George Harrison Invitational Dead Pool

He Lies… in State

2012-01-22T12:20:00.000-05:00

Seamy Valley

Former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno has died at the age of 85 of complications from lung cancer, 3 months after he could have gone out a legend. Fittingly, he died on a Sunday, because we know how much he hated to inconvenience anyone on a Saturday. Terry Gilliam films had better endings than Paterno’s life. On Oct. 29, 2011, he won his 409th game to become the all-time winningest coach in Division I college football history. On Nov. 5, his long-time defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was revealed to be a pedophile in good standing, and that it had been reported to Paterno, and that he had essentially left a Post-it Note on his boss’ desk saying: “Jerry. Shower. Kids.” and forgotten about it. Then he got fired (by a phone call, the gutless bastards), got cancer, broke his hip and died. Prior to giving enabling a bad name, Paterno had established a football factory in the insignificant town of State College, Pennsylvania. Passing up a scholarship to Boston University School of Law, Paterno moved to Happy Valley in 1950 to become quarterbacks coach before taking over as head coach in 1966, where he implemented an offense as conservative as his horn-rimmed glasses, rolled up pants and white socks. In his record-setting 46-year career, he led 2 national champions, 5 unbeaten teams and finished in the top 5 11 other times, and made 37 bowl games, winning 24 of them – both records for any head coach. And doing so all the while with no recruiting scandals and with some of the highest graduation rates among major college programs.

At Rest

2012-01-20T12:18:00.000-05:00

Or
At Last
(An epitaphany shared with Monty, and probably everyone else on this mailing list)
Etta James, starter of first dances at weddings across the country, has died of complications from leukemia at the age of 73. Riding a powerful voice into the Rock and Roll, Blues and Rockabilly Halls of Fame, scored her signature hit “At Last,” ironically when she was still a fresh-faced 22-year old pop singer. At Lasting fame eluded her, as she battled addictions to heroin, cocaine, painkillers and ham hocks from the 1960s through the 1980s. Filling in more of her blues background, she had no idea who her father was, but her mother told her he was renowned pool player Minnesota Fats, and she as raised by often abusive friends and foster parents until she was 12. She began to get her just due in the 1990s, scoring a Grammy for best jazz vocal performance, her first of 4, including 2003’s lifetime achievement award. James was played by Beyonce in Cadillac Records, a fictionalized account of Chess Records, and Beyonce was asked to perform her cover of At Last at President Obama’s inaugural. James later threatened to kick Beyonce’s ass. She later explained she was joking. Her son later explained she had Alzheimer’s, the first indication of her rapid health downturn.

Trouble Bruin

2012-01-03T11:58:00.000-05:00

Or
Shot Down in a Blaze of Glory
Gene Bartow, who showed how hard it is to replace a legend, has died of stomach cancer at the age of 81. Bartow had the unenviable task of following the greatest coach in the history of sport, UCLA’s John Wooden, and kept up the program, going 52-9 in two seasons, the second best winning percentage among Bruin coaches, surpassing even Wooden. He made the Final Four and the Sweet 16, but for a program that had won 10 championships in 12 seasons, that wasn’t going to get it done, and the school and alumni never really warmed to Bartow. Bartow was well versed in how hard Wooden was to contend with, having lost to him in the 1973 Finals as the head coach of Memphis State, the year he was named NCAA Coach of the Year. Deciding it would be much easier to run a program where he had no predecessors to measure up to, he started his own athletics program as athletic director at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, launching a basketball program at a school that had only a 400-seat gym. Within 4 years, he had UAB in the Elite Eight and the team now plays in a 9,300-seat arena that bears Bartow’s name. For his efforts, he was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. Following his retirement from UAB, he became a consultant, and eventually president of the Memphis Grizzlies.

A Disturbance in the Force

2012-01-01T20:39:00.001-05:00

Bob Anderson, the Marni Nixon of cinematic swashbuckling, has become more powerful than we can possibly imagine at the age of 89. The common perception of Darth Vader is that David Prowse provided the hulking presence while James Earl Jones gave him his testicle-shrinking voice. In reality, so much badassery could not be the product of just two men. Enter Anderson, a member of the British Royal Marines during World War II and a member of the 1952 Olympic fencing squad, to add a dash of Inigo Montoya to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. While Sarah Lane couldn’t pull back the curtain on The Black Swan fast enough, Anderson, being a British member of the Greatest Generation, kept his stiff upper lip in the background. His sole acknowledgement: a cameo role as an Imperial Officer who doesn’t even get choked to death, until Mark Hamill disclosed his role in interviews following the release of Return of the Jedi, the only example of beneficial retroactive tinkering to the Star Wars franchise. Anderson’s influence draws a fencing line from Errol Flynn in The Master of Ballantrae through several iterations of James Bond, across Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy to Florin with The Princess Bride and into a galaxy far, far away.

Me Tarzan, You Dead

2011-12-24T12:03:00.000-05:00

Cheeta, one of many chimps who upstaged the man meatbags in the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and 1940s, has died at an animal sanctuary of kidney failure at the age of 80, making him one of the oldest chimpanzees ever recorded. As the second banana, Cheeta provided comic relief and recruited his animal friends to rescue the loinclothed lunkhead. He can be grateful that he made his mark before having to endure message board trolls going apeshit and pointing out that he was never featured in the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels or PETA incessantly flinging poop about everything, or having to feel up a naked Bo Derek in 1981’s Tarzan, the Ape Man, where Tarzan was incomprehensibly partnered with an orangutan. A 1995 fire that destroyed sanctuary records and the fact that at least 15 animals are reported to have been in the movies, often several in the same movie, throw a monkeywrench in efforts to determine exact cinematic contributions to the franchise, but this Cheeta reportedly retired to Johnny Weismuller’s estate after hanging up the vine, then moved to an animal sanctuary in Tampa in the 1960s.

What do you know life about death? You talking existential being or anthropomorphic diety?

2011-12-22T12:03:00.000-05:00

William Duell, who explained ska to Dick Clark and admonished Tommy Lasorda for trading Tommy John, has died of respiratory failure at the age of 88. The slight character actor is probably best known as the all-knowing Johnny the Snitch, who gave Frank Drebin the word on the street, for a price, between shoe shines on Police Squad! (in color), before explaining how to put out a fire in a furniture warehouse to a firefighter, or how to complete a coronary bypass in a patient with a history of sinus bradycardia to a surgeon. Other roles included Sefelt, an epileptic who was afraid of his meds in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the man who rang the Liberty Bell on stage and screen in 1776, and a quintessentially crusty New Englander who was less than helpful with directions in Funny Farm.

Czech Out

2011-12-18T15:36:00.000-05:00

Or
Velvet Underground
(Kudos to Don)
Vaclav Havel, the man who ended Czechoslovakia, has died at the age of 75. The dissident writer spent years in and out of prison and under police surveillance for his incessant whining about Communism. He became the voice of the Czech people, driving the Prague street demonstrations that led to the Velvet Revolution, so named because the peaceful transfer of power took just weeks to complete and did not involve a shot being fired. And because Havel played Mel Torme at full blast to drive the Commies out. Pretty soon oppressive yokes were being shaken off throughout Europe, Iron Curtains were falling and forgetful old guys in the US were taking all the credit. Havel was elected the first president of Czechoslovakia, broke that and became president of the Czech Republic, setting the West-leaning path that had the country joining NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, a move that has really paid off for them. Havel was a star in the West for his well publicized love of Lou Reed and Frank Zappa, who was named “special ambassador to the West,” but at home he was mocked for being naïve, for marrying a former actress best known as a topless vampire, and for staying a little too late at the party and meddling in politics long after it was time for professionals to run things. But then the West has a long history of backing the wrong ponies in international affairs.

Dear Departed Leader

2011-12-17T13:57:00.000-05:00

(Props to Don)

Or
Kim Jong-no longer Ill
(An epitaphany shared with Mark)

Or
Train in Vain
(Kudos to Don)

Or
Un for the Road
(Additional accolades for Don)

Or
Drear Leader
(More merit for Mark)
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, part Bond villain, part Monty Python sketch, a veritable Willy Wonka with nuclear missles, has died at the age of 69 or 70 of a heart attack on a train brought on by “great mental and physical strain” during a “high-intensity field inspection.” Which is how I think you would probably describe Elvis’ eternal bowel movement, if you’re looking for a more honest assessment of his final moments. There was a double rainbow over the log cabin on the sacred mountain where he was born, so be prepared for similarly supernatural visions for his funeral on Dec. 28. When the “peerlessly great man” replaced his father as the leader of the most backward country in Asia, pear and apricot trees spontaneously came into bloom, attracting butterflies and bees, while a fisherman caught a rare white sea cucumber, the finest indication of fitness to lead since a watery tart hurled a scimitar at Arthur. At the age of 23 he was repairing auto engines, improving farming practices, penning operas and plays and authoring a thesis on Korean history. Then on Tuesday… For fun he would wander through cemeteries and rattle off the phone numbers of the deceased. The first time he ever played golf, he shot 11 holes-in-one and recorded a score of 38 under par. Hennessy reported that in 1993 and 1994, he was their single biggest customer in the world, importing more than $750,000 a year, roughly 833 times the average salary of a North Korean, 2 million of whom (10% of the population) died during a famine in the 1990s brought on largely by state incompetence. But man destroys, man builds – he developed a plan to solve the famine by breeding rabbits to be the size of dogs for food. A noted cinephile who literally wrote the book on Communist film-making (1973’s On the Art of the Cinema) he tried to jump start the North Korean movie industry by kidnapping a South Korean director and actress and forcing them to make Pulgasari, a Godzilla rip-off with a pro-Communist subplot. When he was forced to give up smoking on doctor’s orders, he decided that the entire country would go smoke free, under penalty of prison and hard labor – more effective than Nicorette. Part of the North Korean science curriculum in schools is that Kim transcended producing urine and feces. Still more reasonable than intelligent design. When not providing punchlines for the Western world, Kim was running roughshod over his people, starving them with an iron hand as he fostered his own personality cult. Despite the cartoonish appearance of the 5-foot-3 inch dictator with Jackie O’s hand-me-down sunglasses and a bouffant, he built the 5th largest army in the world at 1.1 million men and added North Korea to the nuclear weapon fraternity. They can’t figure out how to get the things to fly straight, but still…

I’ve Been Tied to the Hitchens Post; Good Lord I Feel Like He’s Dying

2011-12-15T14:03:00.000-05:00

Or
The Disposable Atheist
(Props to Don)

Or
Off Without a Hitch
(Additional accolades for Don)

Or
Arguably Dead
(Meritorious mention for Chris N)

Or
God Finally Got Him, Unless It Was The Whiskey
(Kudos for Chris N)

Or
Unhitched
(Huzzah for Monty)
Christopher Hitchens, a journalist who hated everything about this world except whiskey and cigarettes, has died of esophageal cancer at the age of 62. Described as being as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar, Hitchens built his reputation which scathing polemics against demagogues both of the left and right, Henry Kissinger, the Clintons, the British monarchy, Mel Gibson, the Dalai Lama, radical Islamists, Mother Teresa, and religious belief in his book “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” He made his bones in the 1970s traveling to some of the worst places on the planet to shine a light on the machinations of dictators and the great powers in Northern Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain and Argentina. He graduated from those hotspots to a land ripe for the picking on: the United States, where his columns touched on everything from getting a Brazilian bikini wax to being waterboarded. Although he was accused of being anti-Catholic and anti-Christian, he insisted that was not the case and that he thought “all religious belief is sinister and infantile.”

Rogers, Over and Out

2011-12-14T12:41:00.001-05:00

Or
With Your Shield-- or On It
Joe Simon, creator of the only comic book character who could make Superman look cool, has died at the age of 98. With partner Jack Kirby, the Comic Book Hall of Famer is best known for creating Captain America, the sturdy, stolid, boring supersoldier created from 98-pound weakling Steve Rogers. The pair later pioneered romance comics, for those who consider romance novels too sophisticated, and horror comics, which makes him a godfather to the Cryptkeeper.

Emmet Otter’s Jugband Wake

2011-12-13T12:35:00.002-05:00

Or
Riddley Me This

Or
Frances Badger Don’t Care
(Confused congratulations for Don)
Cult author Russell Hoban has died at the age of 86. Best known for his apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker, described by Anthony Burgess as "what literature is meant to be," set in Kent 2,000 years after a nuclear holocaust. He also wrote about Frances the badger and The Mouse and His Child, which was turned into an animated film by Sanrio, the bastards who brought the world Hello Kitty. Hobson also wrote a varmint-based version of The Gift of the Magi called Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas, which was turned into a 1978 HBO special by Jim Henson.

