I am in receipt of many e-mails wondering how come no tributes on this site for Barbara Billingsley, Tom Bosley or other celebs who've recently gone away. Easy answer: I have nothing to say about these people…or at least nothing that everyone else isn't saying. I kinda got started in the obit business because for a long stretch, whenever a veteran comic book creator passed, if I didn't write about them, no one else did. Too many deaths of people I thought mattered were passing without notice. The duty also intersected with my compulsive anecdote-telling, which was in full display Tuesday evening when I spoke at the Writers Guild. Mention a proper name in my presence and I probably have a story about the person — often but not always a first-person encounter — and it's difficult for me to not share it. My best friends have grown to be tolerant of it and a precious few may even have learned to enjoy it.
But I have no stories about Ms. Billingsley or Mr. Bosley. Never met her. Met him once for about as long as it took to tell him I enjoyed him in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway and wished I could have seen him there in Fiorello. That was it. Nothing else to write about either…and there are plenty of bios and remembrances around by folks more qualified to compose such things. Please don't take it as me not respecting them or their work. Sometimes, you just don't have anything to say worth saying. And sometimes, even I can realize that.