Before you go....

I realize that this blog has turned into a series of obituary articles of late. Memories of John Keneley, David Lloyd, Carl Ballantine, Charles R. Meeker, Jr. and Richard Paul have occupied some of my space and time in the last few months. Each in their own way had some affect on me, so it is only right to try and analyze the loss. But I want to dwell on "what I have" rather than "what I've lost".

It would take several posts a day for months to come talking about those people who influence me that are still around. In the episode of "Chuckles Bites the Dust" Georgette says a profoundly funny truth. "It's so sad. Funerals always come to late. While people are around us we don't pay much attention and take them for granted. Then when they're gone we dress in black and cry our eyes out. Why don't we think to do that when they're alive? "

It was to such an end that several years before his death, the Magic Castle held a wake for the still living Billy McComb. Billy was a Irish rogue of a magician and like Ballantine had a profound affect on a lot of comic magicians. His material became public domain in some cases. Magicians and comics did not know they were stealing from Billy because his material was repeated so often and never sourced.

Typical Billy McComb: Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Before I go I would like to ask you a question. You see, when I go home tonight, my little son Brendon will wake up as I enter the house. He will say, "Did you perform tonight, Daddy?" I will tell him what a wonderful crowd you were. He will say, "Did they like your magic, Daddy?" I will tell him you liked it very much and clapped very hard. He will look at me with those beautiful blue eyes and that wonderful smile with the missing tooth in the front and he will say, "Did the nice audience give you your usual standing ovation, Daddy." I ask you, what am I going to do... Lie to the boy?

This never failed to get the audience off its feet for a rousing standing ovation as he left the stage.

During his wake, Billy was on stage in an easy chair. All of his friends came together to give their eulogy/roast in the most irreverent way possible. I have rarely laughed harder than that evening. There were times we thought Billy would die laughing at his own mock funeral. That was not sufficient cause for people to soft pedal the rhetoric, but rather to amp it up. To be present at the moment the affable Billy McComb died laughing, particularly if it was your joke that did him in, would have been a beautiful thing.

For the remaining years of Billy's life, every time I saw him he never failed to laugh and mention the "Death Song" I did about him with my vulture puppet Nethernore. In some strange way, performing at his funeral brought us even closer together.

Georgette, what a great idea.

As you were,
Jay