YBTL 2008 Deaths To Date

(Updated 10/08/08)

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1) Pater Caffrey	11) Georgia Frontiere	21) Margaret Truman	31) Lydia Shum	41) Mikey Dread
2) Galyani Vadhana	12) Dan Wittman	22) Earl Butz	32) Emily Perry	42) Arthur C Clarke
3) Choi Yo-sam	13) Suzanne Pleshette	23) Barry Morse	33) Janez Drnovsek	43) Paul Scofield
4) Milt Dunnell	14) Victor S Johnson Jr	24) Joshua Lederberg	34) Myron Cope	44) Al Copeland
5) Ken Nelson	15) Louis de Cazenave	25) Maharishi Mahesh Yogi	35) William F Buckley	45) Richard Widmark
6) George Moore	16) Kenneth Parnell	26) Phyllis Whitney	36) Joseph Juran	46) Jules Dassin
7) Sir Edmund Hillary	17) Viktor Schreckengost	27) Baba Amte	37) Philip Rabinowitz	47) Max Helton
8) Carl Karcher	18) Suharto	28) Roy Scheider	38) Jeff Healey	48) Charlton Heston
9) Milton Wolff	19) Gordon Hinckley	29) Oscar Brodney	39) Howard Metzenbaum	49) Barbara McDermott
10) Allan Melvin	20) Arch. Christodoulos	30) Smoky Dawson	40) Lazare Ponticelli	50) John Wheeler

51) Ollie Johnston	61) Irena Sendlerowa	71) Earle Hagen	81) George Carlin	91) Henki Kolstad
52) Edward Lorenz	62) Robert Rauschenberg	72) Harvey Korman	82) Dody Goodman	92) Jo Stafford
53) Danny Federici	63) Sheik Saad Al Sabah	73) Yves Saint Laurent	83) Leonid Hurwicz	93) Helen Brockman
54) Aimé Césaire	64) Alexander Courage	74) Bo Diddley	84) Clay Felker	94) Estelle Getty
55) Daniel Lee Siebert	65) Willis E Lamb Jr	75) Mel Ferrer	85) Larry Harmon	95) Frank Schweihs
56) John McConnell	66) Robert Mondavi	76) Ferenc Fejto	86) Jesse Helms	96) Randy Pausch
57) Enrico Donati	67) Huntington Hartford	77) Jim McKay	87) Mike Souchak	97) Norman Dello Joio
58) Albert Hofmann	68) Dick Martin	78) Tyrone Jones	88) Michael DeBakey	98) Lee Young
59) Sir Anthony Mamo	69) JR Simplot	79) Cyd Charisse	89) Tony Snow	99) Alex Solzhenitsyn
60) Eddy Arnold	70) Sydney Pollack	80) Jean Delannoy	90) Bobby Murcer	100) Sandy Allen

101) Jack Weil	111) Anita Page
102) Henri Cartan	112) Eddie Crowder
103) Leroy Sievers	113) Sherrill Headrick
104) Jerry Wexler	114) George Putnam
105) Ronnie Drew	115) Lynn Kohlman
106) Levy Mwanawasa	116) Mary Garber
107) Thomas Weller	117) Paul Newman
108) John Thoday	118) Boris Yefimov
109) Killer Kowalski	119) George Palade
110) Bill Melendez

Veteran Irish actor Peter Caffrey has died in England at the age of 58. The renowned stage, TV and film actor passed away Tuesday 01/01/08 following years of ill health after he suffered a stroke in 2000. Despite being left disabled by the stroke, he planned to return to acting in 2005 when he was cast to play a publican in the independent film "Sweet Dancer".

He was a familiar face on both sides of the Irish Sea and is best known for his role as Padraig O'Kelly in the BBC drama "Ballykissangel", watched by 15 million viewers, in which he starred in five of the six series. After the series was cancelled in 2001, he was a much sought-after film actor, starring in a number of roles. He played an Anglican minister, a gay television producer and a transvestite. He also received critical acclaim for his portrayal of the loudmouth Frank Grogan in the low-budget heist movie "I Went Down", which made him a star on both sides of the Atlantic. Caffrey was strongly praised for his portrayal of a transvestite in John Lynch's 1998 film 'Night Train', starring John Hurt.

He was a solid veteran of the stage, starring in West End productions in London and at Dublin's Abbey and Gaiety theatre. His theatre credits include "Whale" and "The Crucible" at the National Theatre as well as the Abbey Theatre's production of "The Patrick Pearse Motel", and Pat McCabe's "The Borstal Boy" at the Gaiety Theatre.

His numerous television credits include Channel 4's series "Criminal Conversations", RTE's series "Bracken" and "The Burke Enigma" and BBC

Northern Ireland's "The Hanging Gale" and "Shannongate". He also appeared in numerous roles in popular television dramas and sit-coms, including "Glenroe", "The Bill", "Coronation Street", "Father Ted" and "Casualty".

We start off the year with a 28-point hit! 3^rd year veteran The Famous Final Scene II gets the Harry Helmsley Award for First Stiff of the Year and adds an Under 65 age bonus to a solo hit (20+4+4). Give praise!

Princess Galyani Vadhana, the elder sister of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, died Wednesday 01/02/08, the royal palace announced. She was 84 years old. Galyani's passing came after the 80-year-old king himself recovered from the symptoms of a stroke after being hospitalized for three weeksin October. Both were treated at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital. Galyani had been hospitalized since June, after doctors found she had abdominal cancer.

The princess was noted for her interest in the arts, especially theater and classical music, a taste cultivated when she, like the king, was educated in Switzerland, where she spent much time until later life. She spoke five languages, and loved to travel, documenting many of her journeys in books. She was the oldest child of Prince Mahidol - a son of King Chulalongkorn - and his commoner wife, Sangwal.

Galyani married Col. Aram Ratanakul Serireungriddhi, a royal aide but a commoner, in 1944, which meant she had to give up the royal title she was awarded in 1935. The couple had a daughter but were divorced in 1949. The royal title was restored by Bhumibol in 1950, after the divorce. She married again in 1969 to Prince Varananda Dhavaj, a professional pilot, who died in 1990.

A lifelong Francophile, she founded the Association of Teachers of French in Thailand, which she headed in 1977-81. She also took up an intensive schedule of charity work, which is a mainstay of royal responsibility. She was a patron of at least five health-related foundations.

Already Dead ascends to 2^nd in command with another solo hit, this one for 20 points.

South Korean boxer Choi Yo-sam, who fell into a coma after winning his WBO intercontinental flyweight title fight last week, was declared officially dead early Thursday 01/03/08. He was 33. The declaration was made at 12:18 a.m. (1518 GMT Wednesday) as doctors stopped the flow of blood to Choi's heart and took him off life support. His heart, liver, both kidneys and both corneas were removed for donation to six patients awaiting transplants. Doctors were required to get approval from the prosecutors' office before the organs could be removed.

On Wednesday, a hospital committee pronounced Choi brain dead after conducting a series of tests. He had been in a coma since shortly after winning the fight against Indonesian challenger Heri Amol in Seoul on Dec. 25. A former world champion, he was knocked down just before the end of the 12th and final round of the bout but got back up and was declared the winner on points before collapsing.

Choi was the WBC light flyweight world champion from Oct. 1999 to July 2002, and fought for the WBA light flyweight world title in Sept. 2004.

In 1982, South Korean lightweight Kim Duk-koo died four days after being knocked out by Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini in a WBA lightweight world title fight in Las Vegas. Kim was knocked out in the 14th round, prompting the WBC to reduce the length of its bouts from 15 to 12 rounds, with the other major sanctioning bodies following later.

Another South Korean fighter, bantamweight Lee Tong-choon, died of acute swelling of the brain in 1995, four days after losing consciousness following a Japanese title fight against Setsuo Kawamasu in Tokyo.

Our first multi-shot hit is also our first Un-Natural Death. AA88, Already Dead, Die2K, Forrest Tucker's Ghost, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch, Monty Python's Dying Circus, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives, Skeleton In Their Closet, The Finish Line, TO DIE FOR and Van Owens Body all get smacked with 27 points each (5 for the 11-way hit+12 for Under 45+10 for Un-Natural).

Former columnist and sports editor Milt Dunnell, a Toronto Star legend and Hall of Fame journalist known for his deft turn of phrase and encyclopedic breadth of experience, has died. He was 102. Dunnell died at North York General Hospital late Thursday night 01/03/08.

Dunnell, who turned 102 on Christmas Eve, was an honoured member of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame and the Football Reporters of Canada Hall of Fame. Dunnell was known around the newsroom as Mr. Sports or, more fondly, as Uncle Miltie.

Dunnell's work took him around the world, covering Olympics from Melbourne to Mexico City or following Muhammad Ali to Zaire and the Philippines. He reached retirement age in 1970 but kept writing until 1994, when he was just shy of 89. In all Dunnell wrote some 11,000 columns for the Star. And he did it like no other.

His 1966 report on the Ali-George Chuvalo fight in Toronto started: "They had a contest between a bull and a bumblebee at Maple Leaf Gardens last night - with the usual result. The bull came out of it with his face looking like a bucket of balls at a golf driving range."

Dunnell, from St. Marys, Ont., began his career writing for his hometown paper, the St. Marys Journal-Argus, before spending 13 years with the Stratford Beacon-Herald, including five as sports editor. He joined the Star in 1942 and seven years later was named sports editor. He retired from the position in 1970 but continued writing five columns a week - and to work for another 24 years.

A book containing 77 of his columns, "The Best of Milt Dunnell," was published in 1993.

In 1996, Sports Media Canada gave Dunnell its Achievement Award.

Century Mark and Tailgaiting with Jesus open up the mic and announce they got 18 points on the Canadian Sportscaster. He shoots, he scores!

Ken Nelson, the record producer behind the twangy Bakersfield Sound made popular by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, died on Sunday 01/06/08 at his home in Somis, CA. He was 96. He died of natural causes.

Although best known for his work with Mr. Owens and Mr. Haggard, Mr. Nelson also helped reinvent country music when 1950s rock ’n’ rollers like Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins began supplanting perennial hitmakers like Red Foley and Eddy Arnold on the country charts. Rather than treating the big-beat incursion of Mr. Presley and Mr. Perkins as a threat, Mr. Nelson, then the head of the country division of Capitol Records, saw it as an opportunity to take rural music in a more sophisticated direction.

First he persuaded a rising singer named Sonny James to record “Young Love”, a smooth romantic ballad, which topped both the country and the pop charts in 1957. He also recruited the Jordanaires, the uptown vocal chorus that had already backed Mr. Presley and Mr. James, to sing on “Gone”, a No. 1 country hit for the crooner Ferlin Husky, which reached the pop Top 5. Both “Young Love” and “Gone” became prototypes for the Nashville Sound, which would give country music more mainstream appeal.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nelson had signed several young rockabilly acts of his own, most notably Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. For Mr. Vincent he produced the hiccupping “Be-Bop-a-Lula”, a Top 10 hit on the pop, country and R&B charts in 1956. With Ms. Jackson, Mr. Nelson cut the raucous “Let’s Have a Party” in 1960.

A musical omnivore who briefly oversaw the Capitol label’s jazz division as well, Mr. Nelson recorded a broad array of music under the country rubric in his nearly three decades there. The harmony duo the Louvin Brothers and the swing-inflected band of Hank Thompson both came under his direction. Known for being a hands-off producer who let his artists record with their touring bands instead of insisting that they work with studio professionals, Mr. Nelson consistently supervised a roster of acts whose music demonstrated how durable and elastic the country genre could be.

Kenneth F. Nelson was born on 01/19/11, in Caledonia, Minn. Placed in an orphanage by his mother when he was an infant, he spent his childhood in Chicago, where he would go on to work in a music store and, later, at a radio station, WJJD. Promoted to music director at the station, Mr. Nelson did everything from announcing broadcasts of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to scouting talent for its “hillbilly” variety show, “Suppertime Frolic”.

After serving in the Army during World War II, Mr. Nelson returned to Chicago and WJJD. He also began producing sessions for Capitol, eventually moving to Hollywood in 1948 to work for the label full time. By his retirement in 1976 he had produced around 100 chart-topping country hits, including “The Wild Side of Life”, a No. 1 record for Mr. Thompson for 15 weeks in 1952. Mr. Owens and Mr. Haggard accounted for more than three dozen of Mr. Nelson’s No. 1 recordings. Many of these were unvarnished, emotionally direct performances that reached beyond country audiences to influence rock acts like the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Mr. Nelson’s wife June died in 1984. He is survived by his daughter, Claudia Nelson, and three grandchildren.

A co-founder of the Country Music Association, Mr. Nelson was president of that organization’s board in 1961 and 1962. In 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He published an autobiography, “My First 90 Years Plus 3”, last year.

Fecal Matter, Forrest Tucker's Ghost and Swan Song get their toes tapping on a 3-way hit worth 16 points on the CMHOFer.

George Moore , who died on Tuesday 01/08/08 aged 84, was one of Australia's greatest jockeys, dominating the sport in his native country in the 1950s and 1960s; he also made his mark overseas, winning both the Epsom Derby and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Moore died in a Sydney nursing home. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease and had undergone two heart bypass operations.

Moore - nicknamed "Cotton Fingers" for his delicate handling of his mounts - formed a successful partnership with the trainer Tommy ("TJ") Smith. The relationship between the two men was sometimes cantankerous, but no one doubted its fruitfulness. Although Moore never won the Melbourne Cup, he amassed a record 119 Group One races in Australia, and rode Smith's great racehorse Tulloch to 19 of its 36 victories. In 1957-58 he and Tulloch took the Rosehill and Caulfield Guineas; the Australian Jockey Club (AJC), Victoria and Queensland Derbys; and the Victoria and AJC St Legers.

George Thomas Donald Moore was born on 07/05/23 at Mackay, Queensland. In 1938, at the age of 15, he was apprenticed to the trainer Louis Dahl in Brisbane; he then transferred his services to Jim Shean, and rode his first metropolitan winner on New Year's Day 1940. In 1943 he went to Sydney, attached to Peter Riddle's stable, and in that year he won his first senior jockeys' premiership (or championship), in Brisbane. He then moved to Sydney, and in 1949 began his association with Tommy Smith. In the same year he rode Playboy, a 100-1 chance, to victory in the AJC Australian Derby.

Like many top jockeys, Moore was no stranger to the stewards' room. The most serious of these encounters was in the 1950s, when he was given a two-and-a-half-year suspension for placing a bet on a horse called Flying East which won a race at Hawkesbury; not only was Moore its registered owner, he also rode another horse in the same race.

Back on the racetrack Moore won the jockeys' premiership titles in 1957 and 1958. The next year he accepted an invitation to ride Prince Aly Khan's horses being trained in France by Alec Head. He duly won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (on Saint Crespin), as well as, in Britain, the 2,000 Guineas on Prince Aly Khan's Taboun. In May 1960 the prince was killed in a motor accident, but Moore continued to ride for his son, the Aga Khan, winning that year's Prix du Jockey Club (the French Derby) on Charlottesville.

He returned to Australia for another successful spell before crossing the globe again, in 1967, to ride in Britain for Sir Noel Murless, whose stable jockey, Lester Piggott, had gone freelance. In that year Moore won three Classics for Murless - the 1,000 Guineas (on Fleet) and, on Royal Palace, both the 2,000 Guineas and the Epsom Derby. He also won the King George on Busted.

It was a remarkable season, but Moore was unable to capitalize on his success in Britain owing to a sinister turn of events. It is said that he began to receive telephone calls demanding that he throw races; and that his flat in London was broken into and his clothes cut to ribbons. Rather than expose his family to risk (the telephone calls had threatened violence ) Moore returned to Australia.

He won many other races over the course of his brief career in Britain, among them the Coronation Cup, Ascot Gold Cup, the Gimcrack and the Ebor. He also took Fiorentina to victory in the Irish 1,000 Guineas. In the United States he won the San Diego Stakes.

He finally retired from the saddle in 1971, his last winner being Classic Mission in the Victoria Derby. He had ridden a total of 2,278 winners, and his big race victories included two WS Cox Plates (1957 and 1958); two Golden Slippers (1970 and 1971); three Sydney Cups (1946, 1966 and 1968); two Victoria Derbys (1957 and 1971); and five AJC Derbys (1949, 1957, 1962, 1963 and 1971). He also won 10 jockeys' championships in Sydney between 1957 and 1969.

Moore continued to be involved in the sport after retiring as a jockey, taking out a trainer's licence. He trained briefly in France before going to Hong Kong, where he won the trainers' championship 11 times in 13 years. He then returned to Australia, settling in the Gold Coast area of south-east Queensland.

The first jockey to be granted a place in the Australian Sporting Hall of Fame (in 1986), Moore is also remembered in the form of the George Moore Medal, presented annually to Sydney's outstanding jockey.

In 1972 he was appointed OBE. Unable to attend an investiture, he received his medal through the post.

Already Dead, Decay NY, Die2K, Goatsucker and Putnam's Tomahawk Chop, all veterans of the game, race across the line with 12 points each on the Aussie jockey.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest in 1953 and was renowned as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, has died. He was 88. Hillary died Friday 01/11/08 at Auckland Hospital from a heart attack.

The New Zealander devoted much of his life to aiding the mountain people of Nepal and took his fame in stride, preferring to be called Ed and considering himself an "ordinary person with ordinary qualities".

The climbing accomplishment, part of a British climbing expedition, even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted Hillary as one of her first acts.

But he was more proud of his decades-long campaign to set up schools and health clinics in Nepal, the homeland of his climbing companion Tenzing Norgay, the mountain guide with whom he stood arm in arm on the summit of Everest on 05/29/53.

Hillary remains the only nonpolitical person outside Britain honored as a member of the Britain's Order of the Garter, bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II on just 24 knights and ladies living worldwide at any time.

Honored by the United Nations as one of its Global 500 conservationists in 1987, he was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates from universities in several parts of the world.

One of his accolades was the Smithsonian Institution's James Smithson Bicentennial Medal for his "monumental explorations and humanitarian achievements," awarded in 1998.

Christopher Reeve's Dancecard, Dead Wringers, GHOSTBUSTIN' BABE, If You're Still Alive...You're Dead To Me!!, Mhor Rioghain (Queen O' the Dead) and Reporting For Plastination all begin their ascent with 10 points each on the mountaineer. Team Dirt gets the first Taxi Squad hit of the year worth 3 points.

Carl N. Karcher, who parlayed a $325 investment in a hot-dog cart into one of the largest hamburger chains in the West died Friday 01/11/08. He was 90. The founder of the Carl's Jr. fast-food chain suffered from Parkinson's disease and was being treated for pneumonia when he died at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, said Beth Mansfield, a spokeswoman for CKE Restaurants.

Karcher, a deeply religious father of 12, was famous in the fast-food industry for his rags-to-riches story - a tale that was tainted in later years by an insider trading scandal and feuds with his board of directors that led to his eventual demise as chief executive officer.

The company and its founder grew even more estranged in recent years when Carl's Jr., seeking to woo a younger male clientele, launched a series of ads that included a scantily clad Paris Hilton washing a car and Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner, surrounded by beautiful women, expounding on the advantages of being able to enjoy a different variety of hamburger every night of the week.

In happier years, Karcher had appeared in the chain's ads himself, cutting a grandfatherly figure as he stood alongside the smiling Carl's Jr. "Happy Star" logo.

Karcher was working as a bread-truck driver in South Central Los Angeles when he noticed the large number of hot dog stands in the neighborhood and saw a business opportunity. He borrowed $311 on the 1941 Plymouth Super Deluxe he owned with his new bride, Margaret, added the rest in cash and bought his first pushcart hot dog stand. One cart soon became four, and by the end of World War II Karcher had opened his first restaurant, Carl's Drive-In barbecue, in Anaheim. He opened the first Carl's Jr. - named "Jr." to distinguish it from his full-service eatery - in 1956.

"With the help and support of my wife and children, my faith in God, my good health, my belief in the free enterprise system, and my willingness to work hard, there was no way I could have failed," he wrote in his 1991 autobiography, Never Stop Dreaming.

From the beginning, Karcher wanted to appeal to a slightly higher-end customer who would pay a little more for quality fast food. Some of his restaurants had carpeting and allowed customers to have their orders delivered to their table. Karcher was also among the first to pick up on America's growing interest in healthier fast food, introducing grilled chicken sandwiches and salad bars. The business fit well with the postwar boom and California's emerging car culture.

Today, Carl's Jr. has more than 1,000 locations across the West; its parent company, the Carpenteria, CA-based CKE Enterprises (CKE), made $1.52 billion in sales in 2006 and had 29,000 employees.

CKE also owns the Hardee's, La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill and Green Burrito chains.

Eternal Dirtnap gets a solo hit on the restauranteur, but only gets 5 points for the Taxi Squad hit. Sizzle!

The last American commander of anti-Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War – who befriended Ernest Hemingway during the conflict – has died. Milton Wolff, 92, died on Monday 01/14/08 of heart failure in Berkeley, California, according to Peter Carroll, the chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, an organisation devoted to preserving the history of North American volunteers in the war.

While in Spain, Mr Wolff met Hemingway, who was writing about the conflict, and the author served him his first ever Scotch.

Hemingway described Mr Wolff as being "tall as Lincoln, gaunt as Lincoln, and as brave and as good a soldier as any that commanded battalions at Gettysburg. He is alive and unhit by the same hazard that leaves one tall palm tree standing where a hurricane has passed.”

Born in New York City on 10/07/15, Mr Wolff was only 21 when he stepped off the soapboxes in his native city, where he defended his Communist views, and into the Spanish war. By the time he was 22, he was the ninth leader of what was known as the Lincoln Brigade, which fought to support Spain's elected socialist government against General Francisco Franco.

About 3,000 Americans fought in volunteer battalions in Spain and more than 900 were killed. About 40 are still alive today.

Soon after the American fighters returned home on 12/15/39, Madrid fell to the Fascists, and the war was over.

But Mr Wolff never stopped fighting for what he considered worthy causes, including integration in baseball, and against the Vietnam War.

More Hemlock Please takes down a field marshall worth 20 points.

Allan Melvin, a popular character actor who played Cpl. Henshaw on the classic 1950s sitcom "The Phil Silvers Show" and later portrayed Archie Bunker's neighbor and friend Barney on "All in the Family," has died. He was 84. Melvin, who was in the original Broadway cast of "Stalag 17" in the early 1950s, died of cancer Thursday 01/17/08 at his home in Brentwood, said his wife of 64 years, Amalia.

During his five-decade career, Melvin made guest appearances on numerous TV shows, including playing different roles on at least eight episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show" and playing Dick Van Dyke's old Army buddy on "The Dick Van Dyke Show". He also played Sgt. Charlie Hacker on "Gomer Pyle: U.S.M.C."; portrayed butcher Sam Franklin - Alice the housekeeper's boyfriend - on "The Brady Bunch"; and continued playing Barney when the hit "All in the Family" became "Archie Bunker's Place".

Melvin, who appeared in only one movie - the 1968 Doris Day comedy "With Six You Get Eggroll" - also did voice-over work in cartoons, including providing the voices of Magilla Gorilla and Bluto on "Popeye". He worked on numerous TV commercials as well, including playing Al the Plumber in the Liquid-Plumr commercials for 15 years.

After launching his show business career in the sound effects department of NBC radio in New York in 1944, Melvin began acting on radio soap operas and then moved into live television. At the same time, he did movie star impressions in Manhattan in a nightclub act written by his friend Richard Condon, who later wrote "The Manchurian Candidate".

Melvin's stand-up act led to his winning "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" radio show in the late 1940s.

He was playing Reed in "Stalag 17," the hit 1951-52 Broadway play set in a German POW camp during World War II, when he first caught Silvers' attention. "The Phil Silvers Show", originally titled "You'll Never Get Rich," was set on an Army base in Kansas and ran from 1955 to 1959. As Cpl. Henshaw, Melvin was the right-hand man to Silvers' con-man extraordinaire, Sgt. Ernie Bilko. "He was brilliant" as Henshaw, Mickey Freeman, who played Pvt. Zimmerman on the show, said Friday. In recent years, when fans would ask Freeman how many surviving cast members were left, he would reply, "Allan Melvin and me - that's a high mortality rate for a noncombatant unit."

Noting that Melvin "was a great mimic of voices," Freeman recalled an episode in which an officer arrived at Ft. Baxter to stop the men from gambling. One of the ways the officer did that, Freeman said, was to make them listen to his wife lecture on art. But the woman had an unusual twitch - pulling on her skirt - and Bilko and the other soldiers placed bets on how many times she would do that during her lecture.

Freeman recalled that Melvin, as Henshaw, was positioned outside the lecture hall with a microphone, broadcasting to the other soldiers on the base -- " 'She's up to 42 now . . . 43 . . . 44, and she's not even breathing heavy.' He made a whole racetrack thing out of it," Freeman said. "He was wonderful."

Melvin was born 02/18/23, in Kansas City, MO. His family soon moved to New York City, where he graduated from Columbia University as a journalism major.

Melvin retired from acting about 10 years ago - long after becoming a household face who was used to people spotting him in public and saying, "Hey, Henshaw" or "Hey, Sam the Butcher!"

Life's a Bitch, Then You Die and Playin for Bonz get some meat for their diets, scoring 18 points each on the character actor.

Georgia Frontiere, the St. Louis native who became a hometown hero when she brought the NFL's Rams from Los Angeles in 1995, died Friday 01/18/08. She was 80. Frontiere had been hospitalized for breast cancer for several months, the Rams said in a statement posted on their Web site.

The one-time nightclub singer was married seven times, starting at age 15. Her sixth husband, Carroll Rosenbloom, owned the Los Angeles Rams at the time of his drowning death in 1979.

The Rams moved twice under Frontiere's leadership, first relocating from the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1980 to Anaheim, 35 miles away. St. Louis' original NFL franchise, the Cardinals, had left for Arizona in 1988. After the city failed to land an expansion team, civic leaders built a $260 million, taxpayer-financed domed stadium anyway, in hopes of luring another team.

Frontiere, born in St. Louis, agreed in January 1995 to move, causing her to be demonized in Southern California but heralded in her hometown. At a downtown rally soon after the move was announced, thousands chanted "Georgia! Georgia!" "You take my breath away," Frontiere told the crowd. "It's so good to be back in St. Louis, my hometown." The Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000.

The Rams were the first major sports team to arrive in California when then they moved from Cleveland in 1946. They became the first football or baseball team to leave the state with the move to St. Louis.

Frontiere was a fixture at Rams games during the heyday of the "Greatest Show on Turf" teams that made the playoffs five out of six seasons from 1999 through 2004. Led by quarterback Kurt Warner, running back Marshall Faulk and receivers Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, the Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl 23-16 and lost the Super Bowl two seasons later on a last-second field goal by the New England Patriots.

Frontiere was born Georgia Irwin on 11/21/27, and attended Soldan High School before moving to California at age 15. She wed that year, though the marriage was eventually annulled, according to published reports. Her second husband was killed when hit by a bus. She left her third husband to try to make it as a showgirl in Las Vegas. Her fourth marriage - to a stage manager of the Sacramento Music Circus - ended in divorce after three years. Husband No. 5 was a Miami television producer.

She married Rosenbloom in 1966, shortly after he took over the Baltimore Colts. He eventually swapped that franchise for the Rams, which his wife took control of after he drowned. Frontiere remarried again after Rosenbloom's death. Her seventh husband, Dominic Frontiere, was an award-winning composer. They divorced in 1988 upon his release from prison after serving time on tax charges related to the scalping of more than 2,500 tickets to the 1980 Super Bowl in Pasadena.

Frontiere left day-to-day operation of her team to Shaw, both when the franchise was in Southern California and after the move to St. Louis. Shaw continues to run the team from Los Angeles. The team has missed the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.

Frontiere became involved in several philanthropic efforts in St. Louis after moving the team, including the creation in 1997 of the St. Louis Rams Foundation. According to the team's Web site, the Rams and the foundation have contributed more than $5 million to charities in the St. Louis area.

Frontiere also committed $1 million to the Fulfillment Fund, an organization that helps needy high school students pay for college. She has served as a member of several boards, including the United Way of Greater St. Louis, Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club, Saint Louis Symphony, Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

In addition to her two children, she is survived by six grandchildren, and Earle Weatherwax, her companion of 19 years.

Already Dead, Bud Dwyer's Brains, Check the Cut List Redux, Decay NY, Goatsucker, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch, Life'll Kill Ya, More Hemlock Please, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop, Skeleton In Their Closet, SPT On Your Grave, Sudden Death/Game Over and Team Dirt all get the minimum 5 points for the NFL franchisee. Don't Fear the Reaper and Happiest Epitaphs catch 3 points each for the taxi Squad hit.

Don Wittman, who has called some of Canada's most significant sporting events, died of cancer Saturday 01/19/08. He was 71.

For more than 40 years, Wittman was a familiar face on CBC television. He did the play-by-play for Grey Cups and Stanley Cups, and covered curling, golf, and track and field, as well. He was a fixture at both summer and winter Olympics. Wittman called Ben Johnson's steroid-tainted victory in the 100 meters at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and he was there when Donovan Bailey sprinted to gold in the same event in the 1996 Games at Atlanta.

Wittman saw Wayne Gretzky win Stanley Cups and was in Czechoslovakia in 1987 for the Canada-USSR brawl at the world junior hockey championships.

During the 1972 Olympics in Munich he stood on a balcony and looked into the masked face of one of the terrorists who kidnapped nine Israeli athletes.

Wittman, chosen as the 2002 broadcaster of the year by Sports Media Canada, was a member of the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame, the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame and Manitoba's provincial sports hall of fame.

Already Dead, Ethnic Cleansing, Forrest Tucker's Ghost, Goatsucker, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop, Skeleton In Their Closet and Van Owens Body all get the call on the Canadian sportscaster worth 8 points each.

Suzanne Pleshette, 70, a smoky-voiced actress who appeared in hundreds of television programs and was best known as Bob Newhart's sardonic TV wife in the 1970s, died Saturday night 01/19/08. She had under gone chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006, and died of respiratory failure at her home in Los Angeles.

Ms. Pleshette was a strikingly beautiful actress and had one of the deepest, most distinctive voices in show business. "Telephone operators have called me 'sir' since I was 6," she once said. Yet her dark allure never quite translated into a movie career that was her aim in the late 1950s.

Her talents were easily adaptable across film genres, from westerns to Disney fare. Her most-remembered film role was the schoolteacher killed by crazed gulls in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1963). Yet several of her starring projects were terrible, including the 1965 adaptation of John O'Hara's book "A Rage to Live," in which she was a socialite nymphomaniac.

Instead of a career as a front-rank movie actress, Ms. Pleshette thrived as a fetching personality on television and in interviews. She proved capable of sassy, well-timed bon mots. To one reporter, she described how she won roles with her best physical asset by saying, "I got every job I ever got walking out of the office." Such risque commentary made her a popular guest on "Hollywood Squares" and Johnny Carson's "Tonight" show. Her banter with Carson brought her to the attention of comedian Newhart, and she eagerly agreed to a leading part in his self-titled sitcom.

"When I started in movies they said I'd be this big star, but I was only a moderate one," she told the Toronto Star in 1989. "Not enough good pictures. It's important to be in a good piece of work no matter the size of one's own part."

She received two Emmy nominations for best actress for her work on "The Bob Newhart Show," which aired on CBS from 1972 to 1978. She portrayed Emily Hartley, an elementary school teacher married to Newhart, who played a Chicago psychiatrist named Bob Hartley.

Ms. Pleshette reprised the role of Emily for the ending of CBS's "Newhart," Bob Newhart's successor sitcom of the 1980s in which he was a Vermont innkeeper named Dick Loudon. In the final episode, Newhart is knocked unconscious by a golf ball. When he wakes, he finds himself in bed with Emily on his old television-show set and tells her about a terrible dream in which he owned a New England hotel. The episode was regarded as one of the cleverest finishes of a television series, and one of the few times an ending in which "it was all a dream" worked.

In the interim, Ms. Pleshette had a long career as a sitcom guest star and in made-for-television movies, the best of which was her Emmy-nominated leading role in CBS's "Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean" (1990), as the social-climbing Manhattan real-estate magnate convicted of federal income tax evasion.

New York Times television critic John J. O'Connor wrote:

"Even with prosthetic cosmetics, Ms. Pleshette is considerably more attractive than Mrs. Helmsley, but her performance captures what could very well be the essence of the woman. The portrait is all the more effective for being not entirely critical."

Suzanne Pleshette was born on 01/31/37, in New York. Her father, Eugene, became a theater and television executive. Her mother, Geraldine, was a ballerina. As a child, Ms. Pleshette appeared in a revival of Maxwell Anderson's "Truckline Cafe" at Sanford Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse. She attended a performing arts high school and the now-defunct Finch College, both in Manhattan, and studied social work at Syracuse University before starting her entertainment career in earnest.

In 1958, she won good reviews for supporting roles in Broadway shows such as S.N. Behrman's drama "The Cold Wind and the Warm" - Meisner, her early mentor, was also in the cast. That same year, she made her film debut in the Jerry Lewis comedy "The Geisha Boy".

Ms. Pleshette also began a prolific television career in such series as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Ben Casey" and "The Fugitive". She received an Emmy nomination for her guest appearance as a happy-go-lucky woman dying of leukemia on a 1961 episode of "Dr. Kildare". Also that year, she

replaced Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan in the Broadway play "The Miracle Worker", and a magazine photo of Ms. Pleshette captured the attention of film producer-director Delmer Daves. He cast her in "Rome Adventure" (1962), in the leading role of a teacher who finds love in Italy with artist, played by Troy Donahue.

She married her co-star but the relationship deteriorated quickly. They were divorced after eight months, although she and Donahue put aside differences to act together in Raoul Walsh's poorly received 1964 western, "A Distant Trumpet". Ms. Pleshette was married to businessman Tom Gallagher from 1968 until his death in 2000. The next year, she married TV comedian Tom Poston, whom she had known for decades. He died in April 2007. Survivors include three stepchildren, Francesca Poston of Nashville, Jason Poston of Los Angeles and Hudson Poston of Portland, Ore.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, she played opposite Steve McQueen ("Nevada Smith") and Tony Curtis ("40 Pounds of Trouble"). She was particularly well cast with the laconic James Garner in "Mister Buddwing," in which she loves amnesiac Garner, and "Support Your Local Gunfighter," in which she loves con man Garner. She starred in several Disney comedies of the period, including "The Ugly Dachshund" with Dean Jones, "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin" with Roddy McDowall and "Blackbeard's Ghost" with Peter Ustinov and Jones.

Ms. Pleshette periodically returned to the screen in family fare ("Oh, God! Book II," "The Shaggy D.A.") and did voice-over work on more recent animated films, such as "The Lion King II" and "Spirited Away." She also played on Broadway with Richard Mulligan as a divorced couple in a

1982 flop called "Special Occasions."

She remained a durable television performer, even if she never quite equaled the success of "The Bob Newhart Show." In recent years, Ms. Pleshette took guest roles on sitcoms such as "8 Simple Rules" and "Will & Grace," often as the outspoken mother of a main character. The parts were not far-fetched. When starring in NBC's short-lived medical drama "Nightingales" in 1989, she told a reporter: "You call us 'Charlie's Angels' in white uniforms and I'll sock ya!"

Adios Amigos, Already Dead, Cape Cadaver, Christopher Reeve's Dancecard, Dead Like Them, Death Be Not Proud, Don't Fear the Reaper, Excuse Me For Coffin, Gratefull Dead, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch, I Am Stretched On Your Grave, Made It Ma! Top Of the World!, Mhor Rioghain (Queen O' the Dead), Otis' Cirrhosis from Rafe Hollister's Still, Reporting For Plastination, Schadenfreude, Sweeney Todd's Pie Filling, Ten Toes Up and What's a TSCU? all get 5 points for the husky-voiced actress. Dead Can Dance settles for 3 points with their Taxi Squad hit.

Victor S Johnson Jr, president of Aladdin Industries and one of Nashville's most prominent citizens outside the music industry, died Saturday 01/19/08. He was 91.

Mr. Johnson was born in Chicago, IL on 06/12/16. He received his BA degree from Amherst College in 1938 and earned his law degree from Yale University in 1941. During his lifetime, he was awarded honorary degrees from Amherst College, Hamilton College and Meharry Medical College. Upon graduation from law school, he served in the Judge Advocate General's office, rising to the rank of Captain.

After his father's sudden death in 1943, Mr. Johnson assumed the role of interim president of the Mantle Lamp Company of America, the company his father founded in 1908 to provide superior kerosene lighting to rural America. Upon completing his military obligation in 1946, Mr. Johnson entered the family business on a full time basis at its headquarters in Chicago. In 1949, he decided to move both the executive offices and the manufacturing facilities to a newly constructed plant in Nashville. Later named Aladdin Industries, he led the company as its Chairman and CEO for the next thirty-five years. Under his leadership, the company expanded its business interests from kerosene lamps to thermos bottles, school lunch boxes, electronic components, food service systems and real estate development.

Johnson was an industrial and civic lion, and one of ten most influential people in Nashville. He kept Aladdin alive, due to his love of the lamp created by his father, despite declining sales. Johnson supported collectors and attended Gatherings of Aladdin Knights in Nashville. The lamp division was purchased by 14 passionate Aladdin Knights in 1999 to continue manufacture in Clarksville, TN.

In 1971 he became a partner in a massive real estate development project to convert an eight hundred fifty acre floodplain just north of Nashville's central business district into one of the city's premier business parks knows as MetroCenter. Additionally, he was an influential force behind the idea to create the Tennessee Performing Arts Center where he served on the Board of Directors of its foundation and received the organization's Applause Award in 1985. He is also credited with proposing to then Governor Ned McWherter that the State of Tennessee acquire land north of the State capitol for what later became the Tennessee Bicentennial Mall.

Over the years, Mr. Johnson was involved with United Way, the Nashville Committee on Foreign Relations, the Atlanta Regional Panel of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships, and the Tennessee Historical Commission to name a few.

