I'm a huge Ernest Borgnine fan. I was thinking that Borgnine, who died last week at age 95, was probably so old that most movie fans today wouldn't know who he was.

So I did a little test case with the summer intern in the cubicle next to mine.

"You ever heard of Ernest Borgnine?" I asked Neal Gebhard, who is 22.

"Oh, yeah," he said instantly with a little smile. "SpongeBob SquarePants."

I was flabbergasted. On the TV cartoon show from 1999 to this year, Borgnine voiced a character called Mermaid Man, whom Neal described as "a senile version of Aquaman." (Aquaman, older readers, is a superhero from the comic books who can talk to fish.)

Well, that's the thing about Borgnine. He had an amazing career spanning 60-plus years, even though he didn't even think about acting until he was nearly 30.

He's probably best known for playing heavies in the movies, like Sgt.