Choose From One Possible Ending

Note: I know this post is almost a month out of date, but it's all part of my goal to hit as many lingering post topics as I can this month. So start getting your Thanksgiving travel plans in order and pretend that you're in early November.

A big part of my childhood, and no doubt the childhoods of countless others, author R.A. Montgomery recently concluded his own adventure the other day. As anyone who knows me can attest, I was a massive fan of the Choose Your Own Adventure book series growing up. I would probably say that the series has a whole (of which I read clear over a 100 entries, the overwhelming bulk of the series) was the most influential piece of literature I ever read. They instilled in me an early love of reading and writing that continues to this day (despite how infrequent I update this blog). They where my first exposure to literary genres like science fiction, westerns, mysteries, and metafiction (I could write a whole post alone about what a mind fuck"Hyperspace" was to an 9 year old). Plus they provided me an unflinching introduction to my own mortality. However most importantly the CYOA series, with their trademark second person narrative and ability to choose different story tangents, taught me to view the world with a different perspective; that everything didn't have to follow an ordered linear narrative, and that many things you thought were impossible or you never even considered could become reality if you would only make the effort to choose.

Considering how many of these books I've read, R.A. Montgomery and CYOA creator Edward Packard are from a pure numbers view the authors I have read the most in my life. I suppose that's the case with children's book series with many people; I'm sure if you were a hardcore Goosebumps or Fear Street reader growing up, you've read more books by R.L. Stine than any other author. It's just a matter of quantity. Still, it felt like kind of a big deal for me when I heard that one of the authors of whom I so prodigiously consumed their bibliography had passed. So I figured as a little tribute to one of the main architects of the CYOA series and of the game book genre itself, I'd try to recall my top 5 most memorable Montgomery books.

A word of warning, I haven't read any of these books in about two decades and childhood memories could sometimes be unreliable, so if you're some CYOA expert or a modern day kid who just read these books for the first time please forgive me if I get a detail or two wrong or I miss out on some important plot point:

5. House of Danger

If Edward Packard was the father of the CYOA series, then R.A. Montgomery was the weird uncle. Truth be told, going by total body of work Packard is my overall favorite CYOA author. However, while Packard cranked out solidly plotted, fun, interesting stories, his stories never went off the rails or took crazy risks (with the exception of a few standouts like the previously mentioned "Hyperspace"). His stories were usually based around standard genre narratives like solving a murder or searching for buried treasure or landing on an alien planet. Montgomery in contrast would have some of the most straight up bizarre setups, which sometimes would come at the cost of making a coherent or fair story . Case in point is "House of Danger". Just look at that dogeared cover and try to figure out what the hell is going on here. There's a sadistic Confederate general, crazed apes, murderous neanderthals, a runaway stagecoach, a modern home, and a cut rate Scooby Doo team. As I recall all these things do show up in this book. I believe the general idea was that you and your friends investigate a mysterious house that has rooms that lead to different times and dimensions. I also recall that this was a brutally difficult game book with very few non-death or generally successful endings; which was sort of a Montgomery trait.

4. Trouble On Planet Earth

It's like "House of Danger" but everything is set to 10. Instead of some mystery house on your block, you and your friend who kind of looks Paul from the Wonder Years meets Shock G get involved in a bunch of potential conspiracies that threaten the entire Earth. I know there were some plots that involved aliens and the Pyramids and often times you would end up abducted on a spaceship. The grotesque fat and his buddy Joe Biden were part of some other story line where they reveal themselves to be from some sort of secret Illuminati-type society with plans of world domination. I would also say that I can't recall ever getting a good ending in this mad fever dream of a book. This was Montgomery at his absolute craziest. It's not the best written CYOA adventure but it's one of the most unique.

3. Journey Under The Sea

R.A. Montgomery's first book, and the second book ever in the CYOA series, Journey Under The Sea is one of his most straight forward books (and possibly his best plotted). One of the great things about the early CYOA books were the high volume of endings they contained. With most long running series the writers just had more ideas early on. Some of the later CYOA books started to repeat stories and barely contained double digit endings. At a whopping 42 possible endings, this may be the most prodigious book in the series. The story was pretty straightforward, you are some underwater explorer searching for treasure and new underwater discoveries (think Bill Paxton in Titanic). I think the main victory story line involves finding the lost city of Atlantis. I recall you might also fall in love with a mermaid. Of course there are plenty of grim drowning deaths also waiting for you.

