CastAway

French actress and singer, Marie Laforêt has died aged 80. https://www.lefigaro.fr/musique/mort-de-la-chanteuse-marie-laforet-20191103

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Hall of Famer and former Maple Leafs GM Jim Gregory has died aged 83. NHL release: https://media.nhl.com/public/news/13561 News report: https://www.tsn.ca/hockey-hall-of-famer-former-toronto-maple-leafs-gm-jim-gregory-dead-at-83-1.1389715

I honestly continue to be surprised that given the ages of some of the big Congressional names, we don't see sitting Congresspeople die more often. Even with Cummings, he wasn't really that old compared to the 80+ brigade. Hell, the Conyers death could potentially have been a sitting member had he not had to resign over the allegations, which given his age, wouldn't have been surprising.

Still, it's always nice to get rid of any doubts, isn't it?

Should be noted that his comments re: the cancer should raise questions as to what stage the cancer is at and survivability odds given to him. "I want to live to tell the story" isn't exactly the most optimistic of comments, so he might be an interesting punt in a pool next year or in 2021. Not sure he'd make the QO for the DDP, but other pools that accept American sources should be a surefire obit.

Last tweet is from June, with a retweet in September. Given it wasn't him tweeting to begin with, rather someone doing it for him, he's either seriously ill with the condition being hidden, or physically relatively okay but mentally gone cuckoo.

Someone remind me to have a ticket out the country + plans for a month's vacation for when he dies. It's going to be a shitshow.

Look at the comment chain, news was broken by @MrWonderful who references a CNN piece, with @The Old Crem providing a QO. Not sure why I needed to provide another source of Cummings' death after that - the conversation had been happening for an hour plus before I got there.

Kirk? Please?

Cummings was House Oversight Chairman, so expect Trump to make a typical daft comment, and 8 million conspiracy theories to give you a headache. That aside, Cummings will be missed in the House, especially now with impeachment processes starting.

Republican Representative Louis Frey Jr. dead at 85. He was in the House of Reps from 1969-1979.

Former NHL winger Danny Grant dead at 74. He played for the Habs and the Kings for a bit each, and 6 years for the North Stars and 5 for the Wings. During the first of his seasons with Wings, he scored 50 goals. Obit in French, nothing in English available yet: https://www.tvasports.ca/2019/10/15/un-ancien-du-canadien-est-decede

I know balls all about the English prison system, but the Guardian piece on Huckle's death (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/14/paedophile-richard-huckle-found-dead-in-prison) notes that he isn't exactly the first criminal convicted of offences against kids to be murdered in that prison. Last murder wasn't a paedo but a garden variety child killer (Colin Hatch) it seems like (and that's a contradiction in itself isn't it?), and he was killed by a diagnosed psychopath who was imprisoned for life for armed robbery. Said psychopath also attempted to kill another guy (Ian Huntley), who was also a child murderer, and admitted it was because he had a "particular hatred against child killers," said crimes against kids "did his head in" and expressed regret that the second guy survived. Now, I'm not exactly mourning their deaths all around, just saying that it doesn't seem like that the prison you want to go to if you've committed crimes against kids. I assume it would be even worse given this wasn't just simple murder, but that the guy in question was a paedo. And had a taste for babies as opposed to, say, 15 year olds (both vile, but I suspect one would play better than the other in prison, and it weren't Huckle's tastes).

So, there's been a lot of focus on Korean/Japanese pop stars and the pressure they face. This is the 2nd? 3rd? K-pop 20s death this year. We need to start considering the 'big' bands (I know of BTS and Pink, and I'm sure there's a couple other well known ones) in the 27 Club conversation, IMO.