If you make your living on the sea, you put your life at risk every time you leave port. That’s just an unavoidable fact of working on the ocean, and one that every commercial fisherman knows all too well. Certainly that is well-known by all the crabbers working the Bearing Sea crab grounds, the fishermen whose lives and livelihood are documented in The Discovery Channel’s hit series, “The Deadliest Catch”.

Long before television make some of them into rock stars, rugged crews drove their boats into harm’s way on the wrong side of the Aleutian Islands in search of the bounty of crab that lives there. All too often, someone didn’t come home, and it was that “roll the dice” mentality that brought the cameras north in the first place. The change from the winner-take-all “derby” fishing to a more sedate – and safer – quota method drained a lot of the drama out of “Deadliest Catch” after a couple of seasons, and focus turned to the people who ran the boats and took the risks. We learned more about the men of the fleet, and what made them tick.

One of those men was Phil Harris, captain and co-owner of the crabber CORNELIA MARIE, and audiences got to know an awful lot about Phil and his crew. We learned that he was a prankster, a lifelong crabber, and a proud father to Jake and Josh, his two sons who served on his crew. We also learned that he was a short-tempered, chain-smoking, Red Bull-swilling advertisement for how not to live a long life, a stroke or heart attack just waiting to happen. In 2008, that vision nearly came to pass, as a blood clot forced Harris off the boat and into the hospital for treatment. When he returned in the spring of 2009 to once again run the CM we hoped he’d be a changed man, someone who had cheated death and learned a valuable lesson. Alas, that was not to be.

On January 29th, while the CORNELIA MARIE was tied up at remote St. Paul Island to offload catch, Harris suffered a stroke. He was rushed to Anchorage and placed in a medically-induced coma, and seemed to be making progress. The coma was ended, and he appeared to be on the mend when he died unexpectedly on Tuesday.

Aa television viewers, we saw Harris as the editors wanted him to be seen, but the townsfolk of Dutch Harbor saw him every day for many years. Here is how the local newspaper remembered Captain Harris:

Their pain is so new that people in Dutch Harbor talk about Harris in the present tense, like he’s about to walk through the door any minute amid a cloud of cigarette smoke and colorful language.

He was “friendly,” “honest,” “strong,” “hardworking” “caring.” He was the kind of guy who took “Deadliest Catch” T-shirts to sick children in the hospital.

“He was a one-of-a-kind person,” said Al Mendoza, fleet manager for Unisea, where the Cornelia Marie landed millions of pounds of crab over the years. “I don’t think he had an enemy over the years I knew him. Not one enemy, ever.”

All say he loved his sons, Josh and Jake Harris, more than life itself.

Then they tell how he used to joke about why lions eat their cubs. The words “brash,” “macho,” “loud” and “impatient” pop up. By all accounts, he could be a pain in the patoot, but that doesn’t mean they loved him less.

It’s been a tough opilio season for the boats of “Deadliest Catch” – deckhand Jake Anderson of the NORTHWESTERN lost his father only days before Harris was struck down. It is a reminder that a life on the ocean can be a very remote one, and time spent on the beach with loved ones is all the more precious.

Phil Harris was 53 years old.

Let me be clear – I’m a baseball fan, which is why I’m not an Angels fan. To me, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim represent pretty much everything that’s wrong with America’s pastime all wrapped up in one pathetic package. An out of town owner trying (in this case, successfully) a championship, a complete lack of respect for the home town (Anaheim should have evicted the bastards for the whole “LA of A” thing … ), a long string of ugly uniforms and, of course, the designated hitter. All in all, not much to recommend them.

If there’s been one saving grace over the years, it’s been their announcers. Homers, to be sure, but at least entertaining – none so much as Rory Markas. Yeah, he coined the schmaltzy “just another halo victory” line, but you could hear in his voice that there was a genuine passion and a childlike love of the game, and that made it all worthwhile.

Shocking, Rory Markas has died of a heart attack at the frighteningly young age of 53. Everyone is doing their own tributes, but none have been as touching and obvously heartfelt as the one by former colleague Keith Olbermann on his “Countdown” show:

Ironically, the Angels had recently announced a cutback in their on-air staff, with Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler leaving the staff. Rory was scheduled to handle the play-by-play duties on radio, but now will regrettably require a replacement.

Another icon of the early days of television has been lost with the death yesterday of comedian Soupy Sales.

Born Milton Supman in 1926, Sales became famous for his children’s show in the ’50s and ’60s, “Lunch with Soupy Sales”. Two things set his show apart from all the other kids shows of the time. While it was made by adults for kids, they never talked down to the audience – many of the jokes were as funny to the adults, and as a result many famous people wanted to guest star on the show. And then there the pies. Soupy Sales made the comedic gag of a pie to the face into an art form. By his own estimation, he was hit by 25,000 pies over the years.

After the end of his show, Sales was a familiar sight as a game show participant, where he never failed to bring certain cool to the set. Sales died in New York at the age of 83.

Somewhere, White Fang is crying.

