Mickey Rooney

I was just wondering whether he was still alive.

In "One Trick Pony," Paul Simon and his band are driving around in their van playing "Dead Rock Stars," wondering who's alive or dead.

I had no problem.

But when that movie was released, I was much younger. You get older and it's all a blur. Not only their lives, but yours. Your hopes and dreams are dashed and even though the future keeps coming down the pike at an alarming rate, you keep thinking about the past.

That's the amazing thing about our world today. Everybody is findable but you don't see them. You look them up online, thrilled that they're there, but you're not sure what you'd say to them if you saw them, because you know now that their experience was different than yours and you'd prefer to keep them in a fixed state in your mind's eye. Ever notice that when you run into somebody from your past you're shocked they got old? Even though you've aged, you can't fathom that they did.

But it was the reverse with Mickey Rooney. By time he flew on my radar he was already past his peak, we'd look at pictures from his salad days and marvel, that he was so cute, and married to so many.

That's the first thing I knew about him. That he'd been married six or seven times already.

Why I wondered. Why make such an important decision so frivolously?

Then again, that's the essence of show people, they make decisions we don't or won't. And we love them for it. We watch them take risks we believe unfathomable, chuckle when we're right, but keep watching nonetheless. Katy Perry and Russell Brand? Why couldn't they just date!

But show people screw first, ask questions later and despite these faux pas we love them none the less.

Mickey Rooney had a career renaissance. Doesn't happen in music, certainly not anymore. Bruce Springsteen gave Gary U.S Bonds another go-round, but today Miley Cyrus couldn't help Stevie Nicks and despite being on HBO no one wants to hear the Boss's music on the radio. It's all new all the time, we put 'em on the scrapheap while they're still hot. Is there anybody who believes Robin Thicke will have another hit other than himself?

But Rooney found a way.

But actors are different from musicians.

Musicians die, actors live on.

Musicians go on the road, succumb to temptation and then do drugs to cope with it all. A lethal combination, that's for sure.

But if you manage to make it through the gauntlet, clean up, find a good significant other and hopefully tour using one home base, jetting in and out for gigs, you can continue to make a living and be a star in somebody's eyes.

Then again, we see musicians as their material, actors as their roles. We believe musicians are real, we know actors are fake.

But they stood in front of us twenty feet tall. At the drive-in. Even when the pictures truly got small on the tiny old screens of yore they emerged triumphant, because they were so good-looking, so charismatic.

And if you were big enough, a bright enough star, your legacy lived on, even if your present day circumstances bore no resemblance to fame.

But then everything disappeared in the rearview mirror. I don't think kids today know who Mickey Rooney was, never mind all those bands whose records I spun ad infinitum back in the seventies.

So, so long Mickster. I always kept an eye on you, mostly on late night talk shows.

And I love that you sued your stepson and his wife and won. In an era where everybody feels cheated, it's stunning when someone truly is, and proves it.

And my favorite part of your obit was when your mother turned down a $5 offer because she was waiting for a better one, those were the rules of vaudeville.

And the rules of life aren't much different. It's all about who wants you.

And we always wanted Mickey Rooney.


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