The Real King.

Elvis Presley
January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977
You know who started calling Michael Jackson "The King of Pop"? Michael Jackson did, and he insisted people call him that. Because he was delusional and crazy, that's why. You know, what with Bubbles the chimp and the one glove and having no nose and coveting the Elephant Man's bones and also coveting the bones of little boys. Allegedly.

You know who started calling Elvis "The King of Rock and Roll"? Everyone. Because he was.

Look, I'm not even that big a fan of Elvis' music. I can take or leave it, and a most of the music from his movies is just terrible. But Elvis wasn't about music. He was about revolution. He didn't create rock and roll, but he ruled it. And there's no sense denying it. That's why both Michael Jackson and Nicholas Cage married his crazy daughter. They wanted some of that Elvis coolness to rub off on them, too. Worked for Nick, not so much for Michael.

You can't deny that he was cool. Probably the second coolest person who ever lived, right behind Jesus. And being cool is better than being a talented actor or a great singer. Being cool is the best thing you can be in this world. Remember, that's why people smoke.

Down south, even if we don't like Elvis, we appreciate him. We understand what Elvis was all about, and we try to live by that code. Simply put, Elvis' philosophy of life was:

1. Sing.
2. Take care of your momma.
3. Be humble.
4. Bang chicks.
5. Enjoy pharmaceuticals.
6. Eat.
7. Die.

It's a simple way of life that I can understand and relate to.

When Michael Jackson died last year, it was a big deal. Sure, if you've got the internet and 500 TV channels and TMZ to build it up. But when Elvis died, there wasn't an internet, and only three channels...and it was even bigger. You had to be there, but it was a global event.

Nobody could live like Elvis, and nobody could die like him. Especially not self-proclaimed false "kings". Put that in your hyperbaric sleep chamber and smoke it, glove boy.

Weezy!

Isabel Sanford
August 29, 1917 – July 9, 2004
Last year, when President Obama made a Jeffersons reference during a speech, he screwed it up. He jokingly clutched his chest and said "I'm a-comin', Weezy!". He used Weezy Jefferson's name but was actually quoting a classic bit from Sanford and Son where Redd Foxx notifies his dead wife Elizabeth that he's on his way. It was so hilarious and effective that when Sanford star Foxx suffered a fatal heart attack on the set of his sitcom The Royal Family in 1991, his co-stars thought he was doing a bit.

President Obama must have got it confused because both Redd Foxx's and Weezy Jefferson's real last names were Sanford. I don't blame him for the mix-up. Obama was in Indonesia until the early 1970s, because that's where he was born. I'm just kidding, of course. He was born in Kenya. Allegedly.

But back to Isabel Sanford, better known to the world as Weezy. What kind of name is Weezy, anyway? That's no name, that's an adjective. Eloise Gwendolyn Sanford was born August 29, 1917 in New York City, making her twenty-one years older than Sherman Hemsley, the man who would someday play her husband on The Jeffersons. Twenty-one years! That made her literally old enough to be his mother. But was she his mother? Our sources say no.

The show, of course, was a spin-off of All in the Family, and she almost turned down the role when producer Norman Lear had a congratulatory bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken delivered to her dressing room. Lear assured her that it was a sincere gift, and apparently everyone got chicken. That's some good eatin', no matter what color you are.

I always felt bad for the cast of The Jeffersons, and not just because Roxie Roker, the actress who played neighbor Helen, was in reality the mother of rocker Lenny Kravitz. When the show was cancelled in 1985, the entire cast was so stereotyped that I saw an Entertainment Tonight piece that they were doing a Jeffersons stage play. But they couldn't get their sassy maid Florence (Marla Gibbs) because she had rocketed to (relative) fame as the star of NBC's temporarily popular sitcom 227. Hemsley became the star of NBC's Amen! a year later.

Now they're all dead, except for Hemsley and Gibbs. Helen and her white husband, one of the two actors who played the Jeffersons' son Lionel, and even the annoying British neighbor. Dead and gone. Isabel Sanford would be 92 years old if she hadn't died on this day in 2004.

I'll be honest with you. I know it's Weezy's day and all, but I can't stop thinking about that chicken. I am starving. I heard so much about the Double Down sammich at KFC and when I went there yesterday, it was already gone.

So, it's a tragedy all around. Sitcoms get cancelled, old ladies die, and fast-food chicken restaurants suddenly remove items just when you're craving them the most. I think there's an important lesson to be learned about our fragile existence and crap like that, but I have no idea what it is.

If You've Seen One Dick, You've Seen 'Em All.

Dick Sargent
April 19, 1930 - July 08, 1994

The TV series Bewitched always confounded me.

