Dead People

At least $2 million in city pension funds went to 96 people who are definitely dead and 23 others most likely dead, according to an audit released by City Controller Jonathan Saidel yesterday. "I see dead people, and they're collecting city pension checks," he quipped, referring to the movie The Sixth Sense about a boy who communicated with dead Philadelphians. The controller secured death certificates for the 96. His auditors concluded the other 23 were most likely dead because their deaths had been reported to the Social Security Administration.

Vanna White, the Wheel of Fortune letter woman, is to be the subject of a Playboy pictorial this spring, a magazine spokeswoman said yesterday. The pictures of White, the well-known letter-turner on the syndicated TV game show, will appear in the May issue of the magazine, said Robyn L. Radomski, Playboy's director of corporate communications. "I haven't seen the pictures yet, because I have been out of town, but I can assure you they will be tasteful, quality shots," Radomski said.

ANOTHER blame game stone-thrower. Re "Ghost Voters" (letters, Sept. 3) by Thomas Lutek: I challenge you, Mr. Lutek, to produce facts or evidence that ghosts, or, as you imply, dead people, vote in Philadelphia. Come on, put your absurd allegation to the test. Prove it to all of Philadelphia that dead people vote in elections. Losing candidates have made this same absurd and baseless allegation, and were proven wrong in federal court, and the same allegation was made a while back in an opinion piece in this very paper.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's column, which, following the example of our nation's first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, will consist of an interview with a famous dead person. As you might remember, Clinton was pilloried in the press last week after Bob Woodward wrote in his book The Choice that the first lady had called on today's guest for guidance. Our interviewee, who is now a hot guest on the talk-show circuit, is an international celebrity in her own right - Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.

When Frederick Clark murdered his beloved grandmother and then raped her corpse, police said, he managed to do something very rare: He shocked those who treat sexual deviants every day. Dr. James Pedigo, chief psychiatrist at the Joseph J. Peters Institute on South Broad Street, said he'd never heard of such a thing before. "I've worked with people who have raped dead people, but not family members," he said yesterday. Pedigo's been treating sexual offenders for 36 years.

AURAL PLAGUE The first cost-cutting measure undertaken by every recession-stricken business should be eliminating music on elevators, in stores and on telephone holds. - sw. BELIEF Ray Charles said it. I believe it. That settles it. - Bumper sticker in Wichita. HIRING DECISIONS NBC-TV put Deborah Norville on its "Today" show because it needed somebody to make Bryant Gumbel look smart. - ra. JOURNALISM There should be a special Pulitzer Prize for newspapers that don't run a half-page color weather map, thus depriving their readers of the depressing news that it's mauve in the Dakotas.

GHOST HUNTERS ACADEMY. 9 tonight, Syfy. I DON'T KNOW if dead people watch television, and neither does anyone else. Most networks consider anyone over 49 dead already, but Nielsen still includes them in their measurements, if only to amuse CBS, which knows that people well into their early 50s continue to buy things they've seen on TV. Once we stop breathing, we presumably become immune to pleas of even late-night cable advertisers, so...

So Roy Rogers is dead, the singing cowboy, gone, at 86. We mean no disrespect. We happen to remember Roy in better days, he was part of our childhood, and we loved him with the strenuous devotion of which children-of-a-certain-age are capable. He was all-of-a-piece: Sunbeam smile, checkered shirt, western boots and dungarees. Big as life, twanging his vowels, singing of the wide-open spaces. His whole show was sweet and good-natured, with wonderful scenery, even in black and white.

Investigators believe some employees of the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office may have put a modern spin on the old, and ugly, practice of stealing from the dead. Law enforcement sources say the feds got involved in a sweeping probe of the office, which came to light yesterday, because one medical examiner employee is believed to have taken a credit card from a body and mailed it out of state. There, it's alleged, it was used by someone else, posing as the deceased, the sources said.

MOGADISHU WITNESSES: GIS KILL 5 IN CROWD A convoy of U.S. soldiers opened fire on hundreds of Somali civilians waiting outside a food distribution center in Mogadishu today, and at least five people were killed and many wounded, witnesses said. The soldiers shot because they believed the crowd was trying to block the road they were driving down, the witnesses said. Moments afterward, dozens of Somalis, shouting "Americans, Americans! See what they did!" picked up the bodies of injured and dead people, placed them on wheelbarrows and rolled them away.

