Saturday, May 30, 2009

My dead uncle on YouTube



I was Googling my mom a while ago, to prove to someone she did voiceovers for a famous anime series in Japan.  And I accidentally came across an article about my uncle dying from cancer.  He himself was a voiceover actor, much more famous than my mom.

Well shit.  I'll be damned.  My uncle's dead.  

Ah, uncle.  I hardly knew ye.

I rarely saw him growing up.  He was busy, for one thing - his voice was in commercials, talk shows, dubbed movies and what not, every day.  Like literally, every day.  Also, he was more or less estranged from our family.  I don't blame him.  My mom's side of the family's weird.  Dad's side's just as weird, actually.  I mean look how I turned out.

I recently Googled him again.  I had no idea he dubbed for James Bond and The Holy Grail! There's a ton of clips of him on YouTube now.  So I spent a day watching him on YouTube.  There's one from the 70s where he's on a well-known talk show.  The host says she's always respected him for his candor.  They talk about how he opted to manage himself rather than hire a manager - a very unusual and expensive option.  

No way!  He sounds totally cool.  Complete opposite of the rest of my family, who, as far as I knew, deemed candor and individualism to be vices.  No wonder uncle blew them off.  I can relate, I don't like them much, either.  So I defected to the other side of the planet.  Best life decision ever!

Cancer, huh.  That sucks.  I hope he didn't suffer too much.  There are tons of better ways to die.  There are also tons of worse ways to die.  I hope mine will be relatively benign, but you never know.  Ah well.  I'm not sad.  Loss and suffering sadden me, but not death.  

I don't much believe in posthumous "legacies", either.  When you're dead, you're gone.  You don't "live on" through legacies (let alone afterlives or reincarnations!).  People with prominent legacies don't "live on" any more than people who are nobodies.  Ha!  Silly humans.  Always trying to come up with belabored fantasies of immortality.  Don't they know denying death just makes you even more afraid of death?

So, yes.  My uncle's dead. I see death on the news all the time, but this hits home a little closer.  It reminds my of my ultimate goal in life - to be completely ready for death, and embrace it when it comes.  Thanks, uncle, for reminding me.  Even though you're like, dead and everything.

4 comments:

  1. Ok. So I saw your profile on OKCupid and decided to attend to your suggestion that you be contacted here instead of there. So now it is your turn to contact me...masterdoc.

    Vite vite

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  2. You ask the world to read you in chapters spread across cyberspace. You invite comment. It must satisfy a psychological craving. Like a needle, you prick your readers. You encourage reaction. If they react critically, you attempt to shame them. What are you really looking for? You lead some to think you are on a quest to find romantic love but an alternative might suggest a quest to settle a a kind of vendetta. There are mysteries in your chapters that you want your readers to solve. There are plenty of clues but you yourself cannot solve the mystery. You prod and needle your readers- you ask not for help but for an epiphany.

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  3. That's a rough way to hear about a family member dying, even if you're estranged from the rest of your family. Or are you estranged? Or was it just your uncle?
    Sounds like your family needs one of those people who tries to 'keep everybody in touch' - for me it was my grandparents, they made sure we all knew what was going on with their side of the family - now they're mostly gone I guess it's down to my mom to do it.

    uh, onenumber@okc if it matters.

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  4. I think your uncle was a cool guy as well. I haven't been to Japan, but the whole hammering down the nail that sticks out that I've heard about, seems to make for interesting people.

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