This is a statement that could easily be exemplified by Rick Rosner.  Despite a high IQ and a firm grasp on a litany of subjects, including writing, Rick’s life has had some strange twists and turns that are the combined result of his skewed sensibilities, and his desire to be famous.

Rick’s exploits, and the fact that he got a 44/48 on the Hoeflin Test are legendary.  He’s also been said to have an IQ that rises each time he takes the test.  Here’s his story.

Genius Prefers High School
Rosner liked high school a lot.  After graduating with a (then) IQ score of 170 in 1978, he later successfully fooled school officials by repeating the twelfth grade four times.  From 1979 to 1987, he returned as a valid senior four times using false IDs, prosthetics and makeup.  On why he did this, he says:

High school’s attractive to me, not necessarily because you have a good time, but because it’s clear why you are miserable. As opposed to real life – post-high-school life- you can be miserable and not have a clear idea what makes you miserable. Dissatisfactions are more vague, more amorphous. (High school’s) an abridged version of real life, and its abridgment adds clarity, and that clarity is comforting.

It’s also interesting to note that he got away with one of his fake IDs using the alias Gilligan Rich Rosner.  Gilligan.

Who Wants To Be A Genius?

The event that catapulted Rick’s life into the spotlight happened on a show that was simultaneously spotlight and knowledge heavy.  This show asked viewers if anyone in the crowd would perchance want to have a lot of money.

After numerous tries to get on the show, Rick was finally in the hot seat.  He was sailing along on the questions and felt really good until a relatively easy-level question messed him up.  He guessed according to his logic, and lost.  He then sued the producers after sending three detailed letters to them explaining his case.

The question was: “What capital city is located at the highest altitude above sea level?”  and the choices were:

A. Mexico City    B. Quito
C. Bogotá       D. Kathmandu

The reasons Rosner lays out in those letters are spot-on critiques of the semantics of the question and its relative difficulty compared to all other questions asked at that level, but he never got anywhere with his suit.  A sample of his correspondence: “I’m sorry to keep sending you letters. I’m not a grievance-oriented person, but a little research led me to a surprising amount of information indicating that it is an unacceptably-flawed question.”

15 Minutes Late?

I do think Mr. Rosner has a strong love affair going with the celebrity dance.  Aside from his appearances (often in the nude) on cable TV shows like The Man Show, Jimmy Kimmel and Crank Yankers, he’s also appeared on a show called Obsessed, and took jobs guaranteed to draw attention to himself.  Clearly this is someone eager for the 15 minutes of fame he thinks he deserves, but I also see a real human being, one who is acting naturally to the stimuli.  He also got steamed at Domino’s when they featured him in this commercial, somehow managing to spell his last name wrong in the graphics (Rossner).

Errol Morris’ First Person

Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) created a show where he interviewed subjects through an “interrotron”, a “self-designed camera that allows the interview subject to see” Morris’ face transposed into the cameraface focused on them.  First Person is one of the best interview shows I’ve ever seen, as it tends to elicit more truth than can be seen in other shows.  Errol Morris on Rick Rosner:

I imagine he is a pretty complicated character who doesn’t understand himself that well.  He’s in the grip of all this stuff that he cannot control.

The journey he has taken, along with all the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and other stories of Mr. Rosner can be seen in six parts on You Tube, starting here.  Notice how Morris strings the facts into a collection, much like a weaver manipulates the strings.

YouTube Link

For a good time, watch and link to all 6 parts of the interview.  Wikipedia on Rick Rosner More on Errol Morris’ interrotron.  Photos: Errol Morris, Rick Rosner

The 50-year-old known for his shouting OxiClean ads was pronounced dead at 7:45 a.m. The Hillborough County medical examiner will perform an autopsy, Tampa police Lt. Brian Dugan said.

Mays was on the US Airways flight from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Tampa on Saturday that had a hard landing at Tampa International Airport when the plane’s front tire blew out. There were no reported injuries on Flight 1241, US Airways told CNN.

According to a local Tampa TV station, Mays said: "All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping. It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head."

