Things that Happen in Three's

In the last several days, David Carradine, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Micheal Jackson have all passed on to the next round. Each one of them where cultural icons and in my peripheral vision for almost my entire life. I never met any of them, and still, their deaths upset me. The death of the status quo, which is always inevitable, is just upsetting all in itself.

Kung Fu, to quote my friend Sharon, is "something I almost never get to say". To us ignorant westerners (me in particular), Kung Fu was David Carradine. As an actor, he pulled off the ethnic imitation that Yul Brenner failed so miserably at in the "King and I". To this day, I'm thinking about how Grasshopper scars himself by grasping the hot pot with his fore arms and then falls into the snow at the beginning of the show. I have to fight the urge to force my children to grab small stones out of my hand before I'll give them their dinner. I have pretended to quote the Kung Fu master for the last twenty years, giving my friends some of the worst advice ever given.

Kung Fu will always remind me of my first boyfriend Tom. It must have been our favorite show because we seemed to watch it a lot. There was once a picture of David Carradine holding a tarot card (the Fool, which is absolutely Kung Fu appropriate) in Rolling Stone magazine. That picture totally validated my obsession with mysticsm to Tom (Dr. Science), and elevated my status with him from crazy to kinda cool crazy. I really appreciated that. Even in dying, Carradine stayed in character. Somehow, I can picture Grasshopper hanging in a closet somewhere in Asia.

When I was a kid, my mother would sneak me out of bed after my sisters were asleep so I could sit with her and watch the Tonight show. While Johnny Carson was not warm and fuzzy, Ed McMahon certainly was. I didn't realize till years later that he actually wasn't a stuffed animal.

Ed may have been second banana to Johnny, but to me he was a role model for how to be a friend. If you are my friend, I will always laugh at your jokes, no matter how not funny they are, at worst just reminding you that no joke ever survived an autopsy. That loyalty is it's own reward, and that's what I learned from Ed.

Being a teenage girl in the seventies, I always have had mixed feelings about Farrah Fawcett. There she was, on that poster that defined beauty for the decade, with her good hair, bedazzling smile, blue eyes and perky little nipples. Then there was me, dark frizzy hair that would never feather no matter how hard I tried, hips I never could get rid of, and dark eyes that had no chance of ever being blue unless I was sad. Farrah was a really a horrendous role model for every teenage girl I knew, mostly because we would/could never achieve it.

But then, Farrah made this movie. I can't remember the title, but it was about this woman who gets attacked by this crazy, serial rapist/killer type in her own home. Just when you think you know that story line, she fights back, overpowers him, beats him senseless, stuffs him in a fireplace with a barred front made out of grating. Then, Farrah's character doesn't call the police, she tortures him all day first. That was the first woman empowered movies I had ever seen, and I fucking loved it! So, Farrah was a two sided sword to a whole generation of women.

Say what you will about Michael Jackson, but the Jackson 5 was the greatest boy band of all time. What Jonas Brothers song will ever stand the test of time like "I'll Be There"? As kids, my sisters and I would put on shows in our basement lip syncing to "ABC". My entire dating philosophy as a teen was based on "The Love You Save".

And then Michael grew up, after spending his entire childhood singing about grown up things, into a grown up who didn't understand that no amount of money, fame, or awards (Artist of the Century? Artist of the Millennium?) could ever bring his lost childhood back. He just never got it. Michael Jackson was an icon to mixed emotion, a man both revered and reviled, all at the same time.

That's a total of four deaths, which means one of two things. 1) the dying isn't over yet and the universe demands two more, or 2) some of you out there don't consider Ed or maybe David an important icon. Perhaps the combination of the two makes up for one Farrah or Michael to the universe. Let's go with option number two, it's my version of optimism. So there you have it.