Suicide is Painless, but Pneumonia Hurts Like a Bitch

2011-12-07T23:13:00.001-05:00

Or
In Potter’s Field

Or
Potted

Or
M*A*S*Hed
Harry Morgan, barely remembered for playing Major General Bartford Hamilton Steele, on M*A*S*H, has died of pneumonia at the age of 96. At least M*A*S*H’s producers were banking that he would be barely remembered when they brought back Morgan less than a year after his guest appearance as a batty general to replace Lt. Col. Henry Blake as the commander of the 4077th. Morgan won an Emmy for his portrayal of the acerbicly homespun Col. Sherman T. Potter, the lone regular Army officer in a camp full of oddballs. But then Morgan was experienced as a replacement character, having filled in for Ben Alexander’s Frank Smith and what passed for comic relief as Bill Gannon on the reboot of Dragnet, a role he reprised on The Simpsons and the 1987 Dragnet movie. Before those roles, he was a classic “hey, it’s that guy” in more than 100 movie roles, including the hanging-happy illiterate in The Ox-Bow Incident, one of Will Kane’s cowardly “friends” in High Noon, the Darwin-denying judge in Inherit the Wind, the blustering sheriff watching over J.B. Books’ last days in The Shootist and an interstellar feline-chasing general in The Cat From Outer Space.

Ohhhh, gimme some peat, boys, to fill that hole; I'm gonna get tossed in a 6 foot hole and waste away...

2011-12-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

Or
Drifted Away

Or
Out with the In Crowd
Dobie Gray, best remembered for the soul hit Drift Away, has died of complications of cancer surgery at the speculated age of 71. Along his long winding road, Gray was at varying times managed by Jethro (Max Baer, Jr of Beverly Hillbillies fame), recorded songs by 1970s songwriter/hybrid experiment of crossing Brenda Vaccaro with a Muppet Paul Williams, and was the first singer to perform in front of an integrated audience in South Africa

This Little Piggy Cried Wee, Wee, Wee All the Way to the Cemetery

2011-12-01T23:17:00.000-05:00

Bill McKinney, the man who taught Ned Beatty to read a script all the way through before accepting a role, has died of esophageal cancer at the age of 80. McKinney was best remembered for his role in Deliverance as one of the backwoods Georgians who thought that Beatty could “squeal like a pig” and proceeded to sodomize him to prove it. Reportedly, that scene was entirely ad-libbed, and McKinney thought “Cut” was for wimps and had to be dragged off Beatty after one take. He also was one of the few actors to appear with the two greatest Western actors of all time, John Wayne in The Shootist and Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales, among other movies. As Central Casting shifted stereotypical bad guys from hulking endomorphs to beady-eyed sociopaths, McKinney found himself in high demand and terrorized B. J. and the Bear, Columbo and someone who called was able to find The A-Team. Just two days before his death, McKinney completed filming for a Doritos commercial.

Socked

2011-12-01T23:15:00.001-05:00

Alan Sues, the poor man’s Paul Lynde on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, has died of a heart attack at the age of 85. Sues spent much of his time playing broadly flamboyant characters, like a cowboy strolling into a saloon surrounded by whiskey-drinking hombres and ordering a daiquiri. Among his recurring characters were Big Al, an effeminate sportscaster more obsessed with ringing a bell than announcing the day’s action, and perennially hung-over children’s entertainer Uncle Al, the Kiddies Pal.

No Svet

2011-11-22T22:37:00.000-05:00

Lana Peters, aka Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva, aka Stalin’s little girl, has died of colon cancer at the age of 85. Rather than humanizing one of history’s greatest mass murderers, the lone daughter of Joseph Stalin offered the world a rare view from her front row seat, starting with her own mother, who committed suicide rather than standing by her madman. While visiting India in 1967 to dump her boyfriend’s ashes in the Ganges, Alliluyeva was approached by the U.S. State Department and offered the chance to jump the immigration line as a Cold War PR stunt. She obliged and refudiated her father’s regime and the Soviet government in press conferences and in a memoir. She later married Frank Lloyd Wright’s protégé at the urging of Lloyd’s widow, a mystic who believed Alliluyeva to be her own daughter, also named Svetlana, reincarnated. Deciding that the Wright cult wasn’t much better than hanging behind the Iron Curtain, she left the States for Cambridge, England, then became the world’s most public double agent by returning to the Soviet Union to engage in a staring contest with Sarah Palin across the Bering Strait. Learning the error of her ways after watching Rocky IV and Red Heat, she returned to the United States in 1986, where to avoid homesickness, she moved to the coldest, bleakest, most depressing place she could find: Wisconsin.

This Was Only One of the Many Occasions on Which He Met His Death

2011-11-19T17:22:00.001-05:00

Or
A Well-Manicured Corpse
John Neville, who slummed it with Shakespeare before being discovered by Python, has died at the age of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 86. Neville was brilliant as Hieronymus Karl Frederick Baron von Munchausen, either the world’s greatest liar or its first superhero in wildly entertaining, if dubiously accurate tales, in Terry Gilliam’s vastly underappreciated The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. A financial flop, the film launched Neville into a late-career resurgence that netted appearances in The Road to Wellville and Urban Legend and distanced him from early career floundering that saw him play Romeo to Claire Bloom’s Juliet, Hamlet to Judi Dench’s Ophelia and Othello to Richard Burton’s Iago on stage.

Out of Danger Mouse

2011-11-18T00:16:00.000-05:00

Mark Hall, producer of brilliantly quirky British cartoons, has died of cancer at the age of 75. As half of the driving force behind Cosgrove Hall, he brought life to the James Bond/Danger Man parody Danger Mouse, the world’s greatest secret agent – so secret his code name had a code name, and his faithful if flustered assistant hamster Penfold, and spawned one of the all-time great trivia mash-up answers: Mother May I Sleep with Danger Mouse? Danger Mouse spun off Count Duckula, during the late, lamented pre-ubiquitious vampire period in popular culture. Ketchup was used instead of blood during his reincarnation ritual, and Duckula went vegetarian. He also had more interest in celebrity than traditional vampire habits like skulking and lurking, much to his manservant Igor’s consternation.

But He Still Has 2 Lives Left

2011-11-17T00:15:00.000-05:00

(Props to Mike Burger)
Gary Garcia, one of the foremost video game recording artists of our time, has died at the age of 63. Buckner & Garcia, hit #9 with 1982’s Pac-Man Fever, a parody of the rock parody Ted Nugent hit Cat Scratch Fever. As their career path descended to resemble that of interns on a wacky morning show, the duo released a complete album of arcade game homages, including Do The Donkey Kong, Ode to a Centipede and Froggy’s Lament. The album went on to sell more than a million copies, none of which were ever played more than once. When not trolling the Playdrome for inspiration, they added lyrics to The Theme To WKRP In Cincinnati, wrote E.T., I Love You, which was shelved in favor of Neil Diamond’s Heartlight, the unreleased Mr. T, and a number of original songs for the Waffle House jukebox.

Getting Lighter

2011-11-08T23:32:00.001-05:00

Or
Peaceful Journey
Heavy D, best remembered as Peaches in the excruciating Cider House Rules, has died at the age of 44 after collapsing at his home. Heavy D & the Boyz had about as much edge as Mr. D’s rotund frame as they helped bring hip hop to the white folks, hitting platinum with 3 of their 5 albums: Big Tyme, Peaceful Journey, and Nuttin’ but Love and scoring chart toppers like Mr. Big Stuff; Gyrlz, They Love Me; and Now That We Found Love.

Macauley Culled

2011-11-08T23:27:00.000-05:00

Ed Macauley, one of the other guys in one of the most significant trades in sports history, has died at the age of 83. On April 29, 1956 Macauley and the rights to Cliff Hagan were traded by the Boston Celtics to the St. Louis Hawks for the rights to Bill Russell. All 3 players involved in the trade ended up in the Hall of Fame, and the Hawks and Celtics split the next two NBA titles, but the trade still has a Manhattan for beads feel to it. The Celtics won 11 titles with Russell. The Hawks moved to Atlanta.

Family Circus of Life

2011-11-08T23:23:00.001-05:00

Or
Who's Going to See Bil Keane Alive Again? Not me....

Or
Looks Like Billy’s Going to Have to Draw the Strip This Week

Or
Who pulled the plug on Bil's ventilator? Ida know.
(Props to Mark)
You know those annoying people who can’t wait to tell you about the latest #@@#$@ing adorable thing their kids did, or about their latest assault on the English language, or about the latest household device their kids broke/lost/defecated on in the cutest way? Now imagine one of those jackasses raped your ear with this tedium every morning for the last 51 years. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bil Keane, who succumbed to congestive heart failure at the age of 89, joining Ziggy braintrust Tom Wilson as hack cartoonists who went from a single panel to a panel van this fall. Brad Anderson, watch your ass. Bil started inflicting the inane, humorless daily activities of Mom, Dad, Dolly, Billy, Jeffy, PJ, Grandma, and, from beyond the grave, Grandpa in 1960, repeating them on a roughly 13-week cycle, knowing that no one read the damn thing unless they were stuck at their in-laws and wanted to avoid talking about why there aren’t any grandchildren yet. Keane was popular among other inept and tiresome cartoonists, counting Jeff MacNelly (Shoe), Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) and Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead) among his friends, swapping strips with Scott Adams (Dilbert) for an April Fool’s joke, while ripping the brilliant Bill Watterson first for insisting on half-page spreads for his lovingly drawn Sunday Calvin and Hobbes strips, then for retiring when he was still at the top of his game. Keane’s funeral procession will start at Scottsdale Funeral Home funeral home, progress down Elm Street, stop at a puddle, will tightrope walk down a fence, poke its head in a dog house, climb a tree, play in a birdbath, weave in and out of trees and kick a soccer ball before arriving at the cemetery.

Down Goes Frazier, Down Goes Frazier

2011-11-07T23:24:00.000-05:00

Or
Smoked

Or
Sliver in His Liver Goes About As Well as The Thrilla in Manila

Or
Muhammad Ali wins Ali-Frazier IV
(Stolen shamelessly from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source)
Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali’s bitch, has died of liver cancer at the age of 67. Where Ali was a floating, whirling dervish in the ring, the picture of grace and speed, Frazier was an unrelenting beast, enduring blows while punishing his opponents with jabs and a wicked left hook. Frazier picked up the heavyweight title while Ali was busy being Muslim and loving the Vietcong, then petitioned to help get Ali pardoned so he could return to the ring, setting up their first epic bout in 1971. For his trouble, Frazier was relentlessly needled by the quick-witted Ali, who called him a gorilla and the white man’s champion for not being more political and vocal about black men’s status in America. Frazier was a blue collar fighter who just wanted to beat the shit out of people. While Ali won the preamble, in the ring, Frazier handed Ali his first ever loss in what was billed as the Fight of the Century. Ali won the rematch in 1974, then took the rubber match, 1975’s Thrilla in Manila when Frazier couldn’t return for the 15th due to a badly swollen eye. For his part, Ali said that fight was the closest he ever came to dying. While he lacked Ali’s style, Frazier won 32 fights in his career, never losing to anyone not named Ali or George Foreman, was Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year 3 times, and his bouts were named that publication’s Fight of the Year 4 times from 1969 to 1975, so to the end, Frazier could hold his head high. And steady. Which is more than you can say about Ali.

Forsch Scored Game 7 Win

2011-11-06T20:04:00.001-05:00

Bob Forsch, former St. Louis ace, has died suddenly of a cardiac aneurysm at the age of 61, fulfilling his pact with Satan to secure the Cardinals incredible comebacks after being 1 strike from elimination twice in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series. So desperate to keep his Game 7 first pitch duties, that, as is often the practice, he failed to read the fine print on the contract as David Freese strode to the plate and only got to enjoy the Cardinals World Championship for a week. Forsch is 3rd on the Cardinals all-time win-list with 163, and extended the Phillies record for no-hitters thrown against to 18 with his 1978 gem (the last Philadelphia has endured), then added another in 1983 to become of one just 29 pitchers in history with more than 1 no-hitter to their credit, and his 2 no-hitters at home were the only ones ever thrown at the first Busch Stadium. He and his brother Ken are the only brothers to have thrown no-hitters. Forsch is the fourth pitcher to have contributed to a no-hitter to have died this year, joining Bob Feller (3), Gene Smith (2 – Negro Leagues), Mike Flanagan (1 inning in a 1991 Orioles combination).

