RadGuy

Georgia Engel is dead? Georgia by far the youngest MTM star Engel? That's actually fucking crazy. Never in a million years would I have thought she'd be the next one to die! Betty White and Cloris Leachman are both ancient. Ed Asner is a fat old Jew. Valerie Harper has been outliving her lung cancer prognosis by a gazillion years and counting. And Gavin MacLeod's old and out of the spotlight. And - fuck me - you're saying that spry, young, "only" 70-year-old Georgia Engel was the first one to die out of them all? I honestly believed that the 3-decade drought between Ted Knight and Mary dying would happen again with Georgia Engel outliving the rest of em all by a few decades. Goddamn. Oh, and excuse my long rant. I'm just shocked. Georgia Engel was a great, sweet actress and she will be missed. Edit: Actually a unique DDP hit for my Z-Team, Belmont-Cragin Reaper. I didn't expect her to die (obviously) but that team is mostly comprised of celebs who I don't want to be DDP misses in the unlikely event that they die. Edit 2: And I see @YoungWillz just pointed out that "someone" picked her.

Picture this. Spring time in Chicago. Flowers blooming, buds forming on trees, sunshine, warm weather. Last week was just like that. We reached 74°F (23°C) on Monday and nearly the same on Tuesday. Felt like summer, spent a lot of time outdoors, listening to good tunes. And then, yesterday morning, I wake up at noon with my hangover and... on God - several fucking inches of snow on the motherfucking ground. It continued throughout the day, including with gusty winds, and the official measurement at nearby O'Hare Airport was 5 inches. Pretty annoying. I was really enjoying the nice weather and it looked like the leaves were about to show up on trees. Last year it snowed several times throughout April, which resulted in no green until mid-May. This year was looking to get green early, but now this fucking snowstorm will probably delay it. Flowers all died too I'm assuming. But it's bi-polar ass Chicago weather, so winter isn't back for long. Snow already melted today, and tomorrow it's gonna be 67°F (18°C) and about the same for the rest of the week.

His ex-wife is dying of cancer.

Fritz Hollings for the List of the Missed.

Wow, can't believe I actually managed to get ahead of Banana. I hope it lasts. Regardless, should be a high-scoring round between us two. As for Mr. Tong, from what I read about him, he seemed like a reactionary sociopath and he will not be missed.

Cosmonaut and DDP pick Valery Bykovsky has died at 84. Best I can do is a Spanish language source so far, figured more of y'all speak that than Russian. Edit: My bad, here's an English one already.

No, that was at 9:00 in the morning, bit too early for our group, especially since we live a ways away from downtown. I was gonna say we didn't even get to see the river *at all* during the day, but I just fuckin realized it's right by the damn train station. Had to have seen it, so either the dye had already worn off and thus wasn't memorable, or I was too inebriated to notice or remember the color change. 'Twas a good day regardless!

As much as I roasted St. Patrick's Day on these forums 2 years ago, I've got to say this year I got in the holiday spirit... by getting shitfaced with my friends at the downtown Chicago parade yesterday. Next stop is the Polish parade in May.

A while ago I was tempted to make a father-in-law vs. daughter-in-law "who will die first?" poll between Birch Bayh and Susan Bayh. Guess we know who 'won' now... But I feel bad for Evan... just lost his father, and will probably lose his wife soon too to cancer.

Yusuke Yamaguchi has died, helping me grow my lead.

What is 'the saddest news I've heard all day'?

Ah, fuck. Really thought she was a banker to make 2020. If I thought she had even a 20% chance of dying this year (especially so early!) I would have picked her in the DDP. This, plus Michael "I think he may have already died off the radar'' Murphy's death yesterday, and McGahan earlier in the month... really shaping up to be a shitty year for me in the DDP. But there's 10 months left so we'll see. And of course, on a personal note - sad story. No age at all. Weird seeing somebody who's pretty much my age becoming a DDP hit. Now I know how youze oldies feels. RIP Jordan Dawes

In an ironic twist of fate, the brother of Amer Deghayes (Syrian rebel fighter/Living End pick), Abdul Deghayes, was stabbed to death in Brighton. Meanwhile, brother Amer seems to live a comfortable life in the much safer, family-friendly city of Idlib, Syria.

No big plans today. I have a date on Saturday, though, gonna buy her some flowers and take her to Chipotle. Should be enough for a blowjob.

What a shame. Dingell's frequent tweets (although presumably written by his staff) were very clever and I'll miss seeing them on my feed. Honored him with a spot on the US politics theme team last year, and this year I have him on my Z-Team. Despite his numerous health scares and bouncing back from them, this looks like the real deal.

Well, the Pats did it again. Fuuuuuck. Honestly I'm not even mad anymore. When they won 2 years ago, I was fucking livid. But this year I'm calm. I've accepted it. Congrats to Tom Brady on 6 Super Bowl rings in 17 years. Now please just retire, ffs!

