2011 Celebrity Deathwatch!

SORR we’ve been a tad AWOL this past week. Meg’s sister is “getting married," and for some reason insists that Meg be “involved.” Sounds like a heathen custom to me, but there you have it. As for me, I’m in the midst of finals. The two projects I’m working on have started to blur together in my subconscious, with the result that I now have a recurring dream where a group of 1930’s English socialites invade the ancient kingdom of Himyar. We’ve got big news next week, but until then… it’s the 2Birds1Blog 2011 Celebrity Deathwatch!

Disclaimer: This isn’t about what I want to happen or anyone I intend, personally, to kill. (Cheaters never win, kids.) It’s solely who I think is on their way out.

Meg’s note: “If you put Larry Hagman on that watch, I will stick your keys square up my snizz and never return them.” [Ed. Note: Hi there. While we're talking about me (and my snizz) (and all the things I've threatened to stick up there) (because what a list that is!), I'd just like to make you all aware of the following:

1.) Three of Ex Co-Blogger Chris' Celebrity Deathwatch predictions from this past year came true. (Including Leslie Nielsen. I mean, I know he was old, but how the hell did you see that coming??)

2.) ∴ The annual 2b1b Celebrity Deathwatch post is obviously haunted.

3.) Today is our 666th post.


4.) Today is also T.G.I. Hagman.

= NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. This is some VOODOO shit and it all makes me heinously uncomfortable. I'd pull the plug on this little shit show here and now if I wasn't busy stress-vomiting all night because despite consuming nothing but cocaine, air, and tap water for the past week and a half, I can either sit or breathe in my bridesmaid's dress—God forbid I want to do both! So you, sir, better thank your lucky stars that I'm retaining water like a pregnant woman stewing in sea salt and have 120 wedding programs to assemble. But listen to me here and now: if my Lord and Savior Larry Martin Hagman dies within the next 24 hours, I'm placing the blame directly on you. You shall forever wear a scarlet 10-gallon hat upon your head and live as an outcast in the woods like the dirty, whorish Angel of Death you are. In fact, where's my Hagman at?


As of December 10, 2010, Larry Hagman is...alive! OH and he better stay that way if a certain ginger-haired blogger and "Designing Women" enthusiast values his gonads. Now, proceed with your death harbinger...ing...Harbinger... of Death...ing...harbinge.]

The list:

Betty White: I don’t want it to happen, but we’ve lost a Golden Girl each year for the past three years and that’s too strong a trend to ignore, as much as we may all want to. I expect a repeat of this voicemail from 2009:

Dad: “Hi, I’m just checking on you. I heard… you know, about Bea, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Call me.”

I was going through “a bad time,” and I’m fairly certain he was afraid her death would push me over the edge. Fifteen xanax, a bottle of Kentucky Deluxe, and a note that read simply “And then there’s Maude.”

Pope Benedict XVI: It hasn’t been a good year for the church. If I were in my eighties and had just spent the past year saying, in public, “Oh, come now, we’re not all pedophiles. I mean, statistically…” I would be ready to die.

Kim Jong-Il: He’s old, he’s sick, he’s as mad as an eel, and the chances daily increase that someone will hit the red button labeled “Fuck This Noise (Pyongyang).” We may be in for another round of the Mao-Castro “is he or isn’t he” dance. North Korea being as… unorthodox as it is, I’ll bet you we get at least one newsreel where he’s clearly been stuffed, and someone tries to make him nod by pressing the back of his head with a stick.

(PS, apparently there’s another Kim Jong-Il who’s a South Korean long jumper. I’m not sure about Korea (and who is?), but in most countries, if your parents name you “Benito Mussolini” or Whackjob von Nutz,” you go to the courthouse on your eighteenth birthday and sign up as “William Jones.”

Fidel Castro: Speaking of old Communists, I’ve thought Castro was dead for years. If Hollywood makeup and method acting can turn Charlize Theron into the spitting image of Aileen Wuornos, I think 2011 might be the year Michael Cera calls a press conference that begins, “Um. You know, the word ‘treason’ gets batted around a lot these days…”

One of those Professional Starcraft Kids, One’s as Good as Another, Really: you know how in the H. P. Lovecraft stories, everyone’s always going irrevocably insane because they saw something indescribable from beyond the stars? That’s how I feel about professional Starcraft. I tried to play a game of Starcraft once, and I’ve literally never shown less aptitude for any activity. It was like watching a brine shrimp try out for the Detroit Lions – I genuinely did not seem to have the right physical structures. With the pressure ramped up after this year’s release of Starcraft II, it can’t be long before one of them actually bursts into flames.

Otto von Habsburg: He has been the claimant to the various Habsburg thrones since 1922. That’s almost ninety years of “Oh, please. Just one little old kingdom. You’d hardly miss it.  You’re not even using – what’s this called? Slovakia? Well, I can change the name later. Just let me have it.” He is 98 and has twenty-three grandchildren and four citizenships. I would feel ready, I think.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia: At 86, he recently transferred some of his powers to younger relatives. Now I’ve never been a king and I likely never will be one, but if I were, you could have my powers when you pried them out of my cold, dead, hands. If he’s anything like me, which we probably both hope is not the case, this transfer of power is a sign that his end is near.

Deborah Devonshire, Phyllis Diller, Angela Lansbury, Mel Brooks, the Queen of England, etc.: None of these have any particular warning signs except that they’re all over eighty and I like them all. 2010 was a very good year for me so, believer in the other shoe dropping that I am, I fully expect all the celebrities I like to kick it in 2011. (Yes, I do think people die deliberately to upset me. Why else?)

Ariel Sharon: In a coma for four years. This one feels kind of like a bunt, but everyone always used to put Brooke Astor on their death lists and she kept going for years and years…

Barbara Bush: Is a bitch. That’s my contribution.

Jimmy Carter: It simply isn’t healthy for an eighty-six-year-old man to scamper off to global tension spots every fifteen minutes. I think he’s decided to fall over dead during one of these trips and get a street named after him in some dangerous country, and I have to say it’s not a terrible plan, if only because it makes this address possible:

People’s Bureau of Correct Behavior Enforcement

1701 Jimmy Carter Avenue

Fort Nightmare, Dangerstan 00178

(Yes, all countries have American-style ZIP codes. It’s a NATO thing.)

People Who Won’t Die:

Aretha Franklin. Cancer better think (think!) twice, because Aretha Franklin is going to find its house, get the key out of the fake rock, and kick its ass.