Wednesday Reads

 Obituary:  The other day, New Year's Eve in fact, comedian Shecky Greene, 97, a fixture for many years in Las Vegas,  died.  According to his widow, he died of natural causes.

He was less well known than others of his generation, but he was still popular.  In a fun fact not mentioned in the AP link, Greene was popular enough there was a racehorse named after him.  This horse, Shecky Greene,  is important to those of us who are fans of the great Secretariat, for Shecky Greene, the horse, was the speedster who ran in front for most of the 1973 Kentucky Derby, until the inevitable happened in the backstretch and into the far turn.  The rest, we can say, is history, in that record-breaking Derby, the record which still stands 50 years later.

Despite being left in the dust, Shecky Greene, the horse. did win the 1973 Eclipse award for the top American sprinter.

Meanwhile, more about his namesake:

Born Fred Sheldon Greenfield, Greene took to singing, acting, making jokes and doing mock accents while growing up on the North Side of Chicago.

He served in the Navy in World War II in the Pacific.

On returning to Chicago, he went to community college and thought he might become a gym teacher, but started doing comedy nightclub gigs for money.

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And yes, the two Shecky Greenes did actually meet:

With Larry Adams riding, Shecky Greene the colt raced to an easy lead and set an honest pace for the first seven furlongs with fractions of 23.4, 47.4 and 1:11.8. As expected, though, he ran out of gas. Secretariat blew past him with a time that remains the Derby record and raced on to Triple Crown history. It was like Shecky the horse was the opening act who yielded the stage to the equine version of Shecky the comic superstar.

Sometime before that Derby, someone had the obvious idea to get the namesakes together for a photo op. The racing media were there in force back when the racing media were a force.

“They brought Shecky out to meet Shecky,” Greene said. “There were about 100 people. Out of all the people who were there, he bit me. The horse came over like he knew it was me, and I don’t think he liked me. But he bit me.”

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It was something how the southern Oregon media refused to correctly sex the murderer "Susan Monica" when it was widely known this killer was and is a cross-dressing MAN. My nephew, who at the time worked on cars for the sheriff's department,  had said the cops  noted this man was a "transgender" or whatever bullshit phrase one wants to call him.  Anyway, this man is housed in a women's prison, certainly making the women there very ill at ease.

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A killer makes a deathbed confession.

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