Not because I didn't find it particularly funny, or because it was using a fake laugh track, or that it was recycling the same stories over and over again for years. It's none of these things. It's not even that the show was a complete rip-off of the movie Bell, Book and Candle. I could honestly care less about that. No, my beef is of a different nature. It's one that has been much discussed by obsessive TV viewers for many years.

You just can't completely switch Darrens and not say anything. It wouldn't be tolerated now. Today, Darren would either be killed off or they'd divorce. I would have even accepted it if they'd concocted some story involving magic wherein Darren's appearance completely changed...anything to explain the obvious physical differences of the two actors, but it's not even alluded to. Perhaps Samantha couldn't tell the difference between the two Dicks. I bet Uncle Arthur could.

I'm biased. I prefer Dick York's Darren to Dick Sargent's Darren. It was all about timing and comedic reactions. Sargent was probably a better actor, but York was funny. York had to quit the show in 1969 due to a chronic back injury and Sargent, who was originally offered the role in 1964 but couldn't take it because of his contract with Universal Studios, got the part. Sargent appeared in 84 episodes of Bewitched (as opposed to York's 156) before the show ended in 1972. York never worked again, except for an episode of Simon and Simon and a Love Boat in the early 1980s, but Sargent went on to an illustrious career of b-movie roles and TV crime drama guest-spots and sitcom walk-ons. His most memorable role (to me) was that of Grady Byrd, the Sheriff who filled in for Roscoe P. Coltrane on a few episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard.

Sargent announced he had prostate cancer in 1992 but shortly thereafter confirmed tabloid reports that he was gay and that his cancer was AIDS-related. He died on July 8, 1994. Before researching this I had also heard that Dick York was also gay but I can't find anything to verify this. He was married to the same woman for almost 40 years and there's no smoking gun, or penis, or whatever smokes when you're gay. Perhaps the person who told me this simply got their Dicks mixed up.

By the way, Dick Sargent wasn't his real name. He was born Richard Stanford Cox. Yes, that's right. His real name was Dick Cox.

Seriously.

Day of the Dead.

Ted Williams
August 30, 1918 – July 5, 2002
Louis Armstrong
August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971
Joel Siegel
July 7, 1943 – June 29, 2007
It's been a few days since I blogged dead people, so it's time to catch up with the past few days of room-temperature celebrities.

Ted Williams was a respected and famous major league baseball player and war hero, but he's more remembered for the bizarre legal wranglings by his family after his death. Ted's contested (and possibly fraudulent) will called for his head to be put into "biostasis" (cryogenic suspension) until he could be revived.

But the head was apparently damaged (cracked) by employees at the cryogenics lab, letting Ted's oozy goodness and life essence escape. Williams' son John-Henry was believed to be the forger of the will until he unexpectedly died in 2004 and is currently frozen as well. Someday they'll all be revived, maybe even in a Ray Milland-Rosie Grier Thing With Two Heads type of deal. It would be pretty sweet. Hurry up, science!

Louis Armstrong was a balding, sweaty man who played the trumpet. He was adored by audiences due to his folksy, affable nature. Although he died nearly forty years ago, it's hard to avoid his peaceful anthem "What a Wonderful World". In fact it's impossible to avoid it. You know how great that song is, and how enraging it is to see it used ironically in substandard films like Good Morning, Vietnam and Fahrenheit 9/11?

It's not Louis' fault. Not at all. As usual, I blame the Liberals. Oh, did I say "Liberals"? I meant to say Progressives. Yeah. That's so totally different. My bad.

Joel Siegel was the movie reviewer with a difference: he never met a movie he didn't like. Put any awful movie up for him to review on Good Morning, America and he'd have nothing but glowing things to say about it. Supposedly he was respected by his peers, but I can't see how. You think Roger Ebert, as wrong as he is about so many things (and completely insane on his Twitter account, if you've seen that) would have put up with Siegel's crap? No way, man.

Ebert loves movies, but not all movies. Joel Siegel was just a good date. If somebody paid for his ticket and his popcorn, he seemed happy with whatever was on the screen. A year before his death, though, Siegel went nuts and walked out of a critic's screening of Clerks 2 and loudly announced it was the worst thing he'd ever seen. I think it was just the cancer talking. The real Joel Siegel would never hate a movie. Not even Twilight.

The most interesting thing I've learned about Siegel is that he was a joke writer for Senator Robert F. Kennedy and was at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of his assassination. My strong dislike for Joel dictates that I implicate him in RFK's death, but we all know that it was Sirhan Sirhan...a lone gunman, acting alone, without a hint of conspiracy. Nope. Not even a little bit.

Bored on the Fourth of July.

"Ann Landers"
July 4, 1918 - June 22, 2002
So, let's get this straight. Ann Landers wasn't a real person. But was also at least two different people. And her daughter, who wasn't named Prudence, became Dear Prudence. And her twin sister was Dear Abby, only that wasn't at all her name. And when the twin sister retired, her daughter, whose name wasn't Abby either, then became Dear Abby.

