I Don’t Know Why You Say Yalow, I Say Goodbye

Rosalyn Yalow, who proved that a woman’s place was in the kitchen, as long as your kitchen has a radioimmunology lab, has died at the age of 89. In an era when June Cleaver was the epitome of feminine ambition, Yalow was earning the second Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to a woman as the co-discoverer of the radioimmunoassay, an extremely sensitive means to measure insulin and other hormones in the blood. The assay, which contradicted all previous thinking about the sensitivity of the immune system, enabled her to show that inability to use insulin caused diabetes and facilitated breakthroughs in early diagnosis of disorders related to thyroid dysfunction. All this despite the fact that she was, in the words of Purdue University that denied her application for graduate school: “She is from New York. She is Jewish. She is a woman.” The College of Physicians and Surgeons, now part of Columbia University, offered her a job as a secretary and promised that if she was a good girl, she could take a couple classes. She opted for a teaching assistantship at the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, instead, although an A-minus in one laboratory course confirmed for the chairman of the physics department that women could not excel at lab work.

Mrs. B. Dead

Or
Lost our Luster
Betty L. Prentis, mouthpiece for the C.G. Conn Brass Company in the most unintentionally demented promotional video ever, has died at the age of 89. Viewers of Mr. B. Natural were asked to accept the leggy Prentis, a former dancer, as the omniscient, omnipresent embodiment of the spirit of music. Kind of like Mary Martin as Peter Pan mixed with a bad LSD trip. At the time, her career had taken her to the London stage, Broadway and television, while the saga of Mr. B Natural regaling impressionable teen Buzz with tales of the magic of music, and even its impact on Buzz’s own family (You leave my father out of this!) languished in obscurity until stumbled upon by the geniuses at Best Brains, who turned it into one of the most popular shorts to get new life with Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Out of Harmon's Way

Or
No Longer Harmonizing
(Kudos to Monty)
Harmon Killebrew, who was not the model for the Major League Baseball no matter how much you romantics want it to be so and correcting the historical record by pointing that out does not make me a bad person, has died of esophageal cancer at the age of 74. The first Hall of Famer in Minnesota Twins history, Killebrew retired after the 1975 season in 5th place on the all-time HR list with 573, and only 2 non-roid raiders have passed him since. After the 1959-1960 NBA season, the Minneapolis Lakers left the great north woods for Los Angeles, fully intending on coming up with a more geographically relevant name, which left East Dakota bereft of major professional teams. The next year, the original Washington Senators relocated to challenge fishing, hunting and ice fishing as the most popular sports in the state. Helping make the case was Killebrew, a real-life Paul Bunyan scraping the farthest reaches of the American League’s ballparks, including the longest HR ever hit at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, the first ball hit over the left field roof at Tiger Stadium and, most famously, a 520-foot home run at Met Stadium marked with a specially painted chair that still hangs on what is now the site of the Mall of America, overlooking the log flume ride. He also was the only man to ever hit the ball over the 471-foot center field wall at Chattanooga’s Historic Engel Stadium.

Snapped into His LAST Slim Jim!!!

(Props to Terrence Walsh)

Or
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
Rando “Macho Man” Savage, who led the 1974 Tampa Tarpons with 9 home runs and 66 RBI, has died at the age of 58 after suffering a heart attack while driving that caused him to lose control of his car. Rather than the Jaws of Life, rescuers were able to free him from the wreck using a Slim Jim. Strutting into the ring with Technicolor cowboy hats, outlandish sunglasses that would make Italian men cringe, fringed jackets, oiled muscles and a bandana to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” Savage was perfectly cast as a wrestler who shared his nom de ring with a song by the Village People. He emerged as one of the biggest stars of the homoerotic soap opera that is professional wrestling, starting as a heel, until a feud with The Honky Tonk Man ended up with Savage’s wife/manager Miss Elizabeth begging Hulk Hogan to save Savage and he switched sides to form the Mega Powers with Hogan, but then Hogan accidentally eliminated Savage during a Royal Rumble. Jealous of Hogan, who had now taken Miss Elizabeth as his manager, Savage turned heel on Hogan, abandoning him in a tag team match against the Twin Towers and then challenging him for heavyweight and tag team titles. Other story lines, er, phases of his personal development, included a snit fit when the Ultimate Warrior wouldn’t grant him a shot at the title after his title bout with Sgt. Slaughter, before Savage and Warrior later teamed as heroes, and a romantic rekindling after Elizabeth left the audience to rescue Savage who was getting abused by Sensational Queen Sherri. Non ring roles included stretching to play wrestler Bone Saw McGraw in Spider-Man and voicing Space Ghost’s grandfather on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

