A Small, But Measurable Loss; Why Little People Make a Big Imact

So yesterday was a very sad day. JD Salinger, one of the best writers of the century, died. And the day before, the diminutive actress Zelda Rubenstein (Poltergeist, Under the Rainbow and any other movies that required a little Jewish grandmother-type figure)passed on as well.

I’m not one to mourn famous people, especially when they were in their 90s, like Salinger. They lived a full life and, quite honestly, they haven’t contributed much to our society in recent years. So having them gone today is pretty much like having them here yesterday. And Salinger was a recluse. His death? Sad, but inevitable. Let’s all move on.

The Rubenstein thing is more disturbing. No, not because she was only 76. And not because she’s gonna shift around in her coffin like a small bag in the overhead compartment of a 747 jet. And not because she’d been starring in landmark roles recently.

It’s sad, because, I just fucking love midgets.

Now I don’t know if she was technically a midget (the tallest midget can be is 4”9’ but it doesn’t make everyone that height or less a midget. I don’t think. I don’t even know what a Milk Dud is, so why even listen to me), But it’s sad when a little person dies. It makes me sad. Why the obsession with midgets?

Well, it’s like this. Midgets, pound for pound, are the purest form of entertainment.

And you know I’m right about that.

But, they must be interspersed with normal sized folk. Otherwise, it’s just a shitshow. My brother, knowing my mini-person obsession, once bought me an all-midget Western “The Terror of Tinytown.” (I kid you not. They rode Shetland Ponies. And it’s decades old, filmed in black-and-white in 1938). I resisted viewing it for years. I didn’t want to hate it.

I hated it. I couldn’t even finish it, and it was about an hour-and-fifteen minutes long. (Is that technically classified as a “short film”) It was in more ways than one, a letdown.

And there have been documentaries about little people and there is the annual convention of little people that always seems to make its way to some news show every year, but that’s not fun. Midgets dancing with midgets ruins the visual affect. The look like swollen (or dried out) regular people and they move a little funny. Show me a 7-foot Shaq doing the Electric Slide next to a 51-inch wee person. Now THAT’s funny.

How much do I love midgets? One year, in this dead pool I’m in with about 15 other people, I drafted 75 little people of some notoriety. (Oh yes, there are plenty of midget entertainers, you betcha. And, yes, that was a casual reference to a dead pool. So what? That’s for another blog. And no I don’t have Harry Morgan. And yes Abe Vigoda is still alive. Oh and because you are wondering, yes, I did pick all the little people from the show “Little People, Big World” but spared the regular-sized siblings.)

There was actually a midget version of “The Bachelor” a few years ago. It was on Fox (shocker!) and the whole “series” was two episodes. “The Littlest Groom” aired in 2004 (I guess “Big Love” was already taken). I LOVED it. And I think any guy who religiously watches The Bachelor is, you guessed it, a douche

What I liked about it, in addition to how cute everyone was in their little dresses and tuxedo, was that after he met all the midget girls, they brought in regular women. Oh….the midget girls were not only pissed but they hurt themselves by craning their necks so high. All of them had that “Oh no you didn’t” look on their tiny childlike faces.

The only really disappointing thing, other than the show not being on every week for a four-month span, was that they NEVER asked the tall girls why they would date a midget. The honest, answer, of course is fame and notoriety, but it was like the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Okay, the 300 pound gorilla.

I think he picked a tall girl. Maybe he picked a midget. Who knows. My memory has always been short.

But the point is Zelda Rubenstein is gone. Zelda baby, you have left a big hole in the world of small entertainers. Your time on this earth was, predictably, too short.