Sounds like a scam to me.

"Ask Ann Landers" was created by advice columnist Ruth Crowley in 1943 and taken over by Esther "Eppie" Pauline Friedman Lederer, who won a contest in 1955 after Crowley died. Eppie's column debuted on October 16, 1955, but just a few months later her twin sister Pauline Phillips decided she could write a better advice column and adopted the name Abigail Van Buren and started "Dear Abby". The two sisters fought back and forth for a decade or so but eventually made up. But that's not really what this is about.

What I'm saying is, I'm about to head to work in an hour or so to flip stinkin' burgers, and people are still making money writing advice columns telling other people what kind of hats to wear. I'm a semi-talented fellow, so what the hell? Why is it that I have to get burger grease all over my shoes on the Fourth of July while ritzy advice columnists are sipping brandy while wearing monocles like the friggin' Monopoly guy in limos and laughing loudly to themselves about the amusing "little" people? Where is Barack Obama's "social justice" when we need it, I ask you?!?

There is nothing more useless than the advice column. They're such terrible, pathetic wastes of time that I'm surprised Paris Hilton doesn't have one. In an era when newspapers are but oversized leaflets and have eliminated movie, art, and television critics to save money, you can't avoid the advice column. Like Marmaduke and The Family Circus, they're a permanent part of the landscape. And for all I know, they could have simply been reprinting the same column over and over for 60 years. Who the hell would know? Does anyone really read them?

But I digress.

Point is, advice columns are useless, and the advice column industry has made the same family (and only members of that family) stinking rich for the last 55 years. It's a racket, and a conspiracy.

I should start my own advice column for real men who like big boobs, cold beer, and movies with 'splosions in them. I'd call it "Dear Roscoe", or some other manly name. But then the advice column mafia would come after me and burn my house down for daring to write a column without the Ann/Abby family blessing. All I wanted was to give advice to men about beer and Chesty Morgan movies, and I get my house burned down?!?

Where's the justice in that. I'm just sayin'.

Hot, Sexy, and Still Dead After All These Years.

Brian Jones
February 28, 1942 – July 3, 1969
Jim Morrison
December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971
What are the odds that you can be an immortal musical genius and be dead at age 27? Apparently, pretty good. Just ask Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, Kurt Cobain, and these two guys. It's called the "27 Club" among conspiracy theorists who believe that each of its members sold their souls for rock immortality.

Frankly, I'm willing to believe it in the case of Jones and Morrison.

Brian Jones formed and named the Rolling Stones, but became estranged from the band because of his drug use. Despite being a good musician, he didn't write many songs and he was happier playing blues and jazz than rock and pop. He was finally fired from the band in 1969 and found floating in his swimming pool less than a month later. The details of his death are mysterious, but it was later speculated that Jones was accidentally killed in a fight with a building contractor and it was made to look like an accident. The contractor died in 1994 and apparently confessed on his death bed.

Jim Morrison was a member of a little-known rock and roll quartet called The Doors. They released a few albums, made some decent music, but mostly it was all about Morrison drinking and pulling his penis out on stage. If you've ever heard a live Doors album, they're terrible. What really matters is that they got it right one time in the studio. Oddly, Morrison also had a water-related death: he was found floating in a bath tub after a "heart attack" in Paris. And by "heart attack" I mean "heroin overdose". Allegedly. Morrison and the Doors have been the subject of many books and one well-edited but embarrassingly heavy-handed Oliver Stone film.

I'm not sure about the legend of a "27 Club". What's the point of becoming an immortal rock legend if you have to die in the process? And what kind of retard makes a deal with the Devil?

Don't people realize that Satan, by his very nature, is going to go back on his deals? It's what he does. Satan is going to screw you over. Would Robert Johnson have gone to the Crossroads and inked a contract with Beelzebub if he knew someone was going to give him a bottle of poisoned whiskey? Would Jimi Hendrix have signed on the dotted line with the Dark One if he knew he'd soon be choking on his own vomit? Would Janis Joplin have agreed to the deed with Old Scratch if she knew that before long she'd curled up in a stinky ball of putrid hippie death? Did Kurt Cobain realize he had consented to staring down the barrel of Mephisto's double-barreled shotgun of fame? And didn't Kurt realize that his Hell experience will become infinitely worse when he's eventually reunited with his wife Courtney Love?

It all just reminds me of that CBS TV show from 1977 or so, A Year at the Top. Two musicians (David Letterman's band leader Paul Shaffer and BJ and the Bear star Greg Evigan) sign a contract with a sleazy rock promoter who guarantees them a year of success, but it involves them selling their souls and being sucked into Hell at the end of that time. The show didn't last a whole year, though, so the story didn't have a satisfying conclusion. I guess starring in BJ and the Bear, My Two Dads, and TekWar is its own kind of Hell, though.

