Johnny Grant, the man who's there when people get their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame died too. He kind of slipped under the radar.

Congrats Klyd on one of your peeps to kick the bucket. Also

Congrats to SC keeping up with it.

Yes! An early lead. I heard Sir Hillary's last words were, "Screw Geoff. Long live the World War I veterans!"

Edmund Hillary was a choice I debated, and I almost tipped my hand last month when DC asked whether Hillary (Clinton) was the common choice among the participants. Actually, I recall hearing that Mrs. Clinton was named after Sir Edmund.

He was actually one of my favorites on my list (why couldn't it have been Betty White?). What I didn't realize when I entered this contest is that I'll now always remember Sir Edmund Hillary as the man who put me into the death pool lead.

That's one down. It makes up for my disappointment in forgetting to put Ernest Borgnine in my list after he was the first one I thought of.

Oh, well. It's a good start, but this contest is a marathon, not a sprint, and there's a long way to go. I'm predicting Maharishi Yogi by Groundhog's Day and Ariel Sharon by the Ides of March. I'm starting to like this game a bit too much.

Damn, talk about a bunch of long-shots!!

Macaulay Culkin
-Suicide...Bad relatiionship with parents, molested by Michael Jakckson, etc...

Peter Gammons
-Already almost died last year (or was it 2006?)

Whitney Houston
-Cocaine

Shia Lebeouf
-Curse of Indiana Jones, I explained in a previous post: "My best long shot is Shia Lebeouf. A kid who has been around forever in movies and very talented. He looks like he has a very bright, long acting career ahead of him. He has the type of potential River Phoenix had, and like River Phoenix he is going to be in the next Indiana Jones movie, and therefore die soon."

David Letterman
-Heart Attack

Norm MacDonald
-Alcohol/Gambling debt related death

Jason Mewes
-Drug Overdose

Borack Obama
-Assasinated

Paul Shaffer
-Because he annoys the hell out of me

Britney Spears
-Could die at any moment for various reasons

Henry Winkler
-I probably shouldn't have put him on the list but I figure at least one sitcom icon has to die and he's looking a little frail lately.

In other words, I'm going to lose.

A couple names I don't know, but I can see where you might choose Culkin, Spears, Obama, Houston, since they all, even though young, have their health/drug/sanity issues. Look at it this way Bibble, if you were laying odds in Vegas, and won with a long shot, look how rich you "would" be.


TIS

WTG on those who had Sir Ednund Hillary who climbed Mt. Everest and a likely candidate. Damn.... I missed that one.

BTW he is alays creditd with being the first guy to clim Mt. Everest, but he had sherpa guides all the way to the top. APparently thy stepped aside to let him tke the final steps to the summit. Does anyone really believe he was the first? I don't. Maybe the first white guy, but not the first guy.

Hillary was accompanied by Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay on his famous ascent. Norgay spoke several languages, but couldn't read or write. His grandson and Hillary's grandson climbed to the summit of Everest together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original climb. Norgay, I think, died about 15 years ago.

Sad news for me.... Johnny Podres, one of the great Brooklyn Dodger pitchers, died yesterday at age 75. He beat the Yankees in two games in the '55 Series, giving Brooklyn their World Championship. The Dodgers lost the first two games of the Series and Podres beat the Yanks in the third... tied up at 3 games apiece, Podres shutout the Yanks in the final game and earned the nickname "The Yankee Killer".

R.I.P. Johnny, and thanks for the memories.

P.S. Nobody had him in the Pool.

This is an instance where you don't want to put someone on your list, because you don't want them to die.

RIP Johnny!

RIP Johnny.... although as a Yankee fan I never forgave him for the 2-0 shut out in the 55 World Series.

Not only was he a solid pitcher, but I remember him as a very good pitching coach in Philadelphia and some other places. RIP

25 Year old actor Brad Renfro has died. He sure wasn't even on the radar blip.

Brad Renfro Dies at 25

TUESDAY JANUARY 15, 2008 08:00 PM EST

By Howard Breuer and Marla Lehner

Actor Brad Renfro has died at age 25, PEOPLE has confirmed.

Renfro died Tuesday at a Los Angeles apartment where he spent the night with friends, Craig Harvey, chief investigator for the Los Angeles county coroner, tells PEOPLE.

Renfro was heard snoring overnight, but found not breathing later Tuesday morning, and the friends called 911. Paramedics declared him dead at the scene at about 9 a.m., Harvey says.

A cause of death was not immediately determined, but Renfro had a history of drug problems.

Drug overdose is "obviously it's a possibility considering his history, but right now all we have is the history of his drinking the previous night," Harvey says. "All that we have is that he was last known to be alive during the morning hours and he was snoring."

The actor, who starred in The Client and Apt Pupil, had recently completed a movie with Winona Ryder and Billy Bob Thornton.

Film director Joel Schumacher discovered Renfro at age 12 and cast him in the 1994 John Grisham movie The Client (which also starred Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones). The following year, PEOPLE named the young screen hopeful one of its "Top 30 Under 30." The actor's other credits include Tom and Huck, Ghost World and Deuces Wild.

But Renfro had a troubled life off-screen, going back to 1997 when he was sentenced to two years of probation after he tried to steal a yacht.

In 2005, Renfro was busted again, this time in a police sting in which he was charged with a felony count of attempting to possess heroin. In a separate incident, he was charged with a misdemeanor count of driving under the influence and two counts of driving with a suspended license.

