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Stop the year, I want to get off

December 2nd, 2016 · Posted by Skuds in Life · No Comments · Life

As if the whole Trump/Brexit thing wasn’t bad enough, this year has seen a lot of celebrity deaths, the latest being Andrew Sachs. Of course this happens every year so I am not sure why it feels worse this year. Possibly because a few of them were absolute A+ list celebrities like Bowie, Prince, Ali, or Leonard Cohen.

There have been a lot of big names going this year: Fidel Castro, Keith Emerson, Leon Russell, Vilmos Zsigmond (a big name for those of us who had to watch a lot of 70’s movies as part of film studies), Alan Rickman, Cruyff, Wogan, George Martin, Garry Shandling, Papa Wemba, Gene Wilder and Oleg Popov, who I am sure I saw in the 60s when the Moscow State Circus came to London and he did his slackwire act.

It has certainly kept the professional obituarists busy and even more so the keen amateur obituarists. You know the types. They feel compelled to write Facebook posts or tweet when just about anybody dies, saying what a sad loss it is and how great they were, but you suspect that half the time they hadn’t really heard of them before. Even more so you get prolific bloggers writing huge articles about the death of Zaha Hadid and yet they have previously never mentioned her or shown even the slightest interest in architecture.

Perhaps they should show a bit of restraint and only publicly mourn those they have previously publicly praised? I know you sometimes you only realise how much you liked somebody when you hear that they died, but not on an almost daily basis.

Anywyay, I am going to take a little time out to think about those people who are still alive. Partly to celebrate the fact that they have (so far) survived 2016 and so that if they pop their clogs any time soon I won’t sound like a complete hypocrite.

Living legends that are still living legends:

  • Aretha Franklin
  • Elton John
  • Bob Dylan
  • Stevie Wonder
  • Clint Eastwood
  • Nicholas Parsons
  • Tom Baker
  • Madonna
  • Van Morrison
  • Phil Collins
  • Woody Allen

Other people I am glad are still around

  • Trevor Brooking
  • Rick Wakeman
  • Debbie Harry
  • Ralf & Florian from Kraftwerk
  • Manu Chao
  • Booker T
  • David Gilmour
  • Liam Neeson
  • Jackie Chan
  • Quentin Tarantino
  • Neil Diamond
  • Kevin Smith
  • Scott Adams
  • Dave Barry
  • Angelique Kidjo
  • Robert Rankin

If any of that lot go before the New Year then I really will be pissed off with 2016!

 

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