Very sorry to see the passing of Farrah Fawcett. She was everywhere in the 1970s — Charlie’s Angels, of course, and innumerable T-shirts and posters — and even if you were too young to pay much attention to girls, you knew she was (then) married to the Six Million Dollar Man, so she had to be cool.
But she’s also got a pivotal role in the film version of Logan’s Run, playing Holly-13, the angelic assistant of Doc, secret assistant to runners. There’s always that nice moment, after so many strange episodes in the film, of seeing her familiar face there in the New You Shop. The 23rd Century suddenly seems like an all-right place. She’ll be missed…
Edit 5:50 CDT: And now, Michael Jackson. The evening news reminded me of May 1990, when we lost Jim Henson and Sammy Davis, Jr. on the same day. MTV, the network which exists because of Michael, was still playing cartoons while the news was being reported on other stations: about twenty minutes ago they finally went to showing Jackson videos. MTV2, VH1, and VH1 Classic are still all on regular programming (which, as is often the case on these nets, means something other than music).
My son’s watching all this on the news — he’s the age I was when Elvis died, and wondering who these people were. Elvis was a bit of a different experience in my case, because we were living a few blocks away from Graceland and I knew who he was just from driving past the place. It was Elvis Presley Boulevard even then.