Elderly Celebrities Relieved Hackett Was the One to Go

he death of legendary comedian Buddy Hackett early last week at the age of 78 was met with fond remembrances and tributes from his family and fans, and a collective relieved sigh from the nation’s remaining elderly celebrities.

“You know how the saying goes,� explained Bob Hope, 100. “Celebrities always die in threes. After Peck and Hepburn went, every celebrity over 60 had to wonder if they would be next. Actually, I think most of these assholes thought it would be me. Maybe I’m just oversensitive, but I was definitely getting some strange looks last week.�

“To be honest, I thought it would be Bob Hope,� confessed comedian Red Buttons, 85. “How old is that guy? He’s definitely cheating death at this point. That guy’s so old he looks like a big walking scrotum. If he gets any older, some far-off king’s gonna have to wrap him up in a silk box like a goddamned royal tortoise. When he does go they might have to count that as three celebrity deaths wrapped in one, like some kind of loophole for rolling over the oldometer.�

Some elderly celebrities handled the superstitious deathwatch more gracefully than others, with actress Fay Wray, 96, noted by loved ones for her calm demeanor and total lack of response to external stimuli all week. Comedian Sid Caesar, 81, took the threat more seriously, locking himself in a hyperbaric chamber with a pistol upon hearing the news of Hepburn’s death. “Let ‘em come and get me,� Caesar was quoted as snarling as the door to the chamber was sealed. It was unclear whether Caesar was referring to old age or gremlins.

“I liked Buddy and all, but if it was between him and me, and it was, I’d pick me. So I’m glad it was him. He was probably in bad shape, anyway,� rambled Phyllis Diller, 86. “Probably had a compacted bowel or the snorts or something, he’s probably better off. I definitely am.�

While talking to a pair of twentysomething autograph-seekers, actor Mickey Rooney, 83, commented on his fondness for Hackett, with whom he once shared an ice cream. Rooney then answered his fans’ queries by explaining that Hackett was neither the mascot for Lee jeans nor the inventor of the hackey sack.

As they walked away, one fan was heard commenting to the other.

“Jesus Christ, Mickey Rourke looks like shit!�

Actor Karl Malden, 90, eulogized earnestly about Bob Hope’s career for 20 minutes before this reporter could adequately explain that it had been Hackett, not Hope, who passed away last week.

“Nah, you’re funnin’ me,� colloquialized Malden. “If Bob Hope’s still alive, how come he’s been haunting my dreams all week? Unless that was Eli Wallach. Hmm. Is that bastard still alive? Tell you the truth; it starts to get hard to tell ‘em apart after a certain age, they all take on that Jacob Marley look after about 80. Shit, maybe it was the Ghost of Christmas Past! Gah! What’d I give you last Christmas, the bath towel or the VCR?�

This reporter left Mr. Malden to his soul-searching, opting to pursue a quote and a Dilly bar from a passing ice-cream truck driver.

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The best part of being a professional Research Editor (and if you don't capitalize that you're shit out of luck if you expect a response email) and knowing shitloads about history is that you get to spend most of your time laughing at how stupid people were in the past. Which is even more fun than it sounds. Not that people are any smarter now, but the true scope of any period's idiocy only becomes vividly clear in retrospect.

Most people don't know, for example, that back when X-rays were invented they weren't used for any breakthrough life-saving medical purposes. They used them to X-ray people's feet in shoe stores to make sure their shoes fit right. I shit you not. And it wasn't until the store employees started growing dicks on their dicks like weird sex-cactus nightmares and other Stephen King nonsense that they put two and two together and figured out that all the store employees should run and hide behind a felt tarp when the Foot-o-Scope was turned on. Years later somebody realized that there was a reason all the regular customers were having their feet turn to chalk, so the shoe stores sold all their Foot-o-Scopes to hospitals, which began using them to X-ray pregnant women daily to make sure their fetuses were turning out okay.

Foot-o-Scopes were outlawed by the 1950's, though some were still found to be in use in West Virginia and other third-world states well into the 1980's. Shocking as this may seem, it is important to remember that the state of West Virginia is officially 100 years behind the times, and is kept that way by the federal government to encourage tourism. It's like a giant state-sized Truman Show. The reason there are so many UFO sightings in West Virginia is that the state's residents have not yet invented the aeroplane, and commercial flights passing over the state scare the bejesus out of everyone on the ground.

However, this is an exciting time to be a West Virginian, since the early 1900's were the golden age of misguided medical innovation. Only now are West Virginians experiencing the joys of phrenology, the science of determining personality by measuring the size of your head. Phrenologists used head-measuring devices that look like what you'd use to measure someone's head if you only had a vegetable colander and an acupuncture set at your disposal. It was thought at the time that different parts of the brain controlled different organs, and it went without saying that each of these organs controlled a personality trait (hence the terms "That guy was a dick," "What an asshole," and "Just tackle the wolf, you pussy!"). So if the subject being measured had a lump on his skull in a certain spot, obviously his brain was so overdeveloped in that area it was pushing his skull out like a baking potato.

