Grim And Funny...

"The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" is a great cartoon, featured on The Cartoon Network. The show is about two crazy kids (Billy and Mandy) who befriend Death itself, and by befriend, I mean basically enslave "him". The two accomplished this by winning a limbo contest against the dark messenger and have been getting into a great deal of trouble with "him" ever since. (Just the usual shenanigans, I suppose...) Anyway, the Cartoon Network has some great games featuring Grim, Billy and Mandy which can be checked out here: Grimmy
"The Fright Before Christmas" is quite the seasonal good old "clean fun" type of thing... know what I mean? So, do check it out...
That is... if you've got time... to kill?
Or better yet... if you're dying to kill some time? ;)
Bwah-ha-ha - morbid pun alert!
But anyway...

Verily, the current trend on TV -since 9/11, is it- has TV shows experiencing a morbid fascination with death - and it has evidently not spared kids' fare either! Such shows as Dead Like Me, Six Feet Under and Terminal City are but the tip of the iceberg... References to the afterlife abound - ghosts are recurring characters on many a show - and the starting point of many series -such as Weeds for example- is the death of a pivotal character (a surprise plot twist that has lost its novelty for quite some time now... but is still being used. Look at the CSI franchise going... hmm?). Such a fascination with passing away now... sheesh! Still... Why not indeed - hmm? Death is an integral part of life, after all... We all know that! It's like the opposite sex - we can't live with it - but we can't live without it either! ;)

Tookie... and Johnny

As they executed Tookie here...

They executed in North Korea... Not much difference between us and the enemy, it would appear...


Johnny Cash spent some time in that famed jail too...


Before getting Hurt...

But way after going through Fire...

And after Redemption too...


So maybe there's hope for the executioners' souls
too?

+++

Tookie - not Wookie... Crips - not Creeps... Terminated - not Governated

Tookie's life is in the hands of the Terminator indeed. Now a mere few days away from the scheduled execution of the former Crips gang leader, clemency is still hoped for from the "Governator" by Tookie's supporters - but how can we really expect such kindness coming from a TERMINATOR...?!?

Tookie is one tough cookie, by the looks of it - this here is the first pic I see of him (one of two, but I chose this one for it is the most recent. The other one was of Tookie in the Seventies - reeks of "Blaxploitation" flair... and that is not appropriate right now.) - I am certain Tookie fears not Death.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams today reminds me of the hardened criminal portrayed by Clarence Williams III in the pseudo-classic "57 Pick-Up" - a rather lousy 1980s Cannon Films offering starring Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret (!), Kelly Preston (the future Mrs. John Travolta herself) and John Glover as a very diabolical back-stabber (his specialty - after all, he went on to play the devil in "Brimstone" and the conniving Lionel Luthor in "Smallville" - but those are different stories...)
In that film, Clarence dispensed death rather casually as mercilessly and quite effectively too... no death sentence for him as he would bite the dust way before undergoing arrest... in typical "Hollywood justice" fashion.

Speaking of Hollywood - it is simply beyond lugubrious and beyond... comical, even, that an actor who has portrayed assassins and killed countless victims on-screen (of course) will now mete out justice and punishment (as he also could display clemency - but likely won't - surprise me, Ah-nold, and do the unexpected...) upon a criminal who shot four people fatally years ago - even before the release of The Terminator... How many shootings has The Terminator inspired since its release... huh? Likely much more than just four, I'd wager...

Do you believe in... real rotten luck? Hexes? Jinxes? Curses? Synchronicity - but in the realm of curses - lest it is just plain bad luck indeed?

It seems rather improbable that there isn't something more to it, when the same family is struck twice by tragedy at the exact same time of the year and in two consecutive years. That is what happened to the Durand family in St-Jean-de-Matha in Québec, Canada. Last year, three weeks before Christmas, a fire broke out in their home - and the wife as well as two of their three kids died in the accidental fire. This year, the husband dies this time, suddenly - leaving the oldest son the lone survivor of a family of five at age sixteen.

Amityville and other houses like it have nothing on *this* house... I think.
Some homes are not worth owning...

Note that - I can't help to think - that Saint-Jean-de-Matha makes me think of the portuguese verb matar... which is the verb "to kill".