TWID - Autumn Edition

This Week in Death brings you: This Week in Death! Below are all the notes and news to cover a week's worth of health and death. There are more health notices than a hospital, and more death than... well, a hospital. How is Billy Graham this week? What's the latest on Courtney Love? Which Music or TV persona - whom I have never heard of - died? (Hint: It's Alice Ghostley) Even as the Shakespearian colors of fall beset us, there's still only one way to find out...

What, my dear... are you yet living?

Ahmadinejad Hoping Nobody Needs to Impress Jodie Foster Over the Next Day
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, facing protests and tabloid headlines calling him "evil" and a "madman," stirred debate Monday about free speech ahead of his appearance at Columbia University. The New York Daily News' front page on Monday read: "THE EVIL HAS LANDED." The New York Post called Ahmadinejad the "Madman Iran Prez" and a "guest of dishonor." Ahmadinejad's scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday will be his third time attending the New York meeting in three years. His request to lay a wreath at ground zero was denied by city officials and condemned by politicians who said a visit to the site of the 2001 terror attacks would violate sacred ground.
[Houston Chronicle]

This Herman Is No Pee-Wee, but Health Rubs Him Out of Concert
Broadway composer Jerry Herman has been forced to pull out of a BBC Radio 2 gala concert celebrating his career due to bad health. The 76-year-old writer of hit shows such as Hello, Dolly! and Mack and Mabel was to fly to London from his home in LA to take part in the concert, which is taking place this Sunday. But on his doctor's advice, Herman will no longer be able to attend.
[The Stage]

Zsa Zsa Recovering; Getting Some Superfluofus Z's in the Hospital
Zsa Zsa Gabor is recovering in a US hospital after undergoing surgery for infections in her legs, her husband said. "The operation was successful, she is in recovery and in a couple of days she'll be okay," hubby Frederic Von Anhalt said in a telephone interview from Zsa Zsa's room at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles.
[This Is Nottingham]

"This is Just a Typical Love Story... This is How it Ends"
Don't call them her drug years. Courtney Love was "out sick." It's a concept she says she got recently from friend Gwyneth Paltrow, who, along with Trudie Styler, was among a handful of friends Love says were "kind to me through thick and thin. You really know who your true friends are when you're down and out." The former Hole singer and widow of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain says she's patiently treading on a long-term trek back from her own personal hell of drug addiction, bankruptcy, identity theft and legal troubles. She has been clean and sober for three years, the singer says, "but it will be another two years before my memory is back to normal" because of her heavy drug abuse.
[USA Today]

Jesus Could Walk on Water, Billy Can Walk on Land
Evangelist Billy Graham took several walks in the hospital where he continues to recover from intestinal bleeding, his staff said. The 88-year-old also visited with family, and his walks included the longest one he has taken since he was hospitalized, a hospital spokeswoman said. Graham will continue to undergo physical therapy to build strength and condition him in preparation for going home, officials said, though there has been no date set for his discharge.
[International Herald-Tribune]

Done to Death... By Slanderous Tongue?

Ghostley Lives Up to Name; Alice off to Wonderland
Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on "Bewitched" and Bernice on "Designing Women," has died. She was 81. Ghostley died Friday at her home in Studio City after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, longtime friend Jim Pinkston said. From 1969 to 1972, she played the good witch and ditzy housekeeper Esmeralda on TV's "Bewitched." She played Bernice Clifton on "Designing Women" from 1987 to 1993, for which she earned an Emmy nomination in 1992. Ghostley's film credits include "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Graduate," "Gator" and "Grease."
[AP]

"Non!"
Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, his former assistant said Sunday. He was 84. A French Jew, Marceau survived the Holocaust -- and also worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children. His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. Marceau, in turn, inspired countless young performers -- Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind." Offstage, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.
[CNN]

I was just Checking the Specs on the Inline of the Rotary Girder... I'm Re-dead-ed"
Jazz drummer Gordon "Specs" Powell, who recorded with Billie Holiday and played for "The Ed Sullivan Show" as part of the CBS network orchestra, has died of complications from kidney disease. He was 85. "He made sure he worked harder than anyone else, he was always prepared, he went to all of his sessions—he called them dates—in suits, impeccably dressed," said his son, Ted Smith. "It was never a bad day for him, and if it was, he wasn't going to let it show."
[Mercury News]

With All that Humbard Accomplished, Rex Still was Booed in Chicago
Rex Humbard, a guitar-strumming revival preacher who became a pioneer of television evangelism in the 1950s and remained a familiar Sunday morning presence in millions of American homes for almost half a century, died Friday. He was 88. Mr. Humbard's sermons were televised on Sundays from 1953 to 1999, reaching up to 20 million viewers, his ministry estimated. At its peak, in 1977-8, the program leased time on 378 television stations in the United States and Canada and broadcast on about 1,200 more in other countries.
[New York Times]

This Week Was Somebody's Birthday! Whose Birthday? Some Death Pool Entrants' Birthdays. How Old Are They? 1,2,3... And Never been Kissed By... Death
Happy Birthday to:
September 21: Larry Hagman (76)
September 21: Nicole Richie (26)
September 23: Mickey Rooney (87)
... And Many More!!!!!!!!

No points deaths this week means no change in the Top 5, who remain...

1. El Esta Adead - 76 points (6 deaths)
2. The Ex-Parrots - 62.3 points (6 deaths)
3. Kraut's Picks - 60.9 points (8 deaths)
4. Yiz-score - 54.3 points (4 deaths)
5. Struck Down by Yahweh - 53.6 points (6 deaths)

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow...
The Commissioner's Council