MrWonderful

My goodness, I'm rallying like crazy in December. Up to 17 hits now. RIP, Mr. West.

An egregious miss by the committee. This is as if the heavens had her die on Dec. 30 to rub it in.

Dikembe Mutombo. As I said in the '23 thread, he started undergoing treatment for a brain tumor as of October 2022. We don't know exactly what he's dealing with, but if he has the dreaded glioblastoma, there's very little chance he sees 2025, with a chance he doesn't even see 2024.

Damn, there it is. RIP, legend.

Ronstadt does look fine for now, but I'd caution against thinking she's completely safe for 2023. At the end of last year, Olivia Newton-John looked good, too. Of course, we all knew how serious her cancer had been for quite some time, and it was just a matter of when the treatments stopped working. Well, they stopped working, and in a matter of months, she went from looking good to dead. Ronstadt is past the usual life expectancy for her affliction. So while she looked fine in the interview and while she probably won't be dead next month, once it starts to deteriorate, it often doesn't take long. I'll consider dropping her, but it's not like she has much time to live, relatively speaking.

I think people grieve in different ways, so it's not for me to say what a person should or should not be doing. It wouldn't be for me, for sure, but far be it for me to tell another person how they should handle a close relative's impending death or death. I'll use an example that I saw recently. Earlier this month, a woman that I went to high school with, who is one of my Facebook friends, lost her young daughter tragically. She was probably around 20 years old, something like that. I guess she struggled with severe diabetes and other related health problems, and she had to be rushed to the hospital and fell into a coma. She never came out of it and died maybe 7-10 days later. During the time that her daughter was in the hospital fighting for her life, this friend of mine posted on Facebook multiple times daily about her daughter, and many of my other friends (who also have her on their Facebook) thought it was strange to see these posts given that it seemed her daughter was facing long odds to recover. But it must have been her way of dealing with it, putting something out there so that she didn't break down, who knows. It's not like she was doing it for the social media exposure. Anyway, I just think it's tough to judge a person for how they behave in an extremely serious situation. Different people are going to react in different ways.

If his own daughter is saying one more night together, yeah, we're talking about hours here, not days.

I missed Jonnie Irwin before; that would be another must-add for me. And Rob Burrow (just learned about him) might not be too far behind, sadly.

How the hell did I miss that? I try to keep up, but as a Yank, I guess I don't catch them all. Thanks.

Thinking about my top 50 List, and with 13 hits this year (a down year for sure), that means I'll have at least 13 new openings. 13 Must-Add's Randy Jackson (looks like a dying man) June Spencer (age alone) Glynis Johns (age alone) Linda Nolan (advanced cancer) Sonny Rollins (92, is well past the life expectancy for his pulmonary fibrosis) Song Ping (age alone) James Whale (stage 4 cancer, recently hospitalized) Frank Field (terminally ill since Oct. 2021) Rolf Harris (92 and very ill with cancer) Andy Taylor (just a 30% survival rate for stage 4 prostate cancer at the fifth year of diagnosis) Ryuichi Sakamoto (stage 4 cancer and just gave "last" concert) Gianluca Vialli (second battle with pancreatic cancer, hospitalized) Steve McMichael (seriously ill with ALS) Must-Keeps (24) Bob Newhart Pele Ayatollah Khamenei Jimmy Carter Rosalynn Carter Yoko Ono Harry Belafonte Joanne Woodward Tony Bennett Barbara Walters Eva Marie Saint Bob Barker Pope Benedict Fay Vincent Dick Cheney Steve Gleason Jacques Delors Robert Solow Don West James Lovelock Philippe de Gaulle George Alagiah Stanley Baxter Henry Kissinger So this leaves 13 spots for me. Of my remaining holdovers, I will probably drop Bob Cousy and David Crosby, with the others still a part of the discussion. I'll list some more names I have my eye on below, with comments included. Dikembe Mutombo (Receiving treatment for a brain tumor as of Oct. 2022; haven't been able to find further specifics. If it's a glioblastoma, there's a chance he may not see 2024, and he'd be a must for 2024 lists.) Mohamed al-Fayed (turns 94 next month, could be in failing health) Tim Curry (has been frail for quite a while now after his major 2012 stroke) Vladimir Putin (he's obviously ill to some degree; rumors that he's very ill continue) Norman Lear (looks good to me still, but he's 100, after all) Liza Minnelli (obviously extremely frail, as evidenced by her Oscars appearance) Robert Wagner (if law enforcement won't get him, perhaps The Reaper will) Katherine Jackson (failing health rumors for a while now) Norman Tebbit (going off comments in his thread that his body seems to be deteriorating) Milan Kundera (probably moves up on the DL if he makes it to '23) Nigel Starmer-Smith (a high-enough placing on the DL to make me think he is very likely to go in the next year or two) Bobby Charlton (another DL pick pretty high on the list) Ted Turner (late stages of Lewy Body dementia?) Stella Stevens (late stages of dementia) Mel Brooks (mentally still all there at 96) James Earl Jones (91 and in declining health) Roberta Flack (85 and just diagnosed with ALS) Jean-Marie Le Pen (looks like he's declined in the past year) Sandra Day O'Connor (at 92, has lasted a long while now with dementia/Alzheimer's) Ruth Buzzi (the 86-year-old suffered a series of strokes earlier this year) Pervez Musharraf (organs deteriorating as of June 2022) Of these above names, I think I'll be reserving spots for Musharraf, Starmer-Smith, Tebbit, and Minnelli. Some other strong candidates though, clearly.

Seeing that was why I added her to my list just before the new year. I was shocked at how gaunt she looked.

I see what you did there. I think.

He does really look like he's aged, wow. Still, he doesn't look frail, and though he had that cancer scare, doesn't appear to be in imminent danger.

This is completely unexpected, yes. He literally was doing interviews yesterday about the impending game and ceremony on Saturday. The Steelers are playing the Raiders on the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception, and the Steelers are retiring his #32 jersey either before or during the game.

Yeah, this is sounding very bleak for Leach. If your brain goes without oxygen for that long, there's basically no way to recover. He's most likely on life support without brain function. Former Kansas State coach Bill Snyder even mistakenly tweeted that Leach had passed away, then corrected himself and apologized shortly thereafter, and has since deleted both tweets. My guess is that some in the know are probably aware that nothing can be done and that it's just a matter of when the family takes him off life support.

It sucks to hear that this is a terminal condition, but for her sake, perhaps she still has a couple of decades left, who knows. I actually think she looks much better in the Instagram video than she did in pictures from January 2022 and in pictures from before that, even. She clearly looks less gaunt, and her face looks more "full." Perhaps after she got diagnosed, treatments have helped. She doesn't look like she's someone whose death could be imminent, and she kind of did look like that recently, at least to me.

Well then, how do I not put a 105-year-old on my 2023 List?

Would Song Ping get a QO in the British media?

Had him on my list because of drol.

Yes he's a gimme pick, as he's sadly very very sick. Low-hanging fruit, if the committee wants it.

Still nothing alarming from those photos imo. This doesn't look like a Queen Elizabeth situation from the end of last year, where she looked noticeably gaunt.

Yeah, as I remarked on his thread, it's incredibly sad. I think he's famous enough (performed with Journey, music producer, American Idol judge) that he should be added to the list. It would be a remarkable upset, unfortunately, if he's alive in 2024. Has to be a must-add to the '23 List.

Damn, yeah this is really sad. If he makes it to 2023, he'll be an auto-add to my list.

I will not be dropping him from my own list. That transplanted heart has a shelf life. Tick tock.

Joanne Woodward, dammit! Ha, I cast my vote for Phillips.