Captain Lou Albano 1933 - 2009

One of my favorite people passed away yesterday, Wrestler/Actor Captain Lou Albano. He started wrestling in the 1950's but made a name for himself in the 70's as a manager, mostly for tag-teams and led 15 of them to championships. Lou's unique look of facial piercings with rubber bands hanging from them and his ears and wrapped around his curly beard made him stand out from his other opponents.
Lou also helped bring wrestling into the mainstream when he appeared in 4 music videos starring Cyndi Lauper. This was the beginning of the "Rock and Wrestling" era of the 1980's and wrestling again for the first time in three decades appeared on network prime time television.
He even helped manage the rock group "NRBQ" and they wrote a song about the Captain that was very popular.
Albano also appeared in numerous movies and television shows, usually playing outrageous characters suited to his personality. Albano also played Mario on the Super Mario Brothers TV show, performing the video game icon in live action segments and giving voice to him in the animated segments.
Captain Lou was one of the greats and wrestling owes a lot to him for helping make it more popular.
Here's to "The Guiding Light".