Elvis Left The Builiding ... But He's Still Drawing Interest ...

Elvis Presley may have left the building several decades ago, but his earning power is far from diminished with Forbes.com ranking him the top-earning dead celebrity for the second year in a row.

Presley pulled in $52 million in the past year, helped by increased visitors to his Graceland estate to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death and new ventures like the Elvis Sirius Satellite Radio show, according to the web site.
"While things might be topsy-turvy in the financial markets above ground, it's still a bull market in the boneyard," Forbes.com said.

Presley earned more between October 2007 and October 2008 than some of the music industry's biggest living pop stars like Justin Timberlake ($44 million) and Madonna ($40 million), Forbes.com said.

Coming in at No. 2 with $33 million in earnings was cartoonist Charles Schulz, who died in 2000 and is best known for his "Peanuts" comic strip, while Australian actor Heath Ledger nabbed third spot.

Ledger, 28, died from an accidental prescription drug overdose in January and his last film role was as the Joker in "The Dark Knight."

"With the 'The Dark Knight' grossing $991 million in box office revenue worldwide, we estimate his earnings at $20 million," the web site said.

Forbes.com said it spoke to experts and sources inside the dead celebrities' estates and researched gross earnings, before taxes, management fees and other costs, from the period of October 2007 to October 2008 to come up with the rankings.

German-born physicist Albert Einstein comes in at No. 4 with $18 million in earnings, mainly from Baby Einstein, the majority Disney owned videos and toys for children, while TV producer Aaron Spelling -- whose shows include "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Charlie's Angels" -- was ranked No. 5 with $15 million in earnings.

The full list can be found at http://www.forbes.com/.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Patricia Reaney)

Bud Ekins Has Made "The Great Escape" . . . Dead at 77!

One of my favorite movies. I searched high and low for The Great Escape last year.

Bud Ekins, a renowned off-road racer and stuntman who performed the famous motorcycle jump over barbed wire in the film "The Great Escape" and bounced a Mustang up and down the hills of San Francisco in "Bullitt," has died. He was 77. Ekins died of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Saturday, family spokesman Paul Bloch said. Ekins, a friend and mentor of fellow biker
Steve McQueen, had a stunt career that lasted for 30 years, and appeared in dozens of movies, including "Diamonds Are Forever," "Earthquake" and "The Blues Brothers."

Born in 1930 to a working class family in Hollywood, Ekins fell in love with motorcycles at an early age and in the 1950s he was one of the first U.S. competitors in world-class motocross events in Europe. His friendship with McQueen grew out of their love of motorcycles. Ekins owned a Triumph dealership in the 1960s. McQueen hung out there and Ekins taught him about off-road racing. Ekins, his brother, David, and McQueen raced as a team in the 1964 International Six Day Trials in Germany, although McQueen crashed and Ekins broke his leg, Bloch said. Overall, Ekins won four gold medals and a silver medal at the international trials in the 1960s. Ekins got into stunt work when McQueen asked him to work on "The Great Escape" in 1962 in Germany. While McQueen did some of the motorcycle stunts, it was Ekins, uncredited, who doubled in the scene in which McQueen's prisoner-of-war character jumps a motorcycle over a barbed-wire fence. It is considered one of the most famous motorcycle movie stunts ever performed. Ekins later worked with McQueen in "The Cincinnati Kid" and "Bullitt,"
(The Essential Steve McQueen Collection (Bullitt Two-Disc Special Edition / The Getaway Deluxe Edition / The Cincinnati Kid / Papillon / Tom Horn / Never So Few)) where he performed much of the driving of McQueen's Mustang in that film's landmark chase in and around San Francisco, where he hit speeds of more than 110 mph. (AP/Courtesy of Susan Ekins)

Ekins' other credits (some anonymous) include the films "Bullitt," "Electra Glide in Blue," Diamonds Are Forever (James Bond Novels)," "Earthquake," "Race With the Devil," "National Lampoon's Animal House (Widescreen Double Secret Probation Edition)" and "The Blues Brothers (Collector's Edition)," and the TV series "Then Came Bronson." Ekins also appeared as bit player in several films, including "The Love Bug (Special Edition)" and "Pacific Heights." Ekins continued his stunt work into his 60s. He was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999. Ekins also owned one of the best vintage motorcycle collections in the world, with 150 rare bikes, although in recent years he had trimmed it down. (Source)

Alex the Brainy Parrot Dies, Emotive to the End

He knew his colors and shapes, he learned more than 100 English words, and with his own brand of one-liners he established himself in television shows, scientific reports and news articles as perhaps the world’s most famous talking bird.

But last week Alex, an African gray parrot, died, apparently of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Brandeis University and Harvard who studied and worked with the parrot for most of his life and published reports of his progress in scientific journals. The parrot was 31.

Scientists have long debated whether any other species can develop the ability to learn human language. Alex’s language facility was, in some ways, more surprising than the feats of primates that have been taught American Sign Language, like Koko the gorilla, trained by Penny Patterson at the Gorilla Foundation/Koko.org in Woodside, Calif., or Washoe the chimpanzee, studied by R. Allen and Beatrice Gardner at the University of Nevada in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1977, when Dr. Pepperberg, then a doctoral student in chemistry at Harvard, bought Alex from a pet store, scientists had little expectation that any bird could learn to communicate with humans, as opposed to just mimicking words and sounds. Research in other birds had been not promising.