I’m feeling particularly old today … Jim Carroll has died.

Carroll was best known as a poet, with his work “Basketball Diaries” having been turned into a movie in 1995 by Leo DeCaprio. But for I and my college friends, Carroll was the underground rocker who created the classic “People Who Died,” a litany of friends who had passed to the Great Beyond by increasingly bizarre methods.

Less singer than spoken word artist, Carroll’s vocals were in many ways reminiscent of The Doors’ Jim Morrison, and his lyrics were equally deep and twisted. He had a way of turning a phrase – among my favorite: “It’s too late … to fall in love with Sharon Tate.”

Carroll himself had a description of his unique performance style:

“There ain’t much time left, you’re born out of this insane abyss and you’re going to fall back into it, so while you’re alive you might as well show your bare ass.”

My friends from Bannockburn are mourning today. Jim Carroll was 60.

Every Friday, we like to run a little eye candy to make up for taking the weekend off from posting. In the past, that’s always been in the form of some kind of pretty girl in a topically relevant pose, but there’s more than one way to be sexy. With the passing yesterday of guitar legend Les Paul, we’ve decided to honor his memory with a different kind of eye candy – that sexy beast of a guitar that bore his name. May we present the Gibson Les Paul …

Just as sexy whether posing or shredding

Les Paul might have been just another footnote in the history of popular music had he not been so frustrated. Performing first with Mary Ford and later on his own, it irritated Paul that he couldn’t play loud enough for a large audience to hear. Beginning in 1941, he experimented with different prototypes for a solid body electric guitar. His experiments culminated with the 1952 release of the Gibson Les Paul, a guitar that continues to set the standard for electric guitars and has been used by a half-century of guitar greats.

But Paul didn’t stop there. Four years later he designed the first eight-track tape recorder, a device that changed the way music could be recorded in the studio. All the while, Paul continued to release Grammy-winning albums; just last year he released “Les Paul and Friends,” an album of duets with some of the greatest guitarists of all time.  Those touched by his life commented on his passing:

“Les Paul was truly a ‘one of a kind.’ We owe many of his inventions that made the rock ‘n roll sound of today to him, and he was the founding father of modern music,” B.B. King said in a statement. “This is a huge loss to the music community and the world. I am honored to have known him.”

Joe Satriani said in a statement: “Les Paul set a standard for musicianship and innovation that remains unsurpassed. He was the original guitar hero and the kindest of souls. Last October I joined him onstage at the Iridium club in [New York], and he was still shredding. He was and still is an inspiration to us all.”

In a statement, Slash said, “Les Paul was a shining example of how full one’s life can be; he was so vibrant and full of positive energy.”

Others might have made their own impact on the electric guitar (Leo Fender among them), but few can boast such a game-changing life as Les Paul. Scary to think what the music scene might sound like today had he not acted on those frustrations so long ago. Les Paul was 91, and will be missed by every sore-fingered guitarist – and their fans.

It’s been a difficult summer for celebrities, as a long string of familiar faces have taken their final curtain calls and headed into the Great Beyond. From Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett, to Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite, we’ve lost many who are known to us. And now, I’m sad to report, another has left us. I refer, of course, to Gidget, the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” Dog.

“She made so many people happy,” says Gidget’s trainer, Sue Chipperton. PEOPLE met both Gidget and Sue at a Hollywood animals photo shoot in February, where the pup was a consummate pro and delighted the crew with her playful nature.

“When she’s on a set, she comes alive,” Chipperton said at the time. But when the mostly retired canine actor wasn’t joining her trainer on shoots, the 15-year-old was happy to just kick back. “She goes on hikes with me and she loves the sun,” said Chipperton, who added that Gidget was happy to sleep “for 23 hours and 45 minutes a day. She’ll lay outside when it’s 105 degrees! I like to joke that it’s like looking after a plant.”

Gidget was 15 when she died of a stroke Tuesday.  If there’s a doggie Heaven, I’m sure she’s chasing little toy cars as we speak.

Here’s an interesting side note to this story.  Apparently, there was a bit of a dust-up between Taco Bell, their advertising firm, and the creative team that came up with Gidget’s dream gig.  Back in January, a judge ruled in favor of the creative team – to the tune of $42 million!  That’ll buy you a hell of a lot of kibble …

But wait ... there's no more!

Damn – is it a tough time to be a celebrity or what?  I know what they say about celebrity deaths coming in threes, but what happens when they start coming in six-packs?

OK, so Ed McMahon wasn’t much of a surprise, since he’d been battling age and illness for a while now.  Farrah Fawcett and Fred Travalena were both fighting losing battles to cancer, so you knew it was just a matter of time.  Even Michael Jackson can’t be considered a complete surprise, considering the way he’d abused chemicals and cosmetic surgery over the years.

