Why Couldn't it Have Been Keith Olbermann?!?

Tim Russert
May 7, 1950 - June 13, 2008

I want to be perfectly clear on this: I wasn't a huge Tim Russert fan. Not that he was a bad guy, or that I was opposed to his politics...but the simple truth was, I didn't really know who he was. In fact, in my mind Meet The Press host Tim Russert and Hardball host Chris Matthews were one. To me, they were literally interchangeable. Who hosted Hardball? Beats me. That fat NBC guy? What's his name? Oh yeah, Tim Russert.

Now...not so much, I suppose. Tim Russert had just returned from a vacation to Italy with his family and was recording some audio this morning when he had a massive heart attack and died. Which is indeed a bummer, even though I couldn't really pick him out of a lineup. Everyone else in the media seems to suddenly have an enormous amount of respect for him.

Maybe even Keith Olbermann will have a thoughtful, tearful tribute to him on Countdown tonight. And, maybe, just maybe, the vengeful spirit of Edward R. Murrow will appear and drag Keith's sorry ass screaming down to Hell, Ghost-style.

One More Reason to Hate Richard Dawson.

Diana Dors
Oct. 23, 1931 - May 4, 1984
I know very little about Diana Dors. She was a British actress and she was hot. Perhaps this is all that really matters.

And yet, there's more to be said. She was generally regarded as the British Marilyn Monroe, and there was a strong physical resemblance. She made many films and became an international star...or at least in countries other than America she was. While she's virtually unknown here, she was nevertheless featured on the covers of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's and the Smiths Singles albums and was the subject of a tribute song ("Good Day") by the Kinks. At the height of her career, she was married to Hogan's Heroes star Richard Dawson. This seems to be the only truly dark spot on her resume. But at least this was before he was kissing all those trailer park wives on Family Feud. She developed stomach cancer and died on this day in 1984.

No Dead Horse Puns, Please.

Eight Belles
May 3, 2008
Bummer, huh?

You live all your life for one purpose. It's the biggest day of your life. You run fast, you try hard, you come in second, but then you break both your ankles and they come and kill you. In front of everybody. Damn, that sucks.

I mean, really. What's that all about?

You know, a lot of people still think that horse racing is a barbaric sport. I don't think that...but I think it's unnecessary, like boxing. And in my opinion, horse racing is kind of a rip-off. You work for years to get there, you train and spend a lot of money, and it's over in 90 seconds. In many ways I think there's a sexual metaphor there, but I'm not going to be the one to make it. No sir, not today.

The biggest crime of horse racing is that it bores me. Men on horses, wow.

I say put monkeys on them. Only not on horses, on dogs. Yes. Spider monkeys. Spider monkeys on dogs. Those little bastards are nothing but cute. And they're still wearing those little jockey outfits.

Now that's entertainment!

Down and Out in Beverly Hills

David Rappaport
November 23, 1951 - May 2, 1990
Yeah, well. I remember when this guy died. He was a very small British actor who actually had a fairly successful career in TV and movies. He was one of the main characters in Time Bandits and The Bride and was set to guest-star on Star Trek: The Next Generation at the time of his death. In the year before his death he'd made some appearances on L.A. Law and had a short-lived '80s series of his own (The Wizard). But he suffered from depression and general unhappiness and bought a .38 and killed himself. This is the same way that Herve Villaichaze (Tattoo from Fantasy Island) also chose to check out.

Look. While I'm a man of average (or some would say, less than average) height myself, I will never know what it's like to be a "little person". But I do know that many a diminutive actor has had hard times and continued to work and not offed himself. I know it's all a matter of personal choice, but look how long Billy Barty lived. He took a lot of bad movie and TV roles, up to and including dressing up in the sea monster outfit in Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, but he never gave up. Worked right up until the time of his death at age 76. Warwick Davis, who starred in Willow (which Barty was also in), hasn't given up. Even though he's mostly appeared in the awful Leprechaun movies for the last 15 years, he's still a working and successful actor in Hollywood.

And if you tiny short men out there need further inspiration, you don't need to look very hard to know that you can be a star. I'm pointing, of course to the careers of Al Pacino and Prince. Face!

Thank you and good night.

I'm Huge!

Steve Reeves
Jan 21, 1926 - May 1, 2000
Steve Reeves is best remembered today for two things:

1) Being a recurring joke on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and
2) Being mentioned in the song "Sweet Transvestite" in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

He's not so much really known for being Mr. Universe 1950 or those terrible Hercules movies he made in the 1950s/1960s. While beautifully filmed, they were poorly dubbed and chopped up and confusing to American audiences. Not really a very good actor, he nonetheless got a lot of film work because he was muscular and good-looking. He turned down the role of James Bond in Dr. No, which might not have been that wise in retrospect. It went to Sean Connery, who became a huge star.

When Gladiator was being filmed, director Ridley Scott never got around to offering Reeves a cameo. He later regretted it, and Reeves died on the very day the film premiered.

An odd thing about Reeves was the fact that you never heard his real voice. In all his Italian-made gladiator movies, his voice was dubbed by other actors. In fact, his actual voice was only heard in the movies Athena and Jail Bait. He was from Montana and spoke fluent English.

My Moustache is Retarded and I am Mean

Adolph Hitler
April 20, 1889 - April 30, 1945

I was never a huge Hitler fan, I'll tell you that right now. I've never been one to follow genocidal maniacs, even if it's true that the Germans do make excellent beer and fantastic cars. You can drive all the BMWs and Volkswagens and drink all the Spaten Munich you want, but there's always going to be that Hitler thing.

Anyway, not only did Hitler murder millions, but he also ruined other things for generations. No one names their kids Adolph anymore, no one parts their hair like that anymore, and no one wears that moustache. And don't forget, that was a very popular moustache many years ago...even Charlie Chaplin had it. But now you can't watch one of the old Chaplin films without thinking "Nazi-loving bastard". And you know it's true.

The rock band KISS cannot use its logo in Germany because the two S's in that logo are jagged and look like symbols of Hitler's SS. This is absolutely true.

So yeah, that's what I'm saying. Not only was Hitler a Jew-hating, VD-ridden, one-testicle-having, bad-art-producing, freaked-out maniac, he was just a jerk.

And I'm glad he's dead.

In your face, Hitler!

Bring Out Your Dead!

Back at last, with the rest of the dead I missed last week!


Douglas Adams
Mar. 11, 1952 - May 11, 2001
You gotta love Douglas Adams. No, really. You are required to love Douglas Adams. It's a law now. He was the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and the Dirk Gently books, all of which are hilarious. Died of a heart attack at a private gym at age 49. Had a huge influence on fandom, and quite a few writers (this one included) spent their formative years ripping him off. Currently, there is a movement underway to get city planners to rename 42nd Street in Portland, Oregon "Douglas Adams Way". There is no real reason for this, other than the significance of the number 42 in the Hitchhiker's books and the fact that Portland is filled with silly, silly people. Adams would have been proud.


