Pais Under Earth

Ian Paisley, royal apologist and buggerer basher in Northern Ireland, has died at the age of 88. A Protestant minister since 1946, founder and leader of the Free Presbyterian Church from 1951 to 2008, Paisley was well known as a firebrand at the pulpit and the podium, regularly attacking Catholicism, ecumenism, homosexuality and any attempt at power sharing with Irish nationalists. He led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, helping to start “The Troubles” in the late 1960s, which pretty much defined life in Northern Ireland for much of the next 3 decades. Like any man of God, Paisley was actively involved in paramilitary operations, leading the Ulster Protestant Action in the 1950s and ‘60s, which carried out vigilante attacks, roadblocks and persecuted suspected IRA members, and supporting the formation of The Third Force and the Ulster Resistance in the 1980s. He attacked the Queen Mum and Princess Margaret for meeting with Pope John XXIII in 1958 saying they were "committing spiritual fornication and adultery with the Antichrist,” and celebrated his death in 1963. When Pope John Paul II spoke to the European Parliament in 1988, Paisley interrupted by shouting "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" The typical measured and respectful tones you’d expect from someone with an honorary degree from Bob Jones University. Paisley also hated Jesus Christ Superstar and Jerry Springer: The Opera, so he wasn’t all bad. His efforts helped bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974 and the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, but he was less successful in blocking the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In 2007, following the St Andrews Agreement, the Democratic Unionist Party finally agreed to share power with republican party Sinn Féin, with Paisley becoming First Minister and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness becoming deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. 

It’s a Condolence Card! It’s a Condolence Card!

Or

It's Safe to Go Back in the Water

(Props to Monty)

Or

Kieled Over

(An epitaphany shared by me, Monty and Steve)
Richard Kiel, best remembered as the hairy caveman that time forgot in Eegah!, has died at the age of 74. The acromegalic actor was the mechanically mouthed Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, the only Bond villain to make a return appearance other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld; the Kannemit emissary with a cookbook in The Twilight Zone classic “To Serve Man;” the crybaby inmate in The Longest Yard, Voltaire, henchman to Dr. Miguelito Loveless, played by dwarf Michael Dunn, in The Wild Wild West; and the giant, unstable fan in Happy Gilmore. The 7-foot-1 beanpole had been a leading contender to play The Incredible Hulk, and had even filmed part of the pilot, before producers wanted someone more muscular and went with Lou Ferrigno. 

Doomed Day Machine

Denny Miller, a classic “hey it’s that guy” of the Bolt VanderHuge variety with a resume combining lead roles in Z-grade dreck like Doomsday Machine, a film annotated by the stars of Cinematic Titanic, and guest starring roles on scores of TV shows, including a stint on Dallas as Max Flowers, Cliff’s foreman on an oil platform who JR bribes to slow down production so that Cliff will default on the loans that he took to secure the offshore oil drilling leases that JR had conned him into buying in the first place, and, in a staggering coincidence, a meathead security guard in an episode of Magnum, PI that I was watching when I learned that Miller was dead, has died at the age of 80. He also played the Visitor Trooper in V who figures out Mike Donovan has infiltrated a Visitor ship, an MP in an episode of MASH, Carol Brady’s high school boyfriend on The Brady Bunch, Tongo the Ape Man on an episode of Gilligan’s Island and for 14 years, he was the Gorton’s Fisherman.

Coffin Filla

S. Truett Cathy, purveyor of fine chicken and self-righteous rejector of civil rights, has died at the age of 93. Cathy, whose loving God apparently didn’t like gays, eating on the Sabbath, or cows that can spell, founded Chick-fil-a in 1946, the same year his social views stopped evolving. Appropriately enough, Cathy died just after midnight on a Monday morning, preserving the sanctity of the Lord’s Day, and ensuring that the bereaved could mourn his passing over a chicken biscuit sandwich.

Keefer’s Under Land

Or

It Was a Good Life

Don Keefer, whose bad thoughts got him turned into a jack in the box, has died at the age of 98. With more than 150 credits in a 50-year career, but only 1 recurring role, Keefer was the quintessential “Hey, it’s that guy,” with only his role in It’s a Good Life, where Billy Mumy as a child of limitless power who wishes those who displease him into the cornfield, standing out. Keefer’s death leaves only Mumy and Cloris Leachman, who produced the hell spawn, left alive from that episode.

Can You Shut Up?

Or 

Can We Talk? Not So Much.

Joan Rivers, whose shrill one-note derivative act that stole liberally from Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield and Phyllis Diller, but was supposedly original because unlike the others she didn’t have a penis, has died at the age of 81, ironically following surgery on one of her few remaining original parts. In more recent years, she combined two of the most tedious things known to man, talking about clothing and her daughter Melissa, to attack celebrities’ sartorial choices on the red carpet. Rivers came to national acclaim through appearances on The Tonight Show, and eventually became the permanent substitute host for Johnny Carson’s numerous vacations. She decided to cross one of the most powerful men in Hollywood to get her own show on the fledgling Fox network, which when she debuted was still 9 months from having two whole days of a broadcast schedule that would be anchored by The New Adventures of Beans Baxter. She didn’t appear again on The Tonight Show for almost 30 years and never spoke with Carson again. With many celebrities scared out of appearing by Carson and a number of problems with affiliates, Rivers was fired after 8 months. This left her with more time to spend at home, and within 3 months, her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, killed himself.