Rocket Man

I was sad to see this:

FARMINGTON, Connecticut (AP) -- Charles Rocket, a comedian and actor who appeared on "Saturday Night Live" and had roles in a variety of movies and television series, committed suicide, the state medical examiner has ruled.

[snip]

Rocket was a cast member on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" during the 1980-81 season, a tumultuous year that followed the departure of the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" and founding producer Lorne Michaels. Rocket gained notoriety when he was fired from "SNL" for swearing on the air.

Rocket's career was perhaps permanently short-circuited by inadvertently uttering the "F" word live on SNL. He was dismissed from the show following that incident. I saw that show 25 years ago but somehow missed "the word". Still, back then, I thought it was kind of cool he did it. There was little to no swearing on TV back then and to get the big one on network TV was just downright radical. Yet, had Rocket not said what he said, would he have gone on to much better things like many other SNL alumni? We'll never know.

Ah, another piece of my past is gone.

There is one other interesting thing in this story. It's the very last paragraph:

His movie credits included "Earth Girls are Easy," "Dumb and Dumber" and "Dances With Wolves," according to the Internet Movie Database.

This is an AP story using, and crediting, an internet information source -The Internet Movie Database. I use the IMDB all the time and have linked to it many times here. But still, this is the AP. They have their own resources, right? Well, maybe not so much anymore. The times, they are a changing.