Excitedly, the young reporter warns us that some of the images we’re about to see “are disturbing.” He then shows them to us twice – the gape-mouthed woman in the foreground, the anxious policeman pushing her away from danger, a man standing over a dead body, the repeated sound of gunfire, and (the Don DeLillo Death touch), the glitzy background of the Bellagio at night.

Postmodern deaths happen while people are having fun.

You Tubes are now available showing closeups of the dead lying along the Las Vegas Strip. As Walter Benjamin, quoted in my title, noted many decades ago, our own destruction has become a thing recorded and delectated. Our own close to 50,000 gun deaths a year yield plenty of shared footage — especially when it’s mass murder, as in the 2017 slaughter of sixty people two miles down from the Bellagio.

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Here’s an even better one! Clearly shows the shooter doing his thing.

Bonus point: Since it’s night, we can see his gun shoot off sparks. Coooooool

And listen. Shooter’s a social media personality. Ya gotta assume he got a friend to film him shooting. Fantastic upload.

‘A man who overdosed on fentanyl in an Indiana Planet Fitness was dead inside a tanning bed for days before his corpse was found.‘

Regular readers of this blog will recognize this as another Don DeLillo Death (background here), a death emblematic of our fun-leisure-time, affluent landscape. Postmodern Americans die from bizarre accidents while enjoying luxe activities in five-star settings.

Can we really call this mode of departure “tragic,” the sort of demise Oedipus would recognize? Grievous Golf Cart of Fate…

Helpful hint: If your house looks like this, it isn’t a house.

My clients don’t cook. They entertain. They have a show kitchen outfitted in marble or other beautiful materials, and there’s a second kitchen where people can actually cook for them. They don’t want cooking in the main kitchen. I design a lot of homes with two kitchens. 

‘A man … arises from the underbrush … about two hundred yards from the golfers. [It’s] evident he holds a weapon in his right hand, a semiautomatic rifle.’

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Don DeLillo already wrote this latest event, though he was off by two hundred yards:

Mr. Trump was perhaps 400 yards away from the armed man, Sheriff Bradshaw said.

An AK-47-style rifle with a scope was found…

This one I’ll write myself.

17 year old who Assaulted his Mother

for Withholding her American Express Gold Card from him

goes on to Kill his Passenger in his Mother’s BMW X3M.

 ‘It’s like she handed him an AR-15,’ says Victim’s Mother

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This one has it all. As you recall, the DeLillo headline must refer to at least three status markers (prior examples here), and this murder trial is absolutely bursting with them: Gold Card, $80,000 BMW, and the repeated invocation of the AR-15.

PGA Tour Golfer Committed Suicide by

Using his Land Rover to Pump $800,000

Florida Townhouse Full of Carbon Monoxide

The headline combines the one in the Daily Mail with the one in Radar. Radar made a point of mentioning the price tag of the place the player filled with gas.

Dedicated readers know the DeLillo headline (examples here) must include at least three wealth-markers — here, PGA, Land Rover, $800,000 house.

With its echt–DeLillo name and its alcohol-everywhere setting, the Phoenix Waste Management Open golf tournament has postmodern pandemonium written all over it.

I’m thinking a contingent of yesterday’s shitkickers was just coming off of the big Trump rally where he encouraged Russia to do whatever the hell it wants to NATO countries that underpay their dues. Fuck em! Kill ’em! This way-roused the crowd, a portion of which, still fired up, then moved on to the big golf game.

… SNL noticed.

VOLVO CRASHES INTO WHOLE FOODS IN BETHESDA

Just down the block from ol’ UD. For other DeLillo headlines, some eerily similar to this one, go here.

This one comes from just around the corner!

MERCEDES CRASHES INTO AMAZON FRESH STORE IN CHEVY CHASE

For details on The Don DeLillo Headline, go here.

The $3million coral art Sphinx destroyed when a 66-year-old Florida woman smashed her Rolls Royce into it was designed by British artist Damien Hirst and owned by hedge fund magnate Steven Tananbaum.

You may recall an earlier DeLilloesque headline:

Florida ferry accident off exclusive island results in deaths of 2 socialites as Mercedes rolls into water

All postmodern headlines must include:

1. an accident, preferably involving cars
2. the car must be a luxury car, and its make must be specified in the lead or headline
3. there must be at least three wealth-markers packed into the headline (Rolls Royce, Hirst, hedge fund; exclusive, socialites, Mercedes).

Both of these headlines would have appeared in DeLillo’s White Noise had he written it more recently.

… wins the Don DeLillo Death Contest.

Man Jumps to his Death off

Mickey and Friends parking lot

at Disneyland

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For more Don DeLillo, postmodern, deaths, go here.

Looks promising.