2. The Race Forever

Another fairly straightforward effort by Montgomery. The premise is you're a race car driver competing in two different marathon races in Africa. There's an off road race involving jeeps and a faster 24 hours of Le Mans style race with smaller race cars. The first decision you make is choosing which race to enter then which one of two cars; and assuming you're not gored to death by a rhino or your aren't immolated when your car bursts into flames you get to do the other race afterwards. In fact, you can technically put yourself in an infinite loop of races by always choosing the other race after finishing one (I always suspected that's why the title was called "The Race Forever"). Here's a spoiler: the car you choose totally determines if you win the race. In the jeep race pick the Toyota over the Land Rover and in the small car race I think it's the Saab over the Lotus. You're not guaranteed to win with those cars, but at least you won't be guaranteed to lose as is the case with the other cars.

1. Escape

One of my all time favorite CYOA books and probably my favorite Montgomery contribution. Escape takes place in a dystopian America sometime around the mid 21st century. The United States is split into three separate nations (kind of like the Hunger Games) and you are a member of a group of spies from the one democratic state who have to escape the hostile territory of the evil totalitarian state to warn your state of an imminent attack. This was most likely my first introduction to dystopian fiction and the idea of a book set ever so slightly in the future rather than a distant Buck Rogers rocket ship future. I remember the first page had an alternate map of the US split into three and the whole idea fascinated me. I recall plenty of action and surprises in this one and overall the book had a sense of suspense given the high stakes and dangerous situation. You never knew who to trust (potential spoiler, I believe the guy with the glasses in your party turns out to be a double agent) or which path to go as you tried to make your titular escape. Interesting note, this is one of the few CYOA books to have a sequel, the not as memorable "Beyond Escape". I think with a few tweaks this story could be modified into a successful modern teen dystopian trilogy.

Twenties Victor, 2004-2014

Twenties Victor Lee, 29, of mostly New Jersey and sometimes parts of New York, passed away at midnight May 7th, 2014 on the Hudson Bergen Light Rail en route from Hoboken, after a long battle with aging.

Twenties Victor was born May 7th, 2004 in New York, NY at Lafayette Hall where he was residing in the waning days of his sophomore year at New York University. He was the only child of Aughts Victor and Teens Victor, who very much loved him and worked tirelessly and selflessly to support him in everything he did. Through them he learned much of the world and all the wonderful knowledge that helped shape him to be the man he was. To them he would be forever grateful and he always hoped to have made them proud.

His life like many lives was a mixed bag of joyful highs, disappointing lows, and a whole bunch of fairly average everyday stuff in between. He only hoped that through it all it would be at least an interesting mixed bag. Among his experiences in his brief decade long journey: he learned to drink (and proudly claimed he never vomited once), he traveled a little (though too little in his estimation), somehow became a barred attorney, and took way too long to get his wisdom teeth out. He never met a sandwich he didn’t like or a bag of jerky he could not finish in one sitting. He savored every brunch, volunteered for every road trip, and agonized over every mix CD.

He gained love and lost love. Managed to lose touch with old friends and made unlikely new ones. He won a small fortune over four game shows and accumulated a slightly larger debt over two colleges. In work he wore many hats including aspiring adman, E list game show celebrity, “Lockhorns” comic paradoist, and terrible lawyer; though he never found any of them all that comfortable for too long. Late in life he developed a curious interest in romantic comedy films and proudly completed his first feature length screenplay in 2013. At his passing he was working on his second one. It was one of his wishes that Thirties Victor would complete it in a timely manner.

Victor never married and had no children…to the best of his knowledge. He is survived and mourned by his friends both real and facebook, and Thirties Victor who will especially miss him but hopes to carry on his legacy and spirit. Wherever Twenties Victor may be in the Great Perhaps, he is most likely wearing a comfortable hoodie, reunited with his favorite cap that he lost on that fishing trip when he was 14, sipping a bloody mary and reveling in the fact he doesn’t have to get up early for work anymore. Services will be held this Saturday evening at numerous bars around the Lower East Side, perhaps maybe a brunch the next day, but that’s up in the air.

