Tinker’s to Never, So No Chance

Or

Tinker Failing, Older: Dies

 

Or 

No Moore

Grant Tinker, the prick bastard who cheated on America’s Sweetheart Mary Tyler Moore, has died at the age of 90. Tinker and Moore formed MTM Enterprises, and for their first foray into television productions, went way out on a limb with The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Success there led to developing more sitcoms, notably Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show and WKRP in Cincinnati. MTM also branched out, apparently because they thought it would be cute to put a kitty in a surgical mask or a policeman’s hat, and invented the ensemble drama with St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues. After their divorce, staff meetings at MTM got awkward, so Tinker took over struggling NBC, which would have been eating Dumont’s dust if it still existed. Under his direction, and with not a little help from Brandon Tartikoff, NBC found itself on top, thanks to programming like The Cosby Show, Cheers, Family Ties, The Golden Girls, Cheers and Night Court. Tinker earned a Peabody Award in 1994 and was inducted into the TV Hall of Fame in 1997. 

On the Fritz

Or

Obsolete Man

(Props to Monty)

Fritz Weaver, the cheap, American Christopher Lee knock-off, has died at the age of 90. His early career included two appearances on The Twilight Zone: the imperious but cowardly Chancellor who kills Burgess Meredith’s quietly noble, if obsolete, librarian, and a scientist fleeing a planet on the verge of nuclear war in a spaceship bound for  - dun, dun, dun - a planet called earth. His big-screen debut was in Fail Safe as Col. Cascio, an unstable military officer with foreign-born parents who somehow gets a job in the headquarters of Strategic Air Command and orchestrates a coup that lasts about 18 seconds. His long, angular face, pointed Cap Weinberger-esque nose and deep voice made him a natural to play evil geniuses. Weaver helped Hal Holbrook feed his drunk shrew wife Adrienne Barbeau to a thing in a crate in Creepshow. He ran the shadowy Franklin Foundation that trained dolphins to kill the president of the United States in The Day of the Dolphin. He invented Proteus IV, an advanced artificial intelligence program that takes over his house and rapes his wife in Demon Seed. For his golden years, Weaver narrated a bunch of documentaries on The History Channel when it still gave a damn. 

Temporaria Fidel is

Or

Cuban Libre

The United States' official position of the last 50 years to ignore Fidel Castro in the hopes he would go away has finally succeeded as the former Cuban strongman has died at the age of 90. Following a failed tryout with the Washington Senators, Castro decided to overthrow the corrupt puppet government of the semi-democratically elected government of Fulgencio Batista. The guerrilla movement found support in the rural poor of the country, and on December 31, 1958, Batista fled into exile, thwarting Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone’s development plans and breaking up Katey and Javier. A Communist island 90 miles offshore was a source of constant embarrassment for the United States, but for the next 50 years, presidents came and went, and through it all there was Castro thumbing his nose at the Yanqui imperialist dogs, giving 5-hour speeches decrying capitalism, stymieingdi an inept invasion at the Bay of Pigs, redecorating the island with Soviet nuclear weapons and of course, assassinating John F. Kennedy. While the rural poor loved him, he brooked no dissent, and Cuba’s record on civil liberties earned the praises of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Il, among other beloved figures. 

Shattered

(Props to Monty)

 

Or

Serenity Not

 

Or

Closed Book

Ron Glass, proud upholder of the tradition of Art Carney, Eddie Bracken, Jack Lemmon, Tony Randall and Thomas Lennon, has died of respiratory failure at the age of 71. Glass is best remembered as ambitious Sgt Ron Harris on Barney Miller, more interested in his wardrobe and efforts to publish his memoir Blood on the Badge than his police work. Thirty years later, he got another noteworthy job, the shadowy preacher Shepherd Derrial Book of the Serenity on Firefly. In between, he was Ross’ lawyer during one of his many divorces and played Felix Ungar on the all-black The New Odd Couple.

Here’s the story, of a deceased lady

Here’s the story, of a deceased ladyWho is pushing up a very lovely daisy.All of you want me to go on, but why bother?
And I am quite lazy.

