Dead Pool 2020 Game Thread

[Tonto]

I watched him plenty of times, over the years, seemed like he'd go on forever. 

RIP

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/regis-philbin-dead-at-88

Regis Philbin, iconic television host, dead at 88

The former host died of natural causes, his family says

Regis Philbin, the iconic television personality best-known for his hosting duties on "Live! with Regis and Kelly" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," has died at the age of 88.

His family confirmed the news of his shocking passing in a statement to Fox News on Saturday.
"We are deeply saddened to share that our beloved Regis Philbin passed away last night of natural causes, one month shy of his 89th birthday," his family said.

"His family and friends are forever grateful for the time we got to spend with him -- for his warmth, his legendary sense of humor, and his singular ability to make every day into something worth talking about. We thank his fans and admirers for their incredible support over his 60-year career and ask for privacy as we mourn his loss."

A New York native, Regis Francis Xavier Philbin was born on August 25, 1931. He was named after his father's alma mater, Manhattan's Regis High School. Philbin graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx before going on to Notre Dame, where he majored in sociology.


After college, Philbin joined the U.S. Navy. He then embarked on his decades-long career in television as a stagehand and a delivery boy for a station in Los Angeles, Calif. Quickly after, he became a news writer and was offered a job as a sportscaster.

Philbin went on to San Diego as a news anchor for KOGO-TV. His first shot at national exposure came a few years later as the sidekick to Joey Bishop on ABC's "The Joey Bishop Show." Philbin then moved on to KHJ-TV in Los Angeles where he hosted "That Regis Philbin Show." The show was canceled due to ratings powerhouse Johnny Carson but it brought Philbin to the midwest for "Regis Philbin's Saturday Night in St. Louis."

After three years of commuting to St. Louis each week for a local Saturday night show, Philbin became a star in local morning television — first in Los Angeles, then in New York. In 1985, he teamed with Kathie Lee Johnson, a year before she married former football star Frank Gifford, and the show went national in 1988.

Celebrities routinely stopped by Philbin’s eponymous syndicated morning show, but its heart was in the first 15 minutes, when he and co-host Kathie Lee Gifford — on “Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee” from 1985-2000 — or Kelly Ripa — on “Live! with Regis and Kelly” from 2001 until his 2011 retirement — bantered about the events of the day. Viewers laughed at Philbin’s mock indignation over not getting the best seat at a restaurant the night before, or being henpecked by his partner.

“Even I have a little trepidation,” he told The Associated Press in 2008, when asked how he does a show every day. “You wake up in the morning and you say, ‘What did I do last night that I can talk about? What’s new in the paper? How are we gonna fill that 20 minutes?’"“I’m not gonna say it always works out brilliantly, but somehow we connect more often than we don’t,” he added.


He was host of the prime-time game show, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” briefly television’s most popular show at the turn of the century. ABC aired the family-friendly program as often as five times a week. It generated around $1 billion in revenue in its first two years — ABC had said it was the more profitable show in TV history — and helped make Philbin himself a millionaire many times over.

Philbin’s question to contestants, “Is that your final answer?” became a national catchphrase. He was even a fashion trendsetter; he put out a line of monochramactic shirts and ties to match what he wore on the set.

“You wait a lifetime for something like that and sometimes it never happens,” Philbin told the AP in 1999.

After hustling into an entertainment career, Philbin logged more than 15,000 hours on the air, earning him recognition in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most broadcast hours logged by a TV personality, a record previously held by Hugh Downs.

“Every day, you see the record shattered, pal!” Philbin would tell viewers. “One more hour!”


In 2008, he returned briefly to the quiz show format with “Million Dollar Password.” He also picked up the Lifetime Achievement Award from the daytime Emmys.

He was the type of TV personality easy to make fun of, and easy to love.

When his son Danny first met his future wife, “we were talking about our families,” Danny told USA Today. “I said, ‘You know that show Regis and Kathie Lee?’ And she said, ‘I hate that show.’ And I said, ‘That’s my dad.’”

Yet Philbin was a favorite of a younger generation’s ironic icon, David Letterman. When Letterman announced that he had to undergo heart surgery, it was on the air to Philbin, who was also there for Letterman’s first day back after his recovery.

