Celebrty Cluster Death

There's a saying that celebrities die in three's. This week it was Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. Pondering death. Pondering life. When we were kids, we didn't have TV so I never watched Charlie's Angels and didn't really know much about Farrah Fawcett, but my older brother was in love with her. Likewise when Michael Jackson took over the music scene in the early 80's I didn't have access to MTV and didn't know anything about his music. I understood that kids were dressing like him (including the wearing of only one glove). Ed McMahon I was a little more acquainted with in the mid 80's as I was secretly confiscating a miniature black and white TV each night and bringing it into my room and watching late night programming as deep into the morning as I could manage to stay awake. Can't say that I ever found him very entertaining, but there he was every night chatting with Johnny Carson.

Not only have they all left us in the time it takes to recover from last weekend's decadence, but I notice I'm getting used to this sort of thing. When you're a kid most of the celebrities that are old enough to pass away are too old for you to have ever heard of; not so when you grow up. When Jimmy Stewart died one day after Robert Mitchum in 1997, I was devastated. And when Princess Diana and Mother Theresa checked died only five days apart, I was shocked, but after a while you get a little desensitized. This is kind of what people do eventually... you know... when it's not living that they're doing anymore... when it's the alternative.

Yesterday at work I referred to one of my co-workers as Ms. Brinkley. I was just teasing her because her first name is Christy, but the joke was lost inasmuch as she'd never heard of the world famous pioneer of super-modeling, and she began questioning our other co-workers in pursuit of an explanation. A minute later she pounced on me with the discovery that Christy Brinkley is old! How could I have referred to her as an old person? In my signature smartass fashion I reasoned with her, "By far most of the people that have ever been born are dead now - compared to them, Christy is still a baby."

I just wanted to write a blog tonight, you know, during this blink of an eye during which, amazingly, I happen to share Christy Brinkley's statistically defiant status among the living.