No words whether the a bump in the head, which caused the death of actress Natasha Richardson a couple of months ago, is also responsible for Billy May’s death. CNN has the news: Link

Previously on Neatorama: 5 Shocking Celebrity Deaths

Grace Kelly

Grace Kelly’s death in 1982 was a big surprise. The Princess of Monaco, who was only 52 and seemingly in perfect health, suffered a stroke while driving with her daughter Princess Stephanie. The timing couldn’t have been worse – it was just as she was driving on the edge of a mountainside, and the stroke left her incapacitated and unable to control the car. It careened off the edge of the mountain and rolled down, flipping over multiple times. Stephanie suffered a cervical fracture and some bruising, but Princess Grace didn’t recover from her injuries. The world was stunned because the reports from Monaco originally said that she had broken her collarbone, a leg and some ribs, but was in stable condition.

Photo from CoverBrowser.com.

Elvis

We know now that Elvis was on more drugs than Anna Nicole Smith, but at the time, it wasn’t widely known that he had a veritable pharmacy in his system. In fact, he had gone to Richard Nixon to complain about the prevalence of drugs in the entertainment industry. Despite a series of kind of crappy concerts – he was out of shape and self-conscious about his appearance, and it showed – he was getting ready to embark on a new tour on August 17, 1977. He didn’t make it. The day before, his fiancee Ginger Alden found him dead on the floor of his bathroom at Graceland.

At first the public was told his death was due to cardiac arrhythmia, which wouldn’t have been too unbelievable giving the amount of weight he had gained; he had also been having some obvious breathing troubles onstage. But it didn’t take long before the truth emerged: his very own Dr. Feelgood, Dr. Nick, had been prescribing massive amounts of pills for a very long time. His autopsy revealed that he had 14 drugs in his system when he died; 10 were in large quantities. They included Morphine, Demerol, the antihistamine Chloropheniramine, Valium, Placidyl, Codeine, Ethinamate, Quaaludes and an unidentified barbituate. It’s rumored that he also had Diazepam, Amytal, Nembutal, Carbrital, Sinutab, Elavil, Avental, and Valmid in his system. It’s a wonder that he didn’t die sooner, really.

Photo from FrancesEllenSpeaks.

John Lennon

When Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon by shooting him four times at close range, the entire world immediately went into mourning. On December 8, 1980, John and Yoko were coming back to their apartment at the Dakota in New York after an evening recording session. Waiting in the shadows of the building’s archway was Chapman, an obsessed fan who had approached Lennon earlier in the day for an autograph and a photo. Of the five hollow-point bullets Chapman fired, four of them hit Lennon and inflicted severe injuries. At least one of them punctured his aorta.

Lennon managed to get six stairs up to the doorman before he collapsed; the doorman took the gun from Chapman’s hand and covered Lennon with his jacket. Police loaded Lennon in the backseat of the police car and drove him to the hospital immediately and said that acknowledged that he knew who he was and fell unconscious shortly after. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center where the cause was determined to be hypovolemic shock caused by more then 80 percent blood loss.

Crowds gathered in Central Park outside of the Dakota singing and chanting and apparently keeping Yoko Ono awake. She asked them to give her a little peace, but please come back the following Sunday to help her observe 10 minutes of silence for her slain husband. Not only did they come back, the whole world decided to get in on the tribute. More than 100,000 people gathered in Central Park on Sunday, December 14, and 30,000 people in Liverpool followed suit.

Photo from the BBC.

Princess Diana

Princess Diana is the first shocking death I really remember. On August 31, 1997, the Princess and her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed were being driven in Paris just after midnight. Their driver was trying to evade paparazzi and was driving at speeds much higher than the recommended 30 mph – some reports estimate that he was going at least 65 and others say 90. He lost control of the car in the tunnel and plunged into a support pillar. Al Fayed died at the scene, as did the driver. The other passenger survived.

Diana died of her internal injuries a few hours later at the hospital – the crash had jolted her body so severely that her heart reportedly was displaced to the right side of her chest. Her death was announced at 5:30 a.m. People worldwide were horrified and saddened and more than three million people showed up to mourn her during her Westminster Abbey funeral on September 6. So many flowers and gifts were left outside of Kensington Palace that the public was asked to refrain from bringing any more items because they were becoming safety hazards.

