thehefner | (no subject)

Joey Bishop is dead.

Many of you will go "who?" Can't blame you. That's because Joey was, in many ways, the only one of the five who had any brains and common sense. He never got into serious drama. He was never involved in crazy scandals. His life wasn't packed with substance abuse and tragedy. He's the only one who truly was able to crack a joke and keep his head above water, even as the world forgot him. I don't think he even gave a damn.

But I don't know. Because that's the thing: there's pitiful little biographical information about him out there. He lived a relatively unremarkable life, aside from the Pack and having a talk show with Regis as his sidekick.

All I can say right now is that it's truly an end of an era.

God, I'm actually crying. Why the hell am I crying? Maybe it's just the culmination of three seriously shitty days of frustration, illness, and bad vibes all around. I don't know what's been in the air lately, but seriously, I'm tired of it all. And now Joey.

Also, in the months since Dad died, I've been so immersed in the Rat Pack of late, delving into biographies and stories which may or may not be true, but that hardly matters either way. With those guys, you take the myth with the men. But unlike Frank, Dino, Sammy, and poor Peter, whose all-too-human flaws showed the dark side of the idyllic and carefree Rat Pack lifestyle, Joey Bishop was the only one who (it seems to me) really was his on-stage persona.

He was the Mouse in the Rat Pack, and in many respects, he was the best of them. There's a reason he was the last one standing.

The last of the Clan is gone. Johnny Go weeps.