gcreptile

Another weird yahoo uk sports obit for Michel Delpech in french, this time about his funeral: https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/video/michel-delpech-inhum%C3%A9-%C3%A0-paris-193800625.html To be honest, it was probably the right decision to exclude yahoo, judging by their standards of journalistic rigour. But Delpech might be the first victim of the new rules. I guess, I'll let Spade do the work of finding an indirect obit, as he's probably got more skin in the game and he needs the obit to stay ahead of DDT.

Yes, on New Years Eve, that is, after the Deathrace deadline, an article about him made use of the word 'recovery': http://www.racer.com/north-american-racing/item/124867-american-racing-legend-adamowicz-fighting-brain-cancer Instead of days, he might well have weeks or months left. Probably not years though.

The Saudi situation has become very interesting and will get even more interesting. Iran has basically beaten Saudi Arabia in the diplomatic game. Oil prices are collapsing. The House of Saud is unstable. Saudi Arabia bombs Yemen to deflect from its own internal struggles, and Iran, with the help from Bush Jr. bombing away Saddam Hussein, has gained a huge influence in Iraq, building a bridge to Syria and Lebanon. There is unrest among the Shiites in eastern Saudi Arabia and Iran is on a reconciliation course with Iraq. Plus, there is the matter of Saudi Arabai indirectly supporting or even creating ISIS. Geopolitically, Saudi Arabia might have seen the most significant changes among all countries in 2015, only rivaled by the Ukraine.

I voted for Schmidt. It was a head vs heart decision, my heart said Mr.Spock.

I believe this will be a heavy year for "indirect" obits. Not just Andrew Smith, but also the Australian bishops Geoffrey Robinson and Ronald Mulkearns, whose deaths will be mentioned during the ongoing child abuse trial. Similarly, Gary Haggarty, probably. And it's slowly looking like Michel Delpech will also need one to count, most reasonably during the Isle of Wight festival in June.

So apparently, they caught "El Chapo", alive! http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/el-chapo-captured-mexican-president-says-1.2729452

English opera singer Marion Studholme, from the days when Opera was still a more egalitarian enjoyment, dead at 85: http://slippedisc.com/2016/01/a-wonderful-english-opera-singer-has-died/

Ah, the competition is too strong. Too many good picks in other teams. She might die in February but the game might be over before that.

There was another life sign of dancer Alice Barker in late 2015, can't believe she's still alive:

Dicey obit of the year Andrew Smith readmitted to hospital on Wednesday, family asks for prayers: http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2016/01/06/andrew-smith-back-hospital-amid-plea-prayers/78372206/

Ah ok, no problem. I didn't really look at the background of the show and just assumed that such a jack-of-all-trades like Harrington Jr. would have done some miming in that context. Edit: I didn't even know that there's a specific english meaning to the word. The more you learn...

The National Enquirer gets one right! https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjYtMuzl5jKAhUKDCwKHXRgCv4QqQIIKigAMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalenquirer.com%2Fcelebrity%2FPat-Harrington-Schneider-Alzheimers-health&usg=AFQjCNGoNiszDyuteQtwY_R0JpVfl-W0Nw&bvm=bv.110151844,d.bGg Err... Pat Harrington article there, for those who can access it

A tip of the hat to Spade, who saw that Pat Harrington Jr. is dead, and the reason why he was a "Must-have" for this competition is that he was both on Hollywood Squares: http://www.tv.com/shows/the-hollywood-squares-1966/october-23-29-1978-2-366413/ as well as in a pantomime: https://www.mptvimages.com/images/71275

Aaahh... even in intensive care. Edit: He suffered a fall. So not necessarily fatal, but let's see...

Let's see if I get points for Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros. The Deathrace would have been better place for him, but I submitted one day too soon. Let's see if his fame in the Latino community gets him a CNN obit.

