What the hell's the obsession with Bob Crane, you ask?  I love Bob Crane, and everything around him.  But let me tell you a bit about me.   Hogan's Heroes is my favorite show, but I loved Small Wonder and the only new show I watch on teevee now is Seventh Heaven.  I loved loved loved Cop Rock.  I only wish I had it on tape.

It's more than just an obsession with bad teevee, my favorite record is Ballad of the Green Berets by Sgt. Barry Sadler.  One day, this spot will be taken up by a truly worthy rant of all thing profane and beautiful and Bob and Crane.

It goes beyond his seedy background as musician (a drummer, the dumbest musicians of all).  Everyone knows musicians ain't right in the head.  It's more than a simple unsolved bludgeoning with wacky zany sex. And don't think this is some dumb tongue-in-cheek Johnny-come-lately, type thing.  I've been obsessed with Bob for my whole damned life.  I remember EXACTLY where and what I was doing, when the news broke.  I cried, at the tender age of 8, a mere three months after my birthday.  Sat around my granny's house out in Orangevale and cried. That's the day the music stopped.   I cried (and still cry) more for poor Bob's death than I did for my own mother.  My mom didn't raise me, the teevee did -- and the teevee show of choice for all discerning people is Hogan's Heroes!

I dunno what the hell is going on here. What universe is this and where are my pants? A comedy about Nazi Germany?! Who woulda thunk?! Wacky teevee Nazis and a sex fiend actor who was beaten to death? No matter what people say, I'm pretty goddamned proud to be an American!

I'm going to have a Bob Crane Museum one day. It'll be open to the public and you're all invited. I have a huge collection of Bob Crane and Hogan's Heroes stuff. Next time you're in midtown Sacramento, email me and I'll give you a showing.

"Dave," a common letter to me would start if people sent me letters, "what do you know about the assassination of Col. Hogan?"

Well let me tell you, I don't think it was John Carpenter and I think Robert Greysmith, who tried to pin it on him in his little book, is a chucklehead. I think that Bob Crane was murdered by an angry woman. Greysmith was wrong about who he accused to be the Zodiac Killer and he's wrong here. That's not the same John Carpenter of Halloween, The Thing and Christine fame, by the way.

Bob Crane had His noggin caved in the wee hours of Thursday, June 29, 1978. Exact time of death I don't know, but His body was found around 2 o'clock by Victoria Berry. Bob's skull was so badly crushed by repeated blows from a camera tripod that Victoria thought it was someone else.

The Killer wrapped a cord from some piece of video equipment around Bob's neck after He was dead. The Winfield Place Apartments (7430 E. Chaperal, Scottsdale, Arizona) is where He got his last, and deadlier, blow job (a horrible pun, but I couldn't help myself).

The police didn't rule out a female Killer so much as decided that the Killer was Bob's pal John Henry Carpenter. With my zero police training I thought that it was a jealous husband or boyfriend. But now that I've seen a few episodes of Columbo and several episodes of Cops, I think it was a female Killer. Most people like to think of girls as the weak sex -- incapable of braining some womanizer with a tripod -- but I can easily envision a pissed off woman smooshing Him like a bug after finding out He lied when He said, "Don't worry baby, that camera ain't on." I've had my lip busted open by a playful lesbian, so I don't doubt for a minute that a "little lady" could be capable of cracking open Bob's head to see what made Him tick.

Written in 1996 on a linux boxen. Now it's 2003 and Bob Crane just celebrated 25 years of being dead.