Wtf billy mays is dead!

[taylovesthebeatles]

Just woke up and heard the news...wtf can everyone stop dying please?

In honor of him here's something funny.

Billy Mays Goes to a McDonald's Drive Thru

There is no more this time. :(

[BADBEATCHAMP]

yeah really its insane how all these famous people are dying. my grampa has said that they say famous people go in 3s. im sure if its true or not, but the ones who have died have died in like the last week or so

[GloBug]

wait the billy mays from the info mercials? wow that guy actually has a show on discovery called pitchmen. anyone seen it. i think it sucks but wow. how did he die?

[allinking17]

That was a crazy death. This one is going to be all over the news for the next few days. I dont know exactly what happened, but something happened yesterday where his airplane emergency landed and things fell on top of his head (debris from the crash). I believe everyone on the airplane was fine and even on twitter he said that everything was fine with him. But the thing is he died this morning. So what im thinking is some type of internal bleeding? If the coroner proves this there is going to be some type of huge lawsuit or new law about being checked out for things liek subdural hematomas. Man he really was a great guy i mean he had a special on the discovery channel coming out soon... so sad RIP MAN and RIP oxy clean

[GloBug]

TAMPA, Fla. – Billy Mays, the burly, bearded television pitchman whose boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean made him a pop-culture icon, has died. He was 50.

Tampa police said Mays' wife found him unresponsive Sunday morning. A fire rescue crew pronounced him dead at 7:45 a.m. It was not immediately clear how he died. He said he was hit on the head when an airplane he was on made a rough landing Saturday, and his wife, Deborah Mays, told investigators he didn't feel well before he went to bed about 10 p.m. that night.

There were no signs of a break-in at the home, and investigators do not suspect foul play, said Lt. Brian Dugan of the Tampa Police Department, who wouldn't answer questions about how Mays' body was found because of the ongoing investigation. The coroner's office expects to have an autopsy done by Monday afternoon.

"Although Billy lived a public life, we don't anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days," Deborah Mays said in a statement Sunday. "Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times."

U.S. Airways confirmed that Mays was among the passengers on a flight that made a rough landing on Saturday afternoon at Tampa International Airport, leaving debris on the runway after apparently blowing its front tires.

Tampa Bay's Fox television affiliate interviewed Mays afterward.

"All of a sudden as we hit you know it was just the hardest hit, all the things from the ceiling started dropping," MyFox Tampa Bay quoted him as saying. "It hit me on the head, but I got a hard head."

Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said linking Mays' death to the landing would "purely be speculation." She said Mays' family members didn't report any health issues with the pitchman, but said he was due to have hip replacement surgery in the coming weeks.

Laura Brown, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said she did not know if Mays was wearing his seat belt on the flight because the FAA is not investigating his death.

U.S. Airways spokesman Jim Olson said there were no reports of serious injury due to the landing.

"If local authorities have any questions for us about yesterday's flight, we'll cooperate fully with them," he said.

Born William Mays in McKees Rocks, Pa., on July 20, 1958, Mays developed his style demonstrating knives, mops and other "As Seen on TV" gadgets on Atlantic City's boardwalk. For years he worked as a hired gun on the state fair and home show circuits, attracting crowds with his booming voice and genial manner.

AJ Khubani, founder and CEO of "As Seen on TV," said he first met Mays in the early 1990s when Mays was still pitching one of his early products, the Shammy absorbent cloth, at a trade fair. He said he most recently worked with Mays on the reality TV show "Pitchmen" on the Discovery Channel, which follows Mays and Anthony Sullivan in their marketing jobs.

"His innovative role and impact on the growth and wide acceptance of direct response television cannot be overestimated or easily replaced; he was truly one of a kind," Khubani said of Mays in a statement.

After meeting Orange Glo International founder Max Appel at a home show in Pittsburgh in the mid-1990s, Mays was recruited to demonstrate the environmentally friendly line of cleaning products on the St. Petersburg-based Home Shopping Network.

Commercials and informercials followed, anchored by the high-energy Mays showing how it's done while tossing out kitschy phrases like, "Long live your laundry!"

Sarah Ellerstein worked closely with Mays when she was a buyer for the Home Shopping Network in the 1990s and he was pitching Orange Glo products.

"Billy was such a sweet guy, very lovable, very nice, always smiling, just a great, great guy," she said, adding that Mays met his future wife at the network. "Everybody thinks because he's loud and boisterous on the air that that's the way he is, but I always found him to be a quiet, down-to-earth person."

His ubiquitousness and thumbs-up, in-your-face pitches won Mays plenty of fans for his commercials on a wide variety of products. People lined up at his personal appearances for autographed color glossies, and strangers stopped him in airports to chat about the products.

