June 28, 2009: Just the previous week, Ed McMahon, sidekick to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, host of Star Search (the American Idol of the 1980s), and pitchman for Publisher's Clearing House, had passed away. This was followed two days later by the death of Farrah Fawcett, the one-time star of the hit TV series Charlie's Angels, who once posed in a red bathing suit for a poster that hung on the walls of every young boy's bedroom in the 1970s. Both, however, were quickly knocked out of the spotlight, since on the same day that Farrah died, the media got word that Michael Jackson had fallen into a coma. They then began ignoring Farrah to go on a death watch for MJ. Once it was confirmed that the King of Pop had died, all the focus was now on him. And still was in the days that followed. People were buying his albums and stuff from Amazon and other websites, and from used record and bookstores. But nobody was looking for Farrah's poster nor were they looking for Season One of Charlie's Angels (Farrah's lone season on the show) on DVD. And what would they have tried to find related to Ed McMahon? A video on You Tube? I'm guessing not.
But today something else happened. I clicked on Twitter and saw the phrase #oxiclean. I wondered how that could be. I hadn't heard much about Oxi Clean lately, so I clicked to find out why. The pitchman for Oxi Clean was now dead! Was the celebrity death streak about to begin again? Oh my god!
I was still using dialup at the time, so I disconnected from the Internet and picked up the phone to give my mom a call.
"Did you hear who just died?" I asked, the news of the Oxi Clean guy fresh in my mind.
"Yes. Michael Jackson."
I was sure she'd already heard about MJ dying, since people were still talking about it. "No, I mean just now."
"No, who?"
"The man who did the commercials for Oxi Clean."
And it was then that my obsession with Oxi Clean came back. I was tempted to go out and buy a jar of the stuff for cleaning. I mean, would it be any worse than buying records from someone who just died? And one needs cleaning supplies more than they need albums, even if you have to keep on buying cleaning supplies. This I felt was a good reason to stockpile Oxi Clean.
Everyone on Facebook was posting about the deaths last week.
So I decided it was time to tell them:
Now the Oxi Clean pitchman has died. Three deaths last week, will there be two more this week?
I have to admit I never even knew the guy's name until today, when I got the following reply:
Tina Brownley: I loved Billy Mays. Everything he sold I wanted. He seemed like one big teddy bear.
Other replies included:
Rachel Johnson: Wow, that's four deaths. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, MJ and now Billy Mays.
And something else I found out today that I never known previously: Billy Mays and Michael Jackson were the same age. I later added this in a comment on my Facebook post, but I do not know who many people actually saw it. In the weeks, months and even the years that followed, no one seemed to know that fact..
His commercials were still being aired on TV. It was very strange and haunting. Perhaps stations were still under a contract of sorts to carry the ads. But it wasn't going to be the same without him.
One day after work, I stopped at Walmart to get a jar of Oxi Clean. I didn't know if they were still making Orange Glo or Orange Clean. I remember those back in the day when he was heavily promoting them alongside Oxi Clean on his infomercial where you could call 1-800-something to purchase the stuff. Were people still using Oxi Clean? I know I still did occasionally and if I couldn't afford the real stuff, I'd get the generic knockoff at the Dollar Tree. It's all the same to me. though I did actually get the Oxi Clean brand today. Mom would later say, "You don't have to use Oxi Clean just because that guy died."
