It Was Times to Go

(Monty)

Or

All the Obits that Are Fit to Print

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, former publisher of the New York Times, is once again leading the way for the paper as it lurches toward the inexorable demise of print, succumbing to a long illness at the age of 86. Sulzberger managed to build both sides of the empire, greatly enhancing the profitability of the paper while maintaining and enhancing its editorial independence. The New York Times won 31 Pulitzer Prizes during his three-decade reign, while more importantly winning the New York Times vs. Sullivan libel case, which shielded the press from libel lawsuits by public officials unless they could prove actual malice. The former WWII Marine also personally authorized publishing the Pentagon Papers, a series of classified reports on the Vietnam War, a decision upheld by The Supreme Court in another landmark First Amendment case. By the time he left the paper in 1992, annual revenues of the Times' corporate parent had risen to $1.7 billion.

Pit Stop

Chris Economaki, who lived by the credo those who can’t do and can’t teach, write about it, has died at the age of 91. He was known as "The Dean of American Motorsports" for his more than 50 years sniffing exhaust in the pits, infields and garages of some of America’s finest asphalt ovals. He was hooked from his childhood, but his one and only time behind the wheel was as a kid in a midget car at a cinder track. He was so terrified he never again donned the flame-retardant track suit, opting instead for ABC’s Century 21-style blazers. He became the editor of the National Speed Sport News in 1950 and was still writing his "The Editor’s Notebook" column more than 50 years later, and was so well regarded as a historian that he wrote the auto racing chapter for the Encarta encyclopedia and authored an autobiography called Let 'Em All Go: The Story of Auto Racing by the Man Who Was There. Among his many honors was induction into the Oceanside Rotary Club of Daytona Beach Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame.

Higher Deaducation

(Props to Greg, who informed me of this passing, fittingly enough while I was on Long Island, point of origin of so many Boston University scholars)

Or
You Kant Take It With You
John Silber, scourge of the intellectually unrigorous, has died of kidney failure at the age of 86. He led the transformation of Boston University from a commuter school almost $9 million in debt in 1971 when he arrived to a top academic research institution and the finest college in America’s finest college town* in his 25 years as President, 7 as Chancellor and 9 as President Emeritus. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a huge prick about it. In a 1977 piece, Nora Ephron called him “the meanest SOB on campus.” The faculty twice voted for his removal by wide majorities. He toyed with the idea of taking out life insurance policies on students as a potential revenue source. He also attracted Nobel laureates Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow and Derek Walcott and future US poet laureate Robert Pinsky to the BU faculty. In 1990, he went on sabbatical to try to win the governorship of Massachusetts. With his blunt assessments of the state’s problems, which came to be known as “Silber Shockers,” he held a 9-point lead a week before Election Day when he exploded at an interviewer who asked a stupid, if innocuous question during what should have been a puff profile. He ended up losing to Bill Weld by 4%. He returned to the university as pleasant, uncompromising and well compensated as ever.

* Shut up, Harvard and MIT are in Cambridge 

No Longer Twitching

(Accolades to Monty)
Herbert Lom, the schlimazel to Peter Sellers’ schlemiel in The Pink Panther movies, has died at the age of 95. He originated the role of the King of Siam in the London production of The King and I, played Captain Nemo in Mysterious Island and reprised the role of The Phantom of the Opera in the Hammer Films remake. Like most lower level distinguished character actors, he had to pay some bills in low-budget horror films, most notably Mark of the Devil, notorious for its graphic torture scenes which led cinemas to hand out sick bags to patrons at screenings of the film. He also was Johnny’s neurologist in The Dead Zone, kidnapped Sharon Stone’s dad in King Solomon's Mines, and chased Christopher Lee as Van Helsing in Dracula.

Wrinkled, Out of Time

Eleanor Engle, the first woman to sign a professional baseball contract, has died at the age of 86. Signed in 1952 by the Harrisburg Senators – while the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of A League of Their Own fame was still extant – her contract was immediately voided by minor league president George Trautman and Major League Baseball commissioner Ford Frick, who apparently preferred being on the wrong side of history. Although she was a high school softball standout, the signing by the struggling Senators was strictly a PR ploy. Still, the Senators manager and teammates rejected her, and what passed for the tabloid press of the day stalked her outside church and malt shops to score the shameless hussy’s story.

Tomb River

Or

Can't Get Used to Losing You

(Props to Monty)

Or

The Days of Wine and Decomposes

(More merit for Monty)

Or

Somewhere, Nelson Muntz Needs a Hug

Perry Como, who provided the soundtrack for Fletch’s colonoscopy, has died from complications of cancer at the age of 84 at his home in Branson, Missouri – fitting given that town’s role as the elephant’s graveyard of show business careers. The low-threat crooner came into his own in the 1960s, with his own variety series, and the only things more common then Perry Como at Christmas were itchy sweaters from grandma and bitter alcohol-fueled recriminations, despite the fact that his Happy Holidays, with its scat mindset, admonitions that “He'll be coming down the chimney, down/Coming down the chimney, down” and reminder that “It's the holiday season/With the whoop-de-do and hickory dock/And don't forget to hang up your sock,” may be the worst Christmas song ever.