Twenties Victor in 2013

It was...fun. Oh, my...

To paraphrase General Douglas MacArthur: "Old advertising mascots never die; they just fade away". The life of an advertising icon is an unpredictable one; some continue to live on as the indelible (somewhat racist) face of a national brand for well over a century, others are over used and worn out into total irreverence, while others flop right out of the gate into obscurity. Occasionally a mascot may get discontinued, only to find unexpected new life decades later. One thing mascots hardly ever do, however, is actually get killed.

It is an exceedingly rare and bold move on the part of a brand when they decide to go for the nuclear option of putting in the effort to deliberately and publicly eliminate their mascot in an advertisement. The only other example I can think of is the heroic death of Segata Sanshiro, the star of a series of brilliantly insane Sega Saturn ads in Japan from the late 90s that I would need to devote an entire entry to properly cover; he had by far the most epic death for an advertising mascot. I do recall the Budweiser frogs were the victims of an assassination attempt in 1997 by some vindictive Italian-American lizards and their hired ferret associate, which did leave one of them traumatized.

The public executing of a mascot is the ultimate expression on the company's part that they are going in a totally new direction and leaving the past completely behind. If a company takes the time and spends the money on a proper end for their character, I suppose it either means that they: (a) have grown to absolutely despise the character and want to be as public with their disapproval as possible or (b) have so much respect for the character that they want to give them the dignity of a big finale rather than just quietly phasing them out.

In the case of Priceline.com's decision this week to kill their longtime spokesman, the legendary William "The Negotiator" Shatner, it is definitely more the latter reason. Priceline, which somehow managed to survive the dot.com bubble and (to my continuing surprise) manages to thrive today as a travel website, has finally decided to drop its silly "name your price" feature, which never really worked that well, and has finally become a straight travel discount site like all the others. This end of the need for price negotiation obviously means the end of the "The Negotiator". It appears that the war had ended and apparently fixed prices have won.

So after 14 years of loyal, price slashing service from the quirky concert sets of the late 90s, to his epic showdown with Leonard Nemoy, to his latter day role as "The Negotiator " (with occasional help from the Big Deal), the people at Priceline decided give Shatner a final act on par with the passing of his other famous character. Looking at the two deaths there is an odd similarity between them. Both instances involved a large explosion on a vast cliff, a fearless act of heroism that saved many lives (and in the case of the commercial, also money), and a sort of symbolic passing of the torch to a new generation. As commercial mascot deaths go, I think it was a fine way to close the chapter and turn the page.

Farewell Negotiator, I hope you're in a better, more affordably priced place.

Feel the Sadness...Oh Yeah!

It's an unyielding, universal truth that many of us often times have great difficulty remembering: there are no guaranteed tomorrows. In our bounded rationality we just assume that at least more new day waits for us all. Every so often though we are given a sobering reminder at just how tenuous and illusory life can be. When I heard the news over the phone from a friend that "Macho Man" Randy Savage had suddenly died in a car accident, I never would have expected that my post about him from Tuesday to be a sad preemptive eulogy for him Friday (and if it turned out that heart attack was due to damage from years of cocaine abuses, it will just get beyond eerie). With this depressing news and the end of the world scheduled for tomorrow, this is all just turning out to be the worst day.

Well, what else can I say about the Macho Man that I haven't already said. He was endlessly entertaining, charismatic, larger than life, an excellent wrestler (something Hogan can never claim), and the true definition of an iconoclast. In short he was an absolute legend that, as it sadly seems to be the case with a disturbing amount of former members of this rough business, left as far too soon. If I actually recognized the WWE Hall of Fame as a legitimate institution I would consider the fact that the Macho Man never lived to see himself be enshrined to be a complete and utter travesty (I mean really, what's Pete Rose and William "Refrigerator" Perry doing in there? You know they just inducted Drew Carey this year? Seriously!). In reality though the Macho Man doesn't need that empty title to prove he was an all time great. Anyone who ever saw his historic match with Ricky Steamboat in Wrestlemania III, or cheered as he carried Miss Elizabeth off on his shoulders after a victory, or was enthralled by one of his out of his mind promos, or lost their shit when he teamed up Hulk to form the Mega Powers, or listened to his ringside commentaries with JR, or was even inspired to snap into a Slim Jim from his ads, knew his greatness.

