TVXOHOF MEMORIAL TRIBUTE - THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS

From The Guardian:
Ozzy Osbourne, whose gleeful “Prince of Darkness” image made him one of the most iconic rock frontmen of all time, has died aged 76.

A statement from the Osbourne family reads: “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.” No cause of death was given, though Osbourne had experienced various forms of ill health in recent years.

Osbourne was one of the most notorious figures in rock: an innovator whose eerie wail helped usher in heavy metal, a showman who once bit the head off a bat on stage, an addict whose substance abuse led him to attempt to murder his wife, and latterly, a reality TV star much loved for his bemusement at family life on ‘The Osbournes’.

Even without “Reality” Television and appearances on talk shows and televised music performances, Ozzy Osbourne qualified for entry into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame as a member of the League of Themselves.  In fact, even with just barely exceeding the minimum requirements to be eligible, Ozzy also gained the status as a Multi-dimensional.

OZZY OSBOURNE

From Wikipedia:
John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne (3 December 1948 – 22 July 2025) was an English singer, songwriter, and media personality. He rose to prominence during the 1970s as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath, during which period he adopted the nickname "Prince of Darkness".

Osbourne became a founding member of Black Sabbath in 1968, providing lead vocals from their eponymous debut studio album in 1970 to Never Say Die! in 1978.

The band was highly influential in the development of heavy metal music, in particular their critically acclaimed releases Paranoid (1970), Master of Reality (1971), and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973). Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979 due to his problems with alcohol and other drugs. He then began a successful solo career with Blizzard of Ozz in 1980 and released 13 studio albums, the first seven of which received multi-platinum certifications in the United States. He reunited with Black Sabbath on several occasions.

He rejoined in 1997 and helped record the band's final studio album, 13 (2013), before they embarked on a farewell tour that ended with a 2017 performance in their native Birmingham. On 5 July 2025, Osbourne performed his final show at the Back to the Beginning concert event amid ongoing health issues, having announced earlier in the year that it would be his last live performance. Though he intended to continue recording music, he died 17 days later on 22 July 2025.

Osbourne sold over 100 million albums, including his solo work and Black Sabbath releases. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Black Sabbath in 2006 and as a solo artist in 2024. He was also inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame both solo and with Black Sabbath in 2005. He was honoured with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Birmingham Walk of Stars. At the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards, he received the Global Icon Award. In 2015, he received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

In the early 2000s, Osbourne became a reality television star when he appeared in the MTV reality show 'The Osbournes' alongside his wife and manager Sharon and two of their children, Kelly and Jack. He co-starred with Jack and Kelly in the television series 'Ozzy & Jack's World Detour' as well as 'The Osbournes Want to Believe' with his wife Sharon and son Jack.

Again, ignoring the reality programming because his fictional televersion is all that was needed, here are the shows which got him into the TVXOHOF:

PARKER LEWIS CAN'T LOSE
RENT-A-KUBE (1990)

Ozzy is seen in a quick cameo insert, not really part of the plot.  He gets dissed by one of the cast regulars and then breaks the Fourth Wall to exclaim, "Well, you don't have to bite my head off!"

O'Bservation: That makes Ozzy a serlinguist, able to talk to the audience back in the Trueniverse.

CSI
SKIN IN THE GAME (2013)

Russell and Ecklie attend a Black Sabbath show to meet the reporter John Merchiston. He wants to see how the CSIs work and Ecklie wants a positive view of the department in the press.

THE CONNERS
BEARDS, THRUPPLES, AND ROBOTS (2020)

Ozzy and Sharon are customers at the Lunch Box restaurant. Jackie, Darlene, and Becky discuss what’s been keeping them, as they want to talk to a manager, and they haven’t ordered anything. When it’s discovered that they’ve been staring at Jackie, Becky thinks they might want a throuple.

(Most of those plot summaries are from the IMDb.)

Here’s the reason why Ozzy is a Multi-dimensional….

THE TOONIVERSE

SOUTH PARK

CHEF AID (1998)

When Cartman comes into school singing the new hit song, "Stinky Britches," Chef realizes that the song he wrote 20 years earlier has been stolen. When he goes to the record company to show the song is his and ask for attribution, the record executive instead hires Johnny Cochrane to sue Chef for millions of dollars. Facing prison if he can't pay the fine, the kids look up all Chef's old music buddies to raise the money.

They all arrive in South Park to hold a huge charity concert, allowing Chef to hire Cochrane for himself and counter-sue the record executive.

