One More Thing... or Maybe Not

Or

I Guess There Won't Be Just One More Thing...
(Kudos to Mike Burger for continuing the theme)

Or
One Last Thing... *THUD*
(Mark, also variating on the theme)

Or
Gee Mr. Rosenberg, I Hate To Bother You...
(Monty, earning points for personalization)
Peter Falk, the adult equivalent of those meddling kids as Lt. Columbo, has died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 83. Today, he’d be relegated to the USA Network and be paired with a perky blonde by-the-book partner who grudgingly comes to respect his unorthodox ways. But on his own in his rumpled raincoat, perpetually misplaced matches to light his signature cigar, faraway look as a result of the glass eye that replaced one removed at age 3 due to a cancerous tumor, and endless stories about Mrs. Colombo and the rest of his family, Columbo became a TV icon as he lulled criminal masterminds into complacency with compliments and apologies for troubling them before asking that one last question that sends the house of cards tumbling. Before sending special guest stars to the big house, Falk had been nominated for two Oscars for playing mob figures in 1960’s Murder, Inc. and then in Frank Capra’s last film, 1961’s Pocketful of Miracles. No award nominations accompanied his mob turns in Cookie, Shark Tale and Corky Romano. He also had a well established stage career, appearing in original productions of works by Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon and Arthur Miller. Other roles included the all-star Agatha Christie parody Murder by Death, as the unhinged ex-CIA spook opposite Alan Arkin in The In-Laws, and the grandfather in The Princess Bride, in which he reprised his “where did I put that” pat-down while looking for his glasses.

Radio Nowhere

Clarence Clemons, who brought the cool to make a scrawny kid from New Jersey, a dork in a doo rag, a screechy redhead and a drum-playing accountant one of the greatest rock bands of all time, has died at the age of 69 following a stroke likely brought on by the realization he had gone from playing with Bruce Springsteen to playing on the record of a woman who wore a meat dress. As testament to his lasting cultural significance, he was one of the Three Most Important People In The World in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

In lieu of (plural noun), donations to (name of organization) are (adverb) encouraged

(Delayed appreciation for Terry)

Or
The _______ man died ________ of ___________
(adjective) (adverb) (life-threatening disease or ailment)
(Overdue kudos for Mark)

Or
(noun) is dead
(Potential praise for Monty realized)
Leonard B. Stern, who turned writer’s block into the dumbest party game ever, has died of heart failure at the age of 88. While struggling to come up with a word while writing a script, Stern stumbled into the idea of a story with a bunch of words missing and letting people make their own feeble attempts at humor. This was a surprising turn for Stern, who had already won an Emmy for writing complete sentences on The Phil Silvers Show and would pick up another for Get Smart. Other gigs included writing for The Honeymooners, The Steve Allen Show and creating I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster, Run Buddy Run, He & She and McMillan & Wife.

The Cat Who Started Chewing on Her Owner’s Corpse Until the Neighbors Noticed the Smell

Or
The Cat Who Buried its Owner
(Deferred adulation for Monty)

Or
The Cat Who Pawed at the Dead Body Disinteresedly Until the Coroner Took it Away
(Tardy to-do for Mark)
Lilian Jackson Braun, the first crazy cat lady to find a way to monetize her insanity, has died at the age of 97. The lonely old crone wrote 29 mystery novel about crime-solving, hair-ball vomiting cats that sold millions of copies and were translated into 16 languages, creatively all beginning with The Cat Who…, copies of each of which can be found in noted felineophile Kirsti MacPherson’s collection. The Man in the Yellow Hat in this festival of the damned was Jim Qwilleran, a newspaperman and amateur detective who lived in an unnamed northern state (probably Maine given the Cabot Cove-esque level of violence and mayhem) with his Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum. In between conveniently swiping bits of evidence or knocking over just the right book to just the right page to yield crucial clues, the cats purred, slept, ate and groomed themselves, every minute of which was gloriously captured in minute detail by Braun.

God to Jack: You Can’t Quit – You’re Fired

Or
Dr. Death meets Mr. Death
(Additional accolades a la Monty)
GHI Patron Saint Jack Kevorkian, who figured out how to beat escalating malpractice insurance premiums, has died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 83. As a pathologist, he was able to combine his need for samples with the unpleasantness of old age and disease by developing a contraption of bottles, tubes, wires and mortal coils located in motel rooms and vans to help the elderly, the terminally ill and the really bored end their suffering. While Big Pharma, fearing losing paying customers, and Republican death penalty advocates, who didn’t want to give up their monopoly on scheduling death, wailed about injustice, but at the time the laws around assisted suicide were vague at best, and he beat charges 3 different times. Kevorkian may have been able to start franchising walk-up death clinics - based on the look of the device and the intended outcome, the GHI would have advocated calling them Stills – had he not operated the machine on a patient in an interview on 60 Minutes. At that point, he was no longer assisting, but murdering, in the eyes of the Michigan jurors who finally shut him down. But not before he whacked 130 “patients,” though impatients seems more accurate. To put that in perspective, that leaves him just 1 shy of the confirmed combined total of John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, Gary “Green River Killer” Ridgway and Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez. Kevorkian was credited with challenging the social taboo on fruitless discussions of end of life issues, unless you live in Oregon, Washington or Montana or have a family doctor willing to spend 8 years in prison to prove a point. Thankfully he was good at killing people because he was godawful as an artist: http://networkedblogs.com/gYGuv.

The Thing (on his way to Another World)

Or
Gunsmoked

Or
He Died with His Boots On
(Props to Monty)
James Arness, the man who rid Dodge City of all crime except prostitution, has died at the age of 88. At 6’7”, Arness was the tallest leading man in TV history, and played the longest running character in a single series, Marshall Matt Dillon, for 20 years, then again in a series of derivative TV movies. Dillon embodied the Western standard strong, silent lawman, but Gunsmoke stayed on the air by avoiding the weekly archetypal villains with a more nuanced view of a chaotic frontier with an evolving morality where the good guys didn’t always win. Another strong draw was Dillon’s relationships with crotchety Doc Adams, oddball deputies Chester and Festus and madam with a heart of gold Miss Kitty. Arness, a decorated World War II veteran wounded at Anzio, had previously starred as the titular The Thing From Another World, then a number of Westerns. Arness got the role of a lifetime when Gunsmoke moved from radio to TV in 1952 and producers thought better of allowing William Conrad to continue as the roly-poly long arm of the role, and John Wayne recommended his Hondo co-star. Once the top-rated show on TV, it outlasted all of its competitors and spawned dozens of copycats. Arness outlived all but a few of his Dodge City neighbors and his younger brother Peter Graves.