"Then There Was His Smell; Not B.O., Exactly. More Like a Ripe Smell, Like Dirty Feet or French Cheese..."

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman elicits a powerful--if repellent--sense-memory of Lester Bangs, the rock music critic Hoffman portrayed in Almost Famous.

Bangs, BTW,

died in New York City on April 30, 1982, of an accidental overdose of Darvon, Valium, and NyQuil.

In other words, poor man's heroin. It did him in when he was only 33.