Hello from Beyond

Hey, everybuzzy. Please forgive me for the frowny-facedness of this here blurg post here, but the thing is that I, Smokey Robinson, am now dead.

I'm kind of ashamed to admit it. It's not the kind of thing you proudly show up at home one day and you're like, "hey, guys, guess what? I'm dead! Hello? Guys?" It's mostly like in the movies, where you're either a zombie and some "vigilante hero" is trying to hack you to bits with a chainsaw, or else you're invisible and inaudible to everybuzzy who isn't Whoopi Goldberg (who, by the by, makes really amazing oatmeal raisin cookies.)

The actual dying part is kind of a gruesome story. I was sitting in the Cannery one day at Dole Fruit, reading The Loving Bones, which is this book by Alex Sebold about a teenage kid who is actually dead for the entire book, which they tell you on page 1 without even writing SPOILER ALERT. (Speaking of which, spoiler alert: I die at the end of this paragraph. See how easy it is?) Anyway, Rebecca Goodman (our token Jew) must have overheard me saying "I wish I could know what it was like to be dead," because when I stood up, my shoelaces had been tied together, but in a very Jewish way. Next thing I knew, I fell over the railing and then tumbled ass-over-elbows into a very inconveniently placed pineapple slicer.

Those pineapple slicers are a real bitch to clean, especially when the guy who regularly cleans them is beginning to ooze out of one of them. Rex "The Supervisor" Hymen kept yelling and yelling, "Smokey! Where the [censored] is Smokey [censored] Robinson, god[censored]?!" I would gladly have told him where I was, except that one of my lips was, at that very moment, about to drip onto his right shoe. Also, the living can't hear the dead without the aid of the aforementioned Ms. Goldberg. But at the time, I didn't know that.

Anyway, hi!

This whole dead thing really isn't that bad. Did you know that in heaven, Bill Clinton is still president, and the Democrats enjoy sizeable majorities in both the House and Senate? And that ALL the bears are named Lollipop the Bear and drive around on Vespa Scooters with skull-and-crossbone stickers and holsters for their AK-47s? Also, the only meal is Kraft Cheese and Macaroni too, because it's the cheesiest. This place is gratest. It really is!

(Psych! It isn't really. This place is the worst - not "the wurst," like a hot dog, which would really go great with all the mac-and-cheese, but the WORST, as in the most miserable place I've ever been. Every time someone calls up Dole to complain about finding one of my eyeballs or a tooth or a fingernail fragment, I have to sit there while Patrick Swayze and the guy who originally played Dumbledore laugh at me for like three hours, which feels like eternity. Also, it takes like four minutes to press a single key. I have been writing this blog post since December 30!)

By the way, I was wrong: there is a God. He wears a turban and He doesn't speak English, so nobody up here understands what He's saying, and most people think He's a Terrorist. He is also in no way affiliated with My Buddy (and Friend of the blog) Jesus Christ. God is actually the Assistant Night Manager at a convenience store called Seventh Heaven, which is supposed to be a clever reference to "Seven Eleven," but nobody gets that without having it explained to them. Some say He really is all-powerful. I say He pours a mean cherry Icee - easily the third-best I've ever tasted.

Anyway.

I recently met Dan Fogelberg, who was quite touched by the flattering obituary I wrote him. We were sipping cherry Icees around Christmas with Carol Channing, and the two of them told me that there's actually a way for me to come back. Are you ready to learn what it is? All that has to happen is that a single cell from my former body has to be ingested by a human male, get metabolized, undergo meiosis, get broken down into amino acids (they're the building blocks of protein!), and finally, be converted into a sperm cell. Assuming I don't then end up in a sock or a drainpipe, it's a simple matter of racing the other sperm cells to an egg cell, become a zygote, then an embryo, then a fetus, then get born in Detroit, have a successful career as an R&B singer, and move to New York City at 68 years old to work for a middling fruit concern.

Piece of cake.

So here's what I need from you, dear readers: eat Dole Fruit Factory brand pineapple.

I'm sure the slicer where I met my end was probably very thoroughly scrubbed before the next batch of pineapple went in. Dole Fruit Factory has very exacting standards of hygiene, after all. But even the most exacting standards must have left a cell or two of mine behind, right? (Don't think about that too long, or else you won't want to eat the pineapple anymore.) Presto. We're halfway home already.

This, obviously, only applies to my male readers. Ladies, for once, this isn't about you. (Until I get back to the top of the charts, that is!) Let's get eatin', dudes! We're just 70 short years from being able to start this whole bloggerizing operation up again!

And just to be on the safe side:

Dear Jesus,

A little halp, (Son of) Man?

Thanx,
Smokey

P.S. Can You catch me up on what I missed on YouTube?

Will Wieners Ever Taste the Same?

It's a sad time to be in America, everybuzzy. Not because of the unexpected demise of 50-years young Michael Jetson, which was sad and all, but not nearly at this level. Do you, America, realize who ELSE just died last week? Do you? I'll give you a hint: he had a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

Oscar G. Mayer, Jr. is gone. No joke. Fucking Oscar Mayer fucking DIED! Now he's with Tupac too!

Dear People Who Are Famous Enough to Have Wikipedia Pages,

STOP FLEEING US TO BE WITH TUPAC. We need you here, or else there's no need to have wikipedia in the first place.

Make with the not dying. Good. Now just keep that up.

Still breathing,
Smokey.

