Thoughtless for the Day

I'm wiped out (and nobody said anything nice about my cartoon yesterday) so I'm heading off to bed early. Before I do, though, I'd just like to say a few words about the deaths of Don Knotts, Darin McGavin, and Dennis Weaver.

When I was a young man, hanging out on the mean and unevenly paved streets of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, a few my friends and I were flagged down by one of our local drunks (there were at least forty of them and they all lived at the Coach and Four Inn) whom we called "Spaceman" because he seemed to have issues with the Earth's gravity. "Boy's," Spaceman said covering each of us with about a half gallon of spittle, "television stars get no goddamn respect."

When "Porky" Gilbert asked Spaceman why that was, he just shouted back "'Cuz they're on television!" as if we should've immediately seen the wisdom of his statement.

Like many of the crazy things shouted at my by crazy people during my crazy youth, I spent a long time thinking that Spaceman's position was just crazy. It's only in the last few years that I've begun to realize that he had a point (Sadly, since Spaceman broke his neck in a fall from one of the Coach and Four Inn's sixth floor windows while attempting to skip out on rent, I'll never be able to tell him just what a true visionary he was).

In the entertainment hierarchy, starring in a television series ranks just below the guy at the circus who follows the elephant with a broom and just about ventriloquism. Don Knotts not only played Barney Fife in the Andy Griffith Show (check out the episode with the exploding goat) but he was also responsible for creating many of the show's brilliant gags: many of which were ad libbed. Darin McGavin actually manged to make the role of a guy who kills monsters believable: setting the stage for The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And Dennis Weaver starred in the greatest made-for-television move of all time: Duel.

But, because they were primarily TV stars (Don Knotts did appearing in several "films" including The Ghost and Mr. Chicken: from where I took "Shit Luther", and Darrin McGavin, of course, starred in A Christmas Story) Knotts, McGavin, and Weaver's deaths will end up getting about one tenth of the airtime that Martin Lawrence's death will get when he finally does Western Civilization a favor and kicks the bucket.