So Long Estelle... a tribute by Holmes

RIP Estelle Getty

I was 8 or 9 when "The Golden Girls" first arrived on the airwaves. I've always said that I may have been an old black woman in another life, and something about this show just hit a nerve with me in a way that it probably did very, very few other kids my age. I watched it a lot with my elderly great-aunts, who would babysit my brother and I on Saturday nights. Even if I didn't get a lot of the humor, it still made me laugh. Much to the chagrin of my friends, I kept watching "GG" re-runs through college and into adulthood, and I even managed to rope in a few people to slowly come to appreciate the show like I did (one of my buddies created a mock tribute to Bea Arthur on the late Web site PublicNigmity.com which outraged actual Bea Arthur fans online). As Sophia, Getty created one of the most memorable characters in recent TV history: a cantankerous 80-something Italian immigrant who raised so much hell at the nursing home (Shady Pines) that her daughter was forced to bring her back to Miami to live with her and her two roommates. Sophia cooked spaghetti sauce in the middle of the night. She always wore her purse, even when in her nightgown. She prowled for men while the other Girls were away on a Caribbean vacation. She stole daughter Dorothy's credit card and went on a Christmas shopping spree. And she made us laugh, a lot. We'll miss ya, ma! We're also renting "Mannequin" in your honor.

and now an episode of Sophia renting porn: