Abe Vigoda’s Dead: The song! (They saw it coming)

Legendary character actor Abe Vigoda died for, presumably, the last time Tuesday.

The Associated Press reported Vigoda — who famously played over-the-hill detective Phil Fish in the 1970s TV series "Barney Miller" and the doomed Mafia soldier in "The Godfather" — died at age 94, at his daughter's home in Woodland Park, N.J.

But it's far from the first time Vigoda has died. In 1982, People magazine mistakenly referred to him as dead. In 1987, a reporter for New Jersey television station WWOR mistakenly called him "the late Abe Vigoda." Hi was a good-natured participant in jokes about his "death" on David Letterman and Conan O'Brien's shows.

Vigoda had been enjoying his "death" for the last several decades of his life.

So is it any wonder there have been not just one, but two websites that for years have tracked his death — or, until now, it's absence? AbeVigoda.com has only ever included the text "Abe Vigoda is ——," with "alive" in a different font at the end, until Tuesday. IsAbeVigodaDead.com has only ever consisted one word — which, Tuesday, became "yes."

But perhaps the best tribute to Vigoda's "death" is the song "Abe Vigoda's Dead (Pre-Mortem Mix), with taking music from Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead," and with lyrics by Greg Peters and Greg Galcik, from Spinnwebe.com

Undead undead undead
The blue-hair widows shamble past his room
Strewn with bingo stamp marks
Bereft of well-formed stool
Hot water bottle's cool
As Fish
Abe Vigoda's dead.

Pure poetry.

Well, maybe not. But we like to think Abe would have liked it.