Morton Downey, Jr.
Dec. 9, 1933 - Mar. 12, 2001
Without Morton Downey, Jr. the world wouldn't have The Jerry Springer Show, or any of the "tabloid trash" talk shows like it. Downey essentially pioneered the genre in the mid-1980s. Morton perfected this bit in talk radio, where he insulted pinhead liberal callers on a nightly basis. I used to catch the show on KHTV Houston, where I got my fill of Nazis, strippers, and various other white trash trailer park bastards. It was a good time, but the show ended in the late-1980s and Downey took various small villain parts in movies and TV shows, developed lung cancer from his chronic smoking, and finally died at age 67 in 2001. Interesting to note that he had also pursued a career in music (as had his father) and had a song in the Billboard Top 100, a country song ("Green Eyed Girl", which went as high as #95) in 1981.


John Holmes
Aug. 8, 1944 - Mar. 13, 1988
John Holmes (John Curtis Estes) was born in Ohio in 1944. Not long after that it was discovered that he had a huge schlong and he began a career in porn films. Something like that, anyway. By 1978 Holmes was making as much as $3000 a day in porn films, but he was putting it all up his nose. Holmes spent some time in jail and was tried and acquitted of being involved in some drug-related murders, and somewhere along the line he contracted A.I.D.S. and died from it in 1988. The film Wonderland is directly based on his life and Boogie Nights is a more loose adaptation. Holmes was reputed to have slept with more than 3,000 women in his life. Well, I doubt that number. I don't know how much sleep was really going on, and that's difficult to prove. Also, it must be noted that he wasn't really a very good looking man at all. Giant penis, yes...attractive, not so much. It's a good thing that Neil Young doesn't have a giant penis and an inclination to do porn, or it could have been so much worse.



Hank Ketchum
Mar. 14, 1920 - June 1, 2001
Created the comic strip "Dennis the Menace". Drew it for years. It was never funny, ever. Dennis the Menace character goes to TV and comics, remains unfunny. Dennis the Menace character is made into movies in the 1990s by Home Alone creator John Hughes, and it wasn't funny then. It just never, ever got to be funny to me. Also, it was kind of a rip-off as a comic strip. It was just a single-panel drawing (Family Circus-style), with some semi-humorous dialog below it. Did I mention it wasn't funny? Hank Ketchum had a real-life son named Dennis. For some reason (I can't imagine what) they became estranged and never spoke to each other again. Now that's funny.


Macdonald Carey
Mar. 15, 1913 - Mar. 21, 1994
Played a doctor on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, which I never watched. He would introduce and close the show, and his voice is still heard in the opening credits today. Had a long, long career in radio and TV. I mostly remember him from a low-budget movie made in the late-1970s which I think was called Starship Invasions, but I couldn't find it in the IMDB. He plays "Dr. McCarey", and he mostly stands around looking worried while the real action happens elsewhere. It was an awful movie, and I watched it late at night because I was always awake in the 1980s. I'll spoil the ending for you. The aliens are repelled, but at the very end a nurse enters the room and says "Dr. McCarey...it's starting again." And he looks really, really worried. Must have been hard to refuse a check with his name on it.


Arthur Godfrey
Aug. 31, 1903 - Mar. 16, 1983
I don't think there were a lot of tears shed when Arthur Godfrey died in 1983. He had been a TV pioneer, sure, but he was also (by many accounts) an absolute jerk. No matter what he did or said during his life, there is no denying that he fired Julius LaRosa on live television in 1953 allegedly because the singer had gotten an agent and the controlling Godfrey wasn't "down with that", as the kids say. But consider this: Godfrey is now dead, and LaRosa (now 78) has had a full Godfrey-free quarter century to dance on his grave. Godfrey was also allegedly the model for the character "Lonesome" Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd, about a friendly and popular TV host who is a mean-spirited, manipulative bully off-screen. Take that, Arthur Godfrey.

Death...the Ultimate Slacker

Yes, Death is a few days behind...what can ya do? It's hard to keep up with the ongoing roster of the non-living. But have no fear: I return Saturday, March 15, with a full catch-up of all the exciting news from the world of the dead.

Another Three-Named Redneck Assassin.

James Earl Ray
Mar. 10, 1928 - Apr. 23, 1998
I admit it. I really don't know that much about the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Once you've got into the JFK assassination, everything else seems kind of minor. Not that MLK and RFK weren't important, mind you...but there's only so much time to look into these things, and JFK is the Holy Grail of Conspiracy Science. Therefore my JFK knowledge is strong and my MLK knowledge is weak. But I do know that James Earl Ray, the man generally considered to be the assassin of Martin Luther King, first confessed to the crime and then spent thirty years in jail denying he did it. He was so persuasive that, by the time he died in 1998, he even had MLK's family convinced he didn't do it. And I don't really know whether he did or not. Everything I know comes from U2's song "Pride (In the Name of Love)", and even it is factually incorrect. The shooting happened at six in the evening...not early morning, as the song states. Ray claimed to have been set up by a mysterious man named "Raoul" or some such, and it was actually this shady character who shot King that evening. But if you saw that episode of X-Files, you know it was Cigarette Smoking Man who really did it.

Original Gangstas.

Alan Hale, Jr.
Mar. 8, 1921 - Jan. 2, 1990
Alan Hale, Jr. was a good character actor with one character: the Skipper. He was playing the Skipper for years before the part was created for Gilligan's Island, sometimes in westerns. He continued playing the part all the way until his death at age 70. The last time I saw him in 1989 or so was in commercials for TBS (with Bob Denver as Gilligan). They were both dressed as their old characters, still stranded on that island (which they escaped in a TV movie, by the way). He was obviously sick and very thin, but there he was. If you've ever watched Mystery Science Theater 3000, you'll know that he appeared in more bad movies than just about any other actor. These included The Crawling Hand, Angel's Revenge, and Giant Spider Invasion. Also appeared on The Love Boat twice and Fantasy Island three times.


Biggie Smalls
May 21, 1972 - Mar. 9, 1997
Let's make one thing clear right now: I'm generally indifferent to rap and hip-hop music. The law of averages on music, as it is on all things, also applies here. 90% of everything, be it music, movies, or what have you, is bad. That's just the way it works out. But there's nothing like being dead that can suddenly make that mediocre recording artist seem like a martyr and a genius. Odds are most of us would never have heard of Biggie Smalls (or, the Notorious B.I.G.) had he not been shot and killed so young. And we damn sure wouldn't have heard that awful Puff Daddy tribute to him and Tupac ("Missing You") that sampled The Police's "Every Breath You Take". But now, like Selena, he's a fallen hero. I ride the bus most of the time here in Vegas, and I am confronted on almost a daily basis with young hip-hoppers and their oversized Biggie and Tupac tribute shirts. It boggles the mind. Simply put, rap and hip-hop music is disposable music. Very hot and popular, then gone and forgotten. Or there would be hip-hop oldies stations...and there are not. I'm just sayin'.

