Shamir. Schlimazel. Undertaker. Necessitated.

Yitzhak Shamir, whose idea of a two-state solution was for Israelis to occupy Israel while all Palestinians would be found 6 feet below it, has died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 96. The former militia member served as Israel’s prime minister from 1983–84 and from 1986–1992, longer than anyone except David Ben Guiron. A native of Poland whose family died in the Holocaust, Shamir became a bulwark of the right wing that came to prominence in the 1970s led by Menachem Begin. To consolidate military gains, Shamir promoted expansive settlement of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ironically, Shamir himself started his career as a terrorist in the eyes of the British military occupying Palestine, as he was sending his underground Jewish fighters to kill the British occupiers. He later put his assassination skills to good use with the Mossad, directing the deaths of several Nazi scientists who were developing Egypt’s missle program. His career as a politician was largely accidental – his political approach was less flowery oratory and more stoicism while waiting for opponents to say something stupid that hurt them. His approach was strength, patience and cunning – never compromise. Well almost never. During the Persian Gulf, he held back from responding to Iraqi Scud missiles falling on Tel Aviv to earn more promises of financial aid from the United States, strengthening the alliance that never ever comes back to bite us in the ass.

Buzz Off

Norman Sas, who set the bar very, very low for electronic sports games, has died at the age of 87. In 1948, Sas invented Electric Football, a low-tech migraine-inducing game that captured the imagination of a nation hamstrung by Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Yo-yos, Hula Hoops and Pogo Sticks. Sas’ game consisted of a metal field with 2 teams of 11 players. Hand the ball to one of them. Flip the motor that starts the field vibrating with the mellifluousness of a fluorescent bulb with a faulty ballast. Thrill as the players move about the field with no discernible purpose, evoking the gridiron performance of the 2008 Detroit Lions. Delight as half of them fall over immediately while the rest spin in position, like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. Quite possibly the worst game ever invented, Electric Football took off among an unsuspecting populace in 1967 after signing a licensing agreement with the NFL, Pete Rozelle’s greatest regret as commissioner after playing the weekend after John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Body Baggataway

Chris Sanderson, Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Famer, has died of brain cancer at the age of 38. After leading the University of Virginia to two Final Fours, Sanderson served as a reserve goalie and later coach for the Philadelphia Wings, the Tampa Bay Storm of the National Lacrosse League. Sanderson is best known as the goaltender for the Canadian National Team in 4 international competitions, earning honors as top netminder 3 times, including the 2006 tournament where the feisty northerners upset the United States for their first world title in 28 years. His last appearance was at the 2010 Federation of International Lacrosse World Championships - 18 months after he was diagnosed with glioblastoma and given 1 year to live. Stopping his chemotherapy to allow him to recover in time to play in Manchester, his miraculous recovery was a rallying point for the hosers as they captured the silver medal.

My Two Sons

(Props to Monty)
Don Grady, the only big brother in the nation who didn’t make his younger brothers taste their own elbows after an atomic wedgie, has died at the age of 68 from complications from cancer. Grady is best remembered as Robbie, the unconscionably decent middle boy on My Three Sons, helping younger brother Chip navigate the bizarre world of the Douglas clan where oldest brother Mike made like Chuck Cunningham after 5 seasons, creepy old men wandered interchangeably in and out of a household full of young boys, a goofy looking kid got dragged into the nightmare with a dubious “adoption” and all the while dad is too busy on top secret government work to notice.

I Won’t Have What She’s Having

(Props to Terry)

Or

Lifeless on the Lower East Side

Nora Ephron, purveyor of sentimental twaddle, has died of leukemia at the age of 71. A brilliant essayist, Ephron turned to the silver screen, earning an Oscar nomination for original screenplay for Silkwood and being cruelly denied for the same for My Blue Heaven. She even made the rom-com tolerable with When Harry Met Sally… and the most memorable diner scene ever. Ephron then gave all that up to write and direct Sleepless in Seattle, a shameless rip-off of An Affair to Remember, which wasn’t that good to begin with, brought Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan back together again for the even worse You’ve Got Mail, with the John Travolta as angel mess Michael for bad measure. She then shoveled mud on the grave of Julia Child, not to mention Amy Adams’ career, with Julie and Julia. Ephron’s second marriage was to Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame; it ended in divorce after his affair with a British politician. She used the marriage and affair as grist for her quill in the screenplay for Heartburn, where she referred to a man who “would have sex with a Venetian blind.” Bernstein threatened to sue, but as a journalist, he was well aware that the truth is absolute defense against libel. She died before she could malign her third husband, crime writer Nicholas Pileggi, but she did turn his Wiseguy into the aforementioned classic My Blue Heaven, the Dr. Strangelove to his Fail Safe.

