 What's the most surprising thing you've learned about an ordinary life, writing one of these obituaries? Well, not a famous person, but... Here's one. I brought one with me. There was a very good photographer who worked for The Village Voice for many years, a man named Fred McDara, and he died in 2007. Now his work as a photographer for The Voice alone would have been more than enough to get him a news ovid in our pages, which it did. He took, for instance, a very famous photo of Bob Dylan, a young Bob Dylan, all in black in Sheridan Square Park in New York, facing the camera and saluting, and that photo has been everywhere. That was taken by our guy, Fred McDara. And because of when he worked in the 50s and 60s, he was famous for documenting photographically the beat generation. To my surprise and delight when I started pulling old clippings and researching the obit, we found that not only did he document the beat generation, but he enterprisingly started a business called Rent a Beatnik for these society matrons who wanted to be au courant, wanted to have a beatnik play the bongos or read poetry at their fancy parties in Scarsdale, but didn't quite know how to go about it. So the rental markets and everything, I would say. Exactly. So the lead of our obit, we say, Fred W. McDara, a self-described square who was a longtime photographer for The Village Voice, documented the unwashed exploits of the beat generation and, as an enterprising freelance talents agent, rented out members of that generation, washed or unwashed, two wide-eyed suburban society gatherings died, et cetera, et cetera. So that was great fun.