The Big Countdown

My  ife expectancy number has declined a lot this year. from 87 to 82. I can’t imagine that 2020 helped a whole lot with that.

My writing life has improved with good progress on the novel and a few placements of stories and poems in the last year. I think the biggest thing I need to do these days is get more active and improve my diet and weight. I recently watched Leonard Cohen: Live in London and man, LC looked better at 73 than I do at 53. I have a new life goal of being more like Leonard Cohen.

As of tomorrow, I will have outlived (in no particular order):

• Christopher Reeve (Superman)
• John Wayne Gacy (first serial killer I ever heard about)
• Princess Grace Kelly (actress who married a prince)
• Luke Perry (my favorite of his roles was in the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• King Henry VII (Henrys IV, V, VI and VIII got Shakespeare plays. Poor VII? Bupkis.)
• Roy Orbison (I always thought of him as really old when he died)
• Frank Zappa (likewise)
• Harry Houdini (who didn’t really look like Tony Curtis)
• Tsar Peter the Great (founder of St Petersburg, I mean Petrograd, I mean Leningrad, I mean St Petersburg—but not the one in Florida)
• Abbie Hoffman (when I was a teenager, I somehow came into possession of a stolen copy of Steal this Book)
• Harry Nilsson (he put the lime in the coconut and drank it all up)
• Barack Obama’s Mom
• Lou Costello (who’s on first?)
• Valerie Solanas (she shot Andy Warhol)
• Giordano Bruno (monk, scientist, and a bit of a nutball all in one)
• Ezekiel (he of the Bible)
• Samuel (he also, of the Bible)
• Hezekiah (yet another Bible dude)
• Macbeth (the real one, not the Shakespeare one, but maybe him too)
• Olaudah Equiano (former slave whose autobiography and activism led to the end of slavery in England)
• William Makepeace Thackeray (author)
• Richard Wright (author)
• Johan Pachelbel (whose canon is not actually a canon and is probably the piece musicians hate most to have to play at weddings)
• Wendell Willkie (failed presidential candidate who I first heard of from Green Acres—who says TV isn’t educational?)
• Omar Torrijos (president of Panama and friend of Graham Greene)