Where Aren't They Now: MORE Overlooked Deaths from 2011, Part 2

(By the way - I'm way more active on the FaceBook, here, than I am on my blog or website. Also, I'm on twitter every day)

Every year, I write about overlooked deaths. And every year, there are far too many to chuck into the one article. So I overwrite, and let them pick the most relevant ones. Here's the second installment of these outtakes, or 'deleted scenes'.

This year, like last year, my much-funnier-than-I mate, Paul Rasche, wrote half of them. Many of the best ones below are his.

So: Cowgirls, actors, fucked-up fraudsters... And cool your tits, DENNIS MOTHERLOVIN' RITCHIE AND THAT MCCARTHY DUDE!





July 15
Who?
Ed Flesh, re-inventor of the wheel

How?
Heart failure

The legacy:
Despite being born with the name of a Batman villain, Ed Flesh will be best remembered for inventing the wheel from Wheel of Fortune, the much-beloved gameshow wherein dim-witted housewives buy vowels.

Before Ed Flesh burst onto the game show scene in the 50s, shows that featured wheels (such as ‘I Wheely Wanna Win Some Cash’, ‘Bobby Millicent’s Wheel of Painful Humiliation’ and the short-lived ‘Wheel of Misfortune’) always had the wheel in a vertical position. Flesh had the brainwave to make the wheel horizontal. Apparently that's all it takes to get an obituary in the Hollywood Reporter these days.

Lose a turn, Ed.


3 August
Who?
Charles Aaron "Bubba" Smith

How:
Acute drug intoxication and heart disease

The Legacy
Originally a professional football player, he was best known for his role as Moses Hightower, the massive steak of a man with the tofu voice, in the first six Police Academy movies. He’s tearing angels in half now.


21 August
Who?
Budd Hopkins. Painter, sculptor… UFO abductee enthusiast.

How:
Liver cancer and pneumonia

The Legacy
In 1964, Hopkins reported seeing a UFO, with two other witnesses, in broad daylight. This led him to a life studying other accounts of UFO sightings. Though admittedly never abducted himself, Hopkins is widely credited with having begun the alien-abduction movement.

Many of the fine, upstanding people who reported seeing UFOs also mentioned inexplicable gaps in their memory. Hopkins sensibly concluded that this wasn’t due to any massive amount of hallucinogenic drug required to see a UFO, but rather, because the witness had been abducted by aliens.

He wrote four books on the subject, including “Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods” (1987), which spent four weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, proving that the truth is indeed out there. Way out there.

Hopkins' art is in the permanent collections in the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, and at the Museum of Modern Art.


30 August
Who?
Faye Blackstone, American Rodeo Star, Cowgirl Hall of Fame

How?
Cancer.

The Legacy:
Blackstone is credited with creating three manoeuvres, and more impressively, only two sound pornographic: the ballerina, the flyaway and the reverse fender drag. She got married in the arena, but thankfully didn’t die in one, in, say, a trampling-related, children-screaming kind of way.

Also, remember how there’s a Cowgirl Hall of Fame? We want to see that video.


6 September
Who?
George Kuchar, underground film-maker

How?
Prostate cancer

The legacy:
George’s death only serves to highlight what an unfair world we live in. Whilst banal film-makers like Spielberg are lauded and successful, a genius like George Kuchar is left to toil in obscurity.

Read these film titles and tell me this guy isn’t the best person ever to have existed: “The Naked and The Nude”, “I Was A Teenage Rumpot,”, “Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof”, “Lust for Ecstasy”, “Tootsies in Autumn”, “Hold Me While I’m Naked”, “Color Me Shameless”, “Unstrap Me”, “The Devil’s Cleavage”, “Mongreloid”, “The Nocturnal Immaculation” – and this is just the beginning. The dude made more than 500 films

I don’t know what a nocturnal immaculation is, but I sure as hell would love to find out.


11 September
Who?
Andy Whitfield. Beefcake actor

How?
Cancer

The legacy:
Andy portrayed Spartacus, the most pectorally-gifted of gladiators, in the 2010 TV series, Spartacus: Digitally Added Blood and Sand. Those of you who watched that series will no doubt remember its many virtues – digitally added blood, real sand, dozens of gratuitous and explicit sex scenes (including one particularly memorable one involving John Hanna and a slave “fluffer”), and the best season finale in living memory. Spoiler alert: the gladiators rebel and SLAY THE FUCK OUT OF EVERYONE. It’s seriously 45 minutes of people running around covered in blood. It could only have been improved if Slayer were playing live on the roof during the massacre

Perhaps Andy’s greatest contribution to the world of entertainment was his work on the 2-minute YouTube video, Time Crisis. It was based on the popular video game, Time Crisis. Andy, you just earned a lifetime pass to Awesomeland.

Tragically, Andy was struck down by cancer and died with his loving wife and children by his side. Slayer rulez.


2 October
Who?
Don Lapre, ‘Incarcerated TV Pitchman’

How:
Apparent suicide in his cell.

