For anyone who thinks I might be slipping in my old age, no, I did not miss this piece of news -- I just didn't get a chance to comment on it until now. And yeah, that sucks. Don Adams was the man. Sure, he was only known for two things, but if you're only going to be known for two things, Get Smart and Inspector Gadget may as well be them.

For anyone who knows me, they know that Get Smart is one of my all-time favorite shows, and it had way more of an impact on my life than it should have. For a couple of years back in middle school, when Get Smart was running on Nick-at-Nite, I so totally wanted to be Maxwell Smart. The fact that I idolized Max should tell you a lot about me right there, and you have another decent sized piece of the BLM puzzle. And you know what? I didn't just want to be Max, I was Max. Or at least, that's what I pretended to be. Wherever I went, I was packing. A cap gun. Hey, you never know when KAOS is going to try and start some shit. And it wasn't no pussy-ass cap gun like those ones that they'll sell that are bright orange. Fuck no; I went to great lengths to make sure that my toy looked as authentic as possible. On top of that I made myself a CONTROL ID card, carefully scrutinizing shitty VHS tapes to make it as close to what was on-screen as possible. I even tried (unsuccessfully) to make myself a shoe-phone once. My life revolved around "pulling a Max" and "achieving Max hair" (only one person out there will get that, and for once it's not ETP). It was sad, but I was me.

But c'mon now -- who wouldn't want to be Max? He's a spy. Not a real-life spy, but the cool bullshit kind of spy that every guy wants to be at pretty much any given stage in his life. He's an idiot, yet somehow, he's at the top of his game. He has cool cars and cool spy gadgets. And, of course, he gets to hang out with 99. That's really all you need to say to make the case, but all the other stuff is still neat, too.

I roped everyone that I could into my fantasy world. Really no one got on board except for my best friend back in 6th and 7th grade. Since I had to be the main character, he had to choose his own number, so he went with the unused 79. And that's pretty much it... We were CONTROL agents. We had gun battles at my parents' house (with him, of course, always playing the KAOS agent because I'm a selfish prick). Ahhh, the things we do as kids to keep ourselves entertained.

So where was 99? Well, on occasion, I could get my cousin to play along (yes, she was a she; I'm not gonna let some dude play 99), but that was about it. Being the ladies man that I wasn't, I never had a full-time 99. Bummer. I never had a cool car, either, because I was 12. But one of these days, goddammit, I'm going to have a red Sunbeam Tiger. And I'm going to fix it up so that a machine gun pops up out of the hood. You're laughing? I'm not laughing. This is serious business.

One of the best weeks of my life (again, this says a lot about me, but I still have a nicer car than you, so what does that say about yourself) was when Nick-at-Nite had an all-week Get Smart marathon which they entitled "Maximum Smart." They played most (if not all) of the episodes from the show's five seasons (that CNN article doesn't quite have it right), and I was in my glory. It was, like, that week, and this one week that MTV had a bunch of new Beavis and Butthead episodes (including "The Great Cornholio") that were the best fucking weeks ever. Again, sad.

Get Smart really needs to come out on DVD. I found the reunion show Get Smart, Again! at one point, but they are as yet to release the TV series on DVD. Get on it, fuckers, because I will buy it immediately. Don't pull any shit by releasing a "best-of" compilation, either. If other shit like Green Acres is out on DVD, there's no excuse for not having Get Smart out.

So yeah, there's another trip down memory lane that you didn't want. Sorry about that, Chief.