I don't know what everyone else is doing, but tonight I think I'm going to have a myself a few drinks in his honor, maybe get myself a twin pack of Slim Jims and see if the bartender will play anything from "Be A Man".

At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man

With all the excitement from all the 1-1 and 0-0 ties of this opening week of World Cup games (although I do have to note South Korea did win their opener against Greece 2-0, which is probably like a 25 point blowout in basketball terms), I must apologize profusely for my belated condolences for the recent passing of country singer, actor, and sausage magnate Jimmy Dean; a true modern day renaissance man. While not exactly a "triple treat" in the traditional mold of multi-talented entertainers like Gene Kelly or Mitzi Gaynor or Usher, for me personally he's made a lasting impression in every field he's been involved in.

In country music, his original trade, he topped both the country and billboard charts with his signature hit "Big Bad John"; one of my all time favorite country story songs (and believe me there are A LOT of country story songs) and definitely my favorite song involving pick axe sound effects.

In his brief foray into acting he had his memorable turn as reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte in "Diamonds Are Forever". Generally considered one of the worst of the Bond films, but I kind of liked the intentional campiness of it (am I the only one that liked Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd?). In the incredibly specific field of one-shot Bond allies I would have to consider Jimmy Dean as one of the best.

Of course, Mr. Dean's later innovations in the breakfast foods industry needs no exposition. I certainly had more than a few breakfast croissants growing up.

One of the sadder facts of the passing of Jimmy Dean is with the sharp decline of Kenny Rogers Roasters and what I'm pretty sure is the complete bankruptcy of Ted Nugent's licensed beef jerky product "Gonzo Meat Biltong" (seriously I can't even find of picture of it on the internet), it appears the days of the singer/actor/food baron seem to be going the way of home telephones lines and movie rental stores. On the other hand though it's a true testament to the admirably prolific and accomplished life the man lead.

Happy trails, Jimmy Dean

The Worst That Could Happen

It's not exactly the death of Michael Jackson, perhaps not even up to the notoriety level of Jim Marshall (I always found "famous rock and roll photographer" to be one of the most intolerably pretentious distinctions around), who also died today, but I found the passing of classic oldies crooner Johnny Maestro a particularly sad and notable passing.

All this is based almost entirely (we also share the same birthday, May 7th, so it's always a bummer to lose a cosmic brother) on my absolute love of his signature 1968 smash hit "The Worst That Could Happen" (as Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge); a cheesy, horn laden, over-the-top pile driver of a ballad that hits all my guilty (then again do I even have a sense of guilt when it comes to the music I like?) pop music pleasure centers. Aside from the sublime joy of karaoking the song and the ridiculous amount of needless gravitas the singer puts on the situation (labeling the target of the song's marriage to be "THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN!"), it places the listener in a really intriguing (possibly confusing) situation with regards to the protagonist's intentions. The song goes along that extremely rare "I love you so much that I want to see you happy with another man...but really I still want you" route. The only other famous hit song I can think of off the top of my head that goes along that sort of conflicted path is Freddie Fender's 1975 country crossover #1 "Before the Next Teardrop Falls".

Actually before today's untimely death, I was bouncing around the idea of doing a post where I did an in-depth look at whether the protagonist from "The Worst That Could Happen" was actually being a romantic hero or just an unbelievable douche by telling his long time love about his feelings and how her marriage to another man would essentially ruin him (at her wedding no less). My view was that a positive or negative assessment would likely correlate with how much one was a fan of romantic comedies, since essentially the entire genre is distilled into the song's three minutes. The listener finds themselves at the tail end of a classic boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl story with the boy desperately attempting to complete that last step at the wedding . People who either actually wholeheartedly believe in the romantic comedy conceit or people who enjoy and appreciate the rule of the romantic comedy would find the protagonist's actions to be romantic and justified. People who despise the manufactured prefabricated nature of the rom com or who don't really believe in the concept of romantic love would think the protagonist's actions are whiny and unreasonable. I'm for the former but no perspective is inherently wrong.