This theory was soon followed to its logical conclusion when medical marvel and part-time turkey hunter James "Lumpy" Monroe was named President for Life and God Among Men of the National Phrenology Association for his freakishly cauliflower-like skull. This crowning achievement of the phrenology movement was short-lived, however, and the practice was dealt a crippling blow soon after his election when Lumpy Monroe drown while attempting to quench his thirst by leaving his mouth open in a rainstorm.

Part of the reason phrenology proved so popular in the early 20th century was that people had just figured out that bloodletting was bullshit and were eager to find something new to spend their healthcare dollars on, since back in that day all doctors could really do was take your pulse and give you "pills." I say "pills" because all prescription drugs were the same thing back then, capsules containing a mixture of cocaine, morphine and alcohol that were put into different bottles depending on what your problem was. The pills didn't actually cure anything, but nobody complained since they were drunk and high all the time.

Believe it or not, this was actually a step forward for Western medicine, since previously people had believed that the only way to get well was to get the sick out of your body by whatever means necessary. From the middle ages through the 1800's, doctors starved, bled and beat the shit out of sick people both for the patient's health and for their own personal enjoyment. And though the starving and the ass-kicking were the most fun for the doctors, bloodletting was by far the most popular cure for everything from abdominal cramps to bad luck.

Doctors and barbers both got in on the act, though the latter was more a serendipitous accident involving poorly-trained barbers. The barbers had a leg up on the doctors when it came to marketing, however, and they came up with the barber pole to make blood draining out of an arm look fun, while all the doctors could come up with was a couple of scary-assed snakes humping a light pole, which probably drove away more customers than it attracted.

Doctors coined the term "phlebotomy" for the practice, combining "phlegm," the scientific term for throat snot, with "botomy," the medical term meaning the removal of an important body part for no good reason. Phlebotomy flourished despite the fact that a doctor killed George Washington by leaving the former president draining while he went away for a weekend of golf. The American Civil War marked the height of the craze, when over 500,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were cured of aggressive tendencies through battlefield phlebotomy.

The annals of medical dumbshitery are much thicker than could ever be covered in one column, but rest assured this topic will be revisited the next time I have to go see my idiot doctor.

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I admit I have been away from my game for quite a while, so forgive me if some of my best conspiracy theories have already been doled out to you from lesser sources. Have you heard yet that Kim Jong Il is a Cabbage Patch Kid?

Oh, yeah. Well, it's not secret over there. You know how non-Chinese Asian culture has this weird hang-up on celebrating all things America. If you thought it was just the Japanese with their Shonen Knife bands and pompadour haircuts, guess again, friend. The Koreans have always admired our culture, except for the years we were bombing theirs into non-existence. Chiefly their big beloved American fad has always been Cabbage Patch Kids.

In fact, that's how Kim Jong Il managed to seize power. The Koreans weren't initially fond of him, but he used his dad's neverending supply of wealth (by Korean standards) to buy the remnants of the Coleco company and hire scientists to integrate over time his DNA with remaining Cabbage Patch Doll design prints.

It was a brilliant ploy, and you can certainly see the resemblance when you see pictures of the chubby-cheeked, short-statured little menace. But I wouldn't credit him with the originality. His older brother whom we've never heard of, Kim Jong Duc, he was the sharp knife in the drawer over there. He conceived of the idea, then foolishly entrusted his staff, all old football buddies from college, to gather the necessary data to put the plan into operation. Well, to North Koreans, Cabbage Patch and Garbage Pail Kid fads are virtually indistinguishable, so you can imagine the horrible offspring from that failed experiment. He was locked away in some basement in the palace of Pongyang, leaving Kim Jong Il unquestionably in charge of the dynasty, and for once, the attractive one in the family.

It took little more than a show of his adorable little adoption papers for the North Korean people to fall in love with this porky dictator, and they pledged undying loyalty to him immediately. Of course, there's little ways to prove this to most people who suspect the information false. Nothing short of pulling down Kim Jong Il's pants and exposing the signature of Xavier Roberts on his fat back cheeks will constitute proof in their eyes. But proof only constitutes one-third of proving something, as we know. The other two-thirds involves wanting to believe it's true and stating it very loudly for all to hear.

Don't insult yourself by asking me where I get my information, since we both know I'm not telling you. Let's just say the guy is an old confidant who has never failed me before, and be reassured I would tell you his name if I could remember. But now that we know the cause of Kim Jong Il's popularity, and I would say you could list linking Cabbage Patch DNA with his own is a possible reason for his deep-seated insanity, we can make every attempt possible to roust him from power.

The CIA, those lovable self-starters, are already at work on this, of course. Given that assassination will cause an international incident, possible war, and create a martyr out of remaining Cabbage Patch Dolls, the Agency has only one solid alternative solution: Create a beloved dictator even more popular than Kim Jong Il. To this end they've been experimenting with genetically-altered Smurf men and other such experiments. Early attempts to create a human-Donkey Kong hybrid were embarrassing failures, and the guy is still throwing barrels off the top of the Sears Tower. More on this as it develops, of course, and if any of you happen to see a living human being who looks strikingly like Howdy Doody, don't hesitate to contact me here for a suitable reward. I'll make you a reporter or something, promise.

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