Mrs. Slocombe, Are You Free?

With all of the detestable, unending ridiculum surrounding the demise of Michael Jackson, a man who has already upstaged the deaths of other celebrities like Farah Fawcett and TV pitchman and screamer Billy Mayes, the death of one more celebrity might just go thoroughly under, or even un-reported-- left ignored in the haze of news of Michael Jackson's final moonwalk.

Mollie Sugden has died.

She was the female rock of "Are You Being Served?" playing the staid and stolid Mrs. Slocombe from 1972-1985. One might have thought she never would have survived this long, that the copious amounts of hair dye that routinely turned her locks into what can only be described as cotton candy on a regular basis would have seeped through the scalp and turned her brain into something resembling fontina cheese many years ago-- but she survived all that.

Mollie Sugden, a dignified lady, sent audiences howling with repeated, straight-faced references to her "pussy," often the reason she had to rush home after a long day of work at Grace Brothers. After all, if she didn't let her pussy out-- who would?

"Mr. Rrrrrumbold," she would say in that royal tone of hers, a pink eyebrow severely raised, "I cannot possibly stay late for a staff meeting tonight-- there's my pussy to consider!"

And consider it we did.

Sugden was a unique actress, the likes of which we probably will never see on television again. She was always at least upper middle age in our minds, and her famous character, Mrs. Slocombe was obsessed with correctness and class, and yet had the unique ability to deliver vulgar, coarse lines with a total air of naivete about her, a complete ignorance that she had said anything objectionable or foul. Mollie Sugden was a comedienne in a world that isn't quite sure it knows what that means anymore. She was Grace Brothers' graceful matriarch, and those of us who grew up with that show and that store won't soon forget her lovely contribution to television history.

She didn't seek to change the world, to make it her oyster, to dominate the public sphere and demand that the world stop the moment she passed away. She didn't seek headlines or scandal or vainglorious attention the way other people of note do. She was a quiet woman who lived in Guildford, married to the same man for forty-two years-- a feat most celebrities seem unable to accomplish. She was a quiet woman who, at the age of five, read a silly poem at a Christmas pageant that had everybody collapsing about with laughter. She was a woman who realized early on in life, "how wonderful it was to make people laugh."

I thank you for the laughs, dear. And I am unanimous in that.

The Famous & The Dead

David Carradine...

Farrah Fawcett....

Ed McMahon.....

and, the grand Daddy of them all...

The Queen of Pop.

June has been a pretty bad month for celebrities. I'm glad I'm not a celebrity. I wouldn't want to die in June, particularly this one. It would be a real bumfuck to die during one of the coolest Junes in recent history.

But, you know what they say about death: you don't get to choose. Unless, of course, you're a suicide. You don't have to worry about me on that score, though. Way too much to live for. Way too scared.

Though I'm by no means a suicide risk, I do have to say I'm not altogether too thrilled about waking up tomorrow and hearing people memorialize and mythologize Michael Jackson. My place of employ is going to be electrified with moronic, dunderheaded, pointless drivel about him, and I kind of wish I could spend tomorrow locked in my basement, just kind of let it all pass by without having to listen to any of it-- that would be seriously fine by me. I don't want to listen to people remembering practicing the "Moon Walk" in their parents' basement while wearing feet pajamas. I don't want to hear about some dickhead's first kiss to "Beat It." I mean, who would have their first kiss to "Beat It" anyway? I mean, I'm sure more than a couple pre-adolescent boys had their first kisses that way down at the Neverland Ranch, but that's their problem.

I wonder about the EMTs and paramedics who responded to the 911 call, though. I do wonder about them. I wonder how I would have behaved had I been summoned to render aid to Michael Jackson. It was obviously a critical emergency, and I'd like to think that I would have been all business, but, it's Michael Jackson. I mean, how can you actually tell he's dead? I guess that's where cardiac monitors come in. Can you just step back and picture yourself giving CPR to that man? I mean, fine, as a healthcare professional, you'd be using at least a barrier so your lips wouldn't have to directly touch Michael Jackson's dubious lips, but still... Just picture it.

Weird.

Also weird-- they're going to perform an autopsy on him, probably tomorrow. How'd you like to be the coroner in charge of that one? Wouldn't you be petrified of what you'd.... find.... in there? I mean, again, it's Michael Jackson. Who the fuck knows what's hiding in there? Maybe he had a titanium duodenum retrofitted, or a small, waterproof music box that plays "Black or White" during digestion. There could be small animals living inside there. Way fucked up. Couldn't pay me enough to cut that shit open and take a peek. Sorry.

