The Columnist Manifesto

Wherein I solve the mystery of the celebrity threes within minutes of my last post.

Needless to say, there are several celebrity death sites on the web, and this one gives a very useful year-by-year listing (not in threes, just a list). Some examples:

October 9-10: Jacques Derrida, Christopher Reeve, Ken Caminiti
October 1, 3 and 5: Richard Avedon, Janet Leigh, Rodney Dangerfield

From the busy summer of '03:

David Brinkley, Gregory Peck, Hume Cronyn (June 11-15, 2003)
Leon "Exodus" Uris, Strom Thurmond and Katherine Hepburn (June 21, 26 and 29, 2003)

You could drop Uris and add Buddy Hackett (June 30), but then you'd lose the Buddy-Buddy of:

Buddy Hackett, Barry White and Buddy Ebson (June 29, 30 and July 4)

And a couple of months later:

Edward "Hydrogen Bomb" Teller, John "Three's Company" Ritter, and Johnny Cash (September 9-12, 2003)

You probably remember this fateful day, March 27, 2002:

Dudley Moore, Milton Berle, Billy Wilder

Okay, I think I'm getting the picture. The answer is: the rational one. Famous people die quite often. Or rather, everyone dies eventually, and there are more famous people than you realize.