An American Master.

Andy Sidaris
Feb. 20, 1931 - Mar. 7, 2007
Andy Sidaris was the man. Period. After a long career as a respected producer for ABC Sports, he retired and moved to Hawaii. It was there he began his real career...making movies. And not just any movies. Ambitious films with lots of car chases, secret agents, and explosions. And tits. Lots and lots of tits. Almost exclusively former Playboy Playmates, Andy Sidaris' actresses found an excuse to get topless at almost every turn. It was a beautiful thing. He had some earlier directorial credits on various TV shows and movies, but is best known for the so-called "Malibu Bay" series of films. Between 1985 and 1998, Sidaris made 10 connected secret agent films, all concerning "The Agency" and the frequently naked agents employed by it. These included Malibu Express, Hard Ticket To Hawaii, and Picasso Trigger. And they weren't made with a penny of studio money...he financed them himself. After he stopped directing, he made appearances in all three of Jim Wynorski's Bare Wench parodies as sleaze mogul "Dick Bigdickian". Not bad, not bad at all. Good job, Andy. We need more guys like you.

How Boobs Changed My Life.

Bill Ward
Mar. 6, 1919 - Nov. 17, 1998
While "growing up", for lack of a better term, there were few high points in my life. I lived for Marvel comic books, I snuck a look at HBO to see naked breasts when I could, and I always bought Cracked magazine. Not Mad, that didn't do it for me. It had to be Cracked. And why? Because, frankly, it was funnier. And the art was better. In the late 1970s, the main artists in the mag I dug were John Severin and Bill Ward. Severin did the wacky TV parodies up front, and Bill Ward did the Nanny Dickering features at the back. I was just developing an appreciation for the female form, and Ward's women were big, busty, and trashy, with giant hips and enormous hair. But mostly busty. He had a long career of drawing women for men's magazines as far back as the 1940s and was the king of so-called "good girl art". His most famous creation was Torchy, a sexually suggestive (but not lewd) World War II-era comic strip. I really loved his work, even though in his later years he did a lot of highly-sexualized bondage work to pay the bills. I forgive ya, Bill...you're the best.

Brother Bluto and Dead Porn Star #3.

John Belushi
Jan. 24, 1949 - Mar. 5, 1982
John Belushi died 26 years ago today. A certified comic genius and brilliant actor, dead. And yet Jim Belushi, healthy as ever. Not his fault, really. It just goes to show you that life can suck. You know, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison are dead, too...but Andrew Dice Clay? Will live to see 80, no problem. 80 and unfunny, but 80 nonetheless. But maybe, just maybe, that's the way it's supposed to be. You don't outstay your welcome. You don't become America's favorite TV dad on According to Jim, but you also don't end up on a VH1 reality series or a crappy sitcom with Cathy Moriarty. You die at the peak of your abilites leaving people wanting more, and the world truly misses you when you're gone. I'll never have that, Andrew Dice Clay will never have that, most people will never have that. But guys like John Belushi, they come around once in a lifetime. I wish I'd known him. Check out Belushi's Wikipedia page. It was amazing the things he did in his life. He crammed into 33 years more life than a lot of us have at 40 or more...or ever will. Well done, my friend.


Lolo Ferrari
Feb. 9, 1963 – Mar. 5, 2000
I wish I'd known Lolo Ferrari, too...but she was no Belushi. John Belushi was the type of guy I'd like to party with, bask in the glow of his sheer personal magnetism. Lolo Ferrari I just wanted to hump. It don't make me a bad person. Lolo has the distinction of having the largest silicone breast implants in the history of the world. Not the largest breasts, mind you, the largest implants. She also did porn...a legacy that her fans can enjoy even today. Wikipedia attributes her death to "natural causes", but she was 37 years old. What sort of "natural causes" kill you at 37? Why Wikipedia didn't mention that her husband was arrested for her murder (by suffocation) in 2002 is a mystery to me.

Edit: The husband was apparently later cleared...which as we know doesn't mean he didn't do it, but that they couldn't pin anything on him. My Consitutionally-protected opinion.

Catching Up With The Dead.

Lou Costello
Mar. 6, 1906 - Mar. 3, 1959
Abbott and Costello were never a factor in my life. I was aware of them, but I was never really a fan and I didn't like any of their 36 films except Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which is great. But everybody knows it was the monsters and not A&C who made that so good. Of course I know the "Who's on First?" routine, everybody does. But can you name another of their routines? That's what I'm saying. The duo split up in 1957. Costello went on to make one solo film (The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock) and died of a heart attack on March 3, 1959. Bud Abbott, being a curmudeonly bastard, lived until 1974 and died peacefully in his sleep. The TV movie Bud and Lou has Costello (Buddy Hackett) in a hospital bed. Against the doctor's wishes he requests an ice cream soda. He drinks it and says "That was the best ice cream soda I ever tasted", and drops dead. I always thought this story was crap, but apparently it's true. Leave it to Hollywood to surprise you with the truth.


John Candy
Oct. 31, 1950 - Mar. 4, 1994
I love John Candy. I was 13 years old when NBC started airing SCTV on Friday nights in 1981, and I'd more often than not fall asleep trying to watch the whole 90-minute show. He was a master of impersonations, from Orson Welles to Curly Howard to Merlin Olsen and Jackie Gleason, and he was more often than not the highlight of the show for me. Later he went on to appear in supporting roles in movies like Stripes and National Lampoon's Vacation before making a move to leading man and making a lot of unfunny films before his death, including Summer Rental, Who's Harry Crumb?, and Delirious. But don't forget he was also hilarious in the modern classics Spaceballs, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Splash, and Uncle Buck. Being in these four films alone make him fantastic. For me, one of his best roles came in 1991's JFK, where he has a very small part showing great dramatic range. As is the case with heavier actors, he died of a heart attack in his sleep during the filming of Wagons East! in Mexico on March 4, 1994, at age 43.

Lazy, Lazy Death.

Death is taking a couple of days off. Be back Wednesday, March 5, with more tales of death, boobs, and porn.

Death's Day Off!

Death is taking a couple of days off. Be back Wednesday, March 5, with more tales of death, boobs, and porn.

Dead Porn Star #2.

Cal Jammer
March 2, 1960 - January 25, 1995
Apparently, being a porn star and having sex all the time with beautiful women isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'd be willing to test that theory myself...but the evidence suggests that porn stars are as screwed up as the rest of us, if not more.