Djaever Notice Retirement Never Lasts As Long As You Want It To?

2011-11-04T19:52:00.000-04:00

Andy Rooney, who spent more than 30 years riffing on whatever happened to be in his line of vision for 3 minutes rather than actually writing and preparing a script, has died of complications from minor surgery, because at the age of 92, there is no such thing as minor surgery. Especially if it was intended to rein in those eyebrows. Rooney has been America’s confused, curmudgeonly, racist, annoying, bat-shit crazy grandfather in nigh weekly commentaries that you got stuck watching because the NFL game ran late and you don’t want to miss the start of The Amazing Race. Over the years, the inanity he has harangued America about has included the spelling and pronunciation of February, how he doesn’t like metal watchbands because his wrist hairs get caught, his dim understanding of inflation, the size of women’s handbags, his ability to sleep anywhere, and the fact that they don’t put bees on nickels anymore. Above all, he lionized his antique Underwood typewriter that he hunted and pecked on for 50 years, compared with him churning through 7 computers in 6 years. Presumably because he kept cracking them open trying to change the carbon paper. He claimed to love properly pressed pants and carefully shined shoes and to have devices in his office to achieve both, yet perpetually looked as rumpled as a bus station suit. Rooney gave his final sign-off just a month ago, so all 60 Minutes needs to do tonight is slap an “Andy Rooney (1919-2011)” graphic up on last month’s retrospective segment.

Lost and Incontinent

2011-11-02T20:03:00.000-04:00

In the movies of the 1940s and 1950s, every third movie produced in Hollywood was required by an obscure clause in the Hays Code to have a character from Brooklyn in the cast for comic relief. In many of those films, that relief was provided by Sid Melton, who has died of pneumonia at the age of 94. Among those films were Lost Continent, where he played a mechanic on an expedition to a land mass unabashedly reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World who has erotic dreams about planes, and Radar Secret Service, one of the finest 59-minute movies about atomic theft this nation has ever produced. Both found second life on MST3K, where Joel and the ‘Bots dubbed Melton Monkey Boy. Melton turned up like a bad penny on 3 different Danny Thomas series, inexplicably took his Brooklyn accent to Hooterville on Green Acres and played Sophia’s late husband in flashbacks on The Golden Girls.

Heaven’s Cates

2011-10-31T19:57:00.002-04:00

Gil Cates, who directed Oscar telecasts with all the sensitivity, subtlety, nuance and emotion of a high school football coach armed with a clipboard, a stopwatch and a whistle, has been played off at the age of 77. Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s exuberantly over the top celebration after winning an Oscar for Jerry Maguire in 1996? Played off. Martin Landau basking in the adulation of the crowd as the culmination of nearly 40 years in show business with his 1995 Oscar for Ed Wood? Played off and cut to commercials as he called out, “No, no.” There are worse things than making the local news run a little late. Before keeping Hollywood stars from enjoying their 46th second of glory, Cates actually seemed to understand and appreciate actors, directing Gene Hackman and Melvyn Douglas to Academy Award nominations in I Never Sang for My Father and Joanne Woodward and Sylvia Sidney to nominations in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. Of special note for us Pooligans, he introduced the In Memoriam montage to the telecast.

Lib-ya-rated

2011-10-20T21:51:00.001-04:00

Or
Final Tripoli
Colonel Moammar Quadafy, the Italian men’s sunglasses model who took over Libya, has been killed by democracy at the age of 69. Bitter over being passed over for promotion during his 42-year rule and too deranged to realize he constituted the entire promotion board, Qadhafi took his anger out on his own people, in odd ways. When student revolutionaries were hanged in a Tripoli square following a show trial held in a soccer stadium, traffic was re-routed to force cars to take in the scene and take heed. Qadafi ordered all Libyans to raise chickens to promote self-sufficiency. He left the Western calendar for one based on the birth of Mohammed, then his own birth, and renamed the months of the year. Gheddafi claimed HIV was “a peace virus, not an aggressive virus,” called the Bible a forgery, and said Israel killed President Kennedy, suggesting he may have been Islam’s answer to Pat Robertson. Qadhdafi had a cadre of bodyguards out of a Robert Palmer video, complete with camouflage fatigues, red nail polish, high-heeled sandals, and submachine guns. With a wardrobe that ranged from that of the uniform of a British admiral in a Gilbert and Sullivan production to Isaac Hayes styled muumuus, Gaddafi cut a dashing figure as he presented himself as the philosopher of the sands, receiving visitors in a sprawling white tent even when traveling internationally, which was particularly well received by New Yorkers during his visits to yell at the United Nations. After years of largely benign rantings, Qadhdhafi reached for the stars in 1986, supporting the bombing of a Berlin discothèque and following it up by financing the 1988 terrorist bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. Qadhafi’s list of BFFs included a veritable Who’s Who of the world’s reprobates, including Uganda’s Idi Amin, who took refuge in Libya after his ouster, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Zimbabwe’s Robet Mugabe, and George W. Bush, who traded the ability to torture CIA prisoners in Libya for an executive order that gave Gheddafi’s government immunity from terrorism related lawsuits and dismissed pending compensation cases in the United States. While to the end Qathafi insisted that the uprising in Libya was the work of outsiders who were wasting their time because he lived “in a place where you can’t get me - I live in the hearts of millions,” he was actually found hiding a drain pipe and was, ahem, shot in a crossfire with loyalists, and absolutely was not executed by his Libyan brothers who loved him so.
Not kicking ass or taking hyphenated names is Phil, who listed him in 2008

Na Na Na, Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye

2011-10-12T21:49:00.000-04:00

Paul Leka, who sent more pitchers to the showers than Tony LaRussa and Sparky Anderson combined, has died at the age of 68. As a songwriter and producer, he helped develop the trippy “Green Tambourine” for the Lemon Pipers and Harry Chapin’s “fuck you, dad” song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” but his most enduring contribution is the 1969 Buddah song “Kiss Him Goodbye,” to which Leka added the 2-minute chorus to keep radio DJs from playing it instead of the A side. In 1977, Chicago White Sox organist Nancy Faust added it to the ballpark lexicon as a way to rally the fans when an opposing pitcher got shelled out of a game.

Dirt Napier

2011-10-11T12:51:00.001-04:00

Charles Napier, the square-jawed character actor who provided guest growls for The Incredible Hulk, has died at the age of 75. Best remembered as Tucker McElroy, lead singer of the Good Ol’ Boys in The Blues Brothers (who for some reason still expected to go on despite showing up after Bob’s Country Bunker was closed in an oft-overlooked plothole), Napier also got bludgeoned by Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, played the sympathetic judge in Philadelphia, screwed Rambo in First Blood Part II, and warned townspeople about Ron Jeremy’s runaway phallus in One-Eyed Monster. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was a fixture on adventure shows, harassing Jim Rockford, Michael Knight, and the Duke boys, chasing The A-Team, and was Hammer, archnemesis to B. J. and the Bear. He was also the brilliantly insane station owner Duke Phillips on The Critic

Just Died, Baby

2011-10-08T12:47:00.000-04:00

Or
A commitment to excellence? Those words you keep using, I do not think they mean what you think they mean
Al Davis, the man who showed that sports ownership should come with term limits, has died at the age of 82. He will be buried in Oakland, dug up and re-buried in Los Angeles, potential new graves will be dug in Fresno, Burbank and Inglewood, before he is ultimately reburied in the same hole in Oakland after some sprucing up that will inconvenience mourners coming to adjacent graves. The Cryptkeeper lookalike with the librarian glasses was hired to be the coach and general manager of the Oakland Raiders in 1963, and stayed too long at the party by about 30 years. He served as the commissioner of the American Football League in 1966, and steered the league in its full-on assault on the NFL, starting with a bidding war for players that forced the merger in 1970. He returned to populate the Raiders with sociopaths, reprobates and lunatics, instilling the team with the outlaw image it has carefully cultivated long after it only applies to the team’s deranged fan base. In 1982, he sued the NFL to force it to allow him to move to Los Angeles; he later sued again, accusing the league of hindering his efforts to build a new stadium in Los Angeles. In 1995, seeking to find a relevance his team had lost on the field, he moved back to Oakland, and sued the NFL again out of habit. Although the Raiders had the best record in professional sports from 1963 to 1985, more recently Davis’ decisions were along the lines of drafting JaMarcus Russell first overall to see him out of the NFL just 3 years later and hiring Lane Kiffin, ripping him for a year and a half, then firing him after 20 games.

Taking a Dirt App

2011-10-05T12:49:00.000-04:00

Or
iDied

Or
America Suffers Another Jobs Loss

Or
In Serious Need of a Reboot
Steve Jobs, who showed that a bastard college drop-out who got fired by the company he founded could ruin the way humans interact, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Coming from a broken home, Jobs had little appreciation for outdated notions of talking to family and friends. Instead of stories of singalongs and car games from family vacations, future generations can ask “Remember that time we sat silently in the back seat until our batteries died?” Instead of lively conversations at dinner with friends, a cluster of people tap feverishly at screens to chat with people who aren’t there. Instead of enjoying music as complete albums, they can buy individual songs while running the risk of being surgically altered to share a common gastrointestinal tract with two other people that is then downloaded to a tablet as a Human CentiPad. Instead of actually experiencing events, people can’t wait to text or tweet about them. But at least they are doing all this on sleek, fancy devices that they didn’t know they needed until Jobs told them they did.

Hope No Longer Springs Eternal

2011-09-19T23:23:00.000-04:00

Or
Hopeless

Or
Hope Sinks
Dolores Hope, who spent more than 70 years giving away Bob Hope’s hard-earned money, has died at the age of 102, giving the couple an impressive combined age of 202. The “singer” married Bob Hope in 1934, primarily out of curiousity if it’s true what they say about men with big noses. Draw your own conclusions from their 69-year marriage. While Bob was Zagating his way through Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and the rest of the world’s finest resort locales, Dolores was donating 80 acres of prime Palm Springs real estate for the Eisenhower Medical Center, earning herself the chair of the center’s board. Bob kept the place afloat with his titular golf tournament. Longevity wasn’t the only thing that rubbed off on Dolores during all that rubbing. Noting Bob’s passion for racking up the frequent flier miles, for their 50th wedding anniversary she gave him a paperweight inscribed, "Don't think these three weeks haven't been fun."

Old Bay

2011-09-15T18:34:00.001-04:00

Or
Baying at the Tomb
Frances Bay, the Rye Lady from Seinfeld, has died at the age of 82. She didn’t begin acting until the 1950s, but found notable roles witnessing Betsy Russell’s bareback riding in Private School, playing grandmother to Fonzie and Happy Gilmore, Kyle MacLachlan's doddery aunt in Blue Velvet, Rosco P. Coltrane’s sister, and therefore, Boss Hogg's sister-in-law, and of course, Mrs. Menges in Critters 3. She found a final slice of fame as Mabel Choate, the woman Jerry steals a rye bread from, which eventually cost Jerry’s dad the presidency of Del Boca Vista.

Just Sand

2011-09-11T23:31:00.001-04:00

Or
I. Was. Spartacus.

Or
The Original Legionnaire’s Disease
Andy Whitfield, star of the Starz soft-core series “Spartacus: Boobs and Sand,” has died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 39. The no-name Australian actor jumped to stardom with the gore and groping look at the life of the Thracian gladiator/rebellion leader, following The Tudors and Game of Thrones as the latest cable attempt to develop interest in a costume drama by having the characters spend most of their time out of their costumes.

With Great Death Comes Great Burial

2011-09-10T23:28:00.000-04:00

Or
Can You Hear Me Now?

Or
Sorry Charly

Or
Come Back, Shame
Hollywood snitch Cliff Robertson has died at the age of 88. Robertson won the Oscar in 1969 playing the titular Charly, continuing Hollywood’s tradition of soothing its guilt over mocking the handicapable by handing out Oscars to every non-special actor who does a half-way decent job depicting a differently abled character. Even then, Robertson was careful not to go full retard in his depiction of Charly, a “just a little slow” bakery employee who undergoes experimental surgery to become smarter and finds that hyperintelligent people are rapey goateed douchebags. Other gigs included the Batman baddie Shame, a Shane-less parody of the Alan Ladd classic, the Twilight Zone classic creep out “The Dummy,” which single-wooden-handedly established the omniscient ventriloquist dummy genre, and “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim,” where he wanders from 1847 Ohio into 1961 New Mexico in search of penicillin for his ailing son. Robertson spent four years as persona non grata after turning in Columbia Pictures president David Begelman for forging his name on a check. Begelman was head of MGM before the justice-obsessed Hollywood elite had let Robertson out of the doghouse for turning on one of their own. Most recently, he spent 10 years hawking AT&T and guiding Spider-Man from beyond the grave as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben.

