Springtime is no time to be a celebrity

Springtime is no time to be a celebrity. Shit, springtime is no time to be famous enough to have your own Wikipedia page. Basically, when spring hits you’d better hope your name’s never been in the paper.

What am I talking about? Stars die in the spring, and we’re not talking the occasional expiration here and there; they die en masse. The big death news a year ago of course was Michael Jackson, and not just because his family shamelessly exploited a personal tragedy for profit; we’ve come to expect nothing less from those attention-seeking oddities.

His death was a seminal pop culture moment allowing him to join Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Kurt Cobain in Heaven’s VIP section. Fortune has smiled on the lot of them. Marilyn was an aging drug addict who was bound to lose her looks sooner rather than later. Elvis was a fat, aging drug addict who’d already lost his looks sooner rather than later. Kurt Cobain, also a drug addict – seems to be a theme here – had just released an album no one really liked until he shot himself in the face and made everyone feel guilty. Lastly we have Michael Jackson, who died on June 25, 2009. He was an aging, drug-addicted freak who was universally (in)famous in life and is now universally iconic in death.

Consequently, poor Farrah Fawcett, who was unlucky enough to die the very same day as Michael, was largely overlooked. I’ve never died before, but I imagine it’s one of life’s low points, Farrah’s being lower than most. Being a dead person she was mercifully spared the humiliation of knowing for certain that the world was more interested in someone even weirder than she, but she was not spared the humiliation of dying from ass cancer, that most embarrassing of terminal illnesses.

Not however the most embarrassing way to die. That honor goes to autoerotic asphyxiation, an activity David Carradine was enjoying a little too eagerly when he died on June 3, 2009. Simply put, he inadvertently hanged himself while jerking off.

Ed McMahon and Billy Mays also died in June 2009, but who gives a shit? Much more interesting is that Mickey Carroll, one of the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, died in May 2009. Coincidentally, my father also played a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz. He represented the Lollipop Guild.

For all the notable deaths of the spring of 2009, 2010 is shaping up to be even better. Just yesterday, June 3, 2010, we lost Rue McClanahan, the slut from the Golden Girls. This has affected me personally as I once had a close encounter with Ms. McClanahan as a teenage grocery bagger at Whole Foods Market. For reasons unknown, Ms. McClanahan was in Ann Arbor, Michigan and apparently craving a wheatgrass shot so she stopped by the store. I wasn’t wearing my glasses so I didn’t see her, and I didn’t bag her groceries so I didn’t talk to her, but my coworkers assured me she was there. All things considered, I suppose calling it a “close encounter” would be overstating things a bit.

To veer off topic momentarily, the Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor attracted more celebrities than one might imagine. Rue McClanahan notwithstanding, our most notable celebrity shopper was Michigan native Ted Nugent. He didn’t purchase food since he eats only wild bear meat, so presumably he just stopped by to shoot some hippies.

Let’s return to the dead. The first genuine celebrity to die this spring was Lynn Redgrave, but no one really cared since the more famous one is still alive. Lena Horne, one of the first black performers to break into the Hollywood mainstream, died a week later. At least I’m told she was black. I don’t see it.

We covered Ronnie James Dio in an earlier blog, so let’s skip him and move on to Gary Coleman who died on May 28. I don’t even know where to start. I guess it’s sad he never saw his gubernatorial dreams come to fruition, but given that he went from bona fide TV star to security guard I don’t think death was really a low point for him. In a final blow, Gary’s death was overshadowed by Dennis Hopper’s, which occurred the following day. This was sad to me because no one does creepy and terrifying as well as Dennis. He once admitted in an interview that prior to getting sober his daily intake of drugs and alcohol consisted of a half-gallon of rum, a fifth of rum, 28 beers, and 3 grams of cocaine. As a person who is neither rich nor glamorous, I’m not well-versed in the cocaine world, but the alcohol alone sounds like enough for a lost month. So let’s not mourn Dennis Hopper’s death; let’s marvel that he made it as long as he did.

I’m going to finish by telling the future. The following will die in June 2010:

The one from Diff’rent Strokes who’s still alive
Peter O’Toole
Keith Richards WILL NOT die. He’s obviously immortal.
Nicholas Cage
Cher
Robin Williams (fingers crossed)