Century Mark carries away 20 points in their Speed Racer lunch box for the solo hit on the industry icon. The Rules Committee voted 4-3 in favor of Johnson, ruling that major media missed the death of this important industrialist.

World War I veteran Louis de Cazenave died Sunday 01/20/08 at age 110, leaving just one known French survivor of the 1914-1918 conflict. De Cazenave, who took part in the Battle of the Somme, died in his home in Brioude in central France, said his son, also named Louis de Cazenave.

"He died at his house, in his sleep, without suffering," the son said by telephone. He said his father was to be buried Tuesday in Brioude.

The last known French veteran of World War I - known as "poilus", meaning hairy or tough - is Lazare Ponticelli, also 110.

Born 10/16/1897, de Cazenave was called up to fight in 1916 and served in different infantry regiments before joining an artillery unit in January 1918, according to a statement from the French president's office.

De Cazenave took part in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, in which more than a million soldiers died, and in the liberation of France from German forces, the statement said.

"His death is an occasion for all of us to think of the 1.4 million French who sacrificed their lives during this conflict, for the 4.5 million wounded, for the 8.5 million mobilized," President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement.

Goodbye Cruel World shoots up a solo hit for 20 points on the old soldier and takes the lead for Oldest Stiff.

Convicted sex offender Kenneth Eugene Parnell, known for kidnapping Steven Stayner in 1972, died of natural causes on Monday 01/21/08 at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, CA.

Parnell was 76 and was in hospice status when he died. He was serving a 25-years-to-life term under the state's three strikes law for attempting to buy a 4-year-old boy for $500 in 2003. The Alameda County jury found him guilty in 2004 of soliciting a person to kidnap someone, attempting to buy a person and attempted child stealing. Parnell actually had five strikes. In December 1972, he kidnapped 7-year-old Steven Stayner of Merced, the younger brother of Cary Stayner who was convicted of killing three tourists and a Yosemite National Park naturalist in 1999.

On 02/14/80, Parnell abducted 5-year-old Timothy White of Ukiah in 1980. He was arrested after Stayner and White hitchhiked to Ukiah and went to a police station. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison and was paroled to Berkeley in 1985 after serving five years.

Steven Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in 1985.

Parnell's criminal history began at age 19 when he reportedly abducted and sodomized a 9-year-old Bakersfield boy in 1951. He also was convicted of robbery and grand larceny for using a gun to rob a service station owner of $150 in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1960.

Flatliners steals away with a 20-point solo hit on the notorious criminal.

Richard Darman, a former White House budget director who helped convince former President George HW Bush to renege on his no new taxes pledge, has died. He was 64. Darman died Friday 01/25/08 in Washington after battling leukemia for several months, according to a statement issued by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a longtime friend.

Darman was chief architect of a compromise designed to reduce the federal budget deficit. Although it drew praise from many economic analysts, the plan included tax increases that broke Bush's 1988 election promise, "Read my lips, no new taxes!" Although the change of policy is partly blamed for Bush's re-election defeat to Bill Clinton, it contributed to balancing the federal budgets in the late 1990s.

Darman sometimes drew criticism for being abrasive, intellectually arrogant and overly concerned with his standing in the White House pecking order. He had a reputation for being so crafty that "Darmanesque" became a word to describe maneuvering that was clever and Machiavellian. He had a more playful side and was known for pranks. He once donned a gorilla suit to amuse his boss, the president.

Darman began his government career in 1971 as a deputy assistant secretary in the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He later held high-level posts in the Defense, Justice and Commerce departments. He served as a top aide to Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who lost his job in the "Saturday Night Massacre" during the Watergate scandal. He was deputy chief of staff to President Reagan while Baker was running

the staff. Baker became his mentor, which helped Darman survive in the Bush White House. When Baker switched jobs to become Treasury secretary, Darman went with him, becoming deputy Treasury secretary.

Along with his jobs in many federal agencies, Darman taught at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives got some good advice on the Washington insider and now has 24 more points (20 for solo, 4 for Under 65).

Viktor Schreckengost, a celebrated industrial designer whose products included mass-produced dinnerware, riding lawn mowers, bicycles and coffins, and who revolutionized trucking by putting the cab over the engine, died of respiratory arrest 01/26/08 at his Tallahassee, FL condominium. He was 101.

Mr. Schreckengost was one of the world's most prolific artists of commercial goods, and his impact on the economy once was calculated at more than $200 billion. He spent decades as an independent contractor for such companies as American Limoges, Harris-Seybold and Sears, Roebuck. During World War II, he worked on a top-secret radar-recognition project for the Navy.

His 1932 cab-over-engine truck for White Motor Co. was a huge boon to laborers during the Depression, who were paid by the freight they could carry. The extra cargo space would allow the truckers to pay off their vehicle in a year. He also influenced many generations of artists and industrial designers who passed through the industrial-design department he founded in 1931 at what became the Cleveland Institute of Art. His students included Joe Oros, chief designer of the Ford Mustang.

Mr. Schreckengost - whose name means "frightening guest" in German - was born 06/03/1906, in Sebring, OH. He learned clay sculpting from his father, a commercial potter, and said his parents expected their children to make their toys. One creation of Mr. Schreckengost's was a plywood plane that had a 10-foot wingspan and was built from piano crates. He used a wound-up inner tube to power the propeller and showed perhaps greater ingenuity by having a friend test-fly it - from an elementary-school fire escape three stories off the ground. The plane did not work, but the friend survived.

As a young man, Mr. Schreckengost was interested in cartooning, but he moved to ceramics while studying at the Cleveland School of Art. After his graduation in 1929, he went to Austria to continue his artistic studies. He became a proficient jazz saxophonist in Vienna.

Upon his return, he created for Cowan Pottery of Rocky River, OH. Possibly his most famous work: an art deco punchbowl featuring images of New York nightlife. Unknown to him at the time, it was commissioned by future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a gift for her husband. The "Jazz Bowl" sold at Sotheby's auction house for $254,400 in 2004.

In the early 1930s, he was hired by American Limoges to design what widely is believed to be the first modern mass-produced dinnerware. Its patterns had a Manhattan theme and became ubiquitous in homes of that era.

Mr. Schreckengost went on to design more than 100 bicycles for Sears, including the Spaceliner, Western Flyer and Campus Compact. He also was chief bicycle designer for Murray-Ohio, for whom he also designed the Pursuit Plane and other pedal cars.

He never had children but was known in his Cleveland Heights neighborhood for taking a keen interest in the playing habits of young people. At one point, he designed a little red wagon with a handle that bent to allow steering control by the person in the wagon.

In addition to the National Medal of Arts, which he received in 2006, Mr. Schreckengost earned the highest honor of the American Institute of Architects.

He continued teaching into his 90s and enjoyed painting Mexican fish.

Easel Kill Ya! designs a 20-pointer on the commercial artist.

Former dictator Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia's communist movement and pushed aside the country's founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday 01/27/08. He was 86. Dozens of doctors had been rushed to the Pertamina Hospital in the capital, Jakarta, after Suharto's blood pressure fell suddenly Saturday night. Suharto had slipped out of consciousness for the first time in more than three weeks of treatment, doctors said. Suharto had been in intensive care with lung, heart and kidney failure since he was admitted to the hospital on 01/04/08. Over the past week his physicians had spoken of a recovery, but by Sunday that had changed dramatically. He had been in and out of the hospital several times since being toppled by a pro-democracy uprising during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis for heart problems and internal bleeding.

Suharto, who led a regime widely regarded as one of the 20th century's most brutal and corrupt, has lived a reclusive life in a comfortable villa in downtown Jakarta for the past decade. Historians say up to 800,000 alleged communist sympathizers were killed during Suharto's rise to power from 1965 to 1968. His troops killed another 300,000 in military operations against independence movements in Papua, Aceh and East Timor. Suharto's poor health had kept him from facing trial, and no one has been punished for the killings.

Corruption watchdog Transparency International has said Suharto and his family amassed billions of dollars in stolen state funds, allegations the family is fighting in court.

Suharto's successors as head of state - BJ Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono - vowed to end corruption that took root under Suharto, yet it remains endemic at all levels of Indonesian society. With the court system paralyzed by corruption, the country has not confronted its bloody past. Rather than put on trial those accused of mass murder and multibillion-dollar theft, some members of the political elite consistently called for charges against Suharto to be dropped on humanitarian grounds.

Some noted Suharto also oversaw decades of economic expansion that made Indonesia the envy of the developing world. Today, nearly a quarter of

Indonesians live in poverty, and many long for the Suharto era's stability, when fuel and rice were affordable. But critics say Suharto squandered Indonesia's vast natural resources of oil, timber and gold, siphoning the nation's wealth to benefit his cronies and family like a mafia don.

Those who profited from Suharto's rule made sure he was never portrayed in a harsh light at home, so even though he was an ''iron-fisted, brutal, cold-blooded dictator,'' he was able to stay in his native country.

Like many Indonesians, Suharto used only one name. He was born Haji Mohammad Suharto on 06/08/21, to a family of rice farmers in the village of Godean, in the dominant Indonesian province of Central Java.

When Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch in 1949, Suharto quickly rose through the ranks of the military to become a staff officer. His career nearly foundered in the late 1950s, when the army's then commander, Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution, accused him of corruption in awarding army contracts.

Absolute power came in September 1965 when the army's six top generals were murdered under mysterious circumstances, and their bodies dumped in an abandoned well in an apparent coup attempt. Suharto, next in line for command, quickly asserted authority over the armed forces and promoted himself to four-star general. Suharto then oversaw a nationwide purge of suspected communists and trade unionists, a campaign that stood as the region's bloodiest event since World War II until the Khmer Rouge established its gruesome regime in Cambodia a decade later. Experts put the number of deaths during the purge at between 500,000 and 1 million.

Over the next year, Suharto eased out of office Indonesia's first post-independence president, Sukarno, who died under house arrest in 1970. The

legislature rubber-stamped Suharto's presidency and he was re-elected unopposed six times. During the Cold War, Suharto was considered a reliable friend of Washington, which didn't oppose his violent occupation of Papua in 1969 and the bloody 1974 invasion of East Timor. The latter, a former Portuguese colony, became Asia's youngest country with a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite in 1999.

Even Suharto's critics agree his hardline policies kept a lid on Indonesia's extremists. He locked up hundreds of suspected Islamic militants without trial, some of whom later carried out deadly suicide bombings with the al-Qaida-linked terror network Jemaah Islamiyah after the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Meanwhile, the ruling clique that formed around Suharto - nicknamed the ''Berkeley mafia'' after their American university, the University of California, Berkeley - transformed Indonesia's economy and attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment.

By the late 1980s, Suharto was describing himself as Indonesia's ''father of development,'' taking credit for slowly reducing the number of abjectly poor and modernizing parts of the nation. But the government also became notorious for unfettered nepotism, and Indonesia was regularly ranked as one of the world's most corrupt nations as Suharto's inner circle amassed fabulous wealth. The World Bank estimates 20 to 30 percent of Indonesia's development budget was embezzled during his rule.

Die2K, Don't Fear the Reaper, Live and Let Die, Memoriam Montage, Ol' Dying Bastards and Old Soldiers Never Die siphon off 10 points each for the dictator. No World for Old Men and Reporting For Plastination take 3 points each for having Suharto on their Taxi Squads.

Mormon Church president Gordon B Hinckley has died of natural causes on Sunday 01/27/08 in Salt Lake City, UT at 97. He has been replaced as president by Thomas Monson, 81, the senior member of the church's quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Mr Hinckley, revered as a "prophet, seer and revelator" by almost 13 million Latter-Day Saints worldwide, had served in the top job since 1995.

The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims a worldwide membership of 13 million, fewer than half of which are in the US; 36% of members live in Latin America and 17% outside the western hemisphere.

Mr Hinckley was born on 06/23/10, in Salt Lake City, to Bryant Strigham and Ada Bitner Hinckley.

He began his church service as a young man in Britain, and held a number of important posts.

As a member of the First Presidency, the highest governing body of the church, he had a major role in administering both the ecclesiastical and temporal affairs of the church, whose members are spread over 160 nations and territories.

He was the first church president to travel to Spain, where in 1996 he broke ground for a temple in Madrid, and to Africa, where he met thousands of Mormons in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

During his tenure, the church grew by more than three million members, printed the 100 millionth Book of Mormon, and underwent a huge temple-building effort, which saw him travel extensively worldwide.

BLOODY MARY, Bury Me Shallow, Excuse Me For Coffin, Flatliners, Memoriam Montage, No World for Old Men and The Absent And The Dead Have No Friends..Nor Do We fulfill their prophecy of 8 points each for the Mormon leader. Brian's Flat Cat and Check the Cut List Redux receive the gift of 3 points for the Taxi Squad hits.

The head of the powerful Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos has died after a battle with liver cancer. Church officials say the archbishop died early Monday 01/28/08 in Athens, months after a failed attempt to receive a liver transplant in the United States. He was 69 years old.

The Greek government announced three days of mourning while his body lies in state. Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis praised the archbishop for bringing the church closer to the public.

Christodoulos was elected archbishop in 1998 and was highly admired in Greece despite upsetting both the liberal and ultra-orthodox wings of the church.

He welcomed the late Pope John Paul to Athens in 2001 - the first Roman Catholic leader to visit the Greek capital in more than 1,000 years - infuriating hardliners. He later made a return visit to the Vatican.

He also upset liberals with his condemnation of homosexuality and his unsuccessful fight to keep religious affiliation on state-issued identity cards.

Some Greeks called for his resignation during sex and corruption scandals in the church, but he remained one of the country's most popular figures.

Orthodox church leaders have 20 days to elect a new archbishop.

The vast majority of Greeks identify themselves as Greek Orthodox, making the church a major force in the country.

21 teams heard the news in December about the archbishop’s illness and add 5 points to each of their coffers.

Margaret Truman, the only child of former President Harry S Truman and a concert singer, actress, radio and TV personality, and mystery writer, died Tuesday 01/29/08. She was 83. Truman, known as Margaret Truman Daniel in private life, died at a Chicago assisted living center after a brief illness. She had been at the center for the past several weeks and was on a respirator.

Her father's succession to the presidency in 1945 thrust her into the national spotlight while a college junior.

Her singing career attracted the barbs of music critics - even the embarrassment of having her father threaten one reviewer. But she found a fulfilling professional and personal life in New York City, where she met her husband, journalist Clifton Daniel, who later became managing editor of The New York Times. They married in 1956.

She published her first book, an autobiography titled "Souvenir", in 1956. She said it was "hard work" and told reporters: "One writing job is enough."

But then she did a book on White House pets in 1969, and later more, one a biography of her father. The idea of doing a mystery called "Murder in the White House" came "out of nowhere," she said.

That 1980 title was followed by mysteries set in the Supreme Court, the Smithsonian, Embassy Row, the FBI, Georgetown, the CIA, Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral and the Pentagon. The last book, "Murder on K Street," was released last year. Donald Bain, a well-known ghost writer, was rumored to have written Truman's mysteries but has denied it.

Later in life, she was a grandmother and sang only in her church choir.ife was one of tremendous personal achievement."

Mary Margaret Truman was born 02/17/24, in Independence, MO. She was the only child of Bess and Harry Truman, who was a county judge at the time. For a few years after her father was elected to the Senate in 1934, she split her school year between Independence and a private girls' school in Washington, D.C. She later attended George Washington University. She also had taken voice lessons, at the urging of a church choir leader. After graduation, she used the political limelight to launch her singing career.

She made her professional singing debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1947 and gave her first Carnegie Hall concert two years later. Critics generally praised her poise but were less impressed with her vocal talent. When Washington Post critic Paul Hume wrote after a 1950 concert that she "is extremely attractive on the stage ... (but) cannot sing very well. She is flat a good deal of the time," her father fired off a note on White House stationery scolding Hume for a "lousy review. I have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below," the president wrote. The note made Page One news - but was not the sort of publicity an aspiring artist seeks. Years later she was able to laugh about it: "I thought it was funny. Sold tickets."

She soon turned more to radio and television, where she made regular guest appearances with Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle. On radio, she was co-host, with Mike Wallace, of a daily talk show on the NBC network and had her own nationally syndicated interview program for eight years. She also worked with Fred Allen and Tallulah Bankhead. Her stage career began in 1954, about the time she quit the concert stage.

Throughout her 20s, reporters were constantly asking about marriage prospects, but she said she was pursuing her career for the time being.

When she met Clifton Daniel at a dinner party in 1955, he was working in New York after a decade as a foreign correspondent. It was not until a month before their wedding in April 1956 that their romance became public. She and Daniel had four sons; he died in February 2000. Son William died in September 2000 when he was hit by a taxi; he was 41.

She was honorary co-chair of the Harry S Truman Library Institute, the nonprofit partner of her father's presidential library, and a governing board member of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Health issues had prevented her from visiting the library in recent years, but she remained actively interested in its operations, said Michael Devine, director of the library.

Schadenfreude gets 20 points of joy on the demise of the first daughter/singer/broadcaster/debutante/author. Who said she had no talent?

Earl L Butz, the outspoken US agriculture secretary forced from office in 1976 for making a racist joke, died Saturday morning 02/02/08. He was 98. Butz was found dead in his bed at his son Bill's Washington, DC home. Butz had traveled to his son's home last week for a visit and had been in poor health recently. His death was announced during the Purdue Agriculture Alumni Association's annual fish fry, an event at the West Lafayette campus Butz rarely missed.

The free-market advocate, a longtime dean of agriculture at Purdue University, had a relaxed and earthy style that won him acclaim as an after-dinner speaker but caused problems in his public life.

Controversy began swirling around Butz after President Nixon appointed him secretary of agriculture in 1971. The farm economist figured in public disputes ranging from foreign grain sales to high meat prices. He was forced to resign his Cabinet post in October 1976 after telling an obscene joke that was derogatory to blacks. The slur was overheard by John Dean, the former counsel to Nixon who was jailed in the Watergate scandal, and Dean's report on it was published in Rolling Stone magazine. Two years earlier, Butz apologized to the Vatican after criticizing the Roman Catholic Church's stand on birth control by using a mock Italian accent while referring to the pope.

Butz maintained during his career that farmers should rely on a free market driven by exports and not federal subsidies. As agriculture secretary, he drew the ire of unions and consumer groups when he worked out long-term agreements on the sale of grain to Eastern European nations and Japan. The sales led to a jump in grain prices at home and drew the applause of the farmers who benefited.

When world food prices soared in the 1970s, Butz gained the acrimony of environmentalists by urging the nation's farmers to "plant from fence row to fence row." That policy resulted in vegetation along fence rows being plowed and planted and wetlands tilled and drained. Butz also proclaimed that farming "is now a big business" and that the family farm "must adapt or die" by expanding into large operations reliant on industrial pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.

In the years that followed his resignation, Butz became one of the most sought-after GOP speakers in the nation, in part because of his salty, humorous delivery. One Butz observation about environmentalists who complained about chemical use centered on apples. He remarked that most living Americans had never bitten into a wormy apple and, after seeing the worm hole, wonder whether they had eaten the worm or whether it was still in the apple.

"Let's be honest about it," Butz said. "God put the worm in the apple; man took it out ... Man used poison to get it out - deadly poison. But the good part is that you can't buy a bad apple in your town today."

As a private citizen, Butz pleaded guilty in 1981 to federal charges of failing to report $148,000 of taxable income for 1978. He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000. Butz served only 25 days in jail, however, as the judge commuted all but 30 days to probation and Butz got five days off for good behavior.

He was born 07/03/09, and raised on a 160-acre livestock farm in northeastern Indiana's Noble County. His first eight years of education were in a one-room school. His long affiliation with Purdue University started in 1927, when he began studies on a 4-H scholarship. He earned the school's first doctorate in agricultural economics 10 years later. He then joined Purdue's agricultural economics faculty, and rose through the ranks over the next 17 years to head the department.

Butz married Mary Emma Powell in 1937, and they had two sons, Bill and Thomas. She died in 1995.

Butz was assistant secretary of agriculture from 1954 to 1957, during the Eisenhower administration. He then returned to Purdue and was dean of the School of Agriculture for the next 10 years. He unsuccessfully campaigned for the Republican nomination for Indiana governor in 1968, his only try for elective office. After leaving the Cabinet, he was named dean emeritus of Purdue's School of Agriculture.

Butz made his home near Purdue's West Lafayette campus, located in agriculturally rich central Indiana. He termed himself a "farmboy at heart" and attributed his longevity to rising early and keeping busy.

In his later years, Butz remained active in Purdue activities and spoke widely. He hosted his own radio program and worked for several farm-related businesses as a board member or consultant. In 1999, Butz donated $1 million to Purdue's Department of Agricultural Economics.

Autopsy Payouts, BairBones, Dead Wringers, Death March, Excuse Me For Coffin, Indiana Jones and the Coffin Of DOOM!!, No World for Old Men, Playin for Bonz and The Absent And The Dead Have No Friends..Nor Do We all harvest 5 points each on the AgSecOTUS.

Barry Morse, who played a detective pursuing the wrongly accused Dr. Richard Kimble in 1960s TV series ''The Fugitive'', has died. He was 89. Hayward Morse said his father died Saturday 02/02/08 at University College Hospital in London after a brief illness.

Born in London in 1918, Morse trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and appeared in British repertory and West End theaters before emigrating in 1951 to Canada, where he became a regular on radio and television. The actor's Web site estimated he played more than 3,000 roles on radio, TV, stage and screen over a seven-decade career.

In 1963, he was hired by producer Quinn Martin to play Lt. Philip Gerard on ''The Fugitive.'' The series ran for 120 episodes over four seasons, teasing audiences with the cat-and-mouse pursuit of Kimble, wrongly accused of murdering his wife, by the implacable Gerard. ''He thought it was a good show - well filmed, well directed and well acted,'' Hayward Morse said. ''He had nothing disparaging to say about 'The Fugitive.'''

Morse also played Professor Victor Bergman in 1970s science fiction series ''Space 1999.'' In 1966, he was named artistic director of the Shaw theater festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, rescuing it from financial crisis.

Morse was a lifelong devotee of playwright George Bernard Shaw, and his son said reviving the festival, which produces the works of Shaw and his contemporaries, was his proudest achievement.

GHOSTBUSTIN' BABE, Rigger Morty's Pasta Way Café and Yersinia Pestis run away with 16 points each on the British actor.

Joshua Lederberg, who died on 02/02/08 aged 82, shared the 1958 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Edward Tatum and George Beadle) for establishing that bacteria engage in sex, a discovery that laid the foundations for modern genetics and biotechnology.

When Lederberg began his researches after the Second World War, bacteria were thought to reproduce by cell division, producing clones identical to the parent organisms. But the discovery by Oswald Avery that deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, was the material that encoded the genetic information for life, inspired him to test that hypothesis.

Working at Yale with Edward Tatum, Lederberg began studying E.coli and, within a year, had established that the bacterium underwent a sexual stage in which it could mate and exchange genetic material - a process known as recombination or conjugation. In 1952, working with Norton Zinder on the salmonella bacterium, Lederberg discovered that bacteria have a second method for exchange of genes, called transduction. This takes place when viruses that infect bacteria transfer genetic material from one bacterium to another.

These discoveries enabled scientists to explain how bacteria evolve and acquire new traits, including resistance to antibiotic drugs, and raised the possibility that, using viruses, it would be possible to manipulate an organism's genetic material. Transduction now forms the basis of much modern genetic engineering.

Joshua Lederberg was born on 05/23/25 in Monclair, NJ the son of Jewish immigrants from Palestine. His father was an Orthodox rabbi descended from a long line of rabbinical scholars. Despite his lineage, as a child Joshua decided that he wanted to be "like Einstein", and by the age of 11 he was reading university science textbooks at the back of the class.

He was educated at the Stuyvesant High School, New York, which he left at 15 in order to study Zoology at Columbia University. He went on to Columbia medical school, interrupting his studies in 1943 to enroll in a US Navy fast-track medical training program, and became involved in examining servicemen returning from war in the Pacific for the parasites that cause malaria.

He left Columbia early to work with Tatum on research into bacteria and in 1948 he was offered a position in the department of genetics at the University of Wisconsin. In 1958 he transferred to Stamford as head of a new genetics department at the university and also as Professor of Biology and Computer Science, working on artificial intelligence as well as in biology and medicine. He remained there for 20 years before serving as president of Rockefeller University from 1978 to 1990.

Lederberg's research interests included space biology, and he coined the term "exobiology" for the study of extraterrestrial life. His warnings of the possibility of microbial contamination from space exploration led to NASA imposing strict quarantine rules on astronauts returning to Earth - much to their irritation.

Lederberg served, at various times, on government advisory commissions on health policy, national security and arms control. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. He was a foreign member of the Royal Society.

Laureate's Lament II splices in 20 points for the Nobel Laureate.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru who founded the technique of Transcendental Meditation and was best known as a spiritual advisor to the Beatles during a brief period in the 1960s, died at his home in the Netherlands on Tuesday 02/05/08. He was 91 and a spokesman said he passed away due to ''natural causes, his age.''

From the 1950s on, the meditation specialist was something of a rock star in his own field, touring the world to teach his method, which involves sitting still and silent for 20 minutes twice every day. But it was his union with the Beatles that turned the Maharishi into a pop cultural icon. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr's much-publicized (and much-debated) trip to India to study with the Maharishi remains perhaps the most familiar touchstone in understanding the Eastern-tinged songs of the band's late-middle period - though the relationship between the Beatles and the guru did not last very long. The author of several books and the founder of a university in Iowa, the Maharishi also is said to have instructed Mike Love, Donovan, Mia Farrow, Andy Kaufman, Doug Henning, the Rolling Stones, and Clint Eastwood. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1975 under the headline, ''Meditation: The Answer to all Your Problems?''

Crypt Kickers, God's Country Death Duo, The Ex Files and TO DIE FOR each find solace in their thoughts for choosing the Maharishi, gaining 14 points and spritual wealth. Oooooommmmm….

Phyllis A. Whitney, a prolific best-selling author of romantic mysteries, young-adult novels and children’s mysteries for more than a half-century, died on Friday 02/08/08 in Faber, VA. She was 104. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Georgia Pearson, who said the cause was pneumonia.

Ms. Whitney, who once said she stayed young by writing, continued to publish books until she was 94. Her last was “Amethyst Dreams” (1997), about a young woman who stands to inherit a fortune but who has disappeared from a family seaside villa. Only her best friend can help find her. Her first book, in 1941, was “A Place for Ann,” a young-adult novel about girls who create a personal service organization doing jobs like dog walking.

In all, Ms. Whitney produced 39 adult suspense novels, some with a Gothic twist (with titles like “Woman Without a Past” and “The Glass Flame”); 14 novels for young adults (“A Window for Julie”, “Nobody Likes Trina”); 20 children’s mysteries (“Mystery of the Scowling Boy”, “Secret of the Missing Footprint”); several books about writing; and many short stories for magazines. Her novels, considered fast-paced with lots of cliffhangers, have been translated into 30 languages and sold in the millions. Though many have gone out of print, some have continued to be re-released in paperback.

In 1988 Ms. Whitney received the prestigious Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement from the Mystery Writers of America. “I always told myself that when I get old I’ll reread all my books, but I never seem to get old,” Ms. Whitney said in an interview with The Times when she was 79. She said that one of her writing tricks was to set her books in places she had visited. She called her vacations book-hunting expeditions. Her earliest novels took place in Chicago, but as her appeal grew the settings became more glamorous and romantic: Palm Springs, CA, Sedona, AZ, and Maui, HI, as well as Turkey, Norway, Greece and Japan. “Amethyst Dreams” was set on Topsail Island in North Carolina.

Ms. Whitney’s travels began early. She was born Phyllis Ayame Whitney on 09/09/1903, to Charles J. Whitney and the former Mary Lillian Mandeville in Yokohama, Japan. (Ayame means “iris” in Japanese.) Her father was in the shipping and hotel business. Her parents had met in the United States and became sweethearts but initially broke up. Afterward, Ms. Whitney’s mother married another man, Gus Heege, an actor, and they had a son, Philip. After Mr. Heege died, Ms. Whitney’s parents reunited in Japan and married there. Phyllis was their only child. Her parents’ story was the inspiration for one of Ms. Whitney’s plots, about a love affair gone awry.

The family moved to the Philippines when Ms. Whitney was 6 and later lived for a time in China. When Ms. Whitney was 15, after her father died, she and her mother left for Berkeley, CA. They later moved to San Antonio, where her mother died of cancer.

At 17, Ms. Whitney moved to Chicago to live with an aunt. She graduated from McKinley High School there in 1924, at 20. (She had gone to missionary schools overseas, causing her to lag behind academically.) The next year she married George A. Garner. They had one child, Georgia, in 1934. Besides their daughter, also of Faber, Ms. Whitney (who always kept her maiden name) is survived by two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In the first years of her marriage, Ms. Whitney worked in bookstores and at the Chicago Public Library while writing on the side. It took her four years to publish her first short story, which appeared in The Chicago Daily News. Besides publishing “A Place for Ann” in the 1940s, she became a book reviewer for The Chicago Sun and then The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Her first book in the adult suspense genre was “Red Is for Murder,” published in 1943 by Ziff-Davis with a picture of a blood splatter on the cover. It tells the story of Linell Wynn, who writes sign copy for a department store and whose life has been uneventful “until the day that murder walks the floors at dusk,” according to the book jacket.

Ms. Whitney and her husband divorced in 1945, partly because he was not supportive of her writing. Five years later she married Lovell F. Jahnke. The couple moved to Staten Island, where they lived for decades and traveled widely together as she gathered fodder for her tales, in one instance taking a hot-air balloon trip. Mr. Jahnke died in 1973, when they lived in Hope, NJ.

Ms. Whitney ascribed her success as a writer to persistence and an abiding faith in her abilities. “Never mind the rejections, the discouragement, the voices of ridicule (there can be those too),” she wrote in “Guide to Fiction Writing.” “Work and wait and learn, and that train will come by. If you give up, you’ll never have a chance to climb aboard.”

Better Off Dead, Check the Cut List Redux, Don't Fear the Reaper, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Formaldehyde Enema, God's Country Death Duo, Mangled Baby Ducks, Morbidly Obsessed, No World for Old Men, Not Playing Dead, Reporting For Plastination, Sweeney Todd's Pie Filling, Team Dirt, The Absent And The Dead Have No Friends..Nor Do We and The Yips write up 5 points each for the aged author. Excuse Me For Coffin authors 3 points for the Taxi Squad hit.

Devidas Murlidhar Amte, an Indian social activist who fought against caste and religious prejudice and founded clinics for lepers and handicapped children, died Saturday 02/09/08. He was 93. Amte was diagnosed with leukemia last year and died in his sleep at a clinic he founded for the disabled in Chandrapur in the western state of Maharashtra.

Amte was widely known as "Baba", a term of respect in many Indian dialects. His largest leper center covered 182 hectares (450 acres), accommodated thousands of people and included a library, a bank, a theater and a technical college. Amte believed in training lepers and the disabled to work, and a motto at his centers was "Charity destroys, work builds."

Amte was born into a wealthy upper-caste family and educated at a Christian college. He went on to become an attorney, and rebelled against caste barriers. He was revered across India for his work on behalf of people from the lowest rungs of the country's complex caste system, those known as "untouchables."

Amte won the Padma Vibhushan - India's second highest civilian honor - and international awards, including the Magsaysay Award, the Templeton Prize and the United Nations Human Rights Prize.

Amte was also famous for organizing environmental awareness marches in the 1980s against large dam projects that displaced millions of farmers and tribes people.

No World for Old Men gets assistance building their point total with a solo hit worth 20 points on the social activist.

Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his role as a police chief in the blockbuster movie "Jaws," has died. He was 75. Scheider died Sunday 02/10/08 at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock. The hospital did not release a cause of death. However, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Taylor said Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital's Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years.

Scheider received two Oscar nominations, for best-supporting actor in 1971's "The French Connection" in which he played the police partner of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, and for best-actor for 1979's "All That Jazz," the autobiographical Bob Fosse film. However, he was best known for his role in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film, "Jaws", the enduring classic about a killer shark terrorizing beachgoers and well as millions of moviegoers.

Widely hailed as the film that launched the era of the Hollywood blockbuster, it was also the first movie to earn $100 million at the box office. Scheider starred with Richard Dreyfuss, who played an oceanographer. In 2005, one of Scheider's most famous lines in the movie - "You're gonna need a bigger boat" - was voted No. 35 on the American Film Institute's list of best quotes from U.S. movies.

That year, some 30 years after "Jaws" premiered, hundreds of movie buffs flocked to Martha's Vineyard, off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts, to celebrate the great white shark. The island's JawsFest '05 also brought back some of the cast and crew, including screenwriter Carl Gottlieb and Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel that inspired Spielberg's classic. Spielberg, Scheider and Dreyfuss were absent.

Scheider was also politically active. He participated in rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a massive New York demonstration in March 2003 that police said drew 125,000 chanting activists.

Brian's Flat Cat, Dead Can Dance, Made It Ma! Top Of the World!, Otis' Cirrhosis from Morrison Sisters' Still and host team The Big Casino all scare up 12 points each on the versatile actor.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Oscar Brodney died six days shy of his 101st birthday on Tuesday 02/12/08.

Entering the film industry in 1935, Brodney worked on various projects, including Abbott and Costello's "Mexican Hayride" and the adapted screenplay for "Harvey". The playwright Lawrence Riley and two other screenwriters adapted one of Brodney's stories for the screen under the title "You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith" in 1943.

Mr. Brodney was nominated for an Oscar and a WGA for "The Glenn Miller Story". He was nominated for another WGA for "The Gal Who Took the West". Mr. Brodney wrote over 50 films and TV shows during his career. He also produced four films including "All Hands on Deck." Mr. Brodney's many writing credits include "Harvey", three of the "Francis the Talking Mule" films, several episodes of the TV series "It Takes a Thief" and two "Tammy" movies. His final credit was co-writer of the Sherman Hemsley horror comedy "Ghost Fever" in 1987.

He also wrote "The Black Shield of Falworth". The film was made famous for allegedly containing Tony Curtis' famous line "Yonder lies da castle of my fodda." In fact, the line of dialogue is urban legend. It wasn't in the movie.

Chitragupta's Roll Call and The Famous Final Scene II finally get a curtain call on the Hollywood writer, earning 18 points each.

Herbert "Smoky" Dawson, the country music legend known as "Australia's first cowboy", died after a short illness at age 94. A spokeswoman for the Australian Country Music Foundation said Dawson had been sick for about six days before dying Wednesday 02/13/08 in Sydney, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported.

Dawson was born Herbert Henry in Warrnambool, Victoria, in 1913. A generation of young Australians listened to Dawson's adventures on his

horse, Flash, and he was dubbed "Australia's first cowboy".

Dawson's first recording was "I Am A Happy Go Lucky Cowhand" in 1942 and he had his own national radio show from 1952-1962. In 1978, Dawson was awarded an MBE and in 1999 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia. He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2005. A DVD featuring new performances was completed this month.

Dawson also taught horse riding on his ranch, and was known for his yodeling, whip cracking, knife throwing and acting.

Dawson is survived by his wife Dot, who turns 102 this year.

Stiff As A Board And Bright Green wrangle 20 points for the solo hit on the Aussie country star.

Popular entertainer Lydia Shum died Tuesday morning 02/19/08 after a long battle with cancer. She was 62. Known for her chubby appearance and joviality, she earned the nickname "Fei-fei" (Fatty) and "Happy Fruit" early in a career that spanned nearly half a century.

Born in Shanghai in 1945, Shum moved to Hong Kong with her family soon after, and made her debut in 1960 as a film child star for the Shaw Brothers studio. She later ventured into singing, television drama and hosting.

One of the most celebrated and beloved comediennes and actresses in the Chinese-speaking world, she appeared in 70 films in Cantonese and Mandarin, and gained wide popularity with her comedic and hosting skills for the Hong Kong television variety show "Enjoy Yourself Tonight."

In 2002, she starred in the English-language sitcom "Living with Lydia" in Singapore, which was broadcast there and also in the U.S., on AZN Television.

Shum married Hong Kong television actor-singer Adam Cheng after a decade-long courtship in 1985. In 1987, she gave birth to a daughter, Joyce Cheng. Her marriage dissolved the following year.

A testament to Shum's iconic status in the territory, Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang expressed his sadness at Shum's passing in a morning briefing. He noted that her laughter accompanied many Hong Kong people as they grew up and called Shum's fortitude in the face of illness "a demonstration of the Hong Kong spirit."

Shum has long suffered from diabetes and hypertension and was diagnosed with a liver tumor in September 2006.

Bud Dwyer's Brains, Ethnic Cleansing, La Morta la Diventa and Van Owens Body get fat on the lady known as “Fei-Fei”, scoring 18 points (14 on the 4-way hit, 4 for Under 65).

Actress Emily Perry, who played Dame Edna Everage's sidekick Madge Allsop, has died at the age of 100. The performer, who played the megastar's taciturn and long-suffering bridesmaid for many years, was 80 when she first took on the role in 1987.

Perry appeared on Dame Edna's ITV star-studded shows and travelled the world as part of comic Barry Humphries' stage spectaculars.

The actress appeared in the Dame Edna Experience, a comedy chat show which attracted a whole host of UK and Hollywood names, from 1987 to 1989. As New Zealander Madge Allsop she never uttered a word, and her main function was to affix badges to star guests - and bear the brunt of Dame Edna's savage comments.

Allsop appeared in two other Dame Edna shows in the early 1990s, eventually retiring in 2004 and moving to Brinsworth House, the entertainment industry's retirement home in Twickenham, south-west London.

The actress also made a one-off appearance in long-running BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine in 1995.

Devon-born Perry - who was known as Pat - ran a children's dancing school for 25 years before finding fame late in life.

Speaking to the BBC News website last year ahead of her 100th birthday, Perry said: "You know, my memory's gone. I've been all around the world with Barry, and I can't remember a thing."

Autopsy Payouts and The Famous Final Scene do the duet worth 18 points on the British actress.