The Legacy
Imortalised by David Spade in an SNL parody, Lapre was awaiting a $52m fraud trial for his company, ‘The Greatest Vitamin in the World’. 'It did not work out for me with my vitamins but I believe that being willing to fail is part of having a chance at success’ he had said. this ‘in case you don’t succeed’ mentality is perhaps why he cut his own throat in his cell, even though his previous suicide attempt didn’t work. (He sliced up his groin trying to cut his femoral artery, while living in a gym). Sleep well, you wacky go-getter/terrifying fraudster.


8 October
Who?
Mikey Welsh, crazy rock star

How?
Drug overdose, obviously (see “Crazy Rock Star”, above)

The legacy:
Mikey will forever be known as “one of the guys on the cover of Weezer’s ‘Green’ album who isn’t the guy with glasses who’s on all the Weezer album covers”. Or for those of us who prefer less complex thought patterns, “he used to play bass in Weezer.”

Mikey was a troubled soul, and the rock star life didn’t agree with him. On returning from touring with the band in 2001, Mikey had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. His bandmates handled the matter with great sensitivity, by re-shooting the clip for “Island in the Sun”, sans-Mikey.

Mikey may have been trying to tell us that he wasn’t doing so well when, years later in 2010, he joined his ex-bandmates on stage to play, of all songs, “Hash Pipe”. And he may have been trying to tell us that things hadn’t improved when he once again joined them to play “Undone”, mere months before his death. That last time was also with the Flaming Lips. If you’re hanging out with the Flaming Lips and singing about becoming “undone” – your drug problems are not solved.


12 & 24 October
Who?
Steve Jobs! Steve Jobs! You guys, STEVE JOBS. Oh, and also Professor John McCarthy, the father of Artificial Intelligence, and Dennis Ritchie, the god of UNIX and the C Programming language. BUT YOU GUYS, THE MAC DUDE DIED.

How:
Complications from a heart disease in the former and ill health in the latter

The Legacy
McCarthy ‘helped design the foundation of today’s Internet-based computing’. Without Ritchie, Apple as we know it, and computers as we know them, wouldn’t exist. But the guy with the sweat shops and the turtle necks died around the same time, so everyone… just… kind of overlooked it.


25 October
Who?
Wyatt Knight, aka Tommy Turner from Porky’s.

How:
Apparent suicide (arising from painful cancer treatments)

The Legacy
Although best known as the bad boy of the bunch in American Pie: Origins… oops, we mean Porky’s, Knight also had stints on Chicago Hope, Star Trek: Next Gen, and Family Ties. And hell, maybe if he’d taken Alex P Keaton to a strip club, the fucker may have loosened up a bit, and got an early start on the coke-and-hookers habit you KNOW he took up in his 20s as an 80s business guy.


5 November
Who?
Les Daniels, horror writer

How?
Heart attack.

The Legacy
In the good old days, vampires in books didn’t glitter in the sunlight and ponce about feeling tormented and sad. Vampires in these books didn’t go on to be portrayed by Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt. These vampires were vampires that were in vampire books written by MEN.

Les Daniels was such a man, and his most famous character was Don Sebastian de Villanueva. Don was cynical, amoral, misanthropic. Just like vampires are meant to be, people. There are no posters of Don on no teenage girl’s wall. Don didn’t put product in his hair. Don just wanted to rip people’s throats out.

Another feature of Daniels’ Villaneuva books was there use of a continued theme, or motif if you will, of juxtaposing his main characters evil deeds against man-made evil throughout history. The use of themes to convey a wider message is something writers used to do a lot, when writing was sometimes allowed to be clever. Then Harry Potter came along and everything changed.


7 November
Who?
Takanosato Toshihide, Sumo Wrestler

How?
Respiratory failure.

The Legacy
Takanosato was nicknamed “Popeye”, because of his brawny physique. This raises questions. Firstly, who sees a Sumo wrestler and thinks, “Wow, that guy looks brawny”? Surely the more common response would be, “Wow, that guy looks like diabetes personified.” (Interesting note: Takanosato had diabetes). Secondly, what about Bluto? When one considers which character from the Popeye cartoons most resembles a Sumo wrestler, surely Bluto has gotta be the one. Wimpy maybe.

Another reason that this guy should have been nicknamed Bluto as opposed to Popeye? Days before his death, he was accused of beating a junior Sumo with a block of wood. Popeye never beat anyone with a block of wood. That’s not how sailors roll. Bluto is the villain. Bluto is the guy who’ll beat you with a block of wood.

Wimpy was that old guy who ate hamburgers all the time. Remember him? He was cool. I’m hungry.


11 November
Who?
Bernd & Reiner Methe, Creepy Twin Referees

How?
Car crash.

The Legacy
Bernd & Reiner Methe did everything together. They were born on the same day, and they died on the same day. They got married on the same day (to twin sisters, natch). They lived in houses just 50 metres apart...

They also worked together, refereeing almost 1000 handball matches together. “Wait - what the hell is handball?” you ask. It’s a European thing, like genocide and wearing hats. You’re missing the point. These two guys spent their whole lives together. They no doubt finished each other’s sentences and smelt each other’s farts. It’s creepy and wrong and it’s good that they’re dead.


Lisa-Skye is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. See more of her here.
Paul Rasche is a Melbournian writer and illustrator. See some of his stuff here