Posted 4:31 PM by sport

I'm coming down with a bug of some kind, no doubt picked up on the plane. So I'll write more about the trip shortly, but now I see Fred Rogers is dead. He was one of my true heroes, and I LOVE his songs. Never covered any of them as I'd wanted to, since it would have been taken as "camp" and too many assholes have mocked him for too long. Along with the crucial message of respect and kindness he lived to share, Fred's tunes are sophisticated little gems disguised as simple ditties. His philosophy, fully embodied by his actions, was based on bravery and wisdom often mistaken for wimpiness and naïveté. He never exploited his success to sell garbage to children, never considered changing his approach to suit increasingly corrupt and shallow cultural trends and never traded on the power of his celebrity to enrich or enshrine himself.

There will be tributes-a-plenty out there in the real world, so there's no need to go on about him here. But, suddenly, life sucks that much more.