Farewell

This has been a hell of a week.

I'm maybe a little young to think of Ed McMahon as Johnny Carson's side-kick but I remember him fondly as the host of Star Search which I used to watch pretty religiously as a kid. When I heard he'd passed, for a moment I hoped that it was just another erroneous report since that rumor had circulated a number of times in the last few years. But it wasn't a rumor this time. He lived a long, and eventful life, he will be missed.

Farrah Fawcett was also a bit before my time but I watched Charlie's Angels on Nick at Nite and I doubt there is anyone on the planet over the age of 30 who isn't familiar with the iconic poster of her in the red bathing suit, nipples at full attention. I know her better from the reports on her battle with cancer the last few years and it is always tragic to watch that disease take people so slowly. I don't think she got her wish to marry Ryan O'Neal before she passed but I hope that the two of them felt married in their hearts. She deserved some measure of hope as she lost her long fight with a terrible foe.

I am exactly the right age to understand the immensity of Michael Jackson's death. I used to want the Human Nature poster of Michael so, so bad, and I loved his music back then. Billie Jean remains one of my favorite songs still. In my mind, it's impossible to separate him from MTV - he just WAS music videos. He got stranger every year and his eccentricities turned him into a character in such a way that it's almost impossible to think about him then without thinking about him now. I don't know if he was guilty of all that he was accused in his life. It's not for me to decide. For all of the privileges he enjoyed, the money he made, the talent he had, I would not trade lives with him for anything. I believe that the experiences of his life were too fast, too hard, too sad, too strange and too much to allow him to be normal or even understand normalcy. I still can't believe that he's gone, it is hard to comprehend when someone larger than life ceases to live. I pray that he is able to find the peace in death that he was never able to find in life.