Jack Palance died yesterday. Or, more likely, he chose to stop living. I doubt death held much sway over Jack Palance. He was one of my favorite actors for a few simple, if possibly odd, reasons:

  1. He hosted the television version of “Ripley’s”¦Believe It or Not” when I was a kid. The best part of the entire show was when he would end a segment by intoning, “Believe it! [then he’d sharply inhale] Or not!”
  2. As most people know, Jack, at age 114, he performed 2,439 one-arm push-ups at the Academy Awards. I’m still working on my first.
  3. In the mid 90s he cut a commercial for Aqua Velva that included not one, but two eminently quotable lines. “I don’t need some fancy cologne to tell me I’m a man,” and, “Confidence is so sexy, don’t you think?”

Can you argue with either of those statements? No. You can’t. And if you try, Mr. Palance’s disembodied soul will hunt you down and crush you like the Hai Karate-wearing punk you are.

Believe it. [sharp inhale] Or not.

Later,

Fox