Former Slovenian president Janez Drnovsek, 57, who helped lead his country to independence from Yugoslavia and later enthralled many of his countrymen by adopting a New Age lifestyle, died 02/23/08 at his home in the Slovenian village of Zaplana. The cause of death was not reported, but he had had cancer in recent years.

Mild-mannered but resolute, Mr. Drnovsek became a political icon in his nation of 2 million for working to keep violence at a minimum when Slovenia gained independence in 1991, a sharp contrast to what happened in neighboring countries as Yugoslavia fell apart. He later led Slovenia to membership in the European Union and NATO.

In recent years, as he dealt with cancer, he made a radical transformation to a holistic lifestyle and wrote several New Age-influenced books.

When Mr. Drnovsek's region declared its independence, Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic sent tanks to the Slovenian border, triggering a brief war. But Mr. Drnovsek pushed for negotiations and eventually orchestrated a deal for the peaceful withdrawal of the Yugoslav army.

Mr. Drnovsek was Slovenia's prime minister for a decade before being elected president in 2002. He did not run for a second presidential term in elections late last year and was replaced by Danilo Turk in December.

Mr. Drnovsek had a cancerous kidney removed in 1999. In 2005, he acknowledged that doctors had diagnosed what he described as "formations" - apparently cancer - on his lungs and liver in 2001, a year before he was elected president. Nevertheless, he generally carried out his duties without disruptions. He said he realized in 2005 that doctors could not cure him. Instead, he insisted that he had cured himself simply by changing his diet, his lifestyle and his way of thinking.

After many years as a straight-laced and stodgy politician, Mr. Drnovsek turned into something of a New Age guru. He moved from Ljubljana, the capital, to remote Zaplana, where he lived with his dog, baked his own bread and ate only organic fruit and vegetables. He had no TV.

As president, he considered some of the daily political give-and-take a waste of time and focused instead on the fight for the poor and weak, even offering to mediate in Sudan's troubled Darfur region. Some criticized him for trying to take on global issues, and he also ruffled feathers by reversing himself on some key issues.

Once an important supporter of the European Union, he grew critical of it, complaining about the bloc's agricultural subsidies. In 2005, he angered Serbia, a valued trading partner, by openly supporting Kosovo's independence-seeking Albanians. He wrote about the perils of technology and urged humans to rely instead on each other. His book "Thoughts on Living and Becoming Conscious" became a bestseller last summer. He recently published a book called "Dialogues".

Born in the northeastern city of Celje, Mr. Drnovsek received a degree in economics at Ljubljana's Faculty of Economics and then worked as a banker. In his youth and early adulthood, he was a member of the Communist Party, the only political force in the former Yugoslavia. But he was never a Communist at heart, going off to ski whenever the party held a congress.

When the Communists were ousted in the first multiparty elections in Yugoslavia in 1990, paving the way for Slovenia's independence, he exclaimed, "This is a sign of a democracy drive that cannot be stopped!"

Already Dead, Bury Me Shallow, Life'll Kill Ya and Monty Python's Dying Circus preside over 18 points each (14 for the 4-way hit, 4 for the Under 65) on the Slovenian President.

Myron Cope, the screechy-voiced announcer whose colorful catch phrases and twirling Terrible Towel became symbols of the Pittsburgh Steelers during an unrivaled 35 seasons in the broadcast booth, has died. He was 79. Cope died Wednesday morning 02/27/08 at a nursing home in Mount Lebanon, a Pittsburgh suburb. Cope had been treated for respiratory problems and heart failure in recent months.

Cope's tenure from 1970-2004 as the color analyst on the Steelers' radio network is the longest in NFL history for a broadcaster with a single team and led to his induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2005. Even after retiring, Cope - a sports talk show host for 23 years - continued to appear in numerous radio, TV and print ads, emblematic of a local popularity that sometimes surpassed that of the stars he covered.

Beyond Pittsburgh's three rivers, Cope is best known for pioneering the Terrible Towel, the yellow cloth twirled by fans as a good luck charm at Steelers games since the mid-70s. The towel is arguably the best-known fan symbol of any major pro sports team, has raised millions of dollars for charity and is displayed at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

An announcer by accident, Cope spent the first half of his professional career as one of the nation's most widely read freelance sports writers, writing for "Sports Illustrated" and the "Saturday Evening Post" on subjects that included Muhammad Ali, Howard Cosell and Roberto Clemente. He was hired by the Steelers at age 40, several years after he began doing TV sports commentary on the whim of a station manager, mostly to help increase attention and attendance as the Steelers moved into Three Rivers Stadium.

Neither the Steelers nor Cope had any idea how much impact he would have on a five-time Super Bowl champion franchise that, within two years of his hiring, would begin a string of home sellouts that continues to this day. Cope became so popular that the Steelers didn't try to replace his unique perspective and top-of-the-lungs vocal histrionics when he retired, instead downsizing from a three-man announcing team to a two-man booth.

Capital Punishment, Skeleton In Their Closet and The Finish Line tackle the competition with 16-pointer on the legendary sportscaster.

William F Buckley Jr, the columnist, novelist, talk show host and tireless intellectual who founded the modern conservative movement and was its articulate voice for nearly six decades, died Wednesday 02/27/08. He was 82. Buckley, who had been ill with emphysema, died while at work in his study in Stamford, CT. In a commentary on the National Review website, the magazine he founded, Kathryn Jean Lopez said it was fitting that he died while working. "If he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas."

An urbane and charming pundit with a lacerating wit and intellect, Buckley was, virtually alone, the public face of American political conservatism in the 1960s and '70s. His ardent friends and admirers came to include a California governor, Ronald Reagan, who sought Buckley's counsel frequently during his campaign and presidency, calling him "perhaps the most influential journalist and intellectual in our era."

Buckley also inspired generations of conservatives, who now fill think tanks and write for National Review - which he launched in 1955 - and the Weekly Standard and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

"It's not lonely the way it was 45 years ago," Buckley said in an interview with The Times a few years ago, "when there was really nothing, certainly no journal of opinion on conservative thought. There are tons of people here now."

Buckley was a fierce debater, who loved trading lyrical put-downs with his political opponents. But, unlike some of the conservative pundits who drive talk radio today, he had many personal friends and admirers among his public foes, including such luminaries as the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the late author Norman Mailer. Some of his political opponents, though, had trouble reconciling the two Buckleys: the irresistibly charming raconteur with the talk show host who drew exquisite rhetorical nooses around the necks of his opponents. "You can't stay mad at a guy who's witty, spontaneous and likes good liquor," Mailer once said.

Dead Betters plays it close to the vest, picking up a 20-point solo hit on the conservative talk show host.

Joseph M. Juran, a pioneer of quality management whose "Quality Control Handbook" revolutionized how companies around the world made and sold products, has died. He was 103. Juran died Thursday 02/28/08 after suffering an apparent stroke.

The "Quality Control Handbook" was first published in 1951, and at least five more editions followed. The book describes the mathematical basis for quality improvements. Juran believed that quality improvements were key to businesses' survival and profits - not only for manufacturers, but for enterprises as diverse as scientific organizations, hospitals, supermarkets, and Internet companies.

He worked as a quality control consultant, lecturer and author until he was in his 90s, his son Donald Juran said. "He always told me, 'Never be without a project,' and he never was," he said.

Juran attended the University of Minnesota and started his career in Chicago at Western Electric Co., the former manufacturing arm of AT&T, trying to resolve product defects, his son said. During World War II, Juran worked in Washington, eliminating bottlenecks that hindered timely equipment shipments to U.S. allies overseas, and worked to minimize defective exports.

After teaching industrial engineering briefly at New York University, he became a hired expert, helping companies come up with quality control standards, his family said. In 1979, he founded Juran Institute, an organization aimed at providing companies with research and advice on managing quality.

Century Mark gets a 20-point solo hit, opening the year with the quality control guru on their Active Squad. The Absent And The Dead Have No Friends..Nor Do We gets a 3-pointer with the author sitting on the Taxi Squad.

Cape Town's famous centenarian Philip Rabinowitz has died at the age of 104. Rabinowitz was known for his feats on the athletics front and held a number of records at the time of his death.

Family, friends and fellow athletes gathered at the Jewish cemetery in Pinelands to pay homage to the man who was also known as "Flying Phil". He passed away Friday 02/29/08 after suffering a mild stroke the previous Saturday - only a day after a photo session with the international media at his daughter's factory where he still worked as a bookkeeper.

In 2004 Rabinowitz sprinted into the Guinness Book of World Records, when he broke the 100m record for centenarian sprinting in a time of 30.86 seconds at the Greenpoint stadium.

"He really hit the news when he broke the 100m and 200m, and he loved it. He loved the adoration of everyone," said his daughter Joyce Kruger. She said her father was proud of himself and that they were also proud of him.

Flying Phil who also held the 200m world record was a regular participant in big walks on the Cape Peninsula.

Sir Wolfie's Gate Keepers dashes out of the gate with a 20-point solo hit on the World’s Fastest Centenarian. The Rules Committee voted 5-1 with 2 abstentions in favor of Flyin’ Phil.

Blind guitar wizard Jeff Healey of Toronto died Sunday 03/02/08 of cancer. He was 41. Healey lost his vision as a baby to a rare form of retinal cancer called retinoblastoma and he battled the disease throughout this life. His website said Sunday that he died with his wife, Cristie, at his bedside in Toronto's St. Joseph's Hospital. Healey had a long fight with cancer. In 2007, he underwent surgery to remove cancerous growths from his lungs. He had earlier had two sarcomas removed from his legs.

Norman Jeffrey Healey was one of Canada's premier blues and jazz musicians who is perhaps best known for his 1988 album "See The Light", which included the hit single "Angel Eyes". He was also nominated for a Grammy for the song "Hideaway" and in 1990, was awarded a Juno in the Entertainer of the Year category. Other Healey hits have included "How Long Can a Man Be Strong" and a cover of The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

As a toddler, Healey picked up a guitar and, setting it on his knees, developed a distinct sound and playing style. By the time he was a teenager, Healey had formed a four-piece band called Blue Direction and was playing in clubs throughout the Toronto area. His best known work came when he formed the Jeff Healey Band several years later with bassist Joe Rockman and drummer Tom Stephen. His career took off when he appeared in the movie "Road House", which starred Patrick Swayze. The Jeff Healey Band was a sellout act across Canada and sold over a million albums in the U.S. market.

During the course of his musical career, he shared the stage with such music titans as Stevie Ray Vaughan, George Harrison and B.B. King. But Healey's passion was not always in rock music and later in his career branched into jazz, especially from the golden years of the genre in the 1920s and '30s. He released several jazz CDs and had a collection of some 25,000 78 rpm jazz records.

Until recently, he had a show on a Toronto jazz station CJRT-FM.

At the time of his death, Healey was about to unveil his first rock/blues CD in eight years. "Mess of Blues" is scheduled to be released in Europe in March and in North America on 04/22/08.

Drop Dead Gorgeous, Ethnic Cleansing, Flatliners, Goatsucker, La Morta la Diventa, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop,

Skeleton In Their Closet, Team Dirt and Van Owens Body all pick up 17 points (5 for the 10-way hit, 12 for Under 45) each on the Grammy nominee.

Former Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat who was a feisty self-made millionaire before he began a long career fighting big business in the Senate, died Wednesday night 03/12/08. He was 90. Metzenbaum died at his home near Fort Lauderdale, FL. No cause was given.

During 18 years on Capitol Hill, until his retirement in 1995, Metzenbaum came to be known as "Senator No" and "Headline Howard" for his abilities to block legislation and get publicity for himself. He was a cantankerous firebrand who didn't need a microphone to hold a full auditorium spellbound while dropping rhetorical bombs on big oil companies, the insurance industry, savings and loans, and the National Rifle Association, to name just a few favorite targets. Unabashedly liberal, the former labor lawyer and union lobbyist considered himself a champion of workers and was a driving force behind the law requiring 60-day notice of plant closings.

When other liberals shied away from that label, Metzenbaum embraced it, winning re-election in 1988 from Ohio voters who chose Republicans for governor and president, and by wider margins than either George Voinovich or George H.W. Bush. That victory produced his third, final and most productive term in the Senate. When it was over, in 1995, he started a new career as consumer advocate, heading the Consumer Federation of America.

Born 06/04/17, Metzenbaum grew up a child of poverty and prejudice on Cleveland's east side. He was 10 years old when he got his first job, delivering groceries in exchange for tips. He worked his way through Ohio State University selling flowers, playing trombone in a National Youth Administration band, selling magazines, renting bicycles and peddling razor blades. He made extra money by charging classmates for weekend rides home. That stopped when his father had to sell Metzenbaum's 1926 Essex to make mortgage payments.

Metzenbaum made his first big money when he and a partner got the idea for a well-lighted, 24-hour-staffed parking lot at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The enterprise expanded to Cincinnati and San Juan, Puerto Rico, and eventually became APCOA, the world's largest parking lot company.

His former partner, Ted Bonda, maintained that Metzenbaum would have ended up among the world's richest men if he'd stayed in business. Bonda and Metzenbaum started one of the country's first car-rental agencies, now Avis.

Metzenbaum once described himself as "born knowing how to make money." He bragged about his ability to take advantage of tax loopholes, but as senator said he sought to erase loopholes favoring the wealthy. Metzenbaum got into politics right out of law school, and spent eight years in the Ohio Legislature. At one point, he thought he was in line to become the state Senate's majority leader, but his reputation as an extreme liberal, or anti-Semitism, or both, changed five crucial votes. Describing the episode decades later, he said the five vote-changers were subsequently defeated, and "I had something to do with it."

A Cleveland bank once refused to put him on its board. So Metzenbaum and a partner became the largest shareholders. He also was proud of leading the fight to open two Cleveland country clubs to minorities. A political miscalculation led to his defeat by John Glenn in a ferocious 1974 Senate primary. Metzenbaum had been contrasting his business background with Glenn's military and astronaut credentials, saying his opponent had "never worked for a living." Glenn's reply came to be known as the "Gold Star Mothers" speech. He told Metzenbaum to go to a veterans' hospital and "look those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn't hold a job. You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job."

Metzenbaum won Ohio's other Senate seat in 1976, but he and Glenn didn't speak for years. The two senators made peace when Glenn needed help with his presidential campaign in 1984. In 1988, Glenn returned the favor by piloting Metzenbaum throughout Ohio to announce the beginning of his re-election campaign and later recorded a commercial rebuttal to a GOP allegation that Metzenbaum was soft on child pornography.

In the Senate, Metzenbaum was a master of the rules and a constant presence in the often-empty chamber, where he posted an aide to scout for unexpected amendments or hastily scheduled floor action on single-interest bills. Former Sen. David Pryor, D-AK once compared Metzenbaum to an airport security guard: "You know he's going to X-ray your baggage, so you have to be clean."

His filibusters and stall tactics were so successful that the mere threat of Metzenbaum opposition was often enough to win concessions. Once, when a two-week filibuster was cut off and Metzenbaum was still determined to block action on lifting natural gas price controls, he and a partner sent the Senate into round-the-clock sessions by demanding roll call votes on 500 amendments. Another year, he held up 80 judicial appointments until his colleagues agreed to schedule consideration of a bill he considered vital. Metzenbaum claimed to have single-handedly saved billions of tax dollars by blocking special tax breaks and pork-barrel programs. In 1982, The Washington Post tallied the price tag of legislation he blocked that year and came up with a minimum of $10 billion.

In time, Metzenbaum evolved from minority-party commando to majority-party subcommittee chairman and became known as much for the legislation he moved as for the bills he blocked. He headed panels with jurisdiction over labor and antitrust, and took on such issues as pension protection, workplace safety, the right to strike, age discrimination, food labeling, baby formula pricing, retail price-fixing, insurance antitrust and cable television monopolies. He was the Senate's prime sponsor of the Brady Act, seeking a waiting period for handgun purchases.

Andes Rugby Player Mints and Friends of the Devil are appointed 18 points each on the veteran Ohio lawmaker.

Lazare Ponticelli, French Army veteran of the First World War died on Wednesday 03/12/08, aged 110. With the death of Louis de Cazenave in January, Lazare Ponticelli assumed the mantle of "le dernier poilu". Now, less than two months later, Ponticelli too is dead, the last of the French Army veterans of the Great War of 1914-18.

He was in fact born Lazarro Ponticelli in northern Italy in 1897 in a small mountain hamlet near Bettola in Piacenza province. He was one of seven children in a desperately poor family: his father was a jobbing carpenter and cobbler, his mother tried to scratch a living from the family vegetable plot and three times a year left home to go down to the Po valley to work on the seasonal rice harvest.

When Ponticelli was 2 his mother left for France in search of work that could make some meaningful contribution to domestic, most of the family eventually following her. He was left in the care of neighbors. When his father and brother were killed in an accident, he made his way by train to Paris, though speaking no French. Eventually he found work as a chimney sweep at Nogent-sur-Marne, which had a fair-sized Italian community.

When war came in August 1914 he lied about his age and joined the 1st Régiment de Marche of the French Foreign Legion, where he found himself a comrade in arms with one of his brothers. But in 1915, with the entry of Italy into the war on the Allied side he was told he must join the Italian Army and was discharged. Refusing at first to be parted from his French uniform, he was firmly escorted by two gendarmes to Turin, where he joined a regiment of Alpinieri for service on the Austrian front. There he was serving as a machinegunner when he was seriously wounded by a shell burst during one of the many futile Italian assaults on welldefended Austrian mountain positions. After surgery and convalescence in Naples he returned to the front, this time to be gassed in 1918 an Austrian use of the chemical weapon that killed hundreds of his comrades.

Demobilized in 1920, he returned to France and with two brothers founded a stovemaking and pipework company, Ponticelli Frères, which did a roaring business supplying industry both in France and abroad.

When the Second World War broke out he obtained French nationality, but he was adjudged too old for active service and instead put his company at the service of France's war effort. When in 1940 the Germans invaded and occupied France he moved his factory to the unoccupied zone. But when Vichy France too was occupied, he returned northwards and worked for the Resistance.

After the war he restarted his company, guiding its business until his retirement in 1960. Latterly he lived in the Paris suburb of Le Kremlin Bicêtre, and regularly attended Armistice Day ceremonies.

Ponticelli held both the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille Interalliée for his services in 1914-18. More recently, like all surviving veterans of the First World war, he had been appointed a Chevalier, Légion d'honneur.

Goodbye Cruel World and How Much For Those Stem Cells? get a 4-3 vote from The Rules Committee, based on awards received for service. Both teams receive their awards of 18 points each for the WWI vet.

Radio disc jock Mikey Dread is dead. He succumbed to a brain tumor late Sunday afternoon 03/16/08 at his family home in Connecticut, USA at the age of 54. Born Michael Campbell in Port Antonio, Jamaica, he distinguished himself as an extraordinary studio engineer and presenter at the now defunct Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) where he came to prominence in the 1970s as "The Dread-the-Control Tower", the name of the late night show he presented at a time when reggae music was scoffed at by many.

One of reggae's greatest innovators and original radio engineers/technicians, the past student of Titchfield High School, in 2006 celebrated the 30th anniversary of the night programme which he started at the JBC, and revolutionised the after midnight shift making it into the most popular slot on radio, by playing strictly dub music. This innovation is seen by many musicologists as the antecedence of dancehall as we now know it.

Upon leaving the JBC, Mikey Dread ventured into recording and scored with a number of releases such as Weatherman Skanking in combination with Ray I, Barber Saloon, Love the Dread, as well as albums such as Dread at the Control, Evolutionary Rockers and World War III. Over time he attracted the attention of British punk rockers, The Clash, who invited him to produce some of their music, the most famous of which is their single Bankrobber, and contributed to several songs on their 1980 album, Sandinista. Mikey Dread also toured with The Clash across Britain, wider Europe and the US.

He also worked closely with producer Trevor Elliot to launch musical career of singer Edi Fitzroy, who was then an accountant at the JBC. As the news of his passing surfaced yesterday, the Sunday Observer got comments from a number of persons in the media and the music fraternity, all of whom hailed Mikey Dread as a significant contributor to the development of Jamaican music. "His (Mikey Dread's) work, is not only national or regional, but also international," former JBC's journalist Leslie Miles noted. "It spanned the world scene and made Mikey a pioneer broadcaster for playing dub music, and also redefined aspects of radio, especially night time radio" Miles, who is now head of news at Bess FM, also spoke of the struggle Mikey Dread faced at the conservative JBC. Music consultant Colin Leslie pointed out that the consequence of the "fight" he received from the management was putting him on at night, but that backfired.

"Remember he is a Portlander, so I always appreciated the fact that we shared the same alma mater (Titchfield High School), that is something I've always cherished and I hold him in high esteem. Although he was ahead of my era, he was somebody who laid an awesome foundation and was very unique and highly respected," was how Richard "Richie B" Burgess of Hot 102, remembered Mikey Dread.

"We were at JBC together, and in those days when he started at the JBC dreads weren't popular on the air. The powers that be in management really gave him a fight," Ali McNab told the Sunday Observer.

"Michael Campbell, is someone who revolutionised radio in Jamaica when there was still an anti-Jamaican sentiment regarding music and culture. In terms of the emerging dancehall, it was Mikey Dread who popularised it on radio. Although it was late night, he still managed to popularise dancehall music and bring it to the masses," was the perspective of Dennis Howard who also worked on JBC Radio, in the post-Mikey Dread era.

And Irie FM's disc jockey, GT Taylor hailed the late Mikey Dread as a role model. "Reggae music in Jamaica, owes a lot that that brother. He was one man who stood up for reggae in the early '70s, bringing the music to the forefront. He is one of my inspirations."

Veteran singer Freddie McGregor attested to the fact that "Mikey Dread was one of the persons fighting the struggle for reggae music. Mikey and I did a lot of shows together over the years. A wonderful brethren".

Already Dead and Van Owens Body scratch out 26 points (18 for the 2-way hit, 8 for Under 55) a piece on the reggae musician/producer/radio host.

Pioneering science fiction writer and visionary Arthur C. Clarke, best known for his work on the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," has died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka at the age of 90. He died on Wednesday 03/19/08 of respiratory complications and heart failure doctors linked to the post-polio syndrome that had kept him wheelchair-bound for years. Marking his "90th orbit of the sun" in December, the prolific British-born author and theorist made three birthday wishes: For E.T. to call, for man to kick his oil habit and for peace in Sri Lanka.

Clarke was born in England on 12/16/17, and served as a radar specialist in the Royal Air Force during World War Two. He was one of the first to suggest the use of satellites orbiting the earth for communications, and in the 1940s forecast that man would reach the Moon by the year 2000 -- an idea experts at first dismissed. When Neil Armstrong landed in 1969, the United States said Clarke "provided the essential intellectual drive that led us to the Moon."

Clarke first came to the Indian Ocean island in the 1950s for scuba, later founding a diving school, and said he became a resident after he "fell in love with the place." President Mahinda Rajapaksa paid tribute to Sri Lanka's most famous foreign resident and "prophet". "We were all proud to have this celebrated author, visionary and promoter of space exploration, prophet of satellite communications, great humanist and lover of animals in our midst," Rajapaksa said in a statement.

Clarke wrote around 100 books and hundreds of short stories and articles, and wanted to be remembered foremost as a writer. Trained as a scientist, he was renowned for basing his work on scientific fact and theory rather than pure fiction and for keeping humanity at the heart of his technological visions.

In 1964, he started to work with the film maker Stanley Kubrick on the script of a groundbreaking film that was to win audiences and accolades far wider than those of most previous science fiction - "2001: A Space Odyssey." Based loosely on a short story he had written in 1948, it dealt poetically with themes of human evolution, technology and consciousness and came to be regarded by many as one of the greatest films ever made.

Clarke, one of the most prolific authors of his genre, was the last surviving member of a group of science-fiction writers known as the "Big Three." The two others were the Russian-born Isaac Asimov, who died in 1992, and Robert A. Heinlein, a Missouri native who died in 1988.

Clarke finished reviewing the final manuscript of his latest novel "The Last Theorem" just days ago. He had also been working on the idea of a "space elevator."

"The golden age of space is only just beginning," Clarke forecast. "Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will travel to earth orbit and then to the Moon and beyond. Space travel and space tourism will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet."

Carrion Luggage, Crypt Kickers, Dead Wringers, God's Country Death Duo, Goodbye Cruel World, Monty Python's Dying Circus and What's a TSCU? all discover 8 more points on their totals with the demise of the author/visionary.

Paul Scofield, the towering British stage actor who won international fame and an Academy Award for the film "A Man for All Seasons," died Wednesday 03/19/08. He was 86. Scofield died in a hospital near his home in southern England. He had been suffering from leukemia.

Scofield made few films even after the Oscar for his 1966 portrayal of Tudor statesman Sir Thomas More. He was a stage actor by inclination and by his gifts - a dramatic, craggy face and an unforgettable voice that was likened to a Rolls Royce starting up or the rumbling sound of low organ pipes.

Even his greatest screen role was a follow up to a play - the London stage production of "A Man for All Seasons", in which he starred for nine months. Scofield also turned in a performance in the 1961 New York production that won him extraordinary reviews and a Tony Award. He also was in a stage adaptation of Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" in 1956.

Scofield's huge success with "A Man for All Seasons" was followed in 1979 by another great historical stage role, as Salieri in "Amadeus." His later stage appearances included "Heartbreak House" in 1992 and the 1996 National Theatre production of Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman."

Scofield's rare films included Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" in 1974, Kenneth Branagh's 1989 production of "Henry V," in which he played

the king of France; "Quiz Show," Robert Redford's film about the 1950s TV scandal in which Scofield played poet Mark Van Doren; and the 1996

adaptation of Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible".

Rigger Morty's Pasta Way Café snares a solo 20 points with the Active Squad hit on the thespian. US Signal Corpse had the actor listed as understudy, but still gets 3 points for the Taxi Squad hit.

Al Copeland, who became rich selling spicy fried chicken and notorious for his flamboyant lifestyle, died Sunday 03/23/08. He was 64. The founder of the Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken chain had been diagnosed shortly before Thanksgiving with a malignant salivary gland tumor. His death was announced by his spokeswoman, Kit Wohl. Copeland died at a clinic near Munich, Germany.

After growing up in New Orleans, Copeland sold his car at age 18 for enough money to open his own one-man doughnut shop. He went on to spend 10 modestly successful years in the doughnut business. The opening of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in New Orleans in 1966, however, caught Copeland's eye. Inspired by KFC's success, Copeland in 1971 used his doughnut profits to open a restaurant, Chicken on the Run ("So fast you get your chicken before you get your change").

After six months, Chicken on the Run was still losing money. In a last-ditch effort, Copeland chose a spicier Louisiana Cajun-style recipe and reopened the restaurant under the name Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken, after Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman's character in the film "The

French Connection." The chain that grew from the one restaurant became Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken.

Christopher Reeve's Dancecard, Ethnic Cleansing, Forrest Tucker's Ghost, More Hemlock Please, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop and Van Owens Body take out 14 points each (10 for the 6-way hit and 4 for Under 65) on the Chicken King.

Richard Widmark, whose movie debut as a giggling killer made him an overnight star, giving rise to an enduring Hollywood career playing a gallery of nasty hoodlums and flawed heroes, died Monday 03/29/08 at his home in Roxbury, CT. He was 93. His health had been declining since he fractured a vertebra in recent months.

Widmark first etched his name in film noir history in the 1947 gangster movie "Kiss of Death", playing Tommy Udo, a snickering, psychopathic ex-convict seeking revenge against an informer (played by Victor Mature). In one indelible scene, he binds the informer's mother (Mildred Dunnock) in her wheelchair with a cord ripped from a lamp and shoves her down a flight of stairs to her death. The performance made Widmark, who had been an established radio actor, an instant movie star, and it brought him his sole Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actor. For the next seven years, as a contract actor, he was given parts in the 20th Century Fox studio's juiciest melodramas.

His mobsters were drenched in evil. But even his heroes were nerve-strained and feral - the daredevil pilot flying into the eye of a storm in "Slattery's Hurricane" (1949); the doctor who fights bubonic plague in Elia Kazan's "Panic in the Streets" (1950); and the pickpocket who refuses to be a traitor in Samuel Fuller's "Pickup on South Street" (1953).

In reality, the screen's most vicious bad guy was a mild-mannered former college teacher who had married his college sweetheart, the playwright and screenwriter Ora Jean Hazlewood.

His trademark villains overshadowed his work in a wide range of roles in a career that spanned six decades and more than 60 movies. In "The Cobweb" (1955), he played the head of a psychiatric clinic where the staff seemed more emotionally troubled than the patients; in "Saint Joan" (1957), he was the Dauphin to Jean Seberg's Joan of Arc; in "The Alamo" (1960), he was Jim Bowie, the inventor of the Bowie knife; in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961), he was a U.S. Army colonel prosecuting German war criminals.

As his blond hair turned gray, Widmark played generals in the nuclear thriller "Twilight's Last Gleaming" (1977) and "The Swarm" (1978), in which he waged war on bees. He was the evil head of a hospital in "Coma" (1978) and a U.S. senator in "True Colors" (1991).

Richard Widmark was born on 12/26/14, in Sunrise, MN and grew up throughout the Midwest, the son of a traveling salesman. Graduating from Lake Forest College in Illinois in 1936, he spent two years as an instructor in the college drama department while acting in stage productions. Then he headed to New York, where a classmate was producing 15-minute radio soap operas and cast Widmark in a variety of roles.

In World War II, Widmark tried to enlist in the army but was rejected three times because of a perforated eardrum. So he turned to Broadway. In his first stage role, in 1943, he played an army lieutenant in F. Hugh Herbert's "Kiss and Tell", directed by George Abbott.

After 10 successful years as a radio actor, Widmark tried the movies with "Kiss of Death", which was being filmed in New York. He was originally turned down for the role by the director, Henry Hathaway, who told him that he was too clean-cut and intellectual for the part. It was Darryl Zanuck, the Fox studio head, who, after watching Widmark's screen test, insisted that he be given the part.

Widmark, who shunned the limelight, spent his Hollywood years living quietly on a large farm in Connecticut and on an 80-acre, or 32-hectare, horse ranch in Hidden Valley, north of Los Angeles. He sold the ranch in 1997 after the death of Hazlewood, his wife of nearly 55 years.

Dead Wringers, GHOSTBUSTIN' BABE, Gratefull Dead, Otis' Cirrhosis from Morrison Sisters' Still, Playin for Bonz, Prop 'Em Up Beside the Jukebox, Satan's Waitin' and Spectral Evidence find their motivation with 6 points each on the veteran actor.

American director Jules Dassin, whose Greek wife Melina Mercouri starred in his hit movie "Never on Sunday" and six more of his films, died late Monday 03/31/08 at an Athens hospital. He was 96. The cause of death was not made public. A spokeswoman for Hygeia hospital said only that he had been treated there the past two weeks.

Dassin, a leftist activist whose more than 20 films also included "Topkapi", abandoned Hollywood in 1950 during the communist blacklisting era. Five years later, he won wide acclaim for "Rififi", famous for its long heist sequence that was free of dialogue. The movie won him the best director prize at Cannes, where he met Mercouri.

He married the actress-politician in 1966 and settled permanently in Athens. Dassin directed his wife in seven films, including 1960's "Never on Sunday", in which she gained international notice for her portrayal of a kindhearted prostitute. It brought him two Oscar nominations, for direction and writing.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis called Dassin, who was born in Middletown, CT, "a first-generation Greek."

After Mercouri's death in 1994, Dassin focused on her main unrealized goal while she was Greece's culture minister: trying to persuade the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles, a large collection of sculptures taken from the Parthenon by a Scottish diplomat nearly 200 years ago. "If there is anything I want to be remembered for, it is for fulfilling Melina's dream," he said in a 1997 interview.

Dassin's Hollywood credits include "Reunion in France", a 1942 wartime romance with Joan Crawford and John Wayne; "Brute Force", a 1947 prison drama starring Burt Lancaster; and the detective thriller "The Naked City" in 1948. The latter, co-written by Hollywood 10 member Albert Maltz, won Oscars for cinematography and film editing.

His 1974 film "The Rehearsal" was based on the Greek student rebellions that helped bring down a 1967-74 military junta that had forced Dassin and Mercouri into exile in Paris. In 1980, Dassin made the Canadian-backed film "Circle of Two", starring Richard Burton as an aged artist with a romantic fixation on a teenage student, played by Tatum O'Neal. Dassin was disheartened by its weak box office performance and never made another film.

Born on 12/18/11, to a Jewish barber who emigrated from Russia, Dassin was raised in working-class neighborhoods around New York.

Drop Dead Gorgeous, Spectral Evidence and The Famous Final Scene II produce 16 points each on the Hollywood outsider.

Max Helton, who formed a Christian ministry that 20 years ago became Motor Racing Outreach, died Sunday afternoon 03/31/08 of brain cancer at his home in Huntersville, NC. He was 67.

"This is an earthly loss but a heavenly gain," said Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage, who serves on the Board of Directors of World-Span Ministries, Helton's international motorsports ministry.

"Max aided so many people in auto racing and you would often see him with some of the sport's top drivers offering a quiet prayer just before the start of a race. He very personally counseled me through the years and was a great influence on my life."

Helton was working at a church in Glendora, CA in 1988 when he met Darrell Waltrip and his wife, Stevie. Helton told the Waltrips that he felt called to lead a ministry in auto racing. Soon after, Helton formed Motor Racing Outreach and was leading Bible study with drivers and crew members in the sport, chapel service at race tracks each weekend and personal counseling session with those in the sport. He left Motor Racing Outreach in 2002.

He then formed World-Span Ministries and took a very similar approach to racing series around the world traveling internationally as he spread the message.

Helton was diagnosed with brain cancer in August. He is survived by his wife, Jean, along with four daughters and nine grandchildren.

Putnam's Tomahawk Chop and Walking Toward the Light receive a glorious 18 points each on the NASCAR chaplain.

Charlton Heston, the Oscar-winning actor who achieved stardom playing larger-than-life figures including Moses, Michelangelo and Andrew Jackson in historical epics and went on to become a best-selling author, a contentious Hollywood labor leader, an unapologetic gun advocate and darling of conservative causes, has died. He was 84. Heston died Saturday 04/05/08 at his Beverly Hills home, his family said in a statement. In 2002, he had been diagnosed with symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer's disease.

With a booming baritone voice, the tall, ruggedly handsome actor delivered his signature role as the prophet Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Biblical extravaganza "The Ten Commandments", raising a rod over his head as God miraculously parts the Red Sea.

Heston won the Academy Award for best actor in another religious blockbuster in 1959's "Ben-Hur," racing four white horses at top speed in one of the cinema's legendary action sequences - the 15-minute chariot race in which his character, a proud and noble Jew, competes against his childhood Roman friend, played by Stephen Boyd.

"I don't seem to fit really into the 20th century," Heston said in a 1965 interview. "Pretty soon, though, I've got to get a part where I wear pants with pleats and pockets."

Heston stunned the entertainment world in August 2002 when he made a poignant and moving videotaped address announcing his illness.

A few days after his dramatic announcement, Heston would sit down for an interview in his beloved Coldwater Canyon home, which he always said "Ben-Hur" had built, and faced the uncertain future with brave resolve and a sense of humor. "The world is a tough place," he said with a chuckle. "You're never going to get out of it alive."

Late in life, Heston's stature as a political firebrand overshadowed his acting. He became demonized by gun control advocates and liberal Hollywood when he became president of the National Rifle Assn. in 1998.

Heston answered his critics in a now-famous pose that mimicked Moses' parting of the Red Sea. But instead of a rod, Heston raised a flintlock over his head and challenged his detractors to pry the rifle "from my cold, dead hands."

Like the chariot race and the bearded prophet Moses, Heston will be best remembered for several indelible cinematic moments: playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with Orson Welles in the oil fields in "Touch of Evil", his rant at the end of "Planet of the Apes" when he sees the destruction of the Statue of Liberty, his discovery that "Soylent Green is people!" in the sci-fi hit "Soylent Green" and the dead Spanish hero on his steed in "El Cid".

The New Yorker's film critic Pauline Kael, in her review of 1968's "Planet of the Apes", wrote: "All this wouldn't be so forceful or so funny if it weren't for the use of Charlton Heston in the [leading] role. With his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body, Heston is a god-like hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of what makes Americans win. He represents American power - and he has the profile of an eagle."

For decades, Heston was a towering figure in the world of movies, television and the stage. He liked to say that he had performed Shakespeare on film more than any other actor, and he once lamented that modern-day movie stars didn't attempt the Bard to hone their acting skills.

"He was the screen hero of the 1950s and 1960s, a proven stayer in epics, and a pleasing combination of piercing blue eyes and tanned beefcake," David Thomson wrote in his book "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film".

Heston also was blessed by working with legendary directors like DeMille in "The Greatest Show on Earth" and again in "The Ten Commandments", Welles in "Touch of Evil", Sam Peckinpah in "Major Dundee", William Wyler in "The Big Country" and "Ben-Hur", George

Stevens in "The Greatest Story Ever Told", Franklin Schaffner in "The War Lord" and "Planet of the Apes" and Anthony Mann in "El Cid".

22 teams get their paws on 5 points each for the actor/activist.

Barbara McDermott, who died on 04/12/08 aged 95, was one of the last survivors of the Lusitania disaster in 1915, when the Cunarder was sunk by a German submarine en route from New York to Queenstown (now Cobh) in southern Ireland.

As Barbara Anderson, she was a month short of her third birthday and on her way to visit her grandmother in England when the liner was torpedoed off the Irish coast on 05/07/15. The ship sank within 18 minutes with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives. The young Barbara, who had been eating lunch with her mother, was ushered into a lifeboat and survived, together with 747 others.

In the melée the ship's purser, William Harkness, saw the frightened girl at the ship's rail near the stern. "Mother was nearby," she remembered, "but he scooped me up and we both fell together into a boat which was lowering." After their rescue, she and her mother, five months pregnant, continued their journey to England to stay with Barbara's maternal grandmother at Darlington. Later that year, in September, Barbara's mother, Emily, gave birth to a son, Frank, who lived only five months.

