I was creeping on various people's twitter pages earlier this evening when I saw people tweeting that Leslie Nielsen had died. For awhile I was sure it was a hoax. One of those absurdisms that has come to define today's media thanks to instant notifications, social networking, on their effects on the news. Alas, I was to learn that it was, in fact, true. Leslie Nielsen, actor, was dead. I hate that this is how I found out. Leslie Nielsen is perhaps the first actor I could identify by name and face. My childhood memories are filled with evenings watching his movies with my parents. While the Naked Gun series is absolutely brilliant (and perhaps the greatest performance by OJ Simpson) and Spy Hard was a double whammy of my childhood heroes (Nielsen and Weird Al? Awesome) the greatest is by far Airplane! It is one of the first "adult" films I remember from my youth and remains one of my favorite comedies. It is the definition and pinnacle of the spoof film. It does to disaster movies what today's spoofs can barely gesture towards (Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, and their ilk? Fuck them). One of the greatest things you can do in your life, and yes I'm absolutely recommending this, is get together with a group of your funniest friends and watch Airplane! together. If they haven't seen it before, all the better.
Leslie Nielsen died of complications from pneumonia in a hospital in Florida. He was with his friends and family.
That last part made me think that there must be a lot of bodies found out in the everglades, half eaten by alligators and the like. Don't you think that would make a good reality show? I mean, Alaska's State Troopers get their own tv show. Wouldn't one where you watch Florida cops going around finding chewed bodies in bloated alligators be even better?
And finally, when I wrote the title to this post it reminded me of that old SNL skit where Dana Carvey was Tom Brokaw and they had him reading prepared obituaries for Gerald Ford as they got more and more ridiculous. That doesn't have to do anything, but its a really funny skit.
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