Cal Jammer (born Randy Lynn Potes) was such an individual. In the porn industry he was popular and got steady work, but wasn't necessarily a huge star. He developed a relationship with porn actress Jill Kelly and they were married in 1993, but he was using illegal drugs and suffering from depression and her openly cheating on him didn't help matters. She became involved with actress P.J. Sparxx as well during this time.

On January 25, 1995 Cal caught his wife in bed with a fellow porn actor. Hours later he blew his brains out in her driveway. This was the basis for a subplot in the film Boogie Nights a few years later.

Again, it seems like there is an extraordinary amount of tragedy in the adult industry. Could it be that the thing that makes a person want to appear in adult films is the same thing that screwed them up in the first place? Or am I just talking out of my ass? We'll never know for sure my friend...we'll never know for sure.

Fester? I Barely Knew Her!

Jackie Coogan
October 26, 1914 – March 1, 1984
Jackie Coogan was a child actor discovered by Charlie Chaplin in 1917 and he made millions from his movie roles. Unfortunately, all his earnings were spent by his mother and stepfather on cocaine and heroin. He sued them, only to get about $125,000 back. The legal battle resulted in legislation called The California Child Actor's Bill, or The Coogan Act, that specified that 15% of a child actor's earnings be set aside by the employer in a trust.

Coogan served in World War II as a Flight Officer and requested hazardous duty with the 1st Commando Air Group, where he flew British troops hundreds of miles behind Japanese lines. After the war he resumed his acting career and appeared in many films and TV series until his retirement in the mid-1970s.

Of course he's best remembered as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family TV series of the '60s. In the TV series Fester was Morticia's uncle, but in the 1991 movie he was Gomez's brother. My contention is that he was both, because they're both creepy and kooky. The Uncle Fester character was played by a badly miscast Christopher Lloyd in the 1991 film and its sequel, and Ron Jeremy played the part in the XXX-rated parody The Maddams Family. Not that I've seen that, of course. Okay, I'm lying. I have.

Jackie Coogan died of a heart attack at age 69 on Mar. 1, 1984. His grandson is actor Keith Coogan, who starred in Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead.

Dead Porn Star #1.

Taylor Summers
1980? - Feb. 29, 2004
Taylor Summers (born Natel King) was a Canadian-born model and porn actress who was reported missing on Feb. 29, 2004. I can honestly tell you that I don't remember seeing her, or even hearing about her, before I was looking for deaths on this day. She didn't make a huge impact, and most porn actresses don't. I don't think there was an abundance of screen work from her, and the IMDB has no listing of her in anything.

Most of the info I have on her comes from a "charity event" for her and another actress on Fetish Movies:

The ladies that participated and donated their time we thank you. We will be donating 100% of the profits of the DVD to the families of two adult actresses who have had their careers cut short by tragic circumstances. Adult film actress Taylor Summers disappeared after a photo shoot in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, on February 29th. Her body was discovered by authorities three weeks later in nearby Whitemarsh Township. Shannon, a beautiful young woman just getting started in the business, suffered an epileptic seizure while cooking, catching her sweater on fire. Shannon was badly burned on over 40% of her body. By the time she was found and rushed to the hospital, her medical bills have gone up to $750,000. Her family is in dire need of help to cover the costs of Shannon's treatment.

And this, copied whole cloth from Porn Star Updates:

Taylor Summers, born Natel King, was a Canadian born porn star who mostly appeared in fetish porn shoots. In March of 2004 King’s nude body was found down a deep ravine in Whitemarsh, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. She was found draped in black fabric secured with duct tape, bound with straps and a ball gag. Her body had multiple stab wounds to both her chest and hands indicating a struggle with her murderer.

Police quickly arrested and charged photographer Anthony Frederick, 47, and his assistant Jennifer Mitkus alleging that the murder occurred during a bondage shoot gone terribly wrong. Police speculated on the possibility that the murder might have been recorded and that King may have unknowingly been the subject of a snuff shoot.

In August of 2005, Frederick was found guilty and sentenced to 24-51 years in prison for the murder. At sentencing he issued a verbal apology to the King family during which King’s mother fled the courtroom in tears. Frederick claims the murder took place during an altercation over money immediately following the photo shoot although evidence suggests otherwise. King was 23 years old at the time of her death.

Again, I know nothing more than this, and I can only find one picture of her on the internet. Anyone curious about the title of this post, "Dead Porn Star #1", will find that there are many, many dead and (especially murdered) porn stars. You will see, as the days go by, that I am correct.

The Man Who Did Not Invent Las Vegas.

Bugsy Siegel
February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947
You remember the 1991 Warren Beatty film Bugsy, right? Beatty, as Siegel, is driving through the desert with Annette Bening and Harvey Keitel in the 1940s when he has to take a leak. While leaking, Siegel decides to build a great expansive casino on that very spot. He draws up plans and builds the Flamingo, thereby inventing Las Vegas as we know it.

And that's correct...except the part that's utter crap.

Las Vegas was incorporated as a city in 1905, as you may be aware, and gambling was legalized long before Bugsy came to town. In fact, there were already casinos, mostly downtown on Fremont Street. The El Cortez was already there, as were the Golden Nugget, the Sal Sagev (now the Golden Gate), El Rancho Vegas, and the Last Frontier. In fact, the Flamingo was already there, though only partially constructed, when Siegel took over on behalf of his "business associates" in the Chicago Outfit.

Siegel and his associates had already made some money by buying the El Cortez for $600,000 and selling it for a $166,000 profit. This is not mentioned in the film...which, while a decent flick, is filled with lies.

How Siegel convinced Hollywood Reporter owner Billy Wilkerson (who was building the Flamingo) to let him take over isn't quite clear. The story is that the cost of building the hotel was getting out of control and Wilkerson was strapped for cash. But maybe, just maybe, Wilkerson also liked the idea having all his blood stay inside his body. I'm just sayin'.

But it is known that Siegel caused cost overruns on the Flamingo and it made the mob nervous. By the time it finally opened it cost several million dollars more than projected and, while a financial success, it was suspected that Bugsy and his girlfriend Virginia Hill were skimming money. Siegel was shot to death at Virginia's home in Los Angeles on June 20, 1947. She wasn't home. She later fled to Austria where she committed suicide in 1966. The end of the film Bugsy indicates that she returned the money she and Siegel skimmed, but this can't be proven and the mob doesn't give receipts.

The final shot of the film Bugsy shows footage of 1991-era Las Vegas and a note about how much money is spent there today as a result of "Bugsy Siegel's dream". I won't argue that Bugsy contributed to the founding of Las Vegas as we know it, but he invented nothing. The mob was already in Vegas, and I believe that it still would have all happened without him.

Bugsy Siegel was nothing more than a punk and a killer, his contributions to Las Vegas have been vastly overrated, and he dressed like a clown. The end.

Death, 2...Blondes with Giant Breasts, 0.