Emily Anderson herself died from tuberculosis a year later, aged 28. In 1919 Barbara Anderson, then seven, returned to the United States aboard the Lusitania's sister ship, the Mauretania, arriving on Boxing Day.

According to the official version of the sinking, the Lusitania had been wantonly sunk in contravention of international agreements. The disaster was among the factors which drew America into the First World War. Claims that the liner had been carrying a secret cargo of wartime munitions have been hotly debated down the years.

Barbara Winifred Anderson was born on 06/15/12 at Derby, CT, where her father worked as a draughtsman for a munitions factory. The First World War had created such demand for the factory's production that he was unable to accompany his family on their transatlantic voyage.

His pregnant wife and child boarded the Lusitania at Pier 54 in New York City on May 1. Six days later the liner was eight miles off the Irish coast when she was sunk by a German U-20 submarine.

Barbara Anderson recalled clearly being in the ship's upper level dining room eating her pudding when the torpedo hit at 2.28pm, and clutching her spoon as she watched other passengers scurrying about below. She became separated from her mother but found her in lifeboat number 15 - her mother explained that she had been rescued after falling into the Atlantic.

Barbara Anderson became an assistant at a Connecticut department store, later transferring to the personnel office as manager. Before her eyesight failed, she was a records clerk at a cemetery office.

The last living survivor of the Lusitania disaster is now thought to be Audrey Lawson-Johnston, aged 93.

Barbara Anderson married, in 1932, Milton McDermott, a laboratory assistant at Yale University. He died in 1981, and she is survived by their son and daughter.

Ethnic Cleansing floats to the top with a 20-point solo hit on the disaster survivor.

Physicist John A. Wheeler, who had a key role in the development of the atom bomb and later gave the space phenomenon black holes their name, has died at 96. Wheeler, for many years a professor at Princeton University, died of pneumonia Sunday 04/13/08 at his home in Hightstown, NJ.

Wheeler rubbed elbows with colossal figures in science such as Albert Einstein and Danish scientist Niels Bohr, with whom Wheeler worked in the 1930s and '40s. Born in 1911, Wheeler was 21 when he earned his doctorate in physics from Johns Hopkins University. In the mid-1930s, he traveled to Denmark to study for a year with Bohr, who won a Nobel Prize for his work describing the nature of the atom.

In early 1939, with war looming in Europe, Bohr arrived in the United States with the news that German scientists had split uranium atoms. Working at Princeton, Bohr and Wheeler sketched out a theory of how nuclear fission worked. During World War II, Wheeler was part of the Manhattan Project, the scientists charged with using nuclear fission to create an atomic bomb for the United States. Unlike some colleagues who regretted their roles after bombs were dropped on Japan, Wheeler regretted that the bomb had not been made ready in time to hasten the end of the war in Europe. His brother, Joe, had been killed in combat in Italy in 1944. Wheeler later helped Edward Teller develop the even more powerful hydrogen bomb.

The name "black hole" - for a collapsed star so dense that even light could not escape - came out of a conference in 1967. Wheeler made the name stick after someone else had suggested it as a replacement for the cumbersome "gravitationally completely collapsed star," he recalled. "After you get around to saying that about 10 times, you look desperately for something better," he said.

In his 1998 autobiography, "Geons, Black Holes & Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics", he wrote that the black hole "teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as 'sacred', as immutable, are anything but."

Among Wheeler's students in the early 1940s was the future Nobel Prize-winner Richard Feynman.

While he spent most of his academic career at Princeton, Wheeler moved to the University of Texas in 1976 because Princeton's retirement age was looming.

Stiff As A Board And Bright Green pull in 20 points for the Active Squad solo hit, while Don't Fear the Reaper earn 3 points for the Taxi Squad hit.

Ollie Johnston, the last of the "Nine Old Men" who animated "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Fantasia", "Bambi" and other classic Walt Disney films has died. He was 95. Johnston died of natural causes Monday 04/14/08 at a long-term care facility in Sequim, WA.

Walt Disney lightheartedly dubbed his team of crack animators his "Nine Old Men", borrowing the phrase from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of the U.S. Supreme Court's members, who had angered the president by quashing many of his Depression-era New Deal programs. Although most of Disney's men were in their 20s at the time, the name stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps the two most accomplished of the nine were Johnston and his close friend Frank Thomas, who died in 2004 at age 92. The pair, who met as art students at Stanford University in the 1930s, were hired by Disney for $17 a week at a time when he was expanding the studio to produce full-length feature films. Both worked on the first of those features, 1937's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".

Johnston's other credits included "Cinderella", "Alice in Wonderland", "Peter Pan", "Lady and the Tramp", "Sleeping Beauty", "101 Dalmatians", "Mary Poppins", "The Jungle Book", "The Aristocats", "Robin Hood" and "The Rescuers".

After Johnston and Thomas retired in 1978, they lectured at schools and film festivals in the United States and Europe and co-authored the books

"Bambi; the Story and the Film", "Too Funny for Words", "The Disney Villains" and the epic "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life". They

were also the subjects of the 1995 documentary "Frank and Ollie", produced by Thomas' son Ted. The pair's guide to animation is considered "the bible" among animators, said John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar animation studios and Johnston's longtime friend.

Adipocere and Chitragupta's Roll Call draw up 18 points each on the Disney animator.

Edward N. Lorenz, a meteorologist who tried to predict the weather with computers but instead gave rise to the modern field of chaos theory, died Wednesday 04/16/08 at his home in Cambridge, MA. He was 90. The cause was cancer.

In discovering “deterministic chaos”, Dr. Lorenz established a principle that “profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton,” said a committee that awarded him the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences. Dr. Lorenz is best known for the notion of the “butterfly effect”, the idea that a small disturbance like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can induce enormous consequences.

As recounted in the book “Chaos” by James Gleick, Dr. Lorenz’s accidental discovery of chaos came in the winter of 1961. Dr. Lorenz was running simulations of weather using a simple computer model. One day, he wanted to repeat one of the simulations for a longer time, but instead of repeating the whole simulation, he started the second run in the middle, typing in numbers from the first run for the initial conditions. The computer program was the same, so the weather patterns of the second run should have exactly followed those of the first. Instead, the two weather trajectories quickly diverged on completely separate paths.

At first, he thought the computer was malfunctioning. Then he realized that he had not entered the initial conditions exactly. The computer stored numbers to an accuracy of six decimal places, like 0.506127, while, to save space, the printout of results shortened the numbers to three decimal places, 0.506. When typing in the new conditions, Dr. Lorenz had entered the rounded-off numbers, and even this small discrepancy, of less than 0.1 percent, completely changed the end result.

Even though his model was vastly simplified, Dr. Lorenz realized that this meant perfect weather prediction was a fantasy. A perfect forecast would require not only a perfect model, but also perfect knowledge of wind, temperature, humidity and other conditions everywhere around the world at one moment of time. Even a small discrepancy could lead to completely different weather.

Dr. Lorenz published his findings in 1963. “The paper he wrote in 1963 is a masterpiece of clarity of exposition about why weather is unpredictable,” said J. Doyne Farmer, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.

The following year, Dr. Lorenz published another paper that described how a small twiddling of parameters in a model could produce vastly different behavior, transforming regular, periodic events into a seemingly random chaotic pattern. At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972, he gave a talk with a title that captured the essence of his ideas: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”

Dr. Lorenz was not the first to stumble onto chaos. At the end of the 19th century, the mathematician Henri Poincaré showed that the gravitational dance of as few as three heavenly bodies was hopelessly complex to calculate, even though the underlying equations of motion seemed simple. But Poincaré’s findings were forgotten through the first three-quarters of the 20th century.

Dr. Lorenz’s papers also attracted little notice until the mid-1970s.

“When it finally penetrated the community, that was what started people to really start to pay attention to this and led to tremendous development,” said Edward Ott, a professor of physics and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland. “He demonstrated a chaotic model in a real ituation.”

Born in 1917 in West Hartford, CT, Edward Norton Lorenz received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1938 and a master’s degree in math from Harvard in 1940. He worked as a weather forecaster during World War II, leading him to pursue graduate studies in meteorology; he earned master’s and doctoral degrees in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1943 and 1948.

Dr. Lorenz was a staff member of M.I.T.’s meteorology department from 1948 to 1955, when he became an assistant professor. He was promoted to professor in 1962 and served as head of the department from 1977 to 1981. He became an emeritus professor in 1987.

Dr. Lorenz remained active almost to the end of his life, in both research and outdoor activities. “He was out hiking two and a half weeks ago,” Cheryl Lorenz said, “and he finished a paper a week ago with a colleague.”

Fecal Matter weather a storm of 20 points for the solo strike on the chaos theorist.

Danny Federici, the longtime keyboard player for Bruce Springsteen whose stylish work helped define the E Street Band's sound on hits from "Hungry Heart" through "The Rising", died Thursday 04/17/08. He was 58. Federici, who had battled melanoma for three years, died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. News of his death was posted late Thursday on Springsteen's official Web site. According to published reports, Federici last performed with Springsteen and the band last month, appearing during portions of a March 20 show in Indianapolis. Springsteen concerts scheduled for Friday in Fort Lauderdale and Saturday in Orlando were postponed after news of Federici's death.

He was born in Flemington, NJ, a long car ride from the Jersey shore haunts where he first met kindred musical spirit Springsteen in the late 1960s. The pair often jammed at the Upstage Club in Asbury Park, N.J., a now-defunct after-hours club that hosted the best musicians in the state. It was Federici, along with original E Street Band drummer Vini Lopez, who first invited Springsteen to join their band.

By 1969, the self-effacing Federici - often introduced in concert by Springsteen as "Phantom Dan" - was playing with the Boss in a band called Child. Over the years, Federici joined his friend in acclaimed shore bands Steel Mill, Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom and the Bruce Springsteen Band. Federici became a stalwart in the E Street Band as Springsteen rocketed from the boardwalk to international stardom. Springsteen split from the E Streeters in the late '80s, but they reunited for a hugely successful tour in 1999.

Federici played accordion on the wistful "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" from Springsteen's second album, and his organ solo was a highlight of Springsteen's first top 10 hit, "Hungry Heart". His organ coda on the 9/11-inspired Springsteen song "You're Missing" provided one of the more heart-wrenching moments on "The Rising" in 2002.

In a band with larger-than-life characters such as saxophonist Clarence Clemons and bandana-wrapped guitarist "Little" Steven Van Zandt, Federici was content to play in his familiar position to the side of the stage. But his playing was as vital to Springsteen's live show as any instrument in the band.

Federici released a pair of solo albums that veered from the E Street sound and into soft jazz. Bandmates Nils Lofgren on guitar and Garry Tallent on bass joined Federici on his 1997 debut, "Flemington." In 2005, Federici released its follow-up, "Out of a Dream."

Federici had taken a leave of absence during the band's tour in November 2007 to pursue treatment for melanoma, and was temporarily replaced by veteran musician Charles Giordano.

At the time, Springsteen described Federici as "one of the pillars of our sound and has played beside me as a great friend for more than 40 years. We all eagerly await his healthy and speedy return."

Besides his work with Springsteen, Federici played on albums by an impressive roster of other artists: Van Zandt, Joan Armatrading, Graham Parker, Gary U.S. Bonds and Garland Jeffreys.

Ethnic Cleansing and Inverse Genesis bang out 22 points each (18 for the 2-way, 4 for Under 65) on the NJ rocker. Life'll Kill Ya stay in rhythm with 7 points (3 for TSH, 4 for Under 65).

Aimé Césaire, an anticolonialist poet and politician who was honored throughout the French-speaking world and who was an early proponent of black pride, died in Fort-de-France, Martinique on Thursday 04/17/08. He was 94. He died at a hospital where he was being treated for heart problems and other ailments.

Mr. Césaire was one of the Caribbean’s most celebrated cultural figures. He was especially revered in his native Martinique, which sent him to the French parliament for nearly half a century and where he was repeatedly elected mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital city.

In Paris in the 1930s he helped found the journal Black Student, which gave birth to the idea of “negritude”, a call to blacks to cultivate pride in their heritage. His 1950 book “Discourse on Colonialism” was considered a classic of French political literature.

Mr. Césaire’s ideas were honored and his death mourned in Africa and France as well as the Caribbean. The office of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said Mr. Sarkozy would attend Mr. Césaire’s funeral, scheduled for Sunday in Fort-de-France. Students at Lycée Scoelcher, a Martinique high school where Mr. Césaire once taught, honored him in a spontaneous ceremony Thursday.

Mr. Césaire’s best-known works included the essay “Negro I Am, Negro I Will Remain” and the poem “Notes From a Return to the Native Land”.

Born on 06/26/13, in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, Mr. Césaire attended high school and college in France. In 1937 he married another student from Martinique, Suzanne Roussi, with whom he eventually had four sons and two daughters. He returned to Martinique during World War II and was mayor of Fort-de-France from 1945 to 2001, except for a break from 1983 to 1984. Mr. Césaire helped Martinique shed its colonial status in 1946 to become an overseas department of France.

He was affiliated with the French Communist Party early in his career but became disillusioned in the 1950s and founded the Martinique Progressive Party in 1958. He later allied with the Socialist Party in France’s National Assembly, where he served from 1946 to 1956 and from 1958 to 1993.

As the years passed, he remained firm in his views. In 2005 he refused to meet with Mr. Sarkozy, who was then minister of the interior, because of Mr. Sarkozy’s endorsement of a bill citing the “positive role” of colonialism. “I remain faithful to my beliefs and remain inflexibly anticolonialist,” Mr. Césaire said at the time. The offending language was struck from the bill.

Despite the snub, Mr. Sarkozy last year successfully led a campaign to rename Martinique’s airport in honor of Mr. Césaire. Mr. Césaire eventually met with Mr. Sarkozy in March 2006 but endorsed his Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, in the 2007 French elections.

Stiff As A Board And Bright Green get another 20 points for the solo hit on the poet/politician.

A death row inmate who was challenging Alabama's method of lethal injection died Tuesday 04/22/08, apparently of complications from cancer. Prison system spokesman Brian Corbett said Daniel Lee Siebert, 53, was pronounced dead at 1:35 p.m. at Holman prison near Atmore, AL where he had been awaiting execution for more than 21 years for strangling four people. Corbett said the exact cause of Siebert's death would be determined later but it appeared to be related to his pancreatic cancer.

Siebert, a self-described serial killer, was also known for grim drawings he made that were offered for sale on "murderabilia" Web sites specializing in artwork, letters and essays by convicted killers. "He certainly hoped to die from the cancer before he was executed," said Esther Brown, executive secretary of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty. Siebert's death comes less than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court approved the most widely used method of lethal injection, prompting states to move forward with executions after a nearly seven-month halt. He was one of several death row inmates challenging Alabama's method, but his suit was unique in that he claimed his cancer medication would counteract with the lethal injection drugs and inflict unnecessary pain.

Siebert was condemned for the 02/19/86 strangulation of his 24-year-old girlfriend, Sherri Weathers, and her two sons, 5-year-old Chad and 4-year-old Joey. He was also convicted separately and sentenced to death for killing a neighbor at her Talladega apartment complex, Linda Jarman, the same night. Siebert was sentenced to life in prison for killing Linda Faye Odum, also of Talladega. He confessed to a number of other killings from California to New Jersey, but the exact number of his victims is not known.

Siebert came within a day of lethal injection in October before a federal appeals court stayed his execution pending the Supreme Court ruling on a Kentucky case. Alabama Attorney General Troy King said Siebert's death should "put an end to the years of legal shenanigans that have gone on." "It's a shame that he got what he wanted, but the people who he brutally executed had no say in the matter at all and that's the injustice of this," King said.

AA88, Die2K and Flatliners all get a reprieve for their hit on the Death Row inmate, as Siebert dies of natural causes and not the needle. 24 points (16 for the 3-way, 8 for Under 55) go out to the teams who took the gamble on a condemned man.

John McConnell, a steel-processing entrepreneur who grew the company he started on a $600 loan into a billion-dollar enterprise, died Friday 04/25/08 of cancer at age 84. McConnell passed away at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, the same city in which he founded his business.

After growing up during the Great Depression and serving in World War II, McConnell enrolled in Michigan State University with G.I. Bill funding. Following in the footsteps of his father, McConnell entered the steel industry as a salesman for Weirton Steel Corp. After several years with Weirton, McConnell sensed the potential in custom-sized steel orders and set off to start his own company to fill that niche.

Headquartered in his basement, McConnell brokered his first order of steel with $1,200 in his checking account and a $600 loan against his 1952 Oldsmobile. The $600 profit on the deal catalyzed the birth of Worthington Industries Inc., (WOR) which was incorporated in 1955. It's now an 8,000 employee-strong company with $3 billion in sales last year.

McConnell received numerous accolades throughout his life, including Industry Week's Excellence in Management award and Financial World Magazine's Outstanding CEO of the Year award. Worthington made Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list in 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2006.

In his 2004 book Our Golden Rule, McConnell attributed his success to his customer service.

"John left his mark not only on the business world but on this community by way he treated people," says Cathy Lyttle, Worthington's vice president of corporate communications. "It didn't matter who you were; he would reach across the table and shake your hand. His philosophy was simple: Be honorable, do the right thing and trust people."

One of McConnell's landmark accomplishments was bringing a National Hockey League franchise to Columbus. As the majority owner of the Blue Jackets, an expansion team founded in 2000, McConnell played a significant role in growing the franchise.

Sudden Death/Game Over get their first score with the NHL franchisee. But it was only worth 5 points, because he was sitting on the bench.

Enrico Donati, an Italian-born American painter and sculptor considered by many in the art world to be the last of the Surrealists, died on Friday 04/25/08 at his home in Manhattan. He was 99. The cause was complications of injuries sustained in a taxi accident in July, said David Oxman, a spokesman for the family.

Mr. Donati survived Surrealism and moved through other art movements, including Constructivism and Abstract Expressionism, and became a successful owner of a perfume company.

After receiving a doctorate in what would now be called sociology at the University of Pavia in 1929, he first turned to music. Unhappy with the state of musical education in Milan under the Fascists, he moved to Paris and for a time composed avant-garde music in a Montmartre garret. He developed an interest in anthropology and in 1934 traveled to the American Southwest and Canada to study and collect American Indian artifacts.

After dabbling in commercial art and printing in New York, he resolved to commit himself to painting and returned to Paris, where he was drawn to the flourishing Surrealist movement. When war broke out in 1939, Mr. Donati returned to New York for good, along with his first wife, Claire Javel, and their two daughters, Marina Donati and Sylvaine Mahis of Paris, who survive him. He was divorced from Ms. Javel in 1965 and married Adele Schmidt, who also survives him, as well as a daughter from his second marriage, Alexandra Donati of New York; five grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Mr. Donati attended the New School for Social Research and in 1942 had his first one-man show at the New School’s gallery. His work impressed the art historian Lionello Venturi, who introduced him to the writer André Breton, often considered the father of Surrealism. Breton brought him into the circle of prominent European artists, many of them Surrealists, who had gathered in New York at the outset of the war.

“You are one of us,” he recalled Breton saying to him. The group included Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Arshile Gorky, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger and the American sculptor Alexander Calder. Duchamp became a particular friend. They collaborated on various projects, including the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme at the Maeght Gallery in Paris in 1947. They devised the exposition’s program, decorating the cover of each copy with a foam rubber breast.

There was his Constructivist phase and, for a time, a focus on Abstract Expressionism. In later years, Mr. Donati became fascinated with surface and texture, mixing his paint with sand, dust, coffee grounds and, at times, the contents of his vacuum cleaner, which he mixed with pigment and glue and slathered on his canvas. “It opened up a new world for me,” he recalled in a 1968 oral history interview for the Smithsonian Institution. “I kept on using the vacuum cleaner dirt for years.”

Mr. Donati’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Art in Houston and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.

Mr. Donati was for many years as engaged in the business world as he was in the world of art. In the early 1960s, he joined the board of Houbigant Inc., one of the oldest purveyors of French perfumes and eau de cologne. In 1965 he bought the company, which was privately held. In 1978 Fortune Magazine reported that as chairman and chief executive, he had “revived the sagging fortunes” of the company, then worth $50 million. His first wife was a member of the Houbigant family, Fortune said.

Easel Kill Ya! and Old As the Hills construct a whopping 28 points (18 for the 2-way, 10 for Un-Natural Death) on the last of the Surrealists.

Albert Hofmann, the father of the mind-altering drug LSD whose medical discovery inspired - and arguably corrupted - millions in the 1960s hippie generation, died Tuesday 04/29/08. He was 102. Hofmann died at his home in Burg im Leimental, where Hofmann moved following his retirement in 1971.

The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm in Basel.

He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a repeat of the laboratory experiment on 04/16/43.

Hofmann and his scientific colleagues hoped that LSD would make an important contribution to psychiatric research. For a time, Sandoz sold it under the name Delysid, encouraging doctors to try it themselves.

Horror stories emerged about people going on murder sprees or jumping out of windows while hallucinating. Heavy users suffered permanent psychological damage. The U.S. government banned LSD in 1966, and other countries followed suit.

17 teams trip out on their 5-point hit, while Century Mark and The Morgue the Merrier come down with 3 points each for the TSH.

Sir Anthony Mamo, the first President of Malta, died aged 99 on Thursday morning 05/01/08 at Casa Arkati in Mosta. A Department of Information statement said that the Prime Minister phoned Sir Anthony Mamo's family and conveyed his condolences. Sir Anthony Mamo is to be given a state funeral of which details will be announced shortly. The Malta Labour Party (MLP) also sent a statement sending condolences to Sir Mamo’s family.

Sir Anthony Joseph Mamo was born on 01/09/09 son of Joseph Mamo and Carla Brincat and was the first President of Malta when the country became a republic on December 13th, 1974, and held the office until 1976. He was previously Governor-General, representing Elizabeth II as Queen of Malta, when the country was a Commonwealth realm. He was also the first Maltese citizen to be appointed Governor-General, and before independence, briefly served as acting Governor.

He was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1955 and knighted two years later. He was made Sieheb il-Gieh within the National Order of Merit in 1993.

Sir Anthony Mamo was a professor of criminal law at the University.

Mamo has been the world's oldest living former head of state since Somalian President Aden Abdullah Osman Daar died on 06/08/07.

Death & Taxes, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch and The Absent And The Dead Have No Friends..Nor Do We all ascend the leaderboard with 16 points a piece on the Maltese President.

Eddy Arnold, the influential singer who had more than two dozen No. 1 country hits, including two of the six biggest in the history of Billboard's singles chart, and is one of the genre's most successful acts ever, died Thursday 05/08/08 at a care facility near Nashville. He was 89. His wife of 66 years, Sally, died in March, and in the same month, Arnold fell outside his home, injuring his hip. He would have turned 90 next week.

Joel Whitburn's "Top Country Songs, 1944-2005" ranks Arnold as country's all-time No. 1 singles artist; the book is dedicated to him. Arnold's mellow baritone made him the king of the chart beginning in 1945 with his first hit, "Each Minute Seems a Million Years." Counting double-sided singles, he hit the top 10 more than 90 times during the next 35 years, including 28 No. 1s. From 1947-68, Arnold's singles spent a total of 145 weeks at No. 1.

One of those, 1947's "I'll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)", spent a record 21 weeks atop the chart, a mark that was tied twice in the 1950s. Less than a year later, Arnold's "Bouquet of Roses" had a 19-week run at No. 1 - tied for sixth-longest in country history - and spent 54 weeks on the Billboard chart, a record that still stands. His other chart toppers include "Anytime", "Just a Little Lovin' (Will Go a Long, Long Way)", "Don't Rob Another Man's Castle", "There's Been a Change in Me", "I Wanna Play House With You" and "I Want to Go With You".

Most of his hits were done in association with famed guitarist Chet Atkins, the producer on most of the recording sessions. His biggest pop single was "Make the World Go Away," which hit No. 6 in 1965.

He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966. The following year he was the first person to receive the entertainer of the year award from the Country Music Assn.

Arnold was born 05/15/18, on a farm near Henderson, TN, the son of a sharecropper. He sang on radio stations in Jackson, TN, Memphis and St. Louis before becoming nationally known. Early in his career, his manager was Col. Tom Parker, who later managed Elvis Presley. His image was always that of a modest, clean-cut country boy.

Death March and Swan Song rise through the charts with 18 points each on the country superstar.

Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died in the Polish capital on Monday 05/12/08 after a long illness, local media said. Israel's Holocaust remembrance authority, Yad Vashem, said in a statement that it mourned her death. The web portal of Poland's leading daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, said Sendlerowa, 98, died in Plocka Street hospital early on Monday. The hospital declined to comment on the report.

Using her position as a social worker, Sendler regularly entered the ghetto, smuggling around 2,500 children out in boxes, suitcases or hidden in trolleys. The children were then placed with Polish families outside the ghetto, created by Nazi Germany in 1940 for the city's half a million strong Jewish population, and given new identities.

But in 1943 Sendler, who led the children' section of the Zegota organization which helped Jews during the war, was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo. She only escaped execution when Zegota managed to bribe some Nazi officials, who left her unconscious but alive with broken legs and arms in the woods.

"People who stand up for others, for the weak, are very rare. The world would have been a better place if there were more of them," Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, said on national television. His sentiments were echoed by former Polish President Lech Walesa as well as religious leaders.

Sendler was honored with Israeli Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal in 1965 for her actions, and later made an honorary Israeli citizen. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year but, despite her bravery, she denied she was a hero. "The term 'hero' irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little," Sendler said in one of her last interviews.

Old Soldiers Never Die and Stiff As A Board And Bright Green escape with 18 points each on the war heroine.

Artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose use of odd and everyday articles earned him regard as a pioneer in pop art but whose talents spanned the worlds of painting, sculpture and dance, has died. He was 82. Rauschenberg died Monday 05/12/08.

Rauschenberg, who first gained fame in the 1950s, didn't mine popular culture wholesale as Andy Warhol (Campbell's Soup cans) and Roy Lichtenstein (comic books) did. But his "combines", incongruous combinations of three-dimensional objects and paint, shared pop's blurring of art and objects from modern life. He also responded to his pop colleagues and began incorporating up-to-the-minute photographed images in his works in the 1960s, including, memorably, pictures of John F. Kennedy.

Among his most famous combines was "Bed", created when he woke up in the mood to paint but had no money for a canvas. His solution was to take the quilt off his bed and use paint, toothpaste and fingernail polish for his creation. But not to be limited by paint, Rauschenberg was a sculptor and choreographer and even won a 1984 Grammy Award for best album package for the Talking Heads album Speaking in Tongues.

Rauschenberg's more than 50 years in art produced such a varied and prolific collection that it consumed both uptown and downtown locations during a 1998 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes, in his book "American Visions", called Rauschenberg "a protean genius who showed America that all of life could be open to art.

Rauschenberg split his time between New York and Captiva Island in Florida, where he kept a house stoked with his own art and those of his friends.

Born Milton Rauschenberg in 1925 in Port Arthur, TX and raised a Christian fundamentalist, Rauschenberg wanted to be a minister but gave it up because his church banned dancing.

He was drafted into the U.S. Navy during World War II and knew little about art until a chance visit to an art museum where he saw his first painting at age 18. He drew portraits of his fellow sailors for them to send home. When his time in the service was up, Rauschenberg used the GI. Bill to pay his tuition at art school. He changed his name to Robert because it sounded more artistic. He studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1947. He later took his studies to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he studied under master Josef Albers, and alongside contemporary artists such as choreographer Merce Cunningham and musician John Cage. He also studied at the Art Students League in New York City.

Rauschenberg first paintings in the early 1950s comprised a series of all-white and all-black surfaces under laid with wrinkled newspaper. In later works he began making art from what others would consider junk - old soda bottles, traffic barricades, and stuffed birds and calling them "combine" paintings.

One of Rauschenberg's first and most famous combines was entitled "Monogram," a 1959 work consisting of a stuffed angora goat, a tire, a police barrier, the heel of a shoe, a tennis ball, and paint. By the mid-1950s, he was also designing sets and costumes for dance companies and window displays for Tiffany and Bonwit Teller.

He met Jasper Johns in 1954. He and the younger artist, both destined to become world famous, became lovers and influenced each other's work. According to the book "Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists", Rauschenberg told biographer Calvin Tomkins that "Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, `I've got a terrific idea for you,' and then I'd have to find one for him."

In recent years he founded the organization Change Inc., which helps struggling artists pay medical bills.

Easel Kill Ya! gathers another 20 points for a solo hit on the abstract artist.

Kuwait's former emir Sheik Saad Al Abdullah Al Sabah, who ruled this small oil-rich ally of Washington for nine days before being removed for ill health, has died, state television reported. The station said he died Tuesday 05/13/08 in Kuwait City. He was 78.

As crown prince, Sheik Saad automatically became ruler when his distant cousin and then emir, Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah, died 01/15/06. But it became increasingly clear that his poor health would not allow him to carry out his new responsibilities.

Sheik Saad's health started deteriorating after he suffered colon bleeding in 1997. When he appeared on television after the death of Sheik Jaber, he was in a wheelchair and could barely shake hands with visitors.

In a historic vote on 01/23/06, parliament removed Sheik Saad from power because of his health and confirmed the current emir, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, as ruler.

Monty Python's Dying Circus and Cape Cadaver get oiled up and enjoy 18 points each on the former emir.

Alexander (Sandy) Courage, composer of the original Star Trek theme and an Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated arranger for TV and movies, died Thursday 05/15/08 at the Sunrise assisted-living facility in Pacific Palisades, CA. He was 88 and had been in declining health since 2005.

Courage's fanfare for the Starship Enterprise, written in 1965 for the first of two Star Trek pilots, was heard throughout the three original seasons of the show and has been reprised in all of the Trek feature films and several of the TV series, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation in the 1980s and '90s. Courage's eight-note brass signature for the Enterprise may be the single best-known fanfare in the world. When told that more people know it than know Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, Courage – in his typically self-deprecating fashion – said that must surely be an exaggeration.

He won a 1988 Emmy as principal arranger for the ABC special Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas, and received Oscar nominations (both shared with Lionel Newman) for his adaptation scores for The Pleasure Seekers in 1963 and Doctor Dolittle in 1967.

He was born 12/10/19, in Philadelphia, but moved to New Jersey as a boy and took up both the piano and horn. He received his degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY in 1941, then enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a bandleader at various bases in California and Arizona.

After the war, he began working for CBS Radio, composing and sometimes conducting for such shows as Hedda Hopper's "This Is Hollywood", "Screen Guild Theater", "The Adventures of Sam Spade", "Detective and Yours Truly", "Johnny Dollar". From 1948 to 1960, he worked as an orchestrator and arranger at MGM, including work on the classic musicals "Show Boat", "The Band Wagon", "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", "Guys and Dolls", "It's Always Fair Weather", "Funny Face", "Gigi" and others.

He also scored a handful of films in the late 1950s, including Arthur Penn's "The Left-Handed Gun" and such drive-in fare as "Shake, Rattle and Rock" and "Hot Rod Rumble". But television became Courage's primary outlet for composition, including various episodes of "M Squad", "Wagon Train" and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" at Universal, "National Velvet" at MGM and "The Untouchables" at Desilu.

Much of Courage's 1960s output was at 20th Century-Fox, where Newman assigned Courage to write music for "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", "Daniel Boone", "Lost in Space", "Land of the Giants" and other series. He wrote a dramatic theme and over a dozen scores for the Carl Betz legal drama "Judd for the Defense" in 1967-68. It was his only other TV theme besides Star Trek.

In addition to his adaptation work on "The Pleasure Seekers" and "Doctor Dolittle", he contributed orchestrations to such '60s musicals as "Hello, Dolly!" at Fox and "My Fair Lady" at Warner Bros. He also orchestrated dramatic and comedic scores for composing colleagues including Adolph Deutsch ("Some Like It Hot"), Andre Previn ("Irma La Douce") and Alex North ("The Agony and the Ecstasy").

"Star Trek", which went on the air in 1966, became his most famous work. In addition to the fanfare, series theme and scores for two pilot episodes, Courage composed the music for just four other hours of the sci-fi classic (two in the first season, two more in the third). He did far more work on "The Waltons", scoring over 100 episodes in the 1970s and early 1980s, plus four Waltons TV-movies in the '80s and '90s.

He also composed music for "Apple's Way", "Eight Is Enough" and other series in the '70s and '80s, receiving an Emmy nomination as composer on a "Medical Center" in 1973 and another as arranger for ABC's "Liberty Weekend" ceremonies in 1986. He also served as music coordinator, and appeared onscreen as a conductor, in Luciano Pavarotti's 1981 film "Yes, Giorgio".

As composing work in TV waned, Courage returned to orchestration for old friends including John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. For Williams, Courage orchestrated several scores including "Fiddler on the Roof", "The Poseidon Adventure", "Hook" and "Jurassic Park". He also adapted Williams' themes for "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace", and wrote many orchestral arrangements for the Boston Pops during Williams' 1980-93 tenure as conductor.

For Goldsmith, Courage orchestrated numerous films including "Basic Instinct", "First Knight", "The Mummy", "Air Force One", "Mulan" and, ironically, "Star Trek: First Contact" and "Star Trek: Insurrection".

Courage also wrote large-scale orchestral arrangements for several recording projects, including Barbra Streisand's 1985 "Broadway Album," opera star Kathleen Battle's 1991 Christmas album, and violinist Joshua Bell's 1998 "Gershwin Fantasy" album.

He was among the founders of the Composers and Lyricists Guild of America, the union that represented composers and songwriters in Hollywood during the 1950s, '60s and '70s. He was also an award-winning photographer whose photos appeared in such popular magazines as Life and Colliers.

More Hemlock Please compose a fanfare with a 20-point solo hit on the Hollywood composer.

Physicist and Nobel laureate Willis E Lamb Jr, who made a career of studying the science of matter and energy and their interactions, died Thursday 05/15/08 of complications arising from a gallstone disorder. He was 94.

The University of Arizona professor emeritus joined the physics department in 1974. He received a 1955 Nobel Prize in physics for his experimental work on the fine structure of the hydrogen atom and for the discovery of a small energy difference, the quantum effect that became known as the Lamb Shift, which revolutionized the quantum theory of matter. His discovery led physicists to rethink the basic concepts behind the application of quantum theory to electromagnetism. His work became one of the foundations of quantum electrodynamics, a key aspect of modern elementary particle physics.

Lamb was born in Los Angeles and, in 1934, earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. Lamb's thesis research during graduate studies was directed by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who went on to head the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb. Lamb was awarded his doctoral degree in 1938 for his dissertation on the electromagnetic properties of nuclear systems.

Lamb was on the faculty of multiple prestigious universities - Columbia, Stanford, Oxford and Yale - before he joined the UA. In 2000, Lamb was awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor. The Medal of Science recognized Lamb's Nobel Prize-winning work as well as his later contributions: his theories of laser radiation and quantum optics and his interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics.

In addition to his widow, Lamb is survived by a brother, Perry, who lives in Maine. Lamb was preceded in death in 1996 by his first wife, distinguished UA historian Ursula Schaefer Lamb.

Laureate's Lament makes a quantum leap with their first hit of the year worth 20 points on the Nobel physicist.

Robert Mondavi, the pioneering vintner who helped put California wine country on the map, died at his Napa Valley home Friday 05/16/08. He was 94. Mondavi died peacefully at his home in Yountville, CA.

He was 52 and a winemaking veteran in 1966, when he opened the winery that would help turn the Napa Valley into a world center of the industry. Clashes with a brother that included a fistfight led him to break from the family business to carry out his ambitious plans with borrowed money.

At the time, California was still primarily known for cheap jug wines. But he set out to change that, championing use of cold fermentation, stainless steel tanks and French oak barrels, all commonplace in the industry today. He introduced blind tastings in Napa Valley, putting his wines up against French vintages, a bold move. Always convinced that California wines could compete with the European greats, Mondavi engaged in the first French-American wine venture when he formed a limited partnership with the legendary French vintner Baron Philippe de Rothschild to grow and make the ultra-premium Opus One at Oakville. The venture's first vintage was in 1979.

The success of the Mondavi winery allowed him to donate tens of millions of dollars to charity, but a wine glut and intense competition gradually cost his family control of the business. In 2004, the company accepted a buyout worth $1.3 billion from Fairport, N.Y.-based Constellation Brands.

Mondavi was an enthusiastic ambassador for wine - especially California wine - and traveled the world into his 90s promoting the health, cultural and social benefits of its moderate consumption.

Born in Virginia, MN, Mondavi got an economics degree from Stanford University in the 1930s and went to work at the Charles Krug Winery, which his Italian-born parents had bought after moving to California from Minnesota.

He married his high school sweetheart, Marjorie Declusin, in 1937, and they had three children, Michael, Marcia and Tim.

For 20 years, the winery was a family business. But Robert clashed frequently with his younger brother, Peter, who had a more conservative approach the business. According to Robert Mondavi's autobiography "Harvests of Joy," matters came to a head with a November 1965 fistfight. "When it was all over, there were no apologies and no handshake," wrote Robert Mondavi.

In the late 1970s, Mondavi's first marriage ended; in his autobiography he wrote that his single-minded pursuit of the wine business was partly to blame. In 1980, he married a second time, to Margrit Biever, a native of Switzerland who had worked at the Mondavi winery since the late '60s.

By the mid-1990s, Mondavi had turned over operation of the company to his sons. But like their father and uncle before them, Tim and Michael clashed over management styles. More troubles emerged as a grape glut soured the wine market in 2002 and lower-priced wines in the Mondavi portfolio faced tough competition from cheaper Australian imports and domestic brands like California's Two Buck Chuck. Also a problem were the millions in charitable donations Mondavi and Margrit had pledged, including helping found Copia, The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, in Napa and giving $35 million to the University of California, Davis.

In her 2007 book, "The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty," author Julia Flynn Siler wrote that declining stock prices later left Mondavi in danger of not being able to cover the millions in gifts he and Margrit had promised.

A corporate restructuring in August 2004 boosted the stock price, but undercut the family's control of the company. By time it was bought out, Michael Mondavi, who disagreed with the board strategy, had already left the company, and Tim Mondavi had loosened ties.

