Two things about Michael Jackson's death have surprised me (besides, of course, the event itself):
1) the number of people who, perhaps in an attempt to feel safer, are professing that since bad things come in threes (Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and MJ)... then what? No celebrities can die for another week or so? They always seem to trail off when they get to the punchline.
2) the apparent need to quietly ascribe the heart attack to some kind of drug use, as if fifty year old men can't just have a heart attack, especially if they're famous fifty year old men. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is most often professed by middle aged men who presumably take some comfort in the knowledge that they're not habitual drug users.

And so, it seems, everyone's feeling their own mortality pretty acutely this week.