Dave Thomas and the Robot Love Cult

Dave Thomas
July 2, 1932 - January 8, 2002

When I went to work (briefly) for Wendy's in the year 2000, my fellow employees spoke in hushed and reverent tones about Dave Thomas, who was born on this day in 1932. My manager told me that few people had actually met Dave, and she'd worked for the company for over ten years and had never once been in his presence. It apparently was an honor that had to be earned, like an audience with the Pope. A select few were worthy, but most were not.

Dave was a mysterious and enigmatic figure despite his "regular guy" persona. He never knew his mother, who put him up for adoption. He served in the Army during the Korean War, eventually he ran some Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Ohio, and he started Wendy's in 1969. Typical stuff you can find on Wikipedia, which is pretty much where I got it.

Anyone who works at Wendy's will tell you that (like most fast food joints) the object is to provide good food to customers quickly and make a profit. And yet, I've always felt there was always something that was slightly off about the place. The first thing you notice is the square hamburger patties. At one point my manager told me, "We make the patties square because at Wendy's we don't cut corners."

Even when I was working for them, I was amazed at how well the place was run. Everything was cooked to order and it could take no more than sixty seconds for customers to get their food. There was a person whose job it was to toast buns, there was a constant flow of fresh patties being put on the grill in a clockwise fashion, and there was absolutely no waste. The patties that were not used were put in a bin and chopped up, for use in Wendy's famous chili.

Most amazing to me were the little folded pamplets that had had instructions, in English and Spanish, on how to do everything in the restaurant. They detailed every food item and almost any situation that could occur and how to prevent or remedy it. I've worked in a lot of fast food places and have never seen such fanatical precision.

The manager training process was like going to college. Two weeks of classes, including homework, in a honest-to-goodness full-size fake training restaurant, then weeks and weeks of extensive training in random locations. It was bizarre.

The idea, of course, was to inspire loyalty and to screen out the lazy or unsavory element. But it always seemed to me that maybe there was something deeper. Like it was an initiation. Like if you went through all the hoops and said the right things and did good, then maybe someday you'd meet Dave.

And then it struck me. There was no Dave.

It was all a game. The "Dave Thomas" that was in all the TV ads couldn't be real. He was just an actor, or a robot double, to be the public face of Wendy's while the real Dave was on an island fortress smoking cigars and being serviced by an army of sex slaves. It was like that phony UFO religion made up by that insane sci-fi writer that all the Hollywood stars got suckered into.

Dave Thomas died of liver cancer in 2002, if you can believe that they tell you. Maybe so, maybe not. Or perhaps he's being held in suspended animation, being attended to by an army of robot clones or mad scientists who are even now working to bring him back.

Was there ever a real Dave Thomas? Sure there was. Just like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, Dave Thomas lives in our hearts. As long as there is a dollar menu, or a pick-up window, Dave Thomas will always be watching us.

Baby Chicks For Sale.

Wolfman Jack
January 21, 1938 - July 01, 1995

Wolfman Jack (Robert Weston Smith), who died on this day in 1995 at the age of 57, was arguably the greatest radio DJ who ever lived.

He was such a legend that most people had never even heard his radio show but still knew who he was. That's largely due to his role in the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti. Lucas gave the Wolfman a portion of a point of profits in the film for his participation, and the movie was an enormous hit. It also contributed to the 1950s-mania that spawned Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Ironically, the Wolfman is probably better known to my generation as the narrator of the early-1980s ABC cartoon series Fonz and the Happy Days Gang. Perhaps it's just my desperate intent to blame George Lucas for Happy Days, or Mork and Mindy, or anything else I can pin on him. I'm not a huge Lucas fan.

Wolfman Jack had his greatest success working for XERF, a radio station on the Mexico/California border, in the early 1960s. It was unregulated by the FCC and therefore would blast 250,000 watts to North America, where it could be heard as far as New York. There he acted as DJ and pitchman, selling mail-order items such as diet pills, sex pills, rose bushes, and live baby chicks. Or at least they were alive when sent out. I would assume there's a reason you can't mail baby chicks any more.

If you want a true testament to the man, consider the number of songs he inspired. What DJ has songs written about him? "Clap for the Wolfman" by the Guess Who, "Wolfman Jack" by Todd Rundgren, and he was featured on the Stampeders' cover of "Hit the Road, Jack", Sugarloaf's "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You", and Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids' "Did You Boogie (With Your Baby at the Movie Show)?" Great songs, all. No, seriously...all great.

On June 30, 1995, he did the last live broadcast of his radio show. He mentioned that he wanted to get back to his wife and give her a hug. He got home on July 1, parked his car, walked into his house, and died of a massive heart attack.

