The Naked Gun and the Dead

Or
Leslie Nielsen – Dead and Loving It

Or
I Don’t Know Where He is Now, But He Won’t Smell Too Good, That’s for Sure

Or
Surely He Can’t Be Dead. He is. And Don’t Call Me Shirley.

Or
Leslie Nielsen was taken to a hospital in Florida. A hospital? What is it? It's a big building with lots of patients, but that's not important right now.
(Kudos to Monty)

Or
Hey, It's Enrico Deadazzo
(Props to Phil)

Or
Guess those 5 Shakesperian Actors got their revenge
(Word to Phil)
Leslie Nielsen, best remembered for battling Cliff Robertson in The Sheepman, has died of pneumonia at the age of 84. I know this obit comes at a bad time. I would have sent it before, but he wasn’t dead then. Writing these obituariess is always difficult, even more so for a beloved figure like Nielsen, so like a midget at a urinal, I am going to have to stay on my toes. Born into a disgustingly Canadian family, complete with a drunken, wife-beating Mountie for a father and a brother who would grow up to be deputy prime minister, Nielsen plodded along in middling dramas and sci-fi movies for more than 30 years, wrestling a bear in Day of the Animals, battling an invisible monster in The Tempest in Space, aka Forbidden Planet, and sinking the Poseidon. Then in 1980, the Zucker Brothers asked him to employ that same earnest approach as Dr. Rumack in Airplane! and a star was born. He followed that up in 1982 with the ahead of its time Police Squad! (In color) as Det. Frank Drebin, a failed 6-episode experiment that netted him an Emmy nomination. The series proved to be exactly 6 years ahead of its time, as 1988’s Naked Gun was a hit that spawned two sequels, all due to Nielsen saying things like “Hey nice beaver,” while admiring Priscilla Presley’s taxidermy collection while never cracking a smile. Roger Ebert dubbed him the Olivier of spoofs, and just as Olivier had The Jazz Singer and Clash of the Titans, Nielsen appeared in a string of direct to crap witless parodies that played like 12:45 a.m. Saturday Night Live sketches including Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 2001: A Space Travesty, Repossessed, Spy Hard and the Scary Movie series. Among his many other roles were the guy that Barbra Streisand kills in Nuts, Col. Buzz Brighton, a ring-banging gung-ho military man in an episode of MASH; Lucas, Blanche’s uncle who marries Dorothy in the finale of The Golden Girls (after getting shot down by Mona on Who’s the Boss?), and the curling-based Canadian romantic comedy Men with Brooms. Although he was a naturalized American citizen, he was Canadian to the core, and in a moment of life imitating art, helped welcome Queen Elizabeth II to the centennial celebration of Saskatchewan, and thwarted Reggie Jackson’s attempt on her life.