Later there was a bittersweet family moment when Robert and Peter Mondavi, aided by members of the younger generation, made wine together for the first time in 40 years. Using a 50-50 split of grapes from Robert Mondavi and Peter Mondavi family vineyards, the brothers made one barrel of a cabernet blend that sold for $401,000 at the 2005 Napa Valley wine auction.

The auction lot was called "Ancora Una Volta," or "Once Again."

Crypt Kickers and Rigger Morty's Pasta Way Café give a toast to their 18 points on the Napa Valley vintner.

George Huntington Hartford II, who died on monday 05/19/08 aged 97, was born into one of the wealthiest families in America and inherited a $90 million fortune at the age of 12, but blew it on a series of quixotic artistic and commercial ventures and expensive wives.

Born in New York on 04/18/11, he was named George Huntington Hartford after his grandfather, a Maine tea merchant who had founded the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) in 1859. His father, Edward, had little to do with the family business; it was Huntington's uncles, John and George, who built A&P into the world's leading retail grocery business.

Huntington, who became the beneficiary of a $1.5 million annual income on his grandfather's death in 1917, was brought up by English governesses in a fabulous apartment on Fifth Avenue, on a plantation in South Carolina and an estate in Connecticut. His father died in 1922, leaving his shareholdings to his two children, Josephine, who went on to marry into the grandest circles, and Huntington, then under the care of his mother, Henrietta.

Huntington was educated at St Paul's School, a patrician establishment in New Hampshire, where he was ostracised as "new money", and at Harvard. There he studied English Literature, played tennis and squash, and married Mary Lee Epling, a dentist's daughter who divorced him in 1939 after he had fathered a son with a chorus girl. (She would later marry Douglas Fairbanks Jr.)

After graduation Hartford entered the family business, but found it difficult to concentrate on stock lists of pound cake and was fired six months later after playing truant to watch the Harvard-Yale football match.

In 1940 he put up $100,000 towards the founding of a new New York newspaper, PM, for which, fancying himself a writer, he became a reporter. But he soon gained a reputation for missing deadlines – once when he took his yacht to cover a story but returned to find his berth taken by someone else.

On America's entry into the war, Hartford donated his yacht to the US Coast Guard and, in return, was given the command of a small supply ship in the Pacific. He ran it aground twice.

After the war Hartford moved to Los Angeles, where he opened a model agency and, surrounded by celebrities and showgirls, became a fixture at nightclubs. In 1949 he married a cigarette seller and aspiring starlet called Marjorie Steele, whom he cast in Face to Face (1952), a film which received moderate reviews. Encouraged by his new wife to make a name as a patron of the arts, Hartford set up an artists' foundation and, in 1954, converted an old cinema into a theatre where he staged his own adaptation of Jane Eyre with Jan Brooks as Jane and a hopelessly drunk Errol Flynn as Mr Rochester.

The script was panned by critics and Flynn dropped out but, undaunted, Hartford took the show to New York, where it played to empty houses for six weeks. Other ventures at this time included a "handwriting institute" (he even wrote a book on graphology) and an automated parking business in Manhattan which lost $1.8 million.

In 1959 Hartford sold $40 million of his shares in A&P to buy Hog Island, a two-mile strip of farmland 600 yards off Nassau, hoping to develop it into the St Tropez of the Bahamas. He renamed it Paradise Island and built the Ocean Club, a luxury resort with 35 acres of gardens modelled on those at Versailles and featuring a 12th-century French Augustinian monastery originally purchased and dismantled by William Randolph Hearst. At the other end of the island he built himself a palatial home where he played host to a cast of celebrities including Winston Churchill, Aristotle Onassis and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

In 1960 Marjorie had sued him for divorce, winning a settlement which included $1 million trust funds for each of their two children. Two years later he married Diane Brown, a red-haired model who had appeared in Thunderball. She bore him a daughter, Juliet, but they both had affairs (she with the singer Bobby Darin), and they divorced in 1970.

Meanwhile the Ocean Club suffered because of Hartford's failure to obtain a gambling license. Resorts International eventually bought him out for $1 million, leaving him with losses of around $30 million. In the early 1960s he built the Huntington Hartford Museum in Manhattan as a showcase for modern art, but he had decidedly unfashionable tastes, preferring "realistic" works (mainly, oddly enough, by Salvador Dalí) to "vulgar" cubism and abstract expressionism. The gallery opened in 1964 to withering reviews both for its design ("a die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops") and contents. The whole venture cost Hartford $7.4 million before he abandoned it.

In 1974 Hartford married Elaine Kay, a 20-year-old beautician from Fort Lauderdale. Within 72 hours of their marriage she walked out after a row but soon returned, bringing several of her women friends with her to share Hartford's 20-room duplex apartment in Manhattan. He began to experiment with drugs, apparently under her influence.

The couple were divorced in 1981 but continued to live together, and Hartford's apartment became the site of violent encounters involving transient visitors, some of whom robbed him of artworks and other possessions. In 1984, after Ms Kay and a friend were charged with tying up Hartford's teenage secretary and shaving her head, the directors of the building voted for eviction.

Little more was heard of Hartford until 2001, when his daughter Juliet found him living alone and covered in bedsores in a squalid rented house in Brooklyn. She placed him in a nursing home, before taking him back to the Bahamas in 2004.

Hartford's illegitimate son committed suicide in 1967. His daughter by his second wife died in 1988 after developing drug problems. He is survived by a son by his second marriage and by the daughter of his third.

"At least I tried to do something artistic with my money," Hartford would say. "What did Paul Getty ever do but make more?"

Fecal Matter inherits 20 points for the solo hit on the supermarket heir.

Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as "Sock it to me!" has died. He was 86. Martin, who went on to become one of television's busiest directors after splitting with Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night 05/24/08 of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica "He had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago," a family spokesman said. Martin was surrounded by family and friends when he died just after 6 p.m.

"Laugh-In", which debuted in January 1968, was unlike any comedy-variety show before it. Rather than relying on a series of tightly scripted song-and-dance segments, it offered up a steady, almost stream-of-consciousness run of non-sequitur jokes, political satire and madhouse antics from a cast of talented young actors and comedians that also included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley and announcer Gary Owens.

Presiding over it all were Rowan and Martin, the veteran nightclub comics whose standup banter put their own distinct spin on the show.

Like all straight men, Rowan provided the voice of reason, striving to correct his partner's absurdities. Martin, meanwhile, was full of bogus, often risque theories about life, which he appeared to hold with unwavering certainty.

Martin also starred as Lucille Ball's neighbor and love interest in her comeback sitcom "The Lucy Show" and, after Laugh-In's run ended in 1973, went on to direct several television shows, including "Newhart" and "Family Ties". He also appeared on "The Love Boat" and "Diagnosis Murder".

He is survived by his wife, Dolly Read, and sons Cary and Richard. Rowan died in 1987.

Andes Rugby Player Mints, Crypt Kickers and Death March say goodnight to the comedian and get 16 points each.

J.R. Simplot left home in 1923 at age 14 with four gold coins given to him by his mother. He ended his life as the spud king of America and one of the nation's richest men. The Idaho farmer, who dominated the state's business and political landscape for 70 years, died Sunday 05/25/08 at his Boise home at age 99. Simplot apparently died of natural causes.

His businesses, still family owned, manufacture agriculture, horticulture and turf fertilizers; animal feed and seeds; food products such as fruits, potatoes and other vegetables; and industrial chemicals and irrigation products. He all but invented the first commercially viable frozen french fries in the world.

Simplot and his family were ranked at No. 80 on Forbes magazine's 2006 list of richest Americans, with an estimated wealth of $3.2 billion.

In 1980, at age 71, Simplot took a gamble on the next generation of businessmen, giving Ward and Joe Parkinson $1 million for 40 percent of what would become computer chip maker Micron Technology Inc. Over the years, he pumped in $20 million more to help Micron build its first manufacturing plant and to stay afloat. Micron went on to become a major producer of DRAM memory chips, which are used to store information in personal computers.

Born John Richard Simplot in Dubuque, IA, he was raised with five siblings on a hardscrabble homestead in Declo in south-central Idaho.

In 1923, he left home with four $20 gold coins and paid $1 a day for room and board at Declo's only hotel. As a shrewd young businessman, Simplot bought interest-bearing scrip paid to teachers who also were boarding there for 50 cents on the dollar. He used it for collateral on a bank loan to buy 600 hogs at $1 each. When pork prices jumped the next year, he brought some rare fat hogs to market for a whopping $7,500. That was Simplot's stake for the potato business. He leased land and from an early partner learned to plant certified seed, not cull potatoes as was common then. Idaho's dominance in potatoes grew with the innovation. Simplot bought an early electric potato sorter and by 1940 had bought or built 33 potato warehouses along the rich Snake River plains from Idaho Falls to Vale, OR.

A chance encounter with a Chicago businessman led Simplot into the onion-drying business in Caldwell in 1941. He made $500,000 the first year and soon was supplying much of the dried potatoes and vegetables consumed by U.S. troops during World War II. The headstrong young man then started buying ranches, cattle and timberland. Taking notice of the wartime shortage of fertilizer, he bought phosphate reserves and built a fertilizer production plant at Pocatello.

After the war, his food production business expanded into freezing and canning, developing the product that would become the company's mainstay: the frozen french fry. Simplot struck a deal with McDonald's Corp. founder Ray Kroc, and his fry business grew with Americans' love for fast food.

Late into his life, the former McDonald's board member drove his white Lincoln Town Car with "Mr. Spud" vanity plates to the fast food chain for hashbrowns or french fries several times a week. More recently, he could be seen driving around Boise in a motorized cart.

In 2004, he donated his former home in the Boise Foothills to the state to be used as Idaho's new governor's mansion.

Like many captains of industry, Simplot had scrapes with the law.

In the mid-70s, Simplot was charged with trying to manipulate Maine potato futures. He was barred from commodities trading for six years and paid $50,000 in fines and an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit.

In 1977, he and the J.R. Simplot Co. each paid $40,000 in penalties for failing to report income and claiming false deductions.

Not a religious man - "I'm a fact man and if it don't add up, I don't buy it; I don't believe in hocus pocus," he said in a 1999 interview - Simplot credited his longevity to disdain for tobacco and alcohol.

Autopsy Payouts, Dead As a Doornail, Ethnic Cleansing and The Absent And The Dead Have No Friends..Nor Do We feast on 14 points each on the potato magnate.

Sydney Pollack was remembered as a generous, unpretentious talent by the elite actors he directed in films such as "Out of Africa", "Tootsie" and "Absence of Malice". Pollack, diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago, died Monday afternoon 05/26/08, surrounded by family, at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. He was 73.

Unlike many other top directors of his era, Pollack was also a film and television actor himself, and he used this unique position to forge a relationship with Hollywood's elite stars and create some of the most successful films of the 1970s and '80s.

In 1970, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", about Depression-era marathon dancers, received nine Oscar nominations, including one for Pollack's direction. He was nominated again for best director for 1982's "Tootsie", starring Dustin Hoffman as a cross-dressing actor and Pollack as the exasperated agent who tells him, "I begged you to get some therapy." As director and producer, he won Academy Awards for the 1986 romantic epic "Out of Africa", starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, which captured seven Oscars in all. Last fall, Pollack played law firm boss Marty Bach opposite George Clooney in "Michael Clayton", which he also co-produced. It received seven Oscar nominations.

Other A-listers Pollack directed include Sally Field and Paul Newman in "Absence of Malice", Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn in "The Interpreter", Robert Mitchum in "The Yakuza", Tom Cruise in "The Firm", and Redford in seven films: "This Property Is Condemned", "Jeremiah Johnson", "Three Days of the Condor", "The Way We Were" with Barbra Streisand, "The Electric Horseman" with Jane Fonda "Out of Africa" and "Havana".

In later years, Pollack, who stood over six feet tall and had a striking presence on screen, devoted more time to acting, appearing in Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives", Robert Altman's "The Player", Robert Zemeckis' "Death Becomes Her" and Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut".

On television, Pollack had an occasional recurring role on the NBC sitcom "Will & Grace" playing Will's (Eric McCormack) father, and appeared in the "The Sopranos", "Frasier" and "Mad About You". His last screen appearance was in "Made of Honor," a romantic comedy currently in theaters, where he played the oft-married father of star Patrick Dempsey's character.

Pollack first met Redford when they acted in 1962's low-budget "War Hunt", and would go on to play a major role in making Redford a star. "It's easy working with Bob; I don't have to be diplomatic with him," Pollack once told The Associated Press. "I know what he can and cannot do; I know all the colors he has. I've always felt he was a character actor in the body of a leading man."

Pollack produced many independent films with the late Anthony Minghella and the production company Mirage Enterprises. His producing credits include "The Talented Mr. Ripley"; "Cold Mountain"; "Sketches of Frank Gehry", a documentary that was the final film directed by Pollack; and the new HBO film "Recount", about the 2000 presidential election.

Sidney Irwin Pollack was born in Lafayette, IN to first-generation Russian-Americans. In high school in South Bend, he fell in love with theater, a passion that prompted him to forgo college, move to New York and enroll in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. Studying under the renowned Sanford Meisner, Pollack spent several years cutting his teeth in various areas of theater, eventually becoming Meisner's assistant.

After appearing in a handful of Broadway productions in the 1950s, Pollack turned to directing. He began on TV series such as "Naked City" and "The Fugitive", then moved to film. His first full-length feature was "The Slender Thread", about a suicide help line. The film was scored by Quincy Jones. "Sydney Pollack's immense talents as a director were only surpassed by the compassion that he carried in his soul for his fellow man," Jones said.

Pollack said in 2005 that for "Tootsie", Hoffman pushed him into playing the agent role, repeatedly sending him roses with a note reading, "Please be my agent. Love, Dorothy." At that point, Pollack hadn't acted in a movie in 20 years - since "The War Hunt" with Redford. The love soon frayed as Pollack and Hoffman differed over whether the film should lean toward comedy or drama, and the tension spilled into the public arena. But the result was a hit at the box office and received 10 Oscar nominations, with Jessica Lange winning for best supporting actress.

Pollack is survived by his wife, Claire; two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel; his brother Bernie; and six grandchildren.

Already Dead, Auditioning For the Choir Invisible, Bury Me Shallow, Dead Can Dance, Death Be Not Proud, Die2K, Goatsucker, GrimLimo, Happiest Epitaphs and Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives produce 5 points each on the actor/director.

Earle Hagen, the Emmy Award-winning television composer who wrote the theme music for "The Andy Griffith Show", "The Dick Van Dyke Show", "I Spy" and other classic TV programs, has died. He was 88. Mr. Hagen, who also composed the jazz standard "Harlem Nocturne" and was a former big-band trombonist for Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Ray Noble, died Monday night 05/27/08 at his home in Rancho Mirage, CA.

After seven years at 20th Century Fox as an arranger and orchestrator, Mr. Hagen moved into television in 1953. During the next 33 years, he composed music for some 3,000 TV-series episodes, pilots and TV movies and composed the themes for "That Girl", "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.", "The Mod Squad" and "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer".

He also wrote a jazz arrangement of the traditional Irish tune "Londonderry Air", which served as the theme for Danny Thomas' "Make Room for Daddy" situation comedy. The Thomas show, which debuted in 1953, launched Mr. Hagen's longtime professional relationship with director-producer Sheldon Leonard. The happy-go-lucky theme for "The Andy Griffith Show" might be Mr. Hagen's most recognizable tune. It's certainly the most beloved.

In his autobiography, "Memoirs of a Famous Composer - Nobody Ever Heard Of", Mr. Hagen wrote that while sitting at home "wracking my brain for an idea for a theme for the Griffith show, it finally occurred to me that it should be something simple, something you could whistle. With that in mind, it took me about an hour to write the Andy Griffith theme." That night, he and several musicians recorded a demo for the opening of the show, with Mr. Hagen doing the whistling and his 11-year-old son Deane doing the finger-snapping.

During his TV heyday, Mr. Hagen wrote music for up to five weekly shows simultaneously, putting in "16-hour workdays, seven days a week, for 40 weeks a year", he told the online magazine Film Score Monthly in 2001. "In the 12 weeks off between seasons, if anyone mentioned music to me, I would kill," he said.

For "I Spy", the hourlong 1965-68 espionage series starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, Mr. Hagen received three Emmy Award nominations for outstanding achievement in musical composition, and he won in 1968. Unlike all the others, 'I Spy' had a new, clean score for every episode. It was unheard of; it was too expensive, but Sheldon put it in the budget.

Mr. Hagen, who was born 07/09/19, in Chicago, was playing trombone and writing arrangements for the Ray Noble Orchestra in 1939 when he wrote "Harlem Nocturne". The sultry tune was frequently recorded, including by the Charlie Barnet, Glenn Miller and Stan Kenton bands. It also was used as the theme for "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer", starring Stacy Keach as the fedora-wearing, retro private eye.

During World War II, Mr. Hagen served in the Army Air Forces. After the war, he joined 20th Century Fox as an arranger and orchestrator and worked on movies such as "Monkey Business", "Call Me Madam" and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes".

Mr. Hagen's wife of 59 years, former big-band singer Elouise "Lou" Sidwell, died in 2002.

He married his second wife Laura in 2005. He is also survived by five children and four grandchildren.

Sneezin' & Coffin is serenaded by a 20-point solo hit on yet another Hollywood composer.

Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to "The Carol Burnett Show" and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in "Blazing Saddles", died Thursday 05/29/08. He was 81. Korman died at UCLA Medical Center after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago. He had undergone several major operations.

A natural second banana, Korman gained attention on "The Danny Kaye Show", appearing in skits with the star. He joined the show in its second season in 1964 and continued until it was canceled in 1967. That same year he became a cast member in the first season of "The Carol Burnett Show".

His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks' 1974 Western satire, "Blazing Saddles".

On television, Burnett and Korman developed into the perfect pair with their burlesques of classic movies such as "Gone With the Wind" and soap operas like "As the World Turns" (their version was called "As the Stomach Turns"). Another recurring skit featured them as "Ed and Eunice", a staid married couple who were constantly at odds with the wife's mother (a young Vicki Lawrence in a gray wig). In "Old Folks at Home", they were a combative married couple bedeviled by Lawrence as Burnett's troublesome young sister.

Korman revealed the secret to the long-running show's success in a 2005 interview: "We were an ensemble, and Carol had the most incredible attitude. I've never worked with a star of that magnitude who was willing to give so much away."

After 10 successful seasons, Korman left Burnett's show in 1977 for his own series. Dick Van Dyke took his place, but the chemistry was lacking and the Burnett show was canceled two years later. "The Harvey Korman Show" also failed, as did other series starring the actor.

Brooks tapped Korman's kinetic comic chops often, including roles in "High Anxiety", "The History of the World Part I" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It." "I gave him tongue twisters because I knew he was the only one who could wrap his mouth around them," Brooks said. "Harvey was such a good solid actor that he could have done Shakespearean drama just as well and easily as he did comedy." Brooks described Korman as a "dazzling" comic talent.

Korman's other films included two "Pink Panther" moves, "Trail of the Pink Panther" in 1982 and "Curse of the Pink Panther" in 1983; "Gypsy," "Huckleberry Finn" (as the King), "Herbie Goes Bananas" and "Bud and Lou" (as legendary straightman Bud Abbott to Buddy Hackett's Lou Costello). In television, Korman guest-starred in dozens of series including "The Donna Reed Show", "Dr. Kildare", "Perry Mason", "The Wild Wild West", "The Muppet Show", "The Love Boat" and "Burke's Law".

Korman and "Carol Burnett" co-star Tim Conway continued working together into their '70s, touring the country with their show "Tim Conway and Harvey Korman: Together Again". They did 120 shows a year, sometimes as many as six or eight in a weekend.

Korman had an operation in late January on a non-cancerous brain tumor and pulled through "with flying colors," Kate Korman said. Less than a day after coming home, he was re-admitted because of the ruptured aneurysm and was given a few hours to live. But he survived for another four months.

Harvey Herschel Korman was born 02/15/27, in Chicago. He left college for service in the U.S. Navy, resuming his studies afterward at the Goodman School of Drama at the Chicago Art Institute. After four years, he decided to try New York. "For the next 13 years I tried to get on Broadway, on off-Broadway, under or beside Broadway," he told a reporter in 1971. He had no luck and had to support himself as a restaurant cashier. Finally, in desperation, he and a friend formed a nightclub comedy act.

"We were fired our first night in a club, between the first and second shows," he recalled.

After returning to Chicago, Korman decided to try Hollywood, reasoning that "at least I'd feel warm and comfortable while I failed."

For three years he sold cars and worked as a doorman at a movie theater. Then he landed the job with Kaye.

In 1960 Korman married Donna Elhart and they had two children, Maria and Christopher. They divorced in 1977. Two more children, Katherine and Laura, were born of his 1982 marriage to Deborah Fritz.

Dead Like Them crack up over the 20-point solo hit on the comedian.

Yves Saint Laurent, one of the most influential and enduring designers of the 20th century, empowered women by reinventing pants as a sleek, elegant staple of the female wardrobe. Saint Laurent, 71, died Sunday night 06/01/08 at his Paris home after a yearlong battle with brain cancer.

In his own words, Saint Laurent once said he felt "fashion was not only supposed to make women beautiful, but to reassure them, to give them confidence, to allow them to come to terms with themselves."

Saint Laurent widely was considered the last of a generation that included Christian Dior and Coco Chanel and made Paris the fashion capital of the world, with the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank, as its elegant headquarters. The designer raised the stature of fashion while making it more accessible, it is widely agreed. From the first YSL tuxedo and his trim pantsuits to see-through blouses, safari jackets and glamorous gowns, Saint Laurent created instant classics that remain stylish decades later.

Saint Laurent was born 08/01/36, in Oran, Algeria, where his father worked as a shipping executive. He first emerged as a promising designer at age 17, winning first prize in a contest sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat for a cocktail dress design. A year later, in 1954, he enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale school of haute couture, but student life lasted only three months. He was introduced to Christian Dior, then regarded as the greatest creator of his day, and Dior was so impressed with Saint Laurent's talent that he hired him on the spot. When Dior died suddenly in 1957, Saint Laurent was named head of the House of Dior at age 21.

He opened his own haute couture fashion house with Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent's close friend and business partner for four decades in 1962. The pair later started a chain of Rive Gauche ready-to-wear boutiques.

Saint Laurent's simple navy blue pea coat over white pants, which the designer first showed in 1962, was one of his hallmarks. His "smoking", or tuxedo jacket, of 1966 remade the tux as a high fashion statement for both sexes. It remained the designer's trademark item and was updated yearly until he retired. Also from the 60s came Beatnik chic - a black leather jacket and knit turtleneck with high boots - and sleek pantsuits that underlined Saint Laurent's statement on equality of the sexes. He showed that women could wear "men's clothes", which when tailored to the female form became an emblem of elegant femininity. Some of his revolutionary style was met with resistance. There are famous stories of women wearing Saint Laurent pantsuits who were turned away from hotels and restaurants in London and New York.

Saint Laurent's rising star was eternalized in 1983, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted a show to his work, the first ever to a living designer. He was awarded the Legion d'Honneur in 1985. But bouts of depression marked his career. Berge, who lived with the designer for years, was quoted as saying that Saint Laurent was born with a nervous breakdown.

When Saint Laurent announced his retirement in 2002 at age 65 and the closure of the Paris-based haute couture house, it was mourned in the fashion world as the end of an era. His ready-to-wear label, Rive Gauche, which was sold to Gucci in 1999 for $70 million cash and royalties, still has boutiques around the world.

Saint Laurent had long been rumored to be ill, and Berge said on RTL radio Monday that he had been afflicted with brain cancer for the past year.

After retirement, Saint Laurent spoke of his battles with depression, drugs and loneliness, though he gave no indication that those problems were directly tied to his decision to stop working.

"I've known fear and terrible solitude," he said. "Tranquilizers and drugs, those phony friends. The prison of depression and hospitals. I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober."

Dead Can Dance, Don't Fear the Reaper, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives and Tastes Like Chicken all get fitted for 14 points each on the fashion mogul.

Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday 06/02/08 after months of ill health. He was 79. Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, FL. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

"I don't know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name," he said, adding that he liked it so it became his stage name. Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some experts believe a possible source for the name is a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow.

His first single, "Bo Diddley," introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as "shave and a haircut, two bits." The B side, "I'm a Man," with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

The company that issued his early songs was Chess-Checkers records, the storied Chicago-based labels that also recorded Chuck Berry and other stars. Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said in 2006 that Diddley's Chess recordings "stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th century."

Diddley's other major songs included, "Say Man", "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover", "Shave and a Haircut", "Uncle John", "Who Do You Love?" and "The Mule."

Diddley's influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. Buddy Holly borrowed the bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp rhythm for his song "Not Fade Away."

The Rolling Stones' bluesy remake of that Holly song gave them their first chart single in the United States, in 1964. The following year, another British band, the Yardbirds, had a Top 20 hit in the U.S. with their version of "I'm a Man."

Diddley was also one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremelo effects. He even rigged some of his guitars himself.

Many other artists, including the Who, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello copied aspects of Diddley's style.

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn't entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations.

Despite his success, Diddley claimed he only received a small portion of the money he made during his career. Partly as a result, he continued to tour and record music until his stroke. Between tours, he made his home near Gainesville in north Florida.

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances.

In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll." Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."

Diddley won attention from a new generation in 1989 when he took part in the "Bo Knows" ad campaign for Nike, built around football and baseball star Bo Jackson. Commenting on Jackson's guitar skills, Diddley says to him, "Bo, you don't know diddly."

Born as Ellas Bates on 12/30/28, in McComb, MS, Diddley was later adopted by his mother's cousin and took on the name Ellis McDaniel, which his wife always called him. When he was 5, his family moved to Chicago, where he learned the violin at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He learned guitar at 10 and entertained passers-by on street corners. By his early teens, Diddley was playing Chicago's Maxwell Street.

"I came out of school and made something out of myself. I am known all over the globe, all over the world. There are guys who have done a lot of things that don't have the same impact that I had," he said.

BairBones, Bud Dwyer's Brains, Dead Martha, Don't Fear the Reaper, Mangled Baby Ducks, Monty Python's Dying Circus, Otis' Cirrhosis from Rafe Hollister's Still, Skeleton In Their Closet, The Yips, Van Owens Body and When the Music's Over all tune up with 5 points each on legendary guitarist.

Actor-filmmaker Mel Ferrer, the onetime husband of Audrey Hepburn who co-starred with the screen icon in "War and Peace", directed her in "Green Mansions" and produced her film "Wait Until Dark", has died at age 90. Ferrer, who also appeared with Hepburn on Broadway for her Tony Award-winning turn in "Ondine," died in his sleep on Monday 06/02/08 surrounded by relatives and friends at his family's ranch in Carpenteria, CA, near Santa Barbara.

The lanky, gaunt Ferrer first appeared on Broadway as a chorus dancer in 1938. After suffering a bout of polio, he worked behind the scenes in radio, TV and film before making his big-screen acting debut in the 1949 drama "Lost Boundaries" playing a fair-skinned black doctor passing as white. Delving as it did into the sensitive subject of post-war American race relations, it was a risky role that "had a huge impact on him and his commitment to civil rights," Ferrer's son, Mark, recalled of his father.

But he is best remembered for his role as the lame puppeteer in the 1953 musical "Lili" with Leslie Caron, the same year Hepburn made her big-screen breakthrough opposite Ferrer's friend Gregory Peck in "Roman Holiday", which earned her a best actress Oscar. Ferrer and Hepburn married in 1954 and appeared together that year in the Broadway production of "Ondine", for which she won a Tony as best actress for playing the water sprite just weeks after receiving her Academy Award. They also co-starred in the 1956 movie adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy novel "War and Peace" - she as Natasha Rostov and he as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. So intent was Hepburn on remaining near her husband that shooting of her Paris scenes in "Funny Face" were timed to coincide with Ferrer's filming of the French movie "Elena et les hommes," in which he co-starred with Ingrid Bergman.

Although he appeared in over 100 films and made-for-TV movies, Ferrer viewed himself less as a screen actor than as a creative talent behind the camera. As a filmmaker, Ferrer directed Claudette Colbert in the 1950 mystery "The Secret Fury" and Hepburn in the 1959 romantic adventure "Green Mansions", set in the jungles of Venezuela.

But the couple enjoyed a more successful collaboration in the 1967 thriller "Wait Until Dark", which he produced starring Hepburn as a blind woman pursued by killers out to silence her as a potential witness. That role earned Hepburn her fifth and final Oscar nomination.

Their marriage - the first of five for Ferrer (he was married twice to Frances Gunby Pilchard) - ended the next year. Their only child, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, 47, is a filmmaker who directed the 2001 documentary "Racehoss."

Ferrer suffered a heart attack following their divorce, and Hepburn largely retired from Hollywood. She died of cancer in 1993.

Born in New Jersey, the son of a surgeon and a prominent New York socialite, Ferrer dropped out of Princeton University to work as an actor in summer stock, beginning a lifelong attachment to live theater.

With fellow actors Peck and Dorothy McGuire, he co-founded the La Jolla Playhouse in 1947, which is still running. His sister was the famed cardiologist Dr. M. Irene Ferrer, who helped refine the cardiac catheter and electrocardiogram.

Carrion Luggage, Crypt Kickers, Ghost of a Chance and Prop 'Em Up Beside the Jukebox perform a 4-way hit worth 14 points each on the actor/director/producer.

Hungarian-born historian, writer and journalist Ferenc Fejto died at the age of 98 in Paris on Monday 06/02/08. Fejto, a respected expert of Eastern Europe, died of a heart attack in a hospital near Notre Dame he was taken to with a pulmonary embolism a week ago.

Fejto was born in Nagykanizsa, SW Hungary, on 08/31/09. A committed anti-Nazi, Fejto was sentenced to prison in 1932, and spent nearly a year in custody. After he was sentenced again in 1938, he fled the country and settled in France. In 1955 he was granted French citizenship and worked for the French news agency AFP as an expert on the Eastern Bloc. He has been the Paris correspondent of the left leaning Népszava newspaper, but he also contributed to several other titles, making him an active participant of Hungarian public life, even from abroad.

His book on the 1956 revolution was published with a foreword by Jean Paul Sartre. He was the director of the CEE and Soviet Union department of the University of Political Sciences in Paris between 1972 and 1982. He first returned to Hungary after his exile to attend the reburial of Imre Nagy (1896-1958), the martyred prime minister of the 1956 Hungarian anti-Soviet revolution in 1989. He visited home afterwards on a regular basis.

He owned the French Legion of Honour as well as numerous international and Hungarian decorations.

Old As the Hills author a 20-point solo hit on the writer/historian.

Jim McKay elegantly covered competitions from badminton to barrel jumping. Yet he may best be remembered for that grim day at the Munich Olympics when he broke the news with three simple words: "They're all gone." The groundbreaking sportscaster died Saturday 06/07/08 of natural causes at his farm in Monkton, MD. He was 86.

McKay was the one who spanned the globe to bring television viewers the constant variety of sports on ABC's influential "Wide World of Sports", where he told of "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

A far different kind of agony awaited in 1972 when word came down in Munich that Palestinian terrorists had kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes. McKay was summoned from a day off, hurriedly putting clothes over a bathing suit to anchor ABC's coverage of the drama as the games stood still. The commando raid to free the hostages ended awfully. McKay told the world. Later, at the closing ceremony, he read a poem by A.E. Housman, "To an Athlete Dying Young."

It was "Wide World of Sports" that built ABC Sports into a powerhouse after its debut in 1961. The age before ESPN and a constant video loop of highlights was simpler then, and viewers tuned in to see what new kind of competition McKay could find. ABC estimated McKay traveled 4 1/2 million miles on assignment for "Wide World," covering 40 countries.

When he moved from NBC to ABC Sports, pioneering television executive Roone Arledge specifically sought out McKay.

A veteran of the U.S. Navy in World War II, James McManus was a newspaper reporter who transferred to television when The (Baltimore) Sun started its own station. He was the first on-air broadcaster seen in Baltimore, and hosted a three-hour weekday show, "The Sports Parade". He moved to New York to do a similar show there dubbed "The Real McKay" by a CBS executive. McManus changed his professional name accordingly.

McKay - understated, dignified and with a clear eye for detail - covered 12 Olympics. His last was in 2002 at Salt Lake City for NBC after he received special permission to get out of his lifetime contract with ABC Sports.

McKay was a minority owner of the Baltimore Orioles.

In addition to McManus, McKay's survivors include his wife, Margaret, and his daughter, Mary. Margaret met McKay when they were reporters at The Sun, and they would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in October.

Death March feels the thrill of victory with a 20-point solo hit on the legendary sportscaster.

Tyrone Jones, a linebacker who helped the Winnipeg Blue Bombers capture two Grey Cup titles during his eight-year tenure with the CFL club, has died. He was 46. Jones, who starred at Southern University, died in his native Georgia on Tuesday morning 06/10/08. He was diagnosed with brain cancer in August 2005.

"This is a very sad day, however we need to remember and celebrate the person of Tyrone Jones; the player of Tyrone Jones and the human being that was Tyrone Jones," said Bombers president Lyle Bauer, a former teammate of Jones. "He made a huge, huge impact on this football team and this league."

Jones joined the Bombers in 1983 and spent eight seasons with the club. He also spent time with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and B.C. Lions, and tried out for the Phoenix Cardinals in 1988.

He was a four-time CFL All-Star and still holds the Winnipeg career sack record with 98. Jones was the 1984 Grey Cup MVP and in 1985 was named the CFL's top defensive player.

Jones is survived by three sons.

Already Dead, BairBones, Die2K, Formaldehyde Enema, Forrest Tucker's Ghost, Life'll Kill Ya, Memoriam Montage and Walking Toward the Light all pick up two touchdowns (6 points for 8-way hit, 8 for Under 55) on the CFL star.

Cyd Charisse, who thrilled generations of moviegoers with her dancing in such classic films as "Singin' in the Rain", has died. She was 86 and passed away Tuesday 06/17/08 after suffering a heart attack in Los Angeles.

Born Tula Ellice Finklea, the Texas native studied classical ballet from a young age, touring with the legendary Ballets Russes starting at age 14. Later, having taken on the stage name Cyd Charisse (a combination of her childhood nickname and the surname of her first husband), she rose to fame dancing in MGM musicals opposite Fred Astaire (Ziegfeld Follies, The Band Wagon, Silk Stockings) and Gene Kelly (Singin' in the Rain, Brigadoon, It's Always Fair Weather). Though just 5 feet, 6 inches tall, Charisse became known for her long legs; the Guinness Book of World Records reportedly once listed her as having the world's most valuable legs, due to a $5 million insurance policy taken out on them. As Astaire said, ''She wasn't a tap dancer, she's just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did. When we were dancing, we didn't know what time it was.''

Charisse also forged a popular partnership with her second husband, singer Tony Martin, with whom she performed song-and-dance acts in nightclubs and on television. In later years, she appeared in exercise videos and on Broadway, where she debuted in 1992, at age 71, in the musical "Grand Hotel". In 2006, she received the National Medal of Arts and Humanities, the highest U.S. honor afforded to people in the arts.

Prop 'Em Up Beside the Jukebox sashay up the charts with a 20-point solo hit on the leggy dancer/actress.

Classic French filmmaker Jean Delannoy, who adapted novels by Victor Hugo and Andre Gide and won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize in 1946, has died at age 100. Delannoy died Wednesday 06/18/08 at his home in Guainville, southwest of Paris, the local city hall said, without providing the cause of death.

Many of Delannoy's films, starring actors including Jean Gabin, Jean Marais and Michele Morgan, were French box office successes in the 1940s and 1950s. But Delannoy's classic style went out of fashion in the 1960s, when he was derided by the more avant-garde New Wave filmmakers, including Francois Truffaut. The New Wave dubbed his movies "le cinema de papa".

French President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Delannoy for "devoting his life, with success, to his passion for art. More than just a great artist, he was a man of great intelligence, alert, pertinent and faithful in friendship," Sarkozy said in a statement.

Culture Minister Christine Albanel said Delannoy represented the "pure classic French style: a mix of refinement and depth inherited from his long companionship with literature."

Working with a script by Jean Cocteau, Delannoy revisited the Tristan and Isolde legend in 1943's "L'Eternel Retour" (Eternal Return.)

His 1946 film "La Symphonie Pastorale", adapted from a Gide novel, won Cannes' top prize. The film told the story of a blind orphan who falls in love with a married pastor.

Another of his films was "Notre Dame de Paris" (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), an adaptation of Hugo's novel starring Gina Lollobrigida and Anthony Quinn.

The Famous Final Scene II make the cut with another 20-point solo hit on the French film maker.

Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs, dirty words and the demise of humanity, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday 06/22/08. He was 71. Carlin, who had a history of heart and drug-dependency problems, died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica about 6 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. EDT) after being admitted earlier in the afternoon for chest pains.

Known for his edgy, provocative material developed over 50 years, the bald, bearded Carlin achieved status as an anti-Establishment icon in the 1970s with stand-up bits full of drug references and a routine called "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television". A regulatory battle over a radio broadcast of the routine ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1978 case, Federal Communications Commission vs. Pacifica Foundation, the top U.S. court ruled that the words cited in Carlin's routine were indecent, and that the government's broadcast regulator could ban them from being aired at times when children might be listening.

The Grammy-winning Carlin remained an active presence on the comedy circuit. Carlin was scheduled to receive the John F. Kennedy Center's prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in November and his publicist said Carlin performed in Las Vegas this month.

His comedic sensibility revolved around a central theme: humanity is a cursed, doomed species. "I don't have any beliefs or allegiances. I don't believe in this country, I don't believe in religion, or a god, and I don't believe in all these man-made institutional ideas," he told Reuters in a 2001 interview. Carlin told Playboy in 2005 that he looked forward to an afterlife where he could watch the decline of civilization on a "heavenly CNN".

"The world is a big theater-in-the round as far as I'm concerned, and I'd love to watch it spin itself into oblivion," he said. "Tune in and watch the human adventure."

