The Trifecta Connection of some 2010 Celebrity Deaths

I am back. It has been almost three weeks since my last post. Oh well, I have been kind of busy and when I have not been, I just did not have the inspiration to post.

I could make this a year in review-type thing and that is not my style. I could go on about all the trouble in the world, see the Korean peninsula, AfPak/Iran, and that would only depress me, you too, once I was done. I could throw a melancholy blanket over what could be the world going to hell in a handbasket. I mean as scary as things seemed or could have seemed during the Cold War era, at least we knew that really there were only two main players (US and USSR) with a number of proxies. The nukes threat was contained because of mutally assured destruction (MAD). Retaliate first and ask questions later.....after the fall out later but later nonetheless. It is not the case now. Fucking strange and insane forces, small, shit house countries have nuclear capabilities and bombing them back to year one may actually be an improvement. Kind of like a karmic reset button being hit. How do you take any solace in that?

I did not want to go there and yet I still did. Enough about that, though. (Isn't that wonderful, get you all depressed heading into a new year, 2011, and all, so welcome aboard this train...it may be Pelham 123).

What I wanted to comment on today is this. I just realized something and I kick myself for not seeing it earlier. This has been a bad year for the movie "Airplane". It was released 30 years ago and was wet your pants funny (oh yeah for real wet your pants funny please check out www.peopleofwalmart.com, scary place that WalMart....or much of America. Not an insult, I am just saying). A barrage of quick jokes, so that if one missed another one hit you rather quickly.

It was sad enough when Lloyd Bridges died years ago (he will always be Izzy Mandelbaum to me...or the father of Jeff Bridges, the Dude, and the new Rooster Cogburn). 2010 saw the death of three (at least) actors who appeared in that seminal film. I am upset that I did not count the threes, when we were at two, and see that pattern. We, as if you or I had anything to do with it, Peter Graves (Captain Clarence Ovuer), Barbara Billingsly and Leslie Nielsen (Dr. Rumack, and don't call me Shirley). I was so caught up in the Billingsly/Tom Bosley deaths that I missed her Airplane connection and how Leslie Nielsen was the third. (Again, I am stretching, like most of us do, to "prove" that celebrity deaths come in threes or are connected by threes).

Again, I will give props to that film. In fact, and I am sure that I have mentioned this before, the movie lead to one of my brother's better quips. Back in 1985, when he was 14 turning 15, he had gone to San Franscisco with our father (who art in heaven....or so we have ourselves believe). He got some sort of walking pneumonia, was barking up a lung and pissed off my, and his, father. Due to his illness, they came home early. While waiting in the airport, they see the flight crew getting on the plane. My brother yells, "Don't eat the fish!". My father cracks up. It was the fish that killed off the pilots, etc. leading to the whole disaster spoof in the movie.

There you have it. Something pleasant to make us forget the earlier part of the posting. Ciao!

I have to remark on the 30th Anniversary of John Lennon's death, a day late

I am back. I just wanted to make a couple of notes about things right now. One, yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the shooting death of John Lennon. Again, only because we live in a base 10 world does the number "30" have any meaning. Then again, it seems like only yesterday that I was sitting in my room, listening to Q107 (or Chum FM) at about 10:30pm on a Monday night. Eventually, the DJ would break in to say that John Lennon had been shot and then on towards 11, that John Lennon had died. It was sad but sadder still that "Double Fantasy" would be his last album released while he was alive.

I cannot say I was devastated. I mean, other musicians had died in my life time (see John Bonham, Keith Moon, Marc Boland for example) so this was nothing new. It was unique that he was shot dead by a stranger, crazy strangers. Thirty years later, I am now coming to connect the dots and seeing why my parents always told me not to "talk to strangers". Strangers are not friends that you just have not met. They are, apparently, the merchants of death and will shoot you dead. Of course, I think that is only true if you are famous and the stranger is crazy....always blaming the deranged stranger.

Imagine there's no heaven....It's easy if you try......No hell below us, above us only sky. I just felt the need to quote John Lennon. He deserves at least that. And, no, I will not be making any Yoko Ono jokes. Though, Sally Jesse Raphael called and she wants her big ass framed eyeglasses back. Then again, the same could have been said about Elton John, so maybe it was a '70s thing.

I just wanted to make mention of the whole John Lennon thing. I did and I am done.

Ciao!