Why Couldn't It Have Been the Butter Face Lady?

I know I mentioned a while ago on here that, as a child, I routinely read the obituaries in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I would joke, "to see if I'm in there."

I was only half kidding.

Today, I sometimes spend a little time sifting through the obituaries in The New York Times for a slightly less bizarre reason. I like to learn about interesting people. And it's funny how most interesting people, similarly, in fact, to uninteresting people, don't seem to get much attention until after they're dead. Sure, there are heaps of feature articles on Susan Boyle or whatever, but how many in-depth pieces do you remember reading about Peter Falk until recent unfortunate events?

Today, I got to learn a little bit about Norma Lyon and, because I found her interesting enough to read about, and write about, you're going to learn about her, too.

THey called her the "Butter-Cow Lady", and it's not because everything about her was awesome, but her cow. It's because she devoted a significant portion of her life to replicating animate and inanimate objects out of, you guessed it my little honors track student: butter.

The Iowa State Fair was a far creepier and more wonderous place with Ms. Norma around, because she would routinely enter gigantic, often life-sized sculptures in the fair, and I doubt she had much competition.

She was a devoted wife of 61 years, and mothered and raised 9 children, and yet she still had time to make a grade AA salted butter version of "The Last Supper," a full-sized dairy cow, and a 23-pound sculpture of Barack Obama's head to accompany her (solicited) 60 second radio endorsement while Obama was running for office.

"He knows our kids need opportunity here in Iowa so they don’t have to leave home to follow their dreams," she said in the ad. "Even if that dream is 500 pounds of butter shaped like a cow."

Hey, it sounds like some of the dreams I've had after eating chips and salsa too late at night.

It might seem like I'm poking fun at the late Ms. Norma Lyon, but really I have nothing but the purest admiration for not only her talent, and her passion, but for achieving mastery. That's something I've never done-- at anything. Certainly there are things that I'm good at, things at which I can admit I do well, but I've never achieved mastery at an art form, or mastery at a job-- I always leave too soon. Norma Lyon crafted things out of butter, and she was no amateur at doing so, and I respect and admire that.

I used to think that being a professional meant you got paid to do something. I don't know how the Iowa State Fair worked out its arrangement with Norma Lyon, but, whether she got paid or not, she was a goddamned professional. A couple years ago, I was cast in an industrial film to play an insensitive prick doctor to teach medical students how not to be insensitive prick doctors, and I got paid $20-an-hour for a week-long shoot. There was a make-up artist and a costumier, a film crew, a lighting crew, a sound guy and even a director flown in from California.

"I have to split the shoot in two, guys," he told us around the dinner table, "so I can fly to France to shoot Salma Hayek in a perfume commercial."

As I bit into my leaky wrap, I laughed quietly in my head as I pictured this guy shooting Salma Hayek. Then I quietly pictured things I wanted to do to Salma Hayek.

The point I'm trying to make here is that, while I got paid for this film, there was nothing "professional" about it, least of all my performance. I hope that, one day, I will achieve mastery at something. It may be being a husband or a father, I don't think achieving it as a son or a brother is going to pan out by this point, or it may just turn out to be at a craft. We'll have to see.

One thing is for sure-- today I will be thinking about Norma Lyon, aged 81. The Butter Cow Lady.

Norma: this pad's for you.

Oh, Bits.

For a while, when I was younger, I would read the obituary page of The Philadelphia Inquirer. When I remarked to a camp counselor that I did this, he asked me why. "To make sure I'm not in there," I quipped.

Precocious, indeed.

Really, the reason I read the obituaries was to see if anybody I knew was in there. I'm not quite sure who exactly I thought I might know, as a fourth grader in suburban southeast Pennsylvania, who might be recently deceased and, therefore, would be in the obituaries. But, for a good few years, I read the obituaries-- just to make sure. I read them pretty regularly. Like other developmentally dubious, potentially unhealthy habits in which I engaged as a child, my parents did little to curb this particular... interest.

"Why don't you read the comics?" my mother helpfully suggested one morning as I sat in my father's chair at the dining room table, hunched over the obits page. I thought about that idea for a moment or two, and it seemed reasonable.

"Okay," I responded. And I began to read the comics, after finishing up reading the obituaries. My favorite comics as a child were "Bloom County" and "Doonesbury."

There is no denying that death is fascinating, especially to a child, who is just beginning to fit death into his whole schema of how the world operates. The utter finality of it, the universality of it, the why and wherefore-- it was pretty arresting for little bowl-cut ol' me. I enjoyed very much reading all the different names and professions people had, how long they lived, where they were being buried. Goldsteins was a very popular funeral home in my neck of the woods, and, as the years went on, several members of my mother's family passed through that way. Those who worshipped in a different way frequently were tended to by the Donahue folks. They had multiple locations. Death is a big business.

