The Shocking and Forgotten Suicide of Don Knotts


On June 30, 1963, comedic actor Don Knotts shot himself in the head with a .38 caliber revolver during the live airing of The Ed Sullivan Show.

Ironically, at the conclusion of the opening monologue, Sullivan remarked, “I’m really excited about tonight’s show. I think everyone is going to be talking about it around the water cooler in the morning.” At the time, everyone that heard the words simply thought it was just vapid self-promotion. Everyone that is, except for Knotts, listening to a feed of the show backstage in the green room.

The show began normally. The first segment featured, a trained poodle act from Waukesha, Wisconsin that performed various flips, ball tricks, and riding tricycles while Stars and Stripes Forever played.

Witnesses said they saw Knotts out of the dressing room, pacing around backstage chain smoking. When asked if something was wrong, Knotts just called it “anticipation”, saying he “just want[ed] to get on with it”.

Knots was scheduled to reprise his Barney Fife character in a skit where Ed Sullivan gets stranded in Mayberry, followed by a brief interview.

Coming back from commercial, the show opened with a whistling bars of the Andy Griffith show, and a facsimile of police station set from the show. Knotts in his Barney Fife costume sat with his feet up on a desk and his hat pulled down over his face. Stage left, a door opened and Ed Sullivan walked in. Sullivan delivered his first line, “Excuse me. My car has broken down, and I was wondering if you could help me.” Knotts simply stood up and walked over to Sullivan and muttered something that the microphones couldn’t catch.

Sullivan looked a bit confused and repeated his line. Knotts looked disinterested, delivered some setup lines, allowing Sullivan to cue up the first big joke of the skit. Instead of delivering the punchline, Knotts said, “I’m not a clown.” Sullivan, visibly confused, repeated his line, and again, louder this time, Knotts said, ” I am not a clown.”

Sullivan, now angry, demanded Knotts say the scripted line. Instead, Knotts drew the revolver he had as part of his costume. He unbuttoned his breast pocket and pulled out two bullets, and proceeded to load the revolver.

Everyone in the theater was quiet. Sullivan eventually asked, “Are.. Are those real bullets, Don?”

“Oh yeah. Bought them myself. They’re the real deal.”

Sullivan put his arms out and tried to calm Knotts. Saying that no one was hurt, so everything would be fine, if he’d just put the gun down.

Instead of calming the situation, Knotts became more agitated. “I am not a clown. Do you understand that? I AM NOT A CLOWN!”, Knotts shouted.

The camera zoomed in on Knotts. He said he was tired of everyone thinking he was just a bumbling idiot. People on the street confusing his characters for him. Casting directors constantly casting him for the what is essentially the exact same role: The Clown. Tears welling up, he said he wanted to do drama. He wanted respect. “I did Shakespeare! Not Malvolio or Dogberry! I was King Lear! I was a good King Lear.”

He collected himself, took a deep breath, and then simply said, “I am not a clown.” He quickly raised the gun to his temple. Off camera, a man shouted, “Don! No!” Knotts repeated, “I am not a clown,” and pulled the trigger.

The crowd screamed, and camera spun and tilted. Quickly, the camera returned to Knotts’s body lying on the stage. Sullivan was standing next to him looking on in shock. Stagehands quickly gathered around Knotts’s body. After a few seconds, someone in a headset stepped in front of the camera while brandishing a clipboard in like a shield. As he moved towards the camera, he angrily shouted, “Turn the goddamn cameras off!”, before pushing the camera off from the image. The broadcast switched to a silent still title slide for the show. The smiling of caricature Ed Sullivan a gross mockery of the nightmare that has just unfolded live on national television.

Across the Eastern a Central time zones, CBS affiliates struggled to fill the dead air. Some stations tried to find kinescopes of literally anything. Cleveland’s WOIO aired an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show. Boston’s WBZ ironically aired the Andy Griffith show. New York’s WCBS just ran the silent slide for the rest of the hour. By the time the show was scheduled for the Pacific and Mountain time, a previous episode of the Ed Sullivan show was prepared and aired.

That night, CBS chief Hubbell Robinson ordered the kinescope of the episode destroyed. Without recordings, and general shifting of social tastes, Knotts and his suicide was forgotten.

The episode was considered lost until 1996, when surviving kinescope film was found in an attic in Saugatuck, Michigan.

A Concept Album For My 11 Year Old

My 11 year old son is learning the guitar. He seems to like this teacher better than his previous one, because this one is focusing on whole songs, rather than musical notes.(When I was studying with my son over the pandemic, I liked learning notes, but it was frustrating to go forward, and honestly, the teacher was a bit of a square.)

Anyway, this teacher has been teaching him classic rock, which is awesome. When he starts practicing a new song, and I name it, he’s proud. For example, for the school talent show, my son played Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”, while everyone else played violins and flutes, and boring stuff like that. My son also learned, “Back in Black”, and now “Enter Sandman”.

“Smoke on the Water” and “Enter Sandman”?

If you’ve been paying attention… somewhere… you might know that I own, and am fascinated with, Pat Boone’s, “In a Metal Mood”.

I should document this here some day, but the tl;dnr is that squeaky clean Pat Boone got in trouble with his predominately older evangelical Christian audience when he promoted his classic rock cover album, “In a Metal Mood”. It played out exactly like how you’d expect it you even half an interest in contemporary American politics — where “contemporary” is defined as the ever damning, past 70 years.)

