RIP Jack Palance -- hooray for me!

At the risk of being grossly unsympathetic and crass (like I've never risked that before), I am happy to announce that Jack Palance is dead at 87. The happiness part is because he died just four days after I listed him at Rotten Dead Pool, where you pick out 10 publicly known persons you think will die in the next 12 months. There is a certain style required here: Jack was an obvious choice (568 DP players picked him, compared with William Styron, who garnered a mere 11 votes) but you get more "points" for correctly picking the obscure and surprisingly moribund. My other picks are Natasha Lyonne, Charlie Callas, Charlton Heston (oh, please, oh please), Al Haig (ditto), Gina Lollibrigida, Eleanor Parker (the Baroness in The Sound of Music), Pete Seeger (whom I love, but c'mon already), Elaine Stritch, and James Watson (the DNA guy).

This is all practice for participating in revsaintmichael's 2007 Dead Pool (in which you pick 50 persons before lighting your black candles and mumbling prayers to Yog Sothoth).