But by using novel methods of teaching, Dr. Pepperberg prompted Alex to learn scores of words, which he could put into categories, and to count small numbers of items, as well as recognize colors and shapes.

“The work revolutionized the way we think of bird brains,” said Diana Reiss, a psychologist at Hunter College who works with dolphins and elephants. “That used to be a pejorative, but now we look at those brains — at least Alex’s — with some awe.”

Other scientists, while praising the research, cautioned against characterizing Alex’s abilities as human. The parrot learned to communicate in basic expressions — but he did not show the sort of logic and ability to generalize that children acquire at an early age, they said.

“There’s no evidence of recursive logic, and without that you can’t work with digital numbers or more complex human grammar,” said David Premack, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Pepperberg used an innovative approach to teach Alex. African grays are social birds, and quickly pick up some group dynamics. In experiments, Dr. Pepperberg would employ one trainer to, in effect, compete with Alex for a small reward, like a grape. Alex learned to ask for the grape by observing what the trainer was doing to get it; the researchers then worked with the bird to help shape the pronunciation of the words.

Alex showed surprising facility. For example, when shown a blue paper triangle, he could tell an experimenter what color the paper was, what shape it was, and — after touching it — what it was made of. He demonstrated some of his skills on nature shows, including programs on PBS and the BBC. He shared scenes with the actor Alan Alda on the PBS series “Look Who’s Talking.”

As parrots can, he also picked up one-liners from hanging around the lab, like “calm down” and “good morning.” He could express frustration, or apparent boredom, and his cognitive and language skills appeared to be about as competent as those in trained primates. His accomplishments have also inspired further work with African gray parrots; two others, named Griffin and Arthur, are a part of Dr. Pepperberg’s continuing research program.

Even up through last week, Alex was working with Dr. Pepperberg on compound words and hard-to-pronounce words. As she put him into his cage for the night last Thursday, she recalled, Alex looked at her and said: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

He was found dead in his cage the next morning, Dr. Pepperberg said. (source)

See Me Rot.com .... Live Cams from the Grave

Personally, not for me... but ....Interesting .... SeeMeRot.com broadcasts live cams from the grave.

The SeeMeRot.com site is dedicated to all who have gone before us. They have been legally fighting as their site says: "Having had many battles in our efforts to maintain our 'Live Coffin Cams' within the interiors of our subjects' caskets. We have succeeded once again & we are in the process of hooking up our first live feed in almost 2 years! (legal battles in two countries have now been settled) We will hopefully start our next broadcast from the Phillipines, where we have secured the rights to our very own burial ground. [undisclosed to protect gravesite]Our original cam site will be one of three that will be live over the course of the coming months, we will stream 1 site at a time at first and then hopefully by the end of 2006 have all three running simultaneously on three pages of this site .

From our base in Seattle we should have been able to control the lighting and 'refresh rate' of the camera equipment, unfortunately that was not the case. Thankfully all the problems we had from the start, (lighting and mounting issues meant that the cam was not only almost impossible to see but also the zoom mal-functioned) have now been addressed. We trust that the new burial site will be more suitable. We hope you find SeeMeRot.com a fascinating place to visit over the coming years.

We will be able to view the new cams for many years and several modifications have been made to the latest cams and the caskets themselves - Whilst it is still buried 'six feet under', the staging area of this unit suits our technical requirements far better. Thanks for stopping by.Should you wish to discuss plans for your own 'Coffin Cam' for family and friends, please contact us for pricing details."

Very interesting concept ...... but for me, not sure I want to see my loved one underground.... comments please......

Caskets on Parade ... A Death Contest ....

Very interesting site .... Caskets on Parade. It's actually a contest site of sorts. If you read the About Us Page, you will get the following info: : )

Caskets On Parade is the name of our little Ghoul/Death/Dead Pool-type contest. The object of the game is to identify (up to) 75 notable individuals who will die during the contest year. Points are awarded based upon the age and uniqueness of selection of individual Victims of the Grim Reaper.

The contest runs annually (we missed 1986-1987 & 1997-99). Since 1978 our entrants have been making their lists, checking them twice, hopin' to figure out who's sickly, or foolish, or just plain unlucky.

Unlike many of the other contests that you run across on the internet, we accept a fairly large list of potential Victims of the Grim Reaper (75). Also, our contest is scored in four different categories —

• Total Points Scored
• Total Kills Scored
• Solo Kills Scored
• Quality of Kills

We also offer several other "honorary" awards to entrants who:
Give a Good Rookie Performance

• Produce a totally "null" list of potential Grim Reaper victims
• Have failed to notice the most obvious of prior deaths

Like most of the other contests, our's runs for the (Gregorian) calendar year - January 1st through December 31st. For the sake of brevity we employ mnemonic identifiers as a shorthand notation in our various listings & databases to identify the contest entrants.
During January we compile the accepted entries and post all of the projected Grim Reaper Victims and their selectors on this website. On a regular basis an Update of Standings is published / updated in the relevant contest year subsite; we've finally gotten out of the printing & mailing business.

Entry submission takes place in the week before New Year's Eve. The 2007 Contest is currently under way; too late to enter. However ... the 2008 Contest will be here before you know it; get to work on those submission lists now.

If you'd like to read more dead-poolish blather, click on through to our collection of FAQ pages (Frequently Asked Qustions).

Check out their Grim Reaper Page: Victims of the Grim Reaper