Letterman returned the favor, appearing on Philbin’s show when he went back on the air in April 2007 after undergoing heart bypass surgery.

In a 2008 interview with the Associated Press, Philbin said he saw “getting the best out of your guests” as “a specialty."


"The time constraints mean you’ve got to get right to the point, you’ve got to make it pay off, go to commercial, start again. Play that clip. Say goodbye,” he said.

The gentle bickering and eye-rolling exasperation in Philbin and Gifford’s onscreen relationship was familiar to anyone in a long-lasting relationship.

“No arguments, no harsh words in all this time,” Philbin told a theater audience in 2000. “Well, there was the time I didn’t talk to her for two weeks. Didn’t want to interrupt her.”


Gifford left the show in 2000. After a tryout period for a replacement, soap star Ripa, then best known for “All My Children," filled the slot.
The same hustler who parked cars in Hollywood worked just as hard to land the job on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

“I begged my way on,” he told People magazine. “There was a short list, and I wasn’t on it. I called my agent, and we made a full assault on ABC in L.A.”

The audience responded to Philbin’s warm, comic touch in the role. He later jokingly referred to himself as the man who saved ABC. It wasn’t complete hyperbole: ABC was suffering in the ratings before the game became a smash success. Forbes reported that two-thirds of ABC’s operating profit in 2000 was due to “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”


“It’s better to be hot,” he told the AP. “It’s fun. I know this business. I was perfectly content with my morning show. People would ask me, 'What’s next?’ There is nothing next. There are no more mountains for me to climb. Believe me when I tell you, all I wanted when I started this show in 1961 was to be a success nationally.”

The prime-time game burned out quickly because of overuse and ended in 2002.

Philbin enjoyed a side career as a singer that began when he sang “Pennies from Heaven” to Bing Crosby on Bishop’s show. He said a record company called him the next day, and he made an album.

Even though the series “Regis Philbin’s Health Styles,” on Lifetime in the 1980s, was part of his lengthy resume, Philbin had health issues. Doctors performed an angioplasty to relieve a blocked artery in 1993. He underwent bypass surgery in 2007 at age 75.

He's survived by his wife, Joy, and their daughters J.J. and Joanna Philbin, as well as his daughter Amy Philbin with his first wife, Catherine Faylen, according to People.

He was on Jimmie's & Nayslayer's list.

I'll figure out the points shortly.

[Tonto]

For Jimmie's  & nayslayer's pick of Regis Philbin:


100 - 88 = 12 points

Bonus points: None

So 12 + 0 = 12 total points (each)

(Guys, please check my scoring on this)

[nayslayer]

Wow I scored!

[Jimmie the Mum]

Wow I scored!

You scored a few times, how many kids do you have?

[Jimmie the Mum]

Did we miss John Gardner on my list? Texas Death Row..

[Tonto]

Did we miss John Gardner on my list? Texas Death Row..

I think you're right!  We missed it.


Now I'll have to rescore it all lol

[Tonto]

Did we miss John Gardner on my list? Texas Death Row..

found it.

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/01/15/texas-execution-john-gardner-death-row/

Texas carries out nation's first execution of 2020 for domestic violence slaying in Collin County

John Gardner, 64, was put to death for the 2005 murder of his estranged wife. His lawyers had argued the crime wasn't eligible for the death penalty.

Texas, the state that has put to death more people than any other by far, carried out the nation’s first execution of the decade Wednesday.

John Gardner was executed for the 2005 Collin County murder of his soon-to-be ex-wife. Tammy Gardner was shot and killed in her home weeks before the couple’s divorce was finalized, according to court records. She called 911 before she died to say her husband had shot her.

With no pending appeals, John Gardner was taken into Texas’ death chamber in Huntsville and injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital at 6:20 p.m. He was pronounced dead 16 minutes later.

Five of his friends and a spiritual adviser were expected to watch through a glass pane in a small room, according to a prison witness list. Tammy Gardner's mother, daughter and son planned to stand in an identical room next door. In his final words, he told his friends he loved them after apologizing to the victim's family.

"I would like to say sorry for the grief I have caused. I hope you find peace, joy and closure. Whatever it takes to forgive me. I am sorry. I know you cannot forgive, me but I hope one day you will," the 64-year-old man said.

