The New York Times obituary geek in me notes the following:

Length of Ronald Reagan’s obituary in the Times: 10,757 words.

Length of Richard Nixon’s obituary in the Times: 13,158 words.

Length of Queen Victoria’s obituary in the Times: 16,142 words.

Here’s how to make it into the New York Times obituaries:

It is best to die before noon, 2 p.m. at the latest, so that there will be decent time for justice to be done before the early evening deadline of the first edition — and less inconvenience to the staff. All those interested in having the Times sum up their lives, even briefly, should also avoid dying on Saturday, when the deadline is very early.

Unless you’re an ex-president, apparently. (It helps when your obituary is written way in advance.)

As for television, I despise the tendency of TV media to tell us to feel reverent and sad after someone dies, particularly someone as controversial as Reagan. Even Nixon became an angel in the press when he died. The Nixon hagiography was tempered, at least, by this entertaining Nixon obituary by Hunter S. Thompson.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

Free speech rules.

Congratulations to “Avenue Q”! The little musical that could, did. “Avenue Q” was easily my favorite musical of the past year, and I was so excited when it won the Tony for Best Musical tonight. I love it when a deserving underdog wins — especially in this case.

I’m sure the show’s Tony campaign helped, of course. If you haven’t heard it yet, you should listen to “Rod’s Dilemma, the song the creative team wrote especially for its Tony campaign. It’s really cute.

Hooray!

Before I knew anything about politics, deficits, taxes, Congress, or AIDS, I knew that Ronald Reagan was my president. He took office when I was in first grade, and by the time he left office I was in high school in Tokyo, Japan. That was a huge chunk of my life. Until I was 15 years old, he was the only president I’d ever known. He loomed large over America, like a king.

My first memory of him is from the fall of 1980. I was looking at the Weekly Reader in my first-grade classroom. On the cover was a story about the 1980 campaign, with photos of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson in little ovals.

Reagan won, and the only thing I knew about him for the next few years was that he liked jelly beans.

Later, when I was in fifth grade, he was running for re-election. My class ran a mock election, with one student speaking as Reagan and another student speaking as Mondale.

Everyone in the class voted for Reagan except me. After listening to both kids’ speeches, I just decided I liked Mondale’s speech better.

I first started watching “Saturday Night Live” during the Iran-Contra affair. I was in middle school. I remember the famous sketch with Randy Quaid as Reagan, pretending to be stupid in front of the reporters in the Oval Office, and then barking out orders to his staff members as the mastermind of the cover-up after the press left.

The quintessential 1980s moment for me is Nancy Reagan appearing on “Diff’rent Strokes,” telling Arnold to “just say no” to drugs.

Reagan’s death is going to be the biggest news story over the next few days. There’ll be lots of familiar faces on TV, and for those of us in our mid-20s to mid-30s, there’ll be lots of childhood nostalgia.

Now that I’m an adult, my opinion of Reagan is more complicated than it was when I was a kid. Thousands of Americans died of AIDS because of him, and his economic policies shot the deficit through the roof and left a mess for his successors to clean up. For the last 10 years, I knew that he’d someday die, and as a newspaper geek, I always wondered what his New York Times obituary would look like. It’s strange that it’s finally happened.

Another piece of my childhood has gone away.