Ozzy Osbourne kills Kenny by biting his head off. This is a parody of two separate real-life incidents where Osbourne killed a dove and a bat by biting their heads off.

Good night and may God bless Ozzy Osbourne.  If that's what he wanted....

 

TVXOHOF TRIBUTE - BRIAN WILSON

From the AP:

Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls” and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world’s most influential recording artists, has died at 82.

Wilson's family posted news of his death to his website and social media accounts Wednesday. Further details weren't immediately available. Since May 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship to oversee his personal and medical affairs, with Wilson’s longtime representatives, publicist Jean Sievers and manager LeeAnn Hard, in charge.

The eldest and last surviving of three musical brothers — Brian played bass, Carl lead guitar and Dennis drums — he and his fellow Beach Boys rose in the 1960s from local California band to national hit-makers to international ambassadors of surf and sun. Wilson himself was celebrated for his gifts and pitied for his demons. He was one of rock’s great Romantics, a tormented man who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper path to aural perfection, the one true sound.

From Wikipedia:
Brian Douglas Wilson (June 20, 1942 – c. June 11, 2025) was an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who co-founded the Beach Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition and mastery of recording techniques, he is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and significant songwriters of the 20th century. His best-known work is distinguished for its high production values, complex harmonies and orchestrations, vocal layering, and introspective or ingenuous themes. Wilson was also known for his versatile vocal range and lifelong struggles with mental illness.

Wilson's formative influences included George Gershwin, the Four Freshmen, Phil Spector, and Burt Bacharach. In 1961, he began his professional career as a member of the Beach Boys, serving as the band's songwriter, producer, co-lead vocalist, bassist, keyboardist, and de facto leader. After signing with Capitol Records in 1962, he became the first pop musician credited for writing, arranging, producing, and performing his own material. He also produced acts such as the Honeys and American Spring. By the mid-1960s he had written or co-written more than two dozen U.S. Top 40 hits, including the number-ones "Surf City" (1963), "I Get Around" (1964), "Help Me, Rhonda" (1965), and "Good Vibrations" (1966). He is considered among the first music producer auteurs and the first rock producers to apply the studio as an instrument.

In 1964, Wilson had a nervous breakdown and resigned from regular concert touring to focus on songwriting and production. This led to works such as the Beach Boys' “Pet Sounds” and his first credited solo release, "Caroline, No" (both 1966), as well as the unfinished album “Smile”. By the late 1960s, his productivity and mental health had significantly declined, leading to periods marked by reclusion, overeating, and substance abuse. His first professional comeback yielded the almost solo effort “The Beach Boys Love You” (1977). In the 1980s, he formed a controversial creative and business partnership with his psychologist, Eugene Landy, and relaunched his solo career with the self-titled album “Brian Wilson” (1988). Wilson disassociated from Landy in 1991 and toured regularly as a solo artist from 1999 to 2022.

Heralding popular music's recognition as an art form, Wilson's accomplishments as a producer helped initiate an era of unprecedented creative autonomy for label-signed acts. He is regarded as an important figure to many music genres and movements, including the California sound, art pop, psychedelia, chamber pop, progressive music, punk, outsider, and sunshine pop. Since the 1980s, his influence has extended to styles such as post-punk, indie rock, emo, dream pop, Shibuya-kei, and chillwave. He received numerous industry awards including two Grammy Awards and Kennedy Center Honors as well as nominations for a Golden Globe Award and Primetime Emmy Award. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000. His life and career were dramatized in the 2014 biopic “Love and Mercy”.

These are the credits which qualified Brian Wilson to be a member of the TV Crossover Hall of Fame:

THE RETURN OF BRUNO (1987 TV Movie)

A "documentary" about the major influence that a '60s rock singer named Bruno has had on rock music, as attested to by such rock legends as Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson and the Bee Gees, among others.

FULL HOUSE
BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1988)

The Beach Boys are in town and D.J. wins a radio contest where she and a guest can see the Beach Boys in concert. Problem is, Danny, Jesse and Joey want to go and D.J. has to decide who will go with her. When she makes her decision, Danny has hurt feelings because he isn't chosen. Now D.J. is upset because of that and she doesn't know what to do.

The Beach Boys sing Kokomo in the family living room. Even though Brian Wilson is singing Kokomo with the rest of the Beach Boys he was not on the original recording of the song.  However, the group later recorded a Spanish-language version of "Kokomo" with participation from Wilson.

