Dead Pool 26th June 2016

Short and sweet this week, I’m sure you would rather be reading something about the EU Referendum anyway… No points awarded, but you have to be sad over the death of Anton Yelchin who managed to squish himself with his own car.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Anton Yelchin, 27, Soviet-born American actor (Star Trek, Alpha Dog, Fright Night), blunt traumatic asphyxia.
• Harry Rabinowitz, 100, British music composer (Reilly, Ace of Spies) and conductor (Chariots of Fire, Cats).
• Bill Ham, 79, American band manager (ZZ Top)
• Michael Herr, 76, American author (Dispatches) and screenwriter (Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now).
• Patrick Mayhew, Baron Mayhew of Twysden, 86, British barrister and politician, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1992–1997).

In Other News

Selma Blair is feeling especially grateful on her 44th birthday. The actress celebrated her special day with her 4-year-old son, Arthur, on Thursday, and also took some time out to thank everyone on Instagram for their “spirit of loving and forgiveness.” Earlier this week, Blair apologised for having to be removed from an airplane on Monday, after she admitted to mixing alcohol with medication. The actress was coming back from a Father’s Day trip in Mexico on Monday with Arthur and her ex-boyfriend, Jason Bleick, when she allegedly had an outburst while the plane was in the air. She was reportedly taken off the plane on a stretcher. “I made a big mistake yesterday,” Blair said in a statement to Vanity Fair, taking full responsibility for the incident the next day. “After a lovely trip with my son and his Dad, I mixed alcohol with medication, and that caused me to black out and led me to say and do things that I deeply regret.” “I take this very seriously, and I apologize to all of the passengers and crew that I disturbed and am thankful to all of the people who helped me in the aftermath,” she continued. “I am a flawed human being who makes mistakes and am filled with shame over this incident. I am truly very sorry.”

Kelly McGillis, best known for playing Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood in the 1986 box office hit “Top Gun, was a victim of a house assault last week. The actress told police she heard someone inside her Henderson County, North Carolina house when she returned home, and before she knew it she was under attack. “I was trying to get rid of the stuff in my hand to better assess what was going on when a stranger, a woman, came barreling down the hallway and began yelling at me. I asked her who she is and why she was in my house and she said, ‘You know why. You’ve been stalking me on Twitter.’ From there the woman “began punching and scratching me trying to grab the phone out of my hand.” Finally a neighbour called the cops and the woman, who had a young girl with her, was taken away. Kelly added, “I’m alright. Scratched and bruised. I feel very thankful it turned out well. But who I feel heartache for is the little girl that was with her. Mental illness takes many hostages. I don’t know her name…but I would like to ask that you pray for her and her mother.”

On This Day

• 1483 – Richard III becomes King of England.
• 1870 – The Christian holiday of Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States.
• 1906 – The first Grand Prix motor racing event held.
• 1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall.
• 1974 – The Universal Product Code is scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio
• 1977 – The Yorkshire Ripper kills 16-year-old shop assistant Jayne MacDonald in Leeds, changing public perception of the killer as she is the first victim who is not a prostitute.

Deaths

• 2003 – Denis Thatcher, English soldier and businessman (b. 1915)
• 2005 – Richard Whiteley, English journalist and game show host (b. 1943)
• 2012 – Nora Ephron, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1941)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Kathleen Turner (62), Paula Abdul (54), Mia Sara (49), Zoe Saldana (38), Gena Rowlands (86), Salman Rushdie (69), Olympia Dukakis (85), Martin Landau (88), Danny Aiello (83), Brian Wilson (74), Lionel Richie (67), John Goodman (64), Nicole Kidman (49), Juliette Lewis (43), Prince William (34), Lana Del Rey (31), Kris Kristofferson (80), Cindy Lauper (63), Meryl Streep (67), Francis McDormand (59), Selma Blair (44), KT Tunstall (41), Mick Fleetwood (69), Carly Simon (71), Ricky Gervais (55) and George Michael (53).

The Last Word

I’ve never felt better. – Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., actor, d. December 12, 1939

Next week peeps!

