Wow, as I wrapped up a long day at work on a mighty 2 hours of sleep I just read that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has died from cancer at the age of 47. This feels sadder to me than most celebrity deaths involving artists I’m not particularly involved with. To be honest, there’s a chance I wouldn’t be able to tell you which Beastie Boy was Yauch if you showed me a picture of the three of them. However, I liked their team spirit, and no member of a team as funny and spirited as the Beastie Boys should have to die like that. I remember reading that Yauch was battling with cancer a couple of years ago, but come on, this was a guy pretty much my age with a lot of energy and a great sense of humor. He’d laugh his way through cancer and send it scurrying on its way.
It took me awhile to like much in the way of rap music, and to this day I’m skeptical of the genre, but the Beastie Boys’ appeal was hard to deny. They were in your face and funny, the way a couple of my friends were funny. Even before I liked any of their music I couldn’t help but like them, if only because they had tapped into a pop culture humor completely specific to my generation. The following fanboy video, in which a group of friends possibly much like my own mates re-creates the band’s amazing “Sabotage” video, says a lot about what made the real McCoys so lovable.
