Jesus, 2016, Let Up Already
Posted on April 21, 2016 Posted by John Scalzi 51 Comments
This is not a good day.
Let’s go crazy anyway.
Whatever
FURIOUSLY REASONABLE
WHATEVER
Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, contributor – AMS
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Wow. Words fail me.
I don’t know what the hell happened, but this is shocking, very shocking.
I’ve been a fan of Prince for as long as I have been an adult.
May he Rest in Peace.
Well …. *fuck*! And over in the UK a really good comedian – Victoria Wood – has died very suddenly too. What *is* it with this year??
And party like it’s 1999…oh, man, this totally bites. I loved his earlier music…
2016 seems to be looking through the old records section to pilfer musicians for what I don’t know. Maybe it is putting together a really good house band, or just has it out for the decades that came before it.
2016 has been BRUTAL; legends are dropping like flies. I am not OK with this.
I was hoping that the AP report was wrong but it became clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t .. I am stunned…
RIP
Is April the cruelest month? It’s been a rough, painful year already.
This really, really, really sucks.
57 years old.
Dammit 2016, I want a do-over. :-( Glenn Frey, Bowie, Prince … but Prince hurts the most. Damn.
Well, at least we can now say that he is indisputably “the artist formerly known as Prince”.
Sorry… but you did say go crazy, John.
He was still making music. Good, new music. He really, really still had it.
:´(
Rest in peace. And thank you for your music.
Man, this sucks.
Damn…way too early.
I never was a fan. Still, I don’t wish death on him. His music was just so uninteresting, unlike many who came before him.
I know it’s morbid but with 60’s musicians and associates entering their 70’s and 80’s, and after Lemmy’s death, I predicted we’d start seeing at least one death every month, and with the passing of David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Sir George Martin, Kieth Emmerson and Merle Haggard I haven’t been far off. But Prince? At age 57? This one is all wrong. RIP the artist formerly known as ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” O(+>
Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Bowie is bigger, but from farther back. Prince just feels way too soon.
His pallbearers should be women in raspberry berets.
Damn. RIP brother.
Today in writing workshop I’ll hand out, and perform “Park Police Passion”
.
.
Meta-sonnet: “Prince is Dead”
by Jonathan Vos Post
.
Prince is Dead
Long Live the Purple Reign
Dead at 57, while the head
of the British Monarchy turned 90, fast lane
at Paisley Park, so talented
.
When Doves Cry
in a Little Red Corvette
Prince Rogers Nelson, could fly
like Hendrix, symbol, sign,
Party Like it’s 1999
.
Jehovah’s Witness
multi-instrumental
Songwriter produces fitness
protean, prolific, elemental
==================
11:38 a.m.
Thursday 21 January 2016
==========
2 Tankas + 1 Quatrain = 1 Sonnet
==========
STOP IT!!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32301435
Percy Sledge too.
Or not. Didn’t check the date, it was last year…
“life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last” – doesn’t mean we want them to end early… :(
In England we are also mourning the loss of Victoria Wood, who was the first woman to do stand up comedy here; she was 62, and in the year below me in the drama department at the university of Birmingham, hence the feeling of personal loss.
It just seems as if we are losing hugely talented people long before their time, and it’s really, really hard…
The Purple Rain soundtrack was one of the first LPs I ever owned (I was 12 when the movie came out). Really didn’t expect this. Dammit. :-(
(sigh) Raspberry Beret. It was about a hat, right?
Prince. Not the generation before me, but my generation. Hits home. Enjoyed his music very much. Must be a really rocking House Band in the Heavenly Hereafter.
What a great talent lost.
Yipes. Atropos seems to be taking more than a fair share of entertainers so far this year. So, so sad. Mind, last year wasn’t really very good, either….
This year is already shit. I had surgery, my mom is having two surgeries, I have to move, and my job is changing theoretically for the better except I may not be allowed to make the change. And oh yeah, dead entertainers out of nowhere.
Seriously cannot wait until 2016 is over.
The coffee shop I was at wanted to commemorate and reminisce with his music. But Prince relentlessly and brutally cracked down on any manifestation of his work anywhere they tried to look. It’s almost like he took his music to the grave with him.
“But Prince relentlessly and brutally cracked down on any manifestation of his work anywhere they tried to look”
He liked to be paid for his work. It’s on iTunes.
A lot of the best Prince music has never been released, except (occasionally) as bootlegs. I wonder what will happen to it? I have a few hours’ worth myself, cassette copies of cassette copies, from when I lived in Minneapolis in the ’80s; I especially like the original version of “We Can Funk.”
I got to see a live show, too: the kickoff of the Lovesexy tour, an in-the-round concert in 1988 at the Met Center hockey stadium, long since torn down. Some material from the (then-unreleased) Black Album was featured including a hilarious performance of “Bob George.” I still think it was his most fertile period.
I am moved to quite The Oatmeal : I’m starting to suspect that George R.R. Martin is the author behind 2016.
Quote… not quite.
I euthanized my beloved 14-year old cat this morning and returned home from the vet to find that one of my all-time favorite artists had died waaaaay too soon. Fuck this day. Fuck it right in the ear.
Fuck. First Chyna at 45 YO now Prince.
Never cried over a “celebrity” death until today. But Prince feels different, personal…
God, I will miss him.
Everyone who’s been capable of commenting on the tragic, untimely death of Prince, please take a moment to appreciate the fact that you’re still around to do so. All these iconic music stars dying of late is sad, but I for one am glad to still be here to mourn. Of course when my time comes my city’s newspaper will have a (hopefully) nice tribute to the death of a fairly well known local nuclear physicist and philanthropist (my own obituary for myself). Or not. Either way, for some people there will be a brief pause of grief, but most everyone else will continue to move forward without a thought. Unlike Prince, I am merely a local blip.
I’m so saddened by this news. I don’t know why I thought about you and your blog to come and mourn. Is that crazy, or what?
“this is what it sounds like when doves cry”
RIP brother :’-(
Surprising that he went so early. He never did much ordinary stuff.
Meanwhile Keith Richards is still alive.
Dragged into a movie theater a long time ago to see this weird guy in this weird movie, Purple Rain. Left that theater with the utmost respect for the enormous, energetic, juggernaut talent that was Prince. We lost a lot, today. :(
Keep an eye out for the next New Yorker cover: purple rain.
The biggest star that’s died this year is over here in Australia – the Great Barrier Reef. Bugger.
To partially atone for my tasteless joke earlier in this thread:
https://www.facebook.com/berkeleybreathed/photos/a.114529165244512.10815.108793262484769/1187338231296928/?type=3&theater
Today’s lunch special in Heaven: Starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam, butterscotch cloud, tangerine, side order of ham.
@NH, a buddy and I developed the theory that Keith Richards died decades ago, but all the drugs interfered with his brain and body passing on the signal that he was gone. In other words he is a zombie! LOL
ON the other hand, Purple Rain was out while I was in high school, and I loved Prince because he was going places with music that everyone else seemed to be afraid of. :-(
I went to see ‘Purple Rain’ in the theatre with a good friend at the time … we were both so square, it seemed very daring. Always had a soft spot for Prince after that even though it really wasn’t the kind of music I liked best (see “square”). :-(
I hope, for his sake, that I’m correct in my position that Jehovah nor any other sky-daddy exists. Because I hold a grudge. And if I’m brought before him, I’m going to wind up, kick him right in the sack, and say “That’s for taking Bowie *and* Prince in the same year, you fucking PRICK!”
Aghh–“*neither* Jehovah nor…”
I’ll quote another (much less known) musician, Deathboy: “Death, go home. You’re drunk.”