Class of 2003

Ian Curtis
SP
Wears a New York (NL) hat.

Ian Curtis, for those who don't know, was the singer/lyricist/Gloommaster General of seminal post-punk band Joy Division. If you've never listened to Joy Division, you should go do so right now. Unless...you've ever thought to yourself, "you know what song I really like? "Proud to be an American" by Lee Greenwood". If that's the case, go kill yourself.

If you're still alive, you're doing better than Ian Curtis, who is definitely not. The answer to this mystery is: Ian Curtis, with a rope, in the kitchen. Most people who write dour, gloomy, borderline suicidal lyrics are really well-adjusted, sane, happy people, right? Well, not this one - he did all of those things, and he was actually totally fucked up. So he put on The Idiot and watched a lesser-known Werner Herzog movie, Stroszek, and hanged himself (Werner Herzog, by the way, is totally still alive and we're all the better for it; Iggy Pop is also still alive, and that one's a mystery to just about everyone). So his band dissolved, but then they said fuck it and reformed themselves as New Order and they added a nice, happy chick and decided to make nice, happy music . Eventually. First they made sad, Curtis-y music. It gives me some amount of pleasure to imagine that yes, "Blue Monday", their biggest post-Curtis hit, is in fact about Ian Curtis, mostly because it would be the most perfectly catty response to someone who did themselves in and left the rest of their band hanging. If the Doors had written a song called, "Go Fuck Yourself You Pompous Fucking Asshole" right after Jim Morrison drowned in his bathtub or whatever "romantic" rock and roll death he gave himself which is actually just another disgusting, fleshy, rotten death, then I would respect them. But instead they help perpetuate the myth of Morrison as some high and mighty rock God instead of the pathetic, self-absorbed, needy junkie that he actually was, so fuck them.

In other words, Curtis made awesome music, but there is nothing in the least bit romantic about offing yourself at 24 because you'd rather live up to some retarded fucking rock and roll myth than get some help for your problems and make more than 3 goddamn albums that we have to play over and over in lieu of, you know, having you still around.

Class of 2002

Jürgen Prochnow
SP
Wears a Pittsburgh hat.

Here are five facts about about internationally-recognized actor Jürgen Prochnow that you may not know:

1) His part in "Das Boot", which made him famous, was originally written as a tightly-wound private investigator in 23rd century New Orleans tasked with tracking down 5 renegade time travelling aliens from the Earth colony orbiting Alpha Centauri. Jürgen insisted that they change it so the setting become 23rd century San Diego, but they butchered it in the editing room and turned it some faggoty submarine movie.

2) He received his trademark pockmarked facial features while tracking down Nazis in the jungles of Brazil and not, as is usually believed, because he went into a plastic surgeon's office and told him to "give me the Edward James Olmos".

3) Uwe Boll has pictures of him raping infants. He passes them around to other filmmakers along what has colloquially become known as the "Prochnow Pipeline".

4) He is the godfather to Shaquille O'Neal's children, but only on Wednesdays and Fridays. The rest of the week, he wanders the streets of Kiel as "Jürgina", a 1920's-era cabaret singer who can bring a sailor to climax within 30 seconds with a single finger. He has never been able to dunk on Shaq but he still tries every time, God bless him.

5) He asked for only one prop from the 1999 Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicle "Wing Commander" - the ship that his character flies in at the beginning. When the producers sent him the scale model used for special effects shots he tracked each and every one of them down and murdered them and their families because he wanted the real fucking ship that flies to the Moon and shit goddammit.