Sooner Later

2011-09-04T13:01:00.000-04:00

Lee Roy Selmon, Don Nee’s real father, has died of complications following a stroke at the age of 56. Selmon and his brothers Dewey and Lucious dominated on the Oklahoma Sooners defense en route to back to back national championships in 1974 and 1975. His reward – being the first player ever drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he would lose his first 26 games as a professional, and probably would have lost to Oklahoma, if given the chance. It would have been much worse without him, as he racked up 78 ½ sacks in 9 seasons, earning 6 Pro Bowl selections and entry in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, to go along with selection in the College Football Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame and the Florida Sports Hall of Fame.

Still as Tupelo Honey

2011-08-29T13:00:00.000-04:00

Or
Back to the Roots
David Honeyboy Edwards, last of the first generation of Delta blues singers, really has a reason to sing the blues, having died of congestive heart failure at the age of 96. Edwards was there from the start of the blues movement, hitchhiking or hopping freight trains from gig to gig, playing street corners, picnics, and fish fries. Basically, he was a vagrant with a guitar. But unlike Kenmore Square’s Mixed Nuts, he made great music. And played an actual guitar, not a hand-drawn cardboard cutout. Edwards took his incessant whining about life’s trials and tribulations, accompanied by intricate fingerpicking and slashing bottleneck-slide guitar work, from the street corners to seedy Chicago nightclubs in the 1950s, and then was championed by pretentious snobs who pretended they’d always big fans during the blues revival of the 1960s, when he started recording on major labels. Despite lacking a prerequisite heroin addiction, Edwards was elected to the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996 and named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2002, a Grammy for blues album in 2008 and a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2010 before achieving the crowning glory of his career, a cameo appearance as himself in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Baltimore Chopped

2011-08-24T23:30:00.000-04:00

Peter Angelos’ tenure as owner of the Baltimore Orioles has driven many of the team’s fans and family to consider taking drastic measures. Mike Flanagan was more driven than most, shooting himself with a shotgun at the age of 59. Flanagan was reportedly despondent over his role in the ongoing disaster that the franchise has become, a stark contrast from the fundamentals-heavy minor league system that fostered the Oriole Way throughout the system. While lacking the panache of a self-immolating monk, something’s got to wake up a franchise that is wrapping up its 14th consecutive losing season after having a total of 13 from 1954, the team’s first season, through 1997, its last playoff appearance. An All Yankee Conference standout at UMass-Amherst, Flanagan was a consistent if unspectacular pitcher for the Orioles for 15 years, with his 1979 Cy Young Award a stunning departure. Flanagan hung around the Orioles front office after retirement, and was a popular broadcaster known for his quick wit – he started giving nicknames to players in the 1970s, such as John "Clams" Castino, which Peter Gammons reported in The Boston Globe, eventually inspiring Chris Berman to ruin sports highlights for everyone.

Imus in the Mourning

2011-08-06T21:06:00.000-04:00

Fred Imus, occasional guest of big brother broadcaster Don, has died at the age of 69. He was found in his trailer in Tucson in his latest attempt to gauge the efficacy of his cleaning lady. He wrote the 1976 #1 country hit “I Don't Want To Have To Marry You” for Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, but mostly fixed old cars when not selling salsa and t-shirts. Don always credited Fred for some of his success, including the idea to involve his producer Bernard McGuirk more in the show, which panned out well when McGuirk started a riff on the Rutgers women’s basketball team that Don joined in on, which got him fired from WFAN and MSNBC. Despite his prickly, and pricky, nature, every one of Fred’s appearances ended with the brothers exchanging unironic “I love yous.”

Bubba Dumped

2011-08-03T21:44:00.001-04:00

Bubba Smith, Dick Butkus’ life partner, has died at the age of 66. After a career at Michigan State that earned him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame, the 6-foot-8, 300-lb Smith spent 9 seasons in the NFL, making two Pro Bowl teams and helping the Baltimore Colts to throw Super Bowl III to the New York Jets. Part of the All-Star lineup of the Miller Lite ads of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Smith quickly found himself stereotyped as intimidating black man for comic relief, most notably as florist turned cop Moses Hightower in Police Academy and too many of its too many sequels. Other gigs included Blue Thunder, co-starring Butkus; MacGyver, co-starring Butkus; Half Nelson, co-starring Butkus; Superdome, co-starring Butkus and as Tony’s duck-loving boxing coach on Taxi, 3 years after Butkus’ cameo.

Toad the Dead Sprocket

2011-07-27T21:12:00.000-04:00

Hideki Irabu, long plagued by hanging pitches in the major leagues, made himself a hanging pitcher, committing suicide at the age of 42. A star of the Japanese Pacific League, Irabu demanded the chance to come to the United States, and his team, the Chiba Lotte Marines, eventually complied and sold the negotiating rights to the San Diego Padres. Irabu refused to sign with the Padres, eventually forcing a trade to the New York Yankees, where he made his debut to a capacity crowd with 35 million more watching in Japan. He won that game, which would be the highlight of his season, and probably his career. Built for comfort, not for pitching, Irabu, pronounced I-rob-you, was a profound disappointment, with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner calling a “fat, pussy toad.” Finishing his career with a record of 34 -35, Irabu was less the Japanese Nolan Ryan, as he had been dubbed, and more the Japanese Ryan Drese.

When The Chip Is Down

2011-07-24T21:47:00.000-04:00

Chip Mayer, the Fredo of the Duke clan, has died at the age of 57. In 1982, Tom Wopat and John Schneider pulled a Drysdale-Koufax and joined forces to negotiate new contracts before returning to The Dukes of Hazzard. With good reason, CBS assumed Dukes’ ratings were based more on the sex appeal of the General Lee, Catherine Bach and Denver Pyle than the two stars, and hatched a strike-busting plan. Knowing how much rednecks love cousins, the Tiffany Network replaced Bo and Luke with cousins Vance (played by Mayer) and Coy (played by Byron Cherry) faster than you can say Curly Joe DeRita, and the wacky antics, car jumping and Roscoe-taunting continued. But hicks and pre-teen boys are a fickle bunch and never warmed to the nouveau Dukes, who left Hazzard County as suddenly as they had appeared when Wopat and Schneider, having been shown the money, resumed their hood-sliding ways after 19 episodes.

Squeezed

2011-07-24T21:10:00.000-04:00

G.D. Spradlin, who learned how to be an evil, powerful, manipulative bastard as an Oklahoma oil man and put that skill set to use as a prolific heavy character actor, has died at the age of 90. Best remembered as Nevada Senator Pat Geary, who goes Jack Woltz one better and gets a whole hooker in his bed rather than just a head, Spradlin didn’t begin acting until he was in his 40s and still managed to compile more than 70 films on his resume. When not attending donkey shows with Fredo, Spradlin did his best Tom Landry impression in North Dallas Forty and sent Martin Sheen up river to kill Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. But his knack for the heavies was his stock in trade, including sadistic Sheriff Cyrus Buelton in Tank, deranged racist commandant of the of the Carolina Military Academy in The Lords of Discipline, Coach Moreland Smith, who made Bob Knight look cuddly in One on One, the guy pulling Johnny Depp’s strings on an assassination attempt in Nick of Time, and Lyndon Johnson in the 1985 TV mini-series Robert Kennedy & His Times.

Rethinking Her Position on Rehab

2011-07-23T22:21:00.001-04:00

Or
She Said No, No, No
Amy Winehouse, the British drunk crackhead who occasionally sang has visited Club 27, joining Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Louis Chouvin. No cause of death has been reported, but I wouldn’t bet the house on natural causes. Adopting the John Derek philosophy “Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse” – well, two out of three, anyway – she rode her husky sound and a hip-hop retro soul sound to record her second album, Back to Black, which scored her 5 Grammys in 2008, including the career ending Best New Artist. She also won Song of the Year for Rehab, which in retrospect now looks more like an unanswered cry for help. Before and especially since, her personal life has made more headlines than her singing, as she sought treatment for anorexia, emphysema, injuries from falls, tuberculosis, and rickets, and of course, lots and lots of addictions with several stints in the dreaded rehab. At her most recent appearance, she was even more incoherent than usual, slurring her way through a couple songs she couldn’t remember the lyrics too – a poor showing, even by Belgrade standards, and she was booed off the stage. The rest of her tour was canceled, and her next public appearance came when she was wheeled out of her London apartment on a gurney.

Rubioed the Wrong Way

2011-07-21T21:08:00.001-04:00

Or
Whipped
The Del Rubio Triplets can start their reunion tour with the death of Milly, the last of the Grim Reaper’s hat trick, at the age of 89. The trio, the Boyds by birth, were a camp sensation of the 1980s with dyed bright blonde bouffant s, gaudy blue eye shadow and showing a lot more leg than any 60-year-olds should wear while offering bizarre interpretations of contemporary classics, such as an acoustic guitar cover version of Devo’s Whip It, which they reprised in an episode of Sliders and in a McDonald’s commercial. Other appearances included Peggy’s aunts on Married... with Children, Full House, The Golden Girls, Night Court, New Monkees and Pee-wee's Playhouse. The group ended with Eadie’s death in 1996, and got even quieter with Elena’s in 2001.

Goo, Goo, Googie, Goodbye

2011-07-15T22:14:00.001-04:00

(Fanfare for Kirsti)

Or
The Lady Tarnishes
(Tip o’ the cap for Kirsti)
Googie Withers, dispenser of a bit of old school British class in dozens of films of the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, has died at the age of 94. Old enough to have been a native of Karachi in what was called British India before the English did such a great job redrawing the map of Asia, Withers took to the stage in London in the 1930s, where she caught the eye of Alfred Hitchcock before he tacitly acknowledged his fetish for icy blondes. Withers had a supporting role in The Lady Vanishes as one of the passengers on a stranded train from which a woman may have disappeared or may have never existed, later adapted as Flightplan and parodied on Andy Barker, PI as The Lady Varnishes. Other films included the inventory comedy One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, Dead of Night and Night and the City. She married the Australian actor John McCallum and joined him when he took over a theater there, bringing to life the words of Chekov, Wilde and Maughum to a bunch of drunks named Bruce. For her efforts, she was the first non-Australian to be named an officer of the Order of Australia, in 1980, later tacking on a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002. Her final role was the 1996 Australian movie “Shine,” for which Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar as a lunatic pianist.

Here’s the Story, of a TV Mogul, Who Stopped Breathing One Lovely July Night

2011-07-12T22:04:00.001-04:00

Or
Just sit right back and you’ll hear the tale
The tale of a fateful trip
That started down the river Styx
Clutched in death’s icy grip

Or
Deadwood Schwartz

Or
The Silver Platters Announce Reunion Tour to Pay for Headstone

Or
A Very Brady Funeral
(Additional accolades for Phil)

Or
Here's the Story... of a Corpse Named Sherwood!
(Can I get a whoop whoop for Terry?)

Or
The Minnow Has Been Lost
(Props to Phil)

Or
The Minnow Meets a Watery Grave
(Kudos to Phil)

Or
Hey Professor, you can built a radio out of coconuts, but you can't raise the dead?
(More merit for Phil)
Sherwood Schwartz, TV theme song auteur, has died at the age of 94. The Emmy-award winning writer of The Red Skelton Show had a vision for a sitcom bringing together a varied group of white people to serve as a microcosm for society that would enable him to explore some of the deeper questions of modern times, like what is man’s place in the universe?, has America developed an unbreachable schism between the classes?, and Mary Ann or Ginger? But as Schwartz assured concerned CBS Chairman William S. Paley, it’s a funny microcosm. Still, network executives were concerned that the show would be too high concept for casual viewers, forcing Schwartz to develop the iconic theme song to explain the show. After 3 seasons the show was canceled suddenly, pre-empting Schwartz’s planned finale revealing that the Minnow had actually sunk in the storm, taking all the “castaways” with it and that the island was actually purgatory and the giant incredibly fake spider and the bird that terrified it represented the good and evil sides of the island. Several years later, Schwartz tried to relax American taboos on the concept of incest with his open-minded take on family The Brady Bunch. Removing the blood relation to sneak around censors, Schwartz intended to show how to strengthen family bonds with bondage. Again, his show was canceled before Marcia got the chance to break something other than her nose up in Greg’s groovy attic apartment. Luckily, Alice and Sam were on hand to sex things up, with Sam’s job as a butcher giving a subliminal nod to talking about his meat. It’s About Time, about two astronauts cavorting with cavemen, Dusty’s Trail, basically Gilligan’s Island in a wagon train, and Big John, Little John, a sitcom built around Robbie Rist, best known as show running Cousin Oliver, were less well received.

