Mine Field Celebrity Deathday Thread

[Volpone]

Oh holy shit, the feels. Apologies to Tim Curry and Optimus Prime for dying days after a literal saint, but I thought of another bittersweet memory: Dolly talked about writing "I Will Always Love You." She was in a contract with a girl group (this is all from memory so it is more or less accurate but take it with a grain of salt) and she'd fulfilled her contract and wanted to go pursue a solo career, but the auteur who built the group didn't want her to leave so they fought about it. So she went home and wrote "I Will Always Love You" and played it for him. He let her go--on the condition that he got to record her performing it.

So. As I listen to Dolly singing about how I don't need her and I needed her to leave so I could go on, I know that's all a lie. She made it up to win an argument so she could slip away quietly without an ugly fight. We need you Dolly. We miss you. We'll always love you. And because I've been drinking and have had more than a few people I cared about die on me, I'll share the poem from the back of the booklet the hospice people give you:

Gone From My Sight​

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...

PS: This made the Kira cancer episode of BSG all the more powerful.

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

"Betty Munroe" from Rocky Horror became a famous designer and co-host of HGTV's Love It or List It for 20 years...

 

[StarMan™]

Dolly Parton, Frank-N-Furter and Optimus Prime. God's on a role this week.

Hope Shatner's taken his vitamins.

 

[Volpone]

It's slightly less ominous than when God called up Harambe, Kimbo Slice, and Muhammad Ali all within a month or so in 2016. I figured Shit was about to go down. The Earth rips open and Lucifer climbs out with his minions and is like "what you got, God?" And God's like "Please allow me to retort..."

 

[The Beer Hall Pooch]

Dolly Parton, Frank-N-Furter and Optimus Prime. God's on a role this week.

Hope Shatner's taken his vitamins.

Dude, every day I wake up amazed he's still alive.

A few years ago, he came to the Arkansas Comic Con, and I started to go thinking "may be my last chance."

That was the year before I had a nearly fatal heart attack, so he almost outlived me.