The whole thing about deaths in 2016 is getting kind of creepy.
Especially when folks get so worked up over someone who was in a show they liked.
Beloved 'Star Wars" hero dies.
Yes, Carrie Fisher is no longer with us, but was she even the most beloved "Star Wars" star to die this year?
Kenny Baker was one of the only people to appear in all the "SW" movies, and he died in 2016.
Yes, Gene Wilder died, but so did the guy who was second-billed to "Punky Brewster." Debbie Reynolds died, and Grizzly Adams became Grisly Adams.
"All, all had gone wrong for the president of the United States And not from evil intentions. But from good intentions, foolishly applied. And so America in her turn learned the lesson: Great states are brought down, great nations are humbled, great dreams are destroyed. It can happen here. No one had ever really believed it. Until now."
-- ALLEN DRURY, 1973
One of the best political series of the Cold War era was Allen Drury's six-book opus that began with "Advise and Consent" and ended with "The Promise of Joy." Drury's narrative deals with the battle between those who believed the best way to maintain peace with the Soviet Union was to stand tough and those who thought finding areas of cooperation was best.
How many people have three calendar days in a row that are significant in the story of their life?
I do, even though they happened in 1949, 1990 and 1969. The first two both happened in Southern California -- my birth on Dec. 11, 1949, and the auto accident that was the closest I ever came to dying on Dec. 12, 1990.
The third one came on the other side of the country, as close to halfway between the two as possible. It was Dec. 13, 1969, in Washington, D.C., when I met the first girl I thought I would marry.
Most people who know me are aware I was one of the founding brothers of the Virginia Mu chapter of Sigma Phi Epsilon when I started at George Mason in 1978.
Oh, not exactly. December 11th was actually the 67th anniversary of my birth. It's why the French saying Bon anniversaire, or "happy anniversary of your birth," is actually more appropriate.
Actually, other countries seem to say things a lot better. Take the English, for example. While I can say, "My name is Michael," and be reasonably accurate, the fact is there are lots of other Michaels and they aren't even all men.
Sixty-seven has always been an important number in my life.
I graduated from high school in 1967, and for many years the favorite memories of my life came from that year. I was on television for the first two times in my life, I went away to college and actually enjoyed the first couple of months and I started dating the first girl in my life I was completely crazy about.
It was quite a year, and until the last three weeks of it I was 17. I had skipped a grade in elementary school in Ohio, so I was a year younger than nearly all the other kids in my class. At least chronologically. If you figure in social skills, confidence and just about everything else, I was really two or three years younger than my contemporaries.
At 17.
That wasn't a complete disaster when I was in high school, but once September came and I was in a dorm room at the University of Virginia, I might as well have been a space alien. I had had four dates up to that point, and my roommate from the Tidewater area informed me that during his last two years of high school he had had sex 200 times.
Needless to say, he had I were from different worlds. My only sexual experience up to that time was a solo endeavor.
But 1967 was such a fascinating year in so many ways. It was the year music became incredible, with bands like the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors and Buffalo Springfield exploding on the scene.
It was the year of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a Beatles album that was unlike anything we had ever heard before.
It was the year of the Summer of Love, the year we all wished we could be going to San Francisco with flowers in our hair.
It was the last year everything seemed possible. Then in the first six months of 1968, they killed Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. In the next six months, Richard Nixon became president and nothing was ever the same. By the way, the sign is fake. There is no Interstate 67.
Certainly there are people who would say April 15th, the day income tax is due.
A lot of kids would say it's the first day of school, the end of summer's freedom and the start of nine months of tedium.
Not me.
Walmart, 2015
To me, the worst day of the year is, well, it's today.
The day after Thanksgiving.
Black Friday.
The day lower middle class America gets up in the middle of the night, gets in line at Walmarts from coast to coast and looks for Christmas shopping bargains.
The day after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the season, and the term "Black Friday" supposedly came because it was the day many retail businesses went into profit -- "into the black" -- for the year.
Note: I'm more than a little ashamed of myself for doing this, because this is a column I wrote more than seven years ago and then reworked and reprinted it in July 2015. All I can say about it is, it's getting scarier all the time.
I can't believe I used to take politics seriously.
Now I don't know if there's anyone left in Washington I can take seriously at all except for my younger brother, and he's too intelligent to be a politician.
Ever since I saw Newt Gingrich shut down the government because he didn't get to sit up front on Air Force One on the way to Yitzhak Rabin's funeral, ever since I watched Bill Clinton ooze sincerity (at least I think it was sincerity; the dry cleaners got it out) saying he never had sex with that woman, it has been harder and harder to look at politicians as anything but entertainers.
Consider this: Who's the guy who seems to take being a senator the most seriously right now? Yup, it's Al Franken, D-SNL, who actually used to be an entertainer.
Or maybe we jumped the national shark when Sonny Bono, R-Cher, got elected to Congress.
Actually, we have also elected Fred Grandy, R-Love Boat, and Wilmer Mizell, R-Pittsburgh Pirates, not to mention Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Alzheimers. One gopher and two baseball pitchers.
