It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now...

I don't personally have much going on right now. So I'll discuss something in the news. One of the top ten funniest men to ever walk the earth passed away yesterday and it needs memorializing. I was taught about movies by my cousin. I spent every summer of my life in a campground in the Pennsylvania mountains where I spent my days swimming, softballing, X-men-ing, tennis-ing and my nights were spent watching horror movies (see Halloween 5, In the Mouth of Madness, and Army of Darkness), sci-fi movies (see Star Wars) and most importantly, old dry comedies. These were my favorites. The ones that immediately come to mind are Clue, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and History of the World Part I. However, at the top of the list, my favorite comedy of all time, will sit Airplane!. It is simply the funniest movie I have ever seen. And the funniest parts of the funniest movie I have ever seen...almost uniformly belonged to the now late Leslie Nielsen. Sadly, the second funniest parts belonged to Peter Graves, who passed earlier this year.

Leslie also starred in the Naked Gun movies which were unbelievably hysterical in their own right. Perhaps you'll know them as those movies O.J. Simpson was in or as the movie version of his TV show Police Squad. Airplane! remains one of the two tests I have to determine whether I like a person's sense of humor. If they don't find the Airplane clip below funny, I don't want to be their friend (the other test is at the beginning of Monty Python and the Holy Grail where you hear the sounds of a horse approaching, except when it arrives its actually a guy banging two halves of a coconut together while skipping...I consider that the funniest moment in movie history).

I was really sad to hear Mr. Neilsen passed and wanted to at least mention it. And perhaps somebody who doesn't know about him, or Airplane! or the Naked Gun Movies (or any other movie I mentioned) will go out and see it...and that will make it worth it. He made some great movies and his dry, deadpan delivery in Airplane! is absolutely outstanding.

This is for you Leslie

His best Airplane scenes:

(There used to be a good video here, but it got taken down - go to youtube)