As part of my EMT training, I was required to attend an autopsy at the morgue of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. The deceased was your typical old lady-- distended belly, pale, flabby skin. Her wristbracelet said she was 87. No toe-tags. I guess that's just in the movies. She died of cancer but, since she passed away in the hospital, I think an autopsy was required. The gentleman in charge of the morgue at Jefferson was conducting the autopsy, and he cautioned me about professionalism and decorum around the dead.

"A couple years ago, I had a bunch of EMT students in here observing an autopsy on a deceased gentleman. When I cut into the lining of the stomach, a small piece of feces popped out, sailed through the air, and landed on the head of the deceased. This one EMT student, who I later found out was at the top of her class and was certain to graduate with distinction, blurts out, 'Wow! I guess he's a real shithead!' Well, I threw her fucking ass out of my examination room and, when the autopsy was over, I called the head of your EMT program and had her kicked the fuck out. So, just so you know-- in here: you watch your ass, and your mouth."

Needless to say, I was a very, very quiet EMT student for this autopsy. With my mouth, as long as it's open, there's the risk of trouble, so it was firmly shut. I helped him weigh the various internal organs. I helped him saw through the skull to expose the brain. After the top of the skull was off, he told me to cup my hands beneath the deceased woman's head. He snipped around the brain a few times with the forceps and, before I knew what was happening-- plop! -- her brain was in my hands.

You never forget that, I expect.

The philosophy behind requiring EMT students to attend autopsies is, I suppose, to get them comfortable with death, or at least acquainted with it. As a healthcare provider, you're going to be exposed to death eventually, so it probably should be done first in a controlled environment, where you're not responsible for the demise of the individual who has passed on. Plus, it's an incomparable anatomy lesson-- far better than any ditto sheet or textbook illustration.

It does smell worse than textbooks and ditto sheets, though. If you think regular, live old people smell, and they do, try being around a dead one whose rectum has just been cut open.

They say that an autopsy robs a corpse of its dignity, but I think people who say that have never actually been to an autopsy, at least not one conducted by the chief coroner at Jefferson Hospital. This man treats his corpses, well, like patients, and that's not always an easy or expeditious thing for a coroner to do. I trust that the coroner who stands before the corpse of Michael Jackson will do likewise, though I'm pretty sure Michael Jackson's dignity was lost a long time before his final breath.

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors

We all know that commercials have persistently and painfully suckled all the joy out of watching network television. If I never see another ad for Tucks Medicated Pads, endure Sally Field and her disintegrating bones, grind my teeth through a thousandth bitchy woman in a sweaterset preparing rich, chocolate Ovaltine for a hoard of Mormon children or hear Wilford Brimley utter the word "Dia-beat-us" ever again, I will die a happy man.

The internet, though it is a free-flowing river of social liberties, endless, creative pornography and clickable shopping, is no freer from the chains of advertising than television. I spent a little time this past week collecting some of my favorite banner ads that appear over my Yahoo Mail. Rest assured, I didn't save any of the banner ads that appear of all the sites I visit, or I'd be in trouble with some of my more conservative readers (Hi, Salt Lake City!)

We'll start with my favorite one:

I mean-- why do I need to click on this? Isn't it obvious?

She's a drug dealer. And/or a prostitute.

Personally, I'm afraid to click on banner ads. I've never done it, and I'm reasonably convinced that something terrible will happen to my computer and/or my humanity if I do click on one. I was actually afraid just to right-click on them to save them to my hard-drive. I mean, does your brain get slow and sloppy once you start clicking banner ads? Do you become a fat woman named Gladys who sits in a fart-enrobed La-Z-Boy watching The Price is Right while Fritos adhere themselves to your ass dimples? I mean, I'm sure it's not an instantaneous process, but that's how it starts at any rate.

What the hell were we talking about? Oh, right-- banner ads. We're used to thinking of ads and commercials as existing to sell us a product of some kind. Well, the internet has changed all that. Now, we need to acclimate ourselves to the idea that there are some ads that exist, ostensibly, to ask us dumbfuck questions like:

And,

Lots of people love to give their opinions on things (scientists call these people "bloggers") and I'm sure that fat Gladys' the world over are thrilled to think that their opinion about a Jacko rebirth or Madonna's ill-achieved 1989 Diane Keaton look, and that they might actually receive something of value in return for their meaningless opinions. Which they won't. No Old Navy gift card for you, Bad Gladys! You'd just spend it on solid color t-shirts that you would sew together to make a hammock for your dimple-ass.

Don't worry, though, there are still banner ads that are trying to sell us shit we don't need.

I mean, I certainly don't need Resveratrol. I'm a twenty-eight year old male. And I'm pretty sure that you don't need it either, whether you've got wrinkles or not. First of all, Dr. Oz likes this, so you automatically know it's bullshit. Second of all, if you have wrinkles, learn to love them-- they ain't going anywhere.

