As you all have undoubtedly heard by now, Leonard Nimoy died yesterday at the age of 83.

You don’t need me or anyone else to tell you what a tremendous life and career this man has had. After all, he’s the impossibly arch eyebrow-ed face and soul of perhaps the most indelible film and TV character ever: Mr. Spock from Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. It sucks to lose this man, but we can take solace in the fact that he came to emulate his character’s credo.

It’s always bewildering when a celebrity dies, when one of our heroes are no longer with us. We feel like we know these people, thanks to their performances and their capacity to make us laugh, cry and salute. We don’t know them truly, not really, but when we lose greats like Leonard Nimoy, we also don’t truly lose them. Their immense body of work lives on, and is never going away. Mr. Nimoy has permanently imprinted himself upon this world with his art, from acting, poetry, photography and music.

Unfortunately, because that’s how life (and death) works, next week will bring another tragedy, another passing. It seems like the past year has been particularly heavy with loss. Each brings an outpouring of affection, nostalgia and heartfelt tributes, and a rush to revisit or discover some of their best work. But there’s no need to rush. We’ll be appreciating Leonard Nimoy long after the obligatory public mourning period. Part of the joys of parenthood (I’d imagine) is passing on traditions to your children, and I can’t wait to force my future kids or any future generation of my family to watch the original series of Star Trek. Or even the rebooted version of the film franchise, because say what you want about J.J. Abrams’ efforts, Leonard Nimoy’s reprisal of Spock is the best part of both films.

In 2013, during EW’s Capetown Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, I had the wonderful opportunity to see Mr. Nimoy in person, as he introduced a screening of Abrams’ Star Trek and most importantly, gave an enlightening retrospective on his career. There are few people that elicit the same kind of giddiness that comes from sitting a few rows from freaking Spock. While he still had his wits (and that glorious sense of humor), afterwards, I commented to my best friend and roommate B. how lucky we were to see him, to experience him, to be there. It wasn’t long before he announced that he had pulmonary disease.

Yesterday morning, I received the news from my dear friend D., a man who is my pop-culture clone, a fitting messenger of such sad tidings. It was one of those things that happens that is absolutely shocking and heartbreaking, yet not shocking at all. I had been mentally preparing for this day since 2013. But it didn’t matter: it still hurt.

The news came on the eve of B.’s departure. Due to the seemingly never-ending unfortunate economic reality of our lives, he was moving home and out of our apartment, closing a chapter in both of our lives that began sophomore year of college, a friendship that inspired me to come to LA in the first place to try to create something that gives one person the kind of impact that Mr. Spock did for millions. That’s what we all hope for; that’s the point. Mr. Nimoy’s journey through humankind’s true final frontier felt even more poignant because he wasn’t the only friend I was losing that day. It’s stupid, entirely illogical, but I associated B.’s own journey eastward as another kind of death. Our friendship remains, and will remain forever, and I’m certain of a shared chapter in both of our stories yet to come (and it’ll be fascinating), but it doesn’t change the fact that I won’t have him to hug when our next hero leaves us. And that sucks.

I don’t think any of this really sunk in, or crystallized, until I went to transfer some files onto my USB, in preparation for what felt like a particularly meaningless errand to FedEx. Of course, this is my USB drive:

I almost lost it, and I should’ve, but I had errands to do, life to live. It felt like the logical thing to do at the time. I’ll break down soon, embrace my flawed humanity, and I welcome it. As Mr. Spock helped teach us, and learned himself, our emotions and feelings are what make us who we are; they’re the best part of being human, or otherwise. Leonard Nimoy’s own passing was one last sermon on the subject.

Mr. Spock was the Outsider, the stubbornly logical alien stuck with a bunch of hot-headed humans. Like almost everything on Star Trek he was a metaphor for other races, other cultures, other sexualities, other ways of life. He may have been alien, but he “showed us what it truly means to be human.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF5ROpjRAU]

For those who grew up in the 90’s, Macaulay Culkin was our childhood. I could care less about Ri$hie Rich, but he made me cry in My Girl, laugh in Uncle Buck, and want to be him in the Home Alone series. When I saw him at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood last year, I almost collapsed, afraid that I couldn’t exist in the same space-time as a guy who helped me grow up. Say whatever you want about Culkin’s life as a child actor and beyond, we all owe him a debt that will likely never be paid.

The evidence is in The Pagemaster, one of the most underrated animated treasures of the 1990’s, a film that is currently enjoying its 20th anniversary.

Richard Tyler is a scaredy-cat loser who won’t even go up into the treehouse Stan Sitwellhis Dad builds for him. He probably emptied out a Sports Authority’s safety equipment section just to ride his bike home. He was me; I was always shit with bikes, and terrified of new experiences. I wouldn’t be comfortable playing sports, games or anything until I was reasonably confident that I’d be one of the best in the class at it. I’m still that way with Pool. Risk was a board game, not something you actually took.