He Got So Lonesome, He Got So Lonesome, He Did Die

Lonesome George, the last known Ecuadorian Pinta Island tortoise, has died at an age well in excess of 100 years. Found living a peaceful existence in the wild, the scientists who found him in 1971 decided to put an end to that and relocated him to the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos Islands. George proved to be either infertile, extremely particular, gay or repulsed by the hideous female turtles of closely related subspecies as more than 30 years of attempts to propagate the genetic line proved fruitless.

Neiman Marked Off

LeRoy Neiman, who overcame severe myopia and a complete lack of artistic ability to become one of the 20th century’s most well known painters, has died at the age of 91. Best known for his blurry, indecipherable images, mostly of sporting events and personalities, or iguanas playing Canasta – who can tell?, Neiman got his big break in a chance encounter with Hugh Hefner in the 1950s, and provided illustrations for Playboy for more than 50 years, including creating the Femlin character for the Party Jokes page.

Can't We All Just Get an Autopsy?

(Props to Monty)

Or

Death Beats Rodney King

(More Monty)

Or

A Pool of Jurors Found for Him. Unfortunately, He Found the Pool.

(Additional accolades for Monty)
Rodney King, who found the hard way that not all LA cops are Frank Gannons and Joe Fridays, was found at the bottom of a pool at the age of 47. On March 3, 1991, King was driving erratically with a blood alcohol of 0.19, twice the legal limit, when he decided not to pull over, fearing his drunken state would violate his parole, instead opting to leave the freeway and drive through residential neighborhoods at up to 80 mph. When he was finally pulled over, he resisted, throwing two officers off his back and hitting another in the chest. He was shown the folly of his ways by 7 well-meaning members of the LAPD, their batons and a taser. Footage of the beating went viral, back when that meant being shown ad nauseum on CNN and pundits gave the LAPD the same treatment they had given Mr. King. Four officers were eventually tried for excessive force, where a jury of their peers, tired of molly-coddling drunk drivers, acquitted 3 and were hung on the 4th. The citizenry of Los Angeles reacted with typical aplomb: rioting, arson, assault and looting to defend King’s honor resulted in 53 deaths, more than 2,000 injuries, 7,000 fires and $1 billion in financial losses.

Turned Estate’s Evidence

Or

Groundfillas

(Props to Don)
Henry Hill, Jr., who managed to buy off Boston College basketball, has died at the age of 69. An associate of the Lucchese crime family, Hill dropped more dimes than an epileptic cashier when he got pinched for drug trafficking in 1980. In his case, snitches got riches, as his story was turned into the book Wiseguy by Nick Pileggi, which begat Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s excuse to abuse Joe Pesci again. In addition to the stuff covered in the movie, Hill orchestrated a point shaving scheme by paying the sanctimonious punks from Chestnut Hill Community College to keep their scoring down to avoid beating the spread in a bunch of games in the 1978-1979 season. Having traded Omerta for Omaha, Hill let the Witness Protection Program take him on the worst Showcase Showdown ever, following Nebraska with Independence, Kentucky; Redmond, Washington; and Seattle, Washington. After repeatedly getting arrested while in witness protection, Hill was actually expelled from the program, but apparently la Cosa Nostra thought having been played by Ray Liotta was punishment enough and he was allowed to live the rest of his life like a schnook.

