Heaven’s Cates

Gil Cates, who directed Oscar telecasts with all the sensitivity, subtlety, nuance and emotion of a high school football coach armed with a clipboard, a stopwatch and a whistle, has been played off at the age of 77. Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s exuberantly over the top celebration after winning an Oscar for Jerry Maguire in 1996? Played off. Martin Landau basking in the adulation of the crowd as the culmination of nearly 40 years in show business with his 1995 Oscar for Ed Wood? Played off and cut to commercials as he called out, “No, no.” There are worse things than making the local news run a little late. Before keeping Hollywood stars from enjoying their 46th second of glory, Cates actually seemed to understand and appreciate actors, directing Gene Hackman and Melvyn Douglas to Academy Award nominations in I Never Sang for My Father and Joanne Woodward and Sylvia Sidney to nominations in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. Of special note for us Pooligans, he introduced the In Memoriam montage to the telecast.

Lib-ya-rated

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Final Tripoli
Colonel Moammar Quadafy, the Italian men’s sunglasses model who took over Libya, has been killed by democracy at the age of 69. Bitter over being passed over for promotion during his 42-year rule and too deranged to realize he constituted the entire promotion board, Qadhafi took his anger out on his own people, in odd ways. When student revolutionaries were hanged in a Tripoli square following a show trial held in a soccer stadium, traffic was re-routed to force cars to take in the scene and take heed. Qadafi ordered all Libyans to raise chickens to promote self-sufficiency. He left the Western calendar for one based on the birth of Mohammed, then his own birth, and renamed the months of the year. Gheddafi claimed HIV was “a peace virus, not an aggressive virus,” called the Bible a forgery, and said Israel killed President Kennedy, suggesting he may have been Islam’s answer to Pat Robertson. Qadhdafi had a cadre of bodyguards out of a Robert Palmer video, complete with camouflage fatigues, red nail polish, high-heeled sandals, and submachine guns. With a wardrobe that ranged from that of the uniform of a British admiral in a Gilbert and Sullivan production to Isaac Hayes styled muumuus, Gaddafi cut a dashing figure as he presented himself as the philosopher of the sands, receiving visitors in a sprawling white tent even when traveling internationally, which was particularly well received by New Yorkers during his visits to yell at the United Nations. After years of largely benign rantings, Qadhdhafi reached for the stars in 1986, supporting the bombing of a Berlin discothèque and following it up by financing the 1988 terrorist bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. Qadhafi’s list of BFFs included a veritable Who’s Who of the world’s reprobates, including Uganda’s Idi Amin, who took refuge in Libya after his ouster, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Zimbabwe’s Robet Mugabe, and George W. Bush, who traded the ability to torture CIA prisoners in Libya for an executive order that gave Gheddafi’s government immunity from terrorism related lawsuits and dismissed pending compensation cases in the United States. While to the end Qathafi insisted that the uprising in Libya was the work of outsiders who were wasting their time because he lived “in a place where you can’t get me - I live in the hearts of millions,” he was actually found hiding a drain pipe and was, ahem, shot in a crossfire with loyalists, and absolutely was not executed by his Libyan brothers who loved him so.
Not kicking ass or taking hyphenated names is Phil, who listed him in 2008

Na Na Na, Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye

Paul Leka, who sent more pitchers to the showers than Tony LaRussa and Sparky Anderson combined, has died at the age of 68. As a songwriter and producer, he helped develop the trippy “Green Tambourine” for the Lemon Pipers and Harry Chapin’s “fuck you, dad” song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” but his most enduring contribution is the 1969 Buddah song “Kiss Him Goodbye,” to which Leka added the 2-minute chorus to keep radio DJs from playing it instead of the A side. In 1977, Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust added it to the ballpark lexicon as a way to rally the fans when an opposing pitcher got shelled out of a game.

Dirt Napier

Charles Napier, the square-jawed character actor who provided guest growls for The Incredible Hulk, has died at the age of 75. Best remembered as Tucker McElroy, lead singer of the Good Ol’ Boys in The Blues Brothers (who for some reason still expected to go on despite showing up after Bob’s Country Bunker was closed in an oft-overlooked plothole), Napier also got bludgeoned by Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, played the sympathetic judge in Philadelphia, screwed Rambo in First Blood Part II, and warned townspeople about Ron Jeremy’s runaway phallus in One-Eyed Monster. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was a fixture on adventure shows, harassing Jim Rockford, Michael Knight, and the Duke boys, chasing The A-Team, and was Hammer, archnemesis to B. J. and the Bear. He was also the brilliantly insane station owner Duke Phillips on The Critic

Just Died, Baby

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A commitment to excellence? Those words you keep using, I do not think they mean what you think they mean
Al Davis, the man who showed that sports ownership should come with term limits, has died at the age of 82. He will be buried in Oakland, dug up and re-buried in Los Angeles, potential new graves will be dug in Fresno, Burbank and Inglewood, before he is ultimately reburied in the same hole in Oakland after some sprucing up that will inconvenience mourners coming to adjacent graves. The Cryptkeeper lookalike with the librarian glasses was hired to be the coach and general manager of the Oakland Raiders in 1963, and stayed too long at the party by about 30 years. He served as the commissioner of the American Football League in 1966, and steered the league in its full-on assault on the NFL, starting with a bidding war for players that forced the merger in 1970. He returned to populate the Raiders with sociopaths, reprobates and lunatics, instilling the team with the outlaw image it has carefully cultivated long after it only applies to the team’s deranged fan base. In 1982, he sued the NFL to force it to allow him to move to Los Angeles; he later sued again, accusing the league of hindering his efforts to build a new stadium in Los Angeles. In 1995, seeking to find a relevance his team had lost on the field, he moved back to Oakland, and sued the NFL again out of habit. Although the Raiders had the best record in professional sports from 1963 to 1985, more recently Davis’ decisions were along the lines of drafting JaMarcus Russell first overall to see him out of the NFL just 3 years later and hiring Lane Kiffin, ripping him for a year and a half, then firing him after 20 games.

Taking a Dirt App

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iDied

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America Suffers Another Jobs Loss

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In Serious Need of a Reboot
Steve Jobs, who showed that a bastard college drop-out who got fired by the company he founded could ruin the way humans interact, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Coming from a broken home, Jobs had little appreciation for outdated notions of talking to family and friends. Instead of stories of singalongs and car games from family vacations, future generations can ask “Remember that time we sat silently in the back seat until our batteries died?” Instead of lively conversations at dinner with friends, a cluster of people tap feverishly at screens to chat with people who aren’t there. Instead of enjoying music as complete albums, they can buy individual songs while running the risk of being surgically altered to share a common gastrointestinal tract with two other people that is then downloaded to a tablet as a Human CentiPad. Instead of actually experiencing events, people can’t wait to text or tweet about them. But at least they are doing all this on sleek, fancy devices that they didn’t know they needed until Jobs told them they did.