Coffin Corner

Steve Sabol, who gave ESPN something to air between midget wrestling and funny car racing, has died of brain cancer at the age of 69. Sabol was a founding member of NFL Films, starting as a cameraman when his father Ed scored the filming rights for the 1962 NFL Championship. In the days when ESPN was struggling to fill their 24 hours, NFL Films became their production company, using the Voice of God, John Facenda, dramatic music, slo-mo replays, and multi-angle camera shots to make a 3-0 Chargers-Lions snoozefest in 1975 seem as climactic as D-Day – a perfect partner for the worldwide leader in prefabricated sporting events. Sabol won 35 Emmys for writing, cinematography, editing, directing and producing – more categories than anyone in history – of NFL Films’ total of 107, and helped launch the NFL Network.

Decked

Now Lance LeGault will really never catch the A-Team, having died at the age of 77. Best remembered as Colonel Roderick Decker, the Wile E. Coyote to the A-Team’s Road Runner, LeGault employed his voice “4 octaves lower than God’s” to find steady work as a serial heavy on action shows of the late 1970s and 1980s. He started as a stunt double for Elvis in Girls! Girls! Girls!, and the King must have taken a shine, as LeGault scored an uncredited role in that movie, then returned for Kissin’ Cousins and Viva Las Vegas, played a tambourine in Elvis’ 1968 comeback special, and led thousands of fans around Graceland as the voice of the self-guided tour. As Al Halliday on Dallas, LeGault also sold J.R. a tanker that he needed to fulfill a contract, but that crashed into a Westar tanker, causing a massive spill, which Cliff Barnes claimed was solely the responsibility of Ewing Oil for its unseaworthy tanker despite having evidence that the collision was simply an accident.

Art Modell - Gone to Hell. Man he screwed the NFL.

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Moved the Ravens: Everwhore

Or

Art Modell. Gone to hell? Will he bring the NFL?

(Props to Mark)
The Dog Pound has a new place to take a dump. Art Modell, who showed LeBron James, Ernest Byner, John Elway and Michael Jordan what it really means to tear out a city’s sports heart and show it to them while it’s still beating, has died at the age of 87. One of the game’s visionary owners, Modell was instrumental in expanding the NFL’s presence in television and convinced Dick Ebersol that Monday night was a great night for football. Then in 1995, after nearly a half-century of Browns football in Cleveland including more than 30 years under his ownership, Modell decided he wasn’t getting spit at enough and moved the Browns from the Mistake by the Lake to the City that Bleeds. In the process, he displaced a successful and popular CFL franchise, rekindled memories of the Baltimore Colts’ flight to Indianapolis, ignored his own history as a Brooklyn Dodger fan, broke repeated promises that he would not move the team and pretty much derailed any chance he had for induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Baltimore Ravens plan a moment of silence before their first game of the season this weekend. The Cleveland Browns plan a 10-minute standing ovation. Interment will be in Baltimore, with the body being relocated to Los Angeles in the offseason.

Iced Coffey

Michael Clarke Duncan, bodyguard turned actor, has died of complications from a heart attack at 54 rather than spend another minute engaged to Omarosa. The Chicago native was one of the first 100 fans on the field during the Disco Demolition Night riot of 1979, sliding into third base and stealing a bat from a dugout. Before his career took off, he dug ditches, bounced, and was a stripper with the stage name Black Caesar. He was also a fairly ineffective bodyguard as The Notoroious B.I.G. was killed on his watch. His big break was as Bear in Armageddon, which helped him land The Green Mile role of John Coffey, the healing manchild, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. He was a treacherous, but smiling, assassin in The Whole Nine Yards; like everyone else, wanted to kill Mark Wahlberg in Planet of the Apes; threw Ben Affleck around in Daredevil; and was the only black man in NASCAR in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Waning Moon

Or

Looner Eclipse

(Props to Don)

Or

Caught Dead Between the Moon and New York City

(Kudos to Phil)

Or

Moon River Styx

(Additional accolades for Phil)
Mass marrying Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who showed that North Korea’s sole export is narcissists with a messiah complex and that whack job religions are not the sole provenance of Tom Cruise, has died of pneumonia at the age of 92. Moon founded his Unification Church in South Korea in 1954, but really hit its stride with thousands of fresh faced simpletons annoying airport passersby with offers of flowers in the late 1970s, taking advantage of increased American interest in bogus religions. He also moved his primary holdings to the United States in search of a tax haven. When Joel Osteen was still stealing lunch money while other kids bowed their heads to say grace, Rev. Moon was inserting his financial talons into non-profits, then planting his stooges in key leadership positions, enabling him to launder his dubious revenue streams. His business/religious interests included construction, hospitals, schools, ski resorts, newspapers, auto parts, pharmaceuticals, beverages, a professional soccer team, commercial fishing, jewelry, fur products, construction and real estate. He took over the University of Bridgeport, where students were lured into cult training with the promise of scholarships. An ardent right-winger, he turned The Washington Times into a leading information source for conservatives who like a good story more than they like news. He financed Inchon, one of the worst films of all time, with Sir Laurence Olivier phoning it in like Michael Caine. To keep up his illusion of religion, Moon would officiate mass weddings of thousands of cultists seeking a slightly more unique experience than New York City Hall, thus fulfilling Jesus’ failed mission by restoring humankind to a state of perfection by producing sinless children, and by blessing couples who would produce them. Most of those couples had barely met, could speak only through interpreters and were bound to complete several years of church duty before consummating their sham marriages. Still, suck it Jesus – you never had yourself crowned “humanity’s savior” in front of astonished members of Congress at a Capitol Hill luncheon in 2004.