He already has two of the twelve down and everyone one of the ten remaining are right in the teacher’s wheelhouse of 70s – 80s hard rock. It could happen! My son could learn all twelve song of “In a Metal Mood”, and then I could record him, and make my own legitimate family memory, that just happens to a contain private joke just for me.

I was going to ask if this was too bizarre, or somehow creepy, immoral, or something even legitimately esoteric talk, but now that I write it down, I’m convinced that I should definitely do this, but not tell the teacher my plan, because I’d come off super weird as soon he’d ask the obvious, “But why this album?”

The world is not nearly cool enough for the teacher to note the tracks, and then make an idle — or better yet, probing — noting the similarities to the album. To which I could only stand beaming ear to ear, while saying, “Wow! What a coincidence!”

THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD’S ONLY GOT ONE ARM! THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD’S ONLY GOT ONE ARM! THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD’S ONLY GOT ONE ARM!

It’s true. Rick Allen, lost his arm in a car crash on New Years Eve 1984, when he lost control of his corvette, and struck a wall. “But wait? How did he lose an arm from simple a car crash?” Ahh! Good question. His left arm was wearing a seat belt, but he rest of him wasn’t. (A graphic rendition of the old, “Wear a seat belt kiddos” PSAs of 80s. (Didn’t Rick Allen make a seatbelt PSA? I’m serious. Grey background, sitting on a stool, showing his right arm, he gives some stats about how seat belts save lives, and eventually closes with, “Wear a seat belt,” stand up, faces the camera revealing his missing arm, and say, then stands up and says, “I wish I did.” That was definitely a series of ads. Wheelchair kid! We might of laughed about them in the fifth grade. Either way, this Rick Allen PSA described, I’m almost positive exists, wasn’t how I first remembered it as a darker, like, “My arm did. I wish I did too,” but that most likely different happen.))

His drum set is a fantastic piece of adaptive engineering, and all this happened right before they recorded their biggest album, Hysteria. (Junior High Jonathan, secretly thought they had awesome songs. He was right.\m/)

Anyway. Here’s the Bloodhound Gang.

At Long Last…

Back in the mid 90s, my friend Brad pulled out a strange small brass contraption. With a few slides and pulls, it transformed into an awkward pipe.

It was exquisite. A door covered the bowl. It had a pick to stir and clean it that was kept in tube on the side. It even had a place to hold unburned weed. It was the perfect hash pipe.

I thought about that pipe for 30 years. I couldn’t tell you anything else about it until a few weeks ago, and now I own one.

Continue reading →

Just Be The Best You

Scene: An airplane, with its engines engulfed in flames, is plummeting towards a hospital.

New Hero: Shit. What do I do? There’re so many people are going to die. What do I do? What do I do? Calm down. “Just think about saving one person,” that’s what he said right? Okay, I can do this.

*whizz* *craaak* *wooft*

Scene: The plane, with the fire now extinguished, sits carefully, but securely on the hospital’s roof. All the passengers and patients are safe.

Reporter: Wow Hero! You really saved the day. Weren’t you scared?

New Hero: I just imagined my mom was on the plane, and so I just knew I had to try.

Reporter: Did you know that the plane was full of time travelers, including Baby Hitler?

New Hero: Wait. What? What are you saying?

Bystander: HEY! THIS ASSHOLE JUST SAVED BABY HITLER!

Crowd: BOO! BOO!

New Hero: I-i-it’s not like that! I… I just saved like a thousand people!

Crowd: BOO! HITLER SAVER!

Howard The Duck: I think you this milkshake is for you.

CV Dazzle Updated

Adam Harvey has updated CV Dazzle
with all new patterns. (Previously.) The new patterns are aimed at defeating newly developed face detection algorithms from a variety of vendors including OpenCV, VeriLook, and Apple.

His main suggestions are:

  1. Use contrasting makeup, light colors on dark skin, and vice versa.
  2. Obscure the nose bridge.
  3. Partially obscure an eye.
  4. Modify the contrast, tonal gradients, and spatial relationships of light and dark areas of the face.
  5. Try obscuring the shape of the head.
  6. Make the face appear asymmetrical.

General Organa, Hero of the Alliance

Leia Organa: A Critical Obituary

While detailed, I’m deeply troubled that there is no mention of the General being an avowed anti-Wookiee bigot. While influential in Alliance to Restore The Republic, her frequent use of anti-Wookiee slurs such as referring to the members of the enslaved species as “walking carpets”, troubled many. As was her pointed refusal to acknowledge the contributions and sacrifices made by Wookiee members of the Alliance. Due to her bigotry and influence on the Alliance Cabinet as the sole daughter of one of the rebellion’s founders, it is believed that liberation of Kashyyyk was delayed by at least three years.

One of the few Wookiees that knew the General well — who agreed to only be interviewed on background in order to speak freely — characterized her relationship with him as “frequently strained” to the point of being “barely tolerated”. When asked if he ever spoke up about her treatment, he said, “She was Bail Organa’s daughter. Everyone in the Alliance knew her. Senator from Alderaan. Early leader in the Alliance. She had her allies. Me? I wasn’t exactly known, and what was known wasn’t exactly a sparkling reputation. But what it really came down to was loyalty. Loyalty to my friend. That and the harsh pragmatism that we were going to need her if we were to have any hope to overthrowing the Emperor, and his regime. So I put up with it. When I couldn’t, I’d make my remark, but she never got it, because he never did bother learn to understand me, but my friend, he knew. She though. She became a real source of friction between me and my friend, so we just kind of stopped talking about it, just to stay friends you know? But after the war, I made it clear I wasn’t going to be in the same room with her.”