Angela Aames
Feb. 27, 1956 - Nov. 27, 1988
If you know me, and by now you surely do, then you know what I'm all about. Hell, the very first post in this blog was all about my perfect woman...Anna Nicole Smith. The blonder the bimbo and the bigger the boobs, the more willing I am to fall for her. And that's as it should be. God made beautiful women for us to stare at...and as long as they're showing it off, I'm there to watch. You're welcome.

And such is the case with Angela Aames. You'd have to be a pretty big b-movie nerd to have even heard of her, much less to have followed her career. Well, turns out I have, and I am. Born in South Dakota in 1956, Angela Aames came to Hollywood in the 1970s and began to appear in cheap b-movies. Being blonde and having large natural breasts was a bonus, of course...but in fact she was a gifted comedic actress. She trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and Harvey Lembeck's Comedy Workshop before landing (largely naked) roles in the movies Fairy Tales and H.O.T.S.. It might not surprise you to know that I've tracked these down and have owned copies for years.

She later got more substantial roles in The Lost Empire and Bachelor Party and appeared on Night Court several times before landing a recurring role in The Dom DeLuise Show.

But as it sometimes goes with these things she was found dead at a friend's home on Nov. 27, 1988 from what the coroner would later determine to be a deterioration of the heart muscle, probably caused by a virus. She was beautiful and had a promising career and it's unfortunate that she died at the age of 32.

But, on the other hand, at least Phil Spector didn't kill her.

Up Front There Oughta Be a Man in Black.

Johnny Cash
Feb. 26, 1922 - Sep. 12, 2003
As little as I know about Johnny Cash, I can honestly tell you that he had a way of taking a song and making it his own. The finest example of this is his cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt", recorded late in his career. He took a good song and made it great....truly great. Johnny Cash, who was born on this day in 1922, had a long career in country music. Having been born and raised in Texas, I was obliged to listen to him on virtually a daily basis. It's very much in the same way that a Canadian is forced to listen to Rush, or a person from Alabama gets constant and repeated exposure to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Having heard him so much I am quite familiar with his work, even though I have never been a country music "fan" per se. I like some of his songs, sure, and he had a great (especially speaking) voice, but he never really was my thing. I did enjoy his work with Highwayman, though (the 1985 "supergroup" with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson).

Johnny's wife, June Carter Cash, died from complications during heart valve surgery in May of 2003, and Johnny died from diabetes and other health issues on September 12, 2003. His home was purchased by Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb in 2006 but was destroyed by fire before he and his wife could move into it.

Three things you did not know about Johnny Cash:

1) Wrote a novel in 1986 called Man in White, about the Apostle Paul.
2) Narrated an audio book, Johnny Cash Reads The Complete New Testament, in 1990.
3) In 1991, sang vocals on a cover of his song "The Man in Black" for a Christian punk band called One Bad Pig.

Ya Doesn't Have to Call Me Johnson.

Catching up from yesterday's day off...


Michael Johnson
1939 - Feb. 24, 2001

Michael Johnson
1939 - Feb. 24, 2001
What are the odds? I mean, really. "Michael Johnson" is one of the more popular names in the internet movie database, apparently. And an actor named Michael Johnson, who was born in 1939, died on this day in 2001.

No, wait...make that two.

Two actors named Michael Johnson (with completely different IMDB resumes and lists of credits) died on this day, the same day, in 2001. And both were born in 1939, at an unknown date. One (Michael Johnson 1) was a British actor who appeared in and the other (Michael Johnson 2) was an actor who appeared in bit parts in E.R. and Walker, Texas Ranger. Are they the same person? Not according to the Internet Movie Database, they're not. It's bizarre, since MJ1's credits end in 1984, and MJ2's credits pick up in 1985. They carry on until his last appearance in 2000. I suspect that they're the same person...but it doesn't appear so to the IMDB, which is considered to be dang near infallible on such matters.

It's weird, I tell you.



James Coco
Mar. 21, 1930 - Feb. 25, 1987
James Coco was a Broadway and movie actor who was known for being overweight and prematurely bald. This lent him to a lot of comedic roles, and the Neil Simon play Last of the Red Hot Lovers was written specifically for him. He went on to win a Tony award for that role. He also appeared in the Neil Simon films Murder By Death, The Cheap Detective, and Only When I Laugh (for which he was nominated for an Oscar). In the last few years of his life, Coco took to dieting, and he lost an incredible amount of weight. He wrote a diet cookbook and had a recurring role on Who's the Boss?. It is my memory that Coco then put a lot of the weight back on, and he suddenly died of a heart attack at age 56. Bummer. He was a really funny guy.


Darren McGavin
May 7, 1922 - Feb. 25, 2006
Darren McGavin was a great actor with a long list of credits, but is best remembered for two roles: newspaper reporter Karl Kolchak in the 1970s horror TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker and the father in the 1983 classic A Christmas Story. It all really depends on where you're from, and how old you are. It's blasphemy to members of my generation, but I never cared for A Christmas Story. I was, however, crazy about The Night Stalker, a mediocre and short-lived TV series based on a fantastic 1971 TV movie. If you've never seen it, it concerns a reporter on the trail of a vampire in Las Vegas. It is notable for being the highest rated TV movie of its time. The series that followed broke ground that made series like The X-Files possible, and McGavin himself later guest-starred in a memorable episode of that show. Died of natural causes at a fairly old age.

Death Takes a Holiday!

Back tomorrow!

Shakespeare? More Like Fakespeare!

Christopher Marlowe
Feb. 23, 1564 - May 30, 1593

Christopher Marlowe was a prolific English playwright who died in a bar fight at the age of 29. He is little remembered when you compare him to his more famous contemporary, William Shakespeare. So why bother remembering him at all?

That's because he was Shakespeare. Maybe.

More than a few scholars believe that it was Marlowe wrote most, if not all, of Shakespeare's plays. He was a marked man in a lot of trouble with the law for his writings and it's believed that he faked his death and continued to write plays, but recruited an uneducated actor to claim he wrote them.

There's actually a pretty strong case to be made that Marlowe faked his own death. The first Shakespeare plays began to suddenly appear only weeks after Marlowe's funeral, there was a great similarity in the writing styles, and then there's the matter of average word size. Both Shakespeare and Marlowe had an average word size of 4.2 letters, and many scholars point toward this as the best proof that both writers were the same individual.

But again, and this can not be stressed strongly enough: Shakespeare had absolutely no education. In no way could he have had the understanding of history and the monarchy that he did. He seems to have appeared from nowhere and been instantly possessed by the spirit of Marlowe, with all of his writing abilities and knowledge. This is why Queen Elizabeth, during the Essex Rebellion, suggested that Marlowe had been the author of Richard II.

