Getting old is just saying goodbye.
The first time I saw a piece of artwork by Frank Kozik, I immediately wanted to understand what it was for and who made it. It was hanging up at a friend’s house, and it was for a Killdozer show at an Austin, TX venue called Emo’s. This was probably around 1995 or so, and the poster was already a few years old by then.
I had never heard the band Killdozer, I had never heard of Kozik, but I was immediately enthralled by both. I didn’t understand anything about gig posters at this point, and assumed that the band made this. Any band with a visual language like this I really had to hear. I wasn’t super impressed once I heard them, but the poster stuck with me, and I remembered the name “KOZIK” at the bottom. Later I would come across more of his poster art at my friend Jen’s house…day-glo nightmare images of Hitler and Manson with giant Keane eyes advertising shows at an LA venue she used to be involved with called Jabberjaw. Then I got involved in the designer toy scene and hey, there he was again only now in 3D. I met him once, at San Diego Comic-Con. He was kind of a dick in person, but in an interesting and frankly kind of awesome way. It wasn’t that he didn’t like people, it was that he just didn’t give a fuck about small talk. Have a point, and get to it. Don’t beat around the bush. Looking at his posters it’s not a mystery why a man like this would have no patience for awkward subtlety. We talked for a few minutes, which I believe were only graciously given based on who introduced us, and I told him I really like his old poster work. Standing in a booth surrounded by his toys and more than a few years past that part of his career, I couldn’t tell if he was irritated or amused by this but then I guess that’s just how he was.
Frank committed suicide on May 6th, 2023.
In 1992, the year that we were all swooning over flannel-clad bastards from the Pacific Northwest, I was also doing this but I was also still studiously watching and absorbing comedy in all forms. I’ve always had a deeply meticulous appreciation for comedy, and once I started performing it was easy for me to convert that into decent timing and callbacks and improvisation and just generally being funny and keeping things moving. In 1992 I was only doing this in theatre, I was still a few years off from picking up yoyos or juggling. But I never missed Saturday Night Live and I watched every sketch like it held the secret to life, the universe, and everything.
In October, an absolutely gorgeous young woman with a shaved head was the musical guest on SNL. She sang an a capella version of a song I didn’t give a shit about, and then she tore up a picture of the Pope and said “Fight the real enemy!”. And then all hell broke loose. Every magazine, every newspaper, every talk show could not shut the fuck up about this and nowhere near enough of them were taking her side. The few that did sorta acknowledge she had a point still engaged in the whole “but that’s not how she should have done it” respectability politics shit that is always the language of the ruling class. And then you didn’t hear much about her anymore. And then, eventually, the world started to acknowledge the utter horrors committed by the Catholic church and covered up by the Pope, by many popes, and yet no one reached out to apologize to this woman who watched her career gasp and die because she dared to speak truth to power.
A couple years ago I ran across this profile of her, and fell in love with her utter lack of fucks all over again.
“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she said of her protest against abuse in the Catholic Church. “But it was very traumatizing,” she added. “It was open season on treating me like a crazy bitch.”
It’s amazing to think that this slight Irish woman singing ballads and pop songs was infinitely more punk rock than all of her noisy contemporaries. Nirvana wore dresses and chuckled through a haze of cigarette smoke while Kurt obsessed over fame and his legacy, but Sinéad O’Conner literally torched her career and told everyone to go fuck themselves if they weren’t willing to get on board and she did it while singing a Prince song. Amazing.
Sinéad O’Connor, now Shuhada’ Sadaqat, was found dead in her home on July 26th, 2023.
In 1986 I was 10 years old, and a narrow dude in a red bow tie squeaked and roared his way into our television sets with a funhouse mirror reflection of the classic kids show. There was a head in a box, wacky neighbors and visitors, and more puppets than you could shake a Fraggle at. It was a parody that absolutely adored what it was parodying, and it was built and executed with all of the love and wit in the world. It would be decades before I really understood that, but in 1986 it was just totally fucking hilarious and it made me feel OK to be weird. Everyone was weird in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and not only was that OK, it was their superpower. That show filled my heart and informed my sense of humor early, giving me the permission to do my own thing without concern for how it would be accepted by others. From the bombastic theme song to the earnest performances by Laurence Fishburne and Phil Hartman, the whole thing made you giggle from stem to stern.
Growing up in an area where I regularly got called a “fa**ot” just for not being a football player, the idea that someone could jump on television and be silly and rubbery and feminine and sensitive and artistic and SCREAM REAL LOUD and be absolutely beloved for it was just exactly enough to fill my little heart.
And even when he fell from grace in the public eye for getting caught rubbing one out in a porno theater, he came back in the only way that made sense…by marching out on stage to present at the MTV Movie Awards to thunderous applause and asking the audience “So, heard any good jokes lately?”
On TV, and in films, he was a constant source of joy for all. Even his social media presence was a non-stop celebration of the weird and beautiful in the world, showing us all that even when Pee-Wee wasn’t on display, Paul couldn’t help but make sure all his friends, all of us, knew that the world was a strange and funny and beautiful place.
Paul Reubens died on July 30th after a lengthy and secret battle with cancer.
Getting old is a lot of things. Just this past weekend I moved my oldest child into their dorm for their first semester of college. It was momentous to me, because I was able to do that exact thing that all parents want: give their kids more than they had. College was never an option for me. Hell, my dad even told me once “college isn’t for people like us” and I believed him and gave up on it right there. Which is wild, considering I never believed anything else out of his fucking mouth. Guess that little tidbit just fed neatly into my own insecurity and imposter syndrome nicely enough that I took it as a convenient reason not to try. My grades were definitely shit exiting high school but I possibly could have figured something out. Community college, as I now understand, is the option for people like that and we were definitely broke enough that I could have gotten financial aid. But I also didn’t have anyone to help me navigate this and when most of the world doesn’t seem like an option for your white trash Florida Man™ self it’s not hard to look down and keep walking.
So moving my oldest in to their dorm, holding them tight and then letting them go, was huge for me. The past few months have been a lot of goodbyes for me. They all hurt, but this last one hurt just right.
Getting old is a lot of things, but mostly it’s just saying goodbye. To our youth, to our friends, to our heroes, to our kids. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that I’m finding to enjoy about getting older! I really do feel most days like I’m becoming the final form of myself and overall…more or less…that seems like an improvement.
But it sure is a lot of goodbyes.
Originally published at https://unklesteve.substack.com.