A Look Up in Angora

Dolores Fuller, sharer of angora sweaters with Edward D. Wood, Jr., has died from complications of a stroke at the age of 88. Fuller was the girlfriend of the notoriously untalented cross-dressing director and saw their love story played out in the semi-autobiographical Glen or Glenda?, which tells the story of a man who tells his fiancée that he likes to wear women’s clothing. As the supportive fiancée, Fuller literally gives him the shirt off her back. She also appeared in Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster. Her association with Wood pretty much buried any chance she may have had at a film career, but she did write songs for Elvis Presley movies, including “Rock-a-Hula Baby” from Blue Hawaii, and “Do the Clam” from Girl Happy.

Seve Up

European golfer par excellence Seve Ballesteros, who chose sports less manly than his native country’s bullfighting, has died of brain cancer at the age of 54. Learning to play golf with only a 3-iron helped Ballesteros divine brilliant recoveries from horrifically bad shots into dunes, creeks, bushes and, in the 1979 British Open, a car park, yielding a birdie en route to his first major victory. Ballesteros also implemented his own affirmative action campaign to force the rest of continental Europe into the Ryder Cup, which had to that point been a US-UK/Ireland contest. Unlike Casey Martin, who challenged golf and then did nothing with his victory, Ballesteros became one of the best Ryder Cup champions, captaining the winning 1985 team and winning 4 others, the last being his stint as non-playing captain in the 1997 Cup in his native Spain, the first Ryder Cup in continental Europe. Ballesteros was the first European and at the time the youngest to win the Masters in 1980, the first of 2 wins, and won the British Open 3 times. Ballesteros also brought a charisma and flair to the game, helping to make golf the non-stop thrill ride loved the world over.

Five the Really Hard Way

Ross Hagen, star of the MST3K-ed classic Sidehackers, has died of prostate cancer, not from chili peppers burning his gut, at the age of 72. Hagen made another appearance in the MST3K realm, starring as an undercover cop in a biker gang in The Hellcats.

Perry White Meets Great Caesar’s Ghost

Jackie Cooper, who learned how to cry on screen the hard way, has died at the age of 88. Coming up as a child star in the 1930s when most children were polishing moving gears, washing the inside of engines and being used as depth finders, the abuses of the film industry were small potatoes. He was filming 27 Our Gang shorts a week, then tear-jerking dramas on weekends as the son a drunken Wallace Beery was ever at risk of losing. In the 1931 film Skippy, directed by his uncle Norman Taurog, he was supposed to cry. Unable to get him to do it, Taurog had Cooper’s dog taken off the set and “shot,” using a prop gun. Tears flowed, and the performance made Cooper the youngest Oscar nominee ever at the age of 9, as well as giving him the title for his autobiography “Please Don’t Shoot my Dog.” A wash up by the time he was a teenager, he became an Emmy-winning TV director of M*A*S*H and other shows, and made a brief comeback as Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s sputtering boss Perry White in Superman, et seq. after original choice Keenan Wynn suffered a heart attack.

Bin better

Osama bin Laden has a new appreciation for the lyrics of Toby Keith, having been killed by U.S. Navy Seals while hiding out in the backyard of trusted ally Pakistan, and don’t you always find things in the last place you think to look despite suspecting they were there all along and despite repeated assurances from said place that there is no way it could possibly be there? In the process, President Obama managed to piss off Muslims, namby pamby human rights activists, conservative Republicans, Native Americans and Pakistanis. No good deed goes unpunished.