Whipped

(Kudos to Monty)

 

Or

He is Not Man, He is Dead

Alan Myers, the third and most well-known drummer from Devo, has died of stomach cancer at 58. Somehow deciding that a decade in Devo was not creatively fulfilling, he recorded an electronic percussion album with Babooshka, played drums with the Asian-themed pop band Jean Paul Yamamoto, and played shows in art galleries with Skyline Electric, with occasional live gigs with Swahili Blonde. Apparently these are actual things.

Sit Shiva Ubu, Sit Shiva

Gary David Goldberg, who made a Canadian garden gnome one of the biggest TV stars of the 1980s, has died of brain cancer at the age of 68. Goldberg’s TV career began as Scooterman, lead character of an Israeli language teaching show for children. After stints as a writer on The Bob Newhart Show, The Tony Randall Show, and Lou Grant, he started his own company Ubu productions, named for the good dog he praised at the end of every episode. Ubu produced the Michael J. Fox vechicles Family Ties, Spin City and added to the many motherhoods of Marion Ross by casting her as the matriarch of Brooklyn Bridge.

Stopped Believing

Or

Don't Stop Bereaving

(Props to Phil)

Or

Whacked

(Kudos to Monty)
James Gandolfini, best remembered as the mayor of New York City in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, has died at the age of 51. He had reportedly sat down to dinner, then suddenly things cut to black. In addition to playing New Jersey’s most successful waste disposal engineer, winning three Emmys, three SAGs and two Golden Globes as whipped mama’s boy Tony Soprano, he played the chick-smacking Mob goon Virgil in True Romance, impetuous Carol in Where the Wild Things Are, and paper lion Col. Winter, who shoots Robert Redford in the back in the Last Castle.

Twilight on the Trail

Pencil-thin mustachioed yodeling country singer Slim Whitman has died of heart failure at the age of 90, leaving the world ripe for a Martian takeover. Known as America’s Favorite Folk Singer, as no one else really wanted the title, his fame was actually greater in the UK, where his 1955 single Rose Marie sat atop the barren pre-Beatles UK Singles Chart for 19 weeks, the longest until Bryan Adams broke the record in 1991, which gives a window into why BritPop sucks so hard yet will not go away. He was one of the first singers to make the transition to infomercials to hawk his crap, and secured even more fans when playing his high-pitched yodeling in Indian Love Call caused the heads of the invading aliens to explode in Mars Attacks!

 

Sleeping With the Fishes

(Props to Monty)
Esther Williams, a star to those who thought that characters randomly breaking into song in the middle of a movie wasn’t awkward enough and that having them do it in a pool really took it over the top, has died at the age of 91. Williams won three gold medals at the US national championships in 1939 at the age of 17, earning a spot on the 1940 US Olympic team. Unfortunately, with Germany’s invasion of Poland, there were no 1940 Olympics. Instead, she and MGM put her athletic body in wet clingy suits and made the most of it for over a decade of water-logged spectacles orchestrated by Busby Berkeley like Bathing Beauty, Dangerous When Wet and Million Dollar Mermaid that proved unpredictably popular to undiscerning post-war audiences. MGM built a $250,000 25-foot deep swimming pool with underwater windows, colored fountains and hydraulic lifts that was usually stocked with a dozen bathing beauties. That pool also saw Williams rupture her eardrums seven times and break her back when the metal crown she wore during a 50-foot platform dive caused her head to snap back when she hit the water. She was as successful and interesting out of the water as Ryan Lochte, and her attempts at dry-land based drama were flops with audiences. Decades after her film career ended, her name was still so associated with swimming, she was able to parlay her fame into endorsements for swimsuits and above-ground pools.

Sacked

Deacon Jones, who helped inspire the series Glee by defending Peter against some bullies who almost goaded him into quitting the glee club, has died at the age of 74. As a member of the Fearsome Foursome, the collection of giant All-Pros on the Los Angeles Rams defensive line, Jones was credited with coining the term sack, and was retroactively credited with 194.5 of them, as it wasn’t recorded as an official statistic until 1982. His unofficial totals of 26 in 1967 and 24 in 1968, both in 14-game seasons, both surpass Michael Strahan’s NFL record, and he did it without having Brett Favre going down easier than Lindsay Lohan.