Mhmm, the combo of cancer now in brain + recently suffered a stroke + hasn't posted to his usually chirpy Instagram since Dec. 26 (well, apparently there was something else since then, but it was so out there it had to be deleted) + a Playmate ex-wife of has has had to make comments on his Dec. 26 photo just to relay the latest on him means I don't anticipate him seeing the month's end. Yes, I agree. There's also this general feeling of "acceptance" on his Instagram. The same that I feel on Kris Travis's twitter feed (It's not public anymore, booo!).

The National Enquirer's sister outfit Radar Online has a literal "SAD LAST DAYS" story about Monty Brinson now, I'm inclined to believe them.

Ah, the Wikipedia entry is just a requirement to be a valid pick. The obit still needs to appear to make it count. For example, Pat Harrington Jr. can be chosen for your team, but whether he obits is unclear. There's still a risk of picking too marginal people. I also think that a huge appeal of this game is knowing more about culture and the little details behind history. One of my favorite examples is Jackie Kennedy's assistant who died last year with daily mail obit., Providencia Paredes, which I think is an interesting tidbit of history. For this reason, I would not like to disqualify "fame by association" picks, like also René Angelil or Monty Brinson, who has very marginal Reality TV fame himself, but is mostly associated with Kim Richards, a major reality TV star and child star (and press magnet) in her own right. Rowena Kincaid is now probably on one notability level with Colin Bloomfield. Can't really cut them out either. Kate Granger is now an MBE, of course. Legit pick. Disclaimer: My main team would still be 'robbed' of Linda Horan though. While she is a long-time labor activist, it wasn't really the activism that got her into the daily mail twice. Maybe the one-in-a-million exclusive morningstaronline obit appears, but that probability is very low.

According to news site nu.nl she's much better and back to work, whatever that is: Boyfriend thought Yfke Sturm wouldn't survive water sport accident. (24 December 2015) Yfke? Short for I Fucked Ye? In some circles, 'water sports' has a second meaning...

Last year, Germany and especially Australia were ravaged by the reaper. It looks like it's France's turn this year: Delpech, Boulez, Galabru and the Concorde test pilot.

Pierre Boulez, the greatest (formerly) living classical musical theorist, conductor and composer, has died at 90: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35241250

Breaking news: My pick Pierre Boulez has died, now that's a celebrity, a giant of classical music: http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35241250 Edit: I wonder if he was a unique. I was already scared when he got mentioned for reasons of age and french-ness by either Shaun or Davy Jones Locker, neither of them picked him in the end. By accident, I got to know that he was too sick to attend his own 90th birthday gala and later read that he was bedridden.

I do like that the cracks are mostly neutralizing each other, for example, Sir Creep and Spade stealing the unique away from each other, or similarly, both me and DDT picking Ronald Mulkearns and Gary Haggarty. On the other hand, this is slowly turning into two different competitions, one of them basically being a game checking the newspapers in the final week of the year for any kind of hospitalised terminal cancer "celebrities", and the other one being the originally intended celebrity deadpool. I wanted to show the ridiculousness of it with my theme team. But it's also showing outside of that, and I think my suggested rule of requiring a wikipedia page in any language, created in the year before picking the team, is sounding more correct each time to prevent a perversion of the system. The "really" famous cancer celebrities, Kate Granger or Kristin Hallenga, have these wikipedia pages, by the way.

Elizabeth Swados, creator of the Broadway musical 'Runaways' dead at 64, possibly because of esophagael cancer: http://deadline.com/2016/01/elizabeth-swados-dead-at-64-broadway-musical-runaways-1201676659/

Not yet, but one probably has to wait until the next weekend for it. His "Wight is Wight" should guarantee a telegraph obit. But they're still in 2015 with their obits. Only the Stigwood obit is from this year, because of the newsworthiness, I guess, but they're still in the catching up process with the two "fresh" obits from Lady Bader and Hocine Ait Ahmed. If there's no obit by Sunday, I will start to worry.