5th Annual (2008 Version) Celebrity Death Pool!

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Slight younger, but still dead:

The standalone VCR.

[Hank Chinaski]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/mo...es&oref=slogin

rob reiner's mom, who delivered the above line in When Harry Met Sally.

[notcasesensitive]

Died at 96. Looks like a solo hit for ncs (unless I missed it on someone else's list).

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

CNN has just put up a headline with perhaps the saddest death of all this year.

Barack Obama's Grandmother has died.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Truly the Terminal Man. Michael Crichton.

[Sparklehorse]

A tremendous artist who is probably underappreciated in the U.S., Mirium Makeba:

Obituary link

In the United States she became a star, touring with Harry Belafonte in the 1960s and winning a Grammy award with him in 1965. Such was her following and fame that she sang in 1962 at the birthday party of President John F. Kennedy. She also performed with Paul Simon on his Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.

But she fell afoul of the U.S. music industry because of her marriage to Mr. Carmichael and her decision to live in Guinea.

...

In her interview in 2008, Ms. Makeba said: “I’m not a political singer. I don’t know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us _ especially the things that hurt us.”

[Hank Chinaski]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/ar...es&oref=slogin

mitch mitchell

[Flinty_McFlint]

RIP Coach Newell, wish you could have seen another championship. Meanwhile, that fucker Wooden just keeps living.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081118/..._obit_newell_5

[Atticus Grinch]

Amy Winehouse . . . admitted to hospital for "reacting badly to medication.". I suppose addiction is a form of reacting badly.

[Hank Chinaski]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/bu...ref=obituaries

• Betty James, Who Named the Slinky Toy, Is Dead at 90
  
  Betty James, who came up with the name Slinky for the stair-walking spring that has delighted children for more than 60 years and who ran the toy company after her husband, the inventor, left it and his family in 1960, died Thursday in Philadelphia. She was 90 and lived in Hollidaysburg, Pa., where the company, James Industries, is located.
  
  The cause was congestive heart failure, her son Tom said.
  
  Paging through a dictionary in 1944, Mrs. James put her finger on the word slinky because she thought it best described the sinuous and graceful movement and the soft sound of the expanding and contracting metal coil her husband, Richard, had fashioned.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Odetta, 77.

[Sparklehorse]

Mr Bentley has moved on up:

Paul Benedicit dead at 70

[dtb]

Originally Posted by Sparklehorse

Mr Bentley has moved on up:

Paul Benedicit dead at 70

That guy was only 70?? I would have guessed he was pushing 70 when he was on The Jeffersons.

On the other hand, there's this older dude who runs on my road a lot. He's not overly fast or anything, but I see him out there a lot. I figured he was about 70, too. Turns out he's NINETY-FREAKING-ONE.

Obviously, I'm not very good at guessing ages.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by dtb

Obviously, I'm not very good at guessing ages.

Americans learn to process age beginning with drinking age, and we extrapolate from that. But you, you're european. europeans let kids drink from a very young age, very very young sometimes, so they don't learn to focus on age so m uch.

[Penske_Account]

Does he ever make it outta the stir alive? [sniff]