If you’re still hanging around the computer on this beautiful, sunny, pre-MemDayWeekend afternoon, you’re more than likely looking out the window and longing for anything other than work to occupy your attention. Allow me to help by tossing out a few links I’ve been meaning to post for a while…

First up, sadly, is a gaggle of obituaries and related materials for three celebrities whose names may not mean anything to you but who you’ll most likely recognize once you start reading.

The first of these is actor and impressionist Frank Gorshin, best known for playing The Riddler on the campy old Batman series. In my mind, however, he’ll always be black-on-the-right-side Bele in the classic Trek episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” That’s the one that serves up a heavy-handed (but effective) allegory about the stupidity of racism, in this case involving a species whose skin tones resemble a high-quality pair of spectator shoes, i.e., black-and-white shoe polish. The “superior” race among these people believe themselves better because their black is on the right side, while the underclass types sport their black shoe polish on the left. It sounds pretty silly, but that was the point, and the episode’s conclusion — when Bele and his quarry Lokai return to their homeworld to find everyone dead from race-inspired civil war and they still can’t put aside their pointless hatred for each other — is chilling, even now, far removed from the turbulent 1960s.

I missed a chance to meet Gorshin a few years ago because I was too cheap to pay his requested $25 for an autograph. In retrospect, I wish I’d just bit the bullet and reached for my wallet. He died on May 17 at the age of 72, from a combination of lung cancer, emphysema, and pneumonia (they ought to be an adequate anti-smoking message for today, don’t you think?). The L.A. Times ran a good obit for him, and I also found a nice tribute here.

Moving along, it may surprise some of you to learn that I am a fan of The Andy Griffith Show, the old black-and-white ’60s sitcom about a small-town sheriff and the assorted loonies he calls friends and neighbors. The show is gentle and sweet-natured, very unlike modern comedy in a lot of ways, and not even especially funny to modern eyes. But my hometown wasn’t so different from the show’s fictional setting of Mayberry when I was growing up, and I enjoy the reminder of how things used to be. I also like the show’s characters, who I would argue are among the best-defined ever seen on a television comedy. One of the most memorable of these characters was a goofball hillbilly named Ernest T. Bass, a lovelorn eccentric who had a thing for chucking rocks through plate-glass windows. Ernest appeared in only five episodes of a show that ran (I believe) nine seasons, but he made a deep impression… deep enough that he even has his own Website.

Howard Morris, the gifted comic actor who played Ernest, died on May 21 at the age of 85. You can find a detailed obituary here, and here is a nice tribute from a North Carolina newspaper columnist. (Mayberry is supposedly in North Carolina, not far from Raleigh.)

Finally, Thurl Ravenscroft, a brilliant voiceover artist you hear every time Tony the Tiger tells you how great Frosted Flakes are, passed away on the 22nd. He was 91. “They’re Greaaaatt!” may have been his signature piece, but he did a lot of other things that Baby Boomers and we older Gen-Xers are sure to recognize, too. For example, he sang “You’re a Mean One” in the animated classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas and his voice is heard all over Disneyland, notably in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (my personal all-time favorite Disney attraction, even before the movie). Here is his L.A. Times obit.

As usual, Mark Evanier, who lives and breathes 1960s animation, television, and comedy, has made some nice comments on all three of these men. He shares personal memories on Gorshin here and here; he discusses Ravenscroft (isn’t that an awesome name?) here; and he talkes about Morris here and here. He also corrects something the official obits of Morris get wrong in this entry.

As I mentioned above, Pirates of the Caribbean is my favorite Disney ride. Perhaps because of childhood experiences with that ride, real historical pirates are also one of my myriad interests, so I was very intrigued to learn that researchers are salvaging Blackbeard’s ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. At least, they think it’s the QAR, which the notorious Blackbeard (who, according to legend, wove burning fuses through his impressive facial hair to give himself a more fearsome appearance) supposedly ran aground off the coast of North Carolina in 1718, shortly before his capture and execution. In a way, I almost think it’s sad that technology has advanced to the point where we can actually find all these legendary shipwrecks. Somehow it’s much more interesting to have them remain missing, don’t you think?

If looking into the sea doesn’t interest you, how about a ride into orbit? Diet 7-UP is holding a promotional contest wherein the lucky grand prize winner will receive a ticket good for one free suborbital flight on a not-yet-built spacecraft similar to the successful SpaceShipOne. The most likely candidate for fulfilling the ticket is Virgin Galactic, the only company so far that has licensed the SpaceShipOne technology. If no one is able to take the winner for the ride by 2009, the ticket is redeemable for cash. Personally, I’d rather get my ride…

And lastly for today, remember that Gilligan’s Island episode where the castaways run into a Japanese soldier who’s been marooned for years and doesn’t realize World War II is over? Well, it seems we have a real-life case version of that scenario in the Phillipines, where officials are looking into reports that two elderly men are Japanese soldiers left behind in the jungle after the war. It is believed, however, that these guys are well aware that their war did, in fact, end a long time ago.

Apparently, however, there was a guy found back in 1974 who didn’t know and initially refused to surrender. It’s a funny old world sometimes…