Back Off the Wagon

2011-07-08T21:55:00.001-04:00

Or
The Last Ford Has Rolled Off The Assembly Line...
(Props to Terry)
Betty Ford, our nation’s pill-popping truck driver of a First Lady, has died at the age of 93. If Jerry Ford was our accidental president, Betty Ford was our perfect storm First Lady. Having started swiping her day’s gin at the age of 12 and giving the best hand jobs in the 9th grade, Ford told an interviewer that she wouldn’t be surprised if her teenage daughter was smoking marijuana and having sex. Not surprising, given that she was the first First Lady to share a bed in the White House with the president. Because when the First Momma (her CB handle - seriously) gets the itch in the middle of the night, she doesn’t want to have to sneak across the hall. When she and Jerry visited China, she kicked off her shoes and started dancing. She said couples should live together before marriage, that women should be drafted into the military, and was an advocate for abortion rights and the ERA. To some, it was a breath of fresh air; to others, she was the crazy aunt who shared a little too much after hitting the cooking sherry. She also candidly discussed her battle with breast cancer and mastectomy, instead of leaving it as the topic of hushed whispers where it belongs, and sold out for a lucrative naming rights deal for a celebrity nightclub for repeat partiers.

One More Thing... or Maybe Not

2011-06-23T21:21:00.001-04:00

I Guess There Won't Be Just One More Thing...
(Kudos to Mike Burger for continuing the theme)

Or
One Last Thing... *THUD*
(Mark, also variating on the theme)

Or
Gee Mr. Rosenberg, I Hate To Bother You...
(Monty, earning points for personalization)
Peter Falk, the adult equivalent of those meddling kids as Lt. Columbo, has died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 83. Today, he’d be relegated to the USA Network and be paired with a perky blonde by-the-book partner who grudgingly comes to respect his unorthodox ways. But on his own in his rumpled raincoat, perpetually misplaced matches to light his signature cigar, faraway look as a result of the glass eye that replaced one removed at age 3 due to a cancerous tumor, and endless stories about Mrs. Colombo and the rest of his family, Columbo became a TV icon as he lulled criminal masterminds into complacency with compliments and apologies for troubling them before asking that one last question that sends the house of cards tumbling. Before sending special guest stars to the big house, Falk had been nominated for two Oscars for playing mob figures in 1960’s Murder, Inc. and then in Frank Capra’s last film, 1961’s Pocketful of Miracles. No award nominations accompanied his mob turns in Cookie, Shark Tale and Corky Romano. He also had a well established stage career, appearing in original productions of works by Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon and Arthur Miller. Other roles included the all-star Agatha Christie parody Murder by Death, as the unhinged ex-CIA spook opposite Alan Arkin in The In-Laws, and the grandfather in The Princess Bride, in which he reprised his “where did I put that” pat-down while looking for his glasses.

Radio Nowhere

2011-06-18T22:02:00.000-04:00

Clarence Clemons, who brought the cool to make a scrawny kid from New Jersey, a dork in a doo rag, a screechy redhead and a drum-playing accountant one of the greatest rock bands of all time, has died at the age of 69 following a stroke likely brought on by the realization he had gone from playing with Bruce Springsteen to playing on the record of a woman who wore a meat dress. As testament to his lasting cultural significance, he was one of the Three Most Important People In The World in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

In lieu of (plural noun), donations to (name of organization) are (adverb) encouraged

2011-06-07T21:07:00.000-04:00

(Delayed appreciation for Terry)

Or
The _______ man died ________ of ___________
(adjective) (adverb) (life-threatening disease or ailment)
(Overdue kudos for Mark)

Or
(noun) is dead
(Potential praise for Monty realized)
Leonard B. Stern, who turned writer’s block into the dumbest party game ever, has died of heart failure at the age of 88. While struggling to come up with a word while writing a script, Stern stumbled into the idea of a story with a bunch of words missing and letting people make their own feeble attempts at humor. This was a surprising turn for Stern, who had already won an Emmy for writing complete sentences on The Phil Silvers Show and would pick up another for Get Smart. Other gigs included writing for The Honeymooners, The Steve Allen Show and creating I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster, Run Buddy Run, He & She and McMillan & Wife.

The Cat Who Started Chewing on Her Owner’s Corpse Until the Neighbors Noticed the Smell

2011-06-04T21:08:00.000-04:00

Or
The Cat Who Buried its Owner
(Deferred adulation for Monty)

Or
The Cat Who Pawed at the Dead Body Disinteresedly Until the Coroner Took it Away
(Tardy to-do for Mark)
Lilian Jackson Braun, the first crazy cat lady to find a way to monetize her insanity, has died at the age of 97. The lonely old crone wrote 29 mystery novel about crime-solving, hair-ball vomiting cats that sold millions of copies and were translated into 16 languages, creatively all beginning with The Cat Who…, copies of each of which can be found in noted felineophile Kirsti MacPherson’s collection. The Man in the Yellow Hat in this festival of the damned was Jim Qwilleran, a newspaperman and amateur detective who lived in an unnamed northern state (probably Maine given the Cabot Cove-esque level of violence and mayhem) with his Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum. In between conveniently swiping bits of evidence or knocking over just the right book to just the right page to yield crucial clues, the cats purred, slept, ate and groomed themselves, every minute of which was gloriously captured in minute detail by Braun.

God to Jack: You Can’t Quit – You’re Fired

2011-06-03T21:19:00.000-04:00

Or
Dr. Death meets Mr. Death
(Additional accolades a la Monty)
GHI Patron Saint Jack Kevorkian, who figured out how to beat escalating malpractice insurance premiums, has died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 83. As a pathologist, he was able to combine his need for samples with the unpleasantness of old age and disease by developing a contraption of bottles, tubes, wires and mortal coils located in motel rooms and vans to help the elderly, the terminally ill and the really bored end their suffering. While Big Pharma, fearing losing paying customers, and Republican death penalty advocates, who didn’t want to give up their monopoly on scheduling death, wailed about injustice, but at the time the laws around assisted suicide were vague at best, and he beat charges 3 different times. Kevorkian may have been able to start franchising walk-up death clinics - based on the look of the device and the intended outcome, the GHI would have advocated calling them Stills – had he not operated the machine on a patient in an interview on 60 Minutes. At that point, he was no longer assisting, but murdering, in the eyes of the Michigan jurors who finally shut him down. But not before he whacked 130 “patients,” though impatients seems more accurate. To put that in perspective, that leaves him just 1 shy of the confirmed combined total of John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, Gary “Green River Killer” Ridgway and Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez. Kevorkian was credited with challenging the social taboo on fruitless discussions of end of life issues, unless you live in Oregon, Washington or Montana or have a family doctor willing to spend 8 years in prison to prove a point. Thankfully he was good at killing people because he was godawful as an artist: http://networkedblogs.com/gYGuv.

The Thing (on his way to Another World)

2011-06-03T21:11:00.001-04:00

Or
Gunsmoked

Or
He Died with His Boots On
(Props to Monty)
James Arness, the man who rid Dodge City of all crime except prostitution, has died at the age of 88. At 6’7”, Arness was the tallest leading man in TV history, and played the longest running character in a single series, Marshall Matt Dillon, for 20 years, then again in a series of derivative TV movies. Dillon embodied the Western standard strong, silent lawman, but Gunsmoke stayed on the air by avoiding the weekly archetypal villains with a more nuanced view of a chaotic frontier with an evolving morality where the good guys didn’t always win. Another strong draw was Dillon’s relationships with crotchety Doc Adams, oddball deputies Chester and Festus and madam with a heart of gold Miss Kitty. Arness, a decorated World War II veteran wounded at Anzio, had previously starred as the titular The Thing From Another World, then a number of Westerns. Arness got the role of a lifetime when Gunsmoke moved from radio to TV in 1952 and producers thought better of allowing William Conrad to continue as the roly-poly long arm of the role, and John Wayne recommended his Hondo co-star. Once the top-rated show on TV, it outlasted all of its competitors and spawned dozens of copycats. Arness outlived all but a few of his Dodge City neighbors and his younger brother Peter Graves.

I Don’t Know Why You Say Yalow, I Say Goodbye

2011-05-30T21:10:00.000-04:00

Rosalyn Yalow, who proved that a woman’s place was in the kitchen, as long as your kitchen has a radioimmunology lab, has died at the age of 89. In an era when June Cleaver was the epitome of feminine ambition, Yalow was earning the second Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to a woman as the co-discoverer of the radioimmunoassay, an extremely sensitive means to measure insulin and other hormones in the blood. The assay, which contradicted all previous thinking about the sensitivity of the immune system, enabled her to show that inability to use insulin caused diabetes and facilitated breakthroughs in early diagnosis of disorders related to thyroid dysfunction. All this despite the fact that she was, in the words of Purdue University that denied her application for graduate school: “She is from New York. She is Jewish. She is a woman.” The College of Physicians and Surgeons, now part of Columbia University, offered her a job as a secretary and promised that if she was a good girl, she could take a couple classes. She opted for a teaching assistantship at the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, instead, although an A-minus in one laboratory course confirmed for the chairman of the physics department that women could not excel at lab work.

Mrs. B. Dead

2011-05-25T12:47:00.000-04:00

Or
Lost our Luster
Betty L. Prentis, mouthpiece for the C.G. Conn Brass Company in the most unintentionally demented promotional video ever, has died at the age of 89. Viewers of Mr. B. Natural were asked to accept the leggy Prentis, a former dancer, as the omniscient, omnipresent embodiment of the spirit of music. Kind of like Mary Martin as Peter Pan mixed with a bad LSD trip. At the time, her career had taken her to the London stage, Broadway and television, while the saga of Mr. B Natural regaling impressionable teen Buzz with tales of the magic of music, and even its impact on Buzz’s own family (You leave my father out of this!) languished in obscurity until stumbled upon by the geniuses at Best Brains, who turned it into one of the most popular shorts to get new life with Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Out of Harmon's Way

2011-05-21T17:07:00.001-04:00

Or
No Longer Harmonizing
(Kudos to Monty)
Harmon Killebrew, who was not the model for the Major League Baseball no matter how much you romantics want it to be so and correcting the historical record by pointing that out does not make me a bad person, has died of esophageal cancer at the age of 74. The first Hall of Famer in Minnesota Twins history, Killebrew retired after the 1975 season in 5th place on the all-time HR list with 573, and only 2 non-roid raiders have passed him since. After the 1959-1960 NBA season, the Minneapolis Lakers left the great north woods for Los Angeles, fully intending on coming up with a more geographically relevant name, which left East Dakota bereft of major professional teams. The next year, the original Washington Senators relocated to challenge fishing, hunting and ice fishing as the most popular sports in the state. Helping make the case was Killebrew, a real-life Paul Bunyan scraping the farthest reaches of the American League’s ballparks, including the longest HR ever hit at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, the first ball hit over the left field roof at Tiger Stadium and, most famously, a 520-foot home run at Met Stadium marked with a specially painted chair that still hangs on what is now the site of the Mall of America, overlooking the log flume ride. He also was the only man to ever hit the ball over the 471-foot center field wall at Chattanooga’s Historic Engel Stadium.

Snapped into His LAST Slim Jim!!!