Carlin wrote three best-selling books, won four Grammy Awards, recorded 22 comedy albums, headlined 14 HBO television specials, and hosted hundreds of variety shows. One was the first episode of "Saturday Night Live" in 1975, when he was high on cocaine.

Drug addiction plagued him for much of his life, beginning with marijuana experimentation as a teen, graduating to cocaine in the 1970s, and then to prescription painkillers and wine. During the cocaine years, Carlin ignored his finances and ended up owing about $3 million in back taxes. In 2004, he entered a Los Angeles rehab clinic for his alcohol and Vicodin abuse.

George Dennis Carlin was born on 05/12/37, in New York City, where he was raised with an older brother by their single mother. He fondly recalled that the nuns at his school tolerated his early comedic inclinations.

After a brief, troubled stint in the U.S. Air Force, he started honing his comic act, developing such characters as Al Sleet, a "hippie-dippie weatherman."

Carlin told Playboy that his sensibilities developed in the 1950s, "when comedy stopped being safe ... (and) became about saying no to authority." He cited such influences as Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory and Bob Newhart.

He also dabbled in movies and television, recently voicing a hippie Volkswagen bus named Fillmore in the Pixar cartoon "Cars."

Carlin is survived by his second wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; and brother Patrick. His first wife, Brenda, died of cancer in 1997. News of his death was first reported by the television show "Entertainment Tonight."

Mr. Carlin leaves his wife, Sally Wade, and daughter Kelly Carlin McCall.

Flatliners yell out 7 words you can’t say on TV, because the comedian was on their Taxi Squad, yielding only 5 points.

Dody Goodman, the delightfully daffy comedian known for her television appearances on Jack Paar’s late-night talk show and as the mother on the soap-opera parody “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” has died at 93. Goodman died Sunday 06/22/08 at Englewood (NJ) Hospital and Medical Center. The actress had been ill for some time and had lived in the Actors Fund Home in Englewood since October.

Goodman, with her pixyish appearance and Southern-tinged, quavery voice, had an eclectic show-business career. She moved easily from stage to television to movies, where she appeared in such popular films as “Grease” and “Grease 2,” playing Blanche, the principal’s assistant, and in “Splash”.

It was on “The Tonight Show” when Paar was the late night TV program’s second host in the late 1950s that Goodman first received national attention. Her quirky, off-kilter remarks inevitably got laughs and endeared audiences. “I was just thrown into the talking,” Goodman said in a 1994 interview. “I had no idea how to do that. In fact, they just called me up and asked me if I wanted to be on ’The Jack Paar Show.’ I didn’t know who Jack Paar was. They said, ’We just want you to sit and talk.“’

After a falling out with Paar, other chat shows took up the slack, including “The Merv Griffin Show” and “Girl Talk.” And there were roles on TV series, too, most notably her appearances as Martha Shumway (Louise Lasser’s mother) on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” starting in 1976, and guest shots on such shows as “Diff’rent Strokes”, “St. Elsewhere” and “Murder, She Wrote”.

In later years, Goodman was a regular in “Nunsense” and its various sequels, appearing off-Broadway and on tour in Dan Goggin’s comic musical celebration of the Little Sisters of Hoboken. She started out playing Sister Mary Amnesia, later graduating to the role of Mother Superior.

The actress was born Dolores Goodman on 10/28/14, in Columbus, OH, where her father ran a small cigar factory. She arrived in New York in the late 1930s to study dance at the School of American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and later graduated to Broadway musicals.

The actress performed regularly on stage in the 1940s and early ’50s as a chorus member in such musicals as “Something for the Boys”, “One Touch of Venus”, “Laffing Room Only”, “Miss Liberty”, “Call Me Madam”, “My Darlin’ Aida” and “Wonderful Town” in which she originated the role of Violet, the streetwalker.

It was the early to mid-’50s, when small, topical nightclub revues flourished. Goodman, a natural comedian, thrived in them. She performed in shows by Ben Bagley and Julius Monk, and in Jerry Herman’s first effort, a revue called “Parade”.

In more recent times, she appeared on David Letterman’s late-night talk show. “He understands my sense of humor. I will do a dumb thing for fun. That’s how I got the reputation for being dopey and dumb. I don’t like dumb jokes but I will do dumb things for a laugh,” she said.

Goodman, who never married, is survived by seven nieces and nephews, 11 great nieces and nephews and 15 great-great nieces and nephews.

Ghost of a Chance get a chuckle over their 20-point solo hit on the actress/comedienne.

Professor Leonid Hurwicz, who died on Tuesday 06/24/08 aged 90, shared last year's Nobel Prize for Economics, with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, for his work on mechanism design theory, a branch of economics which aims to establish rules for arranging economic transactions so that, when everyone behaves in a self-interested manner, the result is one which leaves everybody satisfied.

Although the mathematics behind mechanism design theory is complex, the basic principles will be familiar to any parent who has had to deal with two siblings squabbling over how to divide a cake. The answer, of course, is that one child cuts and the second gets to choose. The second child will choose the larger half, which gives the first the incentive to cut the cake as equitably as possible. The first-cut, second-choose solution is a simple example of a mechanism designed to achieve the fairest solution for all concerned – and avoid tantrums.

Mechanism design, initiated by Hurwicz and further developed by Maskin and Myerson, uses similar principles to arrange economic incentives within institutions where the "invisible hand" of the market alone will not suffice – from utility regulation to contracting out of government services, and from structuring the pay and incentives of company executives to designing insurance schemes which provide the best coverage without inviting misuse.

Hurwicz took up economics in the 1940s and 1950s, a period when debate was raging about the relative merits of central planning and the market mechanism. He argued that at the centre of the failure of the central planning model was a lack of incentive for people to share their information with governments truthfully.

Moreover, although markets were less afflicted by such incentive problems, they were by no means immune from the problem of "asymmetric information". When, for example, one person wishes to buy an item, and another is happy to sell it, both may have an incentive to lie about the true price they would be happy to trade at. As a result, trades that ought to take place often do not.

Hurwicz's most important argument, set out in two seminal articles in 1972 and 1973, was that the way to get to the most efficient and satisfactory economic outcome in any system is to design mechanisms in which everybody does best for themselves by sharing truthfully whatever private information they have – an idea called "incentive compatability".

In the 1970s mechanism design was taken to new levels of mathematical sophistication and complexity thanks to the boom in computing power and game theory.

It was subsequently employed on tasks ranging from devising better ways of paying defence contractors to how to auction a radio spectrum. In the latter case the theory was that the highest bidder, having invested much in a particular bandwidth, will have an incentive to provide a first-class service.

Hurwicz's work also had a major effect on development economics, shifting the focus away from governments in solving the problems of poor countries to a focus on the rule of law, property rights and the provision of incentives to farmers and small businessmen to act in ways that further the social interest.

Leonid Hurwicz was born in Moscow on 08/21/17, just two months before the October Revolution, to Jewish parents who had lived in Congress Poland (the part of Poland then within the Russian Empire), but had been displaced during the First World War. In 1919, fearing persecution by the Bolsheviks, the family fled back to (now independent) Poland in a horse-drawn wagon and settled in Warsaw, where Leonid took a Law degree at Warsaw University in 1938.

The legal education had been his father's idea and, alongside his studies, the young Hurwicz indulged his real interests by studying Physics and entering the Warsaw conservatory as a piano student. Then, during a second-year course in Economics for his Law degree, he discovered a new passion; and after taking his degree, he moved to England to study at the London School of Economics.

His English was rudimentary, and the classes he understood best were taught by the Hungarian economist Nicholas Kaldor. "He had a worse accent than I did," Hurwicz recalled, "but I could understand it, so I took all the courses he was teaching."

In 1939 he moved to Geneva, where he enrolled at the Graduate Institute of International Studies and attended seminars given by the economist Ludwig von Mises. Meanwhile, his parents and a brother, who had fled eastwards in front of the invading Germans, were arrested and interned in Soviet labour camps. In 1940 Hurwicz moved to Portugal, and finally emigrated to the United States, where the rest of his family later joined him. He became a research assistant to the economist Paul Samuelson, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1970, and to Oskar Lange at Chicago University.

After America's entry into the war, he became a faculty member of the Institute of Meteorology at Chicago and taught statistics in the university department of economics. He also worked for the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, which sought to create mathematical models of the economy. In 1951 Hurwicz was recruited by the economist Walter Heller as professor of economics and mathematics in the School of Business Administration at the University of Minnesota. He became chairman of the university's statistics department in 1961 and Regents' Professor of Economics in 1969.

He spent most of the rest of his career at Minnesota, interspersed with studies and teaching elsewhere in the United States and Asia, and was appointed Curtis L Carlson Professor of Economics in 1989. Although he retired from full-time teaching in 1988, he continued to teach graduate students until 2006.

Hurwicz served on the United Nations Economic Commission in 1948, and on the United States National Research Council in 1954. A man of catholic interests (he was knowledgable on such diverse matters as the dialects of Tamil, archaeology, biochemistry and music), he also served as a member of the National Science Foundation Commission on Weather Modification, established under Lyndon B Johnson to research ways of modifying the climate to benefit mankind.

A lifelong Democrat, Hurwicz was a pledged delegate from Minnesota for Senator Eugene McCarthy at the 1968 Party Convention and served as a member of the Democratic Party Platform Committee. Among other things he used his "mechanism design" expertise to help design the "walking subcaucus" method of allocating delegates among competing groups, which is still a feature of Democratic caucus meetings. In February this year he attended his own precinct caucus at the age of 90.

Hurwicz won many honours and prizes, most notably the National Medal of Science, presented to him by President George Bush in 1990, though it seemed that the Nobel Prize would elude him. In the 1950s he worked on non-linear programming with Kenneth Arrow, who in 1972 became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Economics prize. He was also the graduate adviser to Daniel McFadden, who received the prize in 2000.

By last year Hurwicz had more or less given up hope. "There were times when other people said I was on the short list, but as time passed and nothing happened I didn't expect the recognition would come because people who were familiar with my work were slowly dying off," he said. When informed last October that he had become the oldest recipient of the award, Hurwicz said: "I hope that others who deserve it also got it."

Leonid Hurwicz married, in 1944, Evelyn Jensen, who survives him with their two sons and two daughters. "The hardest part of marriage," Hurwicz said on his wedding anniversary last year, "is the first 63 years."

In The Deathroom starts adding up the points with yet another 20-point solo hit on the Economics Laureate.

Clay Felker, who revolutionized the magazine genre as founding editor of New York, bringing readers a smart, sassy mix of gossip and news that was replicated relentlessly across the country, died Tuesday 07/01/08. He was 82. Felker died with his wife, writer Gail Sheehy, at his side at their New York City home after a battle with throat cancer, the magazine said.

Felker's New York became indispensable in the 1960s and '70s for those craving the latest on the city's social scene, inside knowledge of its business and politics, and consumer tips from its endless "best of" lists.

When publishing titan Rupert Murdoch forced Felker and co-founder Milton Glaser out in a hostile takeover in 1977, New York's staff walked out in solidarity with their departing editors, leaving an incomplete issue three days before it was due on newsstands.

Felker published, edited and wrote for dozens of publications including Life, Time, Esquire, the Village Voice, Adweek, Daily News Today, Manhattan Inc. and U.S. News and World Report.

Felker was born in Webster Groves, MO and graduated in 1951 from Duke University, where he edited the student newspaper. His first journalism job out of college was as a sports writer at Life magazine, where he got the scoop on a Brooklyn Dodgers scouting report of the New York Yankees that highlighted Joe DiMaggio's ailing arm.

New York magazine began as a Sunday magazine supplement in the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. In 1968, Felker and Glaser molded it into a standalone weekly glossy. Felker bought the Village Voice in 1974 and created New West magazine a westernized version of his original creation, based in California. Both publications met the same fate as New York magazine, landing in the hands of Murdoch.

After reluctantly leaving his magazine, Felker served as editor and publisher of Esquire from 1978-1981, but none of his later publications had as much impact as New York.

Die2K, I Am Your Flesh, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop, Walking Toward the Light and How Much For Those Stem Cells? all get news of their 10 points each on the magazine magnate.

Larry Harmon, who turned the character Bozo the Clown into a show business staple that delighted children for more than a half-century, died Thursday 07/03/08 of congestive heart failure. He was 83.

Although not the original Bozo, Harmon portrayed the popular clown in countless appearances and, as an entrepreneur, he licensed the character to others, particularly dozens of television stations around the country. The stations in turn hired actors to be their local Bozos. "You might say, in a way, I was cloning BTC (Bozo the Clown) before anybody else out there got around to cloning DNA," Harmon told the AP in a 1996 interview. "Bozo is a combination of the wonderful wisdom of the adult and the childlike ways in all of us," Harmon said.

Pinto Colvig, who also provided the voice for Walt Disney's Goofy, originated Bozo the Clown when Capitol Records introduced a series of children's records in 1946. Harmon would later meet his alter ego while answering a casting call to make personal appearances as a clown to promote the records. He got that job and eventually bought the rights to Bozo. Along the way, he embellished Bozo's distinctive look: the orange-tufted hair, the bulbous nose, the outlandish red, white and blue costume. "I felt if I could plant my size 83AAA shoes on this planet, (people) would never be able to forget those footprints," he said.

The business - combining animation, licensing of the character, and personal appearances - made millions, as Harmon trained more than 200 Bozos over the years to represent him in local markets. "I'm looking for that sparkle in the eyes, that emotion, feeling, directness, warmth. That is so important," he said of his criteria for becoming a Bozo.

The Chicago version of Bozo ran on WGN-TV in Chicago for 40 years and was seen in many other cities after cable television transformed WGN into a superstation. Bozo - portrayed in Chicago for many years by Bob Bell - was so popular that the waiting list for tickets to a TV show eventually stretched to a decade, prompting the station to stop taking reservations for 10 years. On the day in 1990 when WGN started taking reservations again, it took just five hours to book the show for five more years. The phone company reported more than 27 million phone call attempts had been made.

By the time the show bowed out in Chicago, in 2001, it was the last locally produced version. Harmon said at the time that he hoped to develop a new cable or network show, as well as a Bozo feature film.

He became caught up in a minor controversy in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame in Milwaukee took down a plaque honoring him as Bozo and formally endorsed Colvig for creating the role. Harmon denied ever misrepresenting Bozo's history. He said he was claiming credit only for what he added to the character - "What I sound like, what I look like, what I walk like" - and what he did to popularize Bozo. "Isn't it a shame the credit that was given to me for the work I have done, they arbitrarily take it down, like I didn't do anything for the last 52 years," he told the AP at the time. Harmon protected Bozo's reputation with a vengeance, while embracing those who poked good-natured fun at the clown.

As Bozo's influence spread through popular culture, his very name became a synonym for clownish behavior.

On New Year's Day 1996, Harmon dressed up as Bozo for the first time in 10 years, appearing in the Rose Parade in Pasadena. The crowd reaction, he recalled, "was deafening." "They kept yelling, `Bozo, Bozo, love you, love you.' I shed more crocodile tears for five miles in four hours than I realized I had," he said. "I still get goose bumps."

Born in Toledo, OH, Harmon became interested in theater while studying at the University of Southern California.

"Bozo is a star, an entertainer, bigger than life," Harmon once said. "People see him as Mr. Bozo, somebody you can relate to, touch and laugh with."

The Famous Final Scene II gets a laugh after realizing no one else picked the clown, giving them a 20-point solo hit.

Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Friday 07/04/08. He was 86. Helms died at 1:15 am in Raleigh of natural causes.

Helms, who first became known to North Carolina voters as a newspaper and television commentator, won election to the Senate in 1972 and decided not to run for a sixth term in 2002.

“Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?” Helms wrote in a 1959 editorial that foretold his political style.

As he aged, Helms was slowed by a variety of illnesses, including a bone disorder, prostate cancer and heart problems, and he made his way through the Capitol on a motorized scooter as his career neared an end. In April 2006, his family announced that he had been moved into a convalescent center after being diagnosed with vascular dementia, in which repeated minor strokes damage the brain. Helms' public appearances had dwindled as his health deteriorated. When his memoirs were published in August 2005, he appeared at a Raleigh book store to sign copies but did not make a speech.

Helms served as chairman of the Agriculture Committee and Foreign Relations Committees over the years at times when the GOP held the Senate majority, using his posts to protect his state's tobacco growers and other farmers and place his stamp on foreign policy.

His opposition to Communism defined his foreign policy views. He took a dim view of many arms control treaties, opposed Fidel Castro at every turn, and supported the contras in Nicaragua as well as the right-wing government of El Salvador. He opposed the Panama Canal treaties that President Carter pushed through a reluctant Senate in 1977.

Early on, his habit of blocking nominations and legislation won him a nickname of “Senator No.” He delighted in forcing roll-call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on federal funding for art he deemed pornographic, school busing, flag-burning and other cultural issues.

In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. “I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that,” he said in a newspaper interview at the time. “If you want to call me a bigot, fine.”

After Democrats killed the appointment of U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle, a former Helms aide, to a federal appeals court post in 1991, Helms blocked all of Clinton's judicial nominations from North Carolina for eight years. Helms occasionally opted for compromise in later years in the Senate, working with Democrats on legislation to restructure the foreign policy bureaucracy and pay back debts to the United Nations, an organization be disdained for most of his career. And he softened his views on AIDS after years of clashes with gay activists, advocating greater federal funding to fight the disease in Africa and elsewhere overseas.

But in his memoirs, Helms made clear that his opinions on other issues had hardly moderated since he left office. He likened abortion to the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 terror attacks. “I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves,” he wrote in “Here's Where I Stand.”

Helms never lost a race for the Senate, but he never won one by much, either, a reflection of his divisive political profile in his native state. He knew it, too. “Well, there is no joy in Mudville tonight. The mighty ultraliberal establishment, and the liberal politicians and editors and commentators and columnists have struck out again,” he said in 1990 after winning his fourth term. He won the 1972 election after switching parties, and defeated then-Gov. Jim Hunt in an epic battle in 1984 in what was then the costliest Senate race on record.

He defeated black former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996 in racially tinged campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumbling up a job application, these words underneath: “You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority.”

Helms also played a role in national GOP politics - supporting Ronald Reagan in 1976 in a presidential primary challenge to then-President Ford. Reagan's candidacy was near collapse when it came time for the North Carolina primary. Helms was in charge of the effort, and Reagan won a startling upset that resurrected his challenge.

During the 1990s, Helms clashed frequently with Clinton, whom he deemed unqualified to be commander in chief. Even some Republicans cringed when Helms said Clinton was so unpopular he would need a bodyguard on North Carolina military bases. Helms said he hadn't meant it as a threat.

Asked to gauge Clinton's performance overall, Helms said in 1995: “He's a nice guy. He's very pleasant. But ... (as) Ronald Reagan used to say about another politician, ‘Deep down, he's shallow.”'

Helms went out of his way to establish good relations with Madeleine Albright, Clinton's second secretary of state. But that didn't stop him from single-handedly blocking Clinton's appointment of William Weld - a Republican - as ambassador to Mexico.

Helms clashed with other Republicans over the years, including fellow Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana in 1987, after Democrats had won a Senate majority. Helms had promised in his 1984 campaign not to take the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, but he invoked seniority over Lugar to claim the seat as the panel's ranking Republican.

He was unafraid of inconveniencing his fellow senators - sometimes all of them at once. “I did not come to Washington to win a popularity contest,” he once said while holding the Senate in session with a filibuster that delayed the beginning of a Christmas break. And he once objected to a request by phoning in his dissent from home, where he was watching Senate proceedings on television.

Helms was born in Monroe, NC on 10/18/21. He attended Wake Forest College in 1941 but never graduated and was in the Navy during World War II. He took an active role in North Carolina politics early on, working to elect a segregationist candidate, Willis Smith, to the Senate in 1950. He worked as Smith's top staff aide for a time, then returned to Raleigh as executive director of the state bankers association.

Helms became a member of the Raleigh city council in 1957 and got his first public platform for espousing his conservative views when he became a television editorialist for WRAL in Raleigh in 1960. He also wrote a column that at one time was carried in 200 newspapers. Helms also was city editor at The Raleigh Times.

Helms and his wife, Dorothy, had two daughters and a son. They adopted the boy in 1962 after the child, 9 years old and suffering from cerebral palsy, said in a newspaper article that he wanted parents.

Abracadaver, BairBones, Cape Cadaver, Carrion Luggage, Christopher Reeve's Dancecard, Dead Betters, Dead Can Dance, Forget My Walker, Get My Bodybag!, Made It Ma! Top Of the World! and What's a TSCU? try to segregate themselves from the pack with 5 points each on the longtime NC Senator.

Mike Souchak, a professional golfer who set a PGA Tour record for lowest 72-hole score in 1955 that stood for 46 years, died Thursday 07/10/08 in the Clearwater, FL area. He was 81. The cause was complications of a heart attack, the PGA Tour said.

Mr. Souchak, at 5 feet 11 inches and 215 pounds, was a long hitter with a muscular physique. In addition to having been captain of the golf team at Duke University, he had been an end and kicker on the Blue Devils' football team.

Mr. Souchak, a native of Berwick, PA won 15 PGA Tour events, his last victory coming at the 1964 Memphis Open. He had 11 Top 10 finishes in major championships, among them third-place finishes in the US Open in 1959 and 1960. He played on Ryder Cup teams in 1959 and 1961.

But Mr. Souchak was best remembered for his score at the Texas Open in February 1955, which was played at Brackenridge Park, a municipal course in San Antonio. He opened with a 60, tying the tour's previous low round, and went on to shoot a 27-under-par 257, besting the previous low score for a 72-hole event by two shots. His 65 in the final round came in muddy conditions and near-freezing temperatures. It was his first tour victory. His prize money: $2,200.

Mr. Souchak's round of 60 stood as a record-tying mark until 1977, when Al Geiberger had a round of 59 at the Danny Thomas-Memphis Golf Classic. Mr. Souchak's 72-hole record of 257 endured until 2001, when Mark Calcavecchia shot 256 at the Phoenix Open.

Mr. Souchak played on the Senior Tour, now called the Champions Tour, from 1980 to 1990, and he was a founder and owner of Golf Car Systems, a golf cart maintenance company based in Clearwater.

Asked about his record, Mr. Souchak said in an interview with pgatour.com in 2007 that he was surprised that it had stood as long as it did, given the improvements in golf courses, equipment, and golf balls - "especially the golf ball."

"I just think that the players are going to keep going lower and lower," he said. Players today, he said, "are more athletic than we were."

He added: "I came out of a football background; I was a little more athletic than most. There were only two or three guys at that time that played anything other than golf. The last thing in anyone's mind was to go and lift weights or get on a bicycle. To get in shape, we ran to the bar after we played."

Inverse Genesis sinks a tough one worth 20 points on the PGA pro.

Dr. Michael DeBakey, the world-famous cardiovascular surgeon who pioneered such now-common procedures as bypass surgery and invented a host of devices to help heart patients, died Friday night 07/11/08 at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX. He was 99. DeBakey died from "natural causes", according to a written statement issued early Saturday by spokesmen for Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital. DeBakey underwent surgery in February 2006 for a damaged aorta - a procedure he had developed.

DeBakey counted world leaders among his patients and helped turn Baylor College of Medicine in Houston from a provincial school into one of the nation's great medical institutions.

While still in medical school in 1932, he invented the roller pump, which became the major component of the heart-lung machine, beginning the era of open-heart surgery. The machine takes over the function of the heart and lungs during surgery.

It was only a start of a lifetime of innovation. The surgical procedures that DeBakey developed once were the wonders of the medical world. Today, they are commonplace procedures in most hospitals. He also was a pioneer in the effort to develop artificial hearts and heart pumps to assist patients waiting for transplants, and helped create more than 70 surgical instruments.

DeBakey was the first to perform replacement of arterial aneurysms and obstructive lesions in the mid-1950s. He later developed bypass pumps and connections to replace excised segments of diseased arteries.

A tireless worker and a stern taskmaster, DeBakey literally had scores of patients under his care at any one time, helping to establish his name as a leading cardiovascular surgeon. By 1992, he had performed more than 50,000 surgeries. "Man was born to work hard," he said.

His patients ranged from penniless peasants from the Third World to such famous figures as the Duke of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, Turkish President Turgut Ozal, Nicaraguan Leader Violetta Chamorro and Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. But he said celebrities don't get special treatment on the operating table: "Once you incise the skin, you find that they are all very similar." He made headlines again in 1996 when he flew to Moscow to help examine ailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin and served as a consultant when he underwent surgery.

DeBakey served as chairman of the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke during Johnson's administration and helped establish the National Library of Medicine. He was author of more than 1,000 medical reports, papers, chapters and books on surgery, medicine and related topics.

DeBakey also trained hundreds of cardiovascular surgeons who now are practicing throughout the world. Among them was famed heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley, who later became DeBakey's chief rival in the Texas Medical Center. Baylor University College of Medicine was a fledgling medical school when DeBakey joined it in 1948, five years after it moved from Dallas to Houston. The Waco-based university later cut its ties to the school, but DeBakey, as the medical school's president and later chancellor, had helped to establish its own identity.

In 1953, DeBakey performed the first Dacron graft to replace part of an occluded artery. In the 1960s, he began coronary arterial bypasses.

In 1962, DeBakey received a $2.5 million grant to work on an artificial heart that could be implanted without being linked to an exterior console. In 1966, he was the first to successfully use a partial artificial heart - a left ventricular bypass pump.

It was the first implantation of a complete artificial heart by Cooley in 1969 that led to the famous feud between the two surgeons that lasted until the two publicly made amends in 2007. The patient, Haskell Karp, 47, lived on the artificial heart for nearly five days, then received a heart transplant, but died 36 hours later.

Cooley was censured by the medical school and the National Heart Institute for using the experimental device, and he and DeBakey traded accusations about their research. Cooley, who contended Karp was so ill he had no choice but to operate, left Baylor and established the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in the Texas Medical Center.

Meanwhile, the effort to save lives through heart transplants was stalled. Dr. Christiaan Bernard in South Africa had performed the first human heart transplant in history in late 1967. In the United States, DeBakey and Cooley were among those who began performing the transplants, but death rates were high because the recipients' bodies rejected the new organs. The advent of a new anti-rejection drug, cyclosporine, gave new impetus to organ transplants in the 1980s. In 1984, DeBakey performed his first heart transplant in 14 years.

His work as an inventor continued. In the late 1990s, DeBakey brought out a ventricular assist device touted as one-tenth the size of current heart pumps that helped ease suffering for patients waiting for heart transplants.

In the late 1990s, he took an active role in creating the Michael E. DeBakey Heart Institute at Hays Medical Center in Hays, Kan.

DeBakey was born 09/07/08, in Lake Charles, LA, the son of Lebanese immigrants. He got interested in medicine while listening to physicians chat at his father's pharmacy. "I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. I just didn't know what kind," DeBakey once said.

He received his bachelor's and medical degrees from Tulane University in New Orleans.

He recalled in 1999 that the time he finished medical school in 1932, "there was virtually nothing you could do for heart disease. If a patient came in with a heart attack, it was up to God."

Early in his career, DeBakey invented a new blood transfusion needle, a new suture scissors and a new colostomy clamp. He began teaching at Tulane in 1937.

During World War II, DeBakey worked in Europe as director of the surgeon general's surgical consultants division, helping develop mobile army surgical hospitals (MASH units) and specialized treatment centers for returning veterans.

He returned to Tulane after the war and joined Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston in 1948.

DeBakey's first wife, Diana Cooper DeBakey, died of a heart attack in 1972. Three years later, DeBakey married a German film actress, Katrin Fehlhaber.

Auditioning For the Choir Invisible, BairBones, BLOODY MARY, Dead Martha, Death Be Not Proud, God's Country Death Duo, Hannibal Lechter's Sunday Brunch, Otis' Cirrhosis from Rafe Hollister's Still, Playin for Bonz, Satan's Waitin', Spectral Evidence, Team Dirt, The Morgue the Merrier, The Ex Files and TO DIE FOR pick up the minimum 5 points for the heart surgeon.

Tony Snow, the former television and radio talk-show host who became President Bush's chief spokesman and redefined the role of White House press secretary with his lively banter with reporters, died early Saturday morning 07/12/08 after losing a battle with cancer. He was 53. Mr. Snow was first diagnosed with colon cancer and treated in 2005, a year before joining the White House staff. But he discovered it had returned after an operation in March 2007 to remove what doctors thought was a benign growth in his lower abdomen. The cancer had spread to his liver, forcing Mr. Snow off the podium for treatment.

Mr. Snow vowed to fight the disease and return to the briefing room but announced six months later that he was leaving his $168,000 job because he needed to recoup the income he lost when he left his job as a radio and television host. He later joined CNN as a commentator.

In a statement the White House issued yesterday morning, President Bush said: "Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of our dear friend, Tony Snow. . . . Tony was one of our nation's finest writers and commentators.

"He earned a loyal following with incisive radio and television broadcasts. He was a gifted speechwriter who served in my father's administration. And I was thrilled when he agreed to return to the White House to serve as my press secretary. It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day. He brought wit, grace and a great love of country to his work.

"All of us here at the White House will miss Tony, as will the millions of Americans he inspired with his brave struggle against cancer."

In his brief tenure as the president's public advocate, Mr. Snow became perhaps the best-known face of the Bush administration after the president, vice president, and secretary of state. Parlaying skills honed during years at Fox News, Mr. Snow offered a daily televised defense of the embattled president that was robust and at times even combative while still repairing strained relations with a press corps frustrated by years of rote talking points. He was lively and entertaining, he could be disarmingly candid when ducking a question, and he did not hesitate to retreat when it became clear he had gone too far. He could tell reporters to "zip it" one minute while defusing tension the next by admitting that he knew so little on a topic that he was "not going to fake it." He enjoyed the give-and-take of a tough briefing, but his smile, upbeat energy, and glib repartee seemed to take the edge off sometimes rough rhetoric on behalf of an unpopular leader and unpopular policies.

When Bob Woodward of The Washington Post disclosed internal White House maneuvering to push out then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Snow tried to dismiss the account with a memorable putdown. "The book is sort of like cotton candy: It kind of melts on contact," he said.

When a flamboyant radio reporter demanded to know whether Mr. Snow was going to evade a typically offbeat question, Mr. Snow chuckled. "No," he said, "I'm going to laugh at it."

Cancer, Mr. Snow later said, was "the best thing that ever happened to me" because it brought him closer to his wife, Jill, and their three school-age children and made him appreciate what was really important in life.

He became an evangelist for a positive attitude and not letting cancer take over one's life. He constantly wore a yellow LiveStrong wristband popularized by Lance Armstrong, and choked up at his first televised White House briefing when discussing his experiences, an emotional display he later jokingly called his "Ed Muskie moment."

21 teams spin 13 points (5 + Under 55) into their totals for the press sec., while Auditioning For the Choir Invisible, Otis' Cirrhosis from Rafe Hollister's Still and US Signal Corpse pick up 11 points each (3 + Under 55) for the Taxi Squad hit.

Bobby Murcer succeeded Mickey Mantle, played in pinstripes with Don Mattingly and watched proudly from the broadcast booth when the New York Yankees returned to power. A cherished link from former Yankees greats to the club's current stars, Murcer died Saturday 07/12/08 due to complications from a malignant brain tumor. He was 62. In his final moments, Murcer was surrounded by family at Mercy Hospital in his hometown of Oklahoma City.

A five-time All-Star outfielder, he spent nearly four decades with New York as a player, executive and announcer. ''Bobby Murcer was a born Yankee, a great guy, very well-liked and a true friend of mine,'' owner George Steinbrenner said. ''I extend my deepest sympathies to his wife Kay, their children and grandchildren. I will really miss the guy.''

Murcer was diagnosed with a brain tumor on Christmas Eve 2006 after having headaches. He had surgery that week in Houston and doctors later discovered the tumor was malignant. Determined to be around his beloved Yankees, Murcer returned to the broadcast booth last year and briefly this season.

The only person to play with Mantle and Mattingly, the popular Murcer hit .277 with 252 home runs and 1,043 RBIs in 17 seasons with the Yankees, San Francisco and the Chicago Cubs. He made the All-Star team in both leagues and won a Gold Glove.

''All of Major League Baseball is saddened today by the passing of Bobby Murcer, particularly on the eve of this historic All-Star game at Yankee Stadium, a place he called home for so many years,'' commissioner Bud Selig said. ''Bobby was a gentleman, a great ambassador for baseball, and a true leader both on and off the field. He was a man of great heart and compassion.''

Always a fan favorite in New York and known for his folksy manner as a broadcaster, Murcer won three Emmy Awards for live sports coverage. His most dramatic words came during his time as a player on one of the saddest days in Yankees history. Murcer delivered one of the eulogies in Ohio after captain Thurman Munson was killed in a plane crash in August 1979. The team flew home after the funeral and, that night, Murcer hit a three-run homer and then a two-run single in the bottom of the ninth to beat Baltimore 5-4. A tearful Murcer fell into the arms of teammate Lou Piniella after the game and gave his bat to Munson's wife. ''There is no way to explain what happened,'' Murcer said. ''We used every ounce of strength to go out and play that game. We won it for Thurman.''

The Yankees learned of Murcer's death Saturday after a 9-4 victory in Toronto. Visibly upset, players such as Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte spoke softly about how much Murcer meant to them.

Touted by many in New York as the next Mantle - they were both from Oklahoma, played shortstop and came with strokes fit for Yankee Stadium's short right-field porch - Murcer made his major league debut as a 19-year-old player in 1965.

After serving in the U.S. Army during the 1967-68 seasons, Murcer homered on opening day in front of President Nixon in 1969 at Washington to launch a career as a full-time player. Murcer moved from shortstop to third base to begin that year, but soon was in center field, Mantle's old spot. Murcer also took over Mantle's locker.

Murcer spent most of his career in pinstripes. He was traded to San Francisco for Bobby Bonds after the 1974 season and was with the Chicago Cubs when the Yankees won the World Series in 1977 and 1978.

He came back to the Yankees during the 1979 season. He had a pinch-hit grand slam in the 1981 opener and was a part-time player when he reached the World Series for the only time later that year, with New York losing to the Dodgers.

During his career, Murcer had a three-homer game, hit for the cycle and once homered in four straight at-bats.

Smart at the plate, he beat out Willie Mays in 1971 to lead the majors in on-base percentage. The next year, Murcer set career highs with 33 homers and 96 RBIs, and led the AL in total bases and runs. He finished with more career walks (862) than strikeouts (841).

Murcer made the All-Star team for five straight seasons, starting in 1971.

Murcer retired in June 1983 and moved into the broadcast booth that season, working as a color analyst on radio. He served one year as assistant general manager of the Yankees, returned as an announcer in 1989 and stayed in the booth as New York won four World Series titles from 1996-2000.

Murcer also served as chairman of BAT, the Baseball Assistance Team charity that provides financial help and other support to players in need.

15 teams drive in 9 points (5 + Under 65) for the Yankee player/executive/announcer. Dead Martha had him on the bench and only gets 7 points (3 + Under 65).

Norway has lost another of its legendary actors. Henki Kolstad's family reported that the 93-year-old actor died at an Oslo hospital Monday morning 07/14/08. Kolstad, best known for his theater and cabaret work and roles as the star of productions aimed at children, died at Oslo's Diakonhjemmet hospital.

"There wasn’t any acute cause of death," said Morten Kolstad, noting that Henki Kolstad was admitted to hospital just two days ago. "He just passed away, quietly and peacefully, around 9am."

Kolstad and his wife Else had celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on 07/08 at a family estate in Holmsbu. "They were sweethearts for 76 years and married for 70, and not many people can claim that," said Morten Kolstad.

The actor made his theatrical debut at the age of 13 on the stage of Norway's National Theater in 1928, and launched his movie career just two years later. Kolstad played roles as both a serious actor and a comedian, and was a longtime fixture on the premiere scene in Oslo. He was as lauded for his interpretations of Ibsen roles, as he was for spoofs and wild theatrics.

One of his best-known roles was as the shoemaker Jens Petrus Andersen in the holiday show "Christmas in Shoemaker Street." (Jule i Skomakergata). He was widely regarded as being among Norway's best and most versatile actors.

Kolstad's death follows that of another well-known actor, Harald Heide-Steen Jr, earlier this month.

The Famous Final Scene goes transatlantic for their latest hit, a 20-point solo on the Norwegian movie star.

Jo Stafford, the honey-voiced band singer who starred in radio and television and sold more than 25 million records with her ballads and folks songs, has died. She was 90. Stafford died of congestive heart failure on 07/16/08 at her Century City home. She had been in declining health since October.

Stafford had 26 charted singles and nearly a dozen top 10 hits, her son said. She won a Grammy for her humor.

Stafford’s records of “I’ll Walk Alone”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You” and other sentimental songs struck the hearts of servicemen far from home in both World War II and the Korean War. They awarded her the title of “GI Jo”.

In 1939, she was working with a group of male singers called the Pied Pipers. The group was invited to join the Tommy Dorsey band, a big attraction in the swing era. Soon the Pied Pipers were singing in major hotels and ballrooms and on radio.

A year later, 24-year-old Frank Sinatra joined Dorsey after a brief stint with Harry James, and he and the Pied Pipers melded ideally. Their languorous “I’ll Never Smile Again” became the No. 1 hit for 12 weeks and sold 2 million copies. A half-century later, Sinatra remarked about Stafford, “It was a joy to sit on the bandstand and listen to her.”

Dorsey gave Stafford her first solo, “Little Man with a Candy Cigar” and it became a hit record. One night in 1944 in Portland, OR the temperamental Dorsey got into an argument with one of the Pied Pipers and fired the group.

The Pied Pipers signed with the fledgling Capitol Records, but Stafford left the group to join Johnny Mercer, one of the Capitol founders. Mercer guided her new career with such hits as “Candy”, “Serenade of the Bells” and “That’s for Me”. In demand for personal appearances, she accepted a date at New York’s Club Martinique. A shy person, she never played a nightclub again.

“I’m basically a singer, period,” she said in a 1996 interview,” and I think I’m really lousy up in front of an audience - it’s just not me.”

