Since we like to discuss various celebrity deaths here sometimes, the recent passing of Charles Rocket was of interest to me, as one who has found some fascination with the Saturday Night Live 1980-1981 season. That was the year when practically the entire production staff, crew and cast was replaced by new folks, after the five-year tenure of the legendary "not ready for prime time players."

Charles Rocket more or less seemed to be the "leader" of this new group, similar to the way Chevy Chase stood out in the first year. He was the Weekend Update anchor, and he at least tried to convey the requisite "hipster" attitude. His passing on October 7th was determined to be a suicide... his throat had been cut and he was found in a field nearby his home. It wasn't reported until at least a week after the fact. People who knew him posted here and there on the web that they were rather suprised by this... he had a wife and a young son and hadn't shown any special signs of depression.

That particular year in SNL's history may be relevant to the Andy Kaufman topic peripherally... since it was what it was, i.e., no longer the big popular thing it used to be, this allowed the show "Fridays" on ABC to temporarily be "the place to be" instead of SNL. And as we know, Andy made several memorable appearances on "Fridays" that season... many would not touch SNL with a fifty foot pole at the time.

This past Sunday NBC aired the "Saturday Night Live in the Eighties: Lost and Found" special, which impressed me with the amount of focus it gave to this season, since from all other signs, everyone seemed to prefer to pretend that it never existed. They even had a few clips, including Rocket doing one of his "Rocket Reports" (man-on-the-street types of interviews) and also included interviews from then-cast members Gilbert Gottfried, Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius, who was noted as having likely been the first person to portray a "Valley girl"-type character in that era.

They even played a clip, although bleeped, of the most infamous moment from that season, when the cast had been playing out a "Who Shot J.R." theme throughout the show -- "Dallas" cast member Charlene Tilton was the host -- and at the end of the show, as the cast was gathered for the goodnights, she asked Charles -- referred to as "C.R." and who had been shot in the final sketch, and who was now seated, bandaged up, in a wheelchair -- who he thought had shot him. He replied, "I don't know, it's the first time I've ever been shot, and I'd like to know who the f*** did it." That moment on live television caused a firestorm at the network, which had been itching to find a reason to put the show out of its misery somehow, and may have been the final nail it needed. Soon after, nearly everyone was canned except for Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, and Dick Ebersol was brought in to right the ship again.

Apparently, Charles Rocket was not necessarily harmed by that moment, as he went on to moderate success as an actor in roles like Bruce Willis's character's brother in "Moonlighting"; a prominent villain-like role on "Max Headroom," some good turns in the show "Quantum Leap," and many other roles in TV sitcoms and dramas over the years. He was also well-featured in "Dumb and Dumber," and was a major character in the SNL-derived film "It's Pat," which seemed to also help cement him better into SNL history. Julia Sweeney, former '80s-'90s SNL cast member who originated the "Pat" character, has her own web site and blog where she recently posted her own memories of him.

Lots of good information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Rocket -- and there are also links to Julia's blog and other things, including a clip from the F-word incident.

So I'm wondering... how many here also remember this year of Saturday Night Live?

I remember it. The first thing that popped into my head when I saw your post was, Hey that's the guy who said f**k on live TV.

Charles Rocket dead
The loser slit his own throat
Now he rots in hell

Hey, I smell hallitosis.

I discovered an interesting discussion over on the IMDB.com message boards for Charles Rocket (should be able to find them by just searching his name and then look for "message board" in the list on the left)... apparently his sister is participating in some of the discussions there. Seems like mostly to complain about the insensitive tone of other people posting there, and it's odd but this seems to be how these things ALWAYS go... someone dies, some smart contingent of people invest the time to run to their message board and proclaim how the person is a hack, a loser, better off dead, or somesuch, and then an argument ensues. In this case, one of the administrators is routinely deleting the insensitive messages, but leaving the outraged responses to them.

I think this would be a ripe topic for psychological study. What compels folks to behave this way? Sometimes I think how society has progressed with so many complicated inventions and innovations to enhance our lives... now we have sophisticated computers and software and so much time people have invested in creating and developing websites to share information... all of the brainpower, money, resources and time invested, to end up in the lap of some creep with too much time on his hands and too little regard for the significance of his ability to say something to an audience of the world at large....

And to the sister, looking for understanding and comfort, of someone whose life ended so early and tragically.