Brueghel's "Triumph of Death" seems appropriate right about now ...
[UPDATE: I just found out Gerry Rafferty died; obviously I'm going to have to address this, as there are a million article on the Web, all exactly the same, and it's making me feel a little empty. Anyway, for now check out posts I did on Rafferty HERE and HERE. Then read below and keep checkin' back. OK?] I’m sitting in my new living room full of not-quite-yet-unpacked boxes of LPs (LOOOONg-ass story bro, haha, I won’t BORE you with the details), listening to the Ty Segall/Mikal Cronin split (also the new Tristeza LP, Harmonia, The Unicorns) and thinking about mortality, and, well, I’m not sure if we’re gonna make it. You. Me. Yr sister Sally, Crazy Uncle Jim; everyone, goners. We’re all sitting on the same toilet seat and we’re all stuck and exposed, our flabby flesh collecting like cotton on the side of a Texas highway (HIYO!).
It doesn’t help that every year I have to re-realize that every … single … year another flock of our best and brightest pass on into the netherworld we know as Heaven (actually I know there’s no heaven but I’ll play along). Either way, it seems 2010 was a particularly harsh year for Our Lady of ddddDEATH. (But, then again, I say that every year, maybe?)
If you don’t believe me read on; hell, I don’t even know if I can continue to live a happy life knowing some of these folks are gone. The worst part of it all is that most of the folks I idolize simply don’t tend to live that long. Musicians drop like Marky Mark‘s pants every year, often around the premature age of 50, and actors, authors and controversial figures sometimes do the same.
With this in mind, mourn with me as 2010 — and hopefully this boner-biting recession — passes into memory like way-too-many years have over the three-decades-plus lifespan I’ve thus far enjoyed …
- J.D. Salinger, despite his status as somewhat of a One Trick Pony of an author, was one of the ultimate bad asses of the literary world. His game-changing book, Catcher in the Rye, is such an omnipresent force it’s difficult to imagine English class without it. My favorite excerpt involves a blanket principal character Holden Caulfield notices at the house of an acquaintance. Some people “can get a big bang out of buying a [Navajo] blanket,” Caulfield muses. I don’t know why but that’s always been the quote that’s stuck with me from Catcher, perhaps because I’ve always found myself exasperated by the things Normal People are excited by (and, apparently, Holden was too). Whether it be the weather, sewing, wine, cheese, cars, working out, Zumba class or whatever else, I’m never been able to properly relate to the interests of others not smitten — as I am — by music, fiction, journalism and/or sports. Isn’t it funny that the one quote I remember and relate to most involves not being able to relate to another human being? There’s a trend happening here …
- Wait a sec; is this for real? Dennis EFFING Hopper died? I’ll have to have my secretary double-check that … wait, I don’t have a secretary. Balls. Oh well; guess I’ll have to accept it. Hopper was a notable dude in so many ways, and, in my mind, was unappreciated for the variety of stellar projects he brought into the world. Perhaps his aloof nature is to blame for this … For example, everyone knows he was the spaced-out dude in Easy Rider; what many don’t mention is he was also the director of the project, the guy that envisioned the ultimate hippy road-trippin’ film back when creating such a drug-addled flick was damn-controversial. He even cast Phil Spector as a drug dealer in a bit part … I also greatly admire his turn in True Romance as a soft, extremely non-Hopper character. Playing Christian Slater‘s dad, Hopper exuded a warmth you wouldn’t expect from one of Hollywood’s prickliest pears. Truly a countercultural icon, Hopper eventually sold out and did commercials appealing to other aging Baby Boomers, but he never sold himself out on the silver screen. How many actors can say that after 40-plus years in the business? His torrential marriage to Michelle Phillips — apparently she tried to leave his gun-totin’ ass after about 3 days, and he chased her plane down the runway like a true psycho — notwithstanding, Hopper was one of a kind. Peace be with you, brother.
- Jimmy Dean, king of sausage — and apparently a musician; or was it actor? — and doubtless influence on Dewey Cox‘ “Cox Sausages” (“It doesn’t say ‘Cox’ unless I say it tastes like ‘Cox’ ” is a favorite quote) is gone. I’m not sure how familiar most younger
Dewey Cox, mentioned in this article briefly ... (?)
folk are with Dean, but his commercials are engrained in my memories of childhood like a sharp sliver burred in a hard heel. He WAS sausage. I’m serious. To top that off, my mom used to serve up his sausages to the Purdum family some mornings; that was breakfast for 10, 20 years. I don’t know what I’m going to do when someone close to me actually dies … it has to happen some day, and I’m obviously unprepared to deal. How about you?
- Leslie Nielson … this might be the toughest one of all. Nielson starred in Airplane! and the “Naked Gun” movies, his deadpan comedic timing coming to define what comedy meant for me as a youngster in a post-Ferris Beuller world. The first Naked Gun, especially; it was a near-perfect romp I watched continually from sixth grade on. I knew it all by heart, which doesn’t come in handy save when, 20 years or so later, you realize parts of Naked Gun were cribbed directly from Robert Mitchum detective movies. (And I mean word-for-word; I felt like I was slowly becoming unhinged when I first noticed it.)
- Ted Stevens? Yeah, he was a corrupt, Senate-/Alaska-/America-besmirching douchebag, guilty of stealing millions from the taxpayers whom loved him so much. RIP, sucka.
- Oh, don’t forget Lena Horne, Tom Bosley, Gary Coleman, Dixie Carter, Ronnie James Dio, Art Linkletter, Kazuo Ohno, Corey Haim, Robert Culp, Peter Graves, Joan Sutherland, Tony Curtis, Rue McClanahan, Johnny Maestro, Helen Wagner and Eddie Fisher.