BAYWATCH
SURF'S UP (1995)

After a number of unusual circumstances occur around the beaches, including Cody and Neely rescuing two surfer boys that come down with a fever, an environmentalist group comes to Baywatch to protest the dumping of chemicals from the storm drains, and Mitch enlists the Beach Boys for a benefit concert to help out raise money for repairing the storm drains.

THE TOONIVERSE

This appearance marked Wilson as a Multidimensional.

DUCK DODGERS
SURF THE STARS (2005)

When his Surf King status is wiped out by The Crusher, Dodgers must prevail in an impossible surfing contest.

“Believe In Yourself”
Written by Brian Wilson
Performed by Brian Wilson

O'Bservation:
All plot summaries are from the IMDb.

Along with the other Beach Boys, Wilson appeared on 'The Ed Sullivan Show', hosted by another League of Themselves member who is in the Hall.  And with his wife Melinda, he was a guest on 'The View'.  (The TV show itself is in the TV on TV wing of the TVXOHOF.)

Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Wilson.

As Red Skelton would say, “Good night and may God Bless.”

Love and Mercy on your cosmic journey, Sir....

TVHOHOF TRIBUTE - FRIDAY FAREWELL FOR JUSTICE SOUTER

From the AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who became a darling of liberals during his nearly 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85.

Souter died Thursday at his home in New Hampshire, the court said in a statement Friday.

While he wasn't much of a presence in the TV Universe, his fictional televersion does have at least the three required appearances to qualify for membership in the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.

DAVID SOUTER

From Wikipedia:
David Hackett Souter (September 17, 1939 – May 8, 2025) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 until his retirement in 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat that had been vacated by William J. Brennan Jr., Souter sat on both the Rehnquist and the Roberts courts.

While he was portrayed by three different actors, all three of these entries can remain in Earth Prime-Time.  The discrepancies in physical appearance can be attributed to our view into Toobworld is through the eyes of some unseen TV character (whom I have given the name of “Mr. Forthwall.”)

Here are the three productions in which his character appeared:

PICKET FENCES
MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT (1994)

BOSTON LEGAL
THE COURT SUPREME (2008)

RECOUNT (TV Movie 2008)

The late Justice will now join other members of one of the most exclusive clubs.  (I’m talking about the Supreme Court, not the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.  Frak!  The TVXOHOF will let just about any motherbleeper in!  There’s even one member who technically didn’t even exist!)

Those other Supreme Court members are Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice John Paul Stevens.  I really should get Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg inducted; I’m pretty sure she qualifies, if just for references alone.  Alito and Thomas can sit outside cooling their heels; I’m in no rush to induct them.  And I’ll be damned if Clarence Thomas gets in before Thurgood Marshall! 

Another Supreme Court Justice who is elegible for entry.... President William Howard Taft!

O'Bservation:
One day I hope to get pictures from the 'Picket Fences' episode and the TV movie "Recount."

TUESDAY'S TVXOHOF TRIBUTE - GLADYS ORMPHBY

Ruth Buzzi as Gladys Ormphby
2008 Emmy Awards 

From Reuters:
WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) - Comic performer Ruth Buzzi, who played a counterpoint to the 1960s sexual revolution for laughs as the frumpy, hairnet-wearing, handbag-swinging spinster on U.S. prime-time television hit "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," has died at age 88.

Buzzi succumbed to complications from Alzheimer's disease at her ranch home near Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursday, 10 years after she was diagnosed, her longtime Los Angeles-based agent Mike Eisenstadt said in a statement.

"Her husband of almost 48 years, Kent Perkins, expressed to me that she was making people laugh just a few days ago," Eisenstadt said in an email message to Reuters on Friday.

Buzzi devised a series of sketch comedy characters on the show. Gladys Ormphby, her most famous, was a scowling, irascible spinster who wore drab brown dresses and a hairnet with a spider-like knot in the center of her forehead. Sitting on a park bench, she would react to the approaches of a dirty old man played by Arte Johnson by mercilessly walloping him with her handbag when he muttered come-ons to her.

The Gladys and Tyrone bits offered a satiric contrast to the era's sexually permissive vibe celebrated on the show, which ran until 1973. The Gladys character became so popular that she began appearing elsewhere on prime time, and it became a badge of honor for a celebrity to be thrashed by Buzzi.

Appearing on one of several televised celebrity "roasts" hosted by actor-singer Dean Martin, Buzzi encountered the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. As Gladys, the diminutive Buzzi ranted about Ali interfering in her relationship with her boyfriend, then threateningly pointed her index finger at him.