More than a decade after his death, XM Radio took a lot of his old bits and airchecks and began airing them on their '60s station. They started with a Halloween special with a coffin openining and the Wolfman announcing "I'm back!" Tasteless? Not if you know what Wolfman Jack was all about.

But the best thing I ever heard about Wolfman Jack was this:

Later in his career he'd travel around and do one-time spots at radio stations. He'd carry a briefcase and in it he would have all of the CDs he wanted to play, all of his liners, all of his sound effects, everything. He'd do anything he wanted for a few hours, then he'd pack it up and move on to the next gig, like he'd never even been there. Fantastic.

Thanks for the Watery Beer.

Pat McCormick
June 30, 1927 - July 29, 2005

Before the microbrew revolution, people did what they had to do to get good beer, or what they thought was good beer. Sometimes they'd have no choice but to employ a country trucker, his moustachioed, Firebird-driving accomplice, and a future Oscar winner to help bring that shipment of Coors to Georgia. Or was it Alabama? Same thing, really...shoeless, toothless people on porches playing banjos. That kind of thing.

One thing's for certain: Big Enos and Little Enos loved beer. But not good beer. Things were different, way back when.

Pat McCormick, who played Big Enos, was born on this day in 1927. He was best known by most for his portrayal of Big Enos in Smokey and the Bandit and its two inferior sequels. But to people like me he'll always be the Professor reading from The Big Book of Vampires at the beginning of 1989's Beverly Hills Vamp. Because people like me are weirdos, that's why.

But he spent most of his career as a top gag writer, working on The Tonight Show for twelve years. He once streaked completely naked across the stage behind Johnny during a 1974 monologue. That's comedy. McCormick also had an identical twin brother who became a police sergeant in Chicago.

He also apparently became involved with busty show regular Carol Wayne. They both served as judges in the 1984 straight-to-video Best Chest in the West, where he jokingly stated "This lady will never drown". On January 13, 1985, she drowned while on vacation in Mexico. Oops. He served as host for Best Chest in the West 2 when Dick Shawn, the host of the first one, dropped dead of a massive heart attack on stage in 1986. These are important things to know, and only I seem to know them.

Sadly, McCormick had a stroke in 1998 and was forced to retire. He spent the last seven years of his life at a Hollywood retirement home and could barely speak. Guys like Pat McCormick fall through the cracks in Hollywood and never get the recognition they deserve. But from me, they get all the love.

This is your day, Big Enos...let's have a beer. No, not that bat's piss Coors you like so much...let's have a Summit Pale Ale.

The Other White Meat.

Jayne Mansfield
April 19, 1933 - June 29, 1967

Supposedly Jayne Mansfield, like her contemporary Marilyn Monroe, was a very smart, deeply introspective, serious actress. She spoke five languages and had a genius IQ. She was a classically trained violinist and pianist, and she turned down the iconic role of Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island because she didn't like being stereotyped as shallow or dumb. By all accounts she was a good mother, a dynamic entertainer, and a hard worker.

Also, did you get a look at those jugs!?!

Look, I'm just saying.

You know, when I started Dead Person of the Day back in 2008, I began it on the first anniversary of the death of one of America's hottest blonde bombshells, Anna Nicole Smith. I compared her death to Marilyn Monroe's at the time, but in truth Anna has more in common with Jayne Mansfield. While all had seen their careers come and go, Monroe's life never became the traveling three-ring circus/freak show that the others slipped into. She simply overdosed and became legend. There was even a beautiful song, Candle in the Wind, written for her. Any songs written for Anna Nicole Smith? None that I can recall (Siouxie and the Banshees apparently wrote Kiss Them For Me about Mansfield's death, though). Smith had the bizarre reality show and court battles, Mansfield had indecency arrests and the $25,000-a-week Vegas show. Their lives became public spectacle, they were held up for ridicule, and then they died.

Even the details of their deaths are freakish. Did Anna only have one nipple, owing to a plastic surgery snafu? Was that Jayne's severed head on the road in that photo, next to her dead dog?* Marilyn's overdose death seems pretty tame when you compare it to hitting a mosquito-spraying truck in a convertible in the middle of the night on a Louisiana highway with three of your kids in the back seat (the kids lived, by the way...one of them is Mariska Hargitay of Law and Order).

Call me shallow and single-minded, but if I had a time machine I'd make four stops. Only Four. One to visit Marilyn Monroe, one to solve the JFK assassination, a stop at Anna Nicole Smith's place, and then on to visit Jayne Mansfield (I guess there would technically be a fifth stop, to return to the present). I'd try to get them when they were at their hottest, and not pregnant or dead yet. I'd say the right things and hit on them, maybe get them drunk (apparently they all enjoyed a pill or a drink or two, so it would be fairly easy). When I got back to the present I'd destroy the machine. Or maybe go visit Russ Meyer starlet Kitten Natividad, circa 1970. Something like that. Maybe I'd just travel through time, hitting on big-boobed starlets and solving mysteries, kind of like an R-rated version of Quantum Leap.

