Jonathan Winters (1925-2013)

Robin Williams should go to the funeral.

@Dodgerblue: Robin Williams has a career because of that guy.

Robin Williams has always fessed to that — it’s why Winters showed up on Mork & Mindy.

@nojo:
Jonathan was less creepy than Robin was and didn’t need to try so hard.

Deleting a double comment. Nothing to see here, move along.

I met him once when I was in the chorus of Happy End at South Coast Repretory. Lee Merriwether (who I also met several times) had a husband named Sherman (or something like that) who had a role in the show- and they were friends with Mr. Winters. He came back after the show: super nice, and cracking jokes rapidly, just like the movies.

My, how time flies.

TJ/. I’m sitting in a restaurant in Weho, listening to the most horrible scene: a man telling another man how much he loves him, how he can’t live without him, how’s he’s loved him since he met him and even though he’s not nearly attractive enough he knows he could make him happy. It’s earnest and heartbreaking and not working at all and OH MY GOD HE JUST TOLD HIM THAT SEX DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU HAVE A MENTAL CONNECTION.

Dear Christ, the humanity!

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing:
Yikes. Straight or gay, that never does work. Best to just move on.

@ManchuCandidate: It made me appreciate Mr. Catt. Nothing, not age, not death, not even premature ejaculation is as terrifying as unrequited love.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: ” Nothing, not age, not death, not even premature ejaculation is as terrifying as unrequited love.”

If that isn’t the Stinquer Tweet of the Day, then I just don’t know what sort of operation our Birkenstock-and-sock overlord is running here. Because I’m ready to announce 4 months into the year that you win the Stinque Intertubes Comment of the Year for that.

@SanFranLefty: Put down the ketchup and make your way to the door.

@SanFranLefty: Did he give me the love? You can’t read the tweet on this newfangled mobile platform. Which, I have to say, is a faboo improvement over the old one.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: I can program the blurb into New! Improved! Stinque! Mobile!, but I can’t decide where to put it.

@SanFranLefty: Ditto.

@nojo: Can it go in the drop down or link from it somehow like “recent comments”?

@Tommmcatt: I feel for him. That sounds very much like the speech that I gave my first college boyfriend, the infamous Turn Signal Dick*. Of course, that was just before I found out that he’d banged half the campus–men and women. I guess that’s what happens when you’re 19, VGL, and horny as hell.

*It was sharp and pointy, like the turn signal on the instrument cluster.

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: Yeah, I’m thinking top of Recent Comments — somewhere it’s just There. Making it a separate link is too much reader effort for something that should be a casual aside.

If you’re interested, Marc Maron has reposted his 2011 Jonathan Winters interview.

Maron is a Cranky Comic who (usually) interviews other comics, and he can take some getting used to. But his interviews are first-rate — always interesting, no fluff.

Maron is also the former host of an Air America program called — wait for it — “Morning Sedition”. Which, well, I wasn’t aware of five years ago.

@nojo: WTF! is among the best podcasts there is ….

@Tommmcatt Can’t Believe He Ate The Whole Thing: I was Baby Face in London. I was very pretty. So very very pretty. So very very very pretty. Weirdoes queued up at the stage door to buy my used dance belts. I have been known in the years since to get on top of a piano to sing Surabaya Johnny.

@¡Andrew!: I miss Turn Signal Dick.

Unrequited love’s a bore.
And I’ve got it pretty bad.
But for someone you adore,
It’s a pleasure to be sad.
Like a strayed
Baby lamb
With no mammy and no pappy
I’m so unhappy.
And oh, so glad.

Larry Hart.

I think that says it all. It’s a privilege to be in love, to be breathless and desperate and haunting the street where he lives. Who cares how it works out. Humiliation is good for the soul. Otherwise you’ll grow up like Vanna White. You cut an apple tree to make it produce fruit. I’m going to stop.