This sucks:
One of the original members of the Steel Curtain, Ernie Holmes, has died following a one-car accident near Beaumont, Texas, officials say. He was 59.
Holmes, who was an eighth round pick out of Texas Southern in 1971 by the Steelers, resided in Texas.
He played for the black and gold from 1971 to 1977, and finished his career with the New England Patriots in 1978.
I am not old, by any stretch of the imagination (I am only 37), but I am soooo tired of people from my youth dying. Too much death going on.
Bombadil
Wait until you’re in your 50s (I’m 54). It only gets worse. Then the people are not only from your youth, but are nearly the same age as you.
cleek
i’m afraid it’s not going to get any better as time goes on. i don’t think anyone who lives gets to avoid it.
ThymeZone
I hate to break it to you, but people your own age have been dying every day of your life.
Grief counseling is available in the nurse’s office for the rest of the day.
Napoleon
True story, I grew up in Youngstown Ohio and when in law school clerked at a law firm where one of the partners had either gotten Ernie off of that coke charge (or was it shooting at the helicopter) and Ernie had bought him a membership to the Allegany Club in Three River’s Stadium to thank him. I got to go to some Pirate games that summer in the Allegany Club as a result of Ernie.
RIP
Rick Massimo
Geez, I was a Pats fan in 1978 and I didn’t know, or at least remember, that Ernie Holmes was there.
Bill H
The major cause of death is birth.
Life is a journey, a journey of days, and the joy is in the journey for that journey has no destination.
myiq2xu
I remember when I was a young teen and Playboy centerfolds seemed mature. Then they were my age. Now they are younger than my daughter.
If Obama is elected, he will be the first President that is younger than me.
You’re only 37 John? You’re still a kid.
bob
The average life span of an NFL player is 57 years. Holmes beat the spread in his final game. Get used to it John. Your actual friends are going to start dying soon. The first adult I was a child with died when we were 32. Ernie was a great player on a great team. RIP.
Bombadil
A good example of how not all snark is created equal. Better luck next time, TZ.
ThymeZone
Next time? You mean you have a more absurd straight line up your sleeve than that last one?
Waiting excitedly here ……..
PaulW
I know this is a bad time to tell you, but the guy responsible for the hula hoop and the superball and the frisbee has passed on.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Sad news. It would be cool if there’s some kind of corporeal Great Waiting Line in limbo for yesterday’s departed, because then the great Ernie Holmes would have the chance to beat the crap out of Bobby Fischer right now. Which would be nice.
bob
Lambchop, if you hated Fisher, you would have hated Beethoven, Picasso, Edison, Einstein, and many others. Great genius is frequently accompanied by distraction in other areas. Fisher was a ground breaking genius in his field. He might have been a bit of an asshole, but I’d bet you have a foible or two yourself. Ernie was a great football player, but in his field, he is nothing compared to Fisher. So, might as well kick the geek’s ass. Same as it ever was.
Bombadil
Keep waiting, my friend. It wasn’t meant as a straight line. Reading about people you know, or know of, who have died, and realizing they are about your age is a disconcerting reminder of your own mortality. That doesn’t feel a joke to me.
tom.a
It happens in 3s, any death pool suggestions on who’s next?
ThymeZone
Possibly, but I am not seeing a lot of people watching chess matches on their celphones and iPods. Not a lot of chess match accounts being sold to Kindle owners. Bobby Fischer tee shirts? A Bobby candy bar? A tv miniseries?
Papparazzi chasing chess masters? Chess scores on CBS Sportsline? Chess features on cereal boxes?
Isn’t what’s really wrong with the modern world the fact that there just isn’t enough emphasis on chess?
Seriously. And, I recently asked an actual bishop why bishops can only move diagonally, and he had no answer.
What’s up with that?
ThymeZone
No! Say it ain’t so!
Uh huh. I’ll stand on what I already said. Death is not the joke. The joke is that you are just discovering it.
