FURST PRINCIPLES

Another sad pop-culture farewell this week: RIP to Stephen Furst, immortal as "Flounder" in Animal House but also remembered for his regular roles on St. Elsewhere and Babylon 5. So...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...I had considered here his memorable performance in a key role (the title role, really) in the neglected 1980 horror movie The Unseen...

...but his character, terrifying (and also peculiarly likable) though he is, doesn't really qualify as a "monster," at least not in the sense I use it here. Instead...

...here's a Zarg, from an episode of Babylon 5.

HAROLD THE GREAT

RIP to Harold Ramis, passed on at 69, which is way too young.

A pretty solid argument can be made that, in his unassuming way, Ramis just sort of was popular American movie comedy from the late ‘70s until the advent of Judd Apatow—he wrote, co-wrote, directed, acted in, or some combination of the above, National Lampoon’s Animal House, Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, Groundhog Day and the criminally underrated, hilarious but fiercely touching Stuart Saves His Family, the best movie ever adapted from a Saturday Night Live sketch. He had a couple of clunkers, sure, but his batting average was insanely high.

Also, he was for a while the head writer on SCTV, the second-greatest TV sketch comedy of all time (second only to Monty Python’s Flying Circus), even though he was American, not Canadian. As if all this weren’t humbling enough, he played one-scene roles in a couple of movies he didn’t write or direct, As Good As It Gets and Apatow’s Knocked Up, and added notes of warmth and sweetness both times. He was awesome and lovable and he’ll be enormously missed.