Billy Mays Dead

[Chuck Nessa]

I suggest you query up some products he hawked and find the discussion groups about them. I searched out 2 that interested me and decided to skip.

[Larry Kart]

A friend of my folks (the son of the eminent rabbi in their old neighborhood in Chicago -- my mother used to push this guy around in his baby carriage) is married to a woman whose first husband was Ron Popiel. She was a so-called hand model in her (so to speak) salad days, and the rest of her was pretty nice too, albeit in a rather lacquered style. Not to stray too far afield, but Ron's father Sam (in the same business) was the big deal Popiel when I was young. IIRC Sam and his son had a big falling out and went their separate ways, with son eventually eclipsing father in the national memory bank.

[JSngry]

Are they sure it was cocaine and not Oxiclean? They both look the same.

Close:

The toxicology tests also showed therapeutic amounts of painkillers hydrocodone, oxycodone...

[catesta]

Yeah, I missed Mr. Popeil or certainly didn't recognize him on the rotisserie thing. But something to consider about that era of three channels - Madge wasn't on every single one of them every day. There was other crap to sell, and limited commercial space with three networks. With hundreds of cable channels, you couldn't spend an hour, any time of the day or night, 24/7/365, without seeing this guy all the freaking time. That leads to far more media saturation than Madge or Whipple ever had.

Dude, you don't remember Mister Microphone?

That's Ron's son delivering the classic line, "Hey good lookin', we'll be back to pick you up later!"