This is the first "Found Dumb!" entry--backwards for dumbfound, for these precious little moments throughout the week that have surprised me, and transformed me into a reveler of a revelation, entranced by a certain event that had transpired--and it can also quite plainly be found dumb, or monotonous, immature, what have you. I'm honestly not crazy about the title of the section but these things are about as official as the administration presently running this country.
Unfortunately for this week, everything that intrigued me was morbid--the last one is political, and more of a gripe than a declaration.
1. If you can remember...
Hollywood actor, Charlie Rocket, as seen in the picture above, not below
who played the obsessive fan in the fantastically underrated film (2.3/10 on IMDB):
as well as the villain in Dumb & Dumber (1994):
then you might have also known that he was found dead five years ago in a field near his Connecticut home.
The 56 year old had his throat cut open, with the state medical examiner ruling it as a suicide. And then those closest to him attempted to bring him closer to nature, ashes after they cremate you bastards, hope you been readin your psalms and chapters...
In short, he was cremated, but I went on a Jay-Z tangent...this is his best song, in my opinion.
Charles Rocket had an interesting and very ephemeral career on the SNL cast due to a faux pas, which for me, adds to the sadness of the story:
The February 21, 1981 episode hosted by Dallas star Charlene Tilton featured a parody of the famed Who Shot J.R.? episode of Dallas. In the episode, Rocket was shot in the chest by a sniper while doing a sketch about a sexy couple (with Gail Matthius as his partner) bathing a dog and spouting innuendo. At the end of the show, as cast members traditionally gathered around the host to say good night, Tilton asked Rocket how he felt about being shot. In character, a wheelchair-using Rocket improvised, "Oh, man, it’s the first time I've ever been shot in my life. I'd like to know who the fuck did it", followed by the cast and audience reacting with shock and laughter.
Due partially to the violation of broadcast standards, along with Saturday Night Live's low ratings, Doumanian and Rocket were soon fired (along with most of the writers and fellow cast members Gilbert Gottfried and Ann Risley).
I enjoy how wikipedia links the word "fuck", you know, just in case.
2.
An old couple was found dead in their home elevator in Georgia. Sherwood Wadsworth, 90, and his 88-year-old wife, Caroline, were found stuck in between the 2nd and 3rd floors. 911 was eventually contacted because of the accumulating stack of newspapers in front of their house.
There was no way to contact anyone while inside the elevator, which is the most fail-enabling elevator system I can envisage. Instead of feeling immediately upset from this story, all my mind could really do was conjure the image in Titanic of that old couple seen cry-spooning as the proletarian bulkheads fill. This image came to mind after reading how the couple was found "lying beside each other in the fetal position".
And then after all that, I couldn't help but think about the finality of such a thing. Being stuck, panicking, feeling helpless, angry, denial, depression, and perhaps finally acceptance.
Imagine if they got it on, just one last time?
This story reminds me of this video I had seen--a surreal time-lapse of one man's ordeal, being trapped in a McGraw Hill elevator in Manhattan for 41 hours.
3.
Nicholas Hughes, whose mother was Sylvia Plath, famed poet and novelist, hanged himself last year in March. He was living in Alaska at the time and had taken a break from teaching marine biology at the University of Fairbanks, a really long break.
Ted Hughes, Sylvia's husband, cheated on her and left her for another poet's wife, Assia Wevill, who also eventually committed suicide by gassing herself and their daughter, Shura, who sure isn't coming back from the dead anytime soon.
Side-note: I believe that if I can find a way to sneak in terrible jokes in between these sad histories, it might somehow legitimize these findings.
In case you were mistaking Sylvia Plath's suicide with any others, like Virginia Woolf's for an absurd example, allow me to clarify: Sylvia was the first to stick her head in an oven, Woolf weighed herself down with rocks so she could familiarize herself with the riverbed near her home, and Wevill, as mentioned above, supposedly copied Sylvia--some brash statement, I suppose.
A film named "Sylvia" was made in 2003 starring Gwyneth Paltrow and I really fucking loved it, not only because I thought Paltrow did a fantastic job, but also because of how well the movie adhered to fact. I must've seen this trailer 25 times.
Supposedly Sylvia Plath's daughter and literary executor, Frieda Hughes, not only refused to cooperate with the producers or allow them access to her mother's poetry, but also publicly denounced the project in a published poem of her own.
I found the poem:
Sylvia Plath My Mother
They are killing her again, She said she did it One Year in every ten, But they do it annually, or weekly, Some do it daily, Carrying her death around in their heads, And practising it. She saves them The trouble of their own; They can die through her Without ever making The decision. My buried mother Is dug up for repeat performances
Now they want to make a film For anyone lacking the ability To imagine the body, head in oven, Orphaning children. Then It can be rewound So they can watch her die Right from the beginning again.
The peanut eaters, entertained At my mother's death, will go home, Each carrying their memory of her, Lifeless — a souvenir. Maybe they'll buy the video Watching someone on TV Means all they have to do Is press 'pause' If they want to boil a kettle, While my mother holds her breath on screen To finish dying after tea.
The filmmakers have collected The body parts. They want me to see. But they require dressings to cover the joins And disguise the prosthetics In their remake of my mother. They want to use her poetry As stitching and sutures To give it credibility. They think i should love it- Having her back again, they think I should give them my mother’s words to fill the mouth of their monster, Their Sylvia Suicide Doll. Who will walk and talk And die at will, And die, and die And forever be dying. If I were her, I'd hog those film rights until I was dead myself instead of denouncing the finished product and sounding like a real wind-bag.
4.
And the last topic, as promised, does not involve suicide or death, but actually gay marriage, or "civil union," according to my coworker who insists on these phrases remaining entirely distinct. I don't wish to delineate the conservative viewpoint because it's all antiquated and lacking progressive logic in my mind. My major gripe with this argument is how every time I find myself regrettably taking part in this conversational rubicon, the person against the idea of legalizing gay marriage brings up the fact that they have numerous gay friends.
"...Oh, and they're so great with their children, and everyone in the town loves them, and we just had dinner recently and they were just such great company..."
And it's all very futile and sad in a strangely oblique way, because it's a cheap exercise in evasion-- a truly ignorant affectation that leaves me utterly dumbfounded.
I will extol every step ofprogressagainst such thinly-veiled prejudice...Consider me a radical in this instance.
