HOW TO LIVE TO 100 98

"Her recipe for a long life was to eat lashings of cream, keep fudge in the car and consume a jar of ginger snaps on the way to church."

Rest in peace, Eppie Buist.

SO LONG, DOC

Paul Newman, rest in peace.

HARVEY KORMAN, 1927-2008

First, the Dentist Sketch. I defy you not to roll on the floor in convulsive laughter. Can't be done.



Now, raise your hand for the pledge:



Rest in peace, Hedy.

AL WILSON, 1939-2008

Here's "Show and Tell".

FAREWELL, CANON JOHN HESTER

A most unusual clergyman, immortalized (er, so to speak) in the Telegraph:

"A striptease performance," he declared, "is a display of beauty, sipped and its bouquet savoured, as one might do with a rare and delightful wine."

We'll put aside for now the issue of whether using that line of logic is going to work with the wives and girlfriends in our audience. Fare thee well, holy man. Hope you brought some twenties for the girls, just in case.

THE OBITUARY THAT HAS IT ALL

The Telegraph has the world's finest obituary section, and they've proved it again with a fantastic piece on somebody I'd never heard of before, Charles Fawcett. Here's how he spent World War II:

When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 Fawcett joined the Polish army but had been in barracks for only a week before escaping from the advancing Nazis and hitchhiking back to Paris. When the French rejected his application to enlist, Fawcett joined the Section Volontaire des Américains - the ambulance corps.

He was sharing a studio with another young American, Bill Holland, whose mother was a German aristocrat. One of Holland's relatives, General Otto von Stülpnagel, had been appointed commander-in-chief of occupied France, and when Holland introduced Fawcett to senior German officers he was able to pass important information to the French Resistance.

In Paris Fawcett also took part in the rescue of a group of British prisoners-of-war who had been placed under French guard in a hospital ward by the Germans. By impersonating a German ambulance crew, Fawcett and a comrade marched in at 4am and ordered the French nurses to usher the PoWs out into the yard. "Gentlemen," he announced as he drove them away, "consider yourself liberated."

"You're a Yank," said a British voice.

"Never," came Fawcett's lilting southern burr, "confuse a Virginian with a Yankee."

Cameo appearances by Louis Armstrong, Warren Beatty, Hedy Lamarr and the mujahideen of Afghanistan.

The whole thing. Read it.

1921-2008

John McHale, the first president of the late great Montreal Expos, has died at age 86. Funeral services will be interrupted by a pallbearers' strike, and will then resume in Puerto Rico when none of the Canadian mourners show up.

Kidding aside, I really do miss the Expos, and McHale was a big reason for their thriving in Montreal. And they did thrive, kids. Until that damnable strike. I regret never having made it to Stade Olympique for a game until '99, although the then-future Her Awesomeness and I did get walk-up seventh-row seats behind the plate.

I can't get behind the Expos' incarnation in DC; after all, Montreal in August is much more pleasant than DC in August...or July, or June, or September, or pretty much any month that doesn't have cherry blossoms in it.