Death at a funeral

In honor of The Velvet Blog's eighth year, a rerun of my farewell blog post, when I killed TVB on March 25, 2010. (OK, it recovered. The blog was dark for about six months.)

So, the gag is, I appropriated the story of the classic "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of Mary Tyler Moore and presented it as if it had actually happened to me. As I had posted a YouTube video of the entire Chuckles episode not long before, and linked to both a clip of the farewell MTM episode's goodbye hug and a copy of David Lloyd's Chuckles script in the post itself, I thought the joke wasn't exactly obscure. Still, a few people took it literally, and one stranger accused me of plagiarism, pointing out the parallels to an MTM episode. You know--the one I explicitly referenced and linked to. Sigh. Anyway, I've always thought this was a great post to go out on, even if it turned out to be a premature burial.


It all started after a really bad breakup. I moved to Minneapolis to get away and clear my head and, by a total fluke, got a job as an associate news producer at a local TV station. My boss was a lovable lug and the anchorman a blowhard and my upstairs neighbor a weight-obsessed Brooklynite and ... well, here I am blathering on and getting away from my point.

So, there was this clown, Knuckles, who hosted a children's show at the station, and, during a public appearance at a circus while dressed as a peanut, a rogue elephant tried to shell him. I know, crazy, right? Anyway, he was totally killed, and it was really sad, and I got mad at my co-workers when they started giggling at the absurdity of it. It was super inappropriate.

Then, at the funeral, the strangest thing happened--during the eulogy, I couldn't stop laughing. Uncontrollably. Seriously, I was shaking. And when the minister pointed out that Knuckles would have wanted it that way, well, then I couldn't stop sobbing, because Knuckles was dead, struck down by an elephant who thought that poor clown was a huge, mutant legume, and, man, that's just so sad.

And speaking of dead, it's been kind of creeping up on me that, after going on six years, The Velvet Blog is dressed as a peanut and there's a rogue elephant here. Oh, it could be worse. The blog could be dressed as a banana and be peeled by a gorilla--that would be worse. Still, though, this blog is dead. And I'd like to think that somewhere up there tonight, behind those pearly gates ... in the Great Beyond, where someday all must go ... somewhere up there tonight, in honor of The Velvet Blog, a celestial choir of angels is sitting on whoopie cushions.

Now, won't you join me in a chorus of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary"?


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