Vice Marshal of the North Korean People's Army Jo Myong-Rok went to Washington in October 2000 to pay a goodwill visit to President Bill Clinton in an effort to improve relations between the two countries. Jo was very high up in the North Korean power structure, being #2 to Kim Jong-il's #1 on the National Defense Commission. Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, paid a reciprocal visit to Pyongyang a week later, and things seem to be going fairly well, but it all came to naught when George W. Bush succeeded Clinton in office that January and took a harder line against North Korea.

Here's the NY Times obituary, should you care to learn more.

Mo gets 5 for the hit and 5 for the solo. Total: 10.

— Amelia

Philip Carlo was certainly a character. How do I know this? He went to jail once for a not-insignificant amount of time for beating up a Chinese restaurant delivery guy for leaving menus in his apartment building. (Not sure if anyone outside of NYC understands why this makes people crazy.) Tony Danza flipped out in the middle of Carlo's funeral the other day, bitch-slapping (metaphorically) a priest who couldn't stop talking about himself and God and not about Carlo. I wish I had been there. Yeah, Carlo was a character and so were his friends.

Philip Carlo was a biographer. Not of classy people like Churchill or Beethoven or Pearl Buck. He wrote the true-life stories of people who raped children, or fed victims to giant rats, or mass-murdering night stalkers. That sort of famous people. True crime was his beat. He knew how to interview these folks and turned out an amazing collection of gory, creepy, fun books. Then ALS got him and one thing more.

Here's a true crime from the Times. Read this sucker and then tell me whether it's all the news that's fit to print. Idiots.

Philip Carlo was 61 when he died of the treatment for all his various and sundry illnesses. Charlene, DDT and Morris the Cat each get 11 for the hit and one for the trio. Total: 12.

— Amelia

This amazing piece of work is from Bill Schenley:

***

Imagine you are a woman who is a librarian in a small, quiet town in Middle America. You love your work. You are a dedicated keeper of the information. One day a man walks in — a simple, non-descript man — who needs assistance in locating a book of poetry. The author of the book (we'll say Lawrence Ferlinghetti) is considered left-leaning. You give precise directions: six rows down, turn left, go down four sections, row BB, second from the bottom. You never see the man again, but when you leave the library that night, as you walk to your car, you are struck in the face, your nose is broken, you are dazed ... and you never see anyone you know or love again. For the next three or four years you are repeatedly raped, beaten and tortured. Each year the beatings tail off while you are in the latter months of your pregnancy. And then you are thrown out of an airplane.

In the United States government's fight to rid the world of Communism, and especially Communism in countries where there were natural resources to be exploited by exalted U.S. capitalists, the U.S. government wrapped its protective arm around men like Fulgencio Batista, Manuel Noriega, Augusto Pinochet, Anastasio Somoza, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Rafael Trujillo, Alfredo Stroessner ... It seems an endless list of Latin American despots the United States government has slithered up to over the last half-century.

Wherever there is a natural resource to be exploited or a broken people to be enslaved, you can be sure a U.S.-sponsored coup is just a moment away. Often, to disguise the treachery of their exploitation, our government will pass off the diabolical as Onward Christian Soldiers.

Between 1976 and 1978 Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, who has died at 85, was part of the military junta that deposed Isabel Martinez de Peron, the President of Argentina. Massera, along with Jorge Rafael Videla and Orlando Ramón Agosti, ruled Argentina de facto during the National Reorganization Process. They ruled over and directed what has become infamously known as "The Dirty War." This war not only had the U.S. government's blessing but also its manpower and money. Lots of money. Even Jimmy Carter, who openly condemned Massera, Videla and Agosti, offered money, albeit on a smaller scale. However, with the election of Carter in 1977, the CIA was blocked from engaging in the special warfare it had previously waged in Argentina.

Beginning in 1981, after Ronald Reagan was elected President, Argentina surrendered to U.S. government control. The Argentine military then did the bidding for the most conservative North American elements.

The Reagan Administration asserted that the Carter Administration had weakened U.S. diplomatic relationships with Cold War allies in Argentina, and proceeded to reverse Carter's official condemnation of the junta's human rights practices. With the re-establishment of diplomatic ties, the CIA renewed its collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service, and Massera and Videla continued to maintain a friendly relationship with the U.S. under the Reagan administration.

