Posted Jul 3rd 2009 3:03PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: News, Industry, OpEd, Celebrities, Obituaries
If anyone in the press should ever ask you, "What were you doing when you heard the great Michael Jackson was dead?", be sure to answer with: "Reading one of your stories on what a lowlife you thought he was just prior to his death."
There are times when I'm ashamed to be a part of the media. The 48 hours after Michael Jackson's death was just such an epoch. I chose that last word carefully because the endless, maudlin, self-congratulatory coverage the major news networks wallowed in following Jackson's death was as long-winded as it was embarrassingly dramatic.
While that coverage is sure to continue throughout the memorial services, unavoidable custody and estate battles and forthcoming autopsy reports, none of that will compare in sickly sweet sensation to what CNN, Fox News and the others lowered themselves to just following the singer's death.
Continue reading Media stoops to honor Wacko Jacko
Posted Jul 1st 2009 4:21PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
The celebrity death march continues.
Karl Malden has died at the age of 97. He was probably best known for his role as Lt. Mike Stone on the ABC series
The Streets of San Francisco. Actually, he was probably equally well-known for his American Express "Don't Leave Home Without It" commercials that ran in the 70s and 80s.
He played the lead role in the short-lived NBC series
Skag in 1980, but most of his roles were in movies, including
Patton,
On The Waterfront,
A Streetcar Named Desire, Kiss of Death,
How The West Was Won,
Birdman of Alcatraz,
Murderer's Row, and
Meteor. One of my favorite Malden roles was in the 50s movie
Fear Strikes Out, where he played the pushy father of Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall. His last role was a first season episode of
The West Wing.
Continue reading Karl Malden dead at 97
Posted Jul 1st 2009 1:33PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Late Night, The Daily Show, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
There's been so much coverage of Michael Jackson's death that there's bound to be great stuff and ... well, not so great stuff. In fact, lots of not so great stuff. Last night
The Daily Show gave awards to the worst moments. This is
really funny. Did Geraldo really use a whiteboard like that, and did CNN actually have an animation of his heart? Amazing.
Posted Jun 29th 2009 3:06PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Late Night, Video, Celebrities, Obituaries, Game Show, Talk Show, Reality-Free
The sad news just keeps on coming: comedian and impressionist
Fred Travalena passed away yesterday, losing a battle with cancer at the age of 66. For those of you who have no idea who I'm talking about (and, believe me, those numbers are legion),
Travalena was big on the talk show and game show circuit in the '70s, doing impressions of everyone from Robert De Niro to George Burns to Jimmy Carter.
As a nerdly kid who rarely left the house after school, however, Travalena is best known to me as a panelist during the latter years of my favorite game show,
Match Game. After the jump is the only
MG-related clip I could find with Travalena, where he does an impression of De Niro on the short-lived
Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour in the early '80s. (Warning: you need to turn the volume up to hear it).
Continue reading A Match Game fan remembers Fred Travalena
Posted Jun 29th 2009 2:16PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Obituaries
If you're wearing
blue to pay tribute Billy Mays, you were probably as shocked by
the pitchman's death as I was. Heck, I was even more surprised by Billy's passing than I was by Michael Jackson's. The guy seemed as healthy as a horse, sporting nothing more than the slight beer gut anyone of his age that's not a fitness fanatic and lives the good life is likely to have.
So in a perverse way, some of us approaching middle age were hoping that the cause of Billy's death could have been explained by the bump on the head he got after his flight had a rough landing the day before he died. We figured it was a delayed response to head trauma, a la what happened to Natasha Richardson earlier this year.
But autopsy results, verified by
Billy Mays III on his Twitter feed, showed that there was no head trauma.
Mays simply died of heart disease. Continue reading Billy Mays died of heart disease, says autopsy
Posted Jun 29th 2009 9:08AM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Commercials, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
News of someone's death always implants a little sadness in my brain, whether its the passing of a major celebrity or some innocent bystander who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Part of it is completely selfish. Someone's passing always reminds me of the frailty of human life and lets me know I'm always one less beer away from reaching the end of my time.
The other part is the projection of my own pain. We've all lost someone close to us and know what that pain feels like when our brain is scrambling to catch up with the reality of that loss. There is someone out there who has to deal with that same pain, whether the person who died was worthy of Catholic sainthood or the Bastard of the Year Award.
Continue reading Today is "Wear Blue for Billy" day
Posted Jun 28th 2009 12:50PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Commercials, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Famous (and loud) TV pitchman
Billy Mays was found dead in his Florida home today. He was 50.
There's no cause of death yet (an autopsy will be performed tomorrow), but Mays was one of the passengers on
a US Airways flight that had a bumpy landing in Tampa, FL yesterday.
I think most people would agree that this been a remarkably strange week for celebrity deaths. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson. We thought those three celebs would be enough for one week (and celebrity deaths often come in threes, as the common wisdom goes). And now we have a guy who is still on our TVs
all the time. It's not like he was old or he had retired or he wasn't doing much in public anymore. Commercials with May run all day long, every day. I saw several last night. He also has a weekly show with Anthony Sullivan on Discovery called
Pitchmen. The pair were also on Conan's show last week. Video of that appearance is after the jump.
Continue reading Billy Mays dead at 50
Posted Jun 26th 2009 10:03AM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: OpEd, American Idol, Celebrities, Obituaries, Alumni
In the wake of his surprise death yesterday,
the networks scrambled to cobble together retrospectives of Michael Jackson's life and works and get them on the air as quickly as possible. I expect we'll see more carefully planned tributes coming down the road. But none perhaps more bizarre than
Fox's proposed tribute to the King of Pop, coming up this Monday, June 29 at 8 ET.