The one thing that really irked the piss out of me as a kid reading obituaries was the distinct lack of gory details-- especially when the decedent was a young buck. Like-- I really wanted to know what happened and I thought, if they were going to bother putting this shit in the newspaper, which is supposed to provide information, that I had kind of a right to know how these people died. I wasn't particularly interested in, "passed suddenly." Well, if you're not wasting away in some Stryker bed in your living room with bedsores all over your ass or hooked up to a ventilator in some ICU, isn't it pretty much always "sudden"? Come on, bitches-- I wanted the details.

What? Was she shot? Stabbed? Hammered or what? Did he eat poorly washed baby lettuce with E-coli in it? Was it an aneurysm or an embolism or a tension pneumothorax or a cerebrovascular hemorrhage? Did some crazy fuck put a pillow over this creep's face because he owed him $30 and a Sega Genesis game? I realized, of course, that it was just a tiny obituary and not a coroner's report, but I was reasonably sure that maybe seven or eight words about the cause of death wouldn't kill anybody.

See what I did there?

I routinely scanned the obituary pages to see if people were around the same age my parents were back then. If I read the entire day's worth of death notices, and there were no people who had died at roughly the age my parents were at this time, I could go to school relatively comforted that one or both of them weren't going to drop dead while I was not learning math. This was the kind of reassurance I craved, amongst lots of other kinds. If I read the obituaries and there were a couple of people who kicked it in their late thirties to early forties, it would be a challenging day at school. I wouldn't be able to focus. It's not that I'd be thinking about my parents dying all day, but, at inopportune moments, my mind would admittedly drift back to that unfortunate subject. Well, I'd reason, if it could happen to Stella V. D'Orisio (née Kaplan), then it could just as easily happen to my mommy. I'd like to entirely blame my mediocre grades on this preoccupation of mine, but I don't think that would be entirely fair. I also watched a lot of Monty Python.

Of course, as a child, I never found anybody I knew in the newspaper's obituary section. It was only after I actually started knowing people who had died that I stopped reading the obituaries. Maybe it became too real at that point. My great-uncle. My neighbor. My allergist. The girl I knew from school who died of a heart attack while getting her wisdom teeth out.

Suddenly.

And it was perhaps then that I realized why, when someone so young passes, the family doesn't particularly feel compelled to reveal the reason behind the premature exit from the stage of life. Because it's just too painful. And, really, in the end-- what does it matter? When you're dead, you're dead. And to you and your loved ones, it's a calamity of unequaled proportions. And to some kid with a funny haircut sitting in a turquoise sweatsuit with his legs folded underneath him in his father's chair poring over the newspaper-- it's merely a curious obsession.

To put it mildly.

A Most Regrettable Obituary

NEW YORK - Officials representing veteran TV producer Dick Wolf have confirmed reports that "Law & Order" has died. It was 20 years old.

The death occured Friday, May 14th, on a New York City Street which was roped off with police tape and marked with film permit signs taped to telephone poles. Police officers at the scene, too distraught over the possible loss of their Actors Equity and Screen Actors Guild Cards, would not comment on the record about the loss. One of them spoke under the condition of anonymity.

"This fucking sucks! How am I supposed to audition for 'Jersey Boys' without a L & O credit after my name? I'll be the only asshole there without one!"

Born in 1990, "Law & Order" lead an exciting existence in a bizarre, fantastical world where every person in a leather jacket is a thug, a New York City police officer fires his gun every day, and Ice-T is considered an actor. It is also a world where people routinely open fire in courtrooms and swear without actually swearing.

Even in its infancy, Gilbert & Sullivan-esque topsy-turvy plot twists were the order of the day for this imaginative show, featuring a mix of wry humor, comical sexual tension, and submental dialogue. The show also introduced to the greater civilian populous the notion that Jews could actually become police officers, an idea propogated by the existence of Richard "The Belz" Belzer.

Way to strike a blow for the Heebees, Belz.

Just when it seemed like Jerry Orbach would never work another day in his life after "The Fantasticks" finally closed after its 4,324,922 performance, "Law & Order" was there to give his career another shot of Thorazine. If watching an elderly man whose face resembled that of Mr. Ed chasing around leather-jacket-wearing unshaven felons down fire-escapes while wearing adult diapers is your cup of tea, then "Law & Order" was the pot that might contain such tea, were you in the mood for that cup of tea at the particular time that a Jerry Orbach episode of "Law & Order" was on any number of 16 stations.

