"Pie In The Face Trumps Knee In The Groin..."

Hearing about famous people dying is automatically cause and effect.

The obvious effect being an awareness that the top half of my own particular hourglass has less sand in it today than it did yesterday.

Michael Jackson. Farah Fawcett. Patrick Swayze.

Tick tock.

Well, whatever sound sand makes that's equivalent to tick tock.

We all hear it, we all feel it, we all have an hourglass on the shelf there with our name on it.

But when the famous name belongs to someone more of my parent's generation than my own, there is a kind of "buy one, get one free" thing that comes with the news.

The aforementioned awareness of said sand sound.

And a specific awareness that I have gotten older.

Admittedly, there's a thin defining line between the two.

The hourglass thing is entirely about the simple passage of time, something we all experience, no matter the chronilogical state of our lives. From the first slap to the last breath, the sand goes south.

Getting older, on the other hand, is defined as coming upon specific points of reference along the way.

It most often presents in the form of verbal expressions like "when I was younger...", "I can remember when..." and, of course, the most insidious of all...

"In my day..."

And that one, kids, is the one that usually two by fours us right across the psyche and brings us face to face with the damnable truth of it all.

We have, at some unknown moment, stopped being the visionary, engergized, inspired and motivated "younger generation" that knew better than, and was determined to correct the mistakes of "our elders."....

...and become the elders.

The passing of Michael and Farrah and Patrick gave me moments of poignant pause and brought up the volume of that swishing sand just a scoche.

The passing of Soupy Sales, on the other hand, began the bonus round.

Because as I spent a few fun minutes checking out some old You Tubes of Soupy's shows, I found myself thinking what lots of folks who remember are thinking at the moment...

Here was a guy who had a massive following of young people for a lot of years who was, times and culture taken into account, a pretty funny fellow and who didnt seem to need to utilize orifices, toilet humor, four letter words, yada yada in order in invoke laughter from his audience.

Was the stuff juvenile, even a little "oh, come on..."?

Duhh.

But that little five year old kid that resides inside all of us can't honestly deny the urge to, at least, chuckle somewhere along the way as the silly Soupy stuff plays out.

And put up against the scatological slant that so much of today's humor club seems to require to succeed, the slapstick Soupy shtick is, if absolutely nothing else, a testament to paradox and irony.

Ancient history that seems almost like fresh air.

I realized, though, as I watched a couple of minutes of it, that enjoyment of this material comes with a price.

If I admit it's funny, then I have to admit that I'm getting older.

Because a lot of contemporary comedy is bordered, top and bottom, by boobs and crotch.

And in my day...