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Ain't it awful?

They're falling like flies out in TV and Movieland, and pretty soon you won't be able to switch on a given channel without a Looking Back On... special.

Ed McMahon.

Farrah Fawcett.

Gale Storm.

And at the relative young age of 50 ... Billy Mays.

Ed McMahon may have been the most famous second banana in show business. He hitched his tail to Johnny Carson's kite early on, and the two were not just partners on the Tonight Show but good friends to boot. It's all but impossible to recall an Ed McMahon moment on the show because that wasn't how it worked. The moments were Johnny's, but without Ed they would have fallen flat.

Funniest single moment, during a Karnack shtick:

Ed: "Sis ... boom ... bah."

Johnny: "What's the sound of an exploding sheep?"

Neither of them could stop laughing for at least five or 10 minutes.

Back in high school, it was considered a mark of our sophistication that we watched Carson faithfully, and our pre-school chatter often focused on the repartee from the night before.

I think two things stood out from those shows: the night Carson suggested the audience at home would do well to switch channels and watch Ken Burns' "The Civil War" documentary -- how often has a TV host ever had the nerve to do something like that? -- and learning McMahon had been a U.S. Marine pilot during the Korean War.

One wonders whether Letterman or Conan or Jay or their sidekicks ever spent any time in the military, much less during a shooting war.

Farrah Fawcett was all T and A when Aaron Spelling put that ... er, them ... front and center on our screens, but what is startling even today was her decision to forgo a second season of the hit show that made her a star.

Imagine Diana Ross doing one Supremes album and bailing out for something more fulfilling, or Marlon Brando doing "A Streetcar Named Desire" and then deciding to produce rock and roll albums instead.

Farrah finally gained some recognition as a serious actress with "The Burning Bed," but her life never quite snapped into high gear again.

Still, she had the guts to strike out in new directions when all she had to do was jiggle and bounce in all the right places to haul in a hefty paycheck and drive men nuts, and I can't remember too many actresses who set the world on its ear with their looks and their hair and then just abandoned ship.

Gale Storm was a little before my time, but I think most of us in the 1950s grew up knowing that "My Little Margie" was a standard put-down for any goodie two-shoes who reeked of white picket fences and came across with an I-can-do-no-wrong attitude (the New York Times obituary mentioned her "wholesome perkiness").

Gale was actually born Josephine Cottle and had her name changed, back in the days when that sort of thing was the norm -- Cary Grant was actually Archibald Leach and Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske -- after she hit Hollywood, but it wasn't until the early '50s that she found her real niche on the small screen.

Billy Mays is much more of the current day, when it seems as if anyone can become known for almost anything, but after Ron Popeil and before Vince the Shamwow guy, he was the voice of as-seen-on-television advertising.

He had no more acting ability than, say, Jerry Seinfeld or David Schwimmer, but he probably got a lot more air time as he advertised any number of wondrous items that, he explained later, were all part of his own personal life.

A hearty, happy "Hi, Billy Mays here!" was his standard greeting as each of his TV commercials unfolded, and he cheerfully made fun of himself on occasion.

It's been a while since so many well-known personalities kicked off all at once, and one merely hopes more won't do so before their allotted time.

* * *

In all the uproar about our town manager, I think something is being forgotten.

This is neither to condemn Bill Kohbarger nor to praise him, but do you good readers understand that he is a creature of the town board?

He is charged with doing their bidding, and if he is putting forth what you feel are bizarre ideas, perhaps you need to think about recalling the people who 1) continue to employ him and 2) are supposed to be overseeing his work.

They are the elected officials you put into position to run the town; he is the guy they continue to employ to do what they want.

It is not their job to keep someone in a position and then allow the public to beat up on him. They should be facing the public and telling you why he is in the position he's in and why they're not letting him go, if that is the case.

The fact that the town board, either individually or as a group, can't get their act together to do that ought to tell you more about their problems than about Bill's.

Just to remind you, we did ask each and every board member how he or she was going to deal with Kohbarger, and they all faded, avoided the question and then put it off on a motion by Frank Maurizio ... who made the motion to have Kohbarger's future employment placed on the agenda in the first place.