Needless analysis of the song aside, "The Worst That Could Happen" also has a particularly special significance to me as I enter that point in my life where all my friends and peers are starting to get married. For perhaps the next decade or so, I'll likely be attending the marriages of various like-aged friends, acquaintances, relatives as they transition from their unhindered 20s to the domestic stability of their 30s. I may even end up as one of them before the decade is out (hey, anything's possible). I would be forever regretful that if, during this dynamic period of martial transitions, I didn't get at least one opportunity to sing what may possibly be the most inappropriate wedding song ever written (with the possible exception of "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul) to the bride-to-be at an engagement party and have the entire reception fall into horrible awkward silence as I profess my unknown, burning love for them.

Now that would be the best that could happen.

The Hook Brings You Back...

So I just found out that Ken Ober suddenly passed away over the weekend. While I was far too young and cable-less to have seen his work as host of "Remote Control" on MTV, I will forever remember him for his role as the main protagonist in the music video for Blues Traveler's "Hook" and to a lesser extent as the sleazy manager in the video for "Run Around". I hate to admit it but "Four" was one of the definitive albums of my youth; a key touchstone of my early development as a music fan. For about a year and a half, that album was inescapable. When VH1 wasn't playing the hell out of the videos, I got my daily dose it from the school bus driver who firmly planted the bus dial on WEBE 108, the local Adult Contemporary station where it was basically played on the hour.

While I'm not going start wearing a KO patch on my shirt or anything (in fact, I'm actually more bummed out by the other recent death of Edward Woodward aka The Equalizer), it is still a little sad nevertheless.

Farewell, Ken Ober aka the guy from "Hook".

Goodbye Geocities

Today, with a relatively quiet whimper that hardly does justice to its lasting legacy, Yahoo! finally pulled the plug on longtime web hosting site Geocities. In an instant millions of long ignored, aesthetically bankrupt, badly formatted pages suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Perverse slash fiction websites, "unofficial" celebrity fan pages, esoteric web rings and clubs, countless web counters; all now the forever lost recorded ephemera of the primordial era of the Internet.

As part of the generation that was born with and grew up concurrently with the personal computer and eventual evolution of the Internet, the death of Geocities is definitely a somber moment. For many of us our crappy personal Geocities page was our first innocent baby steps into this omnipresent force in our lives called the Internet. One can only look back with wistful pixelated nostalgia about a time when having a scrolling marquee or a three frame animated gif on your page was a big deal, where you could find an AOL trial CD in your mailbox every week, when a thirty second wav file took half an hour to download and a thirty second lo-res porn clip took half a day, when "The Net" seemed like cutting edge futurist cinema. Simpler times, indeed.

Although I lost track of it nearly a decade ago and I doubt that it even survived this long, when I heard the news of Geocities imminent demise I still wondered if one of those doomed long abandoned pages was my first web page made back in middle school. Like a great majority of Geocities sites I spend all of an hour setting it up and nothing more afterwards. It was basically a single homepage with some generic background wallpaper, a picture of Mr. T (I used to love watching reruns of the A-Team growing up, some neon scrolling font welcoming people to what I called my "Super Fun Happy Website", and some random greeting message to anyone fortunate enough to come upon my site. In a way it can be viewed as the proto-Victor Sells Out.

While we'll never know if my site still existed up to today, for the benefit of all you readers out there, I have managed to create a crude artist's rendering from memory of what it may have looked circa 1997, right down to the Netscape browser:

That counter should be closer to 10.

Misty poorly coded memories, of the way we were...

Death of a Salesman

Really? Billy Mays, too? It's not enough that this past week has been the most prolific celebrity death spiral in recent memory, we have to throw in the beared one as well? It's enough to suspect that there's some sort of real life version of "The Dead Pool" going on. Ed was old and Farrah was ill, but the completely unexpected and sudden deaths of two seemingly healthy middle aged guys with everything to live for starts to smell a little fishy. I vaguely remember someone once telling me that if you can make it through this relatively dangerous period from about 50 to 65 where statistically many of the heart attacks, life threatening illnesses, and accidents happen, the odds are you'll live to at least to 80. If I was around 50 right now I'd be staying up late, totally ridden with anxiety. MJ's health is (as with almost everything with his life) a mystery, but a strapping model of fitness like Billy Mays just suddenly keeping over? What hope is there for the rest of us?