Yep. Time travel, boobs and conspiracies, that's what makes life worth it.



*Answer: no. Apparently it was a wig that Jayne was wearing. The truck that the '66 Buick Electra hit also killed her driver and her boyfriend/manager. She may have been scalped, but she wasn't completely beheaded. The decapitation speculation came from Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon, but it doesn't appear to be true at all. Facts take all the fun out of life.

Thank You, Tiny Old Woman, For Being a Friend.

Estelle Getty
July 25, 1923 - July 22, 2008
I wasn't really a fan of The Golden Girls.

No, to be completely honest, to say that I wasn't a fan of The Golden Girls is putting it mildly. I hated it. It was a complete waste of time and had no reason to exist, save to give people stuck at home on Saturday night something to watch while their lives passed them by.

But I did pay to see Estelle Getty and Sylvester Stallone in Stop...Or My Mom Will Shoot! in a theater, so who am I kidding?

When Estelle Getty died a year ago today, people felt bad. They were completely shocked...because she was, in reality, only slightly younger than Bea Arthur, the actress who played her daughter on the show. Her Golden Girls co-stars Betty White and Rue McLanahan had very nice things to say about her.

But when Bea Arthur died a few months back, people just made jokes that she was a transexual and slammed her. Nobody had much good to say about her.

I think there's an important lesson to be learned from this. But I don't know what it is.

I guess...be nice to people, and they'll be nice to you. Be a cranky old hag and no one will want to work with you and people will make jokes on radio shows after your death that you had a penis.

Death's Day Off.

No one died today. Also no one who later died was born today. No one at all. This is a guarantee, and you don't even have to check it out. They must have done something to the water.

Check back tomorrow for guaranteed death.

Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting

Bruce Lee
Nov. 27, 1940 - July 20, 1973
Bruce Lee died on this day in 1973. He was killed by ninja assassins, the very same ninja assassins who later shot his son Brandon on the set of the movie The Crow and more recently caught up with his friend David Carradine. They dressed David up in fishnets and a wig and tied a rope around his junk to humiliate him. It's the Bruce Lee Curse, my friends. When you run with ninja assassins, you can always count on them getting you. You cannot escape.

Also, on this date in 1969, some guys stood around on a movie set at area 51 and Walter Cronkite reported that we'd walked on the moon. But he knew too much and he was killed last Friday by ninja assassins.

Oh, they will get you. You may be 92 years old and retired, but they will come for you. Beware of ninja assassins.

The Adventures of Crazy Mama Oswald

Marguerite Oswald
July 19, 1907 - Jan. 17, 1981

"Lee Harvey Oswald, my son, even after his death,
has done more for his country than
any other living human being."
As with all things, I am judging Lee Harvey's mother, Marguerite Oswald, to be crazy simply from something I saw in a movie. In this case it was a throwaway line in Oliver Stone's well-made but historically innacurate 1991 epic JFK. Stone really doesn't expand on it other than to say she was bonkers. So what was so crazy about her, anyways?

"This young man - whether he's my son or a stranger -
repeatedly declares, I didn't do it, I didn't do it. And
he's shot down. That's not the American way of life.
A man is innocent until he's proved guilty."
I read a good bit of Mama Oswald's testimony to the Warren Commission and found it unremarkable. She seems like a cranky old lady trying to get some representation for her son, but it doesn't reveal her to be any crazier than the average old lady.

Lee's father had died two months before he was born and his mother mostly raised him and his two brothers by herself. While living in New York, Young Lee was diagnosed with psychotic tendencies in 1953 and was recommended for psyhciatric help, but his mother opted to suddenly move to New Orleans instead. What could possibly go wrong?

Because his mother moved around so much, he had lived in 22 different homes by age 18. Depending on who you ask, there was or wasn't a series of "uncles" coming around, some with mafia connections. Lee therefore either did or didn't have connections to the New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, who either did or didn't employ Jack Ruby, the man who either did or didn't shoot Oswald many years later. Allegedly.

(JFK's central character, Jim Garrison, was a gambler and apparently owed money to Marcello. As a result, he was quick to brush off any mob connection to the JFK assassination. This fact is one of many missing from Stone's film.)

"Lee was such a fine, high-class boy. If my son
killed the President he would have said so.
That's the way he was brought up."
In 1964, Marguerite released a record album on Folkways records in which she read her son's letters he'd written while living in Russia. Nothing more American than making a fast buck off your recently-dead son. Papa Joe Jackson would be so proud. It must be terrible...I'd love to hear it.

