The Death of Jim Varney

Why a tribute to Jim Varney? I'll tell you why, you smarmy prick, because Ernest Scared Stupid and Ernest Goes to Camp were defining films of my childhood. They stand on the pantheon of oddball films that first catered to any semblance of humor I had. I remember in 2000, upon finding out about Jim Varney's death, having a sense of profound loss associated with my childhood and feeling like I could never have quite the same laughs I did as a child. I have a short-list of things that recall childhood memories/sensations, and certain movies incite a pristine memory of care-freeness. These films conjure up that very particular nostalgia, memories that I didn't know I had 'til I play the movies. 

So when I thought about Jim Varney, and in my work-induced boredom, read his bio, I felt a deep appreciation for this thespian from Kentucky who carried a goofy, irritating character to its logical extreme. It's a testament for what one human can do for another through art, no matter how trashy or unsophisticated said art is. 

Also, it seems that Varney was a forerunner for this type of modern lovable idiot character. Pee Wee, Larry the Cable Guy (how I loathe typing those words), and Mr. Bean all followed this character-type. I think that assessment alone deserves consideration and review of the man's work, no matter how idiotic it may seem to you. I should also say that Scared Stupid was one of my first forays into horror, and there's not a more appropriate film for initiation. I know this is an ironic, sentimental post, but it came very poignantly to me, so there.

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"Born June 15, 1949, James Albert Varney, Jr. was an American actor.

Varney began his interest in theater as a teenager, winning state titles in drama competitions while a student at Lafayette High School (which he graduated from with the class of 1968) in Lexington, Kentucky. At the age of 15, he portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in a local children's theater production, and by 17, he was performing professionally in nightclubs and coffee houses. He listed a former teacher, Thelma Beeler, as being one of the main contributing factors in his becoming an actor.

He was best known for his character Ernest P. Worrell, originally created by Nashville advertising agency Carden and Cherry in the 1980s. The character was used in numerous television commercial campaigns in the following years.

He was also noted for doing commercials for car dealerships across the country, most notably Cerritos Auto Square in Cerritos, California. Another favorite Ernest vehicle was promotions for various TV stations around the nation, including the news team and the weather departments.

He also lent his voice to the character "Slinky Dog" in Disney's Toy Story film series, and to the character "Cookie" Farnsworth, from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which was released the year after his death.

Varney provided the guest voice for the carny character "Cooder" for "Bart Carny" episode of The Simpsons.

Varney played the prince that Roseanne's sister Jackie started dating near the end of the 90s television series Roseanne.

Varney also played the part of Jed Clampett in the 1993 production of The Beverly Hillbillies. In addition to his Ernest Goes to... series, he starred in several smaller movies for Carden & Cherry such as Ernest P. Worrell's Family Album, Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam, and Your World as I See It, all of which showcased his great facility with assuming a wide variety of characters and accents. Just prior to his stint as Ernest P. Worrell, Varney was a cast member on the notorious television flop Pink Lady and Jeff.

Jim Varney died of lung cancer on February 10, 2000 at 4:45 a.m. in his home in White House, Tennessee, as the movie Ernest the Pirate neared completion; he was 50 years old." - Lexington Arts Website

The Death of Ronnie James Dio

July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010

We made the mountains shake 

With laughter as we played 

Hiding in our corner of the world 

Then we did the demon dance 

And rushed to nevermore 

Threw away the key and locked the door 

"Ronnie James Dio, a singer with the heavy-metal bands Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio, whose powerful, semioperatic vocal style and attachment to demonic imagery made him a mainstay of the genre, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 67. His death was announced by his wife, Wendy, on his Web site, www.ronniejamesdio.com.

No cause was given, but in recent months Mr. Dio had spoken about suffering from stomach cancer, and his band Heaven and Hell canceled its summer tour because of his health.

A heavy-metal purist, Mr. Dio was known as much for his vocal prowess as for his Mephistophelean stage persona. He sang about devils, defiance and the glory of rock ’n’ roll with a strong, mean voice that rose to a bombastic vibrato, and he is credited with popularizing the “devil horn” hand gesture — index and pinky fingers up, everything else clenched in a fist — as a symbol of metal’s occult-like worship of everything scary and heavy.

Ronald James Padavona was born in Portsmouth, N.H., and grew up in Cortland, N.Y. He took his stage name in tribute to the gangster Johnny Dio, and he began his career in rockabilly bands in the late 1950s. By the early 1970s his group Elf became a regular opening act for the British band Deep Purple, and Mr. Dio gained his first wide exposure when Ritchie Blackmore, Deep Purple’s guitarist, recruited him in 1975 to sing for his new band, Rainbow.

When Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, Mr. Dio replaced him, staying until 1982. By then he had his own group, Dio. Its first album, “Holy Diver,” was released in 1983, and its cover art was typical of the band’s style, with a cartoonish painting of a red-eyed demon whipping a drowning priest with a chain. In various lineup configurations, Dio released material into the mid-2000s.

Mr. Dio briefly rejoined Black Sabbath in the early 1990s, singing on its 1992 album “Dehumanizer,” and in 2006 he began playing again with members of that band, naming the group Heaven and Hell after the title of the first Black Sabbath album on which he had appeared. Heaven and Hell toured widely and released one album, “The Devil You Know,” in 2009.

