Next year might be better / but I don't see any proof
December 26, 2016 1:06 PM   Subscribe

Mac McCaughan (Superchunk, Portastatic) delivers a bitter valediction to 2016 with his new song "Happy New Year (Prince Can't Die Again)."
posted by Maaik (17 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
(Prince Can't Die Again)

2016 just struck down George Michael on Christmas. Do not tempt it.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:18 PM on December 26, 2016 [12 favorites]


In six months we'll realize that the people who died this year were the lucky ones.
posted by enn at 1:24 PM on December 26, 2016 [24 favorites]


At this point I think I'll just hide in my basement until 2017 gets here. Catchy tune, I hadn't thought about Superchunk in years.
posted by COD at 2:09 PM on December 26, 2016


This is so good, thank you.
posted by corb at 2:24 PM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


Every New Year's I make a point of listening to cortex's Next Year's Gotta Be Better Than This One. This time I have a feeling I might listen to it more often than usually.
posted by Kattullus at 2:27 PM on December 26, 2016


Apparently, statistically, this is going to be every single year from here on out. Previous generations had a smaller selection of celebrities to work from, and even then they would have James Stewart and Robert Mitchum die within 24 hours of each other.

We've reached a moment in history when the massive collection of celebrities foisted on us from the 60s on are old enough to die. Rock stars, in particular, who tend to have a shorter life span. But every year is going to be this mass of death, and its going to increase, because the number of famous people shoved down our throat year in and year out has just gotten bigger and bigger.

Also, the oldesters have been through their version of this, but their celebrities aren't quite so famous to us as our are, so when the people they grew up watching on TV and in film and listened to on the radio died off, well, it didn't mean that much to us.

But look at 1994. In one year, the following died:

JANUARY

Cesar Romero
Tip O'Neill
Harry Nilsson
Telly Savalas

FEBRUARY

Joseph Cotten
Jack Kirby
William Conrad
Dinah Shore
Bill Hicks

MARCH

John Candy
Charles Bukowski
Lewis Grizzard
Eugène Ionesco

APRIL

Kurt Cobain
Ralph Ellison
Richard Nixon

MAY

George Peppard
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,

JUNE

Nicole Brown Simpson
Henry Mancini

AUGUST

Peter Cushing (until this year!)

SEPTEMBER

Jessica Tandy
Robert Bloch

OCTOBER

Martha Raye
Burt Lancaster
Raúl Juliá

NOVEMBER

Cab Calloway
Guy Debord,

DECEMBER

John Osborne

That's a year I picked at random, and just the celebrities that I thought people would generally know. What kind of year takes Harry Nilsson, Bill Hicks, John Candy, Charles Bukowski, and Kurt Cobain, just to pick a few?

A miserable year, that's what. Like this one. Like the ones we have every year, if you're an older generation, or paying attention.

Like the future.
posted by maxsparber at 2:28 PM on December 26, 2016 [22 favorites]


A lot of these deaths have hit harder, I think, because we also know we're recently seeing life expectancy trends reverse for the first time in modern history in the U.S. There's a real epidemic of despair and addiction raging through society right now. The fact even the richest, most privileged members of our society aren't immune and aren't any better at managing the social breakdown is especially depressing, statistically unusual or not.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:42 PM on December 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


I've got a Mac story.

I was vaguely aware of Superchunk when Mac's wife and her brother opened a superb restaurant in what had been a pretty seedy Indian place adjacent to my art supply store. The West end of Chapel Hill was kind of sketchy back then but you could buy a commercial building for about 11$ a square foot.

There were holes in the ground between the sidewalk and the street. One day I saw a large rat come out of one of the holes and jump into the closing automatic side door of a minivan piloted by someone in a wheel chair. She drove off before I could get out from behind my register and I've always wondered about the rest of her day.

A smaller one came up our toilet and I flushed it back down and called the city. They sent a camera in from the street but didn't see anything. I don't think they believed me but eh, two rats in two years, big deal.