I was fascinated to find a photographic analysis of photos of Marguerite Oswald from the 1950s. Turns out there were several different Marguerite Oswalds, including fakes and doubles, and the thing was a cover-up before it was even a cover-up. God as my witness, there are some people who believe that they (whoever they are) were planning the JFK assassination while Oswald was still in grade school.

There's nothing about this case that doesn't fit. The most unbelievable nuggets of information somehow all seem to make sense in the enormous scope of it all. Maybe that's why Marguerite Oswald doesn't really seem all that crazy to me.

"Mr. Johnson should remember that I am not just anyone
and that he is only President of the United States
by the grace of my son's action."


**For the record, I am on the fence about the JFK assassination. I was once a believer in a huge conspiracy, but time has shown me that freaky things can and do happen every day. The career of Carrot Top is proof enough of this. There is simply too much money in perpetuating wild theories which can never be proven, and there's a good chance that a lot of the disinformation has come from the government itself in an effort to distract us all from more current shenanigans.**

Hot Chicks of Ancient Hollywood, Part 1

Lupe Velez
July 18, 1908 - Dec. 13, 1944
What can I say about Lupe Velez? She was hot, and now she's dead. Seriously. There's not much more to it than that.

She starred in several films, most notably the Mexican Spitfire series, but I found her to be at her hottest in a 1932 film called Kongo. She was married to Tarzan star Johnny Weismuller for five years and apparently suffered from bipolar disorder.

As for her death, Wikipedia has this to say:

"In the mid-1940s, she had a relationship with the young actor Harald Maresch, and became pregnant with his child. Vélez, following her Catholic upbringing, refused to have an abortion. Unable to face the shame of giving birth to an illegitimate child, she decided to take her own life. Her suicide note read, "To Harald: May God forgive you and forgive me, too; but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's, before I bring him with shame, or killing him. Lupe." She retired to bed after taking an overdose of sleeping pills. According to newspaper accounts, her body was found by her secretary and companion of ten years, Beulah Kinder.

Andy Warhol's underground film, Lupe (1965), starring Edie Sedgwick as Lupe, is loosely based on this fateful night, suggesting that she was found with her head in the toilet due to nausea caused by the overdose. Another report says she tripped and fell head-first into the toilet, knocking herself unconscious and drowning. However, Kinder reports finding Vélez peacefully asleep in her bed."

Lupe Velez has an unusual place amongst the other women on my "Time Machine List". Assuming a time machine can be perfected in my lifetime, I would steal it and use it to travel back to fornicate with the women on the list. Others on this list include Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Anna Nicole Smith, and porn actress Trinity Loren. Lupe Velez is the only actress on the list who was less than a c-cup. Although I'm normally a meat and potatoes man, I sometimes like to spice things up.

I, The Badass

Mickey Spillane
Mar. 9, 1918 - Jul. 17, 2006
Yet another badass. I mean, look at that hat. That is one serious hat, and you don't wear something like that unless you mean business. Mickey Spillane was a serious tough guy who meant what he said. He didn't just write Mike Hammer...he was Mike Hammer.

He started his career by writing comic books. He wrote for Funnies, Inc., which was an outfit that packaged comics for different publishers. He ultimately wrote for every major superhero of the 1940s...Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and Captain America. Kick ass. Remember that this was a time when Batman and Captain America would just as soon shoot you as bring you in. It was a wonderful time.

The day after the Asians attacked Pearl Harbor, Mickey Spillane joined the U.S. Army. He and his wife wanted to buy a house so he wrote the first Mike Hammer novel, I, The Jury, in 19 days. It sold over six million copies.

But when I said that Mickey Spillane was Mike Hammer, he literally was Mike Hammer, playing his own character in the 1963 film The Girl Hunters. He later appeared on an episode of Columbo but is more remembered these days for some Miller Lite commercials he made in the 1980s. This importance of this cannot be overstated. Miller Lite is rat's piss in a can. It's awful and undrinkable. But Mickey Spillane made it manly to drink, and the ad campaign was a huge success.

I'd love to write like Mickey Spillane, and a lot of people have imitated his no-nonsense, two-fisted hardboiled style. But there will never truly be another writer like him...probably because the politically correct crowd would shut him up these days. You can't call women dames or skirts any more because no one has any sense of humor these days. It makes me sad for our eroding culture, where there are no more real men.

It almost makes me want to have a Miller Lite. Almost.

Local Boy Makes Big Splash

John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Nov. 25, 1960 - July 16, 1999
Sure, you're rich. You've never had to work a day in your life. Your dad was President of the United States. You got to spend the family money starting George, a well-meaning but unread political magazine. You got to bang Madonna and Daryl Hannah. It's been a pretty sweet life by most people's standards...but are you happy?

