Quote of the Week...from Bob Newhart

The only way to survive is to have a sense of humor.                        Bob Newhart

Bob Newhart, the great television comedian known for his two popular sit-coms The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78) and Newhart (1982-90), is definitely a survivor...he's 91 and still pluggin' along.  However, if you put his name into a search engine you're bound to come up with death reports...he supposedly just died either on September 21st or October 30th, depending on the website.  From what I can tell, this is a hoax and the soft-spoken humorist is still alive and well...which brings me to the above quote.  I suppose you really are a survivor if you outlive your own death notices!  My favorite Bob Newhart Show episode...and there were many I liked as I regularly watched it back in the 70s on Saturday evenings following Mary Tyler Moore...was the Thanksgiving episode from 1975 in which Emily leaves on a trip and Bob is left spending the holiday with others, including his highly neurotic patient Carlin, in his apartment as the turkey gets burnt in the oven and Bob orders Chinese while everyone ends up getting inebriated.  One element of his series that I loved was how a simple joke or turn of phrase from early on would come back later on and get amplified and humorously twisted...this particular episode was a great example, with knock-knock jokes taken to their funniest.  Let's all hope that Mr. Newhart got a good laugh at his "demise" and will continue enjoying his life to the fullest.  By the way, there's something on the internet called WikiObits that produces makeshift obituaries of famous people even if they're still alive.  They did one for Newhart and I tested it out by doing a search on Beyoncé...their false obit of her stated that she died possibly of a fireworks accident.  This all illustrates something I've hit upon before: if you Google something, it will respond by providing you what it "thinks" you want, not necessarily what is true...