There are several reasons why Larry Hagman is not going to come to your birthday party

In the middle of the night last night I woke up with one burning question on my mind.

Was Larry Hagman alive or dead?

I couldn't remember whether or not he was still alive and for some reason I was obsessing about it*

*He is in fact dead.  He died in Dallas on November 23rd, 2012, which seems as fitting as anything.  This is REASON ONE that Larry Hagman will not be coming to your birthday party

After a few minutes I woke up enough to recall that he was dead, which should of ended the discussion right there.  However, I instead started thinking about how odd it is that whether or not Larry Hagman was dead was in any way significant to me.  It's not like I was going to wake up this morning and say to myself, 'Hey, I think I'll call Larry Hagman and see if he wants to go to brunch.' because A: I do not have Larry Hagman's contact info, because B: I do not in any way know him.

This is REASON TWO that Larry Hagman will not be coming to your birthday party.  Even if he were not unfortunately previously scheduled to be dead that day, you don't know him.  Dead, Alive, dressed in drag doing the hula, it's completely irrelevant.  Larry Hagman has never been personally involved in your life.*  I'm tempted to call him Schroedinger's Larry Hagman, except that that would require me to explain again why Schroedinger was kidding and we should all stop misinterpreting what he said about cats and boxes (I'm looking at you, Big Bang Theory.)

*Unless of course you're someone who actually knew him, in which case most of today's post doesn't really apply to you and I would refer you instead to the thing about Marky Mark, because I always liked that post.

And suddenly our society's fascination with checking in to see if old celebrities were still alive or not seemed completely ridiculous to me. What does it matter to the average person (or indeed, dog).  Suzanne Pleshette is not planning on going with me to the next Captain America movie.  Christopher Plummer isn't going to Snap Chat with you at any point this morning*.  Larry Hagman is not coming to your birthday party.

Although it couldn't hurt to invite him.

* I did actually meet Christopher Plummer once, and I have to tell you that you're probably safer not snapchatting with him.  He's the most intimidating person I've ever met.  God knows what things you might see and never be able to unsee.