Well, the answer is, of course, no.

No one is happy...because even millionaires want more than they have. That's why you are seriously contemplating running for the Senate. Who could beat you? No one living in the state of New York, for sure. Unless something crazy happens, like some scheming political carpetbagger suddenly moving to New York to jump on it, the job is yours.

It's a good thing you're not running against someone like that...no one gets in their way. They'd Kaiser Soze your ass, removing the memory of anyone that even spoke to you. People who cross them have a way of winding up in the park with all their blood drained out. Allegedly.

But that's next year. Right now you're headed for your cousin's wedding. And it's bad enough that you've got your wife harping on you, but then you've got her sister along for the ride. It's almost enough to make a guy dive his plane into the Atlantic Ocean, just to end it all. Backseat drivers...am I right, fellas?

You relax, assured in the knowledge that your future is secure. You are, after all, a Kennedy. It's a carefree life when you're America's invincible Golden Boy. Wealth, entitlement, and adventure await. You'll be surrounded by loving children and grandchildren long into old age.

Make sure to work that last bit into the toast at the wedding, when you get there...

Diabetes, Bad.

Dana Hill
May 6, 1964 - July 15, 1996
(Pardon me if the entries this week are a bit disjointed, brief, or non-existent. Turns out I'm moving and losing internet access completely for a bit, so I'm doing about a week's worth of entries in advance...)

Not much to say about Dana Hill. She was a child star who is best remembered for portraying Audrey Griswold in National Lampoon's European Vacation and numerous after-school specials. She later found work doing voices for cartoons such as Duckman, Rugrats, Goof Troop, Gummi Bears, and Darkwing Duck.

She also unfortunately suffered from diabetes, which stunted her growth and caused major complications. She suffered a stroke and died at age 32 on July 15, 1996, leaving a legacy of goofy cartoon voices.

And now a confession. I always had the hots for her. Of course it never went very far, with her being dead and all...but I suppose these things happen. Sigh.

The Only Good Hippie...

Jerry Rubin
Jul. 14, 1938 - Nov. 28, 1994
“His words and courage inspired us" - Jerry Rubin, writing about Charles Manson in his book, We Are Everywhere.

First and foremost, a hippie is a hippie. Take the love beads off, give him a bath, and you've got a clean hippie, but a hippie nonetheless. And Jerry Rubin was always a hippie.

I hate hippies. Does that make me a bad person? Almost every so-called "revolution" is quickly repackaged and sold back by The Man to the very people attempting to carry it out. All such movements are a crock of crap, marketed to suckers.

I hate emos and goths for the same reason. Feel free to express your individuality and rage by dressing alike and listening to the same music. Idiots.

But unlike the emo kids and goths of today, who are simply just weepy and annoying, hippies like Jerry Rubin had an extremist agenda...namely, the radical overthrow of the government of the United States. As members of the "Chicago Eight", Rubin and his friend Abbie Hoffman (both also founders of the Yippies, the Youth International Party) helped incite the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

And even when the Vietnam War was over and there was little left to protest, guys like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman still hung around and made trouble, eventually turning on each other in a series of debates.

Rubin was also an early investor in Apple Computer. But I must point out, so was Forrest Gump.

In a final audacious act of nonconformity, Jerry Rubin jaywalked on a busy street and was hit by a car on November 14, 1994. He lingered and died from his injuries fourteen days later.

Typical. Staying in bed for two weeks. Lazy hippie.


Did I mention I don't like hippies?

Never Got a Dinner!

Red Buttons
Feb. 5, 1919 - July 13, 2006
What? His real name wasn't Red Buttons?!? You're blowin' my mind, man.

Red Buttons (born Aaron Chwatt) was a lot like yesterday's subject, Milton Berle. Except Red was funny and had talent. Did a ton of film and TV work, was a gifted songwriter, and yet always made time to do those Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. I was impressed that on every one, he used the same comedy routine.

(From memory) "I want to thank our guest of honor for being here tonight, and it's good to celebrate this person. But there are others from history, great people, who never got a dinner..."

And he'd do five minutes of jokes about people who never got a dinner. It always killed. Unlike that Milton Berle, who just stunk the place up with his stolen 1948 jokes, in his dress.

I always liked Red Buttons. A great comedian with good timing and also a dependable actor. He was probably the only person in The Poseidon Adventure who I have any respect for at all, even though I despise that movie. He also won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 1958 for Sayonara, and Milton Berle didn't.

In short, Red Buttons was talented and funny. While his IMDB biography says he still plays Vegas on occasion, I highly doubt this. I'm not sure he ever got a dinner, but he deserved one. Milton Berle almost certainly did get one, and yet he shouldn't have.

He sucked...just like he sucked yesterday.