Florence Henderson, the TV supermom who managed to shepherd her entire on-screen brood to adulthood, has died of heart failure at the age of 82. Henderson started her career as a singer, appearing on Broadway in Fanny and on TV in Oldsmobile commercials. She later became the first female host of a late-night talk show when she bridged the gap between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Henderson is best remembered as Carol Brady, widowed under suspicious circumstances with three blonde children, none of whom ever mention or seem to miss their departed father, and who immediately bestow the name “Daddy” onto Mike Brady, Carol’s newest sugar daddy, himself conveniently widowered, in the amoral saga The Brady Bunch. Her sick game came to a fitting end when she was gunned down as a special guest star on Police Squad! (in color), but not before leaving us with The Brady Bunch Hour, The Brady Girls Get Married and Brady Brides. She then accepted any role that would come along playing off or against her wholesome mom shtick: Dave’s World, King of Queens, and in her last screen role, Fifty Shades of Black. 

The Corpse Smelled ‘Round the World

Ralph Branca, who made Bobby Thomson a household name, has died at the age of 90. Coming into Oct 3, 1951, Branca was a 3-time All-Star, a former 20-game winner and a major part of why the Brooklyn Dodgers had built a 13 ½ game lead in the NL in August over the New York Giants. The Giants had gotten insanely hot – possibly thanks in part to back up catcher Sal Yvars stealing signs from the bullpen – and the Dodgers had faded down the stretch, forcing a 3-game playoff for the NL pennant. After the teams had split the first two games, the Dodgers had taken a 4-1 lead in the top of the 8^th of Game 3. Two singles, a double and poor defensive positioning had led to a run scoring and brought the winning run to the plate in the form of Thomson. Despite the fact that Thomson had hit a game-winning HR off Branca in the first game of the playoff, Dodgers’ manager Charlie Dressen figured lightning wouldn’t strike twice and brought Branca back. You may recall broadcaster Russ Hodges’ exclamation “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” if you are trying to remember what happened next. Yvars later said that he had told Thomson what pitch was coming for the fateful HR, which Thomson denied, while admitting he had gotten the signs for his first 3 at-bats that day. A back injury in spring training in 1952 significantly limited Branca’s effectiveness, and he was out of baseball at the age of 30, playing in an Old Timers Game at Yankee Stadium in 1956 when his velocity caught the Dodgers’ attention and they brought him back for one final inning. Other career highlights include being one of the few Dodgers to stand alongside Jackie Robinson as he broke the color barrier on Opening Day 1947; becoming the first player in major league history to be ejected from a World Series game in which he wasn’t playing for bench jockeying the home plate umpire in Game 7 of the 1952 World Series; running the Baseball Assistance Team, a non-profit organization that provides financial aid to baseball players in need, for more than 17 years; and not stopping his daughter from marrying one of the biggest jackasses in baseball history: Bobby Valentine. 

Cooley-ed Off

Denton Cooley, the Thomas Kinkade of cardiovascular surgery, has died at the age of 96. Once one of the busiest cardiac surgeons in the country, he would schedule multiple surgeries simultaneously, with junior surgeons beginning each procedure and opening the chest, while Cooley would rush from operating room to operating room for the tricky parts. Cooley performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States in 1968, then jumped the gun and implanted an artificial heart in a patient waiting for a donor heart, despite the fact that the device wasn’t approved. The patient died within 3 days. His boss and mentor Michael DeBakey had been developing an artificial heart, hadn’t authorized his protégé’s surgery and was outraged, arguing it was unethical to experiment on human patients. Cooley contended that his job as a surgeon was to help his patient, not wait for bureaucracy. Oh, and they were both cardiologists with God complexes who wanted to be the first at everything. The men then didn’t speak for 40 years while independently pioneering most of the techniques used to perform heart surgery. Cooley actually considered his greatest contribution to be a method for using a heart-lung machine to ventilate patients during open-heart operations that reduced the amount of transfused blood used during the procedure, reducing the risk for infection. His work with Dr. Moreau to transplant a sheep’s heart into a human was less successful. 