In what might be the biggest plot-twist in the rap community in years, 21 Savage has been arrested by ICE because he is apparently secretly from the UK and has been illegally living in the USA. Kids - this is why you don't trust people from Atlanta.

Just wanted to point out that my NFL team Traded To The Saints is missing the theme-team description. Something like ''People involved with the NFL, from coaches and players, to superfan Pancho Billa and an ESPN sportscaster''.... shit it's too vague for a theme team, isn't it?

Welp, I excluded McGahan on the basis that he wouldn't obit. This was my major 'make or break' punt for 2019. Now that he did obit, I don't think I have a shot in hell of winning this year (not that I expected to). Congrats to those who did pick him! Which is - err, all of youze. I now fall to =16th place, tied with Dead Cow and Sir Creep. Both of those teams will make big improvements compared to last year, imho. Creep, I think, will have his best year yet, even better than 2016.

School was cancelled yesterday and today. Wind chills yesterday morning made it near -55°F (-48°C). This morning had slightly less torturous wind chills, but the actual temperature reached its lowest value in years: -24°F (-31°C). My sister stepped outside to do the ''throw boiling water and it automatically turns into snow'' thing. It worked quite well.

Alright, so, I've decided I want to change my username back to the original RadGuy. It's been 1 and 1/2 years since I changed it to Phantom of the Midway, but people still call me Rad. Also, I'm occasionally confused with the OG @Phantom So fuck it, we're going back to RadGuy. Apologies to pool runners in advance for needing to edit my name in their masterlists/scoreboards... (Also, as this might help with confused folks, could my tagline be changed to: "AKA Phantom of the Midway")

We been dealing with the same shit, other Phantom. High-five for Midwest struggles! We got a measly 6 inches from this storm, but of course my shitty town didn't clear the roads, so school was cancelled today. There's probably well over a foot on the ground now, thanks to the previous snowstorms, so it definitely looks like a winter wonderland out there. And Wednesday... aye, school will definitely be cancelled. They're now showing a wind chill of almost -60°F at 8:00AM Wednesday morning. NEGATIVE FUCKIN' SIXTY. Thursday will be a nice, mild, balmy -30°F wind chill. So school may not be cancelled on that day. Would be nice if it is, tho, cause then we'd have a 5-day weekend (Friday is off anyway for teacher conferences). And ya know what's funny? By Saturday and Sunday, high temperatures will be around 45°F. Almost spring-like. The weatherman on TV last night said ''Saturday will feel over 100 degrees warmer than Wednesday''.    Holy shit that's crazy. Well, that's Chicago weather for you.... Anyway, off to shoveling I go...

So about a week later, an update. Friday night into Saturday, we did end up with a ton of snow. Around 6 inches fell, possibly more but I'm not sure (well I wasn't gonna fuckin' go out with a ruler, was I?) Tuesday we had an ice storm. I was leaving school for lunch and had to take several minutes to scrape the ice off my car. On the plus side, it didn't ice afterwards, so I quickly left before the traffic at the end of the day, while most other folk were stuck scraping. Wednesday a bit more snow fell. And Thursday. And today. Fuck sake! Today was also frigid as hell, with wind chills around -20°F (-29°C) in the morning. No school cancellations throughout all of this, but I'm not surprised. By Chicago standards, it wasn't that bad. What's ahead? A snowstorm coming Monday morning. Funny thing is - one model shows 3 inches falling here, another model shows 13 inches. If it's the latter - definitely no school. Roads will be fucked. And also if it's that much, the snow on the ground - of which there already is a fuck-ton - will probably be 2 and a half fucking feet! Wednesday morning and Thursday morning wind chills could go as low as -50°F (-46°C)! Definite school cancellations. I'll be enjoying next week in the warmth of my house, it seems.

With Fatima Ali's death, I am at 4 hits. That's the first time I've gotten 4 hits in a month, and I was hoping that would happen, since I've already gotten 3 in a month several times. Wonder if I can make it 5? Okay, okay, I won't get greedy. Up to 7th place now. Slowly making a climb, but it's very early days so doesn't mean much. I am feeling a bit more optimistic about my performance, though.

Well, she's definitely further left than most Democrats. She has a record of being tough on Wall Street. However, she's voted for increasing the military budget a few times lately (as have many other Democrats, unfortunately). So that was quite disappointing of her. In some ways she also comes off as a bit opportunist. She chose not to endorse Bernie in 2016, likely because she didn't want to get on the bad side of the Hillary-wing of the party. She's a bit of a calculating politician - and she used to be much more honest, aggressive and opinionated. So it appears that being in Congress for a few years has changed her, and not in a good way. Overall, I guess you could say she's somewhat Bernie-lite. But Bernie is certainly to the left of her. Personally, I would easily vote for Bernie (or even Ojeda or Tulsi Gabbard) over Liz Warren in the Democratic primaries. However, I would have no problem casting my vote for Warren in the general election. If the nominee is somebody like Joe Biden, I would just vote third party probably. But yeah - Warren meets the ''progressive enough'' threshold where I would vote for her in the general election.