194.5 - RIP: Leonard Nimoy

RIP: Leonard Nimoy

We've got another RIP this week. I came into work the other day and the first thing my boss said to me was "Did you hear the terrible horrible news?" As there always seems to be a plethora of such, I asked "Which terrible horrible news?"

That's how I heard that Leonard Nimoy had died. He was 83 and death was from end-stage COPD.

Leonard Nimoy, of course, was best known as Mr. Spock in the Star Trek universe - starting with what later became known as ST:TOS, for Star Trek: The Original Series and continuing through movies and into The Next Generation.

Leonard Nimoy

Lots of people, famous and not, remembered him in tweets. My favorite of the ones I saw was from actress Mindy Kaling, which consisted of three quotes: "This is the Mugar Omni Theater." "...because he grew up six blocks from here." "Who put the bomp?" I loved it because I instantly understood what she meant.

In the years after the original series ended, he chafed at being so totally identified with a singlle role, so much so that he wrote an autobiography in 1975 titled I Am Not Spock. Twenty years later, have come to terms with and even embraced the connection, he wrote a second volume called I Am Spock.

So yeah, he was Spock, but he was more. He had an acting career quite apart from Star Trek plus being a director, author, poet, photographer, and art collector.

But at the end of it all, he was Spock. So it's fitting that he came to sign off his tweets with LLAP - which, in case you are a recent arrival from a different space-time dimension, I will say stands for Live Long And Prosper.

RIP, Leonard Nimoy.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/leonard-nimoy-famous-for-his-role-as-mr-spock-dies#.bcjq1E2wq
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jaimieetkin/celebrities-scientists-and-more-remember-leonard-nimoy#.ndn593mq5
http://hyperallergic.com/186688/the-many-lives-of-leonard-nimoy-artist-collector-vulcan/