But how do you explain Billy Mays?  Like Jackson, Mays was only 50 when he was found dead yesterday morning by his family.  The preliminary reports are blaming his death on heart disease, and he certainly wouldn’t be the first guy to go down that way … but you just thought it’d be mid-pitch for Mighty Putty or something.  Making Billy’s death all the stranger, he’d been a passenger on a plane that blew out tires during a hard landing in Tampa a few hours earlier, and even mentioned to others that he’d been conked on the head by the contents of a overhead bin.  They say that it’s not related to the death …

Now, while we do make part of our living here at the MB on the follies of celebrity, we don’t spend a lot of time mourning their passing.  In this case, though, it hits unconfortably close to home.  Michael and Billy were both 50 … later this week, I celebrate a birthday.  Care to guess which one … yup …

I think I need to hit the bicycle …

It was never easy to be Farrah Fawcett. Beautiful blonde model from Texas, she’s cast on “Charlie’s Angels” and they promptly develop a new term to describe actresses like her – “T & A”. She walks away from the show in a dispute over what that T & A is worth, and she’s blackballed by the industry for two decades. When she contracts as embarassing a form of cancer as you might imagine – anal – the folks at UCLA share that fact with the National Enquirer. Even when she dies, Michael Jackson kicks the bucket hours later, stealing her spotlight once again.

Here at the MarlinBlog, we remember Farrah from her first introduction to the world – that poster. You know the one I’m talking about – you probably had it on your wall as a kid. I know I did … and so did a lot of others, considering the sales. One of the ways you know you’ve made an impact on pop culture is when people want to imitate you; considering the collection at right, her impact is clear.

They’re going to rerun “Farrah’s Story,” the documentary Fawcett herself made about her fight with cancer, tonight on NBC. Watch it if you can; for now, we remember her as she was …

Unless you’ve been unconscious for the last 24 hours, you now know that Michael Jackson, the one-time “King of Pop,” has died. It’s a sad tale, of course, whenever anyone dies young, and Jackson was only 50. I’ll leave it to others to eulogize him, and to chronicle the worldwide mourning. I’d like to focus on a slightly different angle …

I’m not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but I can’t help thinking: Didn’t he die at just the perfect time?

Think about it – here’s a guy who’s a very frail 50, a full twenty years beyond the end of his relevant period as a pop star. He’s gotten backing from Philip Anschutz and company for a big comeback tour – fifty shows at Anschutz’s O2 Arena in London. It’s claimed that he’s working out like a madman, but at the same time has appeared to be one bad surgical experience away from the Great Beyond. They’ve already postponed the start of the concerts once, and now we’re only a couple of weeks away from finding out if he can really capture the magic. Hundreds of thousands of fans are ready to be enthralled – or reimbursed.

Ever see the movie “Capricorn One“? It was a cynically intriguing flick, and not just because they cast O. J. Simpson as an astronaut. The premise was the first manned mission to Mars – three astronauts in an Apollo capsule ready for the multiple-month journey. Problem is, it dawns on someone that since they went with the lowest bidder, the life-support system won’t survive the journey – and, therefore, neither will the crew. Rather than cancel the mission – and risk NASA’s funding being cancelled – they stage a huge charade, mimicking the landings and Mars-walks in a soundstage in the desert. That worked right up to the point where the now-unmanned capsule was destroyed during re-entry, making it a little difficult to explain the presence of three still-living astronauts. Cue the marksmen …

I don’t know. I don’t know if Jackson still had what it would take to moon walk his way through two months of shows, nor do I know if he could come close to achieving the glory he once had. All I know is that there’s a mystery doctor injecting him daily, and now it looks suspiciously like one of those shots – supposedly to help with the pain of performing – may have instead hastened his death.

I’m just sayin’ …

Even when you know it’s coming, it doesn’t get any easier. Farrah Fawcett, who battled cancer for the last three years, died this morning in Santa Monica at the age of 62.

There are few entertainers who can claim the term “iconic,” but Farrah was clearly one of them. From her role in Charlie’s Angels to her record-selling poster, she defined beauty for the Seventies. Her decision to leave Charlie’s Angels after a single season was shocking, but paved the way for the paydays enjoyed by so many stars today. She showed a lot of young girls the way to stardom, and a lot of young boys the way to manhood …

Though her star never burned as bright as it did in the early days, Farrah was seldom far from the spotlight. In “Burning Bed,” she shed the glamor image for that of a battered wife who’d had enough. In her fifties, she posed for Playboy, and she was recently the star of her own reality show.

It is probably her fight against cancer that will define her legacy. Unlike so many who retreat behind walls of secrecy, Farrah wanted the world to see what she was up against. Documentary cameras followed her through her treatments and the downward spiral of her life, and she hid nothing – you saw the good days and the increasingly bad ones. When staffers at UCLA leaked her medical records to the National Enquirer, she set up a sting that ultimately unmasked the perpetrators. To the end, she was Texas tough, and Texas proud.

Make room, God – here comes another Angel.

UPDATE: And in related news, many media outlets are reporting that singer Michael Jackson has been rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. TMZ is saying he died, but they don’t have to worry about things like fact checking. Won’t be surprised if that turns out to be true, though – you can only put your body through so much in one lifetime. Safe to say that wherever Farrah ends up, Michael won’t …