You know you're getting old......

......when all the people you watched on TV as a kid are dying.

I just saw on Yahoo that Davy Jones of the Monkees died of a heart attack.  It is so sad  to think of all these people aging and then gone.

I was in the Monkee's prime audience - a 14 year old girl.  And I was a fan - bought the records and watched the show faithfully.  But Micky Dolenz was my favorite and my friend Judy liked Peter Tork.  I think we considered Davy to be too short but he was oh so cute back then.  I can't look at Richard Hammond on Top Gear now without seeing a resemblance and remembering Davy Jones.  (I also can't watch Top Gear without wanting to swat Jeremy Clarkson upside the head, but that's another post......)

The Monkees were a band but they were "safe".  None of the conniptions that the Doors or the Who pulled.  No psychedelic or drug references.  No puzzling music, like the Beatle's Strawberry Fields.  I remember watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in a short film they made to go along with that song (was that the first music video?) and seeing Dad's expression, partly disbelief and partly confusion about what the heck the song meant.

So the Monkees were safe for impressionable youth and if you were a young teenaged girl, they were beyond adorable.  I think if you saw any of their later live performances they pushed the envelope a bit, and especially they did in their movie "Head", but the early TV shows were just right for a Southern Baptist girl from Kentucky.