You have until Monday at Midnight (12:00am PST Tuesday) to enter the 1st Annual Swan Fungus Holiday Contestâ„¢. Remember, all you have to do to enter is draw a picture of me, Field Commander LeVine, and caption it! It can be a drawing by hand, an MS Paint drawing, or even a collage! The winner gets a fully-autographed Jesus Lizard concert poster. Holy shit, right!?
December is almost over. Across all forms of media, the next week will be filled with cloying fits of nostalgia, hindsight-enriched wistfulness, and even some good-old-fashioned navel-gazing. Each Friday this month Swan Fungus has concluded the week with a new year-end list. Last week was The Top Ten Top Tens, and before that was Top Ten Negative Reader Comments Of 2008. Next week: The Top 100 Albums of 2008. Stay tuned!
Apocalypse Now actor Sam Bottoms died yesterday. He played Lance, the guy who was high the whole time. He took LSD, cocaine, and tranquilizers while filming to help get him into character. That film is one of my favorites, ever. His performance, like almost everyone in the cast, is excellent. I’m glad that even though he’s gone, I can still watch that magical film about death and depravity and war and depression any time I god damned please.
Come to think of it, 2008 was truly a huge year for deaths. This entire list of people who met their doom over the past twelve months could consist of people who spit the bit before the month of March ended! That’s how many people died this year. There was Scarlet Garcia, the Filipino model and actress who was shot nine months ago, but is probably still a hotter piece of ass than any you have ever had. There was Enrico Donati, the 99-year-old Italian surrealist painter and sculptor, who died on my birthday. And who could forget Vytautas Kernagis, the Lithuanian singer and television announcer, who died of gastric cancer in March?
2008 was also an epic year for pneumonia. The illness struck down pretty much everybody! You could field a famous celebrity baseball team with all the dead pneumonia patients from this year. Heart failure and drug overdoses were pretty popular too. I think it’s really nice that someone can die from “heart failure” and it totally glances over the fact that they were found dead on their toilet by a loved one. Oh yeah, and one teenage slut from Australia fell under a train — but more on that one later.
Perhaps no death this year — or in the last decade — affected more Americans than that of pop-singer and teen heartthrob Justin Timbelake. I think we’re all still reeling from the news, and I don’t think American music and culture will ever be the same again. We’ll miss you, Justin.
And now, the list.
The Top Ten Deaths Of 2008
Honorable Mention – “The Pneumonia Star Chamber” Christian Brando (January 26th, pneumonia), Charlton Heston (April 5th, pneumonia), and Bernie Mac. Sir Edmund Hillary (January 11th, heart failure), George Carlin (June 22nd, heart failure), Bo Diddley (June 2nd, heart failure), Isaac Hayes (August 10th, stroke), Klaus Dinger (March 20th, heart failure), William F. Buckley Jr. (February 27th, emphysema), Roy Scheider (February 10th, staph infection)
10. Ernest Gary Gygax – The inventor of Dungeons & Dragons died in March of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. I’ve never played D&D, but I can recognize its importance in nerd culture. I’ll always remember him for his cameo on Futurama when he greets Fry with, “Greetings it’s a… [rolls dice] …pleasure to meet you.” So hilarious. Anyway, he had a few heart attacks and then that thing killed him. I don’t know what it is, but it sounds painful. Another famous American gamer, Bobby Fischer, also died this year (January 17th), of kidney failure. I imagine that’s also a horrible way to die. The reminder that Fischer died this year turned my thoughts to the night I got drunk with that kid who was the inspiration for Searching For Bobby Fischer. Oh, and by “got drunk with that kid” I mean we were at the same birthday party, and I got really trashed and introduced myself to him before I turned into the asshole at the party no one wanted to talk to.
09. Wayne “Frosty Freeze” Frost – Also known as Freeze To Please, he was an old school hip hop bboy and member of The Rock Steady Crew. He was stricken with an “undisclosed illness” (can you say, AIDS!), went on life support in 2007, and died a year later on April 3rd. Frosty died and left behind a slew of questions, the most important of which is, “died he die from drug AIDS or gay AIDS?”
08. Charlie Booth – An Australian athlete who lived to 104 years of age, and is credited with inventing the starting block. Considering how often starting blocks are referenced metaphorically by people who are trying to get their life on track, pun intended! Anyway, he died of something or other. Probably old age. I don’t think it’s really possible to live to be 104 years old. I think once you hit 60 your brain is automatically shut down by forces deep inside the heart of the shadow government. This causes all old people to just start making numbers up as they go along. Yeah, 104? Some day I’m gonna be two-hundred-eleventy years old.
