Dead Men Can Write
How long have we been waiting for Bob Hope to eat his last meal at the Toluca Lake Bob's Big Boy? So long that today's New York Times obit was written by reporter Vincent Canby -- who died in 2000.
I myself dodged a bullet thanks to Bob's longevity. At my old job at another TV trade (Electronic Media, now known as Television Week), I was assigned back in 1997 to write an advance obit about Bob Hope. My editor was worried that he might die at anytime, and wanted to be ready.
I started work on it, but hit a brick wall: No one at NBC wanted to talk. They thought it was too goulish. So I set it aside and vowed to resume working on it later. But I was always too busy to get back to it. And it became a long-running joke with my co-worker: "You better write that obit, Bob Hope's gonna die any day now," he'd remind me.
But Bob didn't. Our editor eventually left, and then I switched jobs, without ever having written that obit. My ex-co-worker says he still thinks of me whenever Bob Hope makes news.
Sometimes it pays to procrastinate.
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