You have just described my whole life. I was thinking how, when I was a kid, legends still walked the earth. People like Joseph Cotten, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Glenn Ford, Ray Milland, Katherine Hepburn, Maureen O'Hara, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and John Wayne. That's just to name a few. And then there were a slightly newer crop of legends, like Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Tony Randall, Jack Klugman, Roddy MacDowall, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, John Ritter, Norman Fell, Ernest Borgnine, and Don Knotts. Raymond Burr, Ricardo Montelban, Lorne Green, James Arness, Leonard Nimoy, so damned many.
Most were from my grandparents' day. Others from my parents day. I absorbed them all through reruns and old movies, and I'm glad I still remember them walking this troubled earth at the same time I was, even if they just appeared in a guest spot on "The Love Boat" or "Fantasy Island". But they're gone, and there's no one to replace them. And that list will only grow as the years move on. William Shatner is in his 90's. Same for Clint Eastwood. Morgan Freeman, too. Christ, even stars I associate with the 1980's are in their 70's now. Tim Matheson is pushing 80! How the hell did THAT happen?!
And who do we have these days? Taylor Swift? Morton Downey, Jr.? Benedict Cumberbatch? Cate Blanchett? George Clooney? Pretty small list. As cool as some of them are, they're not a patch on some of those old school stars we've lost. And Gen Z will have even less because they themselves are lesser. Timothy Chalomet, maybe? Not much to choose from.
Entropy sucks.