"I enjoy what I do," Mays told The Associated Press in a 2002 interview. "I think it shows."

Mays liked to tell the story of giving bottles of OxiClean to the 300 guests at his wedding, and doing his ad spiel ("powered by the air we breathe!") on the dance floor at the reception. Visitors to his house typically got bottles of cleaner and housekeeping tips.

As part of "Pitchmen," Mays and Sullivan showed viewers new gadgets such as the Impact Gel shoe insert; the Tool Band-it, a magnetized armband that holds tools; and the Soft Buns portable seat cushion.

"One of the things that we hope to do with 'Pitchmen' is to give people an appreciation of what we do," Mays told The Tampa Tribune in an April interview. "I don't take on a product unless I believe in it. I use everything that I sell."

His former wife, Dolores "Dee Dee" Mays, of McKees Rocks, Pa., recalled that the first product he sold was the Wash-matik, a device for pumping water from a bucket to wash cars.

"I knew him since he was 15, and I always knew he had it in him," she said of Mays' success. "He'll live on forever because he always had the biggest heart in the world. He loved his friends and family and would do anything for them. He was a generous soul and a great father."

Besides his wife, Mays is survived by a 3-year-old daughter and a stepson in his 20s, police said.

__

Associated Press Writer Sarah Larimer in Miami and Ron Todt in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

[Pokerkitty6]

Billy Mays commercials drive me crazy. I always change the channel or mute when he is on. I am very sorry he passed away, too young for death. People need to stop dying. We've had enough for one week.

[doorgod2]

never heard of him rip billy

[GloBug]

never heard of him rip billy

i bet u have u just never paid attention to him. he is everywhere on tv now adays.

[freeringo]

No more Billy Mays
Shamwow is on the outs
Enter Eejit, the mouth from the south of somewhere.
I would love an Eejitmercial

[KaciBlakely]

Well to be honest. A person dies every thirty seconds so it's not abnormal. It's just famous people that it is happening to. I feel bad for his family though and will keep them in prayer.

[GloBug]

well what do you know. autopsy done on him show that cocaine contributed to his death. wow didnt he know that coc is bad for you. well i guess with his hectic schedule he needed to have it.

[BnLM5]

well what do you know. autopsy done on him show that cocaine contributed to his death. wow didnt he know that coc is bad for you. well i guess with his hectic schedule he needed to have it.

Autopsy: Cocaine contributed to Billy Mays' death - Yahoo! News

Or so he thought he needed it. I missed this thread, so I will comment now. I was thinking before GloBug contributed some results of the autopsy that there was cocaine involved, that he was very unlucky. As what are the odds that a persons plane would have problems and make a rough emergency landing and everything be fine with no casualties and then die from a concussion sometime later because something hit him in the head during the landing. But I can see now it was not bad luck rather bad choices. Very sad!

[navuta]

Just woke up and heard the news...wtf can everyone stop dying please?

In honor of him here's something funny.

Billy Mays Goes to a McDonald's Drive Thru

There is no more this time. :(

lol....
Please stop dying is a good one...
we all gonna die..
dying is a nice process we have to face...
who might be the next famous to die??

[taylovesthebeatles]

Hmm wow cocaine. Interesting. I do feel for the family on this one- I wish there weren't such a stigma attached to drug use. It really is sad, especially in this case, it sounds like he wasn't a heavy addicted user or anything like that. Yes drugs can be and often are bad for our health, but that should not mean that anyone who chooses to use them should be labeled a "bad person" for doing so. I think I'll make this my next Discussion of the Week topic, stay tuned.

[BnLM5]

Hmm wow cocaine. Interesting. I do feel for the family on this one- I wish there weren't such a stigma attached to drug use. It really is sad, especially in this case, it sounds like he wasn't a heavy addicted user or anything like that. Yes drugs can be and often are bad for our health, but that should not mean that anyone who chooses to use them should be labeled a "bad person" for doing so. I think I'll make this my next Discussion of the Week topic, stay tuned.

I can't agree with you more! Making bad choices is definitely not because you are a bad person. When people make bad choices though there are usually consequences to follow as opposed to good choices where rewards are usually gained. Mostly you see addiction being a consequence of a bad choice to use drugs, which still does not make a person bad, but rather sick so to speak. Unfortunately people die from using drugs sometimes which is truly a sad thing. But regardless it does happen.

[DINGO8MYBABY]

I'm not surprised about the cocaine. You'd probably have to be amped up on something to sell crap like Oxyclean. I'm not sure which is worse: Billy Mays and cocaine, or the Shamwow guy beating up a hooker last spring.

[Pokerkitty6]

Cocaine is very bad stuff. Stay away from it!