When I woke up this morning, Geight heard me stirring and came in to tell me that he had bad news.

And I knew exactly what it was.

The day before Dolly Parton had passed away. Geight's awful work schedule the past few days meant that I had already planned to make a slightly nicer than usual dinner, and bought one of those golden curry bricks.

Justin McElroy has been doing a series of streams of games with Tim Curry in them, and it felt appropriate to put one of those on as we had our curry dinner. And as I was putting it on, I had the thought of how Tim was doing. They come in threes after all. I shook that thought out of my head.

Justin began to sing his little theme song, a parody of Sweet Tranvestite. And I again had the unpleasant thought of how when it was Curry's time, to watch both Clue and Rocky Horror would be time consuming, but "I'm Going Home" in the latter would make for a more appropriate finale. Again. Dark thoughts that weren't necessary. Enjoying dinner and watching Justin struggle with Wing Commander were to be my priorities. Let's not will something so sad into happening.

Aw jeeze. Sorry everyone.

No no, I'm not actually blaming my thoughts for causing his passing. But in some horrible little way, the universe heard me.

And I've never really been one for grieving celebrities. I never followed anyone's career or personal life or anything like that. Their passings could be sad, but my days continued unchanged. I was surprised when it was Robin Williams that I did in fact tear up. Hell, Dolly was yesterday and I just moved on from it.

But Tim Curry was obviously going to be the big one. Certainly growing up I had seen him in media often enough. My brother and I watched the first Home Alone religiously when we were young. The second plenty of times as well. We were both introduced to Clue by my uncle one sleepover at grandma's where she, my brother, and I regularly played the board game.

Over the years I introduced a lot of people to that movie. Pizza and renting movies for a sleepover at a friend's house? I made sure to show people what felt like a secret movie. Something nobody I knew had ever heard of, but that everyone I got to watch it recognized how great it was. Even at an age when half the jokes were still going over our heads. We didn't know what homosexuals or socialists were, but we would do the singing telegram girl bit again and again.

Fast forward to 2010-ish. Clue was no longer quite so secret, airing frequently on Comedy Central, enough that while I'd still get people to watch it for the first time, they were much more aware it was a thing. It was October and I had that Halloween spirit (probably due to an X-Entertainment article or something). I wanted to watch something that felt seasonally appropriate, but not _scary_. I'm not one for horror movies really. I looked through my collection of DVDs and there I found Clue and Rocky Horror. Both felt perfect for the occassion. Not Scary-Scary Movie night. I streamed both movies on like JustinTV, introducing folks once more to both films.

It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that both movies were set in spooky manors with Tim Curry in a lead role.

The next year I decided to do it again, and embraced this connection, calling it Tim Curry Night. A third great work of cinema with Tim Curry in it, The Worst Witch was added to the roster.

If you do this sort of thing long enough, it becomes part of you and part of how others see you. Ask me my favorite song, video game, or book and I'll never be able to settle on one for more than a minute.

Ask me my favorite movie and it will be Clue.

Tim Curry Night has gone on for more than a decade. The Worst Witch has been dropped because it's extremely fucking boring and Curry's role mostly boils down to the incredible performance of Anything Can Happen on Halloween. So instead we'd just end it with that scene alone.

Sometimes I'd do a test stream earlier in the day of an early episode of Regular Show where Tim Curry plays the role of a hot dog who organizes a barbecue rebellion.

People would regularly ask me to stream some of his other movies. I always kept it to Clue and Rocky Horror because this is still a Halloween-adjacent event damnit. But for a little while I took the GDQ approach and experimented with a Summer Curry Night.

We watched FernGully, a movie I last saw in theaters, and which all I could remember was not really enjoying it! Seeing it again confirmed that I was right to not really enjoy it.

We watched Muppet Treasure Island! Most of us (myself included) had never seen it before, and oh my god it's such a wonderful film. And Tim Curry makes for such a memorable Long John Silver. It truly is a festival of conviviality.

The "well that movie kind of sucked, but Muppet Treasure Island is an all-timer" set the stage. The latter movie would stay. The former would vary. The first movie would end up consistently being remarkably so-so. The Pebble and the Penguin and Annie both did not impress. Clearly we were here for the pirates.

Summer Curry Night kind of faded away as it's hard to find time to stream multiple movies and also get people on board to watch them, but Tim Curry Night will continue to endure.

But I just might put those movies on tonight.

Thank you Tim Curry, for all the wonderful memories.

'Cause I've seen, oh, blue skies
Through the tears in my eyes
And I realise
I'm going home.