Dead Up, Yo: A Blog For The Morbidly Deceased

Good Mourning, friends and well-wishers! Seeing all of my friends, peers and local laughingstocks tweet and Facebook stati (there's got to be a verb for the word status), everyone's got an uber "important" opinion on the recent slate of deaths. Since my words are not limited to 140 characters, here are some quick thoughts that I like to call, This Week In Celebrity Deaths:

Let's start in chronological order:

Ed McMahon - June 23, 2009
My dad told me about this one right as I was, as usual, running late to work. I grumbled, "Ah, no surprise." Harsh, yes, but Ed was old and lived a full life and career. One of the last times I saw him was briefly on some lousy Family Feud primetime special. The only reason I stopped at the channel was because I thought, "Shit, Ed McMahon looks bad." An 85 year old guy in a neck brace kind of drooling is not a sight for primetime television. It nearly broke my HD tuner. I pitied Ed till I found out how much back taxes he owed. Not even all those years on the Tonight Show, then Publisher's Clearing House and The Feud could save old Ed. Baby Boomers insist that the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was great, I'm sure it was, but I was too young to care. I'm sure many, many (I hope) years from now when I tell my kid what a great man Andy Richter was, he or she or he-she won't care much either. I never did win that Publisher's Clearing House and met Ed McMahon or Dick Clark. R.I.P. Ed. Keep on truckin' Dick.


Farrah Fawchett - June 25, 2009
Another unsurprising one. A long battle with anal cancer, a fate best reserved for a person of Hitler-like proportions. I really don't have much to say on this one, I'm miffed that people I know that weren't even alive when Charlie's Angels was on the air, call her an 80's icon. Angels was canceled in 1980 and after that it was pretty much a supporting role in Cannonball Run....and a poster a LOT of young boys became men to (you know, slapping hand) in the 70's. In fact, it is the best selling pin-up poster of all time, selling 12 million copies. No other women could pose effortlessly seductive in 33 years??? A tribute to her hotness, although I never personally spanked it to that poster (and I'm NOT going to start now). Ryan O' Neal had plans to rewed Farrah when she was on her deathbed. Romantic? I guess, but then again there are some that see Natural Born Killers as a fantastic romantic romp. Expect Ryan O' Neal in some sort of TMZ-related mess in the near future.

Michael Jackson - June 25, 2009
A blog in itself. My personal focus group, which is social networking, has created two camps. One, which is he was a molester, fuck him. Two is he was the King of Pop, he entertained me. Truth be told, I was a big fan as a kid. I wore the one glove and danced around to his music. My mom even bought me a toy microphone, but I grew out of it. The problem with Michael, is that he never grew out of childhood. He was the ultimate Man-Child. Pedophilia is a terrible and frightening crime....yet I fall into the second camp that chooses to remember his wealth of music and entertainment value. Oh well to those kids and fuck their greedy parents too. MJ was the greatest showman of all time (fuck Elvis, a watered down "safe" choice for lame whites). Jacko didn't molest me and was a great entertainer. The bad is equal with the good, but the good says he was the greatest all around showman ever.

Billy Mays - June 28, 2009
While all of my peers posted about everyone else, I was among the first to post this one (I even included a picture in case you didn't know). Out of the other 3, why was this the only death I commented on publicly? Simply put, he was the only relevant one. The others were past their primes (even MJ, too much to comeback from), but Billy was a multi-millionaire (that means not in serious debt like Ed or Michael) and arguably the greatest pitchman of all time. He hocks cheesy titled products, but he also gave new inventors an opportunity to live their dreams. If you can sell a boatload of products this country doesn't really need, you are a success in my book. Boisterously hawking products to unsuspecting consumers on all hours of the day...maybe this is the American Dream these days? Billy did it better than them all and I look forward to Pitchmen on the Discovery Channel every week. The least famous, but most relevant will be missed.

It is sad to see people that we may have seen on our television screens through the years pass on, but to my peers with opinions, I didn't hear half as much talk when thousands died during Hurricane Katrina. Sorry they were not entertainers, pedophiles (as far as we know), talk show sidekicks, TV sluts and pitchmen. Get your GED, make your one comment and move the fuck on. Michael Jackson doesn't care what you think about him anymore now than when he was alive. It's over folks. Let's just hope the list of people celebrities and otherwise drying can stay low. R.I.P. to the deceased and a "Keep On Truckin'" to the rest.

-JF