26th June 2016 | Categories: 2016 | Leave A Comment »

Dead Pool 19th June 2016

Welcome all, another edition of The Dead Pool hits the press! This week we saw the senseless death of a Labour MP at the hands of a bigot and the passing of ALF, which should be good news to all cats. Alas, we didn’t have space to cover kids being eaten by alligators at Disney World, those rides are getting more and more dangerous I tell you, maybe you should rethink your next holiday!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Mimmo Palmara, 87, Italian actor (A Long Ride from Hell, Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis, Hercules Unchained).
• Tom Leppard, 80, British tattooed man.
• Janet Waldo, 96, American actress and voice artist (The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Wacky Races).
• Michu Meszaros, 76, Hungarian-born American actor (ALF).
• Ronnie Claire Edwards, 83, American actress (The Waltons, The Dead Pool, Designing Women).
• Lois Duncan, 82, American writer (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hotel for Dogs, Who Killed My Daughter?).
• Jo Cox, 41, British politician, MP for Batley and Spen (since 2015), shot and stabbed.
• Rubén Aguirre, 82, Mexican actor (El Chavo del Ocho, El Chapulín Colorado, Chespirito), pneumonia.
• Attrell Cordes, 46, American rhythm and blues singer (P.M. Dawn), renal disease.
• Ron Lester, 45, American actor (Varsity Blues, Popular, Good Burger), liver and kidney failure.

In Other News

Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt is in hospital after suffering a heart attack after performing with the band at Expo 2016. He is currently being treated in Antalya and is said to be in a serious but stable condition. In a statement, his management  said: ‘Whilst his condition is serious, he has already demanded his customary cup of tea with two sugars and a sweetener.’ The band’s manager Simon Porter added: ‘No further comment will be made at this stage until the completion of the next round of tests and assessments to be made over the next few days. ‘We would ask you to respect the family’s privacy at this difficult time.’ A self-confessed former drug addict, Parfitt has suffered a catalogue of health problems, including a quadruple heart bypass in 1997, a throat cancer scare in 2005 and a heart attack in 2011.

Meat Loaf is stable and recovering after collapsing on stage in Canada due to “severe dehydration”. Meat Loaf, whose real name is Marvin Lee Aday, collapsed mid-way through performing his hit ballad “I Would Do Anything for Love” in Edmonton on Thursday evening. Video footage posted on Twitter showed the singer lean heavily to his right and drop his microphone before collapsing to the ground. Several members of his band and crew then rushed on stage to assist him before he was taken to Edmonton Hospital. A statement posted on the 68-year-old’s Facebook page said the collapse was caused by severe dehydration and he is now in a stable condition and “recovering well”. Prior to the incident, Meat Loaf had cancelled two planned performances due to ill health. The singer has the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and had minor heart surgery in 2003, a week after he collapsed on stage at Wembley Arena.

Lil Wayne has reportedly suffered a seizure forcing his private jet to make an emergency landing. The New Orleans rapper, whose real name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr, was flying from Milwaukee to California when his pilot was forced to land in Omaha on Monday. He apparently blacked out when the plan touched down. Carter suffered two seizures in 2012 and another in 2013. He’s previously said that he’s epileptic and has suffered seizures since his childhood. “This isn’t my first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh seizure,” Carter the media in 2013. “I’ve had a bunch of seizures. Y’all just never hear about them. But this time, it got real bad because I had three of them in a row.”

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been placed in intensive care after undergoing an operation to replace a defective heart valve. The procedure lasted four hours, Milan’s San Raffaele hospital said, giving no further details. But sources told Ansa news agency the operation had been a success. He is likely to take a month to recover. Berlusconi, 79, was admitted to hospital last week after suffering a heart attack his doctor said could have killed him. He is expected to remain in intensive care for another 48 hours. On Monday, Berlusconi wrote on his Facebook page he was “concerned” by the looming operation. “But I am also very moved by the very many demonstrations of appreciation, support and affection which I have received from everywhere, even from political rivals,” he added.

The BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Caroline Wyatt is to step down from her position after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Wyatt, who has worked at the corporation for more than twenty years, has had the condition for 25 years but was only diagnosed at the end of last year. She recently announced she had been off work because of the illness on social media. The veteran reporter said she is very sad to be stepping down but is overwhelmed by the support she has received. “I have lived with the condition for the past 25 years, so the diagnosis came as a relief as it enables me to have treatment and to do all I can to manage it. I am tremendously sad to be stepping down from my religious affairs correspondent at a time that understanding religion has rarely been more important.”

And finally, an Indian cinema-goer has died of a heart attack while watching new horror sequel The Conjuring 2. The unnamed 65-year-old male collapsed from chest pains at Sri Balasubramaniar Cinema in Tiruvannamalai, a town residing in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, as the film reached its climax. The man was rushed to a nearby hospital where he later passed away. Times of India reports that a strange turn of events then followed; after doctors sent his body to Tiruvannamalai Government Medical College Hospital, both the cadaver and the person tasked with transporting it both went missing in the process. It is believed that the unknown person may have possibly absconded with the body. Fresh news is yet to be reported on the subject but we’re sure that when it arrives there’ll be a perfectly rational explanation as opposed to the supernatural forces several commentators clearly believe were at hand.

On This Day

• 1862 – The U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories
• 1865 – Over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas, United States, are finally informed of their freedom.
• 1910 – The first Father’s Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington.
• 1949 — The first ever NASCAR race was held at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
• 1953 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.
• 1978 – Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut.

Deaths

• 1937 – J. M. Barrie, Scottish novelist and playwright (b. 1860)
• 1993 – William Golding, English author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1911)
• 2013 – James Gandolfini, American actor and producer (b. 1961)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Jason Mewes (42), George H.W. Bush (92), Malcolm McDowell (73), Tim Allen (63), Ally Sheedy (54), David Grey (48), Steve-O (42), Olsen Twins (30), Donald Trump (70), Boy George (55), Steffi Graf (47), Jim Belushi (62), Helen Hunt (53), Courtenay Cox (52), Ice Cube (47), Neil Patrick Harris (43), Barry Manilow (73), Jason Patric (50), Will Forte (46), Newt Gingrich (73), Venus Williams (36), Paul McCartney (74), Isabella Rossellini (64), Alison Moyet (55) and Richard Madden (30).

The Last Word

Ah, that tastes nice. Thank you. – Johannes Brahms, composer, d. April 3, 1897

Next week peeps!

19th June 2016 | Categories: 2016 | Leave A Comment »

Dead Pool 12th June 2016

Another week passes and several notables perish. Alas, none worthy of our listings, but interesting people nevertheless. So no points to dispense but everyone keep an eye out for your Maverick, looks like Americans have finally decided to start shooting celebrities, not just themselves.

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Manohar Aich, 104, Indian bodybuilder, Mr. Universe (1952).
• Theresa Saldana, 61, American actress (Raging Bull, The Commish, I Wanna Hold Your Hand), renal failure.
• Sir Peter Shaffer, 90, British playwright (Amadeus, Equus, Black Comedy) and screenwriter, Tony (1975, 1981) and Oscar winner (1985).
• Michael Baldasaro, 67, Canadian sect leader (Church of the Universe) and political candidate (Marijuana Party), cancer.
• Bernard Shrimsley, 85, British newspaper editor (The Sun, News of the World).
• Gordie Howe, 88, Canadian Hall of Fame ice hockey player (Detroit Red Wings, Hartford Whalers, national team).
• Christina Grimmie, 22, American singer-songwriter (Find Me) and talent show participant (The Voice), shot.

 In Other News

The former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been taken to hospital with a heart problem, according to a spokeswoman for his party. The 79-year-old’s condition was “nothing to worry about”, she added. A statement by the San Raffaele hospital in Milan said the hospitalisation was necessary after what it called a “cardiac deficiency”. The leader of Forza Italia, who had a pacemaker implanted in a hospital in the US when he was 70, would undergo tests “in the next few days”, the hospital statement said. Mr Berlusconi was Italy’s prime minister four times, but has since been convicted for tax fraud and bribery, not to mention the fornicating with young ladies, maybe this is what brought on his “cardiac deficiency’.