In the midst of a massive storm, Richard finds himself in The Library. Watching it now, the idea of a kid ever going to a library seems quaint, so much more magical/surprising than it was in 1994. Nowadays the library is where the homeless keep warm, or a place where the desperate seek free WIFI and glumly pay to print their resumes. Why else would you be in the library? Shamefully, society reads books on Kindles and iPAD’s, and if we succumb to actual paper-bound books, we order them from Amazon. Why read books for free when we can pay for them? The Pagemaster makes you want the world of your childhood back, when your class would take “field trips” to the library and force you to sign up for a library card, a quasi-religious experience that felt like you were signing up for a cult/skeevy daycare.

The Pagemaster grasps onto the power of books, of reading, of the Library, and paints it as a fantastical realm, with books that are as Alive as you or I. Books are (literally) our friends. Anyone who’s ever had a lonely afternoon reading Harry Potter knows this to be unequivocally true. The Pagemaster trumpets the power of reading, be it Adventure, Fantasy, and even the misunderstood genre of Horror. You could lose yourself into a world, embrace danger, daring and learn about yourself in the process. Pagemaster showed losers you could be a heroic sword-wielding knight who could take on a dragon, even if you looked like Macaulay Culkin, who looked like a big time dweeb in this movie, animated or otherwise:

What do I do with my hands?

And:

But by the end, thanks to his Bookish friends, Richard Tyler wasn’t afraid anymore. I said, “I’m not afraid anymore!”

The Pagemaster stars the holy triumvirate of sci-fi actors: Patrick Stewart, Christopher Lloyd and Leonard Nimoy. Or if you want to broaden it to the Mount Rushmore of Sci-Fi, you could throw Whoopi Goldberg in there (Ghost, dudes!), and you’d be wrong. Interestingly, Pagemaster not only stars Captain Picard and Guinan (Whoopi on TNG), but also Robert Picardo (The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager). It’s not hard to see the Star Trek DNA strands weaving throughout Pagemaster.

Patrick Stewart wonderfully plays against type, against his persona and the genre expectation that he’s cultivated, by being Adventure, a Pirate ruffian of a book. Leonard Nimoy similarly subverts our supposition, by being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a memorable scene:

Whoopi is Whoopi/nobody’s Fantasy, while Christopher Lloyd is Mr. Dewey (get it?), the Librarian AND the Pagemaster, the wizard overlord of Richard’s literary journey that includes Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Moby Dick and Alice in Wonderland. You kind of wish the boy had traveled in more unique worlds; even in 1994 those four were overplayed. Regardless, the Pagemaster is a role that only Christopher Lloyd can play, and one that he probably still could. Like Culkin, Christopher Lloyd was an inextricable link to my childhood, the perfect choice to play the gatekeeper of Magic.

Until recently, Back to the Future was my answer for favorite movie of all-time (now it’s Galaxy Quest). Lloyd’s excitable, brilliant Doc Brown was a massive part of that. But the man was also Uncle Fester in Addams Family and Addams Family Values, Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the Boss Angel in Angels in the Outfield. He was even Rasputin in Anastasia. The guy has his fingerprints all over the most important films from the 1990’s and is the man tasked with showing us the power of imagination, the kind of groan-inducing maxim that I still can’t get enough of.

I could talk about Pagemaster forever. Its unparalleled cast, its shitty animation, that the incomparable Phil Hartman voices Tom Morgan (above), one of Long John Silver’s pirate cohorts, but I’m getting thirsty, and I suspect so are you. So…on with it:

DRINKING RULES

1. Drink whenever Richard Tyler and company jump inside a book.

2. Take a sip for every reference to a storm, and every stormy scene.

3. You gotta drink for every dragon scene. This video is admittedly awful quality, but highlights one of the coolest/creepiest moments from the movie:

4. Whenever we see the library’s “Exit” sign, or Tyler draws it in the sand or something equally pathetic/poignant, drink.

5. Drink whenever Richard is scared.

6. Sip on the drink of your choice whenever Richard wields a sword.

7. Drink whenever we meet a new book.

8. If you ever find yourself reading the title of a book, or recognize a book’s spine, drink, you snob.

9. You best be drinking whenever there’s a book pun. You’ll know it when it happens.

10. Whenever Horror (voiced by Frank Welker) unleashes his dumbass laugh, drink. Also, watch this loving tribute to the most underrated Book in the film:

11. Drink whenever Richard/Culkin adjusts his glasses, or loses them, or all the different things that happens to nerds who wears specs. Consider this the Giles rule, a permanent staple when any character wears glasses. Because they never stop fucking with them.

12. Whenever cartoons and reality exist in the same scene, drink. Consider this the Space Jam rule.

EXPERT EDITION: Just drink for Christopher Lloyd. Every time. He deserves it.