogan for Congress,” One Honest Man Is Enough,” he apparently was not referring to himself.

Like the Sands of the Hourglass...

(Props to Monty)

Or
No Island this Time
Frances Reid, lead figure in housewives’ stories for 4 decades, has died at the age of 95. As Alice Horton, she was the last original cast member from Days of Our Lives, appearing in the first episode on November 8, 1965. Course, with her membership in the mob-run Screen Actors Guild, this has been a no-show job since 2007. A standout citizen of Salem, Alice was the calm center with tasty doughnuts around which her 5 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and friends of all of the above rotated calamitously. Along the way her son, who was presumed killed in Vietnam but actually had amnesia and extensive reconstructive surgery almost hooks up with his sister, who then becomes a nun, she was almost killed by a robot that dispensed medication, unlike the robots who kill old people to take their medications, she helped a wrongly arrested man escape from jail by drugging his jailers with doughnuts. In another episode, she was believed to have been murdered by the Salem Slasher, only to be resurrected on a remote island designed to look exactly like Salem. Reid also appeared in the 1966 John Frankenheimer thriller Seconds as the wife of banker Arthur Hamilton, who is drugged by the Company, given reconstructive surgery and forced to live out a new life as Rock Hudson, so she was well prepared for life in Salem.