In January 2006, he entered a rehab program. At the time, Renfro's attorney, Richard Kaplan, told the Los Angeles Times that his client was doing well and "looks forward to doing whatever is necessary to take care of his personal and legal issues." Renfro eventually plead guilty to the heroin charge and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Most recently, in June 2007 Renfro was found to have violated his probation by not enrolling in a long-term drug treatment program. A judge warned him that if he violated probation two more times, he could be sentence to a live-in rehab program or to jail time.

Renfro's death was first reported by TMZ.com.

He was the little boy in The Client! How sad! That's one of the better Grisham adaptations.

Nobody had him as a pick.

Two weeks into the year and we got only ONE hit!!??!

It's cold and flu season. Someone's bound to get pneumonia or something.

Everyone's predicting Britny's trainwreck. They're already calling her the next Princess Di or Anna Nicole Smith.

This list (linked below) might be of some interest to you participants:

2008 DEATHLIST PICKS

Least we aren't the only sicko's out there.

Former New York Mets Pitcher, DON CARDWELL, passed away yesterday.


DON CARDWELL DIES

They are as sick as we, and have many of the same picks!

I don't think anyone had Bobby Fischer on their list. We really suck at this.

World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer Dies

By GUDJON HELGASON

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) -- Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death.

Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, Robert James Fischer was a U.S. chess champion at 14 and a grand master at 15. He beat Spassky in a series of games in Reykjavik to claim America's first world chess championship in more than a century.

The event had tremendous symbolic importance, pitting the intensely individualistic young American against a product of the grim and soulless Soviet Union.

It also was marked by Fischer's odd behavior - possibly calculated psychological warfare against Spassky - that ranged from arriving two days late to complaining about the lighting, TV cameras, the spectators, even the shine on the table.

Spassky said in a brief phone call from France, where he lives, that he was "very sorry" to hear of Fischer's death.

Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov said Fischer's conquest of the chess world in the 1960s was "a revolutionary breakthrough" for the game.

But Fischer's reputation as a chess genius soon was eclipsed by his idiosyncrasies. He lost his world title in 1975 after refusing to defend it against Anatoly Karpov. He dropped out of competitive chess and largely out of view, emerging occasionally to make erratic and often anti-Semitic comments, although his mother was Jewish.

"The tragedy is that he left this world too early, and his extravagant life and scandalous statements did not contribute to the popularity of chess," Kasparov told The Associated Press.

Fischer lived in secret outside the United States but emerged in 1992 to confront Spassky again, in a highly publicized match in Yugoslavia. Fischer beat Spassky 10-5 to win $3.35 million.

The U.S. government said Fischer's playing the match violated U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia, imposed for Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic's role in fomenting war in the Balkans.

Over the years, Fischer gave occasional interviews with a radio station in the Philippines, often digressing into anti-Semitic rants and accusing American officials of hounding him.

He praised the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards." His mother was Jewish.

He also announced he had abandoned chess in 1996 and launched a new version in Argentina, "Fischerandom," a computerized shuffler that randomly distributes chess pieces on the back row of the board at the start of each game.

Fischer claimed it would bring the fun back into the game and rid it of cheats.

In July 2004, Fischer was arrested in Japan and threatened with extradition to the United States to face sanctions-busting charges. He spent nine months in custody before the dispute was resolved when Iceland - a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph - granted him citizenship.

Fischer told reporters that he was finished with a chess world he regarded as corrupt, and sparred with U.S. journalists who asked about his anti-American tirades.

"The United States is evil. There's this axis of evil. What about the allies of evil - the United States, England, Japan, Australia? These are the evildoers," Fischer said.

In his final years, Fischer railed against the chess establishment, alleging that the outcomes of many top-level chess matches were decided in advance.

Instead, he championed his concept of random chess.

"I don't play the old chess," he told reporters upon arrival in Iceland. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best."

If ever there was an example of the thin line between genius and madness, he was it.

First, I was thinking Bobby Riggs (Billie Jean King's foe).

Wow! Talk about a name from the past. You know I couldn't even tell you what he looked like, but there was a time his name was mentioned in the news very often.

TIS

I just know his name from the movie, "Searching for Bobby Fischer".

Nobody picked Fischer on their list.

So, with the final checkmate, Bobby, R.I.P.

Fuck him. He was a self-loathing, anti-semitic lunatic, who praised the September 11th attacks, referring to NYC as "Jew York City."

Good riddance.

I'm sorry for his death, but ONLY for the sake of his chess. He turned in some phenomenal performances in his time. Kasparov once said that Fischer was further ahead of the other players of his generation than anyone else ever! wow.

But of the Fischer who used his fame as a platform for anti-Semitic rants and who called the attacks on September 11, 2001 "wonderful news," I say good riddance.


(As per wikipedia, Fischer died at age 64, which is coincidentally the number of squares on a chessboard)

Fischer, like so many of these chess wizards seem to be, was an introverted, self-hating, miserable SOB. His anti-Semitism was embarassing, and I never knew his mother was Jewish.

I remember the victory over Spassky in Iceland in "72, and somehow think that it coincided with the Munich games. This was at the height of the Cold War, and was huge news. I was 8 years old and had thought they were playing checkers.

I remember the cover of Time or Newsweek with the pictures of both Fischer and Spassky on chess pieaces.