We love to talk about what's great, what's not so great, and what we like in spite of it being not so great. This is what we're talking about right now.
Billy Mays Passes Away
28 Jun 2009 12:10 pm
What a bad week for pop culture icons! Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and now Billy Mays. Add in the recent death of David Carradine and I'd be shaking in my shoes if I were the king of mini-series or king of paperback thrillers or an iconic designer of the fashion world! Somebody needs to check in on Lee Majors and make sure he's still alive and kicking peddling hearing aids.
I was surprised by David Carradine's death. I didn't see that coming, but, and I know it sounds mean, I think his best work was behind him. Guest starring on a second string Fox summer series? He was better than that! He did go out in the perfect way for conspiracy theorists to fill blogs for a month (like this one).
Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett were both in pretty bad shape. Frankly, they both lived longer than I thought they would and longer than I would have wanted to in their place. Michael Jackson, well, somebody said it best when they said he'd been dead to them for a long time. I wasn't a fan in his heyday and certainly wasn't in his later years. His death is pretty insignificant.
But Billy Mays was at the top of his game! "Pitchmen" was an entertaining show. Billy and Anthony Sullivan would show how a product went from inventor to direct marketing and made it interesting to watch. Did you see the episode with the shark repellent where Anthony Sullivan was testing it by swimming in shark infested waters and Billy was in a boat in front of him chumming the water? Dangerous? Yes! A bad practical joke? Yes! Funny? Yes! It showcased the rivalry between the two while demonstrating their unique personalities. The honesty of the show, so rare in current reality television, was refreshing and unexpected.
And he had something that obnoxious ShamVince never will - likability.