How does the saying go? "Always a pallbearer...."

Dead people are starting to catch up with me. They're taking more and more prominence in my life.

RICHH is dead. I was planning to tell you about him anyway, but now that Mr. Feinstein is dead, I have to tell you about RICHH. Can't put it off any longer.

Rich Halberstein was co-editor of the Cornell (TM) Lunatic humor magazine in 1987 when an accident forced him to take time off and thereby thrust the burden of keeping the magazine alive onto the shoulders of his co-editor -- who, in turn, ultimately handed the magazine over to a friend of mine and me. Rich was, by all accounts, a very funny man to be around and his humor in the magazine was simultaneously brilliant and tasteless. I mean, really tasteless. Like, "Missing Children Playing Cards -- Collect the Whole Set."

I found out about Rich dying a few months ago (about a year after his death, in fact). I did a little digging and discovered that he and I have been (sorry, had been) living in the same town for the past several years. A little more digging revealed that Rich was a bit of a legend on Usenet during the early years. (For those of you who don't know what Usenet is, think of it as the global bulletin board analog to the web or to e-mail. If that doesn't help, then just think of it as a geeky computer gnurd thing that involves lots and lots of people who aren't you.) There are *fan sites* dedicated to collecting his various posts. (Examples here and here.)

Typically, Rich would post under the user name RICHH, although he did occasionally use pseudonyms, as well. He posted treatises on philosophy and pop culture, he posted humor, he posted raunchy porn of a particularly literary bent. Much of what he wrote way back then reads kinda like a modern day blog. The guy was ahead of his time. And now he's dead.

Weird things have been happening lately. Like, soon after finding out RICHH was dead, I received a lifeline from past Lunatic editors who are trying to organize alumni who worked on the magazine. I mentioned RICHH being dead. They -- you know, they -- asked if I'd like to write a few words about him for an upcoming newsletter. The more I researched Rich's life in an effort to say something interesting about him, the more fascinating his life became to me.

At my suggestion, and I know this sounds tacky, we're going to put his obit under the "Where are they now" section, featuring (I hope) a photo of his tombstone. Since he was buried in Florida (nowhere near any of my friends or family in Florida, too) and not in Seattle, it'll be hard to get that photo. But the more I read of his writing, the more I think he would have wanted it this way.

The thing about RICHH is, he was a downright funny as well as tasteless guy who lived hard and died young. I feel like it's possible to be irreverent in my obituary for him in the Lunatic alumni newsletter without being disrespectful. But there's also an undercurrent in any irreverence I may choose to employ regarding his death. Any dime-store psychologist would recognize such humor as a defense mechanism.

Earlier today (Wednesday, not Thursday -- I'm writing this after midnight, but today is still Wednesday to me), I received the word that Paul S. Feinstein died a few months ago.

It's getting a bit late in the evening now for me to adequately eulogize this man. He was my honors English teacher for junior and senior years in high school. He was one of the best teachers I've ever had. He had a cool and reserved sense of humor, a firm sense of what was right and wrong, and he demanded that we do our best to live up to our potential. He died all too young.

I wish I could sum this all up with some profound observation about life and death. I don't have any. Rather, I tell you all this by way of simply saying that death is increasingly on my mind these days. Like most of you, I've lost close family members throughout the years. But the rate at which I'm losing peers is now accelerating noticeably. A few years ago, an old high school friend with whom I had lost touch passed away. He was the first of my peers to go (not including my cousin Mark). Rich and I never got to know each other, but his death is nonetheless relevant to me right now. But losing Mr. Feinstein is bringing it all home.

Once upon a time, my peers started getting married. Later, so did I. Then, they all seemed to be having kids. Later, so did I. Now, my peers are starting to die. And eventually...

That's a signpost up ahead. Welcome to Midlife Crisis, USA.