Matt Damon talks to the dead in "Hereafter," though after awhile, it's hard to tell who's who. This isn't Damon's liveliest performance, and after more than two hours of it, you'll think you've died and gone to "Changeling," another endless Clint Eastwood movie that looked like it was shot through a fish tank plagued by a bloom of green algae. Certainly "Hereafter" starts with a jolt - a tidal wave swamps a tropical resort, drowning (among others) a French tourist (Cecile de France, her actual name)

GHOST HUNTERS ACADEMY. 9 tonight, Syfy. I DON'T KNOW if dead people watch television, and neither does anyone else. Most networks consider anyone over 49 dead already, but Nielsen still includes them in their measurements, if only to amuse CBS, which knows that people well into their early 50s continue to buy things they've seen on TV. Once we stop breathing, we presumably become immune to pleas of even late-night cable advertisers, so...

Christina Ricci dons a negligee to play a crash victim caught between two worlds in "After. Life," a title that squanders an opportunity. An opportunity to call the movie "The Half Naked and the Half Dead," an apt description of the way "After.Life" functions as a psychosexual horror movie and M. Night Shyamalanish spiritual thriller. Ricci is Anna Taylor, a high-strung girl who mistakes her boyfriend's clumsy marriage proposal for a breakup speech, then drives off in a tearful rage, right into the back of a truck.

"The Fourth Kind" takes its title from the sliding scale of alien encounters - sighting, evidence, contact and abduction. Oh, those boorish extra terrestrials. Haven't they skipped a few steps? Shouldn't the fourth be drinks and dinner, the fifth cuddling, before we get to your place or mine? "The Fourth Kind" comes at you with a clumsy come-on of its own - it's one of the virally marketed thrillers, in this case one that purports to address the mystery of deaths and disappearances around Nome, Alaska.

ANOTHER blame game stone-thrower. Re "Ghost Voters" (letters, Sept. 3) by Thomas Lutek: I challenge you, Mr. Lutek, to produce facts or evidence that ghosts, or, as you imply, dead people, vote in Philadelphia. Come on, put your absurd allegation to the test. Prove it to all of Philadelphia that dead people vote in elections. Losing candidates have made this same absurd and baseless allegation, and were proven wrong in federal court, and the same allegation was made a while back in an opinion piece in this very paper.

RANDY PLESSOR seems like a normal-enough guy. He has a pleasant wife whom he met online and married a year ago. He has a 19-year-old son who somehow dodged the truculence typical to teenagers. He has a stable job in a stable industry, as computer specialist for an Easton pet-food company. But mention ghosts, and the cuckoo bells go off. "I'm feeling coldness all around me, cold, icy-cold. Can you feel it?" he asks. (No.) "It's 85 degrees out here tonight, but it's so cold you can see my breath," Plessor continues, exhaling forcefully.

AS THE CITY struggles to balance its budget, I offer an idea that I think will be more palatable than the now-abandoned surcharge for trash pickup or charging residents who visit health clinics. My idea doesn't penalize people for trying to keep the city clean and sanitary by disposing of their trash or by attending to their health at city clinics when they can't afford to go elsewhere. But most important, it will be music to the ears of every politician: It targets a constituency that can't inflict any political harm.

While admitting that it needs better fiscal management, the Camden School District said payments were not made to dead employees. In a voluminous corrective action plan, the district disputed recent findings by state auditors that said payments were made to 10 employees after their recorded dates of death. South Jersey's largest school system blamed shoddy record-keeping and clerical errors for that and numerous deficiencies cited by auditors. The state audit had accused the district of continuing to pay salary and benefits to some employees who had died.

Vegan, skydiver, jogger, dope fiend. No matter who you are, you're going to die. That's the happy fact that energized the National Funeral Directors Association's 125th Convention and Expo, which was attended by about 3,000 funeral directors and wrapped up yesterday at the Convention Center. "You're only on Earth a short length of time," The Amazing Giovanni, a magician performing on the convention floor, told a group of funeral directors gathered near a tasteful grouping of gleaming caskets.

Judy Olsen grabs a flashlight when she enters the church vault to look for clues. Where, she wants to know, are her people? Her dead people? The petite woman with short, black hair scrutinizes the yellowing records to find a detail - anything - about a long-deceased congregant of the First Presbyterian Church in Mount Holly. Hungry for ancestral knowledge, his family had contacted her. The missing dead are Olsen's people. She refuses to let them rest in obscurity. She pores over eye-numbing documents in government halls and libraries.