the summer the 70s died

david carradine, then the first second banana, ed mcmahon. then back-to-back, farrah fawcett and michael jackson, within hours of each other.

carradine's end was tawdry, trussed up nekkid in a thai hotel room. ex-wives and sex-toy sellers sliming out from under rocks onto the tv for a few seconds of airtime to discuss his proclivities. if you divorced the guy because his kink freaked you out, why go on larry king? why attach yourself to something you abhor, that nobody wanted or needed to know about you and your famous ex? if any love remains in your heart, grieve privately. if you think the guy was a sick perv, offer your own note of grace to his unfortunate and accidental death. stay home and shut up. if you own a dildo store, well, whatevs, i guess. so everybody's kung fu fightin' for a slice.

mcmahon was sick, broken-down and broke. his mansion had been rotting from invasive mold, he had defaulted numerous times on his mortgage and had a tangled skein of lawsuits with contractors, doctors and attorneys. (at one point, he was estimated to be worth over $200 million. he was behind less $500k on the house, but won $7 million in the mold suit. why was he still in arrears on the casa? i will never comprehend hollywood money. although booze and roulette aren't generally considered sound investments. nor are ex-wives. but he only had 2 of those...) supposedly his last whore-wife/widow was a compulsive shopper. thirty years on the couch with johnny, bloopers with dick clark, star search, all those publisher's clearinghouse ads, blurbs for bud, game shows... where was the dough, ed? in the end, he was a very sick old man, who spent the last month of his life in the intensive care unit with pneumonia, dying from bone cancer .

he never stooped to writing tell-alls, never blabbed about behind-the-scenes or aired anybody else's dirty laundry, of which i'm sure he saw and smelled LOTS, having been in show biz 70 years. old school. any of you twittering kids taking notes? oh, right. you forget how to write on paper and tweets are for twits and only 140 characters. that will not do for teaching grasshopper life lessons in dignity. even though that guffaw of his, that i heard nightly from my parents' tv downstairs, was anything but, lol.

farrah had been dying for awhile. only 1600 american women receive a diagnosis of anal cancer each year. it's very rare, and most often a result of hpv infection. so, yeah, butt sex can give you cancer, kids. she thought she beat it, but when it came back, she jetted off to europe for all sorts of dubious alternate "cures". her "friends" and long-time lover ryan o'neal were all over tv, "mourning" her imminent demise. seriously? when was the last time you saw kate jackson or alanna stewart not on tvland, ffs? or o'neal in the news NOT for drugs or guns? nipped, tucked, washed-up and washed-out, vampires on her deathbed. they even made some sort of maudlin documentary in her final days, that aired on nbc. o'neal was going on about finally marrying her before she expired. undying amore? um, i'm thinking money grab, that his "paper moon" and "love story" loot went up his nose long ago. yuk.

she had made that krazee letterman appearance and had a reality show, "chasing farrah." ( i think.) i watched part of an episode. it was too much trainwreck even for me. she was out of her mind, looped on something, utterly illucid and surrounded by sycophants. she'd already had a lot of very poor plastic surgery and her beauty was bent and broken, ruined by bad knives and unseeing vanity.

that hair, that smile. her red swimsuit and her role as jill munroe and america's first taste of "jiggle tv" ("once upon a time, 3 little girls went to the police academy"... holy crap!! lmoa, sexist, much?) were blips in her life, yet cast giant shadows over any later accomplishments or aspirations. she was brilliant in the "burning bed", won raves for "extremities" and i think i am the only one who saw her quiet remarkable performance in "the apostle" with robert duvall.

her only kid was in and out of jail and rehab. her looks fading, her mind unreliable (even if it was from meds), and her health abandoning her, i so wished she had just stayed home. forbidden the hyena frenzy on morning chats and larry king. gaaaaaah. why do you want to be dying in prime-time? it was all too ghoulish, and i admit i am a sicko.

but farrah doesn't get the front page today because the king of pop appears to have gone out much like the last king, from a drug overdose. demerol. the tox screen will take weeks, but something tells me that won't be the only elixir he was getting from his own personal dr. nichopolous.

is there a secret sub-specialty at certain med schools for hollywood doctoring? recently i had to have a rib re-located by my doctor. she has been my doc over 15 years. i fainted from the pain. she gave me tylenol, ffs. i know enough money means essentially no barriers in your life. when it's mountainous bankrolls in the hands of the ever-increasingly loony, we see the same sad end over and over. the doctor as enabler, to keep his lifestyle up and running too. never mind that pesky, "1st do no harm" caveat, eh?

a prodigy, beaten and called "big nose" by his abusive father. at 5, little michael was already kicking it on stage and it wasn't long before guys like sam and dave and barry gordy were helping push the train. i remember the brothers had a variety show, just like donny and marie, and i pranced in my danskins, with full-on jazz-hands, on the living room shag when they sang "one bad apple". "off the wall" and "thriller" (still the best-selling album of all time) were part of my high-school soundtrack, and we played the albums over and over and over. our moms surely knew the words as well as we did, lol. his videos were dazzling epics, and he was the first black artist to get aired on mtv. he was the most popular performer in the world.

then he moonwalked right into krazyville. his hair caught on fire. he built neverland because he "never had a childhood." he married lisa marie presley. that interview with the 2 of them and diane sawyer was so surreal, it was like a fever dream. their kiss? aaaggghh... bubbles the chimp, emmanuel lewis, plastic surgery and ever lightening skin. he morphed from a little afro'ed black kid to diana ross, to a broken down white spinster lady. recent shots of him without a nose and melted ears...

maccauley culkin, sleep-overs and jesus juice. pretend admiral outfits and peter pan. little boys with cancer, litigious parents and gag orders. what dying kid's make-a-wish is, " i wanna sleep in michael jackson's bed, mommy"? rehab, lawsuits, more rehab. baster babies named curtain rod, blanket and futon. (or some such.) self-exile in bahrain, to fuck little camel jockey boys with impunity, i guess? hundreds of millions of disappeared dollars ballooning into ever bigger hindenburgs of debt. strings of canceled tours and charities that never saw a single promised dime.

apparently, u.s. law states a dead person cannot be libeled. i don't know what kind of recourse an estate would have, and the shark fight over his fortune (whatever that now means) and legacy will be horrible. papps were parasitically on-site so there are shots of his face under an oxygen mask, his lifeless body being rolled into the ambulance. (his hair was perfect..) the 911 call is on-line already. cnn followed his body from his rented mansion to the medical center. candids of his mother and siblings in the e.r. are posted on tmz. yes, the guy was completely cuckoo, but he was one of the most brilliant pop talents ever, as well as a son, a brother and a father, ya know?

imelda marcos, hugo chavez and corey feldman all had something to say. eddie van halen (smoking secret guitarist on "beat it"); martin scorsese (director of the "bad" video); dick clark, quincy jones and madonna all made statements as did sir elton. elizabeth taylor is too overcome to speak. arnold schwarzenegger, al sharpton and heidi montag piped up too.

there will be moonwalking at the eiffel tower on sunday and a philipino prison guard has already organized his 1500 prisoners into a synchronized dance tribute to "thriller". not all the memorials will be tasteful, i guess, huh?

really, though, there was no other logical ending for him, was there?

i need a bath.