Goodbye, Dick Clark

Okay, I'm the first to admit that the title of this post is misleading. I'm not a big fan of Dick Clark. I have no problem with the man, but he was blandly affable, and I like my entertainers with a point of view.

But Dick Clark died this week. That's sad. His death, like my 40th birthday and gray hair (which I've gotten a lot of comments on lately, even though I've been going shamelessly gray for years) was for me an undeniable signpost that life keeps on going by.

I watched a lot of T.V. growing up. So much that my parents justifiably worried about the effect it would have on my development. It gave about as much as it took, but my point is that even at a young age, I had a morbid, ever-present sense of mortality. I'd see old people on the screen and regularly experience the thought that if everything goes according to plan, this guy will be dead long before me, and to a lesser extent, so would many of the middle-aged artists and entertainers who were currently in their prime.

I remember specfically thinking this about Michael Jackson, who has been dead for a little while now. I wasn't a big Michael fan, but for a time, the guy was everywhere; they didn't *get* any bigger. And there he was: youthful, slender, nearly ageless even in later years, whirling, dancing, energetic. And I thought to myself: "Unless something unforeseen happens, there will be a time when he is dead and I will persist."

And here we are. I'll tell you something else: it still blows my mind that I survived to see the new millennium. "The year 2000" was such a mind-blowing, jet-packing, Star Trekking impossibility that although I could do the math and realize that I only had to make it to twenty-nine to realize it, I could hardly conceive of it.

Still, here we are. Some of us, anyway. It's funny, an eight year-old kid also can't conceive of how the titans of his culture can fall from grace; how even the impossibly rich can blow their money and end up stealing or selling used cars or just die cold and alone. He can't foresee old age slowly but inexorably stealing things from people that he didn't know could be stolen: A stroke took the forever young Dick Clark and reduced him to a slurring, stammering stiff-walking parody of his former self. For those that grew up watching the alert, smooth, raven-haired game show host, it was flatly horrifying, a profoundly sad reminder that nobody is safe from Nature's ruthless coin toss.

They say these things happen in threes. While I don't go for superstitions, they do seem to my simian brain to occur in clumps, whether twos or fours or what have you. I wonder who is next?

My heroes aren't getting any younger, and I bet that many of them don't live very cleanly. Death has already claimed my beloved and hard-charging Christopher Hitchens, all of whose fans wish they'd discovered his genius sooner. If anybody could have made hay out of another thirty years, that old bastard would have. And yet we'll never know.

Angus Young of AC/DC; I don't think he's ever going to quit smoking, and it will be a sad, blurry day when I hear that he's gone (assuming I don't beat him to it, of course). Brian Johnson of the same band has had his health interfere with their tour dates and slows him down. What joy their music has brought me. They taught me about power, pain, humor, majesty, virtuosity, and rugged art without ever using those words to do it.

Queen has already lost Freddie (I feel like a fool that it still hurts to lose a man I never even came close to knowing, but what else is a romantic soul for?), and the ridiculous poodle on Brian May's head has turned a wonderful, poofy gray. Thank the baby Jesus that male-pattern baldness didn't strike and make a Bozo-like mockery of his spongy mane.

Bob Denver, and nearly all the one hit wonders of Gilligan's Island, dead. Michael J. Fox has goddamned Parkinson's.

Bernie Mac and Bill Hicks, both flamed out just as their star started to shine. George Carlin had a good long run, working at a strenuous pace even as he withered on the vine before dropping off.

Anna Nicole Smith died before she could slip into the degrading, inevitable run at hard-core pornography that so obviously awaited her, and that my right hand so eagerly welcomed.

Bob Dylan and Keith Richards look like unwrapped mummies but are still among us. Good for them, although I never had the good sense tp appreciate their works. It's never too late, or is it?Shameless misogynist Sean Connery keeps getting older and sexier as time goes on, but nobody really wins at this game.

I like to think that I've kept something of the imp in me, a twinkle of the inner child, giggling and running the streets in short pants, petting neighborhood dogs and playing tag. Although, I had struggled with that, especially lately, of which the malaise of the last few years has been a symptom: I had lost hope, forgotten how to laugh, and most of all forgotten what I knew when I was young, slender and stupidly joyful: none of it matters, in a wonderfully libertine way. It's something I've always known, but struggled to embrace: none of the negative really matters, and laughter is among the noblest of activities, in it's way. Mean, arrogant, joyless people (this last I've been recently and stupidly guilty of) aren't worth fretting over, and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. Live with a perpetual, self-generated, exultant delight, and if they can't learn by example, then do it *harder.*

This creed is too long to tattoo on my body, but that's a good part of the reason I got Freddie Mercury tattooed on my forearm. He championed a harmless hedonism, a lust for life and pleasure and happiness that made the aforementioned, joyless tisk-tiskers vibrate with a condemnation that they never realized was jealousy, and goddamned good on him for it! For that alone he deserves my adoration; the artistic talent he shared was another lifetime's worth of glory, and it's a cruel shame that he didn't even get one lifetime to see where it took him.

While I'm rambling, what is this perceived connection between ultimate truth and death? My mother, my brother, my childhood friend Stacy Corn, all possessed an understanding of this principle, a comprehension that (I'm sick of reaching for a synonym) joy is a noble pursuit and state of being. Each in their own way shone with an uncommon light, only to see it snuffed out, in particularly cruelly protracted ways, as if there were some truth to the fable of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. And people wonder why I'm an Atheist! If there were any truth to it it would only serve to prove the existence of a hideously barbaric god, not the opposite.

I guess I've said what I came to say. Besides, my commute is over, and it's time to put away my bluetooth keyboard.

Dick Clark is dead. Long live Dick Clark.