About Larry Gelbart's Stroke

[filkertom]

FROM: Larry Gelbart <xxxxx@xxx.xxx>
TO: filkertom@yahoo.com
SUBJECT: MY STROKE

Never happened.

My premature obituary is merely a trailer.

Best,

Larry Gelbart

First, yay! He's fine.

Second, dayumm. It ain't often you get e-mail from a writing god. 'Scuse me while I buff my fingernails on my lapel.

Third, um, Mr. Gelbart, sir -- to quote Dr. Tran: ... How did you find my village...?

Comments

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Your "village" has a heck of a lot of citizens, people with summer homes, and tourists. I'd bet that he found one of them reporting his death as "found in filkertom's LJ."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, I was actually pretty careful about the wording -- "apparently Mr. Gelbart may have suffered a stroke, and we wish him all the best" -- trying to address the fact that it may not be the case, and that he wasn't dead yet. So the Telephone Game would've had to go pretty far for that. Not that I think you're wrong; this being the 'Net, the Telephone Game goes that far all the time....

[ebenbrooks.livejournal.com]

The Telephone Game is preternaturally shortened on the 'Net, my friend. I once saw one person report something, and then a second person, referring directly to the report of the first person, completely distorted the original report.

All it takes is one lazy reader who glances at a sentence wrong and goes off in a tizzy. :/

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

From what I've been able to tell, somebody's been posting fake obituaries to alt.tv.mash and alt.obituaries. You're probably on the end of the Telephone Game that went from "died of a stroke" to "had a stroke."

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Any relation to the premature post of Forrest J Ackerman's death? Personally, I wouldn't put it past the foxy old buzzard to have engineered that himself, just to read the obits. Not speaking ill of the dead, I'd say it to his face and I bet he would merely smile enigmatically.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Newsgroups: alt.obituaries
From: rshanda4077th@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:27:22 -0800 (PST)
Local: Mon, Dec 29 2008 4:27 am
Subject: Health/Death Watch: Larry Gelbart, M*A*S*H genius

That's what Google Groups has on the original poster to alt.obituaries. The 2002 obit on Mr. Ackerman is a different e-mail address at AOL, but that doesn't mean anything.

[timewalker.livejournal.com]

I woke up X-Mas morning to an obituary for David Tennant on one of my feeds. Needless to say, I scrambled to LJ to see what my friends had to say. Nothin'. I'd like to find the guy who typed that one up.....

[trektone.livejournal.com]

Woah!

[ebenbrooks.livejournal.com]

And by the way, he probably found your village the same way any of us (who have not met you personally) did—via friends. (In my case, selenesue.)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure he did. But think about it. The closest thing I have to a big-name Hollywood friend, at least as far as I'm aware, is trumanburbank. I don't think Larry Niven or actress/stuntwoman Toni Blair (who I have hooked up with on MySpace) read my LJ. I'm just very curious how far into what depths my name has traveled.

Of course I want to exploit it, a little. Who wouldn't? ;)

On the other hand, given that the rumor has been going around, he may just be Googling himself and nipping it in the bud wherever he finds it.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I'd bet on this being active damage control, personally. He's just finding every place where this was reported, and sending "didn't happen" messages before his front lawn is hip-deep in flowers.

[ebenbrooks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. Heck, I self-Google already, and there aren't any rumors about my death going around! ;-)

[jss]

Would you like us to start some?

[ebenbrooks.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm.... Could generate some publicity, but ... no, I don't think so. It might unduly upset some people. Thanks anyway.

[jss]

As long as you're sure.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Very cool.. for him being healthy and for him being keen and writing to tell you so.

[sdelmonte]

There is something about the Internet and about e-mail that not only reduces the distance between us and the greats, but that makes them want to reduce it further. I've seen that with Paul Dini replying to posts on his blog and Lawrence Lessig replying to an e-mail I sent him about LJ.

But this makes those seem small. Those were essentially solicited. This...this is just way cool.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

It's much like the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game. Just from the people I have seen posting on this list, I can think of several of your regulars who could be within two or three degrees of Gelbart. And who knows who is lurking here, maybe a friend or neighbor.

It did not happen to be me, but it could have been; my father, like many WGA members of his generation, were hit up for real life war stories of Korea as the series M*A*S*H kept going on longer than the war did. [He was the real X-ray technician who was always sought out by camera buffs on base because he had the only darkroom for many miles around! His price: he got to make his own extra copies of nurses' shower pix.]

[hughcasey.livejournal.com]

I remember when I first posted John Scalzi's "Being Poor" in my LJ, but I didn't know who had written it, so I posted it unattributed. John emailed me THAT NIGHT to ask me to attribute him as the author.

I'd never spoken to John before that.

So, yeah, it happens.

[docwebster.livejournal.com]

That icon is so made of win.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

Nice!

[james-the-evil1.livejournal.com]

LOL @ Dr. Tran

[madrona.livejournal.com]

I...love...mother!

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>My premature obituary is merely a trailer.<<

That has to be the wittiest rejoinder to a mistaken report of one's death/injury I've seen since Sam "Mark Twain" Clemens said the reports of his death were "greatly exaggerated." And knowing how funny a writer Larry is, we should have totally seen it coming. Thanks for sharing it.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

That was, in fact, how I knew I wasn't being rickrolled. It was way too clever a response to be just anybody.

[gan-chan.livejournal.com]

It certainly is. And hopefully the release date of that particular feature presentation has been pushed way, way back.