Celebrity Death Pool!

[Diabolical]

The conspiracy theory I made up:
J.D. Vance killed the Pope.
Vance met with him on Easter. He died that night.

trump wants to install his own far-right radical Pope, and he's stupid enough to believe that's within his power, so he had his number three lackey slip Francis some poison.

[Tom Foolery]

One of the plot points of the third Godfather movie is that the Pope that lasted 33 days was assassinated by sinister agents within the Vatican who are working with enemies of the Corleones to disrupt a multi billion dollar deal Michael had made. Sounds plausible.

We also forgot actor Nicky Katt. 54 years old. Suicide. He started out as a child actor, but the stuff I remember him from were movies like Boiler Room, Dark Knight, Sin City, and Way of the Gun.

[Ran]

Steve McMichael, 67. Hall of Fame Chicago Bear and professional wrestler - Complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

[anarky]

Jill Sobule, 66, died in a house fire.

Terrible, terrible way to go.

Also, she was 66? Fuck. I mean, it tracks, if she was in her mid-30s in the 1990s, but, damn, this shit makes us all feel old.

[Tom Foolery]

Joe Don Baker. 89. He was Buford from Walking Tall. Played both a bad guy and an ally in the James Bond movies. But, most importantly, he was Mitchell. And if you’ve never seen the MST3K episode where they watch Mitchell, god help you.

[anarky]

George Wendt, 76.

Norm Petersen.

Bill Swerski.

Fucking legend.

[Tom Foolery]

Bill Swerski.

Da Bears.

[Ran]

Jim Irsay, 65. Owner of the Indianapolis Colts.

Didn't know until yesterday that Jason Sudeikis was George Wendt's nephew.

[anarky]

Rick Derringer. Rock legend who also produced a guy named Al Yankovic.

[Diabolical]

Ed Gale, 61.
The man inside Howard the Duck and Chucky.

[Ran]

Loretta Swit, 87.
RIP, Major.

[anarky]

Sly Stone, 82.

Fucking legend. RIP.

[anarky]

Brian Wilson, 82. Don't know the exact cause of death, but he'd been suffering from dementia.

If there were a rock & roll Mount Rushmore, he'd definitely be on it. I'm going to go spin Surf's Up and Smiley Smile a few times (not that I won't spin Pet Sounds, but that's a given).

[Tom Foolery]

I’ve always known Good Vibrations was a catchy banger, but I didn’t learn until recently how much it influenced and inspired Wilson’s contemporaries at the time. Like, even the Beatles were like “holy shit, we gotta step it up”

[anarky]

Good Vibrations is the only 100% intact capsule of the SMiLE album that never materialized, because Brian was under pressure to top Pet Sounds, which even then pretty much everyone acknowledged was a masterpiece (at least every musician; critics actually were pretty divided) and, well, it broke him and he wigged out and burned all the master tapes except Good Vibrations, which had already been released as a single. And thus began also the legend of Brian Wilson as an insane genius.

Re-recorded bits of it ended up on other albums (especially Smiley Smile), and he did a solo version of the full album about 20 years ago. There are a few outtakes that survived and were on a boxed set, JFC, about 35 years back.

Heroes & Villains was reportedly the centerpiece of the album, with one version (which no longer exists, or at least has never surfaced) reportedly over a half hour long. The eventual single version of the song, and several outtakes from the boxed set, really hint the song actually could've worked at that length, and would've left everyone saying "Good Vibrations who?"