So Mac and Andrea buy that half of the building and they and some friends are trying to do as much of the work as they can and it's noisy but they're really nice people who test recipes on us and I'm cool with it.

One day the jackhammer stopped and we could hear multiple people screaming through the firewall and I ran out the backdoor with one of the two by fours we used to bar it. I went in their back door and down the steps and a dozen giant rats are waiting for me and I start whacking them. These were "I eat cats for dinner" size rats. I'd killed six of them by the time I got to the kitchen. Scarier were the ones I hit that got up and ran away. People are up on the counters and rats are pouring out of a hole in the floor. I would have been up there too if I didn't have a four foot cudgel. The only thing to do was to open the front door and chase them out to those holes in the grass and turn a metal table over the hole in the kitchen. Not saying I wasn't scared too. We later discovered all of us had read that Stephen King story

The terracotta plumbing had been porous for a while. It was very expensive to fix and delayed the opening by months. I took my employees over on opening night and Mac was working the door. He told staff not to let us pay for shit.

10 years later the pipes under my building collapsed and I sold it to them. Please don't let this dissuade you from eating there. It's all better now. And do get duck.

Sorry if you are traumatized. We were. Please don't name the restaurant in this thread.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 4:08 PM on December 26, 2016 [13 favorites]


But every year is going to be this mass of death, and its going to increase, because the number of famous people shoved down our throat year in and year out has just gotten bigger and bigger.

Sad to say, the statistics bear this out, at least by the simple metric of comparing the number of the BBC's pre-written obits over the years. "Across the whole year, there was a 30% increase in BBC pre-prepared obituaries used in 2016 compared with 2015. 'In 2012, we had a total of 16,' says [the BBC's Obituaries Editor Nick] Serpell. 'In 2013, it went to 24. In 2014, it rose again to 29. In 2015, it rose slightly again to 32.' For 2016, as of 15 December, it stands at 42."

And all this is going on during a year of rather shitty political events—Brexit, the failed coup in Turkey, the US election, impeachments in Brazil and South Korea, random mass killings all over, Zika outbreaks, etc., etc.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:55 PM on December 26, 2016


Mr. Yuck: "[long, gross rat story]"

Eponysterical!
posted by kevinbelt at 5:10 PM on December 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


maxsparber: yeah, but Nixon's death in April 1994 made all the other deaths in that year worth it! Imagine if his head lived on forever in a jar somewhere!
posted by Schmucko at 5:51 PM on December 26, 2016 [1 favorite]


APRIL
Kurt Cobain
Ralph Ellison
Richard Nixon


Damn. I wish I believed in some kind of afterlife, just to be a fly on the wall when those three meet up in the anteroom to whatever it turned out to be.
posted by Naberius at 6:59 PM on December 26, 2016


just to be a fly on the wall

I don't actually believe in an afterlife, but if there is a heaven and hell then I know it's hell where all the people I want to meet will be.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:06 PM on December 26, 2016


Go to Heaven for the climate, but Hell for the company. --Mark Twain
posted by kinnakeet at 7:46 PM on December 26, 2016


I've got a Mac story.

I worked at CD Alley just down the same block for most of the last 14 years (I left when the store closed in February of this year). We were in the last remaining seedy(pun sort of intended) building for years after everything gentrified. I can confirm rats (and cats--my current cat literally wandered into the store one night as a kitten from that feral colony around Rosemary St) through the removal of the old bus station and the construction of the Franklin Hotel improved things a bit. Didn't help the flooding though.
posted by thivaia at 8:16 AM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


Also, the restaurant that will not be named is fantastic
posted by thivaia at 8:16 AM on December 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


I left when the store closed in February of this year
I'm pretty sure I shopped in CD Alley last week. Is it under new ownership? Did I miss that it is called something else now? *checks* Sure enough, Schoolkids Records bought it.

...what had been a pretty seedy Indian place adjacent to my art supply store.
Small world - a friend of mine's son was one of your employees
posted by thelonius at 9:22 AM on December 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


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