2011-05-20T17:11:00.001-04:00

(Props to Terrence Walsh)

Or
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
Rando “Macho Man” Savage, who led the 1974 Tampa Tarpons with 9 home runs and 66 RBI, has died at the age of 58 after suffering a heart attack while driving that caused him to lose control of his car. Rather than the Jaws of Life, rescuers were able to free him from the wreck using a Slim Jim. Strutting into the ring with Technicolor cowboy hats, outlandish sunglasses that would make Italian men cringe, fringed jackets, oiled muscles and a bandana to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” Savage was perfectly cast as a wrestler who shared his nom de ring with a song by the Village People. He emerged as one of the biggest stars of the homoerotic soap opera that is professional wrestling, starting as a heel, until a feud with The Honky Tonk Man ended up with Savage’s wife/manager Miss Elizabeth begging Hulk Hogan to save Savage and he switched sides to form the Mega Powers with Hogan, but then Hogan accidentally eliminated Savage during a Royal Rumble. Jealous of Hogan, who had now taken Miss Elizabeth as his manager, Savage turned heel on Hogan, abandoning him in a tag team match against the Twin Towers and then challenging him for heavyweight and tag team titles. Other story lines, er, phases of his personal development, included a snit fit when the Ultimate Warrior wouldn’t grant him a shot at the title after his title bout with Sgt. Slaughter, before Savage and Warrior later teamed as heroes, and a romantic rekindling after Elizabeth left the audience to rescue Savage who was getting abused by Sensational Queen Sherri. Non ring roles included stretching to play wrestler Bone Saw McGraw in Spider-Man and voicing Space Ghost’s grandfather on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

A Look Up in Angora

2011-05-09T19:30:00.000-04:00

Dolores Fuller, sharer of angora sweaters with Edward D. Wood, Jr., has died from complications of a stroke at the age of 88. Fuller was the girlfriend of the notoriously untalented cross-dressing director and saw their love story played out in the semi-autobiographical Glen or Glenda?, which tells the story of a man who tells his fiancée that he likes to wear women’s clothing. As the supportive fiancée, Fuller literally gives him the shirt off her back. She also appeared in Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster. Her association with Wood pretty much buried any chance she may have had at a film career, but she did write songs for Elvis Presley movies, including “Rock-a-Hula Baby” from Blue Hawaii, and “Do the Clam” from Girl Happy.

Seve Up

2011-05-07T19:39:00.000-04:00

European golfer par excellence Seve Ballesteros, who chose sports less manly than his native country’s bullfighting, has died of brain cancer at the age of 54. Learning to play golf with only a 3-iron helped Ballesteros divine brilliant recoveries from horrifically bad shots into dunes, creeks, bushes and, in the 1979 British Open, a car park, yielding a birdie en route to his first major victory. Ballesteros also implemented his own affirmative action campaign to force the rest of continental Europe into the Ryder Cup, which had to that point been a US-UK/Ireland contest. Unlike Casey Martin, who challenged golf and then did nothing with his victory, Ballesteros became one of the best Ryder Cup champions, captaining the winning 1985 team and winning 4 others, the last being his stint as non-playing captain in the 1997 Cup in his native Spain, the first Ryder Cup in continental Europe. Ballesteros was the first European and at the time the youngest to win the Masters in 1980, the first of 2 wins, and won the British Open 3 times. Ballesteros also brought a charisma and flair to the game, helping to make golf the non-stop thrill ride loved the world over.

Five the Really Hard Way

2011-05-07T19:33:00.000-04:00

Ross Hagen, star of the MST3K-ed classic Sidehackers, has died of prostate cancer, not from chili peppers burning his gut, at the age of 72. Hagen made another appearance in the MST3K realm, starring as an undercover cop in a biker gang in The Hellcats.

Perry White Meets Great Caesar’s Ghost

2011-05-03T19:27:00.000-04:00

Jackie Cooper, who learned how to cry on screen the hard way, has died at the age of 88. Coming up as a child star in the 1930s when most children were polishing moving gears, washing the inside of engines and being used as depth finders, the abuses of the film industry were small potatoes. He was filming 27 Our Gang shorts a week, then tear-jerking dramas on weekends as the son a drunken Wallace Beery was ever at risk of losing. In the 1931 film Skippy, directed by his uncle Norman Taurog, he was supposed to cry. Unable to get him to do it, Taurog had Cooper’s dog taken off the set and “shot,” using a prop gun. Tears flowed, and the performance made Cooper the youngest Oscar nominee ever at the age of 9, as well as giving him the title for his autobiography “Please Don’t Shoot my Dog.” A wash up by the time he was a teenager, he became an Emmy-winning TV director of M*A*S*H and other shows, and made a brief comeback as Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s sputtering boss Perry White in Superman, et seq. after original choice Keenan Wynn suffered a heart attack.

Bin better

2011-05-02T19:41:00.000-04:00

Osama bin Laden has a new appreciation for the lyrics of Toby Keith, having been killed by U.S. Navy Seals while hiding out in the backyard of trusted ally Pakistan, and don’t you always find things in the last place you think to look despite suspecting they were there all along and despite repeated assurances from said place that there is no way it could possibly be there? In the process, President Obama managed to piss off Muslims, namby pamby human rights activists, conservative Republicans, Native Americans and Pakistanis. No good deed goes unpunished.

The Waitz is Over

2011-04-19T21:18:00.000-04:00

Or
Grete Excavations
Like many strangers to New York City, Grete Waitz ran through the streets as quickly as possible to avoid the perils that befall outsiders, from muggers to flashers to the inescapable stench of garbage and urine that pervades America’s Calcutta. Unlike most strangers, Waitz was generally successful, and wisely timed her visits for the first week of November, winning the New York City Marathon 9 times in 12 tries, setting a record in her first marathon and breaking that record three more times. She ran that first marathon as a lark at her husband’s urging that a trip to New York City would be a second honeymoon. As part of their celebration, the two dined on shrimp cocktail and filet mignon… the night before the marathon. Waitz was in such agony over the last 10 miles that after she crossed the finish line, she took off her shoes and threw them at her husband, proclaiming she would “never do this stupid thing again.” As with most women, she couldn’t be trusted, and was back the following year to shave almost 5 minutes off her record.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

2011-04-19T20:57:00.000-04:00

Or
Goodbye, Mistress
Elisabeth Sladen, who spent 4 years shrieking and giving the Doctor a reason for extensive exposition, has died of cancer at the age of 63. As Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who, Sladen endured Jon Pertwee’s old man smell and Tom Baker’s unhealthy obsession with his own scarf while bouncing around time and space for three and a half years in the TARDIS. The most popular traveling companion for the Doctor in viewer polls, Smith’s departure made front page news in England, but most importantly, she took K-9, TV’s most annoying robot this side of Twiki, with her. Despite leaving, Sladen kept reprising the role – in a spin-off pilot K-9, several specials, BBC radio plays, a few cameos on the mother ship and then, 30 years after leaving the series, getting her own show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which ran 4 seasons on BBC, which is like 15 ½ episodes. In the series, Smith leads a bunch of kids to defeat monsters and aliens, suggesting the whole nigh-immortal Time Lord deal is pretty overrated.

Are You Being Served Cold?

2011-04-14T21:19:00.000-04:00

Trevor Bannister, haplessly horny salesman at Grace Brothers, has died of a heart attack at the age of 76. As Dick (or James, as the show apparently forgot midway through the series) Lucas, Bannister pined for buxom Miss Brahms on Are You Being Served?, but lost prominence as the show became more of an ensemble, and left at the peak of the show’s popularity for paying gigs that lasted longer than 7 weeks. With Bannister’s passing, the only Served survivors are Frank Thornton (Captain Peacock) and Nicholas Smith (Mr. Rumbold).

And Joost Iced For All

2011-04-12T19:38:00.002-04:00

Eddie Joost, who had the lowest batting average for any player with 400 or more at-bats in a season, has died at the age of 94. The slick-fielding shortstop spent 17 years in the majors, helping to fuel a brief revitalization of the Philadelphia Athletics in the late 1940s after Connie Mack had sold off anyone worth watching, dooming the A’s to the second division for 12 years in a row. After years of dwindling attendance and the cross-town Phillies relevant for the first time in a generation, Joost led the team to a winning record and a franchise record attendance in 1948. The resurgence was short-lived and Joost served as the player-manager of the team in 1954, their last before moving to Kansas City and ceded the city to the Phillies, a decision that would pay off with a World Series parade just 26 years later. He played one more season with the Boston Red Sox before retiring. No longer an athlete, Joost was an active Athletic supporter, as a frequent guest of Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society events, and throwing out first pitches in Philadelphia and Oakland as the abomination of interleague play brought the Phillies and Athletics franchises together again. Joost was also notable as one of the few baseball players to wear glasses in the field to correct an astigmatism, as toric IOLs were a half century away, was the last living player to have played at Baker Bowl, the Phillies home from 1895 to 1938, and was the last surviving member of the 1940 World Champion Cincinnati Reds, the earliest World Series winner that still had a surviving player. With his death there are just 37 surviving players from the Philadelphia A’s.

He's Dead As Hell and He's Not Going To Take This Anymore!

2011-04-09T21:18:00.000-04:00

Or
One Really Angry Man
Sidney Lumet, who directed The Wiz, has died of lymphoma at the age of 86. Other films included Henry Fonda as a pansy-ass liberal combating the world’s worst dad trying to get an innocent kid acquitted in 12 Angry Men and then making my day by bombing New York City in Fail-Safe, Al Pacino as a back-stabbing cop in Serpico, and as a bad bank robber trying to pay for his boyfriend’s sex change in Dog Day Afternoon, Paul Newman as a drunk lawyer with a soft spot for turnips, Peter Firth as a deranged kid who couldn’t stop horsing around in Equus and the increasingly prescient television satire Network.

Ferraro Restarossa

2011-03-26T11:46:00.000-04:00

Geraldine Ferraro, who fell just 253 electoral votes shy of becoming the first female vice president in U.S. history, has died of cancer at the age of 75. The three-term Congresswoman from Queens blazed a trial for inexperienced women selected as token eye candy by overmatched men later followed by Sarah Palin and Kelly Ripa. Only the fact that she was unqualified, had a husband who didn’t feel obligated to pay taxes and had mob ties and that her running mate Walter Mondale was bland and ran on a platform of raising taxes kept them from stopping the Reagan Revolution.

White Lilies: A New Fragrance from Elizabeth Taylor

2011-03-23T22:24:00.000-04:00

(Props to Shawn)

Or
Cat on a Cold Metal Slab
(Kudos to Monty)

Or
8 Weddings and a Funeral
(Shamelessly stolen from stiffs.com)
Elizabeth Taylor, serial bride, diamond shill, and Oscar winner for Butterfield 8 before she ate fields of butter in her later years, has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 79. With any luck, this means we’ve seen the last of those godawful 20-year-old White Diamonds commercials. Throughout her career, Taylor tended toward edgier roles, first drawing attention in National Velvet as a cross-dressing pre-teen horse fetishist, winning an Oscar in Butterfield 8 as a hooker and another as a whiny, violent alcoholic in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, playing a gold-digging seductress in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with other ex-hookers, adulteresses and drunks mixed in for good measure. When not acting, Taylor was a big fan of getting pelted with rice, with 8 trips down the aisle. Richard Burton once said "Elizabeth's breasts are apocalyptic, they would topple empires before they withered." Several marriages fell as well. She led off with Conrad Hilton, but checked out after 9 months; bent Michael Wilding’s stiff upper lip after 5 years; fell hard for Mike Todd, who then fell hard in a twin-engine Lockheed; Todd’s friend Eddie Fisher was at her side, gradually working his way around to the front and dumping Debbie Reynolds in the process; turnabout was fairplay as Fisher was on the outside looking in at Taylor’s Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton; after 10 years, Dick and Liz divorced, forgot why they divorced and got remarried, remembered why and re-divorced after 16 months; 6 months after that divorce, Taylor hit the campaign aisle with Senator John Warner, who was term limited at 6 years, and then, seemingly by accident, she married fellow rehabber Larry Fortensky for another 5-year bite of the apple. Later years were marked by humanitarian efforts, primarily to fight AIDS, playing Fred Flintstone’s mother-in-law Pearl Slaghoople and providing Maggie Simpson’s voice for her first word.

Suddenly last week, 4 Pooligans picked apart Liz’s 20 points, with Jen taking 3rd, while Michelle’s A Kiss Before Dying (But Not With Vigoda), Shawn’s Team Older, and my R.I.P. from the Headlines 3 – R.I.P.est join the dogpile at 13th. Also of note, my first GHI Bingo, and 12th overall, – 2005 – Better Dead Than Red State

Warren, Peace

2011-03-18T11:49:00.000-04:00

Or
Un-Warren-ted
Warren M. Christopher, who as President Clinton’s Secretary of State didn’t stop the genocide in Rwanda, didn’t enact a road map to peace in the Middle East, gave away the Panama Canal, and didn’t address China’s human rights violations and favorable trade status, then as an Al Gore operative couldn’t find a more compelling VP candidate than Joe “Droopy Dog” Lieberman and failed to secure a legitimate outcome in the recounting of the 2000 presidential election, has died of bladder and liver cancer at the age of 85. Christopher had previously served as Deputy Secretary of State under President Carter, and was passed over when Cyrus Vance resigned in protest over the failed rescue attempt of Iranian hostages. Christopher eventually secured their negotiated release for the hostages, giving his old boss the finger by making the day of their release his last in office. Among his successes were negotiating an end to the Balkans conflict after years of ignoring genocidal bloodshed, giving Jordan $1 billion to acknowledge Israel, restoring Jean-Bertrande Aristide to power to help make Haiti the thriving success story it is, and securing Poland’s place in NATO, pissing off Russia, but giving George W. Bush a powerful second ally in his war against Iraq after the United States was attacked by Afghanistan-based terrorists.

