Our friend, who would like to remain anonymous (let’s just call him “Scott”), has a thing for celebritydeathbeeper. com. Why the anonymity? Because he’s got a big, fat serious nonfiction book coming out from a major publishing house next year and fears looking like a celebrity obsessed pop culture boy that he is, or something like that. We say, if the celebrity death beeper fits, wear it! But, alas, he fears writing about celebrity departures from this mortal coil may ruin his street cred as a reporter of serious history and world events, which is what he does in his spare time. So, if you promise not to tell Harper’s or Smithsonian, or any of the other serious glossy mags that hold his future in their hands, I will pass along his passing fancy with passing celebrities….
Our Anonymous Friend, “Scott,” on CDB
Like taking those expired Percocet, it seemed to be a good idea at the time. On some blog or another I ran into a mention of celebritydeathbeeper.com. Interesting idea: they send you an e-mail each time an angel gets its wings— I mean, each time a celebrity dies. (They are, apparently, not the same thing.) So I subscribed. I was feeling ironic that day.
If I remember correctly, my first celebritydeathbeeper message told me that Rod Price of Foghat — the band that once taught us all to say "I just want to make love to you" — had gone to the great 8-track player in the sky. He'd fallen down a flight of stairs, it seems. That was a bad week for old midlist bands: Crowded House drummer Paul Hester was found hanging by the neck in a Melbourne park, while Molly Hatchet singer Danny Joe Brown finally stopped flirtin' with disaster and just went all the way.
What I learned over the next few months is how few celebrities actually die during any given slice of time. Here's the death beeper A list since the beginning of March: Johnnie Cochran, the Pope, Saul Bellow, and Prince Rainier. (I refuse to count Terry Schaivo.) Not that celebritydeathbeeper stops there. I also was able to note, in a timely way, the following losses: Eduardo Paolozzi, John Fred Gourrier, Trude Rittman, Glenn Davis, Barney Martin, Jack Keller, William Bell, and Frank Gorshin, among many others.
You may know enough to say, "Eduardo Paolozzi! Italian sculptor!" or "Frank Gorshin! The Riddler!" but I don't. What I've learned from celebritydeathbeeper is that either my definition of celebrity is not nearly elastic enough or that I have spent way too much time not paying attention. What I get splashed across my inbox is thus an endless stream of anonymous bad news, and here's my only insight, such as it is: When people you've never heard of die, there is no frisson of shared cultural recognition, no irony, no grief.
You may say "Don't be so serious," to which I respond, "Hey, I didn't think it would be." Each celebritydeathbeeper message ends by telling me how many people subscribe (12,000 or so) and asking the semi-rhetorical question "Why unsubscribe?" My answer: Because for some unrecoverable reason I thought it would be a lark.
this is way good i love it
NOT!!!!
Posted by: natalie booker | March 16, 2007 at 07:52 AM