Eleven German MPs of Turkish origin have been put under police protection. They received death threats after supporting a move to describe the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide. Germany’s foreign ministry has warned MPs of Turkish origin against travelling to Turkey, saying their security there could not be guaranteed. The German parliament’s move outraged the Turkish government, which does not recognise the killings as genocide. The 11 MPs of Turkish origin who voted for the resolution have faced a backlash of negative opinion from the Turkish government and from within Germany’s sizable Turkish community. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan castigated them, saying: “What sort of Turks are they?” Ankara’s mayor showed the 11 MPs in a tweet, saying they had “stabbed us in the back”. According to German media, it was retweeted by many Turkish nationalists, some of whom made death threats. Juicy! Who thought that the Turks were such pedants over grammar.

In Royal news, The Queen’s official 90th birthday has been marked with the Trooping the Colour parade in central London. More than 1,600 soldiers and 300 horses took part in the annual event on Horse Guards Parade and she appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with members of her family, including Princess Charlotte, for an RAF flypast.

Celebrations were also held to mark 70 years since Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest-reining living monarch, came to the throne. The celebrations began with a religious ceremony in Bangkok, led by 770 Buddhist monks, an auspicious number. The 88-year-old king is revered by Thais, for whom he has been a figure of stability through the country’s decades of political upheaval. But he is in poor health and has not been seen in public for months. On Tuesday, he had heart surgery, with what the palace said were “satisfactory results”.  Several hundred people gathered outside the palace on Thursday morning to wish the king well. As expected, he did not make a public appearance.

Online speculation that US actor Jack Black had died was the work of a hacker who posted messages on his rock band’s official Twitter account. Fans expressed dismay after a message on Tenacious D’s Twitter page claimed Black had died at the age of 46. Subsequent messages, however, appeared to suggest the group’s account had been hacked. This was later confirmed by Tenacious D themselves, who called the hacking a “sick ‘prank'”. “WE had our Twitter account hacked,” the band tweeted on Sunday afternoon. “We can assure you that Jack is ALIVE and WELL.” It is not the first time Black, whose films include the Kung Fu Panda trilogy and School of Rock, has been the victim of an online hoax. One in 2012 claimed he had fallen off a cliff in New Zealand, while another in 2014 alleged he had died after a stroke.

On This Day

• 1939 – Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures‘ Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor.
• 1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.
• 1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.
• 1967 – The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
• 1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit.

Deaths

• 1980 – Billy Butlin, South African-English businessman, founded the Butlins Company (b. 1899)
• 2003 – Gregory Peck, American actor, singer, and producer (b. 1916)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Kenny G (60), Mark Wahlberg (45), Sandra Bernhard (61), Jason Isaacs (53), Paul Giamatti (49), Bjorn Borg (60), Aaron Sorkin (55), Tom Jones (76), Liam Neeson (64), Bear Grylls (42), Bill Hader (38), Anna Kournikova (35), Jerry Stiller (89), Nancy Sinatra (76), Griffin Dunne (61), Kanye West (39), Barbara Bush (91), Michael J. Fox (55), Johnny Depp (53), Natalie Portman (35), Jackie Mason (85), Elizabeth Hurley (51), Gene Wilder (83), Hugh Laurie (57), Joshua Jackson (38) and Shia Lebeouf (30).

The Last Word

Barbara Olson (1955–2001) – What do I tell the pilot to do?

Next week peeps!

12th June 2016 | Categories: 2016 | Leave A Comment »

Dead Pool 5th June 2016

With the tragic demise off The Greatest boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali, we have some points to dispense. Well done to Sarai, Paula, Nick, Mark, Dave, Shan, Wendy, Julia and Nicola, 76 points each. Even more kudos for those of you who have managed to score for the first time. We’re more or less at the half-way point and all but ten of us have scored, which is rather unusual in itself, but the way things are going I strongly suspect that everyone will score something this year, which will be a first for us!

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Harambe, 17, American gorilla, shot.
• Alan Devereux, 75, British actor (The Archers).
• Carla Lane, 87, English television writer (The Liver Birds, Butterflies, Bread).
• Muhammad Ali, 74, American boxer, three-time WBC world heavyweight champion (1964, 1974, 1978), Olympic gold medalist (1960), respiratory issues.
• Dave Swarbrick, 75, British folk musician and singer-songwriter (Fairport Convention), emphysema.