Hello, I Must Be Goughing

2011-03-17T11:51:00.000-04:00

Or
Time to Gough
(Props to Monty)
Michael Gough, who endured Val Kilmer, MacGregor Syndrome and nippled batsuits as Alfred Pennyworth, Batman’s beloved manservant, has died at the age of 94. Other roles included the guy who set Trog free in Joan Crawford’s last movie and the scientist Nick Rivers rescues in Top Secret! After the 1979 Tony Award winner for featured actor in Bedroom Farce was replaced by that hack Michael Caine, he kept food on the table as Tim Burton’s bitch, voicing the Dodo Bird in Alice in Wonderland, Elder Gutknecht in Corpse Bride, and playing Notary Hardenbrook in Sleepy Hollow.

Marty Carrion

2011-03-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

Marty Marion, the only 8th place hitter to win the MVP award in major league baseball history, has died at the age of 93. Hitting just .267 with 6 HRs for the St. Louis Cardinals who would go on to win 1944’s strangely patriotic Streetcar Series over the Browns with all 6 games played in the teams’ shared Sportsman’s Park, meaning this trip really wasn’t necessary, Marion’s award reflected his defense and leadership and overall status as one of the top shortstops of the 1940s. Known both as Slats for his long, lean frame and Octopus for his long arms and exceptional range, Marion was a 7-time All Star and led the Cardinals to four pennants and three World Series championships in his 10 seasons under the Arch.

Goodbye, Ruby Doomsday

2011-03-02T22:21:00.000-05:00

Ruby Muhammad, the human PR campaign for the bowtie set, has died at the age of 104 of lung cancer. In 1986, Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan named her the Mother of the Nation of Islam, despite the fact that she actually joined the nation in 1946, 7 years after it was founded, and that she had nothing to do with founder Elijah Muhammad. Either record keeping in the Nation isn’t as meticulous as their attire and Louie just assumed she was Elijah’s widow, or he decided he needed a happy, smiling, grandmotherly face to put on his shadowy cult, like how Colonel Sanders made for an adorable visage behind a narco-trafficking corporation that mixes in a secret ingredient among its 11 herbs and spices that makes you crave fried chicken fortnightly. With a Living Mrs. Butterworth in place, Minister Farrakhan was free to preach anti-Semitism, separatism, that the earth and moon were once the same thing, and that there was a $15 billion steel UFO mentioned in the Bible that still hovers over us – carrying the still living 114-year-old Elijah – and will come back and destroy America. Ruby Muhammad, meanwhile, got her own sweet ride - a motorized scooter donated for her use in her Sacramento nursing home.

A Pair to Remember

2011-02-28T19:56:00.002-05:00

Or
Gentlemen Prefer Pulses
The two and only Jane Russell, vexer of censors and inspiration for single entendre movie taglines, has been betrayed by her chest, succumbing to a respiratory illness at the age of 89. Howard Hughes’ obsession with milk was never more useful than when he discovered Russell and her 38 Ds and cast her in the western The Outlaw, notable primarily for posters deemed to reveal too much of her talents, despite the movie being generally less scandalous than a Snickers commercial by modern standards. Censorship proved to be the mother of invention, and with cleavage being off limits, Hughes answered with amplitude, designing a cantilever bra to push Russell’s muscles into every scene. With a few notable movies on her resume, including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Russell’s career mostly served as a punchline for costars like Bob Hope, who said that culture was the ability to describe Russell without moving your hands, movie posters, like The French Line: “Jane Russell in 3-D. It'll Knock both your eyes out!" and The Tall Men: “They Don't come ANY BIGGER," and cartographers, as evidenced by Alaska’s twin mountains named The Jane Russell Peaks.

The Duke of Flatline

2011-02-27T19:54:00.001-05:00

Duke Snider, the biggest thing to come out of Compton until Easy-E, has died at the age of 84. The third best center fielder in New York in the 1950s, providing the convenient rhyme with Dubuque, Snider was accustomed to being the other guy, having made his major league debut in the same game where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. He lacked the cache of Mantle and the athleticism of Mays, but Snider was the only one of the three to hit 40 HRs in 5 straight seasons and led all major leaguers with 326 HRs and 1,031 RBI in the 1950s while leading the Brooklyn Dodgers to 6 pennants in 11 seasons. Snider was the only player to hit 4 HRs in a World Series twice, including the lone championship for Brooklyn in 1955. He also was the last living player who was on the field when the Dodgers finally overcame the New York Yankees and hit the last homer in Ebbets Field before the team left in 1957. While the West Coast welcomed major league baseball, LA Coliseum, with its 440-foot right center field fence – 100 feet deeper than the Brooklyn bandbox – was less inviting and Snider’s production dropped, though he did pick up a second World Series ring in 1959. With the second-year New York Mets stockpiling ex-Dodgers, Giants and Yankees to offer daily Old-Timers Games to bring in fans, in 1963 Snider was back on the East Coast, notching his 400th HR and 2,000 hit, but losing 111 games in the process. Snider closed out his career with an unproductive season with the San Francisco Giants, then managed in the Dodgers and San Diego Padres minor league systems and served as a broadcaster for the Padres and Montreal Expos.

Five Rounds, Somewhat Less Rapid!

2011-02-22T20:59:00.001-05:00

In need of Doctoring, William Nicholas Stone Courtney, who led the stalwart United Nations Intelligence Taskforce to defend the earth from Daleks, Cybermen, the Master and Flipper People as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart on Doctor Who, has died of cancer at the age of 81. Bearing a name that helps explain how the British lost the Falklands, Lethbridge-Stewart brought the exiled Doctor into UNIT as a scientific advisor. Although he rarely agreed with the Doctor or understood the extraterrestrial threats before him, the Brigadier met every challenge with a stiff upper lip and a hail of bullets and rocket fire. Brought out of retirement to battle interdimensional knights, Lethbridge-Stewart saved the planet by besting the Destroyer of Worlds with only his service revolver, the most expensive prop the BBC could muster.

Uncle Leo, Goodbye!

2011-02-16T21:06:00.000-05:00

(Props to Monty)

Or
Lesser for Two Weevils
The sounds have stopped emanating from Len Lesser's body, the New York Jew who somehow briefly got the jump on Josey Wales in Missouri, with his death from pneumonia at the age of 88. Lesser spent 50 years as “Hey, it’s that guy” until the beak nose and thick city accent landed him the role of a lifetime as Jerry Seinfeld’s protocol-obsessed Uncle Leo. Other roles included a prison guard in Papillon, building a bridge for Kelly’s Heroes and playing one of Frank’s more demonstrative friends on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Snatched

2011-02-14T19:46:00.000-05:00

David F. Friedman, fan of gore and boobs, has died of heart failure at the age of 87. The film producer got his start with “nudie-cuties” – straightforward documentary footage of Florida nudists with titles like Goldilocks and The Three Bares that fell just short of the censor’s axe, before graduating into putting an adult spin on classic tales, like The Erotic Adventures of Zorro, The Adult Version Of Jekyll and Hide and The Erotic Judgment at Nuremberg, aka Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S., and Life is Beautiful, and Sexy, aka Love Camp 7. In addition, Friedman produced the first splatter film, Blood Feast, the heartwarming take of an Egyptian caterer in Miami who enjoys decapitating women, which he promoted by supplying theaters with airline vomit bags to distribute to customers. Made for $24,500, the film reportedly earned millions.

Coins on the Eyes of Kenneth Mars

2011-02-12T19:45:00.001-05:00

Or
Women are From Venus, Dead Man is Mars

Or
Achtung, Baby
(Props to Monty)
Kenneth Mars, best remembered for his DVD Premiere Award-nominated turn as Grandpa Longneck in The Land Before Time IX: Journey to the Big Water, has vallowed in is grandvudder’s vudshtapps (Vudshtapps, Vudshtapps, ), succumbing to pancreatic cancer at the age of 75. A favorite of Mel Brooks, Mars played Nazi-loving playwright Franz Liebkind, composer of Springtime for Hitler in The Producers and Police Inspector Kemp, whose artificial arm had a mind of its own in Young Frankenstein. When not characterizing all of Europe with the same broad accent, Francis’ boss Otto Mannkusser on Malcolm in the Middle, Senator Donner, who tried to shut down the Misfits of Science in their pilot episode, and Alan Stanwyk's father in law in Fletch.

We Are a Fatality

2011-02-11T19:42:00.000-05:00

Chuck Tanner, the manager traded for a catcher, has died at the age of approximately 80. Tanner was an amiable baseball man fated to deal with jackasses like Dick Allen and Wilbur Wood, who he coaxed to an MVP award and a 24-win season, respectively, Charlie O. Finley, who hired him for a season then traded him for Manny Sanguillen as part of the house cleaning. All of which prepared him to deal with the collection of cranks reprobates on the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates, including Dave Parker, Bert Blyleven, Willie Stargell and Bill Madlock. We Are Family was more like We Are Fraternity, with tales of baseball Annies and drugs filling the pages of a tell-all, but the team could flat out play, winning 98 games, sweeping Cincinnati in the NLCS and then rallying from a 3 games to 1 deficit to win the World Series. After being fired by the Pirates, Tanner wrapped his career with the unfathomably nice Dale Murphy in Atlanta, and lost 89, 92 and were on the way to 106 losses when he got fired. Nice guys really do finish last.

The Boys are Back Inground Again

2011-02-06T20:03:00.000-05:00

(Props to Don)

or
The Crowd Thins Out
(Additional accolades for Don)
Gary Moore, best remembered from his time in Thin Lizzy, has died at the age of 58. The ex-Skid Row (not that one, a different one) guitarist joined the Irish rock band in 1973 to complete a tour after Eric Bell quit suddenly, and later performed in Colosseum II.

Round Peggy in a Rectangular Hole

2011-02-05T22:29:00.000-05:00

Peggy Rea, bit player in two decades worth of TV, has died of heart failure at the age of 89. Best remembered as Boss Hogg’s wife Lulu, Rea also played Grace’s mother-in-law on Grace Under Fire, Olivia’s cousin on The Waltons, Nana in Meego, and, in her first role in 1953, a nurse on I Love Lucy.

Getty ‘R Done

2011-02-05T22:24:00.001-05:00

J. Paul Getty III, apple well removed from the tree, has been reunited with his ear at the age of 54. The grandson of the oil man who was once the richest man in the world was living a clichéd bohemian life frequenting nightclubs, selling paintings and homemade jewelry and acting as an extra in movies when he was kidnapped at the age of 16 in 1973 by Italian gangsters and held for $17 million ransom. After the family refused to pay after 3 months, his severed ear was sent to a newspaper. With the boy damaged, the old financial wizard was able to negotiate the ransom down to $3 million, of which he contributed $2.2 million, the most his accountants said would be tax deductible, then loaned the rest to his son at 4% interest, so essentially he made a profit on his own grandson’s kidnapping. And when he called to thank him for paying the ransom, Grandpa didn’t take the call. After learning his family viewed him with the same regard as one has for a dented can of tomato soup, he fell heavy for alcohol and drugs, which led to a drug overdose that caused a stroke that left him paralyzed, unable to speak and partially blind. So apparently, you can be too rich.

Decomposing

2011-01-30T20:01:00.000-05:00

Thwarting evil geniuses will be a lot less entertaining with the death of John Barry, 77. Barry helped imprint the cool on the James Bond franchise composing and the distinctive Bond theme and producing the scores to 11 films, including From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. Barry also won 5 Academy Awards as composer of Born Free, Dances With Wolves, Out of Africa and The Lion in Winter and a Razzie for The Legend of the Lone Ranger. Non award-winning films on his resume include Chaplin, The Ipcress File, The Quiller Memorandum, Body Heat, Midnight Cowboy and Howard the Duck.

