Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Columbo

Wikipedia gets checked by me every week to see if any celebrities died, so I can keep up on pop culture. Their deaths never affect me one way or the other, although I remember being sad for two entire days when Dale Earnhardt was killed in February 2001. I’m a NASCAR fan and Earnhardt was always my favorite driver, and his shocking death hit me hard.
Other than that, I’ve never been sad about another celebrity’s passing until I heard last Saturday morning that actor Peter Falk died.
“Oh, man,” I muttered and was legitimately sad for the day.
Falk became famous on TV in the late 1970s for playing the role of detective Lt. Columbo, but all the episodes aired as reruns throughout the 1990s on the Biography channel, which is how I got hooked on the series. Columbo was a cigar stub-smoking, wrinkled raincoat-wearing, old beat up Peugeot car-driving, irritating murder-solving genius. The show was groundbreaking because in almost all Columbo episodes, the murder occurred early and the TV audience knew who did it, then the plot steadily unwound as Columbo eventually figured things out for himself and nailed the killer.
I mention Peter Falk today because Columbo was kind of an inspiration for my Crazy Lucky Dead book. A murder in CLD takes place somewhat early, then the psychological bizarreness of the main characters is showcased throughout the rest of the novel.
A quick fact about Peter Falk himself – he was blind in one eye due to cancer at age 3. Falk’s daughter, Catherine, offered this anecdote about her father at his eulogy.
“My fond memories of Dad include watching him on Hollywood sets, and taking family trips with him to the California mountains,” she said. “Oh, I also remember many exciting car rides because that man behind the steering wheel had only one eye.”
Look into the AbyssStill no word from any agents. I’ve pretty much given up hope and am starting my next book when I go on vacation in mid July.
“You’ve given up?” wife Jenny remarked when she read the draft of this blog. “Get back on your horse and start mailing and emailing packets again – there are hundreds of agents out there. You’re not giving up so easily on your dream, are you?”
I’m a Seinfeld fan, and that was the exact sentence that Jerry once spoke to Newman when Newman, a mailman, said he had given up hope of ever getting a mail route in the paradise state of Hawaii.
“You’re not giving up so easily on your dream, are you?” Jerry asked.
“I usually do,” Newman answered.
Okay, I won’t yet. There aren’t many things I dislike more than mailing query letters and trolling for literary agents, but just about everything I’ve ever dreaded doing in my life has actually turned out well.
Wait a second. I’m out of stamps. There goes the dream.

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