Sadly, as with JFK and the Loch Ness Monster, no one will ever know for sure. The only thing that can be said is that it defies common sense that a poor, unschooled actor would suddenly gain the ability to become the most famous playwright in the history of the world. It's as if Carrot Top suddenly won Best Actor at the Academy Awards...not impossible, mind you, but highly unlikely.

I'm just sayin'.

The Magic Voice and the Golden Harp.

Alexander Scourby
Nov. 13, 1913 - Feb. 22, 1985

Again, I must stress that if you do only one thing and do it better than everyone else, you'll be famous. This is a philosophy I stole directly from Col. Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, but I must add that he is dead and cannot, therefore, sue my ass.

One man who did sue and win from beyond the grave was Alexander Scourby.

Now, Scourby was an actor with an incredible voice, and is credited on the Internet Movie Database with having appeared in at 78 least projects. But none of these are what made him famous, nor was his abundant stage work (he appeared in at least four productions of Hamlet and played a different role in each). No, Alexander Scourby made his name by reading The Bible. The whole Bible, front to back.

He recorded the entire King James Bible in from 1941-44 for the American Foundation for the Blind, and these recordings became bestsellers when released to the general public as The Talking Bible in 1966. You might remember we used to listen to these things on vinyl discs called "records", and the entire set contained 169 of these funny round objects and ran 84.5 hours. It is now part of the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.

Scourby re-recorded the entire Bible again in 1972-74 for the Episcopal Radio and TV Foundation. He agreed to a reduced fee if proceeds from the sales were to go to non-profit purposes, but filed a lawsuit when tapes were released commercially as the "Authorized Alexander Scourby's Latest Narration". This suit raged on for years, and Scourby died before it could be resolved in 1990. The verdict handed the rights to the 1970s recording to the deceased Scourby and drove the Episcopal Radio and TV Foundation out of business.

While Alexander Scourby is known to have read the entire Bible at least twice, he didn't seem to have any particular religious affiliation.

Bah, Godless Hollywood types!

God's Own Shock Jock.

Dr. Gene Scott
Aug. 14, 1929 - Feb. 21, 2005

I was probably in my early-mid 20s when I experienced this, so it had to be the early 1990s, late at night, on some cable channel that probably doesn't even exist anymore. There was this old guy sitting in a chair, screaming at viewers to send him money. Then suddenly there would be videotape of some horses. And this videotape would go on and on, and the old guy would come on again and scream some more. Then the horses again. And it seemed to go on for hours.

This was Dr. Gene Scott, who died from a stroke three years ago today.

It's amazing to watch someone who is the best at what they do. It doesn't even matter what they're doing...it's just incredible to watch them work. This was the thing about Gene Scott. Some called him a con artist, but if he was, he was a very good con artist, and that makes all the difference.

When he wasn't ranting about Atlantis, government conspiracies, or UFOs, Gene Scott was preaching the Bible, often from the original Greek texts. He would sit and take apart every symbol, every sentence, every paragraph, everything. He knew it back and forth, and would use chalkboards and dry eraser boards to make his points.

He was married three times, the last time to Melissa Pastore, previously known as porn actress and producer Barbie Bridges. She studied with Scott for years and upon his death took over his church and currently appears on TV doing lectures in front of dry eraser boards. She does as he did, translating the Bible in fifty different ways that would have made him proud. Turns out she's a natural at this. Go figure.

You can still see and hear Gene Scott's message on the internet. Thousands of hours of his teachings and rantings are still out there, so it's like he never really left us. It's reassuring...because in the age of videotape, the internet, and YouTube, nothing is truly lost any more. And this is important, because future generations need Dr. Gene Scott...just as they need living legends such as Ron Jeremy, Jerry Springer, and Larry King. American masters, each and every one.

Because, as I said, and as Gene Scott's life proved...it's not so much what you do, as long as you do it well.

It Never Got Weird Enough.

Hunter S. Thompson
July 18, 1937 - Feb. 20, 2005

In this entry, I'll rely on Wikipedia a bit more than usual. I think that's because the subject at hand, Hunter S. Thompson, is at best an enigma. He was at once a public celebrity and a recluse. It was as if he had the ability to vanish at will and reappear only when he felt like it, to perhaps write a column or story.

Hunter S. Thompson was a great writer. His writing was powerful, truthful, and fearless. He was also an anti-social, paranoid, drug-taking, unpredictable loose cannon. But perhaps that came with the territory when you wholly and completely invented a style of journalism and influenced generations of budding writers.

A long time before I really knew anything about Hunter Thompson, I liked him. I liked the idea of him, even before I ever read a word he wrote. Traveling around, getting into adventures, pissing people off, and then writing about it...that's the Real American Dream. And you never even really knew if what you were reading actually happened, or he just made it up in his head. It didn't matter, because it still made the point. I wish I had gotten into his work when I was a teen, back when I was reading J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut, because it would have made even more of an impression on me.

If you believe Hunter Thompson's Wikipedia entry, he killed himself three years ago today. Or maybe he didn't.

Thompson died at his self-described "fortified compound" known as "Owl Farm" in Woody Creek, Colorado, at 5:42 p.m. on February 20, 2005, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Thompson's son (Juan), daughter-in-law (Jennifer Winkel Thompson) and grandson (Will Thompson) were visiting for the weekend at the time of his suicide. Will and Jennifer were in the adjacent room when they heard the gunshot. Mistaking the shot for the sound of a book falling, they continued with their activities for a few minutes before checking on him. Thompson was sitting at his typewriter with the word "counselor" written in the center of the page.

Paul William Roberts in his Globe and Mail article of Saturday, February 26, 2005 wrote the following:

Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."

They reported to the press that they do not believe his suicide was out of desperation, but was a well-thought out act resulting from Thompson's many painful medical conditions. Thompson's wife, Anita, who was at a gym at the time of her husband's death, was on the phone with him when he ended his life.

What family and police describe as a suicide note was delivered to his wife four days before his death and later published by Rolling Stone Magazine. Entitled "Football Season Is Over",it read:

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt"

Artist and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:

"...He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell — rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks..."

On August 20, 2005, in a private ceremony, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 153-foot tower of his own design (in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button) to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", known to be the song most respected by the late writer. Red, white, blue, and green fireworks were launched along with his ashes. As the city of Aspen would not allow the cannon to remain for more than a month, the cannon has been dismantled and put into storage until a suitable permanent location can be found. According to widow Anita Thompson, the actor Johnny Depp, a close friend of Thompson (and portrayer of Raoul Duke, Thompson's fictional alter ego, in the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), financed the funeral. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out."

Other famous attendees at the funeral included U.S. Senator John Kerry and former U.S. Senator George McGovern; 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley; actors Bill Murray (who portrayed Hunter S. Thompson in the movie Where the Buffalo Roam), Sean Penn, and Josh Hartnett; singers Lyle Lovett and John Oates, the poet Trip Lucid; and numerous other friends. An estimated 280 people attended the funeral.