Other than his wife, who was also his manager, he is survived by his son, Daniel, his father, Pat Padavona, and two grandchildren.

Over the years Mr. Dio became a symbol of the glories and the silliness of metal, and sometimes both at the same time. In the 2006 film “Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny,” a boy whose father has forbidden him to play metal prays in his bedroom to a poster of Mr. Dio sitting on a hellish throne; Mr. Dio, holding a medieval-style goblet, comes to life and urges the boy to forge his own way.

“You will face your inner demons,” Mr. Dio sings. “Now go, my son, and rock.”

- NY Times Obituary

Dio - Holy Diver (1983)

The Death of Frank Frazetta

February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010

I've been drawing or painting most of my life. Just here or there, and I never finish much. Oftentimes, I question my ability, whether it be to lack of focus or technical. Lately even, I haven't really had the discipline it takes to work at any length or detail. To digress, it's one of the most important parts of my life, and there are very few artists that I consider pillars of inspiration. Even fewer, are those that I would consider an influential core to my artistic gestation and aspirations. There lies Frank Frazetta, proof that man can transport his art from other dimensions. I was devastated when I found he had passed a couple of days ago. After hearing the news, I went home and looked through Icon, his biographical art book that has been published several times over. I'm still enthralled with the concept of how Frank worked, at many points completing his masterworks in a matter of hours. Its that spontaneity and channeling of that intangible creative energy that makes me want to pick up the paintbrush and stop talking. I never met Frank Frazetta, but he'll always be present when I'm working on my art.

Obituary from the NY Times -

"Frank Frazetta, an illustrator of comic books, movie posters and paperback book covers whose visions of musclebound men fighting with swords and axes to defend scantily dressed women helped define fantasy heroes like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, died on Monday in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 82.

The cause was complications from a stroke, said Rob Pistella and Stephen Ferzoco, Mr. Frazetta’s business managers.

Mr. Frazetta was a versatile and prolific comic book artist who, in the 1940s and ’50s, drew for comic strips like Al Capp’s “Lil’ Abner” and comic books like “Famous Funnies,” for which he contributed a series of covers depicting the futuristic adventurer Buck Rogers.

A satirical advertisement Mr. Frazetta drew for Mad earned him his first Hollywood job, the movie poster for “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965), a sex farce written by Woody Allen that starred Peter Sellers. In 1983 he collaborated with the director Ralph Bakshi to produce the animated film “Fire and Ice.”

His most prominent work, however, was on the cover of book jackets, where his signature images were of strikingly fierce, hard-bodied heroes and bosomy, callipygian damsels in distress. In 1966, his cover of “Conan the Adventurer,” a collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, depicted a brawny long-haired warrior standing in repose on top of a pile of skeletons and other detritus, his sword thrust downward into the mound, an apparently naked young woman lying at his feet, hugging his ankle.

The cover created a new look for fantasy adventure novels and established Mr. Frazetta as an artist who could sell books. He illustrated many more Conan books (including “Conan the Conqueror,” “Conan the Usurper” and “Conan the Avenger”) and works by Edgar Rice Burroughs (including “John Carter and the Savage Apes of Mars” and “Tarzan and the Antmen”).

“Paperback publishers have been known to buy one of his paintings for use as a cover, then commission a writer to turn out a novel to go with it,” The New York Times reported in 1977, the same year that a collection of his drawings, “The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta,” sold more than 300,000 copies.

Frank Frazzetta was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 9, 1928, and as a boy studied painting at a local art school. (Early in his career, he excised one z from his last name because “with one z it just looked better,” Mr. Pistella said. “He said the two z’s and two t’s was too clumsy.”)

Mr. Frazetta began drawing for comic books of all stripes — westerns, mysteries, fantasies — when he was still a teenager. He was also a good enough baseball player to try out for the New York Giants.

The popularity of Mr. Frazetta’s work coincided with the rise of heavy metal in the early 1970s, and his otherworldly imagery showed up on a number of album covers, including Molly Hatchet’s “Flirtin’ With Disaster” and Nazareth’s “Expect No Mercy.” Last year, Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist for Metallica, bought Mr. Frazetta’s cover artwork for the paperback reissue of Robert E. Howard’s “Conan the Conqueror” for $1 million.

Mr. Frazetta married Eleanor Kelly, known as Ellie, in 1956. She served as his occasional model and as his business partner; in 2000 she started a small museum of her husband’s work on their property in East Stroudsburg, Pa. She died last year.

Mr. Frazetta is survived by three sisters, Carol, Adel and Jeanie; two sons, Alfonso Frank Frazetta, known as Frank Jr., and William Frazetta, both of East Stroudsburg; two daughters, Heidi Grabin, of Englewood, Fla., and Holly Frazetta, of Boca Grande, Fla.; and 11 grandchildren.

After Ellie Frazetta’s death, her children became embroiled in a custodial dispute over their father’s work, and in December, Frank Jr. was arrested on charges of breaking into the family museum and attempting to remove 90 paintings that had been insured for $20 million. In April, the family said the dispute over the paintings had been resolved, and the Monroe County, Pa., district attorney said he would drop the charges."

I thought it would be cool to include a CBR file with many of his works. You'll need the comic reader linked on the right of this blog to view these.

Downloadone.

Downloadtwo.