Behind Big Bird’s nest is a picture of Mr. Hooper. When I saw that - after not having watched Sesame Street in twenty years - I teared up.
John Lennon
John Belushi
Jim Henson
I’m too young for both of them but I’m wondering why JFK and no RFK? If I had been around/aware back then (add 15 years to me) and I think those would have really affected me.
The great, great Joe Williams. My wife and I had seen him at Yoshi’s a month before, and we both commented on how good he looked. Then he was dead. My wife called me at work with the sad news, and Iwept unashamedly. (So there, Fenris.)
Oh, I don’t think anyone’s mentioned Madeline Kahn yet—almost as upsetting as Gilda Radner.
In addition to a host of others previously mentioned
Steve Goodman
Kate Wolf
John Duffey
John Hartford
Freddie Prinze. It was reported on my birthday. It came over the car radio while we – a group of teens who were in a play together – were in the North Carolina mountains, staying for the weekend at a friend’s house. I loved “Chico and the Man,” and that was the first time someone who had affected me (and how can we not like someone who makes us laugh?) killed himself.
John Lennon. No news there. I was in college at the time. I had grown up on the Beatles, and the stupidity of his murder still shocks me. He was half bullshit at times, but he was also brave and outspoken in his beliefs, and it would have been fascinating to see where he was going to next.
Jim Henson because it meant the end of the Muppets. What has come out since has been all right, but there’s a Henson-sized gap there.
Andy Warhol. Sudden and stupid death. Again, no more interesting things to see.
It’s not seeing the old ones go that make me sad. It’s inevitable and they’ve had their run. We’ll never see Bob Hope entertaining the troops, or Reagan make a speech that slips underneath your cynicism somehow. It’s the young, talented ones who go that choke me up, because talent, genius, brilliance is so rare.
And Douglas Adams. I still can’t talk about it.
Dark, that was Phil Hartman, of Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio. That one hit hard.
Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, the creators of Superman. I’ve always been a fan of the man of steel and it really made me sad when they each passed away.
Englebert Humperdinck.
Even though I am a die hard, lifelong Packer fan, I will admit to being saddened when Walter Payton died. He was a respected opponent, and from what I hear a very nice person off the field.
Yeah, but her death was so STOOPID–killed while snorkeling by an out-of-bounds speedboater–that I mostly just felt angry. What a fucking monstrous asshole, deciding that the boundaries set up for speedboaters didn’t apply to him, so he fucking kills one of the best songwriters of the 20th century. I hope he was eaten by tiny crabs, from the feet up.
Englebert Humperdinck is still alive—unless you mean the German composer, who died in 1921.
I think he was reffing deeward.
Martin Luther King, Robert F Kennedy, Roberto Clemente, John Lennon, John Belushi