Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, the world’s oldest person, died Tuesday at a home for the elderly in Hoogeveen, Netherlands. She was 115.

Louis Epstein of the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, which verifies age claims for Guinness World Records, confirmed her death for The Times and said she had held the “world’s oldest” title for 15 months.

Johan Beijering, director of the Westerkim home for the elderly, told Associated Press that Van Andel-Schipper died peacefully in her sleep. She had lived in the facility since she turned 106 and in the city of Hoogeveen since World War II.

“She was very clear mentally right up to the end, but the physical ailments were increasing,” Beijering said. “She said, ‘It’s been nice, but the man upstairs says it’s time to go.’ ”

Born June 29, 1890, the woman known as “Aunt Henny” had the 15th-longest life span ever validated, said Epstein, who is based in New York.

On her 115th birthday, she received visits from Dutch Queen Beatrix’s daughter-in-law, Princess Laurentien, and a delegation from the Amsterdam Ajax soccer club, which Van Andel-Schipper supported for 87 years.

She once complained that other residents of the home for the elderly were “hicks who don’t understand soccer.”

In 2001, when she was 111, Van Andel-Schipper was invited to tea with the queen, which she considered a highlight of her life.

“She was really nice,” the elderly guest told the Hoogeveensche Courant newspaper afterward. “I let her ask the questions. I thought that would be best.”

Epstein said Van Andel-Schipper had agreed to be autopsied by the University of Groningen to help scientists learn more about longevity. Sickly and underweight as a child, Van Andel-Schipper was robustly healthy as an adult, and at age 100 she survived breast cancer that required a mastectomy.

Her personal advice on how to live a long life was to eat pickled herring, drink orange juice and “keep breathing.”

Although she preferred riding her bicycle and never learned to drive, she once told Time magazine that she considered the invention of the automobile the greatest technological advance in her long lifetime.

Born in Smilde, Netherlands, she taught needlework and lived with her parents until she was 47. Two years later she moved to Amsterdam and married Dick van Andel, who died of cancer in 1959. She had no children or other immediate family.

Van Andel-Schipper ascended to the longevity title after the death of Ramona Trinidad Iglesias-Jordan of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on May 29, 2004. Iglesias-Jordan was thought to have been the planet’s last person to die of all those born in 1889.

Now the title of world’s oldest person has been bestowed on Elizabeth Jones Bolden of Memphis, Tenn., who is 115. Her birth date of Aug. 15, 1890, was verified for Guinness in April by Robert Young, the Atlanta-based senior claims investigator of the Gerontology Research Group.

Off our rockers, actin’ crazy

With the right medication we won’t be lazy

Doin’ the old folks boogie

Down on the farm

Wheelchairs, they was locked arm in arm

Paired off pacemakers with matchin’ alarms

Gives us jus’ one more chance

To spin one more yarn ~~”Old Folks’ Boogie”, Little Feat, Waiting For Columbus

“By definition, a Supercentenarian is anyone who has lived to be 110 years or older.” So states the Gerontology Research Group based in Los Angeles.
The GRG web site further states that “We presently recognize 69 Validated Living Supercentenarians - 63 Women and 6 Men. Our all time high, earlier this year, was 71.”

(Sidebar: the GRG web site could use a serious redesign.)

Since you have plenty of time until you reach 115 years old you might want to read up on some of the latest medical research on gerontology. Try the Molecular GRG whose stated aim is “…to resolve the mechanisms by which the lifespan is controlled in mammals and human.” Heady stuff.

Since you’re going to live a bit longer than you thought we wanted you to at least have a plan:

100 Things To Do Before You Die - #12 is our top choice, #55 happens daily and we don’t recommend #85 (ick), but do go to Ireland.

For the younger set - 33 Things To Do - #8 is actually quite soothing.

Maxim Online’s List - How many of you are going to try #8?

Don’t forget a bit of AFTER the event planning:

LifeGem - Uh, what?

Death’s Half Acre - Donations accepted.

Make yourself into a stew

Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead

Remember - your 115 year allotment is a terrible thing to waste. Get packing!

LA Times
Robert Gardner, a colorful, bodysurfing judge who became as known for his witty writing as for the no-nonsense justice he dispensed for more than half a century on court benches from Newport Beach to American Samoa, has died. He was 93.

Gardner died Saturday in his sleep at his home in Corona del Mar, said his daughter, Nancy Gardner. She said he had been in declining health for the past year and died of natural causes related to aging.

When Gardner sat on the state appellate court, his written opinions attracted a statewide following.

The University of Santa Clara Law Review, which sometimes reprinted his pithy remarks under the title “A Gallery of Gardner,” cited his 1973 caution to lawyers and judges that jurors’ ability to weigh all evidence must be respected.

“A juror is not some kind of dithering nincompoop,” Gardner wrote, “brought in from never-never land and exposed to the harsh realities of life for the first time in a jury box.”