John Gardner had a history of domestic violence, including the shooting of a previous wife who later died from her injuries, court records state.

He had argued for years that his crime should not have been prosecuted as a capital murder, which is the only crime in Texas that can result in the death penalty. A capital murder conviction in his case required the jury to decide that the killing was committed during another felony crime — home burglary or retaliation for his wife being a witness in their upcoming divorce proceeding.

Instead, his appellate attorneys said, John Gardner’s trial lawyers should have raised an “abandonment rage” defense. They argued that he didn’t break into his wife’s house and that he shot her to prevent her from leaving him, not because she was going to testify against him in court. Texas and federal courts rejected the argument.

The Gardners had been married for more than five years, and court records indicate it was an abusive relationship. Tammy Gardner’s friends and relatives testified at trial that her husband had put a gun to her head before and that she showed up to places with bruises on her face. After she filed for divorce, they said that she was terrified for her life and that John Gardner was harassing her, asking if she was going to go through with it.

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The day of the murder, her daughter said John Gardner was repeatedly texting his wife about the divorce and asked, “YES OR NO?”

At trial, while jurors weighed whether to sentence John Gardner to death or life in prison without the option for parole, his sister testified that they had grown up with abusive parents. Their father, a Baptist preacher, would interrupt church services to loudly beat his son with a belt in the hall, she said. John Gardner's appellate attorneys later said trial lawyers didn't properly search for other evidence that could have turned the jury toward life.

The slaying wasn’t John Gardner’s first domestic violence conviction. Three of his previous four wives had also reportedly been abused by him, according to a federal court ruling. In 1983, he was convicted of aggravated assault in the shooting of his wife at the time, Rhoda Gardner, who was pregnant and later died from her injuries. He served two years of an eight-year sentence in Mississippi. After two years on parole, he was again imprisoned after being accused of assaulting his new wife’s daughter, who required hospitalization, and kidnapping his wife at knifepoint.

At the Tammy Gardner murder trial, prosecutors also presented evidence that John Gardner sexually assaulted his wives’ young daughters.
His appellate lawyers argued most recently to the U.S. Supreme Court about the abandonment rage defense. They said lower courts had wrongly rejected such claims.

“[John Gardner’s] violent domestic history further supports the fact that he abused or killed his former spouses and their children ‘to manage his relationships,’ and not because of their status as a prospective witnesses who would testify against him,” his attorney, Lydia Brandt, wrote in a petition. “The killing of Tammy Gardner was an estrangement killing — which is not a capital murder offense.”

If he had been convicted of murder, not capital murder, the harshest punishment he would have received is life in prison. The Texas Attorney General’s Office argued to the high court that John Gardner killed his wife because of the upcoming divorce, where she was a prospective witness, and not earlier at the time of the breakup.

John Gardner’s appellate attorneys also said the lack of evidence of a forced entry showed that he wasn’t committing a burglary, the other felony that could trigger the capital murder offense. The state argued Tammy Gardner’s 911 call and her fear for her life indicated she would not willingly let him into her home.

“In fact, uncontrollable rage triggered by abandonment makes it more likely Gardner entered Tammy’s home without her effective consent and for the purpose of harming her,” wrote Texas Assistant Attorney General Matthew Ottoway.
Texas has seven more executions scheduled through May.

[Jimmie the Mum]

Sorry about that. We all should be checking our lists, especially me. I have a few international & above the reach people on my list. 
I figure he probably caught the virus while in prison, so I checked today.

[Tonto]

Ok, score corrections


For Jimmies pick of John Gardner:

100 - 64 = 36 points

Bonus points: 25 + 25 + 25  (1st person, 1st male, only person to pick) = 75 points each

So 36 + 75= 111 total points


Now correcting my score for my pick of Terry Jones:

100 - 77 = 23 points

Bonus points: 25  (only person to pick)

So 23 + 25= 48 total points

(That's a net of -50 for me on my earlier posting of the score)


(Guys, please check my scoring on this)

[Tonto]

Corrected scores (please double check me)


Current Score (As Of 07/25/2020)
Benfishin1               33.0
Jimmie the Mum     123.0
nayslayer                12.0
Tonto                    101.0