She was a “reluctant star,” her son said. “She loved making records and really didn’t crave the attention of personal appearances.”

At Capitol, Stafford, who had been married to Pied Piper John Huddleston from 1941 to 1943, became reacquainted with Paul Weston, who had been an arranger for Dorsey. They married in 1952, and he acted as her arranger and conductor for the rest of her career. They had two children, Tim and Amy, and four grandchildren.

Despite her shyness, Stafford appeared before studio audiences in radio and television during the 1940s and 1950s. She alternated with Perry Como on a nightly 15-minute radio show in 1944, guest starred on many TV variety shows and had her own series, “The Jo Stafford Show” in 1955-56.

She recorded more than 800 songs during a versatile career that included ballads, folk, Scottish, country and novelty.

She even tried comedy. She and Weston recorded an album of numbers on which she sang painfully off-key and he played miserable piano. They were billed as Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, but their identity was soon discovered.

A second album won them a Grammy in 1960 for best comedy album.

Jo Elizabeth Stafford was born 11/12/17, in Coalinga, CA where her Tennessee father had come to work in the oil fields. When a new field was discovered in Long Beach, he moved his wife and four daughters south. Young Jo studied classical music for more than three years and was cast in a high school production of “Roberta”. But the 1933 Long Beach earthquake destroyed the school, and she joined her two older sisters singing pop songs on radio as the Stafford Sisters. The Staffords sang background music at film studios - where Jo met the Pied Pipers.

Stafford made her last recording in 1970 although her songs continue to be used in movie soundtracks.

Decay NY, Spectral Evidence and The Kevorkian Cocktailers earn applause for their 16-point, 3-way hit on the versatile singer.

Helen Lewis Brockman, 105, died Tuesday 07/22/08.

Ms. Brockman was a former New York fashion designer and retired Kansas State University professor.

Ms. Brockman's 1965 book, "The Theory of Fashion Design", was the definitive text in the field. In 1968, at age 66, she finished her ninth year of teaching at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. She was recruited to K-State by Doretta Hoffman, then dean of the College of Home Economics and an editor of Ms. Brockman's book. Ms. Brockman taught in the Department of Clothing and Textiles until 1974.

At K-State, she inherited a course on historic costume design and transformed it into her Evolution of Culture course. It introduced dozens of K-State students to culture, fashion and life far beyond Kansas. Ms. Brockman also devoted years of research on a pattern system for women's fashion, and K-State patented her tool for the process, the Shoulder-Slope Protractor and Pattern Sizer.

While on the faculty, she negotiated with the KSU Foundation to co-purchase her home, adjacent to campus, as a university guest house. With her as host, dozens of visiting faculty and scholars took advantage of the accommodations and the Brockman hospitality.

She was born on 09/24/1902 to parents Levi and Ida Mae (Ashworth) Lewis, in the village of Palo, IA.

Before World War I, she commuted by train to high school in nearby Cedar Rapids and she played on the county-champion girls' basketball team. After preparatory courses at Cedar Rapids' Coe College in 1921, she taught third grade in nearby Shellsburg.

She then studied classical languages at the University of Iowa, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1926. The week before her graduation, she married Dale Brockman, a graduate in electrical engineering and hydraulics. After Dale was hired by General Electric, the couple drove one of their wedding gifts, a used Model A Touring Car, from Iowa to Dale's new job in Schenectady, NY. She briefly worked the GE assembly line, swore off driving after a near accident, and taught elementary and junior-high students.

In 1933, at the height of the Depression, she and Dale left their jobs to pursue careers in New York City - she as a fashion designer, and he as a commercial photographer. She studied at the Traphagen School of Fashion Design and eventually established herself at the fashion house Rolland Freres. For her first midriff dress design - which she invented in 1937 - Ms. Brockman used one-of-a-kind material woven in Guatemala. Additional Brockman designs were featured in New York Times advertisements for Saks Fifth Avenue.

Between 1936 and 1942, she was designer of choice for singer Margaret Speaks, of "The Firestone Hour" national radio program. During that time, emotional problems prompted Brockman to complete nearly 400 hours of psychoanalysis, which she credited with saving her life.

A year after Pearl Harbor, her husband was appointed director of the Army's pictorial service in London. Helen, back in New York during World War II, first worked on an air-raid precautions manual before taking a job assisting Bell Labs engineers as they developed a top-secret weapon - radar. During the war, Helen received a Dear John letter from her husband, who divorced her and married his London secretary.

Ms. Brockman's experience at organizing and filing led to an additional assignment at Bell Labs and then at the Utica (N.Y.) Mutual Insurance Co. She returned to New York City in 1958 to teach at the Fashion Institute until 1967. She joined the K-State faculty in Jan. 1968.

During her years at Brockman House, from 1974-2007, she entertained guests, worked on her pattern system, wrote a cookbook and a computer-software manual, traveled abroad, developed her original approach to astrology, and channeled her philosophy through a series of verses.

At age 98, the Kansas Department of Human Resources honored her as one of the state's oldest workers. Her abridged autobiography, "Both Sides of Nice", and her unabridged biography, "My 20th Century", were published in 2005. University parties celebrated her 100th and 103rd birthdays.

Century Mark trolls the convalescent homes and pulls in another 20-pointer.

Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV's "The Golden Girls", has died. She was 84. Ms. Getty, who suffered from advanced dementia, died at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday 07/22/08 at her Hollywood Boulevard home.

"Estelle always wanted to be an actress, and she achieved that goal beyond her dreams," former "Golden Girls" co-star Rue McClanahan said. "Don't feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia."

"The Golden Girls," featuring four female retirees sharing a house in Miami, grew out of NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's belief that television was ignoring its older viewers. Three of its stars had already appeared in previous series: Bea Arthur in "Maude," Betty White in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and Ms. McClanahan in "Mama's Family." The last character to be cast was Sophia Petrillo, the feisty 80-something mother of Ms. Arthur's character. "Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her," Ms. Arthur said in a statement.

"The Golden Girls" culminated a long struggle for success during which Ms. Getty worked low-paying office jobs to help support her family while she tried to make it as a stage actress. "I knew I could be seduced by success in another field, so I'd say, "Don't promote me, please,'" she recalled.

She also appeared in small parts in a handful of films and TV movies during that time, including "Tootsie", "Deadly Force" and "Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story". After her success in "The Golden Girls," other roles came her way. She played Cher's mother in "Mask," Sylvester Stallone's in "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot" and Barry Manilow's in the TV film "Copacabana". Other credits included "Mannequin" and "Stuart Little" (as the voice of Grandma Estelle).

"The Golden Girls", which ran from 1985 to 1992, was an immediate hit, and Sophia, who began as a minor character, soon evolved into a major one.

Audiences particularly loved the verbal zingers Ms. Getty would hurl at the other three. When Ms. McClanahan's libidinous character Blanche once complained that her life was an open book, Sophia shot back, "Your life's an open blouse."

Born Estelle Scher to Polish immigrants in New York, Ms. Getty fell in love with theater when she saw a vaudeville show at age 4. She married New York businessman Arthur Gettleman (the source of her stage name) in 1947, and they had two sons, Carl and Barry. The marriage prevailed despite her long absences on the road and in "The Golden Girls".

Ms. Getty was evasive about her height, acknowledging only that she was "under 5 feet and under 100 pounds." Ms. McClanahan said her nickname for Ms. Getty was "Slats". "Because she was so short, itty-bitty," she said.

In addition to her son Carl, Ms. Getty is survived by son Barry Gettleman, of Miami; a brother, David Scher of London; and a sister, Rosilyn Howard of Las Vegas.

19 teams earn a small 5 points on the diminutive actress.

Frank "The German" Schweihs, reputedly one of Chicago's most feared mob enforcers, has died while awaiting trial on charges he took part in a conspiracy that included numerous organized crime murders. He was 78. Schweihs, who had cancer, died Wednesday night 07/23/08 after he was taken from the federal government's Metropolitan Correctional Center to Thorek Memorial Hospital, authorities said. He had been in federal custody for more than two years.

Prosecutors said Schweihs was responsible for killing two people: a Phoenix man who mobsters deemed a potential federal witness and a suburban Chicago businessman who had evidence that might have sent another mobster to prison.

Star witness Nicholas Calabrese, brother of one of the defendants, testified Schweihs came up with the idea of using an Uzi submachine gun to murder Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, the Chicago mob's longtime man in Las Vegas.

Spilotro was the inspiration for the Joe Pesci character in the movie "Casino."

Calabrese said the Schweihs plan called for gunning down Spilotro, his brother Michael and defense attorney Oscar Goodman. The plan fell through.

Federal law enforcement officials said Schweihs specialized in beatings and murders, and they had hoped to put him in prison for life. His trial was scheduled to begin on Oct. 28.

Prosecutors had hoped to try Schweihs along with five others in a landmark mob conspiracy trial last fall, but he was deemed too ill to take part.

AA88 had a hunch that the hired gun would soon be “sleepin’ with the fishes” and picks up a 20-point solo shot.

Randy Pausch, a terminally ill professor whose earnest farewell lecture at Carnegie Mellon University became an Internet phenomenon and best-selling book that turned him into a symbol for living and dying well, died 07/25/08. He was 47. Pausch, who was a computer science professor and virtual-reality pioneer, died at his home in Chesapeake, VA of complications from pancreatic cancer.

When Pausch agreed to give a theoretical "last lecture," he was participating in a long-standing academic tradition. Except a month before giving the speech, the 46-year-old Pausch received the diagnosis that would heighten the poignancy of his address.

Originally delivered last September to about 400 students and colleagues, his message about how to make the most of life has been viewed by millions on the Internet. Pausch gave an abbreviated version of it on "Oprah" and expanded it into a best-selling book, "The Last Lecture" released in April.

Yet Pausch insisted that both the spoken and written words were designed for an audience of three - his children, then 5, 2 and 1. "I was trying to put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on the beach for my children," Pausch wrote in his book. Unwilling to take time from his family to pen the book, Pausch hired a co-author, Jeffrey Zaslow, a Wall Street Journal writer who covered the lecture. During more than 50 bicycle rides crucial to his health, Pausch spoke to Zaslow via a cell-phone headset.

"The speech made him famous all over the world," Zaslow said. "It was almost a shared secret, a peek into him telling his colleagues and

students to go on and do great things. It touched so many people because it was authentic." Thousands of strangers e-mailed Pausch to say they found his upbeat lecture laced with humor inspiring and life-changing. They drank up the sentiments of a seemingly vibrant terminally ill man, a showman with Jerry Seinfeld-esque jokes and an earnest Jimmy Stewart delivery.

"If I don't seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you." He used that line after projecting CAT scans, complete with helpful arrows pointing to the tumors on his liver as he addressed "the elephant in the room" that made every word carry more weight.

As Pausch essentially said goodbye at Carnegie Mellon, he touched on just about everything but religion as he raucously relived how he achieved most of his childhood dreams. They included experiencing the weightlessness of zero gravity, authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia ("You can tell the nerds early on," he joked), becoming a Disney Imagineer and Captain Kirk from "Star Trek," and playing professional football.

Onstage, Pausch was a frenetic verbal billboard, delivering as many one-liners as he did phrases to live by.

When his virtual-reality students won a flight in a NASA training plane that briefly simulates weightlessness, Pausch was told faculty members were not allowed to fly. Finding a loophole, he applied to cover it as his team's hometown Web journalist - and got his 25 seconds of floating.

Since 1997, Pausch had been a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon. With a drama professor, he founded the university's Entertainment Technology Center, which teams students from the arts with those in technology to develop projects.

The popular professor had an "enormous and lasting impact" on Carnegie Mellon, Jared L. Cohon, the university's president, said in a statement. He pointed out that Pausch's "love of teaching, his sense of fun and his brilliance" came together in his innovative software program, Alice, which uses animated characters and storytelling to make it easier to learn to write computer code. During the lecture, Pausch joked that he had become just enough of an expert to fulfill one childhood ambition. World Book sought him out to write its

"virtual-reality" entry.

He didn't get to be Captain Kirk, but actor William Shatner, who played the starship commander, visited Pausch's lab at Carnegie Mellon. Pausch believed that watching Kirk had taught him leadership skills. After the speech, Pausch was given a walk-on role in the "Star Trek" film due out in 2009.

After his applications to become a Disney Imagineer were repeatedly rejected, Pausch said he talked his way into spending a sabbatical at the company's virtual-reality studio. He helped design such virtual-reality rides as Aladdin's Magic Carpet at Disney World.

Randolph Frederick Pausch was born 10/23/60, and raised in Columbia, MD. He liked to say he won the "parent lottery" with Fred and Virginia Pausch. His father sold insurance and his mother taught English. As a teenager, he was allowed to paint whatever he wanted on his bedroom walls. His artistry included a quadratic equation, elevator doors and the rocket ship that adorns the cover of his book.

After graduating from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in 1982, Pausch earned a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon in 1988. At the University of Virginia, he taught for nine years. When he got tenure, he thanked his research team by taking them to Disney World.

Although he didn't make it to the NFL, Pausch said playing high school football taught him to master fundamentals and accept criticism. A month

after his speech, the Pittsburgh Steelers invited him to a practice. Pausch caught passes, grinning ear to ear.

Last fall, he moved his family to southeastern Virginia so that Jai, his wife of eight years, could be near relatives. He tried to "build memories"

with his children, taking his oldest, Dylan, to ride a dolphin and introducing his son Logan to Mickey Mouse at Disney World. For his final Halloween, his family - including his youngest daughter Chloe - went as the animated characters the Incredibles, personifying his end-of-life mantra: We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

He used his newfound status to call attention to the need for cancer research, appearing before Congress in March and filming a fund-raising spot

for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

The same friends who called him "St. Randy" to poke fun at his media image were "not surprised that he's moving the world," Zaslow said. "They always thought he was special. Even his doctor said, 'If I picked one patient who would become famous and inspire the world, it would be him.'"

Weeks after his book was released, 2.3 million copies of it were in print. It is being published in 29 languages.

By the book's end, Pausch sounds like a parent imparting advice as fast as he can. The chapters grow shorter as he tries to fit it all in: Don't obsess

over what people think. No job is beneath you. Tell the truth.

15 teams got the message about the motivational speaker’s last lecture and earned 13 points each (5 + 8 for Under 55).

Norman Dello Joio, a composer who achieved wide popularity in the mid-20th century with a proliferation of essentially tonal, lyrical works, died on Thursday 07/24/08 at his home in East Hampton, NY. He was 95.

Mr. Dello Joio wrote dozens of pieces each for chorus, orchestra, solo voice, chamber groups and piano, as well as scores for television and three operas. Church music, the popular tunes of the jazz age and 19th-century Italian opera were all influences on his style, which could be both austere and colorful.

In defining his musical approach, Mr. Dello Joio cited the advice of a teacher, the composer Paul Hindemith, that he should never forget that his music was “lyrical by nature.”

That meant, “Don’t sacrifice necessarily to a system,” Mr. Dello Joio said on his Web site. “If it’s valid, and it’s good, put it down in your mind. Don’t say, ‘I have to do this because the system tells me to.’ No, that’s a mistake.” He said he took the advice to heart, and jokingly called himself an “arch-conservative.”

A strong spiritual bent emerged in his composing, and the story of Joan of Arc became a major theme. He wrote an opera called “The Triumph of Joan,” which he withdrew after a student performance in 1950 at Sarah Lawrence College, saying he was dissatisfied with the work.

In its wake came “The Trial at Rouen,” a new St. Joan opera written for television. He revised it for the New York City Opera, under the title “The Triumph of St. Joan,” and later derived a symphonic piece from the first version.

Mr. Dello Joio said he was first drawn to the subject by a children’s book on the lives of the saints, which he found in an organ loft at age 12.

“The timelessness and universality of Joan as a symbol lay in the eternal problem of the individual’s struggle to reconcile his personal beliefs with what he is expected to believe,” Mr. Dello Joio wrote in a 1956 article in The New York Times. “Daily, for ages, she has challenged men to have her courage.”

Mr. Dello Joio won awards throughout his career, gathering a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for his piece “Meditations on Ecclesiastes” for string orchestra and an Emmy in 1965 for a TV series, “The Louvre,” on NBC. He also wrote works for ballet; Martha Graham choreographed a number of them. The jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw commissioned a concerto from him.

Mr. Dello Joio taught variously at Sarah Lawrence, the Mannes College of Music and Boston University, where he was a dean of the School of Fine and Applied Arts. He also helped to establish a program at the Ford Foundation that placed young composers in residence in high schools.

Mr. Dello Joio was born on Jan. 24, 1913, and reared in New York City. His father was a vocal coach, a church organist and his first keyboard teacher. (He recalled that he used to see Metropolitan Opera stars arrive in Rolls-Royces at his house for coaching.)

At 12, he was substituting for his father at the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Manhattan. By 14, he was organist and choir director at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church on City Island. He also studied organ with his godfather, Pietro Yon, who was the organist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

He studied composition at the Juilliard School and with Hindemith at Yale and the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood.

Mr. Dello Joio’s first marriage, to Grayce Baumgold, ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Barbara Bolton, who survives him, along with his sons, Justin Dello Joio, a composer, and Norman Dello Joio, a champion equestrian jumper; his daughter, Victoria Dello Joio, a martial arts master teacher; two stepchildren, Ned Costello and Kathleen Bar-Tur; and three grandchildren.

Stiff As A Board And Bright Green and Swan Song perform a duet on the Classical composer, adding 18 points each to their respective gruppetti (Google it).

Lee Young, a jazz drummer who served as Nat King Cole's musical director for nearly a decade and broke barriers as the first African American hired for a staff position with a Hollywood studio orchestra, has died. He was 94. Young, brother of the great tenor saxophonist Lester Young, died 07/31/08 at his Los Angeles home of complications from colon cancer.

The multitalented Young, who played on scores of recordings, was also a successful bandleader and mentor of young talent, including alto saxophonist Art Pepper. Over the course of his career, Young played with a who's who of jazz greats, including Fats Waller, Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Ethel Waters and Billie Holiday.

While Young worked at MGM in the late 1930s, he taught Mickey Rooney how to play drums for the film "Strike Up the Band".

In July 1944, Young was on the drums at Norman Granz's historic first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert at Philharmonic Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The lively jam session was a fundraiser for the Mexican youths wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to San Quentin in the notorious Sleepy Lagoon case. Cole was on the bill that day, as were saxophonist Benny Carter, pianist Teddy Wilson and guitarist Les Paul. JATP, as the sessions came to be known, became the template for a nationwide concert tour of top jazz stars, often including Young and his brother.

In 1953 Young started an association with Cole, serving as the great singer's musical director and drummer until 1962. When he left Cole, he produced records for a range of entertainers, including saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders and the Edwin Hawkins Singers. He also worked as an executive for several record labels, including Liberty, Vee-Jay and ABC/Dunhill.

Young was born 03/07/14, in New Orleans, the youngest of three children in a musical family. His brother and sister, Irma, played the saxophone. Their father, Willis Handy Young, was a multifaceted musician who played trumpet, piano, violin, saxophone, bass and mellophone.

Willis Young started a band that played on a vaudeville circuit for African American performers. Lester, Irma and Lee would all eventually play in the band, which took the family around the country. They lived at various times in Minneapolis, Albuquerque and Phoenix. In Albuquerque, Ben Webster, then a budding saxophonist who would gain prominence as part of Ellington's orchestra, joined the band for a time.

About 1930 the family settled in Los Angeles, where Willis Young developed a reputation as a superb musical teacher and the precocious Lee found some work - while still in junior high school - as a singer at the Apex Club on Central Avenue. Through the 1930s, Lee Young played in a variety of bands, including those led by top-notch performers. He made his first recordings with Waller, the great pianist, when he was 23 and toured with Waters for a time in the late 1930s.

He formed his own band in the early 1940s, joined by his brother as co-leader in 1941. They became big around town, broadcasting two nights a week on KHJ-AM radio. After the group disbanded in 1943, Lee Young continued to lead small groups when the city had a vibrant jazz scene. He also turned to movie studios for additional work. While those gigs were lucrative, the racism of the time made employment irregular.

In 1946 he was about to work with Stan Kenton's otherwise all-white orchestra when he was given a multiyear contract as a staff musician at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. He was the first African American to integrate a studio orchestra but found the work unchallenging and left after two years.

Chitragupta's Roll Call gets a 5-point fill for a solo Taxi Squad hit on the Jazz drummer.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author whose books chronicled the horrors of dictator Josef Stalin's slave labor camps, has died of heart failure. He was 89. He died late Sunday 08/03/08 in Moscow.

Through unflinching accounts of the eight years he spent in the Soviet Gulag, Solzhenitsyn's novels and non-fiction works exposed the secret history of the vast prison system that enslaved millions. The accounts riveted his countrymen and earned him years of bitter exile, but international renown. And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

Beginning with the 1962 short novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", Solzhenitsyn (sohl-zheh-NEETS'-ihn) devoted himself to describing what he called the human "meat grinder" that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually.

His "Gulag Archipelago" trilogy of the 1970s shocked readers by describing the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe. But his account of that secret system of prison camps was also inspiring in its description of how one person - Solzhenitsyn himself - survived, physically and spiritually, in a penal system of soul-crushing hardship and injustice.

The West offered him shelter and accolades. But Solzhenitsyn's refusal to bend despite enormous pressure, perhaps, also gave him the courage to criticize Western culture for what he considered its weakness and decadence.

After a triumphant return from exile in the U.S. in 1994 that included a 56-day train trip across Russia to become reacquainted with his native land, Solzhenitsyn later expressed annoyance and disappointment that most Russians hadn't read his books.

During the 1990s, his stalwart nationalist views, his devout Orthodoxy, his disdain for capitalism and disgust with the tycoons who bought Russian industries and resources cheaply following the Soviet collapse, were unfashionable. He faded from public view. But under Vladimir Putin's 2000-2008 presidency, Solzhenitsyn's vision of Russia as a bastion of Orthodox Christianity, as a place with a unique culture and destiny, gained renewed prominence.

Putin now argues, as Solzhenitsyn did in a speech at Harvard University in 1978, that Russia has a separate civilization from the West, one that can't be reconciled either to Communism or western-style liberal democracy, but requires a system adapted to its history and traditions.

"Any ancient deeply rooted autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking," Solzhenitsyn said in the Harvard speech. "For one thousand years Russia has belonged to such a category."

Born 12/11/18, in Kislovodsk, Solzhenitsyn served as a front-line artillery captain in World War II, where, in the closing weeks of the war, he was arrested for writing what he called "certain disrespectful remarks" about Stalin in a letter to a friend, referring to him as "the man with the mustache." He served seven years in a labor camp in the barren steppe of Kazakhstan and three more years in internal exile in Central Asia.

That's where he began to write, memorizing much of his work so it wouldn't be lost if it were seized. His theme was the suffering and injustice of life in Stalin's gulag - a Soviet abbreviation for the slave labor camp system, which Solzhenitsyn made part of the lexicon.

He continued writing while working as a mathematics teacher in the provincial Russian city of Ryazan.

The first fruit of this labor was "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", the story of a carpenter struggling to survive in a Soviet labor camp, where he had been sent, like Solzhenitsyn, after service in the war.

The book was published in 1962 by order of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was eager to discredit the abuses of Stalin, his predecessor, and created a sensation in a country where unpleasant truths were spoken in whispers, if at all. Abroad, the book - which went through numerous revisions - was lauded not only for its bravery, but for its spare, unpretentious language.

After Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, Solzhenitsyn began facing KGB harassment, publication of his works was blocked and he was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union. But he was undeterred. "A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country," he wrote in "The First Circle", his next novel, a book about inmates in one of Stalin's "special camps" for scientists who were deemed politically unreliable but whose skills were essential. Solzhenitsyn, a graduate from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at Rostov University, was sent to one of these camps in 1946, soon after his arrest.

The novel "Cancer Ward", which appeared in 1967, was another fictional worked based on Solzhenitsyn's life. In this case, the subject was his cancer treatment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then part of Soviet Central Asia, during his years of internal exile from March 1953, the month of Stalin's death, until June 1956. In the book, cancer became a metaphor for the fatal sickness of the Soviet system. "A man sprouts a tumor and dies - how then can a country live that has sprouted camps and exile?"

He attacked the complicity of millions of Russians in the horrors of Stalin's reign.

"Suddenly all the professors and engineers turned out to be saboteurs - and they believed it? ... Or all of Lenin's old guard were vile renegades - and they believed it? Suddenly all their friends and acquaintances were enemies of the people — and they believed it?"

The Stalinist era, he wrote, quoting from a poem by Alexander Pushkin, forced Soviet citizens to choose one of three roles: tyrant, traitor, prisoner.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, an unusual move for the Swedish Academy, which generally makes awards late in an author's life after decades of work. The academy cited "the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature."

Soviet authorities barred the author from traveling to Stockholm to receive the award and official attacks were intensified in 1973 when the first book in the non-fiction "Gulag" trilogy appeared in Paris.

"During all the years until 1961," Solzhenitsyn wrote in an autobiography written for the Nobel Foundation, "not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared that this would become known."

The following year, he was arrested on a treason charge and expelled the next day to West Germany in handcuffs. His expulsion inspired worldwide condemnation of the regime of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Solzhenitsyn then made his homeland in America, settling in 1976 in the tiny town of Cavendish, VT with his wife and sons.

Living at a secluded hillside compound he rarely left, he called his 18 years there the most productive of his life. There he worked on what he considered to be his life's work, a multivolume saga of Russian history titled "The Red Wheel".

Although free from repression, Solzhenitsyn longed for his native land. Neither was he enchanted by Western democracy, with its emphasis on individual freedom.

To the dismay of his supporters, in his Harvard speech he rejected the West's faith "Western pluralistic democracy" as the model for all other nations. It was a mistake, he warned, for Western societies to regard the failure of the rest of the world to adopt the democratic model as a product of "wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension."

Crypt Kickers, Ghost of a Chance, In The Deathroom, Live and Let Die, Satan's Waitin' and US Signal Corpse all add 10 points to their camps while Laureate's Lament II and The Ex Files pick up 3 points for their Taxi Squad hits.

The world's tallest woman, Sandy Allen, passed away early Wednesday 08/13/08 in a nursing home in Shelbyville, IN. She was 53 and had been ill for several months. Allen, who was 7-foot-7 1/4, is listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest living woman.

Sandy Allen was a 6.5-pound baby, and her abnormal growth began soon after her birth in June 1955. By the age of 10 she stood 6-3 tall, and was 7-1 by 16 years old. A tumor on her pituitary gland caused her abnormal growth. The tumor was removed in 1977.

Sandy had a dream to break free of a world, that she felt she had outgrown. In her first letter to Guinness World Records in 1974 she wrote, "I would like to get to know someone that is approximately my height. It is needless to say my social life is practically nil and perhaps the publicity from your book may brighten my life," Guiness World Records reported.

The accolade did help to bring about a reversal of fortunes for the Indiana secretary. First, there was an offer from film director Federico Fellini to take a role in his film Casanova in 1975, and then her first date with a 7-foot Illinois man.

Poor circulation and weak leg muscles meant she was dependent on a wheelchair, and she had health struggles since June.

Life's a Bitch, Then You Die gets a growth spurt of 20 points for choosing a very large woman.

Jack A. Weil, founder of the Rockmount Ranch Wear company whose snap-buttoned Western shirts became popular with movie stars and rock icons, has died. He was 107. Weil died Wednesday 08/13/08 at home, said Steve Weil, his grandson, who is the current president of the business his grandfather started in downtown Denver in 1946.

Steve Weil said his grandfather was the first to design Western shirts with snap buttons and also created pockets with jagged, sawtooth-pattern flaps. The snaps are often topped with real or synthetic mother of pearl. "I learned fast you can't sell to cowboys; they have no money," the elder Weil said in a 2001 Associated Press interview. "You have to appeal to the cowboy in everyone and sell to them."

Weil's shirts have been worn in movies by Elvis Presley, Clark Gable (in his last film, "The Misfits") and Heath Ledger ("Brokeback Mountain.") Bob Dylan, John Fogerty and Eric Clapton also have sported the shirts. In a 2004 Associated Press story on the company, blues and rock veteran Al Kooper said he had ordered shirts from Rockmount that week. "One of the biggest impressions on me is Elvis Presley. He wore Rockmount shirts," Kooper said.

Rockmount designed shirts for Colorado's House delegation for the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month.

The price of a shirt has gone from about $2 in the 1940s to $60 and up today, mostly because the Weils kept manufacturing operations in the United States.

"I never wanted to be the richest man in the cemetery," he told his grandson.

Jack Weil remained chief executive officer of Rockmount and went to work daily until a few days before his death, his grandson said. He was believed to be the oldest CEO in the world.

Born in Evansville, IN in 1901, Weil learned apparel manufacturing while working at an overalls factory during World War I. He later was a salesman in Denver, and first got into the Western field by helping a friend sell cowboy hats.

Rockmount was a wholesale-only business for its first 55 years but opened a retail outlet after Denver lost many of its mainstay stores, his grandson said.

Better Off Dead and Century Mark cowboy up with 18 points each on the Western clothier.

Henri Cartan, a mathematician known for meticulous proofs and for inspiring a revival of mathematics in France after World War II, died in Paris on 08/13/08. He was 104. His death was confirmed by the American Mathematical Society.

In the 1930s, Dr. Cartan was a founding member of a group of French mathematicians who set out to rigorously write down the foundations of mathematics; the group published papers under the pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki. Many of France’s top mathematicians and scientists had died during World War I. Dr. Cartan said the Bourbaki group was the beginning of a mathematical renewal. Through sometimes argumentative collaboration, the Bourbaki group worked to establish the foundations for different areas of mathematics, an approach that was highly influential for decades.

“He’s a mathematician that contributed in two different ways to the subject,” said John Morgan, a professor of mathematics at Columbia University. “There was his own work, which was quite influential. But just as influential were the students that he had, which led to the generation of French mathematicians that, at its high point, were the best in the world.”

“He liked things to be perfect,” said Jean-Pierre Serre, an eminent mathematician who was one of Dr. Cartan’s graduate students.

Again, after World War II, Dr. Cartan, who stayed in Paris while many mathematicians left for other countries, inspired a revival of the study of math in France. He started a seminar series that ran from 1948 until 1964. Each year, a different topic was tackled in depth and detail.

“Nothing was left in the shadows,” recalled Luc Illusie of the University of Paris-Sud, in a tribute published in 2004 for Dr. Cartan’s 100th birthday. “There was no ‘black box’, ” he continued. “The necessary preliminaries and background were presented in detail. The proofs were not simply ‘sketched’ but presented completely. Cartan was concerned that one should understand, a legitimate concern that is no longer so widespread, it seems to me. Many times I saw him interrupt a lecture to ask the speaker to ‘light the way.’ ”

In his research, Dr. Cartan worked in several areas, but perhaps the most significantly in a field known as homological algebra, which applied the technique of algebra to topological spaces. A doughnut is intrinsically different in shape from a sphere because of the central hole; the algebraic calculations enable mathematicians to differentiate many different spaces.

Together with Samuel Eilenberg, Dr. Cartan wrote the fundamental textbook for the subject. Although it was published in 1956, Dr. Morgan said he still taught with it. Dr. Morgan recalled attending a gala in Paris in 1974 for Dr. Cartan’s 70th birthday. “He was the grand old man of French mathematics,” Dr. Morgan said. “There was no doubt about that. They deferred to him and treated him with enormous respect.”

Henri Cartan was born in 1904, the son of Élie Cartan, one of the most famous mathematicians of the early 20th century. He received a doctorate in mathematics from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Dr. Cartan taught at the University of Strasbourg from 1931 to 1940 and at the École Normale from 1940 to 1965. After World War II, Dr. Cartan helped French and German mathematicians re-establish academic connections even though the Germans had executed a younger brother of his, who was a member of the French resistance. Dr. Cartan later taught at the University of Paris-Sud at Orsay until he retired in 1975.

He received the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1960, one of the highest awards in the field.

Century Mark and Putnam's Tomahawk Chop collaborate for an 18-point hit on the mathematician that adds up in the end.

Leroy Sievers, a National Public Radio commentator who turned his battle with cancer into a popular and touching radio and online series, has died from his disease. He was 53. Sievers died Friday 08/15/08 at his home in Maryland, NPR announced Saturday in a statement. He was first diagnosed with colon cancer in 2001. In 2005, the disease returned as a brain tumor and lung cancer.

A report on his own chemotherapy treatments in February 2006 was broadcast on "Morning Edition" and prompted an enthusiastic response from the audience. It eventually became a regular series and feature on the network's Web site.

"For the past two years, Leroy shared his life with cancer on the air and online with passion, wit and a kind, brutal honesty that created a safe space for an open and candid dialogue about the disease," NPR Vice President for News Ellen Weiss said in a statement.

His cancer continued to spread during the past few years. After several surgeries, he recently decided to stop treatment.

Sievers worked as a journalist for more than 25 years, including 10 at CBS News and 14 years at ABC News Nightline, four of them as executive producer. He covered more than a dozen wars and was embedded with Ted Koppel to cover the Iraq war and produce "The Fallen", a tribute to soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Cancer was not in Leroy's plans. But he turned his battle with cancer into the most dramatic, the most moving and the most important story of his life," Koppel wrote on NPR's Web site.

Sievers' memorial page can be found on NPR: http://www.NPR.org/blogs/mycancer

Already Dead, Check, Please!, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Formaldehyde Enema, Goatsucker, In The Deathroom, Indiana Jones and the Coffin Of DOOM!!, Memoriam Montage, Morris the Cat's 9 (+21) Lives, The Ex Files, The Yips, Van Owens Body and Walking Toward the Light get the scoop on the journalist and dig up 13 points each (5 for 13-way hit, 8 for Under 55).

Jerry Wexler not only coined the phrase rhythm and blues, the legendary music producer was one of the key architects of the genre. He revolutionized popular music with seminal, superstar-making recordings of acts such as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and others.

But the genius of Wexler, who died Friday 08/15/08 at his Sarasota, FL home at 91, was not limited to just one style of music. The record producer died at home, where he was under hospice care, about 3:45 a.m. Friday of heart disease; the death was first confirmed by David Ritz, co-author of Wexler's 1993 memoir, "Rhythm and the Blues".

Over his decades-long career, he would create varied soundscapes that touched just about every kind of listener, from his work with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson to his masterful recording of Dusty Springfield to his work with pop and rock acts like George Michael and Dire Straits. He also helped build one of the most influential labels in pop, Atlantic Records, which was the home of Franklin, Charles, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. He was named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Wexler earned his reputation as a music industry giant while a partner at Atlantic Records with another legendary music figure, the late Ahmet Ertegun. Atlantic provided an outlet for the groundbreaking work of African-American performers in the 1950s and '60s.

Wexler helped boost the careers of both the "King of Soul", Charles, and the "Queen of Soul", Franklin. Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and Percy Sledge were among the other R&B greats who benefited from Wexler's deft recording touch. Among the standards produced by Wexler: Franklin's "Respect", a dazzling, feminist reworking of an Otis Redding song; Sledge's deep ballad "When A Man Loves A Woman" and Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour", with a horn vamp inspired by Wexler's admittedly rhythmless dancing.

He also produced Dusty Springfield's classic "Dusty in Memphis", which would become a benchmark of "blue-eyed" soul, as well as key recordings for the Memphis-based soul label Stax Records; Wexler created a partnership where Atlantic distributed Stax records and eventually took control of their master recordings.

In the studio, Wexler was a hands-on producer. Once, during a session with Charles, the tambourine player was off the beat. Wexler, in his award-winning autobiography, recalled grabbing the instrument and playing it himself.

"Who's that?" asked Charles.

"Me," Wexler told the blind singer.

"You got it, baby!" Charles said.

The son of Polish immigrants and a music buff since his teens, Wexler, a New York City native, landed a job writing for Billboard magazine in the late 1940s after serving in World War II and studying journalism at Kansas State University. He coined the term "rhythm and blues" for the magazine's black music charts; previously, they were listed under "race records".

While working at Billboard, Wexler befriended Ertegun - a life-altering friendship for both. Ertegun and a partner had started Atlantic, then a small R&B label in New York. In 1953, when Ertegun's partner left for a two-year military hitch, Wexler stepped in as the label's co-director.

He never left.

While Ertegun enjoyed the more bohemian aspects of the music business, Wexler was a working partner. Wexler produced 16 albums and numerous hit singles for Franklin, who switched to Atlantic in the mid-1960s and rediscovered her gospel roots after several unhappy years singing show tunes for Columbia. "When it came to the studio, you could say the two of us were joined at the hip," he once said.

Franklin noted that Wexler produced her first platinum album, the classic 1972 gospel recording "Amazing Grace."

"I think the things that we produced absolutely brought soul to the forefront as evidenced by my having the cover of Time magazine," she said Friday. "There had definitely been a musical revolution there, revolutionary change in music, and soul came into prominence."

In 1967, Wexler and Ertegun sold Atlantic to Warner Bros. for $17.5 million. Although they stayed on to run the company, the pair began moving in different directions.

Wexler began working with a collection of Southern musicians in the 1970s, including guitar genius Duane Allman, Dr. John, and Delaney & Bonnie. He also produced albums for Willie Nelson. In the 1980s, Wexler worked with Dire Straits, Carlos Santana and George Michael. In April 1988, Atlantic marked its 40th anniversary with an 11-hour concert at Madison Square Garden, with the stage shared by performers from Crosby, Stills & Nash to the Bee Gees to Ben E. King.

US Signal Corpse spins a big hit worth 20 points on the music executive.

Ronnie Drew, a founding member of the Irish folk group The Dubliners, died Saturday 08/16/08. He was 73. Drew passed away in Dublin after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Drew, born in Dublin in 1934, formed The Dubliners in 1962 with Luke Kelly, Ciaran Bourke and Barney McKenna. Their songs include "The Molly Maguires", "Dirty Old Town" and "Seven Drunken Nights". The Dubliners also recorded with The Pogues, and together they had a hit with "The Irish Rover." Drew also released a string of solo albums.