For all the tragedy, you know what the worst thing about losing Mays is for me? The fact that now that he's gone, the title of king of the infomerical unofficially goes by default to this unsavory character:


The most prominent figure in late night product pitching has been changed from a clean cut, family man with an ever present smile and gregarious attitude who sold his wares not by deception but by his sheer, booming enthusiasm and genuine belief in the product, to the above pictured smarmy degenerate who's entire selling method consists of an aggressive fast talking hard sell with a healthy dose of insult and condescending attitude towards the audience.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still endlessly entertained by Vince and I eagerly await his next miracle product, but he really is the kind of shady character that gives late night commercial guys a bad name. For timeless class and respect, you couldn't beat Billy. For me he'll always remain the undisputed "King of Shop".

Wait, who died?

I'm sure you've already heard the news repeatedly over every type of media known to man; so it's almost a completely moot point to announce it. It's really the most epic of celebrity deaths in that it was so unexpected, so surprisingly tragic, go global that it became one of those "I know where I was when I heard..." sort of passings. This was basically our generation's Day the Music Died, the death of Elvis, the assassination of John Lennon, the suicide of Kurt Cobain. A shocking event that mournfully closes out an era. It's all so surreal that I still have a difficult time believing it actually happened. I just expect it to be some weirdo stunt, another bizarro chapter in a life defined by sharp eccentricity. However, it looks like the news isn't changing. The cold hard, undeniable fact remains: Flemish singer and television presenter Yasmine is died.

Insensitive punchlines at the expense of other recently deceased celebrities aside, it really was a big deal that MJ died. Just when you thought there was nothing else Michael Jackson could do to shock you, he goes off and unwittingly ends up doing the most startling, unexpected thing imaginable. In the coming days I'm sure there'll be various tributes and reflections of an artist that was once so spectacular and dominant that he was referred to as "The King of Pop". Hopefully they'll shine a dazzling lighting on an unparalleled body of work that shaped and influenced pop music to this very day; a body of work that has been buried and obscured under twenty years of scandal, disturbing behavior, and humiliating weirdness. Hopefully people will realize that in this modern age where if you can manage to get a handful of kids of buy an actual cd gives you the #1 album in the country and where fame is freely given without talent (sometimes specifically because of a lack of it), the passing of Michael Jackson was the passing of the last great superstar.

I think given the events of today, the super extended version of Michael Jackson's obscenely bloated, 40 minutes long, Thriller knock off "Ghosts" from "HIStory" is quite appropriate. I still think his heavily costumed portrayal of the bigoted old white guy is the best acting he's ever done.

Michael Jackson - Ghosts
Uploaded by Wakazai. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

That's really all I have to say on the matter. Oh and RIP Farrah Fawcett, sorry you got hosed. For a decade defining icon like you, dying any other week would have guaranteed you the front pages and a host of tributes. Unfortunately, many of us don't choose our untimely deaths. To think, Ed McMahon got a bigger send off than you. I mean how many teenagers came of age masturbating to posters of Ed McMahon?

The Nail in the Coffin: RIP Wayman Tisdale

If you haven't heard already, former NBA player Wayman Tisdale passed away on Friday. The whole thing is especially tragic considering how young he was (only 44), how it came about after a two year long battle with cancer that even cost him his right leg, and how by all accounts he was a pretty classy guy. For me, what really brings this loss home is the fact that Tisdale now has the dubious distinction of being the first NBA Jam player to have passed away (technically, if you want to split hairs about it, it's arguable that Drazen Petrovic was the first player to pass away if you count the arcade game...which I won't).

