Have you guys become addicted to the STREET BONERS and TV CARNAGE blog yet?
You should-- they have hilarious features, including one that we are about to pirate and use as a basis for our own list of "Hilarious Deaths." That list should be called ironic deaths (such as the one where the only non-lifeguard at a party of lifeguards, all of whom were celebrating their year without a single death on the job, drowned in the swimming pool), although there are a few that don't make the cut.
You'll thank us or (is it forgive us?) for removing Eric Clapton's son's tragic death and some of the other, unfunny and more offensive choices:
1) JOHANN UNDERWALD, Swiss math genius, in a 1999 bungee-jump gone wrong. The problem? He made himself a "300-foot bungee cord to make the 250-foot leap."
2) BOBBY Leach, an American folk hero and early pioneer of the daredevil schtick later appropriated by Evil Kneivel, made some incredible leaps and bounds of his own before finally succumbing to his death after slipping on a banana peel.
3) "PISTOL" PETE MARAVICH, one of the greatest basketball players of the mid-20th century and the all-time leader in NCAA Division I, died of a heart attack during a pickup game. (The bloggers neglect to mention he was a retired alcoholic by then, and the cause of death was related to a heart defect that should have killed him years earlier.)
4) DR. ATKINS. You all saw this one coming: his fad diet was again taking the country by stor, crushing sales of bread and other carb-heavy food, when a 250-pound man was found dead. That man was Dr. Atkins.
5) Same with the founder of PowerBar and the pro jogger who died while jogging. Ironic but not that funny.
6) Maybe not ironic but at least not too morbid: VICTOR VILLENTI, a well-known jogger was killed "—while jogging—after being struck by an eight-pound frozen leg of lamb that had fallen from someone’s third-story window."
7) One more health nut death:
...JEROME IRVING RODALE, massively successful publisher of health-food books and Prevention magazine. After having boasted that he was going to “live to be 100 unless I’m run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver,” Rodale appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971. When it appeared that Rodale had fallen asleep in his chair, Cavett asked him, “Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?” If so, he had been bored to death, since he died of a heart attack while the show was filming. Sadly, the show never aired.
8) We all remember WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, who, as the Simpons remind us, died in 30 days. Harrison gave his inaugural address in the freezing cold. But to show everyone what a "man" he was, he neglected to wear a coat. The President came down with pnuemonia... and the rest is history.
9) In Arizona,
DAVID GRUNDMAN thought it would be cool to grab his shotgun and go out “cactus plugging” with a friend one day in 1982. He plugged a 26-foot Saguaro, a huge prickly slab of which fell and smashed him to death.
10) JENNIFER LEE STRANGE had a strange death of her own: she died while holding her bladder in a "Hold Your Wee For A Wee" radio contest. Jennifer, it's a $250 item-- not worth dying over.
There are more, but some of them aren't that ironic (being killed by bears after staying with them for more than a dozen summers is not irony, it's invevitability.) You can check out the rest here.