Friday Five

After yesterday's wild and raving rant, I promised a suitably silly Friday Five. Now, some might say this is a little macabre, but I ran it by my husband and he felt the possibilities with this topic were endless. And he was right, it was hard to narrow it down to just five. No pictures today, I'm feeling lazy. Sorry.

So.....

Five Dead People I Like

1. Julia Child (8/15/1912-8/13/2004)

Fun, warm, witty, and hell bent on teaching America that food was more than melted Velveeta. Very close to the end of her life, she did a guest shot on Emeril Live. Emeril had just destroyed something he took out of the oven, and Julia said "Don't worry over it. We're just going to get the pre-made pretty one out of the back anyway." Which at that time sort of broke the "taboo" on Emeril's set that he supposedly cooked "live". It was awesome, and felled everyone with laughter. She also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during WWII, because the Navy said she was too tall.


2. Richard Harris (10/1/1930-10/25/2002)

Marvelous actor and hell-raiser extraordinaire. How Peter O'Toole outlived him, I'll never know, and he probably doesn't know either. Check out the movie The Molly McGuires from 1970. And of course, he originated the role of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series. He played it exactly as I imagined Dumbledore to be, which is pretty amazing. Harris lived life by his own rules with his friends Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, and Albert Finney. He had fun right up until the end.


3. Fred Rogers (3/20/1928-2/27/2003)

Mr. Rogers was awesome. While there has been some contention lately that he caused a generation of kids to grow up with feelings of entitlement, I think it's a bunch of hogwash. I was enthralled by this man when I was a kid, and whenever I was going through a period where other kids were picking on me, Mr. Rogers made me feel better. And, no, I don't have a sense of entitlement. I don't think anyone owes me anything, whether I'm special or not.


4. My Great-grandmother Dorothy Scott

She was fun, and she made the best Yorkshire pudding ever. As she got older, she would laugh so hard, she couldn't get up, and woe betide anyone she fell over on. She put up with a lot through her life. She lost a sister to disease, I think it was diphtheria. She had three daughters of her own, and helped raise my mother when my gran become a single mom. The best story about "Nanny" comes from my second cousin, Scott, who gave the eulogy at Nanny's funeral. Scott sometimes took Nan to her doctor's appointments, and she hated the waiting room. She always said they shouldn't bother showing up on time, since they never saw her until twenty minutes after her appointment should have been over. One day, she brought a cap gun, and fired it off after repeated attempts to get a nurses attention. She got in for all her appointments very quickly after that.


5. Albert Einstein (3/14/1879-4/18/1955)

Patent clerk, physicist and pacifist. Brilliant and tempermental. Not a perfect human being, but a an almost perfect mind. He wasn't always good to his wife, but he did love his children, and in the space of a very short time helped revolutionize the way we looked at the world and the universe. It just took a while for some of his ideas to catch on.


Honourable mentions: Ben Franklin (who is definitely dead) and Abe Vigoda who everyone seems to think is dead, but isn't.


Those are my five...show me yours! And have a good weekend, y'all, I'm working through mine.