SRSLY..WUT!?!?!?!?

(First off the most obvious. Hey 2016 FUUUUCK! YOOOOUUUUUUU!!!)

So, I'm working a Sunday (I'm over it. I work every Sunday) and things are going okayish. It's lunchtime and I have a couple of sales already with another one lined up for after I smash this TV dinner. My last call was a little bit weird, but yeah that'll happen and at least I learned how to do something I've never done before. So that's good, right? Best of all, I start a four day weekend tomorrow because I decided I needed a staycation and I had the time so why not? It's my vacay and I'll pajama if I want to. So I pulled out my phone because I always do at lunchtime and what do I see? Star Trek has lost a cast member.

No, not the Star Trek I grew up on that's been around for fifty years. Not anyone from the string of TV series that followed it. Nope. Twenty-seven year old Anton Yelchin is dead. Fans of the new Trek movie series know him as Chekov, and he was in lots of other stuff too. I'm a Trekkie though (and proud of it) and so that's the role I'll always remember him for. At any rate, I have a question.

WHAT
THE
ACTUAL
FUCK?!

Listen, I've never been happy to see a beloved celebrity go, but it happens to all of us eventually. Yelchin was twenty-seven though and that makes things that much worse. Leonard Nimoy was nearly eighty-four when he passed. I was devastated. I posted about it. I hated it. But at the end of the day, it didn't matter that I was sad to see him go.  I could at least be happy that one of my earliest childhood friends had lived a long life, had a family and accomplished more than can reasonably be expected of any human being. Guess what? Yelchin was twenty-seven. He had much more left in him.

You'd think I'd get used to this kind of thing. As a Detroit sports fan, I've seen a lot. Reggie Sanders of the Detroit Lions suffered a career ending neck injury on the football field. Mike Utley, who played for the Lions as well, was paralyzed on one. No Red Wings fan will ever forget the day Vladi Konstantinov and Sergei Mnatsakanov. No one ever deserves what happened to them but it's a little worse to see it happen to someone you follow. I had a number sixteen Red Wings sweater. I loved that guy.Oh, and I grew up watching pro wrestling. I could tell a million stories about wrestlers we've lost far too young.  So maybe I should get over this. I mean, I've been through it and I can't change it but... but... DAMMIT!

There's a lot about the death of Yelchin that we still don't know, the most obvious being how he got ran over with his own car in his own driveway. That sounds like something from a Chevy Chase movie, but it's what's being actually reported. I want to know what happened here. That doesn't even seem possible. This almost sounds like it had to have been human error. Was the car a stick? Was the e-break on? I don't know. But let's focus on something else for a second and never mind the franchise.

I hate it when things like this happen. How old are Yelchin's parents? As young as he is I'm guessing (and no, I don't know for sure) that they're still around. How hard did it hit his father to find out that this had happened ON FREAKING FATHER'S DAY?!?!? No one EVER wants to lose a child. I get that. I have kids. The fact remains that it happened. I feel so sorry for both of his parents. Nothing I've found about him says that he was married or had kids of his own. I don't know whether to be happy about the fact that there are less people hurting because of that or if I should feel sorry for him because he never got to experience those things. Ugh.

Whenever I hear the story of someone who was lost too young, I remember the day my father passed. We just passed the eighteenth anniversary of the day it happened. He was forty-two and every year that fact hits me just a little harder. I mean, I'm thirty-nine now and I'm not planning on heading off to heaven in three years because that's just not long enough. I guess what really bothers me though is that Yelchin never even came close to forty-two. He never even made it to thirty.

I don't know what led to this. I don't know how a guy who should have been at work rehearsing ends up squished by a vehicle that he owned. I'm quite frankly not sure I want to. Whatever it is, it has to be a mess. I just... I don't know. This has me worked up and I'm not sure why. I've never met Anton. I don't know anyone who has. I really enjoyed him in the movies but I haven't spent anywhere near the amount of time with the guy as I have with any of the regulars of the TV series. It's just... I dunno. This one hit me the wrong way, I guess.

So now will come the predictable speculation, but honestly I'm just not in the mood for it. If this next movie hits like we all think it will (and I'm talking about ticket and merchandising sales, not trying to debate about how it compares to ST:TOS) there will undoubtedly be a sequel. I'm not going to spend my time wondering whether or not there will be a Chekov in future movies and who'll they'll get to replace him if so... At least not for today. For today let's all just think about a life taken far too early for apparently no reason and a family that is in mourning. I've suffered the loss of some of my idols before but never like this and never this young. This sucks.