Oh shit! How very sad about Heath Ledger.
How long before someone Blames The Gays?
"The gay lifestyle is so dangerous that even playing one in a movie led this poor man's life to ruin."
He's kind of on my radar more than most, because his daughter has the same name as my second one (the devil child) - and actually the same middle name as my youngest, though I didn't know that before. They mentioned pills, so suicide? Very sad.
What Jackmormon said.
How long before someone Blames The Gays?
I blame Bob Dylan. And the boomers.
Poor Mary-Kate, she must be beside herself.
Say what you want, I know she really loves Fred.
They used to live near me and I saw them walking around a few times. Very weird. Will the new Batman be too macabre to show?
Did they find any red/green fibers on his body?
Is there any evidence that this guy was guilty as opposed to tortured into insanity? Any evidence not obtained through torture.
Testimony from slavessuspects is only reliable when obtained through torture, Cala.
Also, if you're linked to a role in a conspiracy that didn't work not because Jack Bauer swooped in and saved people, but because you were too dumb to make a conspiracy work even if Osama bin Laden gave you the Top Secret Al-Qaeda Book of How-To-Be-A-Global-Jihadist, you should not serve more jail time than you would have if you'd done something that actually harmed someone.
Re: Ledger: You never really know what someone else is going through. Wow.
15: Do you call that the "too stupid to conspire" defense?
17: The quit-freaking-the-fuck-out-so-you-can-look-tough defense.
Seriously, though, I read something about how Padilla's plot, such as it was, involved basically swinging radioactive material around in a bucket as a human centrifuge, like little kids do with pails full of water. This does not strike me as a serious threat to national security, and seems like the sort of thing that would be treated more sanely if the lunatics weren't running the asylum.
I heard the news as I was driving on I-80 and Fernando called in after his shift on 92.7 (the gayest radio station in the whole wide world and I LOVE IT) to say that HL was indeed dead. So of course, teh gays clearly prescribed Heath some bad shit.
(I can already hear Bill Maher's next rant about why prescription pills are evil and why everyone would be better off if they simply sparked up every once in a while.)
That sucks about Ledger, The Dark Knight looks spectacular.
I think the studios are sadistic for making me wait six months to see it.
Oh, damn. (About Ledger.)
Oh, who cares? (About Thompson.)
They're saying suicide/accident right now. I gather - at least, not murder/homicide. Dammit. I found Brokeback Mountain very nearly unbearable.
17: Whatever you do, don't read the profile of Mike McConnell in the latest issue of the New Yorker.
Ah, I feel strangely sad about Ledger. I did love 10 Things; maybe that explains it.
Yeah, he was pretty charming in that movie.
If you haven't seen Candy and are ok with gritty arty tragedies about junkies, I'd recommend it. Three very good performances by Ledger, Abbie Cornish, and Geoffrey Rush as a gay chem professor.
Ledger was also the lead in the series Roar? What little I remember about that show doesn't seem to hurt much.
Wow, Six degrees or something. Vera Farmigia had a leading role in Roar and also starred in an good indie drug addiction move Down to the Bone
Stop me before I get to a junkie Kevin Bacon.
Jesus fucking Christ, how sick I am of my dissertation, and sick of the endless trickle of feedback that I must deal with on an ever shorter timeline, and how glum that my director has made it clear that there is no such thing in my department or at least in my personal future as a defense that ends without sending the defender home with a bunch more revisions to do. Die, dissertation, die.
92.7 is sometimes so gay that the GF and I can't quite believe that they're allowed to say such stuff on the air. This, from a couple who splits time between the Castro and WeHo, and who are never far from shops selling lube, hydrant-sized butt plugs and assorted Stryker vids. (Re BPOUS - Butt Plugs of Unusual Size - the GF once went into such a store and was like, come on, this is just for shock value, right? She was then escorted out of the store for being intolerant.)
Apropos of nothing, perhaps, Milk starts shooting in the Castro, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. They've emptied out our fave wine shop since it's across the street from Harvey's old photog store on Castro.
when Princess Diana died i was somehow consoled
if young and beautiful and rich and royalty should die in their prime, it's everybody's fate and should accept the fact
the same year my mom died
Oh rfts, I remember that feeling. It sucks. Hang in there.
Suzanne Pleshette also just died. I expect no one under 38 will care, but I find it sad. (Turns out she married both Troy Donahue and Tom Poston. I had no idea. )
when Princess Diana died i was somehow consoled
if young and beautiful and rich and royalty should die in their prime, it's everybody's fate and should accept the fact
Stars: They're just like us.