With A Name Like Drucker, He Must Be Dead

Frank Cady, best remembered for his uncredited role in D.O.A., has died at the age of 96. Generally typecast as a Midwestern good guy small town shopkeep, clerk or druggist, Cady kept up a steady schedule of minor movie and TV roles, with the occasional departure, like as a seedy hood questioned in a cop’s murder in the noir classic He Walked By Night. He scored his big break as Hooterville’s general store owner, postmaster, editor and publisher of the Hooterville World-Guardian, constable, justice of the peace, superintendent of schools, and banker Sam Drucker, making more than 300 combined appearances in Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies. His good fortune evaporated in 1971 when, in an attempt to shed CBS’ image as the network for hicks and geezers, head of programming Fred Silverman canceled every program that had a tree in it. His other most notable was the town drunk in the episode of The Danny Thomas Show where Danny blows a stop sign and is pulled over by a small-town sheriff in what was the unofficial pilot for The Andy Griffith Show. He made two more appearances in Andy Taylor’s jail cell, but Hal Smith ended up getting the permanent gig as Mayberry’s resident drunk, Otis.



Cady is the second resident of Hooterville to die in the last 7 months, following Sid Melton (Alf Monroe). The few survivors include Eb (Tom Lester), Ralph Monroe (Mary Grace Canfield), Dr. Janet Craig (June Lockhart) and several of the Bradley sisters.

Fahrenheit 0

(or the more accurate, but less lyrical, Fahrenheit Room Temperature, from Monty)

Or

Something Lifeless This Way Comes

(Props to Monty)

Or

Sing the Body Stagnant

Or

Farewell Summer… and Fall and Winter and Spring…

Or

Ray Brad-buried

Ray Bradbury, who spent a lifetime imagining fantastic worlds where crazy old men didn’t get hypocritically pissy when others expropriated titles decades after they had done the same thing, is to the dust returned at the age of 91. Over his nearly 70-year career, many of his short stories and novels envisioned the mess the human race would make of the world. He presaged our current disdain for literacy in Fahrenheit 451 (which he typed on a typewriter rented at the UCLA library for 10 cents a half hour, costing him $9.80), pollution and immigration crises in The Martian Chronicles and the bizarre obsession with tattooing in The Illustrated Man. In pursuing a wider audience than the pulp magazines he had read as a child, Bradbury eschewed dense technological jargon and pesky facts, such as by making the air on Mars breathable. His interest in the genre and in writing were evident when he wrote a sequel to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Warlord of Mars at the age of 12. Disney had optioned the book, but instead decided to just dig a hole and throw $150 million in it. In 2005, Bradbury objected to the similarity in titles of Michael Moore’s traitorous polemic Fahrenheit 9/11, something Bradbury never would have done to the writers he admired, like William Shakespeare (Something Wicked This Way Comes), Walt Whitman (I Sing the Body Electric!) or William Butler Yeats (Golden Apples of the Sun).

Good Night, Mrs. Landingham

Kathryn Joosten, who made a living out of playing doomed old ladies, has died of lung cancer at the age of 72. Her passing this time did not receive the fanfare of Mrs. Landingham’s, which led California Assemblyman Kevin Shelley to adjourn the Assembly in honor of the passing of “a great American,” further establishing that California politicians do not inhabit the really world. Her death after a year and a half of New England drollery on The West Wing was followed by an extended arc as a patient who explains to JD that everybody dies, a point apparently overlooked in his medical training. Then she took up residence on Wisteria Lane when her planned one-off appearance as Karen McCluskey turned into Septuagenarians Say the Darnedest Things, with her winning two Emmys while doing things like asking Nicollette Sheridan “We going for drinks or mammograms?” She died in the Desperate Housewives finale, 3 weeks before her own finale. Other notable entries on the resume: Mega Python vs. Gatoroid and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

Survey Says XXX

Or

100 People Surveyed, Top 5 Answers on the Board... Name A Pallbearer at Richard Dawson's Funeral

(Props to Terry Walsh)
Richard Dawson, who made Nazis and sexual assault funny, has died of esophageal cancer at the age of 79. Dawson starred as Corporal Newkirk, the pickpocket con artist among Hogan’s Heroes, whose ease at overcoming Nazi plans made one wonder how World War II lasted longer than a holiday weekend. Next up was his martini-dry counterbalance to the myriad manic antics on Match Game, which set up his hosting duties on Family Feud, where he helped comfort housewives while cuckolding husbands, winning a daytime Emmy, despite rankling his corporate overlords. He was a bit darker as Damon Killian, host and executive producer of The Running Man, until he gets canceled by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Ben Richards.