Evel Knievel, RIP

One of my friends is kidding me that I should change the name of this blog to “those are people who died”, because her I got with another RIP post. I guess in a sense much of what is going on in the world isn’t interesting me much right now, but the passing of legends and celebs for some reason does.

Quite simply, if you grew up in the 60s or 70s, you knew who Evel Knieval was. He used a fairly stock Harley Davidson bike, and jumped over all sorts of stuff, from cars, to greyhouse buses, to a shark tank (which inspired a similarly stupid stunt on Happy Days, hence the term “jump the shark”). Through all of this, he landed succesfully at times, wiped out spectacularly at other times, and entertained and scared us all more than once. His ill fated attempt to jump the snake river canyon pretty much sealed his career, and later in life he suffered many ailments unrelated to jumping but likely related to his hard living. He was 69, but the arcade games and B-movies about his life and career go on forever. More news here