Laird to Rest

Melvin Laird, the lone semi-honorable, useful member of the Nixon Administration, has died of complications of respiratory failure at the age of 94. After 9 terms in the House of Representatives representing Wisconsin, Laird became President Richard M. Nixon’s first secretary of defense, where he transitioned from the draft to an all-volunteer army, pushed responsibilities onto the South Vietnamese army while trying to wind down American troop involvement, and opposed bombing North Vietnam and invading Cambodia. All these positions differed with his stance as a congressman, where he had repeatedly attacked President Lyndon B. Johnson for escalating the war too gradually, accusing him of playing for a tie rather than trying to win the war. Things look a little different when you’re in the room where it happens. Laird’s positions also contradicted stated White House policy. Luckily, Nixon was renowned as being a laid-back boss who welcomed opposing viewpoints. Oh, no, wait, he had Laird’s top aide’s phone tapped. Laird scared the Soviets into a strategic arms limitation agreement by suggesting the US would expand its arsenal if they didn’t sign. Laird stepped down as defense secretary after one term, becoming Nixon’s chief domestic policy adviser, and drawing the short straw in trying to convince Vice President Spiro T. Agnew to resign after pleading no contest to accepting bribes. Laird left the White House as the Watergate crisis deepened, becoming the senior counselor on national and international affairs for the Reader’s Digest Association.

Solo, Farewell, Auf Weidersein, Good Night

Or

Say U.N.C.L.E.

(Props to Monty)

 

Or

Dirt Napoleon

 

Or

Battling Beyond the Stars

(Meritorious mention for Don)

Robert Vaughn, who played a samurai in the Old West and in space, has died of leukemia at the age of 83. The last surviving member of The Magnificent Seven, Vaughn played Lee, the cowardly mercenary, then came back in essentially the same role for Battle Beyond the Stars, Roger Corman’s update on The Seven Samurai theme. Apparently he wasn’t available for A Bug’s Life. Vaughn’s star-making turn was the Symbol Maker’s son in Teenage Caveman, a Roger Corman cheapie with a twist ending that it was earth all along that eventually made fine MST3K fodder. He parlayed that into a role as an injured war vet wrongfully accused of murder in the melodramatic twaddle The Young Philadelphians, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination in 1960. He starred as suave spy Napoleon Solo in the tongue-in-cheek spy caper series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And after that, he settled into a long career of shadowy intimidating authority figures: billionaire Ross Webster in the franchise-destroying Superman III; crooked politician Walter Chalmers in Bullitt; billionaire king maker Carl Anderton on Law & Order, who decides to cut off Adam Schiff’s campaign funds; White House Chief of Staff Gordon Cain who decides re-election is more important than aliens and heroic astronauts in another MST3Ked schlocker Hanger 18; and General Hunt Stockwell, the man who did what Col. Decker couldn’t – capture the A-Team and force them to work for him in the shark jumping final season. 

Not Spinning in Her Grave

Or

Reno 911… Too Late

Janet Reno, who allegedly was the United States’ first female Attorney General, and was definitely its 2^nd longest-serving, has died of complications of Parkinson’s at the age of 78. After time as the State’s Attorney for Dade County where her controversial way of gathering evidence led to acquittals for a number of child abusers, her spinster status allowed her to avoid the undocumented nanny issues that thwarted the nominations of President Clinton’s first two choices. She vowed that she ‘didn’t do spin’ in discussing her job, so among the highlights of her tenure were the successful killings of David Koresh and 85 other Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas; the persecution of Ted Kaczynski, America’s favorite Luddite, including Reno’s violation of his copyright on his Manifesto; the aggressive opposition to the urban renewal efforts of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in Oklahoma City; challenging the idea that any press is good press by suggesting Richard Jewell was the Olympic Park bomber, not the hero whose quick actions saved countless lives and the touching reunion of Elian Gonzalez with his father in Cuba at gunpoint. She was defeated in the primary while running for governor of Florida, and devoted the rest of her life to dance parties.