"If you want to make something of it, I want you to meet me out in the parking lot, and we'll have it out, man to man," Buzzi tells him, unleashing dozens of rapid-fire handbag hits to the head and shoulders of the bemused champion, who took it all in good humor.

At another roast, Buzzi as Gladys tells Martin: "Look at you, sitting there so calm and cool, when last night you were yearning for my body." Martin responds: "That wasn't yearning, it was yawning," precipitating a handbag assault, with entertainment legend Frank Sinatra looking on and laughing.

"No, it didn't hurt," Buzzi told interviewer Nick Thomas in 2016. "It looked vicious, but it was just a felt purse lined and filled with old pantyhose and cotton. I was able to swing it with all my might and it still wouldn't hurt anyone, although it looked great and sounded great with a 'thud' when it landed."

Buzzi earned three prime-time Emmy Award nominations in the 1970s - for "Laugh-In" and "The Dean Martin Show" - and two daytime Emmy nods in the 1980s and '90s, including one for her work on the acclaimed children's show "Sesame Street." She won a 1973 Golden Globe award for "Laugh-In."

Gladys Ormphby will be Ruth Buzzi’s most enduring legacy in the TV Universe, with Skitlandia as her domain.  And the Television Crossover Hall of Fame honors her with this memorial induction into the Hall.  Many other characters from that show were of that time and so they were doomed to be fleeting images in the long run.  But Gladys Ormphby (and her beau Tyrone F. Horneigh) were timeless.

GLADYS ORMPHBY

From the Muppet Wiki:
Gladys Ormphby was a frumpy spinster who originated on ‘Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In’ in 1968, and was one of the few characters to remain on the series for its entire five-year run. The character's frumpy attire and stooping posture were first used by Ruth Buzzi in a stage production of Auntie Mame as Agnes Gooch, but the traits were refined and retooled for ‘Laugh-In.’

The dour, hair-netted Gladys was perpetually found seated on a park bench, where she was generally harassed by dirty old man Tyrone (Arte Johnson). Gladys staunchly defended herself by pounding him with her pocket book.

When Johnson left the series, shortly after an aborted wedding between the pair, Gladys developed an increasingly desperate dream life, creating fantasy romances between herself and historical figures. Both Gladys and Tyrone resurfaced as animated characters on the 1977 Saturday morning series ‘Baggy Pants and the Nit-Wits.’

On Sesame Street
In the 1990s, when Ruth Buzzi was a regular on ‘Sesame Street’ as Ruthie, Gladys made a few guest appearances. In one sketch, seated on her park bench as usual, she is approached by Cookie Monster who begs for cookies. Gladys sharply insists that she has zero cookies, so Cookie Monster eats her pocket book instead. Still unsatiated, Cookie Monster hungers after her sweater and hairnet, and is puzzled when she runs away.

(First: Episode 3705) Gladys also appeared in the celebrity version of "A New Way to Walk." In a 1993 episode, Gladys appears as "the Grouch Princess," complete with a magical pocket book.

Other appearances
Outside of ‘Laugh-In’ and ‘Sesame Street’, Gladys has also surfaced in such diverse venues as ads for Canada Dry ginger ale, the Dean Martin celebrity roast for Frank Sinatra, and the 1996 "Weird Al" Yankovic music video "Gump," making a cameo appearance on her favorite perch, the park bench.

O'Bservations: 
There were two instances in which Gladys Ormphby was connected to two other Toobworld characters who are also members of the TVXOHOF.  Both of them were inducted on the strength of their presence in the main Toobworld.  But with Gladys involved, these would be their Skitlandian televersions.

During that roast of Frank Sinatra, Lt. Frank Columbo showed up to get the autograph of Old Blue Eyes for his wife.  They didn't meet on screen, but within the reality of the TV Universe, they must have crossed paths off-stage at the ballroom.  And in one episode of 'Laugh-In', Gladys fantasized about working for Private Eye Joe Mannix.

In the TVXOHOF of my mind, there is that park bench in the Hall’s gardens, surrounded by daisies.  Tyrone F. Horneigh probably won’t be showing up, but I’m sure there will be plenty of other Hall members who will face the fury of Gladys’ handbag.

with Edward G. Robinson

with Sammy Davis Jr.

with Dick Martin & Dan Rowan

with James Garner

with Judy Carne

with Rock Hudson

with The Holy Modal Rounders

with Don Rickles

As Red Skelton would say, “Good night and may God bless….”