Celebrity death that bummed you out the most...

[glatt]

Tom Davis, writer for SNL, sidekick of Al Franken, died yesterday.

Tom Davis, ‘SNL’ writer and comedy partner of Al Franken, dies at 59
By T. Rees Shapiro, Published: July 19

Tom Davis, the longtime stand-up comedy partner of Al Franken and a writer who created many of the most memorable sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” including the alien “Coneheads,” which he dreamed up while on LSD, died July 19 at his home in Hudson, N.Y. He was 59.

He had a metastatic tonsil cancer, said his wife, Mimi Raleigh.

Mr. Davis and Franken began writing jokes together as teenagers at the private Blake School in Minneapolis, making mock announcements over the public address system, including a satirical Ku Klux Klan march called “Superpatrioticanticatholicsegregatious.”

They joined “Saturday Night Live” before its debut season in 1975 and shared a single apprentice writer's salary of $350 a week, where they collaborated on sketches culled from politics, pop culture, and the bizarre.

Mr. Davis said he spent a small fortune throughout his lifetime on marijuana, hashish, cocaine, LSD and heroin, and enjoyed the substances with his friends Timothy Leary, John Belushi and Jerry Garcia.

The idea for the “Coneheads” came after a drug-fueled vacation to Easter Island with Dan Aykroyd, where Mr. Davis hallucinated that his own forehead had grown 10 inches.

Mr. Davis created the recurring Steve Martin character “Theodoric of York,” a medieval barber who dispatched sage advice on medicine and the law.

In one skit, Theodoric is called upon to rule judgment against a criminal, John the Tanner, who was accused of adultery.

“You were found guilty of theft and your right arm was cut off,” Theodoric says. “You were found guilty of lying and your tongue was cut out. Now, hmm, adultery.”

One of Mr. Davis’s best-known sketches was the scene in which culinary doyenne Julia Child tries to remain calm after she cuts the “dickens out of my finger.” She bleeds profusely all over her holiday chicken and shrieks, before passing out, “Save the liver! Save the liver!”
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The two were largely inseparable and worked in tandem for much of their comedy careers. Franken even named his daughter in his best friend's honor, Thomasin Davis Franken.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by glatt

Tom Davis, writer for SNL, sidekick of Al Franken, died yesterday.

He and Franken were the baggage handlers transporting the gorilla in "Trading Places".