2016 has been a hell of a year for obituaries, so I thought I'd steal this idea from another forum I'm a member of. They call it by a different name, but let's make this the place where we can post and commiserate on the passing of people who, for good or for ill, have entered our collective consciousness. In the hopes of warding off any important posts, I'm going to open things up with Zsa Zsa Gabor: May this thread remain long dormant.
There have been several of the more well known who have left us. The most recent is Ron Glass, 71, who I really knew from Firefly. Seemed like a very nice guy.
The Black Rabbit of Inle has claimed Richard Adams....one hopes that he can join Lord Frith's Owsla for he has stopped running today age 96
<takes gun> That's it, 2016, you have fucked up now!!! You couldn't just leave well enough alone, could you? You had to take her as well!? I just can't imagine what her mother is going through now. It's one thing to bury an aged parent, but to bury your own child? It doesn't matter if Carrie were 6 or 60, no parent should ever have to bury their own child!!
OK, in 2016's defense: Most, if not all, of these notable celebrities struck it big around thirty to forty years ago...back in the 1970s and 1980s. If you were twenty in 1976 and became a cultural icon for the next forty years, you'd be Fisher's age. Sixty years old. The point is, they're all getting old unfortunately and have now reached the stage in their lives where they begin to experience the natural health issues elderly people face. Does it make it any easier to bear? Of course not, but there is a reason why so many cultural icons are suddenly dropping dead all of a sudden. Plus, we live in the era of 24/7 news coverage, so yes we'll be exposed to it when a celebrity dies.
Carrie Fisher? But she looked so healthy in Rogue One! Sorry, black humor helps me. She had a hard life after the original trilogy, lots of drugs, so I'm not surprised, but still saddened.
This is sadly not uncommon. I'm guessing the emotional stress of her loss was too much for an aged pulmonary system.
William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist. ETA: I just went digging through Wikipedia's 2017 deaths page to see if there were any I'd missed. Lots, but no one else whose name I recognized off the top of my head. I was, however, saddened to see that the Pioneer Cabin Tree, the last of the two "drive thru" Giant Sequoia trees, fell on January 8th. I remember seeing trees like this in cartoons when I was growing up, and I was surprised when I later learned that they weren't just fantasy.
2016 was not so much a freak year for notable deaths as people think. The number in the first half of the year especially was above typical values, but largely what we are seeing is part of a longer term trend: there are simply more celebrities / people of note around who have reached their 60s and 70s and are therefore unfortunately coming to their end of their lives. This in turn is due to the mass media really taking off when this generation were starting out their careers. It wouldn't be surprising if the rate continues to increase in future years. Interesting reading material: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38329740
Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, and one of only three to have gone twice. There are only six of the twelve left alive now.