How can anyone resist featuring a 93 year old judge who also surfed. Check out his obit ODDones, it will reaffirm, “You’re only young once, but you can be immature all your life.” How about Judge Gardner’s quote re divorce, “(the act) “may not be used as a handy vehicle for the summary disposal of old and used wives. A woman is not a breeding cow to be nurtured during her years of fecundity, then conveniently and economically converted to cheap steaks when past her prime.” Blunt, but point well taken.

So as to the title of today’s ODDthought, set the time machine back to, oh hell, the 1960’s. There’s this band in Boulder, Colorado that is destined to become “The Beatles of Japan,” and then head off into obscurity. The original name? (See below—you think political correctness is a modern day thing.) The P.C. name of the band was “The Astronauts.” You could get 3.2 beer, and if you got really lucky, you could dance with a UNI-VER-SITY of Knee-braska” coed. Life is dangerous when lived in retrospect.

Don’t get us wrong folks, we got all this info from some geezer sitting on a porch in Saratoga, Wyoming
strumming a banjo and talking to a goose. But evidentially, the Astronauts could flat rock out
. Maybe we’ll catch up to them during the next rotation of the cosmos. Hope we do, we do.

Please define “nincompoop.”

Answer to question above, “The Storm Troopers.” (and they made their first debut in a bowling alley. “Fuck it Dude, let’s go bowling.”
)

We’re off to blog about donuts
. Please save us a table at The Tool, and the first pitcher of Coors
is on us. (And what’s with this stuff about having to give your DOB before logging on to the website of a publicly traded company, making a legal product, in a decent town, even though the barley fabricator is now owned by Canadians. Hey, Denver stole the Avalanche
fair and square.)

LA Times
Elwood L. “Buck” Perry, who invented the Spoonplug fishing lure and is considered the father of structure fishing, a system calculated to aid anglers in finding their catch, has died. He was 90.

Perry, the owner of Bucks Baits, died Aug. 12 in Taylorsville, N.C. His family, announcing his death on his website, gave no cause of death but said he had been in declining health.

A lifelong fisherman, Perry concluded that fish move predictably, not willy-nilly, along routes dictated by underwater topography, following contours in the lake or streambed. He also decided they spend much of their time in deep water and move along the contours to shallow water, where they become more active. How far they go depends on several conditions, including weather and the water, he said.

To help figure out where any variety of freshwater fish would be, he developed a combination of a spoon and a plug, which he patented in 1946 as the Spoonplug. He described the lure as “a shoehorn that’s been tromped on by a horse.”

Perry designed seven sizes, the largest for deep water. To map a river or lakebed, he used the smaller ones first to tap the bottom, then gradually substituted larger sizes to go to deeper water until he found fish. Perry could cover a new lake in a few hours.

He never accepted the excuse that fish weren’t biting, responding: “You’ve got to go out and make them strike.”

“Spoonplugs,” he said on his website, “are lures (tools) specifically designed to find productive structure, locate fish, and make them strike…. The wobbling action is designed to trigger strikes, especially when bumped or ‘walked’ along the bottom.”

In 1973, Perry published “Spoonplugging: Your Guide to Lunker Catches.”

Fishing Lure Mailbox
Old Fishing Lures Mug
Spoonplugging
Buck Perry’s guidelines for fishing success

It’s a sad day in Redneck Land
—no, we don’t mean Hurricane Katrina
, but rather the death of Elwood L. Perry, inventor of the spoonplug fishing lure
. Elwood systematized the stalking of fishes, but studying their behavior, and predicting wherefore they whereby be. Take heart those of you who have taken literally the challenge of building a better mousetrap
. Elwood built a better fish lure. Now if someone would just come up with a sleeping bag zipper that didn’t get stuck, or sound-dampened Port-a-Potty
, or a Big Mac
that didn’t leak lettuce and sesame seeds, then America would be a friendlier place for those who genuflect at the alter of NASCAR
and keep filling out Powerball
tickets with various variations of 3
.

All this has got the ODDfellows thinking about the many products that truly enhance the quality of life for those who find the sound and whiff of a diesel pickup better than Viagra
. Here is just a partial listing:


The Tailgatorz:
A handy device that turns your tailgate into a chair when you back into your parking space at the local drive-in movie.

Beer can chicken cooker:
A whole new way to recycle

Bass boat:
American ingenuity at work—just don’t fall in with the battery.

High dollar ski vacations:
Something you definitely won’t see at Vail.

Self-applicating condoms:
All hail the speed strip applicator.

Stealth scouting cameras:
Suitable for the game trail or bedroom.

Various scents for deer hunting: “Scrape Juice,”
“Buck Bomb,”
and the every popular “Standing Estrous Scent.”
If you want a particularly unique incense stick, why not try “Deer Sense?”
It, a. “Masks your odors,” and b. “Has a powerful sexual attractant.” Yes sir, after polishing off that beer can chicken with that special someone, you can fire up the old Deer Sense, and, if you’re lucky, impresses the heck out of them with your Mossy Oak
sheets, and if you’re even luckier, break out the self-applicating condoms. (But we digress).

Uncle Boogers Bumper Dumper:
The ultimate in portable toilets.

Gotta go renew our subscription to Redneck World
.