So many famous people have died recently, it’s hard to keep up! Don Knotts, Kirby Puckett, Dana Reeve, and Slobodan Milosevic, have all shuffled off their mortal coil in the past few weeks, and today, hockey legend “Boom Boom” Geoffrion skated off to the great frozen pond in the sky. It seems that when I load aol.com every morning to check my spam, I am greeted with another celebrity obituary that I dutifully read, half expecting to find a readers’ poll at the bottom asking, “Which aging television actor or sports hero will next be voted off the physical plane of existence?” This spate of newly-deceased celebs has gotten me thinking about all the luminaries who have died in 2006 alone – Curt Gowdy, Peter Benchley, Betty Friedan, Coretta Scott King, Wilson Pickett, Chris Penn, Lou Rawls, Kermit the Chimp… And then I thought about all those whom the world mourned in 2005 – Johnny Carson, Max Schmelling, Arthur Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, Johnnie Cochran, Mitch Hedberg, Pope John Paul II, Luther Vandross, Peter Jennings, Bob Denver, Rosa Parks, Richard Pryor, Peaches the Elephant…
And then I thought about all the famous dead people of the last 10 years, and all the famous people who died in the past 50 years, and 100 years, and in the last 1000 years – Mickey Mantle, Woodrow Wilson, Chris Farley, Mahatma Gandhi, John Lee Hooker, Oliver Cromwell, Lucille Ball, Thomas Edison, Charles Dickens, Juan Ponce De Leon, Kurt Cobain, Genghis Khan, Aaliyah, Tupac, Voltaire, Seabiscuit the Horse…
They’re all famous, and they’re all dead! Coincidence? Or does there exist a centuries old curse that plagues society’s celebrated?

The Señor is on the case.