They've decided to air an encore of the Michael Jackson themed episode of
American Idol from this past season. In it, the
Top 13 contestants performed from Jackson's catalogue. It's a bizarre choice, because despite a few good performances, notably from Kris Allen, Alexis Grace and Allison Iraheta, most of the performances were either okay or downright terrible. I'd think you'd want some good singing of perhaps some of his better known works to honor the man.
Continue reading Fox offering up a bizarre MJ tribute Monday: a repeat of American Idol
Posted Jun 25th 2009 8:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: News, OpEd, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Wow. Busy day in celebrity deaths. First we hear that
Farrah Fawcett finally lost her battle to cancer, then suddenly we hear that, after being rushed to a LA hospital in cardiac arrest,
Michael Jackson also died. He was only 50, and he was about to embark on a comeback concert stint in London that he hoped would revive his career.
ABC News was already scrambling to move up the Farrah special they had planned to air on
20/20 this coming Friday. That special, where Barbara Walters interviews Ryan O'Neal, will be shown tonight at 10 PM ET. They also just announced that they will be airing an MJ retrospective at 9 PM ET.
Other networks are following suit with
their own specials, according to THR.com.
It's interesting how most news outlets aside from Fox didn't confirm MJ's death even though our friends at
TMZ had the news first. I guess it wasn't legitimate enough for them. Either way, it's a shockingly sad day in the entertainment biz, no matter what you may have thought of Farrah or Jackson.
Posted Jun 25th 2009 1:18PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
A spokesperson has confirmed that
Charlie's Angels star
Farrah Fawcett has died of cancer.
Fawcett died this morning at John's Medical Center in Santa Monica. Ryan O'Neal was at her side. He had said recently that he wanted to marry Fawcett before she passed, but there's no word yet on whether they got married or not. This may sound ghoulish, but ABC actually put together a new special that is going to air tonight at 10PM. It's titled
Farrah Fawcett: Her Life, Her Loves, Her Legacy. They put the show together when it looked like Fawcett was back in the hospital and had taken a turn for the worse.
Like most teen boys in the 70s, I had that famous poster of Fawcett, featuring her hair and her big smile. Even back then I knew that
Charlie's Angels was kinda cheesy and dumb, but it was entertaining cheese.
Posted Jun 23rd 2009 6:40PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Late Night, OpEd, Watercooler Talk, Celebrities, Obituaries, Talk Show
During some of the television obits I've been hearing about the
late, great Ed McMahon, one of the most common misunderstandings about the
Tonight Show sidekick's career has been perpetuated: that he worked for
Publishers Clearing House, handing out big checks to unsuspecting sweepstakes winners.
Well, Ed
did work for one of those sweepstakes-and-subscriptions houses, but it was PCH's main rival,
American Family Publishers. He often appeared in the AFP's ads and mailings with his
Bloopers and Practical Jokes buddy Dick Clark.
Not once did McMahon work for PCH, but as Bob pointed out in
his obituary, jokes about his sweepstakes work often kept the mistake alive.
Continue reading Ed McMahon did not work for Publishers Clearing House
Posted Jun 23rd 2009 9:22AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: TV Royalty, Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Longtime Johnny Carson announcer and sidekick
Ed McMahon has passed away at age 86.
This probably isn't a surprise to most people, since McMahon has been in poor health for a number of years and also injured his neck severely in a fall in his home in 2007.
McMahon is best known, of course, for being the announcer and couch mate for Carson on
The Tonight Show for 30 years. McMahon also hosted the original version of
Star Search for many years, co-hosted
Bloopers and Practical Jokes with Dick Clark, and was a staple of the annual
Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon every September. Besides appearing in a number of TV shows and movies, he was also a spokesman for American Family Publishers (though, oddly, every single joke about these commercials with the giant checks and McMahon mentions Publisher's Clearing House for some reason).
McMahon died at Ronald Reagan/UCLA Medical Center in L.A.
Posted Jun 4th 2009 11:45AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
Kung Fu star
David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok, Thailand hotel.
The cause of death hasn't been confirmed yet. First reports said that there was no cause of death, then his manager said it was natural causes, and now
some news outlets are saying he committed suicide by hanging. I'm sure we'll find out more news later today.
Besides his run on
Kung Fu, Carradine made a ton of movies, including the
Kill Bill films,
Crank: High Voltage,
Death Race 2000,
Mean Streets,
Bound For Glory,
The Long Riders,
Grey Lady Down and many others. He was also in many TV shows over the years, including
Alias,
Night Gallery,
Ironside,
Gunsmoke,
Medium, and
King of the Hill. He also has a role as Gideon in FOX's summer series
Mental.
Carradine was in Thailand to film a new movie.
Posted May 10th 2009 1:39PM by Eliot Glazer
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Video, Obituaries, Reality-Free
The
late Bea Arthur was, among other things, a comedic genius, feminist icon, and beloved American actress of stage and screen. But widely overlooked in the recent coverage of her passing is the fact that she was a active advocate for animal rights. She campaigned against the force-feeding of ducks in the foie gras trade, even accompanying the president of PETA to London, where she demanded that Harrod's discontinue their peddling pâté.
Continue reading Bea Arthur also saved animals (as do her 'girls')
Posted May 5th 2009 1:03PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, Obituaries, Reality-Free
There was a sitcom on for a short time in the 70s titled
Lotsa Luck. It starred Dom Deluise as a single guy who lived with his overbearing mother. I remember it being the funniest thing in the world, but I was around 8 or 9 years old at the time so if I were to see it today I'm sure I'd realize that I was wrong. But I do know that I went around saying "lotsa luck!" to people for several months after the show premiered.
Deluise died last night in Los Angeles. He was 75.
Continue reading Dom Deluise dead at 75
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