For me, NBA Jam will forever be the all encompassing symbol of the happiest period of sports fandom in my life. Back in the mid 90s, basketball ruled my middle school life and I followed my New York Knicks and the NBA with a wholehearted, innocent passion, that'll never be duplicated again. It was my first love and my first introduction to sports as a whole. Serendipitously at the height of my infatuation, I got a copy of the greatest sports game ever made, NBA Jam, for my Genesis. I spent untold hours dominating the league with my unstoppable Knick duo of Patrick Ewing and John Starks. It was seriously one of the best duos in the game, you had Ewing with his maxed out low post dunking and defensive skills and Starks with his speed and deadly three point accuracy, all bases were covered. The only other team with such perfect symmetry was the aging Pistons team with Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer.

It has been a downer year overall for NBA Jam. In addition to the death of Tisale, the imminent retirement of Dikemembe Mutombo means that there will officially be no more active players from the original game roster. It's just another sad reminder of the unyielding march of time and the changes we all have to accept.

So what final words do I have to say about Wayman Tisdale, the NBA Jam player? Statistics wise he was actually one of the worse players in the game with only a slighly above average dunking ability. Paired with the supremely talented Mitch Richmond he was at best a useful role player and at worse a slow footed albatross. But we shouldn't let the mediocre abilities of Wayman Tisdale, NBA Jam Player, take away from the more notable accomplishments of Wayman Tisdale, real life person; the monster college player who was Blake Griffin before Blake Griffin, the solid if not spectacular 13 year NBA veteran, and the surprisingly successful smooth jazz artist (8 albums since 1995, including one that went to Number 1 on Billboard's contemporary jazz chart. It makes Bernie Williams' musical career look positively Federline).

Boom shakalaka, wherever you are.

Wayman Tisdale
1964-2009

Montalgone

Remember that scene in "Blue Velvet" where Dennis Hooper's Frank is meeting up with his friend Ben played by Dean Stockwell and he keeps telling Ben throughout how he is so impressively "fuckin' suave" and how much of a "suave motherfucker" he is?

That about sums up my definition of the late Ricardo Montalbon. The man was so goddamn suave.

His unique brand of ultra smooth, borderline caricatured, Latin accented, classiness was the driving presence that defined for me, among others, the greatest Star Trek movie of all time, in the best Naked Gun movie of all time, one of the best Freakazoid! villains of all time, a decent Spy Kids sequal, and a relatively tolerable Taco Bell commercial.

Roger Ebert has a personal "Stanton-Walsh Rule" which states that no movie featuring either character actors Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh can be altogether bad (apparently with the exception of Wild Wild West). In that sense I can probably say that for me any work was always a little better with a dash of Montalban.

Damn, that's suave!

Bullied

Another Oscar ceremony is the can and another record low for viewership. For those of you keeping track I came out at a respectable 8 of 11 in my prediction of the major award catagories (what can I say I voted with my heart for "War/Dance" for best doc). In my final parting shot at the whole thing, I just want to bring up one burning question: where the hell was Brad Renfro?

To give a little background; the highlight of every Oscar ceremony for me (aside from the sardonic red carpet barbs of Joan and Melissa Rivers) is the "people who died in the past year" montage. As an aficionado of celebrity passings, the death montage always manages to surprise me with people who I had forgotten died earlier in the year (Jack Valenti), people I had no idea passed (Roscoe Lee Brown), or people who I thought were already dead (Barry Nelson). Also for a lot of the honorees, especially those behind the scenes players who had to have the films they've worked on along side their pictures, it is probably the only time they will have ever have the spotlight on them. What's also kind of amusing is the awkward, perverse, postmortem popularity contest that goes on as some people get more applause and cheers than others. For me, applauding for the deceased, seemed like they were celebrating the fact that person was dead.

In contrast to previous years, 2007's in memoriam class to me seemed to be lacking in overall star power. It did have some major icons like Antonioni and Bergmann; Deborah Kerr and Jane Wyman were big stars in their day; and of course there was the tragedy of Heath Ledger. However, in the end it just seemed like a highly disproportionate number of forgotten directors, make-up artists, studio executives, and even two agents. Which makes the omission of the recent death of Brad Renfro all the more puzzling.

