Tag Archives: What Dreams May Come

“Make Your Life Spectacular” – Robin Williams In Memoriam: 3 Years Later

Hard as it is to believe, this month marks three years since Robin Williams’ left us.  Doing this blog, I write about a lot of celebrity deaths, but in the time that I’ve been doing it, and in my life really, the death of Robin Williams hit me like I’d lost a family member.  Good times and bad, the man had a boundless joy running through him in such volume that you weren’t sure if it was going to actually make it to his mouth or go bursting out his ears.  All that being said, his suicide didn’t surprise me, it just made me profoundly sad.  People look at funny people like Robin and think how happy they must be, but humor doesn’t come from happiness; humor is the best bad way to cope with deep pain.  The theory being that if you can’t escape your own demons and be happy yourself, maybe you can bring a smile to someone else’s face.  I think Williams was happy when he was making others happy, but the need to be ON all the time and to do that must have been tremendously exhausting.  I miss him, like I miss a friend gone on before, and this video from Goalcast which manages to take his graduation speech from Jack (NOT one of his better movies) and marry it to a beautiful montage of his career, is just beautiful.  I think it’s the way he’d want to be remembered.  Then if you find yourself tearing up after the first one, check out this interview with Craig Ferguson a few years before his death and you’ll remember the joy of just watching the man talk.  We miss you Robin, and thank you.

Author Richard Matheson Dies 1926-2013

One of the giants of early science fiction/science fiction horror has passed.  RIP, sir.

Author Richard Matheson has passed away at the age of 87. Details are currently few, but Matheson’s daughter, Ali, said the following according to author John Shirley’s Facebook page:

“My beloved father passed away yesterday at home surrounded by the people and things he loved…he was funny, brilliant, loving, generous, kind, creative, and the most wonderful father ever…I miss you and love you forever Pop and I know you are now happy and healthy in a beautiful place full of love and joy you always knew was there…”

Matheson’s novels include iconic works like I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Hell House and A Stir of Echoes while his short story output has been adapted as everything from episodes of “The Twilight Zone” to the recent big screen sci-fi tale Real Steel. Among his countless contributions to genre storytelling, Matheson penned the original “Star Trek” episode “The Enemy Within” and supplied the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s early telefilm Duel.

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep,” Matheson himself commented in his 1978 novel “What Dreams May Come,” “All terrors would cease… Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”