Majorly English

I’ll remember a few things about my sophomore year of college. I’ll remember the amazing arrangement we had, where one television sat on a mini-fridge and the other on a sink, so that we could play way too many games of NCAA Football while simultaneously watching cruddy movies at 11:30 in the morning on Starz.

I’ll remember discovering that you can double the capacity of a garbage can if you pile trash in it to twice its height.

I’ll also remember the Real World: San Diego.

Like so many college students with cable and a bad procrastination habit, my friends and I watched the Real World religiously. Don’t get me wrong, we derived no sense of idealism or connection to these people. It was much closer to watching a dozen drunken monkeys ride around on Segways than any sort of “this is my generation” type of experience.

That being said, we loved the show, and while I’ve stopped watching the latest editions of Real World because I realized it’s the same damn thing every time (bunch of hot people get drunk and cry, fight, screw, and sit in a hot tub, in random order), I’ll always remember that season.

Well guess what? Frankie from San Diego apparently died.

Frankie Abernathy — the punked-out, boat-phobic rock chick of MTV’s
“Real World: San Diego” fame — died at the age of 25 on Saturday at
her mother’s home in Shorewood, Wisc.

Abernathy suffered from cystic fibrosis, though an official cause of death has yet to be determined, according to MTV News.
During her stint in the “Real World” house, Frankie exhibited symptoms
of cystic fibrosis, such as difficulty breathing and immune-system
impairment, and it was a significant part of her storyline on the show.

Frankie had some tumultuous times on the show, and ended up leaving the house before the end of the season.

I’ll always remember Frankie as being the head case who taught Jamie what a cutter was, was obsessed with her creepy boyfriend, somehow decided moving to San Diego for six months while harboring a crippling fear of water was a good idea, and left in the middle of the season and flew home to see her boyfriend in a full gothic Halloween gown.

I’m sure she was a great person deep down and whatnot, but when you sign up to display yourself on national television, sorry to say but that’s how you’ll establish your identity to 99% of the world. And in this case, that identity is a little kooks.

“Real World’s” Frankie Dies at 25 – TMZ.com
Awful Announcing: You Create the Caption #27 (Now With Links!)

Technorati Tags: real world, frankie abernathy, san diego, mtv