obits

Baudrillard's passing should not go unmentioned, though I'm not the one to offer a proper tribute (Steven Poole's Guardian obituary is decent). I do remember a very genial, patient man at an event at the Phoenix Arts Centre, Leicester, who refused to rise to the bait of those in the audience who demanded a more 'relevant' theory. I liked his photos too: subdued, slightly mournful, with none of the 'ooh, let's think about signs' nonsense the caricaturists of postmodernism have given us to expect.

Anyway, the point was to note that the deaths of these epochal figures always seem to be obscured by lesser ones. Baudrillard dies: so does John Inman! 2004 - Jacques Derrida: Robert Palmer! Is this some sort of conspiracy of distraction? (1994: John Smith and Kurt Cobain...)

p.s. also interesting to read about winemaker Ernest Gallo who died the same day as JB. What I didnt know was that he was a key player in the dodgy tradition of marketing cheap alcohol to poor black Americans - specifically Thunderbird, introduced 1957. Obituary quotes the jingle: "What's the word?/ Thunderbird/ How's it sold?/ Good and cold/ What's the jive?/ Bird's alive/ What's the price?/ Thirty twice."