I have to admit, though, I started feeling kind of weird about my life when I kept seeing these kinds of ads popping up over my inbox:

And, um, this one:

I mean-- hasn't internet trolling and tracking gotten better than this? Aren't they supposed to be monitoring my shopping and viewing and clicking habits? Aren't they supposed to know I don't look like I'm ready to start up a canasta league with Betty White? Why are you trying to sell me stairchairs, bedpans and Botox? Come on, interwebz, I thought ye knew me better than ye do.

Then I see a banner ad like that and I say, "Ah. They've got me." Two things of which I am very much afraid: my mortgage, and my death. Good job, interwebz.

They've also really got my number with this beauty, too:

No, I don't have a flabby mancrush for Hugh Downs-- but I do always think I'm having a heart attack. I'm reasonably convinced I'm having one right now, actually. Will you pay off my mortgage in the event of my death?

I joke about the necessity for these heart attack symptom ads that allow Mr. Hugh Downs to continue to make his mortgage payments prior to the event of his death, but, evidently, there is a need, a real need for ads like his. Because products exist in this society that were invented, it seems, for the sole purpose of hastening our demise...

Like Bacon. Salt.

Other ads play to our insecurities and our competitive nature, by asking us, in much the same vein as "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" if we think our intellect can best that of someone else's.

They often post Miley Cyrus', Sarah Palin's and, to make the playing field fair, Tiny Tim. On a whim, inspired by this ad, I went to a website that offers free IQ tests, because I'd never taken one. The first question read something like this:

"Three dogs, six chickens and four llamas are standing in a farmyard in Chernobyl. How many legs do they have?"

I froze. Math. I clicked the beautiful red X in the upper right-hand corner of my screen immediately. Obviously, I am not smarter than Barack Obama, but I'm probably not smarter than Miley or Tiny either.

Oh well, at least I know what to season my food with.

Jacksoniana

Julien's Auctions has announced that it is auctioning off the single largest collection of Michael Jackson's personal effects.

While this is an admittedly lean financial time for most people, the chance to own any item from the soon-to-be shuttered Neverland ranch is probably going to be irresistable for those with even meager liquid assets.

According to the New York Times, this is a small sampling of what will be on the auction block:

A King's crown (I don't know which King, and Jackson probably doesn't know either.)

A sceptre (presumably the property of the same unknown monarch.)

An ice-cream cart (brand unspecified, used to lure boys.)

A life-sized Llego model of Darth Vader (same purpose.)

A life-sized (?) model of E.T. (Ibid.)

The New York Times article teeters on the edge of decency when it states:

"When Mr. Jackson likes something, he really likes it. Bronze garden statues of young children frolic by the dozen. Disney cartoon characters, along with Peter Pan — whose Neverland island gave the Jackson estate its name — pop up in paintings and figurines, sometimes dressed like their collector. "

As I said, this is just a a small sampling of what was published in the newspaper. Through unnamed sources, I was fortunate enough to obtain the complete list of items that are for sale at the auction. While I am up to my eye-tits in painter's estimates and mortgage payments, those of you with more financial leverage and unorthodox tastes might want to take notes:

10 full body stockings in varying shades of white, off-white, bone, cream, clown, and porcelain.

Taxidermied remains of Bubbles the Chimp, dressed in sequinced jumpsuit.

16 nun's habits, varying sizes. Rosary beads missing.

Seven frozen lemmings on sticks (found inside ice cream cart.)

1 Brazillian waxing kit (condition, poor)

Life-size statue of Joe Jackson (limbs, head and thorax missing.)

Life-size statue of Candice Bergen.

Life-size statue of Italian marathon athlete and gold medalist (Barcelona, 1992) Rosa Mota.

Five hundred and forty-six boxes of "Lucky Charms," all opened.

1 Panzer IV tank, gold-plated with rhinestones appliqued to gun turrets, license plate "GLVD 1."

12 copies of "The Jewish Book of Why."

Improvised flower and candle shrine to late "Family Feud" host Richard Dawson.

Handwritten card (blue crayon) to Barack Obama that begins, "Are you my mother?"

Manual "An Idiot's Guide to At-Home Rhinoplasty" (supplemental CD missing.)

14 assorted prosthetic limbs (varying colors, some in poor condition.)

6 Swarovski-encrusted surgical masks.

Letter (pencil) to Peter Sellers co-star Herbert Lom that ends, "Are you my mother?"

37,532 international-rate postage stamps (licked.)

5 cartons of unmarked ointment tubes.

December, 1996 issue of "Vintage Motorworks" magazine.

Envelope containing bone shavings and accompanying note of support from Sally Field.

I hope you will consider bidding on some of these lesser-disclosed items. Add a little Jacksoniana to your humble home, and score your own little piece of Neverland today.