Dead Pool 7th August 2016

In all honesty, you almost didn’t get a newsletter this week. The lack of news and deaths nearly put a stop on us! It’s really time to send out the flying monkeys, don’t blame me if someone you adore dies this week!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Gloria DeHaven, 91, American actress (Summer Stock, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Out to Sea), complications from a stroke.
• Anne of Romania, 92, French-born Romanian royal, queen consort of King Michael.
• David Huddleston, 85, American actor (The Big Lebowski, Blazing Saddles, Santa Claus: The Movie), heart and kidney disease.
• Gaspar Saladino, 88, American comic letterer (Superman vs. Muhammad Ali, Arkham Asylum). 

In Other News

Oscar Pistorius has denied injuries to his wrists sustained in prison were “a suicide attempt”, a South African prison spokesman has said. Pistorius claimed he fell out of bed in his cell at the prison where he is serving a six-year sentence for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. “Oscar Pistorius denied speculations of a suicide attempt. As a policy principle, we cannot further discuss a particular offender’s personal condition in the public domain,” Manelisi Wolela, a spokesman at the Department of Correctional Services, told Reuters. His brother posted on Twitter to say Pistorius was in good spirits and is “doing well given the circumstances”. He called reports the athlete had tried to injure himself “completely untrue and sensational”.

Brazil’s most recognisable celebrity Pelé pulled out of the Rio  2016 opening ceremony just hours before it was due to begin, but the director insisted this would not detract from a show that aims to be about a lot more than sport. Underscoring how nothing seems to go right for the country recently, the footballer Pelé announced his withdrawal as a result of pain to caused by his recent hip replacement surgery. Local media had reported that he was among the candidates to light the Olympic cauldron. “At this point I’m not physically able to attend the opening of the Olympics,” the 75-year-old said in a statement. “As a Brazilian, I ask God to bless all who participate in this event and to make it a great success.”

Ozzy Osbourne is undergoing “intense therapy” for sex addiction, which caused his separation from his manager and wife of 34 years, Sharon. The Black Sabbath frontman’s representatives released a statement saying he had been dealing with sex addiction for the last six years,but that since his “relationship” with hairstylist Michelle Pugh had been exposed, he had sought treatment. When Osbourne moved out of the family home in May, it was suggested he might have relapsed in his drugs and alcohol addictions. Osbourne himself said: “I have been sober for three and a quarter years. I have not touched drugs or alcohol in that time. Any reports that I am not sober are completely inaccurate.”

On This Day

• 1947 – Thor Heyerdahl‘s balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
• 1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.

Deaths

• 1957 – Oliver Hardy, American actor, singer, and director (b. 1892)
• 1999 – Brion James, American actor (b. 1945)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Wesley Snipes (54), Fatboy Slim (53), J.K. Rowling (51), Dean Cain (50), Joe Elliott (57), Coolio (53), Kevin Smith (46), Sam Worthington (40), Edward Furlong (39), Martin Sheen (76), Martha Stewart (75), John Landis (66), James Hetfield (53), Evangeline Lilly (37), Billy Bob Thornton (61), Barack Obama (55), M. Night Shyamalan (46), Gerri Halliwell (44) and Michelle Yeoh (54).

The Last Word

“Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel”. – George Appel, executed by electric chair in 1928.

Next week peeps!