The Dirty War is responsible for the death or disappearance of possibly 30,000 Argentinean citizens. Few died easy. Among his many horrific crimes Massera, who had ultimate responsibility for the clandestine maternity unit at the notorious detention center of the Navy Mechanics School, arrested pregnant women, sometimes without cause, for the purpose of selling their babies to a lucrative North American market. One woman who survived told how Massera watched as her baby was cut from her and then had her beaten until she cleaned up her own body fluids splattered on the floor after the delivery.

In conjunction with Nazi war criminals (for their expertise, I suppose) who were hiding in Argentina, Massera's secret police arrested thousands and thousands of citizens who were guilty of being journalists, librarians, educators and academics. They arrested families for being wealthy and then stole their money and confiscated their property. They arrested young women, some as young as 14, because they were attractive. These women became child-producing machines. Like Hitler used Josef Mengele, Massera used Nazi doctors as instruments of torture.

Robert Cox, who was the editor of the English-language Buenos Aires Herald, said of Admiral Massera, "I hate to use the word 'evil,' but you can't get out of it with Massera." Cox, who was forced to flee Argentina in 1979, added, "He was corrupt from the start and he used corruption to increase his power. He turned the navy into a criminal organization. They stole, they raped, they murdered, they became malevolent, destructive gods."

And in the end, under the proud watchful eye of the United States Government, Massera, not wanting tell-tale mass graves, disposed of those called by Argentineans La Desaparecieron by drugging them, stripping their clothes away, slicing open their bellies, and rolling them out of planes and helicopters into the ocean.

Bill Schenley gets five points for the hit and five more for the solo. Total: 10.

-----

See also:

Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina by Paul H. Lewis

God's Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s by M. Patricia Marchak

A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture by Marguerite Feitlowitz

Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations by Iain Guest

Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number by Jacobo Timerman

—Bill Schenley

What a life. He produced hundreds of films, from the great (Nights of Cabiria) to the good (Three Days of the Condor) to the bad (the one with Madonna). He knew the coolest directors, actors and actresses in the biz. For seven freakin' decades he traveled the world putting monies (that's the plural of money) together to make movies. He smoked, he drank, he married a model, he lived to be 91. On top of everything else, papa was a noodle maker. So he knew his Italian cooking. I never went to the gourmet deli he had in NYC. But I've been to Eataly. Now I know he was waaaay ahead of his time.

So his epic films stunk to high heaven. So he didn't know high art from low-brow. So his fortunes rose and fell. He was larger than life. How do I know this? Because all his obits said so, that's how!

It's a duet for JohnnyB and Jenstrikesagain. They get 2 for the hit and 3 for the combined production. Total: 5.

— Amelia

Pat Burns was a three-time winner of the Jack Adams Trophy as the NHL coach of the year, and he won Lord Stanley's Mug with the 2003 New Jersey Devils. He also coached the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins. He was also a somewhat shady Montreal cop. You think he'll be remembered for any of that? Not a chance.

Pat Burns, who probably should have gone into the NHL Hall of Fame before he died, will be remembered for not dying in a timely manner. This poor bastard suffered from every known form of cancer and just wouldn't freakin' die. He overcame colon cancer, liver cancer and cervical cancer. He had lymphoma, carcinoma, sarcoma and blastoma. He beat pemphigus vulgaris, anal warts, acoustic neuroma, pilocytic astrocytoma, craniopharyngioma, medulloblastoma and oligodendroglioma. He had his colon removed, his kidneys removed and his placenta removed. He had his knees relocated — the man just wouldn't fucking die. And, last month, he even had the temerity to throw a juke at deadpool players around the world when he pretended to be dead.

For seven long years he was a mainstay on deadpool lists and he wouldn't die. Finally, mercifully, with acknowledgement to lung cancer and a greater power ... we get the points! C'ya Pat.

Bill Schenley, Deceased Hose, Direcorbie, EdV, Erik, Jazz Vulture, Mark and Roxanne Wiggs just didn't give a puck about Coach Burns' overtime maladies — they were tired of growing old with him. They each get fourteen points for the hit.

