We’re not going to lie to you readers of the finest newspaper collegiate journalism has to offer: It’s been a pretty godawful, downcast week.
Yes, we know “Darts & Laurels” is supposed to take the good and the bad in equal measure, but we’d be lying to both you and ourselves if we wrote about anything BUT how miserable these past five days have been.
So yes, we’re going to be complaining today… a lot. More on edge than Larry David in an uncomfortable situation, just as cranky as the two Muppets who sit in the balcony and heckle other Muppets (we know their names are Statler and Waldorf, but who’s to say for our readership), here’s this week’s…
Death: It happens to the best of us... literally. It was painful enough that David Bowie shed his mortal coil Sunday; hell, if you want to go back slightly further, we’re still reeling from Lemmy Kilmister’s death only a few weeks ago.
So when news of Alan Rickman’s passing reached our ears and eyes Thursday, it began to seem gratuitous on the part of death’s invisible hand.
After the world sighed a collective groan of grief at Bowie’s passing, the following tweet made the rounds across social media: “Thinking about how we mourn artists we’ve never met. We don’t cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves.”
We don’t know whether there are already coffee table books for tweets the way there are proverbs, but we’d like to propose this tweet be included in such a text.
All praise aside, this isn’t the only reason celebrity deaths affect us so hard: Celebrities are markers, signifies of a specific time and place.
They’re comforting, familiar and reliable in a way our own friends and family often cannot be. When a celebrity passes away, so too does an immediately identifiable time of our lives.
For acting in a blasé fashion and taking too much, too soon from the world, Death gets a Dart. We don’t feel like offering a rejoinder this week. But regardless of Rickman’s passing, he will always have a place in our hearts. Always.
To invoke a celebrity who thankfully has yet to pass, “What’s the deal with Florida weather?” You wake up in the morning and it’s below 40 degrees, but by 1 p.m., it’s 50 degrees and you’re wearing a peacoat! *insert studio laughter*
But seriously, the weather has been abysmal. Dart.
There are still people spoiling “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Dart. Seriously, don’t be that person. You wouldn’t like it if someone spoiled something for you, so don’t do it to others. Plus, that just makes you a giant jerk. Don’t do it.
In France, Jewish civilians have been advised to refrain from wearing a yarmulke following an ISIS-inspired attack on a Jewish school teacher in Marseille.
We honestly don’t know where to start with this one, which means there will probably be an editorial about it next week.
Until then, we’re giving anti-Semitism and radical Islam proud, kippah-wearing Darts.