Photo from BiographyAndBiographies.

Dale Earnhardt

While not exactly in the same vein as Princess Diana or Elvis, Dale Earnhardt’s death certainly stunned the sports world. He was just completing the last lap of the Daytona 500 on February 18, 2001, when the left rear corner of his car hit driver Sterling Marlin’s front bumper. This made Earnhardt veer sharply left, then sharply right toward the concrete retaining wall. Just as his car was hitting the wall, Ken Schrader’s car ran into the #3 black Goodwrench car.

To most people, this didn’t seem like such a huge deal – for NASCAR, this was a relatively common accident and they had seen Dale come out unscathed after much worse crashes. The two cars slid down toward the infield grass and Schrader got out of his car, appearing to be completely fine. He walked to the #3 car and looked inside to check on Dale, then immediately signaled for help.

It turned out that Earnhardt died instantly, but wasn’t officially pronounced dead until he was examined at Halifax Medical Center. His injuries included a fatal skull fracture, eight broken ribs, a broken ankle, a fractured breast bone, and collarbone and hip injuries that indicated his seat belts did not fail. Sterling Marlin started receiving hate mail and death threats, Earnhardt’s #3 car was retired, and fans paid tribute to Earnhardt by holding up three fingers for the third lap of every Winston Cup race for the next year (I’m sure some people still do it). Even television announcers stopped commentating for the third lap.

Photo from USA Today.

What celebrity deaths totally floored you? Share your reactions in the comments.

We’re all gonna die someday. What will be our last tweet before we do? I found this pretty hilarious. Takes a look back at what might have been tweeted had twitter been around in years past.

A day rarely goes by without word of a new celebrity signing up to join the Twitter revolution. Everyone from mainstream personalities, like Shaq and Jimmy Fallon, to YouTube stars, like iJustine and Michael Buckley, are microblogging personal details that were formerly accessible only to the most ardent stalker/fan. Allowing celebrities to reach out to their fan base in such a direct manner must keep their management teams in high alert, which makes us wonder what would’ve happened if troubled stars from years past had known the power of Twitter. We did a little soul/Twitter searching and came up with a collection of “Famous Last Tweets” that sadly never were.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by internetisscary.

A collection of cross stitch awesomeness. This blog features works by Shanna of "St!#ch Out Loud."  Sure these pieces may have hearts and flowers, but they also feature sexual innuendos, profanities and David Hasselhoff. A perfect addition to any humble abode, cubicle or bar stool setting. 

Lastest posted works include:
- Make Awkward Sexual Advances Not War
- Cowboy M-Fer
- David Hasselhoff
- Debauchery

The bonus is Shanna’s "super hilarious" and "witty" commentary.  Check it. Check it.

The world fell in love with David Hasselhoff for his hair, his car named KITT, his mad lyrics and tunes, his lifeguard tan, his pugs, his drunken rages, and most of all his sexy.

This is my latest in celeb “man candy” pieces – capturing the greatness that is the Hoffenator.

De-lisch.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by shanbanan.

Looking back, everyone had a bad yearbook photo, and over groomed, picture perfect, celebrities are no exception.

Have a look at some of the pictures these famous faces would love to forget. Including George Clooney, Tom Cruise and Zach Braff

Link – via reddit

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

Here’s a neat quickie article at our pal mental_floss about 10 famous people who were homeschooled. For example:

1. Agatha Christie. Agatha was a painfully shy girl, so her mom homeschooled her even though her two older siblings attended private school. [...]

4. If Thomas Edison was around today, he would probably be diagnosed with ADD – he left public school after only three months because his mind wouldn’t stop wandering. His mom homeschooled him after that, and he credited her with the success of his education: “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.”

5. Ansel Adams was homeschooled at the age of 12 after his “wild laughter and undisguised contempt for the inept ramblings of his teachers” disrupted the classroom. His father took on his education from that point forward.

Link – via i met a possum