Hello, Mom.
Hello, Miss Shana! And Happy Birthday! (OMG! I haven’t wrapped your presents yet!)
I guess I should get started on my announcements if I can stop getting distracted by my package that came in the mail.
What package?
“What package,” she says! You know, the VHS tapes I ordered from ebay? The Bob Dylan tape, because it had James Taylor on it, and the two other tapes, because they had James Taylor on it?
I’m sorry I asked!
Let’s just say I found some cool stuff on ebay as usual. But Anyway, congratulations on your award!
What award?
You know, the awards Dr. B gave out!
Which awards are you talking about???
The Lifetime Achievement Award!!!
Oh, right……….
Mom, everybody knows about the award by now! Can we possibly move on to the Death Report?
Wait a minute, I haven’t given my acceptance speech yet! Ahem! It all started in a 5,000 watt radio station in Fresno, California….”
Give me that! This is Ted Baxter’s acceptance speech from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”!
How did that get in here? OK, I’m ready now. Ahem! December 7th, 1941. A date that will live in infamy!
Alright, Mom, that’s it! I have a very important Death Report to get to. And by the way, that was FDR’s speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor!
What was that doing here???
Now; as I was saying, the Death Report….
Someone died???
Who hasn’t died! I wish I could say that the Death Report would be easy to swallow this month, but I can’t. Sadly, “Sesame Street” lost original cast member, Emilio Delgado (known for playing Maria’s husband, Luis) at 81.
Here is a tribute video that the official Sesame Street youtube channel put together on Luis. One thing every fan of the show remembers is when Maria and Luis got married in 1988 but that aired before I was born.
Too bad you couldn’t have gotten here sooner.
We also lost an original member of The Funk Brothers, guitarist Joe Messina.
Robert White and Joe Messina
You might want to explain who The Funk Brothers were.
They were the Motown studio band! Joe was recruited by label owner, Berry Gordy, in 1959 out of the Jazz Clubs in Detroit. The Funk Brothers played on hundreds of hit records. Joe played on pretty much all the Motown hits such as “Dancing in the Street”, “I Can’t Help Myself”, and, of course, “My Girl” by The Temptations:
Joe was 93.
We also lost an iconic comedian—Gilbert Gottfried.
Say it isn’t so! He was so funny! He was known for his very loud, obnoxious and annoying voice! Here he is retelling a presumed “conversation” he had with Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick. He said he recommended putting a white whale in the book who bites off the leg of a sea captain, and Melville presumably replied, “What, this huge whale the size of an airport only bites off one tiny leg of this tiny little ship’s captain? I guess he wasn’t very hungry that day; and then what, how does the captain get rescued? The other sailors jump in and rescue him? And perform surgery on his leg without even so much as a Kindergarten education?” And Gilbert says, “Look, I can’t write the whole book for you!”
Here it is:
So listen, this video was really a set-up for the next video, which is a clip from John Oliver’s show “Last Week Tonight” wherein John says, “Have you noticed that no one has ever heard Jared Kushner speak? What does he sound like? Well, luckily, we came across this piece of film….”
Yes, that was Gilbert Gottfried voicing over Jared Kushner! (Jared Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law!) Ha-ha! Gilbert Gottfried was 67. He will be missed.
Mom, we lost your blue-eyed soul brother from South Philly, Bobby Rydell, to pneumonia at 79. He died in Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia.
Oh no! This is a disaster!
Of all those “Elvis clones” from the 1960’s, he was the only one who actually had talent! He could sing and dance…. In fact, he landed the leading role in the classic movie-musical, “Bye Bye Birdie”!
I want you to watch these 2 videos and tell me what his constitutional remedy is. Notice how light he is on his feet, he’s almost lighter than air!
The name of this song is “Good Time Baby”.
My chick’s dynamite, it’s kicks every night, good time baby, let’s go crazy!
And the next one is “Sway”, and by the way, Bobby Rydell is NOT lip-syncing, that’s him performing live!
If you can figure out his constitution, write to me at [email protected] and tell me what you think it is, the answer will be in the May ezine.
That’s it for now, Bye-Bye Bobby!
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Elaine Lewis, DHom, CHom
Elaine takes online cases. Write to her at [email protected]
Visit her website: https://ElaineLewis.hpathy.com
