Too Many Dead Celebrities, Too Little Time

Seriously, Universe. What is going on? First Natasha Richardson with that freak head injury and then Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson on the same day, and now Patrick Swayze? Are you there, God? It's me, Jaime. Please stop killing our celebrities before they can do Dancing With the Stars.

Before I continue, I should clarify that I don't normally sob into my popcorn when celebrities die, although I'm not completely hollowed out inside either (despite what my mother insists whenever we discuss my lack of husband and babies) and clearly, I realize the death of any human being is a terribly sad thing for the family and friends of that human being. I'm just saying, if I don't know you personally, it's kind of impossible for me to have an opinion one way or the other, and I'm definitely not going to your candlelight vigil. (Sidenote: I was once witness to a candlelight vigil for an actress who was still alive. No joke. Idina Menzel fell through the stage the day before her last performance of Wicked, a show I worked many moons ago, and bruised her ribs. The paramedics took her to Roosevelt hospital and gave her painkillers. Hours later, bawling fans were standing outside the theater in their freshly painted, neon green, puffy-paint OUR THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU and DEFY SADNESS t-shirts, with their green roses and green witch-hats and green candles, and playing, from a lone boom box underneath the poster with Idina's photo and the Tony award stamp on it, an acoustic single from her album, unfortunately [or hilariously] titled, "It Only Hurts When I Breathe." Creepy? Ridiculous? Hysterical? I don't know. She was three blocks away, high on morphine and lying in bed with man-candy Taye Diggs, watching Access Hollywood. You make the call.)

That said, there's something so inherently strange to me about the passing of Patrick Swayze, even though we all unfortunately saw it coming for a long time. This is the guy who pulled Baby out of the corner and taught her how to get her groove on, 1989-version-of-1964 style. This is the guy who made sexual clay pots with Demi Moore. He was such an inherent part of my childhood love affair with the genius Cheese Whiz of late 80s/early 90s cinema that his death is like that of an old elementary school friend who kicked it before I could Facebook him. Vividly, I can still remember watching Dirty Dancing for the first time, my cousin Joelle and I spending at least fifteen minutes beforehand trying to get the blasted tape-deck door of the VCR to STAY THE HELL shut. (I feel like half of my TV-watching time in the 80s was spent yelling at that bastard VCR as it randomly opened and shut like some demon-bitch Jack in the Box.) Dirty Dancing was worth it. Dirty Dancing was just one of those movies. It made you want to put on an ugly, salmon-colored salsa skirt and hop into Doc Brown's Delorean and travel back in time to the fictional 60s so that you could go to Kellerman's vacation resort and do lifts in the ocean at sunset with Patrick Swayze. Because that mofo? was DREAMY. Right? I can still remember dancing like an uncoordinated white girl (some habits you never outgrow) in an attempt to reproduce Swayze's moves to The Time of My Life, except my dance partner was Joelle, who - although slightly more coordinated than me, in that way Autistic kids are slightly more coordinated than Down Syndrome kids - still hit her head on my grandmother's night-table during the chorus and bridge (which may or may not have been my fault as I may or may not have promised to catch her.) I can still remember the sounds of my grandmother clamoring around in the kitchen, making dinner. ("Carl, get the hell out of my way, and don't you dare change the channel, $25,000 Pyramid is on. Go find the girls - are they watching the fucking TV again? This floor isn't going to clean itself.")

Ah, memories.

That Patrick Swayze, such an intrinsic part of my childhood universe, could be gone forever, is so sobering - as if a chunk of the 80s was just killed and trampled by the high-stepping Marching Band of Time. (Shut up! It's a perfectly good band nerd metaphor.) This also means both guys from the SNL Chippendales Stripper sketch are now gone, which of course means I've been asking the universe those serious questions. Things like "What the hell?" and "Why the fuck?" The answer, sadly, is we're growing old, my fellow Gen-Xers, and we're apparently dragging a ton of random B-Celebrities down with us.

So in conclusion, God, I want to know when this madness is going to end. Don't you understand we need these people for our reality shows? THEY'RE STILL FILLED WITH PURPOSE! THEY STILL HAVE THINGS TO DO! HAVEN'T YOU EVER WATCHED I'M A CELEBRITY, GET ME OUT OF HERE?

Sigh.

Think on it awhile, God. That's all I ask.