Celebrity Death Text

C-Murder. Eppi Pen. Amon-Ho-Teppler. Epp. Soul Brother No. 2.
I've been known by many names, but I'm here to let you know that I'm for realz on the intehnets.

The last time I blogged, it was over at Myspace. I'm sure you all remember Myspace, right? That fake social networking site (so 2005) that my brother Nate dubbed, "The Detroit of the Internet"? Well, for all its shortcomings, the one feature I did like on Myspace was that it had blogging built in. I found that when I did blog, it turned out pretty funny. And 2 or 3 people even read the thing! Minimal interweb celebrity was at my fingertips...
But then Myspace got played out by Facebook (just like Detroit got played out by...every other available city in the US), so I had to make the switch.

So this brings me to my first proper post: Celebrity Death Text.
What is Celebrity Death Text?
Celebrity Death Text is a competition my brother and I inadvertently came up with (due to the advent of text messaging, picture phones, and the continuing trend of celebrities dying) back in 2005.

• a little background may be in order: my brother Nate is the smartest and funniest person I know. He would tell you that I'm smarter, but I know the only reason he tells people that is to make me feel better about myself, so maybe I am smarter than him since I can see through his facade? But maybe he knows that I know, thus making it all the more apparent how much smarter he is than me under those circumstances. Either way, he would not tell you that I'm funnier.

So, back in 2005 I get this text message from Nate:

"I bet his last words were: Motherfucker."

I laughed out loud. I had not heard that Richard Pryor had died, and I was saddened to find that out, but this was the best way for the news to be delivered.

From that day on, whenever a celebrity died, it was sort of a race to see who could send the text first, and who could be the funniest. It really didn't matter the level of celebrity or notoriety either, we Epplers are equal opportunists. There were a couple that were untouchable though (James Brown, Michael Jackson, Steve McNair, I think Ted Kennedy - that one would be too easy anyway), we're not totally bereft of hearts, you know.

Some highlights from this endeavor:

Peter Tomarken (the former host of Press Your Luck, died 2006)- "...and stop"

Howard Zinn (famous historian, activist; died 2010) - "History."

Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul, and Mary; died 2009) - "Maybe she should have hammered out cancer."

Paul Gleason (character actor, best known for Principal Vernon in The Breakfast Club; died 2006) - "He got the horns."

And there were others, all distinctively hilarious...but the undisputed winner (authored by me, I might add) was:


"See you later, alligator."

So, the tradition continues to this day (as celebrities will not stop dying), and I encourage you, dear reader, to get in on the action. As soon as you see a celebrity has died on AOL, get out your phone, take a pic, come up with a cold-heartedly hilarious tag-line, and send it off. You'll make someone's day, as long as it's not the widow/er.