The Hard, Hard Ground

It's been a few years since I've picked up a copy of The New Yorker. (It's been a few years since there was anything in The New Yorker.) It must have fallen off the subscription bundle of my ENT physician. Plenty of Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar, though.

Regardless, what I remember was that they'd take an outtake of a magazine or newspaper story that was either phrased funny, or reported on something really out of the ordinary. The editors would then add a single sentence blurb to the bottom of the reprint that deadpanned the whole thing. If it wasn't outright funny (hard to describe even the best of these, or the cartoons as outright funny), there was usually a good droll wit to it.

Death, as we know, can be one of the most ironic events in life. Pete Hamill, in a foreward to a collection of obituaries, quite succinctly points out that life is the leading cause of death. And the life we lead, can very often play a part in the events of our passing.

No better example of this, and what could appear as a New Yorker outtake, is the story of Mark Sutton, the 'James Bond' Olympic parachutist who helped open the 2012 games in London. Mr. Sutton was (and now the tense as given it away) a "wing suit" enthusiast who would leap off cliffs, or was dropped from helicopters, and then flew like a bird, aided by the aerodynamic design of the suit, before opening the parachute at some point in the flight, when he then came down somewhat conventionally.

His last effort at doing what he enjoyed was on Thursday, August 15, when he leaped from a helicopter at 11,000 feet and struck the side of a mountain at 150 miles an hour.

A police spokesman explained that Mr. Sutton died instantly. "It appears that the victim opted for a trajectory that was too close to the ground."

Goddamn ground. It wins every time.

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