THREES

My mother, who is in the hospital again, always said that deaths come in threes. How she knew this or why she thought this, I do not know. I was reminded of this the other day when Michael Jackson topped off the week when Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett had already passed away. Each in their own way was an icon of American culture during my lifetime.

When I was in college, I got in the habit of frequenting a club near my home. I would stay there drinking beer at the bar each night until the Tonight show ended...which, I think, was 12:30 in those days. Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon were a pair that you couldn't miss. They were THE water cooler talk of the middle sixties. They stretched the bounds of what you could see and hear on television. McMahon was an integral part of that show and Carson's success...

Farrah was one of Charlie's Angels who my young daughters seemed to admire. Her hair set a trend in the late seventies and early eighties. Of course, my son was a little too young to have the best-selling pin-up poster in history which she graced in a red one-piece bathing suit. She fought the good fight against cancer...

I first saw Michael Jackson with the Jackson 5 in a television special in the early seventies. They were part of the Motown explosion. There was no better music in that era than Motown. Of course, Michael left the group and gained unprecedented fame performing pop singles. I would say he probably had more to do with the success of MTV than any other performer. Then, fame and fortune turned did a number on him...
:D