On December 24, 2006, we were looking for an image to post here for Christmas Day and found one of James Brown dressed as Santa.
How could you go wrong celebrating Christmas Day with The Godfather of Soul as Santa?
Pretty horribly easy as it turned out: Brown died a few hours later, at 1:45 AM, of pneumonia (later there were allegations that he had been murdered).
Talk about mortified. We took the image down as soon as we learned of his death, quite early in the morning. We’ve had plenty of chances to embarrass ourselves here over the years, and succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams in that regard, but that moment of horrible realization stands alone.