Life imitates art

Ransom and I are big fans of Dexter, Showtime’s series featuring Michael C. Hall as the title character, a blood splatter analyst with the Miami police. That’s his day job; at night he’s a serial killer. Before Dexter, Hall made a name for himself dealing with the dead in another way, as the director of a funeral home on Six Feet Under. We loved that show too.

Each episode of SFU began with a death – income for Dexter’s business. They were usually odd, ironic or outrageous. One of my favorites was of the guy too lazy to exit his SUV as he picks up the morning newspaper. He leans out the door to grab it from the driveway, but slips out of the vehicle, which then rolls over his head and kills him.

We couldn’t help but smile and think, “thinning of the herd.”

Another untimely end was met by a 20-something out partying with her friends in a rented limo. They stand on the back seat and watch the passing LA cityscape through the sunroof. Her friends sensibly get back in the car but she continues to whoop and laugh and enjoy her night out – until the limo passes too close to a parked cherry picker and she meets it head-on at 45mph. Ouch!

Last night I read on the New York Times web seat that a teenager met the same fate on a double-decker party bus in the city. Details were sparse but he apparently put his head through a ceiling hatch and was killed as the bus went under the Fletcher Avenue underpass near the George Washington Bridge.

This was just a kid, and kids sometimes do foolish things. I am sorry for him and his family.

A few years ago I was on a Metro North train to New York to hear Ransom conduct at City Opera in Lincoln Center. I never made it. Our train was delayed to the point that I turned around and went home when we finally crawled into the next station.

We had run over someone just west of Stamford. A 55 year-old retired firefighter was showing his wife and kids how to flatten a coin on the tracks. While his horrified family looked on he failed to see, or failed to react to, the oncoming train, the train I was on. He was sliced in half.

I feel sorry for that family too. Sorry that their patriarch was such an idiot. The worst thing about this comic tragedy is that he had already passed on his genes.

H. L. Mencken said “no one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” He got that right.