Re-visiting The Dead Celebrity Fan Club

While I was in LA recently, I came across an interesting ad in a local paper advertising nightly stays at the former apartment of late Doors singer, Jim Morrison.

Now, while I am not sure why anyone would pay to sleep in some dumpy, roach-infested pit furnished with dirty shag carpeting from the Seventies and beds infested with flesh-burrowing parasites passed on by so-called Doors Fans/Uncleanly-Hippie-Vermin, I am sure there is probably no shortage of ridiculum ready to shell out big bucks to break on through to the burn-out side.

After all, when it comes to dead celebrities, Jim Morrison has got to carry a heavy load.

Ever been to his gravesite at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris? It was so popular with adulated fans desperately craving to pay tribute to their favorite singer (by loitering for endless weeks, smoking copious amounts of potent hydroponic skunkweed and scrawling LONG LIVE THE LIZARD KING on any other nearby tombstones), the cemetery fenced off his resting place. Now, I presume these Morrison fans are forced to smoke their weed in the same place local Parisiens relieve their bladders (which just happens to be any other place they feel like).

Note: Did you know 19th century composer Frederic Chopin is also buried at Pere Lachaise cemetery, and not a single knife-etched scrawling reading LONG LIVE RONDO IN E FLAT MAJOR, OPUS 16 on his tombstone?? Not to worry though. I fixed that small oversight.

So, what is it with these dead celebs that keeps us hanging on? Every year, the man with the hard hair on the nightly news tells us how old Elvis WOULD HAVE been on January 8th. Ok, so Elvis would have been 71. Fine. And he MIGHT HAVE run in the Boston Marathon if he spent more time jogging instead of popping sleeping pills and frying up peanut butter and banana sandwiches, but they dont talk about that every January 8th on the news, do they?

Marilyn Monroe is another dead celeb people just cant say goodbye to. Why not? Hollywood's greatest actress? A celebrated legend? Come on, if Marilyn had lived any longer, she would have ended up becoming Anna Nicole Smith with the fortitude of Bobby Brown at a complimentary all-you-can-snoot coke smorgasbord.

Listen, lets leave the dead alone. Next time you are in LA, do not waste your hard earned cash on an apartment even Jim Morrison would not have remembered if he were alive today. Spend it where its really needed. Like the legendary high-priced Beverly Hills Hotel. I hear that place couldn't even afford to supply Zsa Zsa Gabor with her very own personal toilet paper maitre d' last year.

Now thats what I call a tragedy.