It's not like Renfro's brief body of work was completely ignored by the Academy. I recall he was in at least three films that where nominated for Oscars (The Client, Ghost World, and yes even Sleepers). I remember they gave a shout out to Jim "Earnest" Varney in 2001 and his decades long career had no role that was anywhere near Oscar consideration (aside from his two cameos as the Slinky dog in the Toy Story movies). So it probably wasn't related to his past output.

Was it possible snow job by the Academy to hide the fact that Renfro had a sorted death of a drug overdose? It can be said that Heath Ledger did die as well of a drug overdose but accidentally popping too many sleeping pills seems a lot more innocent than overdosing on heroin and morphine. However, the Academy doesn't seem to have had problems with overdoses and suicides in the past. Chris Farley died in one of the most notorious ways possible after a day long orgy or alcohol, drugs, and food; but when the '98 Oscars came around he was up there on the screen. Robert Pastorelli was remembered in 2005, Chris Penn in 2007 (I seem to sense a trend about fat people and cocaine). On top of that, these guys hardly had a career full of Oscar gold.

So if it wasn't his career as an actor nor his dark demise, what could it have been? A personal vendetta? An editing mistake? An unspoken quota on young blonde actor deaths? An indirect chastising of Larry Clarke and anyone who participates in his movies? Or maybe like most of the world when we first heard he had died, they had just forgotten about him.

Brad Renfro

And school's out early and soon we'll be learning and the lesson today is how to die...

As a founding member and semi-regular contributor of my friend Janssen's "Celebrity Death Pun & Conundrum Society" Facebook group, I always have my ear to the ground when it comes to the passing of celebrities of varying fame. It's always interesting to see what clever, esoteric, or (many times) belabored puns we can make about the deceased from Robert Altman ("Suicide would have been painless") to Peter Boyle ("Dead Frankenstein") to Charles Nelson Reilly ("When the doctor looked at his EKG, he saw a ______"). However, given the ever so mercurial nature of the Reaper one could go weeks at a time before a celebrity of a suitable pop culture pedigree (not that there's anything wrong with that; Karl Malden, Nancy Reagan, the cast of Golden Girls you guys keep on trucking) or have a ridiculous day like today when you have reports of three big passings all within a few hours. I am also fully aware that many other "notable" people die everyday like the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Chairman of the Iranian Assembly of Experts, but one must agree that these people lack a certain pop cultural cache.

If you haven't heard already Tom Snyder, Bill Walsh, and Ingmar Bergman all passed away earlier today, all three (well to a lesser extent for Tom) were some of the most accomplished men of their respective fields. I mean there have been crowded days like this before but I found it interesting, the diversity of those that passed. How many Ingmar Bergman fans would know if Bill Walsh or Tom Snyder died, how man Bill Walsh fans cared if Tom Snyder and Ingmar Bergman died, does Tom Snyder even have fans? The final interesting note about the passings were that I learned about both Bergman and Snyder from watching the Critic. I also remember playing Bill Walsh College Football for the SNES at my friends house around the same time thus completing this bizarre 1995 connection.

So here are my final words on:

Tom Snyder
"The Late Late Late Show"

I'm far too young to have even existed for his more famous "Tomorrow with Tom Snyder" but I do remember watching the Late Late show, which for those of you actually younger than me was later hosted by Craig Kilborn and now Craig Ferguson. I recall viewing his incomprehensibly cerebral discussion show as the epitome of what being an adult was about...because it was so boring.

Ingmar Bergman
"Checkmate"

I actually haven't seen a single Ingmar Bergman film myself, although I did see "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" where they parody the whole playing games with Death thing from the "Seventh Seal". Now that I'm getting my Netflix going again maybe I'll get around to seeing at least one. However prospects seem low that there are any nudity filled sex romp action buddy comedies in his filmography.

Bill Walsh
"West Corpse Offense"

Unfortunately no Bill Walsh parody in the Critic to complete the trifecta but a crudely animated representation nevertheless. I again was far too young or not even born to appreciate the three Super Bowls won by his 49ers dynasty. When I watch the NFL films though, I really feel bad for the 1988 Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII. I had for years mistaken George Seifert, who lead the 49ers to Super Bowl wins in 1989 and 1995, with Walsh. Although this mistake is quite understandable considering that they were both similar looking gray haired old white guys.