Re: James Doohan

1

I wonder why he waited 25 years or so to have kids by his third wife. 55 or 60 is not so crazy, but 80 is pretty weird. How old was his wife? If she was 20 when she married him, she was 46 when she had the kids. Was she 20 when she got married? That's pretty young.

horizontal rule
2

Eric has written a book and so is probably reasonably old. Maybe Sarah was a surprise.

horizontal rule
3

We only know that the last kid came late. The first two with the third wife could have been back in the 70s and poor Sara might have been an accident.

horizontal rule
4

A sentence of death to any editorial cartoonist who shows him being pulled up to heaven with the caption, "Beam him up!" Same applies when Shatner or Nimoy die.

horizontal rule
5

In first, with more information, a link and proper spelling. You are so pwned, bza.

horizontal rule
6

She was 43. So, 54-year-old Scotty married a 16-year-old? Weird.

horizontal rule
7

I mean 17.

horizontal rule
8

A sentence of death to any editorial cartoonist who shows him being pulled up to heaven with the caption, "Beam him up!" Same applies when Shatner or Nimoy die.

"At Least He Prospered" is a much funnier Nimoy death joke, anyway.

(I tried to come up with something for Shatner, but it's hard to wring any really good puns out of the word "TekWar")

horizontal rule
9

Question: is there another actor who is most famous for a role in which they spoke in an accent not their own?

horizontal rule
10

Mel Blanc?

horizontal rule
11

Peter Sellars?

horizontal rule
12

That is, "Sellers".

horizontal rule
13

To 5:

Conceded. But stay polite or I'll reveal to this site your nickname from grad school.

horizontal rule
14

bza is in contempt of blog until he/she reveals Weiner's nickname.

(Why does a guy named Weiner need a nickname?)

horizontal rule
15

"The Meatman Magic Matt Weiner."

Snickering at just plain "Weiner" would have no art to it.

horizontal rule
16

Big The Committments fan?

horizontal rule
17

I didn't make it up, but no, I'm pretty sure it's not a Commitments reference. I think it was supposed to simultaneously pick the long-hanging fruit of the phallic joke and poke fun at MW's basketball skills via comparison to Karl Malone. And the pimpin' flavor of the whole thing is at odds with his social persona.

horizontal rule
18

Did anyone else find this a strange use of the word "apocryphal"?

"James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original 'Star Trek' TV series and motion pictures who responded to the apocryphal command 'Beam me up, Scotty,' died early Wednesday."

horizontal rule
19

I took it to mean that the line was never uttered on an episode. But it was a little strange.

horizontal rule
20

Shucks, I didn't know that line was never actually uttered in the series. If that's the case, I suppose "apocryphal" kinda fits.

horizontal rule
21

God damn you, person whose name it would still be completely unforgivable to reveal, so I won't do it. And you reveal that my social persona is non-pimpin' too? I am crushed, crushed.

The person who coined that name always claimed--to me--that it came out more or less randomly.

horizontal rule
22

Here's the first predictably terrible real media headline for the Doohan death that I've seen.

horizontal rule
23

19 is perfectly true. Scotty beamed lots of people up and down, and Kirk often asked to be beamed up, but never did he (or anyone else) say "Scotty, beam me up," any more more than Humphrey Bogart ever said "Play it again, Sam."

9: an awful lot of the people who came out of vaudeville and were in movies of the Twenties and Thirties; Chico Marx is probably one of the few names who would still be well-remembered. But I have quite a few more recent examples floating in the back of my head.

I had a number of links and observations here, if anyone cares, including a link to one of my accounts of the time I met Doohan.

horizontal rule
24

"He's Dead, Jim" is so lovely in its awfulness.

horizontal rule
25

I canna take much more of this.

horizontal rule
26

"He's Dead, Jim" is so lovely in its awfulness.

Agreed. Then there's this headline.

horizontal rule
27

Lieberman... said their message to Bush essentially was, "Don't send us an extremist that's going to blow the place up, and first look is that that's exactly what he has not done."

The thing is Lieberman meant that literally.

horizontal rule
28

Why is Lieberman such a tool?

horizontal rule
29

Pretty much every blog in creation seemed to think they were being original, creative, and clever, in using some variation of "Beam me up" as a header.

Respectful, too.

horizontal rule
30

On my way in this morning, it occurred to me that the answer to #9 is George W. Bush. This would have been sort of clever had I thought of it at the right time.

horizontal rule