In Other News 

Richard Simmons has been hospitalised after acting strangely at his Hollywood Hills mansion, it has been reported. The reclusive fitness guru was behaving bizarrely at his home on Friday night, leading someone to call 911. Paramedics took Simmons, 67, to a Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. It is not clear if he has been discharged yet. The workout star’s Twitter and Facebook pages continued to be updated with links to news articles through Friday and Saturday, however it is not known whether someone else was in charge of the posts. All the pictures he has posted of himself recently appear to be old. Simmons has been a recluse for the last three years and in March his friends feared he had been ‘kidnapped’ by his housekeeper. Teresa Reveles, 64, was accused of of controlling Simmons using black magic, something the star was forced to deny in phone calls to two chat shows. ‘I am not kidnapped. I am just in my house right now,’ he insisted. ‘No one should be worried about me. The people that surround me are wonderful people who take great care of me.’ Of Reveles, he added: ‘She’s been with me for 30 years. It’s almost like we’re a married couple.’

Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, has travelled to the UK with family to have a second cardiac procedure in five years, his daughter has said. Sharif was in high spirits when he went into the operating theatre at about 8am, according to Maryam Sharif. Posting the information on Twitter, she did not say how long the surgery was expected to take. The operation was for a perforation of the heart, a complication from an earlier cardiac procedure in 2011, Maryam said in another tweet last week. Nawaz Sharif, 66, was prime minister for two terms in the 1990s before being overthrown in a 1999 military coup. After years in exile, he returned to Pakistan in 2007 and led his party to a victory in a 2013 election.

Prince Philip missed a commemoration of the largest naval battle of the First World War following advice from his doctor. The Queen’s husband was told to miss the Battle of Jutland commemoration which saw the Royal Navy fight the Imperial German Navy off the coast of Denmark from 31st May to 1st June in 1916. The 94-year-old, who celebrates his 95th birthday on 10th June, has not been to hospital and is not expected to need an appointment any time soon. “The background is that this is on the doctor’s order, but there are no plans for him to go to hospital,” a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace told the media. “This is a temporary health thing.”

On This Day

• 1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris.
• 1917 – World War I: Conscription begins in the United States as “Army registration day”.
• 1956 – Elvis Presley introduces his new single, “Hound Dog“, on The Milton Berle Show, scandalising the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
• 1963 – The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, resigns in a sex scandal known as the “Profumo affair”.
• 1968 – Robert F. Kennedy, a U.S. presidential candidate, is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian. Kennedy dies the next day.
• 1975 – The United Kingdom holds its first country-wide referendum on remaining in the European Economic Community (EEC).
• 1981 – The “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that five people in Los Angeles, California, have a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, in what turns out to be the first recognised cases of AIDS.
• 1989 – The Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
• 2004 – Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, dies at 93.

Deaths

• 2004 – Ronald Reagan, American actor and politician, 40th President of the United States (b. 1911)
• 2012 – Ray Bradbury, American author and screenwriter (b. 1920)
• 2015 – Tariq Aziz, Iraqi journalist and politician, Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs (b. 1936)

Last Week’s Birthdays

LaToya Jackson (60), Noel Gallagher (49), Mel B (41), Colm Meany (63), Steven Gerrard (36), Clint Eastwood (86), Tom Berenger (67), Lea Thompson (55), Brooke Shields (51), Colin Farrell (40), Morgan Freeman (79), Ronny Wood (69), Jonathan Pryce (69), Heidi Klum (43), Alanis Morissette (42), Dana Carvey (61), Zachary Quinto (39), Justin Long (38), Rafael Nadal (30), Noah Wyle (45), Russell Brand (41) and Angelina Jolie (41).

The Last Word

Donald Campbell – (1921–1967) – Hallo, the bow is up… I’m going… I’m on my back… I’ve gone. Oh.

Next week peeps!

5th June 2016 | Categories: 2016 | Leave A Comment »