This has been around a while but I still love it: it’s cartoon time and the message is “observe beauty where you can!”

Two songs on my iPhone this morning at the gym that got me thinking. Two utterly different styles, yet their meaning could be very similar if taken out of their literal context and held up against the artists and their personal lives themselves…

First up is Queen’s hard rockin’ Hammer to Fall:

We don’t waste no time at all
Don’t hear the bell but you answer the call
It comes to you as to us all
We’re just waiting for the hammer to fall

Oh, every night and every day
A little piece of me is falling away
But lift your face the Western Way
Build your muscles as your body decays

Rich or poor or famous
For your truth it’s all the same
Lock your door the rain is pouring
Through your window pane
Baby now your struggle’s all in vain

What the hell we fighting for?
Just surrender and it won’t hurt at all
You just got time to say your prayers
While you’re waiting for the hammer to fall

Written in 1984 during the height of the Cold War by Brian May, it’s generally a song about fearing atomic war, really. But now, past the 99 Luftballonism, when it’s sung by Freddie Mercury it has a certain air of allusion and irony to how, in a few years time, he would succumb to AIDS (lyrics emphasis mine).

The second song, written by Howard Ashman, called Human Again for the musical Beauty and the Beast is about a bunch of enchanted furniture wishing the spell that they’re under makes them uh… human again! But again, listening to the lyrics and overlaying it across Mr Ashman’s life (who wrote this song during the last stages of his fight with AIDS while holding out for new treatments. Unfortunately he died before seeing it on the screen) it turns into something more than cartoon folly:

When I’m human again
So sweep the dust from the floor!
Let’s let some light in the room!
I can feel, I can tell
Someone might break the spell
Any day now!

When we’re human again
Only human again
When the girl fin’lly sets us all free
Cheeks a-bloomin’ again
We’re assumin’ again
We’ll resume our long lost joie de vie
We’ll be playin’ again
Holiday’ again
And we’re prayin’ it’s A-S-A-P
When we cast off this pall
We’ll stand straight, we’ll walk tall
When we’re all that we were
Thanks to him, thanks to her
Coming closer and closer
And closer and…
We’ll be dancing again!
We’ll be twirling again!
We’ll be whirling around with such ease
When we’re human again

I found it odd that these two songs shuffled themselves next to each other. Like ghosts communicating to me through electronics. Thanks for the music, dead guys!

A while back I mentioned Jon Erik Hexum on Twitter and I got a response (ahem) “Why exactly do we care about this Jonah Hex dude who died when I was in Grade 9?” Oh dear. Someone missed out on the hairy 80s beefcake era. I think I was in grade 8 (Ha! Take that old man!) when the whole parade of hairy leading men came out: Gil Gerrard, Lee Majors and Jon, to mention my faves. But Jon was my first “tragic dead celebrity” crush.

He was borne of fine European stock and discovered by John Travolta’s manager. He had one season on a time travelling sci fi show called Voyagers! where I first took notice of him, being the pasty gay sci fi geek I was. Nobody else watched it because it aired beside 60 Minutes (remember kids, pre-VCR days!) and he was let go. However with his blue eyes that could cut through steel, Hollywood thought they could use him. He was picked as the male lead in Making of a Male Model alongside Joan Collins. I recall several scenes were shot sans shirt and alluded to nudity. Luckily I got to watch it alone, a miracle in a house of 5 kids, and nearly fainted at these scenes.

After that he had a walk on role in HOTEL and a major part in a movie called The Bear (I know… I know… fate!) working with Gary Busey. So you can see he was climbing past these people on the ladder to stardom. After that he was given the lead in a male model as CIA spy show called Cover Up.

Rumour has it when Jon Erik got bored the fateful day he put that gun loaded with blanks to his head, his last words were “Let’s see if this will do it.” I am sure he was referencing the actual one round he had in the gun, not alluding to any suicidal tendency. The charge was strong enough to send fragments of his temple into his brain. He remained on life support for days until his mother pulled the plug. Parts of his perfect body was donated to a long list of people (see Wiki, take it as you will). I’d love to be that kid with the 3rd degree burns who got some of his skin. I imagine they harvested off his perfect hairy pecs for some unrelated body area on the kid: “Mommy? Why is my left shoulder so much more hairier than my right?”

When he died my brothers couldn’t understand why I was so forelorn for weeks. Like a school girl weeping into her pink David Cassidy pillow, I clipped out news articles and saved them under my bed.

My first website I ever made was a ironic Jon Erik Hexum memorial, replete with animated GIF torches and tears that dripped from a rose. It was green for some reason. If you want something similar, you can go over to Find-a-grave.com and leave digital flowers on his cyber-plot. No seriously, you can.

OneMinuteGalactica is brilliant. ‘Nuff Said.

“I wish you were tall enough to fart on you…”