I know I run the risk of blowing this Oscar Mayer thing way, way, wa-hay-haaaaay out of proportion. Thank Zod it's the first time in my life I have ever done that. But seriously, my facebag status = "mourning", everybuzzy! And your facebag status should = "mourning" too, for who among us can claim not to have been touched by this great man's meat? Why, for generations, Americans from sea to shining sea, young and old alike, have gladly and gratefully been raised with this man's wiener between their buns. The next time someone even mentions the word "United Nations," I just know it's gonna make me think of that wonderful man and the thin, fleshy tubes that were so amazing to have in my mouth. Especially covered in mustard.

But now he's dead, and I for one think this is one of those occasions where you probably want an open casket funeral, just so we're all very clear on what becomes of the body.

Rest in peace, Wiener Man.

Reese Witherspoon's Sensible Stand, or How Fred Thompson Could Have Rocketed to the Presidency

Three stories about Hollywood Actors from yesterday's news:

Story 1:

Hollywood Actor #1 withdrew from the race for President yesterday after failing to win - or finish higher than fourth - in a single Republican primary. No word yet on whether or not he will return to his role on NBC's Law & Order.

Story 2:

Hollywood Actor #2 was found dead in his apartment at 421 Broome Street in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon. He was reported to be naked and surrounded by pills.

Story 3:

Hollywood Actor #3 won't pose for sexy photo shoots to promote her films.

"If [actresses] take their clothes off, they objectify themselves," she tells the UK edition of Glamour. "I am flabbergasted by how many legitimate actresses do it."

Hollywood Actor #3, 31 – who shares custody of Ava, 8, and Deacon, 4, with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe – adds that she tries to avoid the pitfalls of a Hollywood lifestyle. "I am a role model for my children," she says.

"Hollywood is one of those endless competitions," she says. "It's a race towards nothing. I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be."

Hollywood Actor #3 credits her 2005 Best Actress Oscar win for Walk the Line with opening up a range of film roles. "I would never have been offered these kind of roles," she says. "There was also a lot of pressure after [winning an Oscar]. People wanted me to do a really big movie and I just wanted to do something more sort of personal and real."

Yesterday, Hollywood Actor #3 denied being engaged to boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal.

Hollywood Actor #1 is Fred Thompson, whose not-so-surprising move to bow out of the Republican race is only helping to pave the way for my Oscar the Grouch '08 campaign. With Thompson out of the race, Oscar can capitalize on the crotchety old man demographic, which he sorely, sorely needs if he's going to stand any sort of chance at all.

Hollywood Actor #2 is, or rather was, Heath Ledger, who got famous after he made out with Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie Brokeback Mountain, and who died yesterday in New York, naked and (I'm guessing) unashamed of it.

Almost swept away by that story was the principled stand of Hollywood Actor #3, Reese Witherspoon who, oddly enough, got famous before she made out with Jake Gyllenhaal, disproving the graduate thesis I wrote at the London School of Economics two years ago. Perhaps, and I'm going out on a limb here, Ms. Witherspoon's march against the forces that would disrobe all of Hollywood would have been better served if, instead of being interviewed for a piece in Us Weekly, she had died a suspicious and untimely death in a Manhattan apartment, clothed only in the nudity that she is apparently too shy to expose.

Of course, she's right, you know. Appearing nude or scantily clad would undermine the integrity of her body of film, which includes such inestimable bastions of taste and decorum as Twilight (where she appeared nude in a sex scene, but in a totally dignified and businesslike way), Cruel Intentions (where she showed up in a bathing suit, but totally didn't mean for that to be sexy), and the incomparable Legally Blonde, in which her character, a ditzy blonde (duh?), buys her way into Harvard Law School so she can chase after a man, and then wins the big case because of her knowledge of the Prada shoe catalog and the fashion senses of the gays. Nudity would TOTALLY have degraded all of those movies - except Twilight, because she already was nude in that one.

Is there a certain irony to the fact that Ms. Witherspoon's not-at-all-trite-or-meaningless crusade got upstaged by Heath Ledger, who died in the nude? Not at all! But there are the makings of a joke lesson in this for Fred Thompson, who probably thought he was SO SMART for picking an almost incomprehensibly slow Tuesday in the middle of January when no albums were coming out, and no special edition DVDs were being released, and only a handful of Major League Baseball players were being subpoenaed by Congress, to compete with his announcement. And the lesson is this: {Insert corny joke making references to being young, nude, and/or dead in order to get headlines here.} You're welcome, Fred Thompson. Better luck four years from now when you'll probably be dead and naked yourself.

Oscar '08 For The Win!

Call off the search...

Eccentric chess genius and rabid anti-Semite Bobby Fischer? He dead now. No word yet on weather his death was orchestrated by Jews, the US Government, or a bad batch of the souvenir color-coded yogurt that Boris Spassky's team used to signal which opening gambit Fischer was using during the 1972 world chess championship which was held, appropriately enough, in 1972.

Either way, this cat has gone horizontal.

I saw Searching for Bobby Fischer in a theater in Paramus, New Jersey in the summer of 1993 with two friends from high school, one of whom is now an ascendant New York actor and the other of whom is, or ought to be, a striking writer. (Since he always was pretty striking, even when he WASN'T writing! Ba-dum-bum!) And the kid who played Bobby Fischer was adorable! Who would have thought he would grow into this dead 64-year-old nut job in the matter of less than 15 years?

No word yet on whether death itself is a conspiracy engineered by the Jews, or any of the other hate organizations whose machinations were responsible for Fischer's brilliance or its later version, total paranoid insanity. I still miss him though. SEXIEST NERD EVER.

Bye bye, Bobby.