Syllabus #180

Bob from Sesame Street died this week.  He was 90.  I saw the news and fully stand by my assertion that when someone is that old and has faded into obscurity in their later years, the headline shouldn't be that they died, but that, until recently, they were still alive.  

With his passing, now all my inappropriately geriatric childhood crushes are dead.  Look, don't overthink this, but until JTT and Zack Morris came along, I only had eyes for kindly but quirky, clean-shaven men born before 1950.  Bob from Sesame Street (1932).  Davy Jones (1945).  Jim Varney (1949), but not as himself even though he was honestly a real smoke show, but specifically Varney as beloved alter-ego Ernest P. Worrell.   

You might be asking, but Katie, what about Mr. Rogers?  All I can say is that a girl has to draw the line somewhere.  For one thing, he was too nice and that was a red flag for me.  Gotta be some skeletons in that closet next to all those cardigans.  Plus, Rogers was four years older than Bob, but he really leaned into the harmless old man thing.  Bob had a little more of swinging hipster vibe.  I mean, just take a look at this denim on denim 'fit:

Dressed like a man fixin' to go slam some PBRs after filming  

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I wasn't very online this week.  Please accept this article about the niche subculture of historic octagonal houses as my sole offering.

Analog Reading:

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy.  I'm almost done!  I don't hate it, but it is, of course, very weird.  The thing I dislike about it is the way the more straightforward elements of the plot are interspersed with the dead sister's hallucinations, which are about as fun to read as a description of someone else's dreams.  It's tedious.