Don't Take the Dead Into Your Own Hands, Take Them to A Cemetery

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Judgment Day

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Time for Wapner.

(Props to Don)

Judge Joseph Wapner, best remembered for his decision in the landmark case Carson v. Letterman, aka The case of the Creased Clunker, has died at the age of 97. Born and raised in Southern California and having dated Lana Turner in high school, Wapner was well suited for a celebrity-obsessed nation even then so willfully ill-informed that he was more well-known than any member of the US Supreme Court. After earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in the Pacific during World War II, Wapner graduated from USC Law School, spent 10 years in private practice, 2 years on the Los Angeles Municipal Court then 18 years on the LA Superior Court. After retiring, he assumed the bench of The People’s Court, where low-income, poorly educated, inarticulate citizenry argued for the amusement of the masses, in what was essentially televised arbitration set up to look like a small claims court. With trusty Rusty as his bailiff at his side, Wapner genially, and occasionally angrily, grilled the downtrodden as they squabbled over petty loans and minor damages, while professional hairdo Doug Llewelyn waited in the wings to exult in triumph with the victors and console the losers. Wapner donned the robes for 12 seasons before being unceremoniously, and unknowingly, dumped when the producers tried to revamp the show to improve floundering ratings. Unable to leave the limelight behind, Wapner presided over for Animal Court – kind of an Stupid and Illegal Pet Tricks where people would sue each other over damage their animals had caused. In an episode of Sliders, he played Commissar Wapner, where The People’s Court was actually a criminal court in an alternate world where the Soviet Union had defeated the United States. 

Silent Minority

Robert Michel, one of the last remaining vestiges of political bipartisanship, has died of complications of pneumonia at the age of 93. A World War II veteran who earned two Bronze Stars and four Battle Stars plus the Purple Heart when he was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, Michel was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois and served for 38 years. A conservative by nature, Michel sought to govern through compromise rather than confrontation. Elected during a four-decade period of Democratic control of the House, the courtly Michel maintained friendships on both sides of the aisle, including House Speakers Tip O’Neill and Tom Foley, which served him well when he became minority leader in 1981 and was tasked with shepherding the policies of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush through Congress. He was dismayed by the late ‘80s-early ‘90s rise of conservative firebrands like Newt Gingrich more interested in winning than governing, more interested in slogans and sound bites than common ground. When Gingrich indicated he planned to challenge Michel for the Republican leadership position in 1994, Michel chose capitulation rather than trying to preserve the integrity of the party and retired from the House, helping to set the United States on the path to the dysfunctional mess that we currently call our political system. On his way out the door, he criticized the growing incivility of Republicans who focused on “trashing the institution” for political gain. Bill Clinton honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for “[serving] our nation well, choosing the pragmatic but harder course of conciliation more often than the divisive, but easier, course of confrontation.”  

Passing. Passing.

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Got the Tigers by the Toe Tag

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Ilitch Scratched

Mike Illtch, owner of the worst wig in professional sports, has died at the age of 87. A minor league second baseman with the Hot Springs Bathers, Jamestown Falcons, Tampa Smokers, Miami Beach Flamingos, Charlotte Hornets, Norfolk Tars and St. Petersburg Saints, Ilitch was forced to retire because of a knee injury, so he and his wife started making pizza. A lot of pizza. As of 2007, annual revenue for Little Caesar’s Pizza was $1.8 billion. As of December 2016, Ilitch was the 86th richest man in the United States with a net worth of $6.1 billion. He chose to take that dough and invest in professional sports, first with the Detroit Caesars of the American Professional Slow Pitch Softball League, winning two World Series titles before the league folded, then the Detroit Red Wings, buying the team in 1982 for $8 million. The Red Wings had missed the playoffs in 13 out of 15 seasons before Ilitch bought the team, but he threw enough money at it to make the playoffs in 30 of the last 32 years, including the last 25, the longest active streak in North American sports and 3rd longest of all time, and racking up 4 Stanley Cups – the team’s first since 1955. He was an early owner in the Arena Football League, with the Detroit Drive, who made the ArenaBowl in each of the team’s 6 seasons, winning 4, before being sold and moving to Worcester, Massachusetts to free up time and attention for Ilitch’s next big purchase. He bought the Detroit Tigers in 1992, and he inspired the team to 12 losing seasons over the next 13 years, including an AL-record 119 losses in 2003, though over the last 11 years they won 4 AL Central titles and 2 pennants. He also bought up a lot of depressed real estate in Detroit when everyone in the city left, keeping it depressed while waiting for the investment to pay off. He was lauded for his philanthropic efforts, and after his death, it was revealed that after Rosa Parks was beaten and robbed in her own apartment, Ilitch quietly had her moved into a nicer neighborhood and paid her rent for the last 11 years of her life, ensuring that the civil rights icon would live long enough to win me the 2005 GHI.

Slicing his way to the dogpile at 12th is Mike’s Trash List. 

This is the 2nd fastest year to 15 hits (2007).

The World’s Compost Authority

Irwin Corey, who was reportedly funny at some point, has died at the age of 102. As a stand-up comic, film actor and activist, Corey was renowned for his unscripted, improvisational style, which convinced Lenny Bruce that Corey was "one of the most brilliant comedians of all time.” It is worth noting that Bruce ingested enough drugs to kill a wildebeest. Corey’s best known shtick was his Professor character, wearing a black swallowtail coat, string tie and sneakers, which he also appeared to have used to comb his hair, and spouting long streams of nonsense and doublespeak. Offstage, the lefty supported Cubans, cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the American Communist Party. He was blacklisted in the 1950s and claimed that dogged the rest of his career. He appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982 and never returned, which he attributed to the blacklist, which makes sense with the notoriously establishment-friendly Letterman. In 1974, Corey accepted the National Book Award on behalf of the publicity-averse Thomas Pynchon, with many thinking they were finally seeing the reclusive author, only to be confused by his mangled syntax and bad jokes. Perhaps his best bit came at the end of his life as he was living in a $3.5 million-dollar house in New York while panhandling for change from motorists exiting the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, then donating the change to charity.

Springbok Forward Falls Back

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Pulled the Rugby Out

Joost van der Westhuizen, South African rugby legend, has died of motor neurone disease at the age of 45. van der Westhuizen appeared in 89 test caps for the South African national team, scoring 38 tries – both national records at the time of his retirement. He played mostly as a scrum-half, where he was renowned for penetrating tiny gaps in the defense, his savage aggression and his heroic game-defining tackles. He was the first to participate in three Rugby World Cups, including the win in 1995 ordered by Nelson Mandela and depicted in the movie Invictus, where van der Westhuizen played a vital role in shutting down unstoppable New Zealand wing Jonah Lomu. He played in a record 111 matches for the Springboks, captaining 10 times and scoring 190 points, and was on the team that won South Africa's first Tri-Nations title in 1998. With the local Blue Bulls from 1993 to 2003, he won two domestic Currie Cup trophies in 1998 and 2002. For this bizarre set of accomplishments, he was inducted into the International and World Rugby Halls of Fame, because apparently these needed to be separate things.