Two good guys died today, and oddly enough, they were both only 37 years old.
1. Darrien Chapman, of a heart attack as he was about to play hockey. He was a sportscaster here in Chicago, and he had been in DC for a few years when I was still living there. I remember him as a really good sportscaster,
I remember that he had a heart attack at the ripe old age of 29, and the channel he worked for showed his recovery and talked to him about the fact that his dad died when he was about the same age as Chapman was when he died today.
I remember very clearly that he said he wanted to be around for a long time to come, for his kids. It’s a fucking shame that he’s not going to be able to, because he seemed like a really decent guy.
2. Jason Mizell, who you probably know as Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC, shot and killed in his recording studio in Jamaica, Queens.
Believe it or not, I used to be really into rap when I was younger, and while I didn’t listen to Run-DMC as much as I did to later groups like Salt-N-Pepa and Naughty By Nature, I still knew enough about them and their music to hear what a powerful influence they had on an entire generation of rappers.
I’m fucking tired of seeing good musicians getting killed or committing suicide or just dropping dead for no good goddamn reason.
But these guys were both good people, and the fact that they both died so prematurely on the same day at the same age is just another reminder of how random and stupid life can be.
And unlike most of the random, stupid stuff I write about here, not in a good way.