ululate!

Adam West has died at the ripe old age of 88. He was, as the cliché goes, a fixture from my childhood thanks to his role as Batman in the campy 1960s TV series. I can't say that I followed West's career much after "Batman," but I'm aware he plunged into hilarious self-parody when he landed the much-beloved role of Mayor West on "Family Guy." I was actually surprised that West had been given such pride of place in Seth MacFarlane's show, given that "Family Guy" so brutally targets and skewers just about everyone (look at how merciless the show was when it came to mocking Robin Williams). Someone like Adam West would have been ripe for abuse, but instead, MacFarlane took West in and set him him up in his own weird, quirky little niche. Mayor West was a man of strange appetites and stranger words, walking the razor's edge between utter detachment from reality and an oddly organic relevance, but the character somehow worked in the larger universe of the show. I can only give West credit for being a good enough sport to play this bizarre, fictionalized version of himself, and it's sad to know that he's no longer around to bring more smiles to the world.

RIP, Mr. West.