Well, I take that back. We can, and should, laugh at death. But that’s for another Michael D thread sometime, when we are bored to pulmonary arrest and need something to talk about.
BTW, I’m older than you and a heart attack survivor, I don’t need any fucking advice on how, or what, to think about death. But thanks anyway.
Wil
Well I can’t just call you “man” can I?
Bombadil
Well, good for you. I’m younger than you, will be going in for cancer surgery in two weeks, and would never presume to give you any advice about death and/or dying. Keep your bloated ego in check, asshat. It wasn’t about you.
Gus
I remember well the Steel Curtain crushing my (then) beloved Vikes in Super Bowl IX. That was a hell of a team.
ThymeZone
It was when you decided to make it about me, asshat.
I made a little joke that you set yourself up for, and you decided to make a personal issue of it. Now here you are.
You really want to go around with me on this? Because I am here all day, and I’m better at this than you are.
Bombadil
Let’s review: I made a comment to John’s post, and you were the one who said
Somehow, my making a comment about how unnerving it is to see people my own age dying leads you to make a lame joke that completely misses my point, and when I point this out, you get offended? Somehow this becomes my giving you “fucking advice on how, or what, to think about death”?
Wow.
ThymeZone
That is correct. You seem to think that you can impose a maudlin tone here over your really inane original post, and thereby put me down. Your post was just a laugher. You discover at 54 that people your own age are dying? Well, good for you, you enlightened soul. Like I said, people your age were dying when you were two. But, I really celebrate your discovery. Honestly, I think it’s just really terrific.
Your post was the joke. I commented on it. You turned it into a slap at me, as if my snark was out of line. You said
as though you had just discovered your own mortality when you read the paper. I discovered mine just a little earlier, that’s all. Half a century earlier, but earlier.
What is your deal here, Bomb? What do you want? What’s this about? Mine is about laughing at death. You got a problem with that? Then don’t laugh at death, that’s your choice. But if you are going to claim to take death mega-seriously, you might need to explain why you didn’t figure out that people your own age were dying every day until you were 54?
Just asking.
Bubblegum Tate
RIP Arrowhead
Bombadil
OK, TZ. I apologize.
John posts about the death of someone from his youth, and I made this whole thread “maudlin”. I was remiss in not pointing out that seeing people my own age die was something that has bothered me since the first time it happened (when I was ten) and leaving it to you to think that it’s a recent phenomenon.
Death is a joke. Mortality is a joke. It’s funny that Ernie Holmes is dead, and I should have seen that. Anyone who is saddened by this in any way, or even comments on it, is obviously humor deficient and not in on the joke.
Again, my abject apologies.
ThymeZone
Too bad you didn’t mean it.
No, you didn’t make the whole thread maudlin. You just made your own posts maudlin. Which is, you know, not exactly the crime of the century. But you have to admit, doing it after suggesting that you only discovered death at age 54 was a great straight line.
Tell you what. You wring your hands over death, if that works for you, and I will laught at it, because that works for me. It’s how I stay sane with three different heart conditions working me over on a daily basis. We’ll just agree to disagree on how to handle the subject of the Grim Reaper. I have no beef with yours, it’s just not for me.
Meantime, I hope your surgery goes well and that you are back here post haste to mix up with me again.
Good lord willing, I’ll still be here ready to give you what for.
Deal?
Bombadil
Deal! I wouldn’t have it any other way.
ThymeZone
Excellent!
Hope to see you here kicking butt for a long, long time.
:)
Robert P.
Geez, you and I seem to be the only political bloggers to cover this. I grew up outside Altoona, I’m 37 as well, so we probably have the same memories of Ernie “Arrowhead” Holmes.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Anti-Semitism is a “foible” now? Cheering 9/11 is a “foible?” You might want to learn something about that reprehensible waste of carbon before you assume that I didn’t like him because he was a “geek.” It was because he was a lousy human being.
4jkb4ia
John is almost my age! I thought he was a few years older.
The more people who you have cherished are dead, the more you realize that you may one day be so old, you will have lost all your heroes.