Joe Restivo meets Joe Restivo

Joe Restivo was a comedian and actor who got some unwelcome notoriety in 2006 when another Joe Restivo died of lung cancer. What were the odds? That Joe Restivo, the one who died, was also a standup comedian and actor (his IMDb entry seems to include some of the other Joe Restivo’s credits), and happened to be the owner of Vitello’s in Studio City (not far from Joe Restivo’s house), the restaurant where Robert Blake and Bonnie Lee Bakley had dinner the night he didn’t kill her.

The surviving Joe Restivo spent a lot of time reassuring people that he was still alive.

"By day four or five, it was not funny anymore," he told the Associated Press after learning that he'd been replaced in a movie because the film crew thought he was dead.

All along, Joe Restivo was alive and well.

Until Monday, when he died of pancreatic cancer.