Mar 30, 2007

Ain't nothing but a gravedigger

By Malcolm Fleschner / Humor Columnist

As a journalist, I'm frequently surprised at how misinformed most members of the general public are about what it takes to be a media commentator. True, a great deal of our work involves hard-nosed news gathering, by which I mean attending exclusive parties to share cocktails with other well-compensated media commentators and discussing how misinformed most members of the general public are.

But beyond this sort of journalistic legwork (so called because standing around chatting for hours is brutal on the calf muscles), success in the news business today often depends on developing a well-tuned eye for emerging trends. Not to toot my own horn in this department, but I did "get in on the ground floor" by purchasing Google stock when it was trading at just $450 (I bought 1/8 of a share) and I also recall watching Emmitt Smith during his record-setting football days and thinking to myself, "Sure, but what people really want to see is whether he can dance the pasodoble."

So you can probably imagine how my trend-attuned ears pricked up this past week when I heard that plans were afoot to exhume the corpse of legendary magician and escape artist Harry Houdini. If these plans go through, Houdini will join other such notables as Jesse James, President Zachary Taylor, Tammy Wynette and the Big Bopper in the ranks of famous people whose bodies have been dug up in the past few years so that modern forensic science could answer unfounded questions about their deaths that almost no one was really asking.

The main driving force behind this trend is that many living descendants of long-dead celebrities have few available options for basking in what's left of their forebears' reflected glory. Admittedly, nowadays many folks without any discernible talent get on TV regularly just because they're related to an actual celebrity (see Rivers, Melissa) but we do have to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise, where would it end? ("Everyone put your hands together for tonight's 'American Idol' guest judge: the late Sammy Davis Jr.'s cousin's neighbor's dermatologist's ex-wife!")

That's why these days, if you're the descendant of a celebrity who's dead and likewise can't stop you, your best alternative is to hit the Internet. There you'll undoubtedly find some kook who's dreamed up a conspiracy theory about how your famous ancestor was murdered, faked his own death, had a vestigial tail, died while carrying Elvis' love child, or, best-case scenario, all of the above. Next, you just hire a PR firm to send out your press release and - Bam! - Matt Lauer and his "Today Show" camera crew should be at your door with a set of shovels faster than you can say, "With three hours of programming to fill every day, anything can be news."

This was what happened to 1950s rocker the Big Bopper, also known as J.P. Richardson, who was dug up at his son's request this past January. The ostensible reason for the exhuming was to settle rumors that Richardson had suffered a gunshot wound aboard the plane prior to the crash that also famously took the lives of fellow music stars Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

Predictably enough, the resulting autopsy revealed nothing unexpected except that the Big Bopper was, in his son's words, "in remarkable shape" for a corpse that had been buried for 48 years (the article from which I got this piece of information didn't mention how many other 48-year-old corpses the "Little Bopper" had dug up for comparison).

But my question is, what if they had found a bullet hole in the Big Bopper? Then what? Would the next stop be Buddy Holly's grave site to dig him up and test his fingers for gunshot residue? And then, of course, to conclusively determine precisely what happened on the plane that fateful night, they'd have to unearth Ritchie Valens to find out whether the "La Bamba" singer had died with his hand outstretched and his mouth forming a shape indicating he'd been shouting the word, "Nooooooo!"

So now, unless the old master can pull off one last miraculous escape, Houdini will be the latest famous corpse unearthed, this time to prove whether he died, as long believed, of appendicitis caused by an unexpected punch to the midsection, or from being poisoned by his enemies in the phony psychic community. And, just to avoid having to do it all over again later, they may also check his tissue for signs of the newly discovered "gay gene."

Well, since there seems to be no stopping this trend, I might as well just try to capitalize on it instead. That's why I'll soon be cashing in my Google profits and reinvesting them in a startup company that publishes maps to celebrity graves. But here's the new wrinkle - now they give you a free home DNA kit with every purchase!

E-mail Malcolm Fleschner at Malcolm@CultureShlock.com to join his pool by picking the precise date when Anna Nicole Smith will inevitably "resurface."