You mean he wasn't dead before?

OK Bob Hope is dead, and this is indeed a sad day, except for idiots like myself who didn't realize he was still alive. I am reminded of something that happened to me in college. I read this article in the New York Times about J.D. Salinger and I kept thinking "Funny, they write about him as if he is still alive." And then I realized he WAS still alive ( still is actually). It wouldn't have been so bad if my mother hadn't thought it too.

Here is the reverse problem - much the same problem that Ed Wood came across when he tried to get work for Bela Lagosi. For those who are unfamiliar, the Tim Burton film about Ed Wood, called interestingly enough Ed Wood, has a montage of Wood calling a variety of people trying to get Bela work and he keeps having to say "No he's not dead." (Of course, he soon would be. Wood would try and make a film out of the spare footage he shot with Lugosi and that film would become Plan 9 from Outerspace voted the worst film of all time. Suddenly I am beginning to feel like Joe Bob Briggs of monstervision) Burton's film has one of the greatest lines in film "You don't work for two years and no one gives two fucks for Bela" pronounced by the Academy Award winning Martin Landau.

What's really sad is that most people know me as a movie person. I can quote Tony Curtis, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn (sniff, okay I should have written something about her I am duly chastised for not writing about the woman who appeared in two of my favorite films Bringing Up Baby and Holiday), but Hope a little out of my range and so for my inspirational quote I will leave the one Bob Hope line I know, from Spies Like Us.

BH: Doctor, Doctor (looks at audience) Glad I'm not sick.