YBTL 2008 Update

(Updated 10/11/08)

Greetings You Bet Their Lifers! Witness the media frenzy of our latest update. 5 of our newest stiffs are tied to media and entertainment, while the other 3 are a mish-mash of world politics, college sports and Nobel medicine. Read on…

 

If you have missed an update, fear not. You may view the Deaths to Date Page to see all of the year's stiffs in digest form.

 

Get caught up on all of the gossip, rumors and other dead pool activities on the Forum Page.

 

Remember, if you have scored an Active Squad Hit (ASH), please send your Taxi Squad Call-Up (TSCU) to tableslam17@yahoo.com .

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?

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.

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.

Already Dead takes claim of first team to 200 points, but now only has half a team left. Die2K pulls up even with VOB in a tie for 3^rd place. Flatliners moves from 10^th to 6^th. MPDC and Crypt Kickers join the Top 12, pushing out Skeleton and TFFSII. 4 teams finally get a hit, all of which picked Newman. That leaves 10 teams Metabolically Challenged. There are only 8 teams within 40 points of 12^th place with 11 ½ weeks to go - that’s 2 solo hits. Go teams go!

 

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