Sorry. Borrowed heavily from Wikipedia there. It's good to have a free source of semi-reliable information available when words escape you.

The best words to describe him come from Thompson himself, taken his novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

"Too weird to live, too rare to die."

Too Tough to Die.

Lee Marvin
Feb. 19, 1924 - Aug. 29, 1987

Lee Marvin was tough. He ate nails for breakfast, and spit thumbtacks. He had a head full of hate and a heart full of snakes and he once shot a man just for snoring. Something like that.

Or, perhaps not.

But he was one of Hollywood's toughest tough guys, and he did serve as a sniper in World War II in the 4th Marine Division. He was wounded in the Battle of Saipan, and most of his platoon was killed in the battle. He was awarded the Purple Heart and given a medical discharge. Marvin turned to acting and began a career playing tough guy roles, and graduated to leading man status. Ultimately he won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Actor for Cat Ballou and had a hit song ("Wandrin' Star" from 1969's Paint Your Wagon).

Like Oliver Reed, he also turned down the role of Quint in Jaws, but later apparently regretted it. But consider this: Robert Shaw, who took the role, died of a heart attack. Oliver Reed died of a heart attack. And Lee Marvin died of a heart attack. Jaws kills.

Though he never intended to, Lee Marvin made a lasting contribution to the American legal system. Ever hear of "palimony"? That was his baby. From the web site of the California Family Law Institute:

"The first palimony suit was brought by a girlfriend of the actor Lee Marvin, Michelle Triola, back in 1977. The lawsuit stated that Lee Marvin had promised to support Michelle Triola for the rest of her life. Then she alledged that she had given up a promising singing and acting career to be Lee Marvin's constant companion, traveling partner, and to assist him. Lee Marvin was married to Mrs. Lee Marvin at the time. The suit went to trial. It established the principal that "live-in-lovers" can sue on supposed oral contracts also called "pillow-talk" contracts. Ms. Triola never received a single dollar from Lee Marvin. She was not able to establish all the requisite requirements. On appellant remand The California Supreme Court sent it back to the Trial Tourt. The trial court then attempted to give Ms. Triola $150,000 in rehabilitation money. That too went to the California Supreme Court. The California Supreme Court ruled that no rehabilitation could be ordered."

You see? You learn something new every day. Well, I learn something new every day. That's because not only am I a complete idiot, I forget everything I know and have to re-learn it the next day. But I do know not to promise to support some wench for the rest of her life...and I can circumvent any payments to said wench by having absolutely no money whatsoever. Thanks, Lee Marvin!

The Man With the Flanders Moustache.

Dale Earnhardt
April 29, 1951 – February 18, 2001

The night of February 18, 2001, I finished up my fast-food job and walked into a Rainbow Foods store in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I was confronted by a life-size cardboard display of a smiling man with a cookie. That cookie was an Oreo, and that man was NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, who had died only hours before in a crash at that afternoon's Daytona 500. I thought it odd, that the display was still standing...and I wondered how long it would continue to do so.

If I had been in a grocery store in Alabama, the Oreo cookie display might have been covered by flowers and cards, or it might have been removed completely by weeping fans. As it was, I was in a midwest state that cared not for racing...and yet, my crazy assistant manager had made a note in the daily sales log that went (and I'm paraphrasing, but she was just nutty enough to say this word-for-word):

"Sales slow today because of crash of Dale Earnhardt. We are saddened by this, and we'll miss you, #3."

I never understood auto racing. I mean, good on you all for finding something you love and making a living at it, but I never thought that putting your foot on the accelerator and moving the steering wheel one direction or another was a sport. It never rang true, and it still doesn't.

Want to know if what you're doing is a sport? If a 90-year-old man can do it, it's not a sport. Get in car, turn key, push gas, turn wheel. Not a sport.

I'm just sayin'.

Deadpan Dan is a Dead Man, Man.

Dan O'Herlihy
May 1, 1919 - Feb. 17, 2005
A great character actor who played many roles from the '40s right up until the late 1990s, and who died three years ago today. You don't know the name, not really, but you know the roles he played. He was Grig in The Last Starfighter, Andrew Packer in Twin Peaks, the evil Cochran in Halloween III, and "The Old Man" in RoboCop...in which he uttered the famous line (to Ronny Cox) "You're fired!"

"...Eight more days 'til Halloween, Silver Shamrock!"

Three Dead People...In 100 Words Or Less

No real unifying theme today, except I'm talking about dead people. That count? These are short, short essays...each a very non-typical 100 words or less...

Sonny Bono
Feb. 16, 1935 – Jan. 5, 1998
It's amazing that Sonny Bono lived as long as he did, because he began his career working as a promotion man for insane music producer/murderer Phil Spector. He married and created the Frankenstein monster that is Cher and later went on to pursue a career in politics. He was introduced to Scientology by Mimi Rogers, the giant-breasted nutcase ex-wife of Tom Cruise. Sonny was killed in a so-called "skiing accident" on January 5, 1998. But just between me and you, it was either the Democrats or Scientologists that whacked him.

Margaux Hemingway
Feb. 16, 1954 – July 1, 1996
Margaux Hemingway was the granddaughter of famous novelist Ernest Hemingway and the sister of actress Mariel Hemingway. She was named after the wine her parents were drinking the night she was conceived. In honor of this she became an alcoholic, and when she finally quit drinking she changed the spelling of her name to Margot. Although a hot and fabulous babe, she had a long history of drug abuse and depression. This destroyed her modeling and acting careers and she committed suicide at the age of 42 by an overdose of phenobarbital. Bummer, huh?

Harry Goz
Feb. 16, 1932 – Sept. 6, 2003
Harry Goz was a respected Broadway theater actor and voice artist. This is all well and good, but everything pales in comparison to the fact that he was the voice of the Captain Murphy on the Cartoon Network's Sealab 2021. This was a great show...but after he died of cancer it lost its magic and was quickly cancelled. His son Michael Goz did the voice of new Captain "Tornado" Shanks and replaced him on the show. They're available on DVD now, so you have no excuse.

One Out of Three Ain't Dead

Cesar Romero
Feb. 15, 1907 – Jan. 1, 1994

Heath Ledger
Apr. 4, 1979 – Jan. 22, 2008

I must admit I didn't see the most recent Batman movie, Batman Begins, and I probably won't see this year's upcoming Batman The Dark Knight. While I did like Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, the awful sequels left me flat. Same with Superman, really. But that's not really the point.

The new Batman sequel caused a lot of buzz when Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger was cast as the Joker and then even more talk when he died suddenly last month, sparking rumors of a "Joker curse". Well let's clear this up...there is no curse. Heath Ledger died of an overdose of prescription drugs (accidental or intentional) and Cesar Romero (the Joker from the 1960s Batman TV show who was born 101 years ago today) died because he was old. Period.

