Yes, it’s true. Friggin’ Ed McMahon died today, at the tender young age of 86, as part of the universe’s ongoing plan to rob me of everything I love. It seems he just died from a combination of sick and old—his publicist cites a “multitude of health problems”—which I suppose is unsurprising, but hardly as fitting for someone of Ed McMahon’s stature as, say, Death By Being Too Cool For School.

For thirty years, McMahon was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on The Tonight Show, and for the same thirty years he was the greatest sidekick, real or fictional, who had ever been devised. Who will tell us where Johnny is now, I ask you? For that matter, who will aid Alex Trebek in telling old people about the importance of Colonial Penn Life Insurance?

It’s too painful to continue. Ed McMahon was one of the all time broadcasting greats—for proof, I invite you to look at the wonderful things just about every person in the entire industry has to say about him—and now he’s gone. I ask you, how is that fair?

He may have lost the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes of life, but at least now he’s moved on to paradise, where the streets are paved with Cash 4 Gold.

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