Do you remember where you were when River Phoenix died?<\/p>\n
Probably not. A better question might be, \u201cDo you remember who River Phoenix was?\u201d( He was an up and coming, very talented young actor back in the day. Did a wicked Harrison Ford impression at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/span>. Made a few other flicks and then died of a drug overdose about fifteen years ago or so.)<\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember where I was when River died, either. But I remember where I was when an actor friend of mine started crying over it. He had never met Mr. Phoenix, but he mourned the \u201cmovies I\u2019ll never get to see\u201d because of River\u2019s death.<\/p>\n It was then that I realized that celebrity deaths don\u2019t mean very much to me, if they mean anything at all.<\/p>\n I say all this, obviously, in the light of Michael Jackson\u2019s shocking, sudden death today, which has overshadowed Farrah Fawcett<\/span>\u2019s not-so-shocking, long-time-coming death on the same day. Others are throwing in the \u201cWhat? He was still alive?\u201d death of Ed McMahon and claiming that all celebrity deaths come in threes. I think claiming Ed McMahon is still a celebrity is really, really pushing it.<\/p>\n Please don\u2019t misunderstand. I don\u2019t mean to be heartless, and I wish the surviving loved ones of all these people well. I just don\u2019t understand why I ought to be more heartbroken about Michael Jackson\u2019s death than any other death I hear about on the news on a daily basis. I didn<\/span>\u2019t know Michael Jackson, and nothing in my life will change as a result of his demise. (Michael Jackson did, however, used to go knocking doors for the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in my neighborhood, wearing a beard and a hat as a disguise. At least, my friend Pus-head told me that. If you can’t trust a guy called Pus-head, who can you trust?)<\/p>\n There is the argument to be made that I\u2019ve<\/span> lost all the great music that we\u2019ll never get as a result of his demise, much like River Phoenix\u2019s movies we\u2019ll never see. But odds are that I wouldn<\/span>\u2019t have seen River\u2019s movies, and the evidence suggests that Michael\u2019s days of producing great music are well behind him. His last decent album was Dangerous<\/span> in 1991. The new stuff on his HISstory<\/span> anthology in 1994 was unlistenable<\/span>, and 2001\u2019s Invincible<\/span> is all kinds of suck. But Thriller<\/span> is still deeply and thoroughly awesome, and I could listen to Off the Wall\u2019s<\/span> \u201cDon\u2019t Stop \u2018Til You Get Enough\u201d from now until forever and still get caught up in the unrelenting funk of that irresistible bass line.<\/p>\n And, best of all, Thriller<\/span> is still here. Michael Jackson has already given me everything of value that he\u2019s going to give me, and I\u2019ve<\/span> lost none of it with his passing.<\/p>\n The \u201closs of talent\u201d argument does work with some celebrity deaths, however. John Lennon\u2019s death forever thwarted an otherwise inevitable Beatles reunion, and Heath Ledger\u2019s death means that the sequel to The Dark Knight<\/span> won\u2019t be as good as it was supposed to be. That disappoints me. But that\u2019s a very, very different thing from mourning the loss of the person who died.<\/p>\n Mourning over Princess Diana\u2019s death reached a fever pitch in 1997, despite the fact that Diana was primarily famous solely for being famous. But everyone felt they knew her, so her death took on the nature of a communal event.<\/p>\n And, I think, that\u2019s the whole crux of celebrity deaths. It brings the world together, because it illustrates we all have something in common. We all knew Michael Jackson, or at least we thought we did. Everyone can sing \u201cBeat It and \u201cThriller.\u201d Everyone can pretend to pop one of his patented dance moves – especially me. And being able to share something with everyone you know \u2013 or don\u2019t know \u2013 provides a strange form of comfort. But the ritualistic weeping and wailing by people who have never spent a second of their lives in conversation with the famed Wacko Jacko<\/span> starts to grate on me very quickly.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say I\u2019m completely unmoved by the death of people I don\u2019t know. 9\/11 was devastating, and not just because we all had it in common. It was a reminder of how much evil is out there, and a grim warning that the monsters who killed 3,000 Americans wanted to kill me, too. The sheer enormity of the number added weight to the moment, but it wasn<\/span>\u2019t the main reason to mourn. When a similar number died in the tsunami a few years back, it didn<\/span>\u2019t have the same personal impact to me.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure how I feel, to be honest. When truly evil people make the world a better place by getting off of it \u2013 i.e. Yasser<\/span> Arafat, Jeffrey Dahmer<\/span>, and the like \u2013 I confess I permit myself a grisly moment of celebration. Michael Jackson wasn<\/span>\u2019t in that same league, but he was certainly creepy. He was never convicted of child molestation, but I know I\u2019d never want my children within 50 yards of the guy. But his heinousness does not rise to the level of posthumous schadenfreude. All things considered, I\u2019d probably rather he were still alive. But he isn<\/span>\u2019t, and I can find a way to carry on.<\/p>\n I have nothing profound to say, I guess. But I think that lack of profundity is profound in and of itself. (Whoa.) All I have left is The Essential Michael Jackson<\/span> on compact disc, except I can’t find disc one, and I think Stalliondo<\/span> may have been using it as a Frisbee.<\/p>\n Rest<\/span> in peace, River Phoenix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doyou remember where you were when River Phoenix died? Probably not. A better question might be, \u201cDo you remember who River Phoenix was?\u201d( He was an up and coming, very talented young actor back in the day. Did a wicked Harrison Ford impression at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/span>. Made ... 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