His buddy Greg from the newsstand

Everybody dies. We write about dead newsmen all too often because too many of us idiots die too young, too often because we ride the rails and grease the skids. But tonight, Hollywood Thoughts remembers a different kind of newsman.

He’s the guy at the newsstand, the one who sells us our papers and magazines, the guy we check in with every morning or maybe every night around the time we know the next day’s papers are about to be tossed off the truck. (In this case, not the woman in the picure, but it worked, you know?)

Sometimes the guy won’t make change for our twenty. Once in awhile, he’s Slash, or Noel Harrison, or she’s Harry Ryttenberg’s mum. But most of the time, he’s Greg from the newsstand. He’s part of the neighborhood, the guy you share a few words with every night or so for maybe five years and never get to know his surname, but you know him and he knows you and your kid, and one day he’s not there any more because he’s dead.

Renowned Hollywood writer and producer Jon Crowley knew Greg from the Sherman Oaks, California newsstand, who died suddenly this week. And Jon’s boy Jack will be reminded that he knew Greg, too.

They don’t give Pulitzers for blogs, at least we don't think they do, but then again, those corrupt Pulitzer bastards ignored the book Tabloid Baby, so what do they know? But let us be the first to clue you that Crowley’s piece on his pal Greg from the newsstand is straight from the heart and will wind up in anthologies.

Check out Hollywood Thoughts. And buy a big fat Sunday newspaper from another city in memory of Greg, the guy from the newsstand with the ZZ Top beard.