2009: Not a good year for famous people

So this is completely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, but when you stop and think about it, the number of dead celebrities that piled up last year was pretty remarkable.

A quick rundown of the major ones:

Natasha Richardson - Reminiscent of the ski accidents that killed Sonny Bono and one of the Kennedys, but sadder. Poor Liam Neeson.

Bea Arthur - less surprising, since she was in her 80s, but still sad. Golden Girls = Olden Girls.

David Carradine - Oops. Turns out, not so kung fu.

Ed McMahon - I think this is the Publisher's Clearinghouse guy?

Farrah Fawcett - I felt bad for her. Sharing your death day with Michael Jackson is totally unfair. I suppose she was best known for Charlie's Angels, but I remember her best from a certain Jonathan Taylor Thomas movie called Man of the House, where she played a free-spirited (aka big-haired) single mom. Classic cinema.

Michael Jackson - are we done talking about this yet? I am.

Walter Cronkite - apparently, "the most trusted man in America." In 1972. Of course, now that title belongs to Dick Cheney.

Les Paul - legendary.

DJ AM - I don't know who this is. Fortunately, wikipedia does.

Patrick Swayze - We all knew he was sick, but a world without Johnny Castle is not a world I want to live in. Who will keep Baby out of the corner now? We can, however, do without that pederast creeper guy from Donnie Darko.

Brittany Murphy - I had actually forgotten about this one already. Oh well.

There are also a whole bunch of people I've never heard of. I am ok with this.

Finally, this one is from 2008 (actually January 2008), but we are still talking about it. And we are probably always going to be talking about it, because somehow, Heath Ledger is STILL MAKING MOVIES!?! Baffling.

2010 does not appear to be relenting for doomed celebs. We've already lost Howard Zinn, J.D. Salinger, one of the Coreys, Fred Morrison (creator of this fantastic piece of plastic), the guy who invented SpaghettiOs, the Georgian luger with an unpronounceable name, Peter Graves, Rufus Wainwright's mom, Alex Chilton, Davy Crockett, and Marie Osmond's adopted son (actual celebrity status debatable).

And it's only March!

Reality TV

OK, so I realize that choosing reality TV as my inaugural "historical" breakthrough is slightly less than auspicious. The only reason is that I need to get this one out of the way so I can move on with my life. I am not one of the reality TV people (weirdos), yet somehow, I have been unable to escape it recently. The fact that it has completely infiltrated my brain means that I need to a) stop allowing other people to drive the television, and b) inform others of my thoughts on the pervasive culture of reality TV.

Once upon a time, the only "reality" television was game shows. Besides those, all small screen entertainment was relegated to people who had been deemed sufficiently attractive by the general public. Normal people do not belong in any sort of publicly televised situation without extensive coaching (and makeup). Along came MTV and The Real World, which apparently people still watch fifteen or something years later. Clearly, putting a bunch of annoying strangers in a giant house full of alcohol sounds like a brilliant idea. A little while later, Survivor happened. Having only seen tidbits of the very first season, I wonder what could possibly be holding people's attention after 17 seasons (seriously...17).

In the early days of reality TV, the shows were timid, and aware of the fact that they were putting regular (ugly) people on television, hoping that the results of their social experiments were entertaining enough for people to watch anyway. Now, it's hard to find TV that is just plain old non-reality TV. Apparently viewership has actually changed so much that every network ever created benefits from showing reality TV. So much so that it appears that reality TV is here to stay. Who knew.

A few gems you may have been lucky enough to miss:

Whale Wars: A Greenpeace expat recruits clueless dreadheaded volunteers (note the guy on the far left in the photo) on a mission to stop a Japanese whaling ship. This show oozes ineptitude in volumes you probably couldn't find anywhere else if you tried: they flip their Zodiac (in Antarctic waters), they fail repeatedly at disabling the Japanese vessel's propeller as the giant ship bears down on them, and best of all, when they are low on fuel and unable to find said Giant Japanese Ship of Death, the Actual Conservationists hang up on them when they ask for directions. Classic.

Half Ton Mom: This one chronicles the gastric bypass surgery of a 900 pound woman. She lost 60 pounds right off the bat, but then she up and died. Just like that. Since the whole point of the show was to encourage others in this situation to lose weight, they kept filming the show, inserting still photographs of the woman every time they didn't know what else to do. On the plus side (size?), you could make a drinking game out of the lingo: apparently the scientific name for people weighing over 550 pounds is "super morbidly obese." Awesome. Drink two.

Rock of Love Charm School: A classy-by-comparison Sharon Osbourne sics pieces of peroxide-blonde trailer trash on each other under the guise of training them in the art of marrying rock stars. Supposedly, bagging Ozzy Osbourne makes her an expert on the subject. The show might as well be one long blurred-out wardrobe mishap interspersed with the bleeped-out profanity that happens during an hour long cat fight. Oh VH1, how we miss the good old days of Pop Up Video.