Indeed, the show will be sorely missed for the acting dumping ground that it was by every emaciated, cocaine-addicted, syphillis-carrying ex-theatre major living with eight other knucklefuckers in a leaky apartment in Hoboken. Now, all they have to look forward to is an embarrassing eleven seconds on "American Idol" or getting salad dressing poured into their gaping assholes on the floor of an apartment owned by some obese guy named Genaro who's only wearing a KKK mask and holding a Flip video camera in his right hand and a molasses-slathered pair of French Ticklers in his left.

Truly, without "Law & Order" the world has been diminished. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to "Oh, My God, Stabler's Been Shot in the Shoulder Again" Fund, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit entity.

A Bit of Obit

I know, I know-- Corey Haim is dead. Those of us who are my age and were suckled on the teat of cinematic masterpieces like "License to Drive" are very broken up about it.

Oftentimes when a celebrity, or a long-ago celebrity, perishes, the internet is flooded with tributes-- people flock to their obsessively-updated Wikipedia and IMDB pages. They tweet about the great loss suffered by the untimely passing and they wax rhapsodic about some of the deceased most quotable moments.

It's kind of a bandwagon thing, except, instead of a bandwagon that everybody's clamoring to get on, it's a hearse.

We all know that I'm a pretty morbid sonofabitch, so, when a celebrity dies, I often turn to the New York Times obituaries-- not to read the celebrity's obit, but to see who else joined them in exiting life's stage at or around the same time.

Folks, say hello-- and goodbye, to John Thorbjarnarson.

I admit that I had no idea who this guy was before I clicked on his obituary. And I'll even go further to admit (because, if I can't be honest with you, then you might as well pull out all my teeth and replace them with peanut M&Ms) that I only clicked on his obituary because of his superawesomeballs last name: Thorbjarnarson.

Thorb

jar

nar

son.

And the "jar" is really pronounced "yar." You know, just because it wasn't cool enough already.

Seriously? That's fucking intense.

His first name bites the boredom brownie, but he more than makes up for it.

Of course, his whacked-out last name isn't the only reason I clicked on his obituary-- I was also kind of interested in the career that he chose:

Crocodile and Alligator Expert.

Can you picture this guy, when he was alive, obviously-- walking into a nice restaurant with white linen tablecloths and blush wine-colored candlesticks gently flickering as he introduces himself to a coquettish, wispy-haired blind date?

"Hi, I'm John Thorbjarnarson, Crocodile and Alligator Expert. Gosh-- traffic was just awful, wasn't it?"

Thorbjarnarson was employed by the Wildlife Consevation Society and his actual professional title was herpetologist, which doesn't even require a follow-up joke so I'll just let it sit. Not only did he make it his life's work to study crocodiles and alligators, but made the preservation of their lives one of his foremost goals.

Not for nothing-- but I would love the opportunity to go back in time to the Thorbjarnarson house, maybe when John was five or six, and just observe him. Was he the kid who was constantly playing around in the local creek, attempting to rouse gigantic, saber-toothed creatures with crusts of bread? Did he dress his little sister up as a crocodile and then chase her around the house with a butterfly net before wrastlin' her to the ground like an overzealous Secret Service Agent?

What the fuck did his standardized career prediction test say? Mine said I would be either an actor or a forest ranger. Apparently, he didn't become "obsessed with reptiles" until he was about 13 or 14, about the same age that normal boys become obsessed with cars or breasts. While he may have been made fun of by his peers, I suppose it's a good thing that there are, were, and will continue to be guys like John Thorbjarnarson who are obsessed with crocodiles and alligators, and are not only obsessed with them, but are willing to bust out the swimming trunks and go rolling around in the muddy swamps with them to get a better understanding of just what the hell they are.

Because you won't catch 99.8% of the population doing that shit. We're far too busy with cars and breasts.

I wonder if John Thorbjarnarson ever thought about his own death-- I suspect that someone who spent such an inordinate amount of time dealing with reptiles as big as a White House dining room table probably did-- and if he ever thought that he would have a normal, quiet death-- like a stroke or an aneurysm or plain old fashioned very very boring cardiac arrest. Did he ever think that he would die not inside the dark, wet, hot mouth of a crocodile or an alligator? Obviously, he had long ago made peace with the very real probability that he would wind up a reptilian squeak-toy.

He died of malaria-- decidedly less violent than being ripped to shreds by a carniverous animal-- but he died of malaria contracted whilst studying carniverous animals, and so they and the unhealthy, unhospitable conditions in which they live did John Thorbjarnarson in in the end-- though it wasn't very dramatic.

Hopefully, none of his colleagues will say something trite or stupid about him like, "He died doing what he loved" or "This is how he would have wanted to go." or "He was a herpetologist's herpetologist."

Because I just hate that shit.