February 12, 2000

11:50 PM

So Charles Schulz ran out of ink about two hours ago, preceded in death by about five hours by Tom Landry. The worst part is, both were in my dead pool, which starts in about 24 hours. (The second-worst thing is all the "It's a sad day for Snoopy" and "Good grief" ledes we're going to have to endure. Blech.)

The Dallas Morning News obit went over the wires at 85 inches before Landy was even cold. Gee, you think they saw this one coming?
posted by luke (9 comments total)

Henry Gibson said it on "Laugh-In": "There's no such thing as Good Grief".
posted by wendell at 12:00 AM on February 13, 2000

BTW, A/P's The Wire sabotages deep links to stories, so here's Charles Schulz's obit as seen at Yahoo News.

posted by wendell at 12:04 AM on February 13, 2000

Regarding prepared obits (common practice, actually): I remember a great SNL skit with Dana Carvey as Tom Brokaw, where Brokaw wants to go on vacation for a month, so the station makes him pre-record a variety of obituaries for Gerald Ford as if he died from a wide variety of causes, each more elaborate than the next. Hilarious.

I wish I were famous enough to have pre-written obits. Wait, no I don't...

As I said yesterday (which I believe is a paraphrase of an Onion person-on-the-street article): How many celebrities have to die before our government will step in and do something?


posted by dan_of_brainlog at 3:11 AM on February 13, 2000

I remember that skit, I think it was based mostly on the real Tom Brokaw doing this a couple years back, pre-taping segments announcing the death of Frank Sinatra about a year before it actually happened. Harry Shearer has a lot of cool things like this on his site. I also enjoyed hearing Dan Rather go off on his staff, stuff you never get to hear...
posted by mathowie at 5:21 AM on February 13, 2000

I think the spookiest thing (that no one's yet written) is that the last Peanuts strip for publication is running today.

I mean, did anyone consider that he just gave up?
posted by othermatt at 8:47 AM on February 13, 2000

I lot of people die after they don't have anything to really live for, like when a spouse dies, this could a case.
posted by Mark at 9:20 AM on February 13, 2000

Two words: publicity stunt.13 more words: Did anyone ever see Charles Schulz and Tom Landry in the same room?Three last words: I didn't think so.
posted by luke at 1:14 PM on February 13, 2000

Four words, I mean. God, why did you make me so stupid?
posted by luke at 1:18 PM on February 13, 2000

Well, that strip aired the day of his announcement back in Novemeber in the daily newspapers. For the Sunday ones, they had a backlog that ended this Sunday, the 13th. OOh...Sunday the 13th.
posted by Cavatica at 9:17 AM on February 15, 2000