Loni Anderson died.

You surprised?

I am.

She died day before yesterday. Saturday 3 August. Just like that!

But it wasn’t just like that.

She was old.

She died two days before her 80th birthday.

They didn’t say how she died. All they said she died from a “Prolonged Illness” which is kinda bullshit so I scrolled around a little and found out she died of Emphysema.

How could Loni Anderson die of Emphysema?

Well, something’s bound to get you. Everybody dies of something.

Even Loni Anderson.

Yeah…okay…so what?

So why am I making a big deal of this? The fact that a 1980s television star has died. Why is the death of Loni Anderson blog worthy? For one thing, I’m sick of talking about Donald Trump. Sick of thinking about him. Thinking about him is like having the MIND FLU. That’s right. Donald Trump is a disease germ, very small but capable of making my life miserable. Back when he was a rich nothing New York joke I spent no time thinking about him. I was okay with that. Now that he’s king of the world I gotta think about him all the time? I gotta think about A NOTHING NO ACCOUNT ZERO BREATHING NASTY SUB NOTHING. Why do I gotta think about him? Maybe if I think about somebody else I don’t gotta think about him. Maybe then THE MIND FLU WILL GO AWAY. I’ll feel a momentary relief. Relief, that is, until he takes away my social security or blows me up in a atom bomb war…in which case it won’t matter anyway cuz I’ll be brown bread…

Better to think about Loni Anderson.

She was my favorite of all the blond bombshells of the seventies and eighties. She starred in my favorite Television show from back then. WKRP in Cincinnati. A smart funny show…not a waste of time like Three’s Company or Charlie’s Angels, two other shows of the era showcasing Blond Bombshells.

WKRP was worth wasting your time watching.

I liked every character in that show. Even Herb, the smarmy sales manager, I liked. But I especially liked the two main characters Loni Anderson and Howard Hessman played.

Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a washed-up former star disc jockey, attempting a come back. He was fired at a big time station for shouting “Booger” on the air. Now he’s stuck at this backwater station, WKRP, going nowhere fast, wondering if a struggle back up that success ladder is worth the effort. He was the cynical moral anchor of the sit-com. But it was the character of Jennifer Marlowe, the station girl Friday, played by Loni Anderson, who intrigued and delighted me over all the other characters on the show.

She was impossibly beautiful…okay. A goddess. And smart. Two legitimate reasons to be stricken by her. But she was more than that. She had character and style. These two qualities are hard to define. I can talk about them all day and not hit the nail on the head. Maybe it was the role she played in WKRP. They gave her all the good lines in that show. But she had to deliver them, didn’t she? And the fact she delivered them so well leads me to believe the character you saw on the show was at heart the real Loni Anderson. I watched her interviewed by Katie Couric, the renown hard-ass journalist, and Loni Anderson held her own and even upstaged Couric. Loni Anderson had a kind of magic that captivated me. Okay, so maybe that’s the long and short of it. Yet that magic needs to be real for me to be captivated. Loni Anderson was the real deal. A blond bombshell with a heart and a brain…and character. Character being a kind of courage and vulnerability you carry with you day to day.

She had courage.

Okay, are we done here?

Not quite. There’s another reason I’m blogging about the late Loni Anderson. Maybe the main reason. The hardest reason. It’s the fact of Loni Anderson being dead. Not just dead. Dead at 80 or almost 80. She missed 80 by two days. She didn’t die young! She got to the front door of 80. How can that be? This is troubling. I can think of other people, one in particular, who I’d rather see dead. Who oughta be dead. Not Loni Anderson.

Loni Anderson was supposed to live forever like a Goddess.

I guess this old age and death thing is for real.

For all of us?

Maybe not the King of the world.

No…no, no, no. Even him.

The Killing Moon will come.

For all of us…