Captain Lou Albano

I'll be the first one to admit that I have let you down. That I am out of shape. Lazy. Lame. Just like Captain Lou Albano. Heh Heh.

Let's face facts. The celebrity death business ain't what it used to be. It has been slow. Really, Really, Slow...

I swear. Every single day I check the obituaries, and every single day there really isn't all that much of interest. And, gosh, short of Patrick Swayze, this has been going on for well over two months.

So you might think I would be all over the Lou Albano thing. Well, it kind of caught me on a rather busy week. See, I started this blog during a relatively slow time in my career, and (Thank God) things have picked up, so I am not exactly sitting around downloading music all day long.

Captain Lou, like, perhaps, Ed McMahon, is pretty much why Celebituary was invented. I mean, sure, we all felt the Michael Jakson death on some level, but, as I have said before, this blog is about giving another fifteen minutes to some of our best friends on their way out the door. And, unlike Michael, Lou Albano, really could use that last fifteen, methinks.

See, I was way into 'rasslin growing up. I watched it every Saturday. An on occasion, I had the honor of going with my dad to the old Municipal Auditorium in Pensacola, FL. I had the honor of seeing a young Hulk Hogan, at the time known as "The Hulk" battle Andre the Giant. And Hogan was the bad guy.

Lou Albano was "New York wrestling," and that wrestling was much better than most of what we got on the Panhandle. No offense to Ron Fuller, Bullet Bob Armstrong, or even Austin Idol.

Here's the thing about Captain Lou. First of all, his schtick was unmatched, save for perhaps George "The Animal" Steele. Frankly, I never liked the whole Cyndi Lauper thing. He shows up in that video as her dad, and I'm thinking "well, that's an endearing role, but Captain Lou is a bad guy, not a good guy,...so WTF?"

Well, I got over it, and as we all know, that video launched Lou into a brief period of national celebrity. I think you know you've made it when you are the center square, even if you have to share it.

This is kind of fun from a pop culture standpoint. What do you get when you combine Captain Lou, Mario, and hip hop? This.

And, the captain parlayed his Mario celebrity into a memorable PSA against doing drugs, which is a bit laughable given his Coke-fueled rants of years gone by.

Ok. Enough. Let's close this one out with a sweet song. It's remarkable. Detached from the body, he sounds a bit like Jimmy Durante.