— Bill Schenley

Doris McCarthy was a painter of the Canadian landscape. Some say she was the only one to capture the soul of the Canadian landscape. She painted scenes from every single Canadian province and territory. She was the first woman President of the Ontario Society of Artists, and she influenced several generations of young artists with her teaching. She exhibited every year of her adult life. She wrote three memoirs and never married. She was a student of several of the Group of Seven, the only artists in Canada you ever hear about, and there is usually a Kevin Bacon-like connection. Her beloved home was called Fool's Paradise and she's made sure it will be an artist's retreat. Although her family's obituary said she didn't suffer fools easily, others have stressed that she was the most loyal of friends and stayed in touch with everyone she came in contact with. (Except the fools, presumably.)

Doris McCarthy is a very special person to us at the alt.obituaries deadpool.

Doris McCarthy was 100 when she died. She is our 100th hit of the year.

Do not write to me or Bill or the committee and say, oops, I forgot Chaim Yonkel, who died in February. Because that will ruin this lovely turn of events.

Chipmunk Roasting gets the solo, not worth much in the scheme of things, but very nice indeed. One plus five equals six.

— Amelia

So there was Canadian-born Leslie Nielsen, 'way back at the age of 33, running around a Disneyfied version of early American history on TV every week as the Swamp Fox, who'd hide in the swamps of South Carolina by day and fight the British by night. Walt Disney had high hopes for the Swamp Fox. Davy Crockett had been a big hit for Walt a few years earlier, and Walt had sold a lot of coonskin caps. Walt's Swamp Fox also wore a hat, a big three-cornered thing with a tail attached to it somehow, and stores were already well-stocked with knockoffs when Walt's eight-episode Swamp Fox arc premiered in October 1959.

Then the Canadian Parliament, which was chock-full of assholes, passed a resolution against Walt Disney for making the British Army look like, well, a bunch of Canadian politicians. Walt was devastated. A friendly government had passed a resolution against him. Him! Walt Disney! The last two Swamp Fox episodes were pulled from the schedule (they weren't shown for another year), and no further Swamp Fox episodes were made. Walt Disney's plans for a second kiddie franchise fell apart.

Despite his own Parliament's best efforts to destroy him, however, Leslie Nielsen continued to find tons of work playing cops, doctors, lawyers and other authority figures through the '60s and '70s, mostly on TV. When NBC decided that the previously unseen studio head on the series Bracken's World should finally be seen, they picked Nielsen to play him.

In 1977 Leslie Nielsen did a little uncredited voice-only work in The Kentucky Fried Movie, a patchwork of comedic blackouts written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. For inspiration, the three would videotape overnight local TV and watch all the commercials the next day, intending to do parodies of them in their film. One night they accidentally taped Zero Hour, a drama about how battle-fatigued ex-military fighter pilot Dana Andrews has to land the passenger plane he's aboard when everybody else gets sick from having eaten the fish.

Three years later, Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker wrote and directed Airplane!, and their old pal Guess Who was available for the role of the doctor. (Nielsen wasn't their first choice for the role but, happily, Christopher Lee had turned it down.)

It's not that Leslie Nielsen was funny, because he really wasn't. His skill lay in delivering ridiculous dialogue with great authority, and that was funny. In fact, some of Nielsen's best lines in Airplane! are lifted directly from Zero Hour, a film that contained three assloads of ridiculous dialogue. One of the best things you can say about Airplane! is that it's become impossible to watch Zero Hour without laughing all the way through it.

After Airplane!, which Nielsen joyfully embraced as the rebirth of his declining career, he starred in the short-lived Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker-helmed TV series Police Squad!, which was a parody of cop shows, particularly a then-recent one called Felony Squad. Nielsen worked steadily until the end of his life, making a few good movies (e.g., Superhero Movie) and a bunch of bad ones (e.g., Mr. Magoo). His biggest recent success was as President Baxter Harris in the third and fourth installments of the Scary Movie series.

At 84, Nielsen came down with pneumonia and they brought him to the hospital. (It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.) He died there, his family and friends at his bedside.

Poolside, Alan scores five points for this hit, plus five for flying solo. Total: 10.

— Brad