Perhaps I began feeling an ounce less morbid about my new hobby when I did some Googles and found that I'm not alone in this strange obsession. There is a website, called "Dead or Alive?" dedicated to just this issue, updated hourly it seems. There are lists on Wikipedia of people who have once been thought to be deceased prematurely, falsely, or otherwise. There are sites that are simply obit aggregators.
It's all Abe Vigoda's fault. The man, who once portrayed "Fish" on the decidedly craptacular Barney Miller, has sustained an entire career on a 1982 People magazine gaff that proclaimed him dead. This mistake instantly revamped his career (people hardly speak ill of the dead). And ever since Vigoda's earthly solvency has become the punchline to a million jokes. It probably helps that he's got such a funny name. By the way, you can check his status at this website - be sure to hit refresh just to make sure he didn't just kick it!
I mean really, if you think about it, this question of alive or dead is a totally viable thing to worry about. Maybe you're a huge fan of Roy Scheider, but you've lost track of him since the mid-1990s TV show seaQuest. [Dead: infection, 2/10/2008] Or maybe you're like me and couldn't fathom that someone as wildly infirm as Jesse Helms could possibly still be alive. [Alive: evil never dies] Or maybe you just don't religiously follow the celebrity blogs. So, before you judge me for being too morbid, I ask you...can you honestly tell me (without peeking on Wikipedia) if the following people are alive?:
John Goodman
Henry Kissinger
Ike Turner
Bea Arthur
Ed McMahon
Shelley Winters
(See what I mean.)
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3 comments:
Biff, I could probably help you with that hairstyle.
C
I'm just not brave enough to really go for it with cutting the sides really short. Sometimes I can get it to look like that if I've been working under the house or something else really dirty. Let's shoot for Halloween.
UPDATE: Jesse Helms is dead. He died on July 4, 2008. Although, I think this patriotic demise is a bit fudged, if you ask me. The only person present at the time of his death was a "long-time staffer" who reported that Senator No bit it at 1 a.m. on July 4th. How convenient? My guess: he died at like 11:15 p.m. on July 3rd and the staffer waited a couple of hours to report it - so he'd sound All-American.
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