*************************************************

From @realDonaldTrump:

Ron Glass died! Black guy on Barney Miller. Very fussy and wordy. Maybe gay. Easy to overlook. Just 71. Still in the prime of his life. Sad.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Florence Henderson died! America’s original MILF. Did I? Wouldn’t be classy to tell, but as Flo is dead– yes, many, many times. Once with Marcia, too.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Leonard Cohen died! Think it was a nut allergy. Might have to ban nuts. We’re losing too many of the good ones to them.#WarOnNuts!

From @realDonaldTrump:

I am in perfect health. No nut allergy. Can eat nuts by the handful. Shame about Crooked Hillary’s health. So very sick. Tired all the time. Crooked Hillary next to die?

From @realDonaldTrump:

Jose Fernandez died! Great, great pitcher for Miami. Un hombre sincero. Had box seats for his last start. Great service. Stunning waitresses. They love me in Florida.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Sharon Jones died! Pancreatic cancer. Nasty. I stand with the black people, who love me, love me so much, during this sad, sad time. I will fix your broken inner cities!!

From @realDonaldTrump:

Pat Harrington Jr. died! The janitor guy on One Day at a Time. Decent show. Maybe not the best. Preferred Three’s Company. Chrissy? She was a 9, for sure. Body and face.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Actress Suzanne Somers played Chrissy. Blonde and jiggly. I won’t lie to you, I had sex with her many times. So many times you wouldn’t believe.

From @realDonaldTrump:

One time we did it in the linen closet of a 5 star restaurant. She was a great piece of real estate, that lady. Outstanding. #WomenLoveMe.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Muhammad Ali died! Great showman. Brought lots of people and money into the casinos. Huge amounts. He got so shaky in the end, though. Sad.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Former Miss New Jersey Cara McCollum has died! Saw her naked more than once in the change room at the pageant. Body a solid 9. Face? Maybe a 7 on a good day. We mourn her passing.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Prince has died! He was never my thing. Straight or gay? Hard to tell. Always changing his brand. Very confusing for the consumer. Made him a bad businessman. #BuyTrumpBrandWater

From @realDonaldTrump:

David Bowie died! Had a glass eye. Was married to a Somalian supermodel. Guy was way out there. Tried to get him on Celebrity Apprentice but there were scheduling problems.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Gene Wilder died! Alzheimer’s Disease. Couldn’t remember a thing in the end. I am in perfect health. My mind is like a platinum trap. Ivy League educated. So, so very smart. #HighestPresidentialIQOfAllTime

From @realDonaldTrump:

Chyna has died! Drug overdose. I have never taken any drugs in my life. Unlike Crooked Hillary who is on HUGE amounts of meds. She’s all weak and shaky like Ali was before his death. Don’t think she has long.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Chyna was a great lady wrestler. Really tall. Kind of homely, but still able to turn a profit in porn. Gotta admire that.

Always thought Ivanka could dominate the industry if she chose.

Dressed in some flavour of active wear, they looked like they were heading off to play Ultimate or maybe run the steps at Casa Loma, something sporty. She was very pretty, while he looked like your average 20 year-old guy still trying to figure out who he might be. Both of them were smiling, but his grin was goofy, almost excited, like he simply could not believe his good fortune at being out with this girl. After about half an hour they came walking back, but this time she was holding a little bouquet of wildflowers that had clearly been picked from a yard just up the street. Their smiles were different now, everything shining. This sunny, spring afternoon will travel with the boy for the rest of his days, a perfect moment when something beautiful started to come alive– a point of light he will always return to.

I was 13 years-old, hopelessly white and just starting high school. I wanted to be cool but didn’t have the foggiest notion how to go about it. Cool was an undiscovered, mythic country that existed off at some unknowable distance, and I was lost, so very, very lost.

Eventually, I learned that the best passage to this land was through music. At the time, while punk and new wave were exploding around me, Billy Joel was my God, and this was not cool.

I found out that the music I had been listening to was wretched kid’s stuff, as were the lame, middle of the road radio stations I pledged allegiance to. If I wanted to be cool, I had to listen to college radio, CKCU specifically.

Listening to this radio station felt subversive, like receiving secret transmissions from a dangerous and lawless place. Unlike the chipper and inauthentic DJ’s I had previously been listening to, the ones who used sound effects and clearly knew nothing about music, the college DJ’s seemed singularly interested in what they were playing, as if it was their holy mission to bring “good music” to you. It was, I think, my first exposure to what might be thought of as the alternative scene.

It was here where I first heard the voice of Nadine Gelineau. She was a DJ at CKCU, and for whatever reason she struck a chord with me. I loved her. I mean, I was in love with her.

Her voice, so knowledgable, confident and fun, suggested worlds I had never imagined. It was a voice that for a 13 year-old boy in Ottawa, was a path, a path to a world of music and cool and all that lay beyond, a path out of the childhood I had always inhabited and on toward something much grander. Her voice conjured the possibility of thousands of different lives.

She was a legend. Hosting radio shows, spinning discs at the counter-culture clubs, championing music and just generally being Ottawa’s single-combat hero of cool, she was the way we collectively wanted to be seen. She gave us all hope and pride, I think, and now she is gravely ill. I hope that she’s able to get through it and return to herself and the legions of people whom she loves and love her.

The thought of her passing is a kind of cataclysm. Ridiculously, it seems impossible, but time, it just slips away, quietly sliding away into a larger and larger pool now forming beneath and behind us. Who knew that pool would get so big and we would get so old? Who knew the present would so mercilessly raze our beloved past?

I was recently reminded that the last song she played at all the club sets she performed was Enjoy Yourself by The Specials.

At the time it struck me as a drunken party song, but now when I listen to it, there’s a sadness and inevitability to it. It was an appropriate song for Nadine to have played, I think. It’s a funny time, that last song of the night, bittersweet. I never wanted it to end, I wanted it to stretch out infinitely, with more and more people joining in, each one a light in the greater constellation of who we were, each one shining so brightly.

So, thank you Nadine, thank you.

( Photo courtesy of Julie Beun)