If there is a Joker curse, it hasn't affected Jack Nicholson, who played the part the 1989 version. He declined to take a salary but instead took a cut of the film's merchandising, thereby earning many times what he otherwise would have. Since then, he's continued to make (mostly unwatchable) movies, including 1994's Hoffa and 2007's The Bucket List. No one seems to remember that Nicholson publicly bemoaned the fact that no one had asked the 70-year-old actor to reprise his Joker role in the new film. He was the worst thing about the 1989 film because he was too old for the part then. Geez.

To make matters worse, Nicholson gave an interview after Ledger's death in which he said he knew that the young actor had a problem. I'm not sure how Jack knew this, unless he was stalking him. I wonder if he called the director and asked if they needed an actor to fill the role of the Joker. What? Too soon?

In all of this, Cesar Romero's frantic portrayal of the first Joker is largely ignored. He was a good actor and didn't seem too old to be the Joker, even though he was in his 60s when he got the part. He refused to shave his moustache for the role, so if you look closely it's just covered by white makeup. And, not that it makes any difference, but I only discovered that Cesar Romero was gay moments ago. Today I guess it wouldn't be as big of a deal, but under the old Hollywood system, being an open homosexual could ruin your career.

But the most interesting tidbit I learned about Cesar Romero is this, quoted directly from his Wikipedia entry:

Romero believed in 'liberation theology,' a political system combining Marxism with Christianity, which purports that, despite the fact that Karl Marx called religion 'the opiate of the masses,' religion and communism are still compatible. Romero was very Christian yet still believed in a utopian society whose belief is that Christ's kingdom would be very similar to Marx's envisionment of communism, and held to this belief until his death.

You learn the most interesting things about people from their Wikipedia entries. I can only wonder how much you see there is true. I'd check Jack Nicholson's entry, but I don't really care that much.

A Hoffa You Can't Refuse

Jimmy Hoffa
Feb. 14, 1913 – July 30, 1975 (Allegedly)

You know, nothing says Valentine's Day like hired union goons. While some folks deliver candy and flowers on this day, still others deliver shakedowns and beatings. This is as it should be...circle of life and all that. Such a man was Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Look. I'll be honest with you. I know nothing about Jimmy Hoffa, and I really don't care. The fact that people have spent the last 33 years looking for him and haven't found a thing is the interesting part.

When Jimmy Hoffa got in that car on July 30, 1975, he probably didn't know that he would vanish off the face of the earth. If he had, then getting into that car would be a goofy thing to do. I mean, he saw The Godfather, right? That's what happened to Carlo. But of course Carlo had it coming. He infiltrated the family and got Sonny killed. Most people agree that Jimmy Hoffa also had it coming...he was most certainly not a shiny happy person. He was born 94 years ago on this very day...and, while no body has ever been found, we can all be relatively certain that he's not blowing out any candles today.

Hoffa worked his way to the top, became a major union leader, etc, etc. That part of the story isn't that fascinating to me. What is interesting is how he formed alliances with organized crime and had people beaten and (probably) knocked off. He had a personal war going with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and they apparently ended up at the same party at some point and had an arm-wrestling contest (Hoffa said he won).

I'm intrigued by Hoffa's probable connection to the JFK assassination. If you're familiar with Oliver Stone's movie JFK, you know that New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison dismissed the possibility of mob involvement in the assassination. This is because Garrison himself was a degenerate gambler and owed a lot of money to New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello. Don't even get me started on the whole JFK thing...just know that Hoffa was mobbed up through his union connections and the mob and the anti-Castro Cubans all hated Kennedy. Hell, everybody hated Kennedy.

But I digress.

Point is, Hoffa pissed some people off and he got whacked. And nobody seems to know what happened, and there never was any blood or a body or anything. He disappeared real good. It's as if he was sucked up into an alien spacecraft...but if so, the anal probing was probably not that strange for a guy who did as much prison time as he did.

I think it's important that they never find out what happened to Hoffa. I think mysteries like this (and D.B. Cooper and Amelia Earhardt) will never and should never be solved. These mysteries are an important part of our national culture...so don't screw with it.

So happy birthday, Jimmy. And, to the rest of you, have a happy Valentine's Day. Or we'll have your legs broken.

The Oliver Reed Memorial Drinking Binge and Hurl-Off

Oliver Reed
Feb. 13, 1937 – May 2,1999

"Richard Burton was hitting the bottle with Jimmy Hurt the night before his death. He knew it was going to kill him, but he did not stop. I don't have a drink problem. But if that was the case and doctors told me I would have to stop, I'd like to think I would be brave enough to drink myself into the grave."

Before we begin, I'll state the obvious: Oliver Reed was not the greatest actor who ever lived. He wasn't bad, mind you, but I didn't particularly care for his acting. He was hammy and artsy and pretentious. But he had an incredible reputation for partying and drinking and fighting...and he literally drank himself to death. I respect this sort of dedication, and (in the absence of a deceased starlet with breasts larger than her head) this is enough for Oliver Reed to be today's Dead Person of the Day.

I think the reason I never cared for him goes back to my childhood. Back in the days when there were such things as "late movies" on regular (not cable) TV, I caught a showing of Burnt Offerings and the last five minutes or so horrified me. I can't think of Oliver Reed without thinking of Karen Black in the old lady getup pushing him out the window and him landing face-first on the car windshield. I was probably 9 or 10 when I caught this...and while it's not really a scary (or good) movie, it made an impression.

But that's neither here nor there. Him singing in Tommy was just as horrifying, if you ask me. No, the reason I've developed a new appreciation for Oliver Reed is due to the stories of his manliness.

He turned down roles in Jaws and The Sting that later went to Robert Shaw because he just didn't feel like going to California. He was stabbed in the neck while filming The Three Musketeers (1973) and nearly died. But didn't. He got in a bar fight in 1963 and it took 36 stitches to repair the damage to his face. Went on a drinking spree with Steve McQueen and threw up on him. Very nearly replaced Sean Connery as James Bond, but his out-of-control drinking and partying put an end to it (he would have been fantastic, by the way). A legendary adventure has Reed and 36 rugby players drinking 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of Scotch, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine and one bottle of Babycham -- all in one night.

But the greatest Oliver Reed story is the last one. On a lunch break during the filming of Gladiator in Malta in 1999, Reed drank three bottles of Captain Morgan's Jamaica rum, eight bottles of German beer, several doubles of Famous Grouse whiskey, and beat five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling. Then he promptly dropped dead of a heart attack on the spot, completely avoiding the bar tab (about $900 U.S.). Fantastic.

"I have two ambitions in life: one is to drink every pub dry, the other is to sleep with every woman on earth."

This is a life philosophy I can get in line with. God bless you, Oliver Reed.