Rodney Dangerfield Passed Away

Rodney Dangerfield passed away. He was 82 years old. I don't know anybody who didn't like him or didn't think he was funny. He made me feel like comforting him even while making me laugh. I always wanted to say, "You're not so bad looking." or "Your luck will turn around soon."

I have two favorites when it comes to Mr. Dangerfield. One was when he was a guest voice on The Simpsons as Montgomery Burns's long lost son. It's episode 4F05 from season 8. The second of my favorites, is the movie Back to School where he plays the wealthy owner of a chain of clothing stores for big and tall men. In it he attends his son's college to help his son fit in and feel better about himself in general. Of course the plan backfires, as Rodney's character Thornton Melon becomes more popular than any student on the campus. Part of what makes him so unbelievably, and I mean that literally, popular are his outlandish parties featuring Oingo Boingo as the main act (Danny Elfman, former lead singer, wrote the theme for the Simpsons and many movie scores) and his irreverence for his teachers.

You know the movie. You've seen it many times as one of your guilty pleasures. You've watched every time your clicker has fallen on Comedy Central while you were channel surfing on Saturday mornings. You know that the funniest scene in that movie is when he performs his dive the triple Lindy. A dive that is so impossible nobody could possibly do it. And if you know the movie as well as I do, you understand why it's my favorite of his.

Anyway, thank you Rodney Dangerfield for making me laugh. I'll miss you.