07. Nathaniel Bar-Jonah – The only reason he’s on this list is because every single name surrounding him on the list of notable deaths from this year was, like, “American poet, director and architect,” and all this crazy shit. Then it randomly says “Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, kidnapper”. How fucking wild and amazing is that? He died while serving a 130-year prison sentence without parole in Montana. He was actually convicted of kidnaping, aggravated assault, and sexual assault of various children. But I’m sure they were all really sexy children, and they were all “asking for it.” He died, and the world is better off without him.
06. Jessica Jacobs – The sultry blonde Australian and singer, who was best-known for her roles in children’s television series. She was a fine piece of ass for a 17 year old, and I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to blow her back out before she died. Oh, and speaking of her death, she fucking fell underneath a train! Can you believe that shit? She was walking on the platform, she tripped and fell on the tracks, and was killed instantly. She was carrying a fake ID at the time (so you know she was a slut and could take a load), so they couldn’t identify the body for several hours. Anyway, I’m sure she was really talented, like the Aussie version of Britney Spears’ younger sister, and it’s a terrible loss to the art world, blah blah blah blah. Her MySpace and Facebook profiles remain active. Check ’em out.
05. David Foster Wallace – Author of Infinite Jest, hung himself a few months ago. I know the prospect of reading a 1,000 page postmodern epic seems daunting, but it’s pretty fucking awesome. It’s also great for fans of Futurama, Idiocracy, and all those dystopan works that poke fun at the future we’re hurtling towards. For a depressed guy, Wallace sure had a lot of humor in him. Dark humor, of course. The kind that most people who choose to hang themselves have in spades, I imagine.
04. Kuruppu Karunaratne – A Sri Lankan long-distance runner who specialized in marathons, he was killed by a suicide bomber in April who exploded himself at the start of a marathon race. It just goes to show you that no matter how hard you train, you cannot outrun your fate. Karunaratne is (non)-living proof.
03. (tie) Mort Garson / Donald Erb – Erb was a brilliant 20th century composer who became well known as an avant-garde electronic innovator in the ’60s and ’70s. One of my coworkers gifted me an Erb record for my birthday this year, and I instantly fell in love with it. He died in August. Mort Garson has been mentioned a lot on Swan Fungus, and I’ve shared with you both his Plantasia record and the Black Mass / Lucifer album. He was an immensely important figure in the electronic music scene, and one of the earliest Moog supporters. It would be impossible to gauge his influence on all forms of music that incorporate electronic elements, but I’ll just go ahead and say it is unfathomably massive.
02. Anastasia Blue – An American-born pornographic actress who acted in over 100 adult movies during her career. Anastasia was probably best known for her award winning performance in Whack Attack 6, for which she took home the much-coveted “Best Anal Sex Scene” award with co-star Lexington Steele at the 2000 AVN Awards. She died of an apparent drug overdose (read: she definitely died of a drug overdose) on July 19th, my father’s birthday. Funny, her stage name was Blue, and that’s probably just how somebody found her! Playboy Playmate of the Month (October ’92) Tiffany Sloan also died this year. The cause of her death was not reported (read: she definitely died of a drug overdose). Bettie Page also died this year. She was 85, and she used to help guys masturbate in the 1950s.
01. Heath Ledger – Heath Ledger died on January 22nd of this year. The supposed cause of death was “accidental drug overdose,” but I like to think he died of a condition known as “completely sucking at life.” Listen, nobody dies of accidental drug overdoses. People who are prescribed drugs and don’t know what they’re doing can die of an accidental drug overdose. Someone who either habitually or sporadically uses drugs, and then dies of an overdose, is not “accidental”. Brad Renfo died exactly one week before Heath Ledger. The cause of his death? Accidental heroin overdose. Of course, Renfro was arrested in 2005 for heroin possession, and went to jail in 2006 for a DUI, so can you really call his eventual overdose an accident? No, you can’t. Sure, it wasn’t his intention to die, but he fucked around with hard drugs and he did die. It’s his own stupid fault. Heath Ledger? Same thing. Gidget Gein died of a heroin overdose in October. He was a longtime junky. His death was no accident. My point? Heath Ledger was a dumbass who sucked as an actor and will be forever known as the Joker in a Batman movie that was voted “most ridiculous plot” of 2008. Wow, what an accolade. Heath Ledger sucked. Batman was overrated. Accidental drug overdoses are rarely accidental. “Why so serious?” More like, “Why so dead?” Answer me that one, dead boy.
