{"id":6388,"date":"2026-02-04T07:00:04","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6388"},"modified":"2026-02-04T07:00:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T06:00:04","slug":"the-wikipage-to-the-great-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6388","title":{"rendered":"The Wikipage to the Great Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I have long been a devotee of Wikipedia\u2019s Recent Deaths page. I know it sounds ghoulish \u2013 and that\u2019s because it is. Who has a coffee on a chilly winter morn and goes to a page that might as well be called here\u2019s who\u2019s dead? This guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in my defence, this is usually a jump-off point for me. You go to a person whose job, title, death interests you and you end up in an interesting Wiki-rabbit hole from which it is difficult to extract yourself. But, despite that, it must be said that this page has soured on me in the last year.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess this is when I realized that the page was filling up with people I grew up knowing (of). Actors, directors, writers, sportspeople that were on my TV when I was young and sashaying off the planet with no regard as to my feelings on the subject. This is frankly rude. There is no way the director of When Harry Met Sally should have been able to leave this planet when and how he did. And the fact that Delia Deetz is gone is only slightly mollified by the hopes that she\u2019s singing the Banana Boat Song with John Candy right about now. In fact, as all of these people leave the only thing that makes me happy is that John Candy has more of his friends to hang out with in some awesome pub in the sky.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t remember my parents\u2019 exact reaction when Jimmy Stewart died or Tullulah Bankhead or Clint Walker. I don\u2019t remember if my dad made a maudlin commentary on life \u2013 you know, let me tell you something about getting older<\/em> \u2013 when R. Lee Cobb passed away or Dennis McLynn went to his great reward in the sky. I have no idea how if my parents made a Patton joke the day George C. Scott went off into the sunset. One thing is for sure, I fully understand my grandmother\u2019s habit of reading the obits page in the newspaper every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, I know, there\u2019s that huge stupid \u2018passage of time\u2019 thing that rears its head when a celebrity dies or you see an old neighbor who used to ride motorcycles and now sits with a blanket across their lap. Blah blah blah. But it does beg the question: how did this happen in eons past?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Sarah Vowell\u2019s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Thomas Jefferson is mentioned to have cried when he saw LaFayette on his last US tour in 1824. Nostalgia and the fact that most of their comrades were gone makes him comment on their \u2018little band of survivors.\u2019 I suppose that it must have surprised him that even the American Revolution had gone from living memory to history and his generation was almost gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he didn\u2019t have to deal with the death of Peter Falk. Columbo. I think we can all agree that when Columbo went off \u2013 and then came back for one more thing \u2013 and then went off for real, the world started on its current downward trajectory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, best not to overthink it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have long been a devotee of Wikipedia\u2019s Recent Deaths page. I know it sounds ghoulish \u2013 and that\u2019s because it is. Who has a coffee on a chilly winter morn and goes to a page that might as well be called here\u2019s who\u2019s dead? This guy. Now in my defence, this is usually a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Clint_Walker_Cheyenne_1960.jpg?fit=810%2C1052&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1F2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6390,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6388\/revisions\/6390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}