The Deadliest Catch Shows Us What a Televised Death Looks Like

It feels a little like being punched in the chest watching this. Already knowing how things turned out seems to make this harder for me to take.

I miss Douglas Adams.

I intended to write a post on the anniversary of his death, May 11th. In the weird hazy netherworld of exhaustion I have been living in lately, I somehow missed the date. Yes, I know – most Adams fans celebrate Towel Day on the 25th, 2 weeks AFTER his death, but this was special because of the proximity of the 10 year anniversary  of his passing.

My copy looked exactly like this.

So yesterday I was beating myself up over missing the anniversary. I’m not prone to extreme celebrity worship, but I’ve always felt that Adams did something special for me: it’s like his books unlocked my sense of humour when I was about 10 or 11. Up until then, I’d been reading books that were more dramatic, mostly detective stories – starting with the Hardy Boys, then moving to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie and the like – works not exactly known for bringing out the chuckles. That all changed when Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy appeared.

The picture is what my Canadian-purchased book looked like, even though the source says it is the UK cover – I don’t know if there was a different cover for the U.S. market. I don’t even know where I got it. It was one of the first books I ever read that was meant to make you laugh, although I didn’t know that at the time I started reading it. I know it brought me a great deal of delight, and led to me naming pets things like Arthur Dent, and playing a lot of Infocom games (unlike most people who played Zork first, my first title was HHGTTG which led back to playing Zork). I always felt like it was a bit of a dirty secret, reading these funny books and all – and I didn’t meet anyone else who was also a fan – or even seemed aware of their existence – until I was around 15. Until then, in my little egocentric pre-teen world, Douglas Adams was this private thing that only I knew about. Ironically, I didn’t even know it was a radio show in the UK. I was just absorbed in the joy of reading these quirky, entertaining stories that were nothing like I’d ever read before. I wished I could write like Douglas Adams, but was thoroughly convinced (and still am) that I could never pull it off because I don’t have the wit.

So on the 10th anniversary of his death, I was going to write a small tribute to the man and what he meant to me. I was never a class clown, and I never sought attention through attempting to make others laugh (although my third grade teacher apparently remarked to my parents that I had a “tremendous sense of humour”, whatever that means). I felt I owed it to myself to do so, and to share that with the world.

All that stomping and gnashing of my teeth – figuratively, of course, I never mentioned it out loud – because again I’d missed something I inteded to do, due to exhaustion and brain fog.

Until this morning.

When I realized – Douglas Adams died in 2001, not 2000 – and I have nearly a year before the 10th anniversary.

Which explains the actual lack of whooshing sounds.

So please excuse me while I erect an SEP field around this post. Move along now, nothing to worry about here…

Peter Graves was a prolific actor, but for me this is one of the most memorable things he ever did: Airplane!

Comedy wasn’t his only genre, though – he appeared in both TV incarnations of Mission:Impossible and made far too many guest appearances on television shows to list, even fairly recently appearing on House.

His body was found in his home March 14th, 2010… he would have been 84 in 4 days.

Thanks for all the joy you brought, Mr. Graves.

Link: Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen dies at age 69

Doesn’t anyone know who Merlin Olsen is? Didn’t anyone watch Little House on the Prairie? I KNOW a lot of you watch football.

He died of mesothelioma, most likely from exposure to asbestos (that’s almost always the cause). He was suing NBC Studios, NBC Universal, and 20th Century Fox for exposing him to it.

Cancer sucks.

Merlin Olsen, 1940-2010