Want Some Candy?

Today your blue reporter was shocked to find that John Candy has been dead for almost twenty years. That made me stop in my tracks. Twenty years already. How about that? He died on March 4, 1994, at the age of 43—which is what I will be next month when the new Superman movie comes out. If that ain't a sobering thought, I don't know what is. 

John Candy. He was one of my heroes in the eighties. The world had never heard of hybrid cars or non-medicinal tablets or email or Facebook or Tweety's tweeds. No, I don't miss that decade. Not on a daily basis at least. I mean, people's sense of dress back then should be left out of our children's history books and I don't get all excited when I hear Was Not Was singing, 'Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur. Boom boom acka lacka lacka boom.' The only thing that hasn't changed is politics. It's still a dirty rotten game. But back then we had John Candy, Tom Hanks, Bill 'Stripes' Murray, Leslie Nielsen, Steve Martin, Goldie 'House Sitting' Hawn (see, I'm no sexist!), and even Eddie Murphy was still funny singing I don't know what the hell he was singing right here but it sure sounded great to my stupid teenage ears. His friend Michael Jackson still sang live and didn't rob me of a freakin' $80 the way he would in the nineties to have me watch him p.l.a.y.b.a.c.k. That made me so grumpy. It felt exactly like that time when my ex-girlfriend faked an orgasm and wrote about it in her diary, which I stole from her and burned. She beat moaning Sally to the punch, I tell ya.

Good Writing Rule Number One: Don't digress. Back to Candy. No, of course I don't mean Candy Crush. How you been paying attention? Don't tell me it's got you completely hooked like that woman who sleeps in my bed while I snore Amadeus on the couch downstairs. Wait a minute. It suddenly occurs to me that the reason my downstairs neighbors have so much loud-pounding sex is not because they love each other's naked bodies so much. It's because my snoring keeps them awake all night and they've got nothing else to do. See, I knew writing this post would somehow be totally enlightening.

And wherever you are, John, you are being missed. Now sing along: 'Boom boom acka lacka lacka boom...'

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