Segarini – Another Monkee Leaves the Circus and Farewell to The Queen of Yonge Street

I should be inured to these events by now.

We all should be …especially if you were around when the celebrities we lose, (seemingly daily as time goes by) were in their heyday. When they were new. Fresh. When you were in your formative years and the movies you saw, the television shows you watched, and the music …most importantly, the music …became the snapshots of your life. And the more distance between then and now, the more faded those snapshots of your youth and your informative years become, the more cherished and loved are the words, music, and pictures they contain.

…and people you never met, never spoke to, never knew at all, became as close to you as family. Sometimes even closer.

And now they are passing away. Reminding us of our own mortality, taking back our youth, and breaking our hearts.

Roxanne Tellier: MonkeeMania!

Ramping up to the 50^th anniversary of The Beatles February 9, 1964  appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, it’s easy to forget that one of the other acts on that same show, on that same evening, featured a slight, young “Artful Dodger” – one David Jones, aged 19, belting out a song from the hit Broadway play Oliver! During that performance Jones sang “I’d Do Anything” with the entire cast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKpLngN6CPE

Segarini: A Monkee, a Montrose, a McQuarrie, and Other Fallen Friends

I felt bad about Whitney Houston. I feel bad about most of my fellow travelers who die from misadventure or self-abuse. I can relate to the fearlessness of youth, the temptations afforded by the entertainment business and more money than brains, and the unforeseen (and oddly unexpected) results some of our most revered icons suffer at the hands of bad decisions and yes-men surroundings.

I appreciate the irony of men of religion and ‘family values’ falling victim to temptations of the flesh, anti-drug celebrities dying because of the very thing they rail against in public, and the folly of those not yet in touch with their own mortality…but it pisses me off when we lose people we care about because of disease, dangerous drivers or delusional fans, lack of resources, or God’s blunder of whisking us off this ball of mud just as we get old enough to start figuring shit out…and that goes for the famous, the not so famous, and the rest of us.