Callas-ulty

2011-01-27T20:00:00.000-05:00

Charlies Callas, the human whoopee cushion, has died at the age of 83. With a career based on bizarre noises and manic faces that give Jim Carrey a quiet dignity by comparison, Callas was a fixture in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s on the talk and variety shows of Merv Griffin, David Frost, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, Mike Douglas, Dean Martin, Andy Williams, Flip Wilson, Joey Bishop and, until he violated his personal space, Johnny Carson. Callas also played himself emceeing a funeral in Amazon Women on the Moon, brought his cerebral stylings to the films of Mel Brooks, including Dracula: Dead and Loving It, High Anxiety, Silent Movie and History of the World — Part I, and voiced Pete’s Dragon Elliot.

Must You Throw Dirt on My Face

2011-01-26T21:52:00.000-05:00

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Louvin on Out

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Back When I Was Alive

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I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Tombstone...
(Props to Terry)
Charlie Louvin, half of one of country’s greatest brother acts, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 83. Louvin on guitar and lead vocals and his brother Ira on mandolin and high tenor harmonies updated the harmony signing of Depression-era performers on ballads born of the Lil’ Abner-esque southern Appalachians to become one of the biggest country hits of the 1950s and earn a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame. They also did a little fiddlin’ in the gospel arena, most notably the album “Satan is Real.” They hit number 1 with “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby,” in 1956, and cracked the country Top 10 with “When I Stop Dreaming” and “Cash on the Barrelhead” while were headlining a touring revue. On the undercard: Elvis Presley. The group’s popularity foundered in the 1960s, and Ira was killed in a car crash in 1965, presumably after nailing Charlie’s wife and running over his dog. As a solo performer, Louvin had 16 top 40 singles, topped by top 10 “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” then became a star with the Grand Ole Opry. The Louvins inspired two generations worth of country performers, and a tribute record, “Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’: Songs of the Louvin Brothers,” won the Grammy Award for best country album in 2004.

Death in the Fast LaLanne

2011-01-22T21:25:00.002-05:00

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End of LaLanne

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Image: Ruined

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If He’s So Fit, Why the Obit?
(Kudos to Monty)
Jack LaLanne, who showed that one can live a long life if one is willing to give up the things worth living for, has died of tediousness at the age of 96. A typical deeply troubled 15-year-old boy in San Francisco who claimed that sugar and junk food had led him to attempt suicide and to try to burn down the house – and keep in mind this was 1929 junk food that made Charleston Chews look appealing, so he would have been a serial killer if Cheetos and dark chocolate M&M’s had been around – LaLanne had a quarter-life crisis and became obsessed with exercise and nutrition to the exclusion of all other interests. This obsession, combined with Ron Popiel-esque hucksterism, made him the founder of the physical fitness movement, which begot muscle-bound gym rats, which begot the explosion in the use of anabolic steroids, which begot tiny, shriveled testicles, so at least none of these sociopaths can breed. With no medical training, other than chiropractor school, so you know he’s on the level, he opened his first fitness spa with a gym, juice bar and health food store in Oakland in 1936, and as anyone familiar with Al Davis can tell you, nothing good has ever come out of Oakland. Doctors saw through his spiel and realized he was insane, intent on inducing heart attacks and costing people their sex drive, but he scored himself a TV show in 1951, and if it’s on TV, it must be true, and his demonic reign spread. His altruistic interest in health led him to open dozens of fitness studios, which he sold to Bally, invent many of the modern torture devices found in gyms, like leg extension and pulley devices and the Juice Tiger, which blended raw fruits and vegetables while occasionally maiming users, and sold dozens of exercise videos and books, even drawing the elderly and disabled into his web of terror. Along the way, he turned his life into a series of That’s Incredible episodes: at 60 he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat; at 70, handcuffed and shackled again, he towed 70 boats, carrying a total of 70 people, a mile and a half through Long Beach Harbor. To fuel his mania, he lived by the credo that if it “tastes good, spit it out,” instead relying on hardboiled egg whites, broth, soy milk, raw vegetables and salmon, with his lone luxury being an occasional roast turkey sandwich.

Cora-flat-line

2011-01-20T21:53:00.001-05:00

Sexy Cora, 2010’s sexiest German amateur porn star, has gone tits up at the age of 23 after a heart attack during her 6th boob job. Discovered as a cast member of the 10th season of Big Brother Germany, Cora was grateful for the European approach to health care having been hospitalized in 2009 after trying to go down in history by breaking the world record for the number of fellatios performed in one day. She was trying for 200 men but choked, failing to get past 75, much to the disappointment of the man from the Guinness Book of World Records.

No Time for Sargent

2011-01-18T21:23:00.001-05:00

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Peace Corpse

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Sargent Slaughtered
R. Sargent Shriver, the bitch of two generations of California and Massachusetts politicians, has died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 95. The graduate of Yale and Yale Law won a Purple Heart in the Navy, then worked as an editor at Newsweek, where he met Eunice Kennedy. Joe Kennedy then hired him to run Merchandise Mart, the world’s largest commercial building, in Chicago, and after a 7-year courtship, Shriver married Eunice, ceding control of his life to the Kennedys. Although the family thwarted his hopes to run for governor of Illinois in 1960 and VP in 1964 and 1968 to focus on other priorities, brother-in-law Jack let him clothe the world’s unwashed as the founding director of the Peace Corps in 1961. He pissed off the family by sticking with Lyndon Johnson’s administration, as director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the lead on Johnson’s war on poverty through programs like Head Start and Job Corps, then as ambassador to France. Somehow being a hippie freak who likes poor people and the French did not endear him to the American people and he had a front row seat to the Richard Nixon ass kicking as the 1972 Democratic VP candidate, having replaced Crazy Tom Eagleton as George McGovern’s running mate. A 1976 presidential campaign was crushed early by the Carter Charisma Crusade, and he had settled into a retirement as an elder statesman until daughter Maria brought home a huge pile of German sausage that would eventually become the state’s governor. Eager to forget having Arnold Schwarzenegger as a son-in-law, Shriver developed Alzheimer’s Disease, leading Maria to heap on the humiliation with the book “What’s Happening to Grandpa?,” and the documentary, “Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am?”

They Bury Corpses, Don’t They?

2011-01-15T21:44:00.002-05:00

Superman is an orphan, as Susannah York, aka Mrs. Jor-El, has died of cancer at the age of 72. York scored an Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod as Alice, a tramp at a Depression dance marathon, in 1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, and was the lone true love of Albert Finney’s Tom Jones in the 1963 Oscar winner for Best Film.

Shipmate Passed Away in the Night

2011-01-11T21:42:00.000-05:00

Perception is everything. While the passing of Milvina Dean, the last living passenger of the Titanic, was splashed across the headlines, the passing of the last survivor from the Lusitania barely raised a ripple. Audrey-Johnston (née Pearl) was just 3 months old on May 7, 1915 when the British passenger ship was torpedoed by a German submarine. Her nursemaid saved her and her brother, and her parents survived, but two sisters were lost, along with 1,196 of the 1,959 people aboard. The US did not respond well to Germany’s approach to naval traffic control, and in its typical approach to foreign policy, entered World War I two years later.

Grabbed Kicking and Screaming By an Angel

2011-01-10T21:48:00.001-05:00

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Die John, Dye
(Props to Monty)

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Touched by an Angel, indeed
(Kudos to Monty)
John Carroll Dye, best known (fittingly) as the Angel of Death, has died of a heart attack at the age of 47. In addition to his role as Andrew in the treacle-fest Touched by an Angel, he was one of the losers who got pity medals after losing to South Korea in the finals of some tournament in one of the greatest Taekwondo movies ever, The Best of the Best, co-starring James Earl Jones, Chris Penn and Eric Roberts.

"C" is for Coffin, That's Good Enough For Me...

2011-01-10T12:43:00.000-05:00

Cookie Gilchrist, the AFL’s version of Jim Brown, has died at the age of 75. Jumping to the Canadian Football League straight out of high school after an attemped illegal signing by Cleveland head coach Paul Brown, Gilchrist starred for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (winning the 1957 Grey Cup), the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Toronto Argonauts before joining the Buffalo Bills of the American Football League in 1962, and was league MVP setting league record 13 TDs and 1,096 rushing yards. The next year he set a pro football record with 243 yards rushing and 5 touchdowns against the Jets, then led them to their first championship in 1964. Between the CFL and AFL, he was an All-Star for 10 consecutive seasons, and he was selected as the fullback on the All-Time All-AFL Team.

None With a Bullitt

2011-01-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

Peter Yates, director of the best car chase not involving the Blues Brothers or the General Lee, has died at the age of 81. Although Steve McQueen didn’t pull double duty as both pursuer and pursuee as he did in the motorcycle chase at the end of The Great Escape, Yates did put one of cinema’s best drivers to work behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang pursing a Dodge Charger through the streets of San Francisco. Yates was nominated for Academy Awards for directing Breaking Away and The Dresser, both tragically car-chase free. Other films included The Deep featuring Jacqueline Bisset in a wet t-shirt and… some other stuff, and Krull, a sci-fi film that can be shown with reels out of order to no detrimental effect.

He Stinks

2011-01-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

Juan Piquer Simon, auteur behind the MST3Ked Pod People, aka Los Nuevos Extraterrestres, has died of lung cancer at the age of 74. Telling the story of two aliens that looked like ALF post-unsuccessful rhinoplasty, one of whom does odd tricks while the other is a homicidal maniac, as they interact with a dysfunctional family and crappy band stranded in the woods, Pod People was one of MSTies’ favorite riffs. Other ridiculous films included Slugs, about a town apparently devoid of salt that is overrun by the title beasties; Pieces, about a chainsaw-wielding sociopath killing Boston’s co-eds to form a human jigsaw puzzle while being pursued by Christopher George in the all-dubbed, all-the-time portion of his career. The film ends when the corpse puzzle comes to life and rips off the killers testicles.

Relieved

2011-01-06T12:35:00.000-05:00

Ryne Duren, the only Yankee reliever to have a Hall of Fame second baseman named after him, has died at the age of 81. Between his Coke bottle glasses, drunken escapades and 98-mile per-hour warm-up pitches bouncing off backstops, he kept hitters on edge en route to notching 630 strikeouts in 589 innings, to go along with 392 walks. He led the AL in 1958 with 20 saves for the Yankees, but his drinking precluded any extended success. In 1965 with the Senators, he got rocked while pitching with a hangover, then got drunk again after the game. While driving home, he pulled over, climbed a bridge, and started shouting. After his manager talked him down, he was released and finished in baseball.

Corpses to the Left of Me, Tombstones to the Right

2011-01-04T22:00:00.001-05:00

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He’s Now as Constant as the Minnesota North Stars

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Right Down the Flatline

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Its So Hard to Keep This Smile From His Face, But He Looks So Natural
Gerry Rafferty had the feeling that something ain’t right, has given up the booze and the one-night stands and now he’ll be getting down the stairs on the shoulders of pallbearers after succumbing to liver and kidney failure at the age of 63. The Scotland-born Rafferty had a father prone to drinking his nights away, and spent many Saturday nights with his mother on avenues like Baker Street to avoid his wrath, which helped color the world view that contributed to hits such as “Stuck in the Middle With You” as lead singer of Stealers Wheel, and “Baker Street” and “Right Down the Line” as a solo artist on City to City. After hitting the Top 10 in the U.S. in 1972, “Stuck in the Middle With You” resurfaced as one of K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies in Reservoir Dogs as Mr. Blonde sliced off Officer Nash’s ear. Content to be an interesting 3-hit drunk Irish-Scottish wonder, Rafferty refused to tour in the United States and turned down chances to record with Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney. He eventually decided to tempt fate by signing with the European label Hypertension, Cirrhosis being unable to meet his per appearance demand.

That’ll Do, Dick

2011-01-04T12:39:00.001-05:00

Anthropomorphizing Brit kid lit author Dick King-Smith has died at the age of 88. Putting his 20 years as a farmer to use, most of Smith’s 100 titles, totaling more than 15 million books sold worldwide, were about animals, starting in 1979 with The Fox Busters, about chickens taking their revenge on foxes, and most of his 100 titles were about animals. His favorite animal was the pig, and his biggest hit was about a pig acting like a sheepdog: The Sheep Pig, or Babe: The Gallant Pig, as they called it for dimwitted Americans, which led to the James Cromwell opuses Babe and Babe: Pig in the City.