Earlier this year, a group of musicians - including Bono of U2, Christy Moore, The Pogues' Shane MacGowan, and Sinead O'Connor - released a song called "The Ballad of Ronnie Drew". All profits from the single went to the Irish Cancer Society. The first chorus, sung by Bono, celebrated Drew's gravelly voice: "Here's to the Ronnie, the voice we adore; Like coals from a coal bucket scraping the floor; Sing out his praises in music and malt; And if you're not Irish, that isn't your fault."

Irish President Mary McAleese called Drew a "champion of traditional Irish music. "With The Dubliners, he re-energized and refreshed our unique musical heritage," she said. "He brought great pleasure to the people of Ireland and yet more around the world. Ronnie will be greatly missed."

In a statement on U2's official web site, Bono said Drew created "music to inspire, to console. Ronnie has left his earthly tour for one of the heavens. They need him up there...it's a little too quiet and pious."

Drew's wife, Deirdre, died last year. He is survived by two children and five grandchildren.

Goatsucker sings a light refrain for the passing of a 20-pointer known for his incants as well as his decants.

The Zambian president, Levy Mwanawasa, died in France Tuesday 08/19/08 nearly two months after suffering a stroke during an African Union conference. He was 59. Doctors at the Percy military hospital near Paris had performed emergency surgery on Mwanawasa the previous day following a sharp deterioration in his condition. Though the operation was initially described as successful, Zambian state television broke the news of the death. "Fellow countrymen, with deep sorrow and grief, I would like to inform the people of Zambia that our president Dr Levy Patrick Mwanawasa died this morning at 1030 hours," said the vice-president, Rupiah Banda. "I also wish to inform the nation that national mourning starts today and will be for seven days."

Banda will take over as acting president until elections, expected to be held within 90 days.

A former lawyer, Mwanawasa was regarded as one of the Africa's most progressive leaders. His efforts to tackle corruption helped win Zambia widespread debt relief. Under his leadership, Zambia's economy grew at 5%, helped by the buoyant copper price, while inflation dropped to the lowest level in three decades. Mwanawasa freely admitted, however, that the benefits had not trickled down sufficiently to the poor.

Beyond Zambia, he became best known as a vocal - and rare - African critic of the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, leading to strained relations between the southern African neighbors.

Mwanawasa first rose to political prominence as a leader of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, which ended the single-party rule of Kenneth Kaunda in 1991. After a stint as vice-president during the Nineties, he was surprisingly chosen by the then-president Frederick Chiluba to be the ruling party candidate for the 2001 election. But soon after taking office Mwanawasa proved his independence by turning on Chiluba, who was put on trial for corruption. He won a second term in 2006.

His health had been a concern even before he became president. In 1991 he was hospitalized for three months following a serious car accident that left him with a permanent slur. The one positive of the accident, he joked, was that he lost his taste for alcohol.

He suffered a minor stroke in 2006, and sought treatment in the UK before declaring himself fit to stand for re-election. He was flown to France soon after collapsing at the African Union summit in Cairo on 06/29/08, and never returned home.

Monty Python's Dying Circus pick up 24 points (20 + Under 65) on the Zambian Prez. Wasn’t just a flesh wound, was it?

Dr. Thomas H. Weller, who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on the polio virus, died in his sleep Saturday 08/23/08 at his home in Needham, MA. He was 93.

Dr. Weller won the Nobel Prize along with two Children's Hospital Boston colleagues, John F. Enders and Frederick C. Robbins. In 1949, they discovered a way to grow the polio virus in safe tissue cultures, a discovery that led to the development of the Salk and Sabin vaccines against the disease. It also underlay the development of vaccines for other viral diseases such as measles and chicken pox and has proved to be a crucial aid to cancer research.

In a 2003 New York Times interview, Dr. George Miller, a Yale virologist, described the breakthrough by Dr. Weller and his colleagues as "one of the major discoveries in virology, cell biology, and molecular biology in the 20th century."

Some 600,000 Americans suffered from polio in the 20th century. At its height, in 1952, about 58,000 cases were reported. Polio's emotional impact was vastly disproportionate to the number of victims, however. The fact that it commonly struck children, could have such devastating effects (including death and paralysis), and its epidemiological unpredictability made it deeply feared.

Dr. Thomas Weller's work was not restricted to polio. He also isolated and for the first time grew the viruses that cause chicken pox and shingles, in 1955. In 1963, he and three other researchers discovered the virus that causes German measles.

He was also a notable figure in the world of tropical medicine. From 1953 to 1959, Dr. Weller was director of the Commission on Parasitic Diseases of the American Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. He headed the department of tropical public health at Harvard from 1954 to 1981. He was a past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and was awarded the organization's Walter Reed Medal in 1996.

At the time of his death, Dr. Weller was the Richard Pearson Strong professor of tropical medicine emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Thomas Huckle Weller was born in Ann Arbor, MI on 06/15/15. His parents were Carl Vernon Weller, who headed the pathology department at the University of Michigan Medical School, and Elsie (Huckle) Weller, a housewife.

A devoted birdwatcher, Dr. Weller showed an interest in science from an early age. He published his first scientific paper, on blue jays, when he was a college junior. He received bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Michigan and a medical degree at Harvard, in 1940. The year before, he started working in Enders's research laboratory.

Dr. Weller began his clinical training at Children's Hospital in Boston, but interrupted it to enlist in the Army Medical Corps. Stationed in Puerto Rico, he rose to the rank of major.

When he was an intern at Children's Hospital, Dr. Weller met Kathleen R. Fahey, who was working in a laboratory there. They married in 1945.

Two years later, Dr. Weller joined Enders in organizing the research division of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital. Robbins, a medical school classmate, joined Dr. Weller and Enders in 1948.

The following year, Dr. Weller and his colleagues grew the poliomyelitis virus for the first time outside human or monkey nerve cells. Using a combination of human embryonic skin and muscle tissue, they demonstrated that polio originates in the body outside the nervous system and that paralysis develops only when the disease has spread to the brain and spinal cells. It had been believed that the polio virus fed on nerve tissue, not muscle tissue.

Before this work by Dr. Weller and his colleagues, researchers had been restricted to studying the polio virus in eggs, mice, monkeys, and other animals. Their work greatly facilitated the study of the virus. Within a few years, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin developed their vaccines for the disease.

In 1954, the year Dr. Weller, Enders, and Robbins won the Nobel Prize, there were 28,000 cases of polio in the United States. Less than a decade later, that number was 121.

Dr. Weller's renown as a scientific researcher did not lead him to ignore more mundane concerns of medical practice. Addressing Harvard Medical School's 1963 commencement, he noted that medical education "tends to ignore the most practical challenge presented by man as a social entity." There's more to medicine, he declared, than "dollar investment in men and machines."

In 2004, he published his autobiography, "Growing Pathogens in Tissue Cultures: Fifty Years in Academic Tropical Medicine, Pediatrics, and Virology".

Crypt Kickers and Yersinia Pestis find the cure for low scores with 18 points on the imunologist. Laureate’s Lament is feeling a little sick.

Professor John Thoday FRS, who died Monday 08/25/08 just five days short of his 92nd birthday, was Professor and Head of the Department of Genetics at Emmanuel College from 1959 to 1983.

Thoday was committed to an experimental approach to genetics and he focused his research on the way in which individual species adapt and respond to their environment - a foundation for understanding almost all ecological and evolutionary processes. Professor Thoday was appointed at a time when the Genetics Department was in its infancy, and it was largely due to his efforts that the Department expanded, moved to its present location on the Downing Site, and established the study of genetics as one of the fundamental biological disciplines in Cambridge.

Professor Thoday was born on 08/30/16, the third son of botanists Professor David Thoday FRS and Mrs Mary Gladys Thoday. He graduated in Botany at the University of Wales in 1939 and then entered Trinity College, Cambridge as a research student. He started research in the Botany School at Cambridge in October 1939 with the first investigation into the effect of neutrons on chromosomes.

He joined the Royal Air Force as a photographic intelligence officer in April 1941. He served in the Middle East, Algiers and Italy and reached the rank of Squadron Leader. Demobilized in 1945, he joined the cancer research staff, Mount Vernon Hospital Middlesex. He discovered, with John Read, the role of oxygen in Radiobiology and showed that the radiotherapeutic effect of X-rays on tissue growth was largely due to chromosome breakage.

He was appointed Assistant Lecturer at the University of Sheffield in 1947, and taught genetics in the Botany and Zoology Departments.

In 1959 he accepted the offer of appointment to the Arthur Balfour Professorship of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. In 1961 he moved the department from a house in Storey's Way to the old Veterinary School site in Milton Road. He established a formal place for the department's teaching in part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos. Such a place had hitherto been deemed inappropriate though the department was established in 1912!

In 1965 he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society. In 1976, he moved the Genetics Department into the Downing site. From 1977 to 1981 he served on the General Board of the Faculties, and was Chairman of its Needs Committee.

He became a Professorial Fellow at Emmanuel College in 1959 and a Life Fellow in 1983. He played an active role in the social life in the College and is remembered, apart from anything else, as being an enthusiastic player of bowls - a game which has been played at Emmanuel since its foundation in 1584, to the College's own idiosyncratic rules.

He gave the college two chimeric trees which thrive in the gardens - chimeras arise at graft junctions as branches which show characteristics of both of the grafted 'parents'. They have a layer of cells of one species around a core of the other. One has a layer of medlar on a hawthorn core; the other a layer of creeping broom on a laburnum core.

Thoday has 128 publications in the field of genetics, according to his website.

Friends of the Devil educate the University of YBTL students in Smart Picks 101, splicing 20 points into their total score for the Cambridge professor.

Professional wrestler Walter Kowalski, known for his hated "Killer" wrestling persona, has died at the age of 81 in Everett, MA. Kowalski's wife, Theresa Ferrioli, was by the popular wrestler's side when he was taken off life support Saturday 08/31/08 after suffering a major heart attack.

Jamie Jamitkowski, who runs the Killer Kowalski's ProWrestling School in Massachusetts, said Kowalski was always more dedicated to teaching his skills to others than celebrating them in media appearances.

"Walter was one of the first guys to do wrestling training. Up to and until his last day at the school, we would have fans and students show up the days he was there," Jamitkowski said. "Walter would turn down paid appearances to appear around the country because he would say he had to work on Saturdays at the school."

He was born Edward Walter Spulnik on 10/13/26, but legally changed his name to Wladek Kowalski 37 years later. The son of Polish immigrants, he was raised in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He majored in electrical engineering at Assumption College and worked part-time at a Ford automotive plant in Detroit to help pay his way, but pro wrestling would become his ticket to fame and fortune.

During a 30-year ring career that spanned from 1947-77, Kowalski wrestled everyone from Gorgeous George to Lou Thesz to Bruno Sammartino. A giant of a man with an impressive physique and unbelievable endurance, Kowalski was a major attraction throughout the world.

A handsome matinee idol early in his career, Kowalski started out as Tarzan Kowalski, an obvious nod to his chiseled frame.

The more infamous nickname was established after a match in Montreal during the ‘50s when he climbed to the top rope and delivered his signature knee drop to fan favorite Yukon Eric. His size-16 boot accidentally dislodged his opponent’s cauliflowered ear.

As the story goes, Kowalski later visited Eric in the hospital, and the two burst into laughter at the absurdity. When it was later reported in a newspaper that Kowalski visited the hospital to laugh at the sight of his unfortunate victim’s missing appendage, his reputation soared to a new level.

Many of his matches ended in riots, and fans once tried to set the ring on fire, with Kowalski still in it. Some would wait with baseball bats and metal pipes in parking lots outside the arenas. Employing a ruthless and relentless style, he had the reputation of being the most hated man in professional wrestling.

Kowalski officially retired from the wrestling world in 1977 and was inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment's Hall of Fame in 1996.

Andy Kaufmann's Tag Team Partners and Over & Out pin down 18 points on the pro wrestling legend.

Bill Melendez, the animator who gave life to Snoopy, Charlie Brown and other "Peanuts" characters in scores of movies and TV specials, has died. He was 91. Melendez died of natural causes Tuesday 09/02/08 at St. John's Health Center.

Melendez's nearly seven decades as a professional animator began in 1938 when he was hired by Walt Disney Studios and worked on Mickey Mouse cartoons and classic animated features such as "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia". He went on to animate TV specials such as "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and was the voice of Snoopy, who never spoke intelligible words but issued expressive howls, sighs and sobs.

Melendez was born in 1916 in Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora. He moved with his family to Arizona in 1928 and then to Los Angeles in the 1930s, attending the Chouinard Art Institute.

Melendez took part in a strike that led to the unionization of Disney artists in 1941, and later moved to Warner Bros., where he worked on Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck shorts. In 1948, Melendez left Warner Bros. and over the next 15 years worked as a director and producer on more than 1,000 commercials and movies for United Productions of America, Playhouse Pictures and John Sutherland Productions.

At UPA, he helped animate "Gerald McBoing-Boing", which won the 1951 Academy Award for best cartoon short.

Melendez met "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz in 1959 while creating Ford Motor Co. TV commercials featuring Peanuts characters. The two became friends and Melendez became the only person Schulz authorized to animate his characters.

Melendez founded his own production company in 1964 and with his partner Lee Mendelson went on to produce, direct or animate some 70 "Peanuts" TV specials, four movies and hundreds of commercials. The first special was 1965's "A Charlie Brown Christmas". The show reportedly worried CBS because it broke so much new ground for a cartoon: It lacked a laugh track, used real children as voice actors, had a jazz score and included a scene in which Linus recited lines from the New Testament. However, the show was a ratings success and has gone on to become a Christmastime perennial.

Melendez created Emmy-winning specials based on the cartoon characters Cathy and Garfield, and was involved in animated versions of the Babar the elephant books and the C.S. Lewis book, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".

He also was co-nominee for an Academy Award in 1971 for the music for "A Boy Named Charlie Brown".

In all, his productions earned some 19 Emmy nominations, including six awards.

Auditioning For the Choir Invisible, Dead Betters, Ol' Dying Bastards and Spectral Evidence come to life after receiving 14 points each on the animator.

Anita Page, an MGM actress who appeared in films with Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford and Buster Keaton during the transition from silent movies to talkies, has died. She was 98. Page died in her sleep early Saturday morning 09/06/08 at her home in Los Angeles.

Page's career, which spanned 84 years, began in 1924 when she started as an extra. Her big break came in 1928 when she won a major role - as the doomed bad girl - in "Our Dancing Daughters", a film that featured a wild Charleston by Crawford and propelled them both to stardom. It spawned two sequels, "Our Modern Maidens" and "Our Blushing Brides". Page and Crawford were in all three films. In 1928, the New York-born Page starred opposite Chaney in "While the City Sleeps".

The following year, she was co-star of "The Broadway Melody," the 1929 backstage tale of two sisters who love the same man. The film made history as the first talkie to win the best-picture Oscar and was arguably the first true film musical.

In his 1995 book "A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film", author Richard Barrios reserved much of his praise for Bessie Love, the veteran actress who played the other sister. But he called Page "intensely likable - sincere, well-meaning, endearing, in much the same fashion as Ruby Keeler several years later - and, of course, quite beautiful." Variety wrote in 1929 that Page "is also apt to bowl the trade over with a contribution that's natural all the way, plus her percentage on appearance. She can't dance, (but) the remainder of her performance is easily sufficient to make this impediment distinctly negligible."

Among Page's other films were two of Keaton's sound films, "Free and Easy" in 1930, and "Sidewalks of New York" in 1931; "Night Court", with Walter Huston in 1932; and "The Easiest Way" in 1931, in which Clark Gable had a small role.

For a short time Page was married to composer Nacio Herb Brown, who wrote songs for "The Broadway Melody", but the marriage was annulled within a year. Page stopped acting in 1936 when she fell in love with Herschel House, a Navy aviator. The couple married six weeks later and Page happily adapted to life as an officer's wife, hosting many parties at their home in Coronado, a city peninsula in the San Diego Bay.

The couple had two daughters, Linda and Sandra.

After House died in 1991, Page went on to return to films. In 1994, she appeared in the suspense thriller "Sunset After Dark".

Most recently, she had a cameo in the horror film "Frankenstein Rising", due out later this year.

Excuse Me For Coffin, Flatliners, Sneezin' & Coffin and Spectral Evidence all receive 14 points for one of Hollywood’s first stars.

Eddie Crowder, who spent nearly half a century at the University of Colorado as a football coach, athletic director and mentor to generations of other coaches, died Tuesday night 09/09/08. He was 77. The cause was complications of leukemia, the university said in announcing his death.

Crowder, who played quarterback at the University of Oklahoma under the legendary coach Bud Wilkinson, compiled a record of 67-49-2 in 11 seasons as Colorado’s coach, from 1963 to 1973. He then served 11 years as the university’s athletic director.

Crowder’s best season was 1971, when the Buffaloes went 10-2 and finished third in the national polls behind their fellow Big Eight Conference members Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Born 08/26/31, in Arkansas City, KS, Crowder was raised in Muskogee, OK, where he won a state high school championship in 1949. He was a backup quarterback on Oklahoma’s first national championship team in 1950 and guided the Sooners to a 16-3-1 mark as a starter in 1951 and 1952.

After a senior season in which he earned all-American honors, Crowder was drafted by the Giants in 1953 but declined to join the team because of a nerve problem in his throwing arm.

He served in the Army Corps of Engineers, playing quarterback on the Fort Hood team in 1953 and serving as a backfield coach in 1954 before returning to Oklahoma and earning his bachelor’s degree in 1955.

He spent a year as an assistant football coach at Army and seven seasons under Wilkinson at Oklahoma. The Colorado athletic director Harry Carlson hired him to coach the Buffaloes in 1963, when Crowder was 31.

Forget My Walker, Get My Bodybag! scores a 20-point solo hit on the gridiron coach.

Sherrill Headrick was so tough in his nine AFL/NFL seasons that he earned the nickname "Psycho" from teammate Len Dawson. Nothing could keep Headrick, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound linebacker, out of the lineup. Not a fractured thumb, a sprained back, hemorrhoid surgery or a cracked vertebra.

That’s how former teammates for the Dallas Texans and Kansas City Chiefs remember Headrick, who died Wednesday 09/10/08 at Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth. He was 71.

"When I got involved with football, it was the toughest game I had ever seen," Hall of Fame kicker Jan Stenerud, who played with Headrick in 1967, said Wednesday. "And Sherrill Headrick was the toughest player I had ever seen."

Headrick was just as tough during his nearly yearlong battle with cancer. Doctors at Baylor All Saints Medical Center diagnosed Headrick with terminal cancer on 09/24/07. The aggressive tumor had spread from his liver to his adrenal glands and right lung before it was caught. He was expected to live 3-6 months. Headrick was admitted to the hospital Monday with a kidney infection. It was the first sign that his liver was breaking down.

Headrick played at North Side and TCU, leaving the Horned Frogs after his junior season to play in Canada in 1959. Headrick was working in the oil fields during the off-season when the upstart Dallas Texans - who became the Chiefs - signed him for the 1960 season. Headrick was a five-time AFL All-Star. He started at middle linebacker in the 1962 and ’66 AFL Championship Games, and in the first Super Bowl, a 35-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers.

Headrick had 14 career interceptions. He also blocked a 42-yard field-goal attempt by Houston’s George Blanda in the fourth quarter of the 1962 AFL title game won by the Texans 20-17 in two overtimes. Headrick played eight seasons for the Texans/Chiefs, and in 1993, he was inducted into the Chiefs’ Hall of Fame. (He finished his career with Cincinnati in 1968.)

Headrick is best known for playing through anything. He once played two days after hemorrhoid surgery. Doctors shot him full of painkillers, provided him a sanitary napkin and cleared him to play. He also played a game with an undiagnosed broken neck from a collision during pregame warm-ups. He had three interceptions.

Headrick lost count of how many surgeries he had, once estimating it somewhere between 15 and 19. He had artificial hips and knees.

Bud Dwyer's Brains, Christopher Reeve's Dancecard, Die2K, Forrest Tucker's Ghost, Goatsucker, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop and Skeleton In Their Closet all pick up 8 yards…I mean 8 points…on the AFL tough guy.

George Putnam, the pioneer television news anchorman and conservative commentator whose distinctive stentorian voice was a mainstay of Southern California broadcasting for decades, has died. He was 94. Putnam, who had been suffering from a kidney ailment since December, died early Friday morning 09/12/08 at Chino Valley Medical Center, said Chuck Wilder, Putnam's cohost, producer and announcer. Putnam did his last regular broadcast May 8 but returned July 14 for a one-hour broadcast marking his 94th birthday, during which he fielded phone calls from well-wishers, including actress Doris Day.

Beginning at KTTV Channel 11 in the early 1950s, Putnam quickly became a dominant and influential force in Los Angeles TV news. The winner of three Emmy Awards, he reportedly at one time was the highest-rated and highest-paid TV news anchor in Los Angeles. Putnam began his broadcast career on a Minneapolis radio station in 1934. When Putnam was working for NBC in New York City in the early 1940s, influential newspaper columnist Walter Winchell declared that "George Putnam's voice is the greatest in radio."

But it was on television in Los Angeles a decade later that the tall, wavy-haired broadcaster with the rich baritone voice made his biggest mark.

In addition to his three Emmy wins, Putnam was the recipient of six California Associated Press Television and Radio Assn. awards and more than 300 other honors and citations.

On KTTV in the 1950s and early '60s, Putnam would conclude his early evening news broadcast with his signature theatrical flair. "And that's the up-to-the-minute news, up to the minute, that's all the news," he would say, then add: "Back at 10, see you then!"

Putnam was criticized by some for stepping beyond the bounds of his role as a reporter and into that of a commentator.

When L.A. County Dist. Atty. William B. McKesson, who had been appointed after Dist. Atty. Ernest Roll's death in 1956, sought election, Putnam said during his news broadcast: "Many of you have asked where I stand in the race for Los Angeles district attorney. I stand for Los Angeles Dist. Atty. William B. McKesson." He then listed his reasons for endorsing the candidate.

Former President Nixon, speaking on videotape during a 1984 roast of Putnam given by KTTV to celebrate his 50th anniversary in broadcasting, said of the outspoken newscaster: "Some people didn't like what he said; some people liked what he said. But everybody listened to George Putnam. That is why he has been one of the most influential commentators of our times."

Born in Breckenridge, MN on 07/14/14, Putnam landed his first broadcasting job at age 20 on WDGY radio, a 1,000-watt station in Minneapolis. He began by answering the phone and spinning records. By the late 1930s, he had moved to New York City, where his professional stock rose considerably after columnist Winchell praised the sound of his voice.

"Winchell made my career," Putnam told The Times. "I went from $190 a month at NBC to better than $200,000 a year."

During World War II, Putnam was drafted into the Army and then commissioned in the Marine Corps, where he was involved with the Armed Forces Radio Service. In the late 1940s, he was hired by the DuMont television network to write and deliver six commentaries a week on a news show broadcast from New York. He added to his professional prestige by sharing the role as the voice of Fox Movietone News with legendary broadcaster Lowell Thomas. In late 1951, he was hired at KTTV, the independent station then owned by Times-Mirror Co., which also owned the Los Angeles Times, which is now owned by Tribune Co.

Putnam was said to have been an inspiration for Ted Baxter, Ted Knight's blustery newscaster character on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

In the mid-1960s, Putnam moved to KTLA-TV Channel 5. He returned to KTTV after about two years and then moved back to KTLA in the early 1970s. Brief stints at KHJ-TV Channel 9 and KCOP-TV Channel 13 followed, including cohosting "Both Sides Now," a short-lived talk show with comedian Mort Sahl. By the early 1980s, most of Putnam's professional life was devoted to his daily current-events radio talk show, which he launched on KIEV-AM (870) in 1976 and where he remained a fixture for nearly three decades.

Since 2004, CRN Digital Talk Radio has syndicated Putnam's "Talk Back" program to a national audience on cable TV, radio stations and the Internet. Putnam broadcast the show from a studio at his ranch in Chino, where he and his companion of 52 years, Sallilee Conlon, bred thoroughbred horses and provided a home for abandoned animals.

For more than 45 years, Putnam rode a silver-saddled palomino in the Rose Parade.

He also made cameo appearances as a newscaster in a number of movies over the years, including "I Want to Live!", "Helter Skelter" and "Independence Day".

Flatliners brings word of 20 more points with their solo hit on the newsman of LA.

Lynn Kohlman, a successful fashion model of the 1970s whose slightly androgynous look became an inspiration to the designers Perry Ellis and Donna Karan, died on Sunday 09/14/08 in Manhattan. She was 62. The cause was brain cancer, said her husband, Mark Obenhaus.

Ms. Kohlman also worked as a design executive for Mr. Ellis and other fashion houses and later as a photographer.

Her personal style was tough and creative. She wore her hair short and her suits oversized, often paired with motorcycle boots. It was her offbeat style that attracted the attention of Mr. Ellis in the 1970s, as he often described her as a muse. Mr. Ellis once designed an entire collection based on an oversized white linen jacket Ms. Kohlman had worn and, as usual, she was the first model sent out onto the runway at that show. He gave her a position as an assistant designer at his company, even though she said she could not sketch or sew.

Ms. Kohlman also appeared on the covers of Vogue and Elle and in advertisements for Yves Saint Laurent and Anne Klein, where Ms. Karan became the designer after Ms. Klein’s death in 1974.

Ms. Karan, after starting her own company, hired Ms. Kohlman as the fashion director of DKNY, when her less expensive collection was started in 1988, to give the clothes a fresh sense of urban toughness and a masculine/feminine blend. Ms. Kohlman also later helped Tommy Hilfiger start his first women’s collection.

“All of those iconic things about DKNY were because of her look,” Ms. Karan said. “She was the Patti Smith of fashion.”

Ms. Kohlman wrote about her experience with breast cancer and brain cancer in a 2005 autobiography called “Lynn Front to Back”. The title referred to her career transition from being a model in front of the cameras to the person taking the pictures, but also to her acceptance of her post-surgery body, as she had always been proud of her figure. The book opened with two arresting images of Ms. Kohlman, shown before and after a mastectomy and a separate operation to remove a walnut-sized brain tumor that left 39 visible titanium staples in her scalp, which she said she had chosen to show that her body was more beautiful than ever.

Lynn Eleanor Kohlman was born on 08/12/46, in Teaneck, NJ. After studying art history at Oberlin College, she moved to Florence, Italy, to help restore artworks damaged in the Arno River flood of 1966. But Ms. Kohlman, who had modeled during college, was soon discovered by Wilhelmina Models and got her first assignment, for The New York Times Magazine, around 1970.

She also loved photography, and her casual portraits of Calvin Klein, Keith Richards and Stephan Weiss, Ms. Karan’s husband, were published in magazines including Interview, Vogue and GQ. In addition to her husband, Mr. Obenhaus, a producer and director of documentaries, Ms. Kohlman is survived by a son, Sam, who also modeled in advertisements for DKNY, and a brother, Jeff Kohlman, a federal judge in Atlanta.

After her breast cancer was discovered in 2002 and then an aggressive form of brain cancer was found the following year, Ms. Kohlman said she was determined not to hide behind her scars. On “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she described walking in the East Village and receiving compliments from a body piercing fan because her staples were “really nicely spaced and even.” She gave him the name of her doctor.

Bud Dwyer's Brains snaps up 24 points on the model/photographer.

Mary Garber, among the United States’ first female sports writers and the first woman to win the Red Smith Award, The Associated Press Sports Editors’ highest honour, died Sunday 09/21/08. She was 92.

The Winston-Salem Journal reported Sunday that a minister was making the rounds at the Brookridge Retirement Village where Garber was a resident, and he asked what she had in mind for a spiritual reward in heaven. “Football season,” she said.

Garber was a sports writer for the Journal and the Sentinel from 1946 through 1997. She started as a society writer during World War II, and moved when the all-male sports department of the Sentinel was depleted.

“Not because I had any ability in sports,” Garber once told the Women’s Sports Foundation, “but because it was the war, and every man was in the armed forces.”

Even though she was banned from locker rooms and forced to sit with the players’ wives instead of in the press box, Garber lobbied to continue covering sports after World War II ended.

Garber first gained access to a locker room at the 1974 Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament, 30 years after her sports writing career began. She retired from the Winston-Salem Journal in 1986, but continued to work part-time until 2002.

Garber served as president of the Football Writers Association of America and the Atlantic Coast Sports Writers Association, groups that initially denied her entry. Also in 2005, she became the first woman to win the Red Smith Award, given to someone who has made major contributions to sports journalism.

In 2006, the Association of Women in Sports Media named its annual award for Garber.

Also, Garber also was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and, most recently, the National Sportscasters and Sportwriters Hall of Fame, located in nearby Salisbury.

Already Dead scores for the 15th time on the legendary sports writer.

Paul Newman never much cared for what he once called the "rubbish" of Hollywood, choosing to live in a quiet community on the opposite corner of the U.S. map, staying with his wife of many years and - long after he became bored with acting - pursuing his dual passions of philanthropy and race cars.

And yet despite enormous success in both endeavors and a vile distaste for celebrity, the Oscar-winning actor never lost the aura of a towering Hollywood movie star, turning in roles later in life that carried all the blue-eyed, heartthrob cool of his anti-hero performances in "Hud", "Cool Hand Luke" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".

The 10-time Academy Award nominee died Friday 09/26/08 at age 83, surrounded by family and close friends at his Westport farmhouse following a long battle with cancer.

In May, Newman dropped plans to direct a fall production of "Of Mice and Men" at Connecticut's Westport Country Playhouse, citing unspecified health issues. The following month, a friend disclosed that he was being treated for cancer and Martha Stewart, also a friend, posted photos on her Web site of Newman looking gaunt at a charity luncheon.

But true to his fiercely private nature, Newman remained cagey about his condition, reacting to reports that he had lung cancer with a statement saying only that he was "doing nicely."

As an actor, Newman got his start in theater and on television during the 1950s, and went on to become a legend held in awe by his peers. He won one Oscar and took home two honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures, including "Exodus", "Butch Cassidy", "The Verdict", "The Sting" and "Absence of Malice".

Newman worked with some of the greatest directors of the past half century, from Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers. His co-stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and, most famously, Robert Redford, his sidekick in "Butch Cassidy" and "The Sting".

Newman sometimes teamed with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood's rare long-term marriages. "I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?" Newman told Playboy magazine when asked if he was tempted to stray. They wed in 1958, around the same time they both appeared in "The Long Hot Summer". Newman also directed her in several films, including "Rachel, Rachel" and "The Glass Menagerie".

With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. New York Times critic Caryn James wrote after his turn as the town curmudgeon in 1995's "Nobody's Fool" that "you never stop to wonder how a guy as good-looking as Paul Newman ended up this way."

But neither his heartthrob looks nor his talent could convince Newman to embrace the Hollywood lifestyle. He was reluctant to give interviews and usually refused to sign autographs because he found the majesty of the act offensive.

"Sometimes God makes perfect people," fellow "Absence of Malice" star Sally Field said, "and Paul Newman was one of them."

Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon's "enemies list," one of the actor's proudest achievements, he liked to say.

A screen legend by his mid-40s, he waited a long time for his first competitive Oscar, winning in 1987 for "The Color of Money", a reprise of the role of pool shark "Fast Eddie" Felson, whom Newman portrayed in the 1961 film "The Hustler".

In that film, Newman delivered a magnetic performance as the smooth-talking, whiskey-chugging pool shark who takes on Minnesota Fats - played by Jackie Gleason - and becomes entangled with a gambler played by George C. Scott. In the sequel - directed by Scorsese - "Fast Eddie" is no longer the high-stakes hustler he once was, but an aging liquor salesman who takes a young pool player (Cruise) under his wing before making a comeback.

He won an honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft." In 1994, he won a third Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his charitable work.

His most recent academy nod was a supporting actor nomination for the 2002 film "Road to Perdition". One of Newman's nominations was as a producer; the other nine were in acting categories. (Jack Nicholson holds the record among actors for Oscar nominations, with 12; actress Meryl Streep has had 14.)

As he passed his 80th birthday, he remained in demand, winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the 2005 HBO drama "Empire Falls" and providing the voice of a crusty 1951 Hudson Hornet in the 2006 Disney-Pixar hit, "Cars". But in May 2007, he told ABC's "Good Morning America" he had given up acting, though he intended to remain active in charity projects. "I'm not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to," he said. "You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that's pretty much a closed book for me."

Newman also turned to producing and directing. In 1968, he directed "Rachel, Rachel," a film about a lonely spinster's rebirth. The movie received four Oscar nominations, including Newman, for producer of a best motion picture, and Woodward, for best actress. The film earned Newman the best director award from the New York Film Critics Circle.

In the 1970s, Newman, admittedly bored with acting, became fascinated with auto racing, a sport he studied when he starred in the 1969 film, "Winning". After turning professional in 1977, Newman and his driving team made strong showings in several major races, including fifth place in Daytona in 1977 and second place in the Le Mans in 1979. "Racing is the best way I know to get away from all the rubbish of Hollywood," he told People magazine in 1979.

Newman later became a car owner and formed a partnership with Carl Haas, starting Newman/Haas Racing in 1983 and joining the CART series. Hiring Mario Andretti as its first driver, the team was an instant success, and throughout the last 26 years, the team - now known as Newman/Haas/Lanigan and part of the IndyCar Series - has won 107 races and eight series championships.

Despite his love of race cars, Newman continued to make movies and continued to pile up Oscar nominations, his looks remarkably intact, his acting becoming more subtle, nothing like the mannered method performances of his early years, when he was sometimes dismissed as a Brando imitator.

Off the screen, Newman was beloved in Westport, the upscale community about an hour north of New York. One of his favorite haunts was Mario's Place, an eatery that Newman frequented with pals actor James Naughton or writer A.E. Hotchner. He preferred medium-rare hamburgers, with an occasional Heineken.

In 1982, Newman and Hotchner started a company to market Newman's original oil-and-vinegar dressing. Newman's Own, which began as a joke, grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All of the company's profits are donated to charities. The company had donated more than $250 million, according to its Web site.

In 1988, Newman founded a camp in northeastern Connecticut for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. He went on to establish similar camps in several other states and in Europe.

He and Woodward bought an 18th century farmhouse in Westport, where they raised their three daughters, Elinor "Nell", Melissa and Clea.

Newman had two daughters, Susan and Stephanie, and a son, Scott, from a previous marriage to Jacqueline Witte. Scott died in 1978 of an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium. After his only son's death, Newman established the Scott Newman Foundation to finance the production of anti-drug films for children.

Newman was born in Cleveland, the second of two boys of Arthur S. Newman, a partner in a sporting goods store, and Theresa Fetzer Newman. Following World War II service in the Navy, he enrolled at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he got a degree in English and was active in student productions. He later studied at Yale University's School of Drama, then headed to work in theater and television in New York, where his classmates at the famed Actor's Studio included Brando, James Dean and Karl Malden.

Newman's breakthrough was enabled by tragedy: Dean, scheduled to star as the disfigured boxer in a television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Battler", died in a car crash in 1955. His role was taken by Newman, then a little-known performer.

Newman started in movies the year before, in "The Silver Chalice", a costume film he so despised that he took out an ad in Variety to apologize. By 1958, he had won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for the shiftless Ben Quick in "The Long Hot Summer".

Dead Wringers, Death Be Not Proud, Death On Two Legs, Tastes Like Chicken, That's Right, You're Wrong, The Death Watchers and Yersinia Pestis whip up 8 points each on one of Hollywood’s legends. Stiff Sloths and The Final Journey add 3 points each for their Taxi Squad Hits.

Celebrated political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, who drew brutally satirical images of the Soviet Union's foes in the service of Josef Stalin, died Wednesday 10/01/08. He was 109. Yefimov's death was given wide coverage on Russian state television. No cause was given.

His cartoons spanned virtually the entire history of the communist state, from shortly after the 1917 revolution to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Among his most memorable drawings was one showing a wretched-looking Hitler, who is said to have ordered Yefimov shot if the Nazis captured Moscow in World War II. Instead, Yefimov was sent after the war to the Nuremburg trials to draw the Nazis as they faced justice.

Yefimov also turned his pen against the United States. His Cold War drawings portrayed Uncle Sam and American leaders as warmongers and money-grubbing capitalists.

In his later years he told the story of Stalin personally ordering him in 1947 to draw U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower arriving with a large army to claim the North Pole. Stalin made his own corrections to the cartoon, in red crayon.

Yefimov acknowledged ambivalence about his role as Stalin's helper, but he expressed great pride in his historic role.

"To a certain extent, cartoons were weapons," he said in a 2002 interview with The Associated Press.

Many of his cartoons ran in the newspaper Izvestia, whose current editor paid tribute to Yefimov in a televised interview.

"Much of what he did will never sink into oblivion," said editor Vladimir Mamontov. "On the contrary, his works will remain not only as witnesses of the epoch, but ... as a clear understanding of human nature, people's characters, politics and life in general."

BLOODY MARY, Crypt Kickers, Die2K, Putnam's Tomahawk Chop and The Absent And The Dead Have No Friends..Nor Do We draw 12 points each on the Soviet cartoonist. Brian's Flat Cat score 3 points for the Taxi Squad Hit.

Romanian scientist George Emil Palade, the only Romanian to have ever won a Nobel Prize, died in the US at the age of 96 on Wednesday 10/08/08, Romanian news television Realitatea TV reported. His research in cellular biology rewarded him with a Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1974.

The main focus of Palade's research was to explain the cellular mechanism of protein production. His name is also given to the cellular particles where protein bio-synthesis is done.

George Emil Palade was born in Iasi, NE Romania in 1912, the son of a family of intellectuals. In 1930 he joined the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest. He left Romania for the United States in 1946, with his wife Irina Malaxa, to continue his post-doctoral studies there. In 1973 he started lecturing cellular biology at the Yale University.

He was a member of the American Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Sciences and Arts.

In 2007 Romanian President Traian Basescu awarded him the Romanian Star Order, the highest distinction of the Romanian state, for his activity.

Laureate's Lament lays down another wreath and picks up another 20 points.

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