Milk starts shooting in the Castro
It was Dan White who started shooting, and that was down at City Hall.
At least I have a campus visit in the gap between submitting my dissertation and giving my defense. I should remember to be happy, and that all this too shall pass.
Stars: They're just like us.
Dead?
28: Sean Penn as Harvey Milk? Really? I've always taken it for granted that would be Ron Leibman's role.
28: Sean Penn as Harvey Milk? Really? I've always taken it for granted that would be Ron Leibman's role.
33: that was then. This is now.
Mayor of Castro Street 2: Pink Thunder
37, 38: I really, really thought so.
Over the objections of prosecutors, Judge Cooke gave Mr. Padilla credit for time served during his 3 1/2-year detention in a South Carolina military brig . . . . During that detention, Mr. Padilla was subjected to prolonged isolation and intensive interrogations in conditions that the judge called "harsh." The conditions, she said, "warrant consideration in the sentencing."
The judge is clearly a master of understatement.
11/41: don't it just make you proud to be here in the land of the freepers?
I wonder sometimes whether there is something in us that hungers for reports of death, and whether if we had no obituaries, no last-30-seconds of the evening news, no hospitals surveilling our elderly relatives to serve the need, we would ask one another about the latest dead people instead of the weather.
45: asking the weather about dead people, while sort of appealing in a moody loner kind of way, seems unlikely to be very fruitful.
You got no poetry in you, you know that?
You know, I'm glad others are strangely saddened by Ledger's death. His performance in The Dark Knight is widely thought to be spectacular -- Guillermo Del Toro praised the rough cuts he saw, as did Martin Scorsese. (Can't find the article, but it made an impression, seeing how different the two are.) But there was something of Big Things about him, and now we'll be left with What They Said Were Big Things (like Brokeback, which was good, but not that good).
Maybe he wanted to be like MLK, gone before he can screw up.
I heard some guy talking about how MLK would have made everything wonderful if he hadnt been killed. Dying early certainly has advantages. Everyone makes mistakes. If you die shortly after success, you don't have as many screw ups on your record. People can talk about how much you would have accomplished, instead of saying "Wow! He had so much promise at age 25."
Of course, you miss out on a lot of fun. And on making a comeback.
45: Last week a young man who was apparently suffering from some combination of mental illness and meth abuse threw his neighbor's toddler off a bridge onto the freeway. I'm really not sure whether to take the ensuing public displays of grief as a heartwarming expression of the community's concern for each other or as the same sort of vicarious enjoyment of others' pain that drives some of the uglier stuff on television. Being cynical, and noting that we don't seem to manage to do a whole lot for such kids when they're alive, I lean toward the latter view, but that may be uncharitable.
It's better to burn out, than it is to rust?
cala, you are like a hurricane. There is calm in your eye
Cala, you are like a packet of silica gel. Do not eat.
I think I'll go out to Alberta, weather's good there in the fall.
Hey, cala is out of the blue and into the black. Now, we just need to solve who read is.
If all the good times are all gone
Then I'm bound for movin' on
Actually, Brokeback was that good. Ledger's performance especially.
Ain't had no loving
Since you've been gone.
58: It's not Ledger's performance that undercut the film, but Gyllenhal's.
Ledger was very good in "I'm Not There" as well. That part didn't really have any good lines, but he made it exactly clear who the character was and why his story mattered.
50: In light of my experience in Hawaii, I'm more than willing to extend the benefit of a doubt on this one. I can't find the link, but I commented previously about the shrine in the basement of the Honolulu airport to the children whose (ancient) remains were unearthed there. People in Hawaii are like that. In the time I lived there, I saw this kind of reaction time and time again to tragic events (e.g. 9-11, the sinking of the Ehime Maru), and it struck me as deeply sincere. I suspect it is at least in part attributable to the influence of Buddhism in the local culture.
But Mr. Padilla's mothers, Estela Lebron, said in comments to the media outside the courthouse that the Bush administration had waged a misguided prosecution against her son, calling it "insane."
Jose has two mommies?
Two mothers with the same name. Just because you're schizophrenic doesn't mean they're not on to you.
64: I think there's some of that and some of the other. What I can't figure out is how much of which. The general standard of human behavior in Hawaii is better in many respects than what I've mostly encountered elsewhere, but there's also a tendency toward random crowd-following that can be quite a bit more perverse than leaving teddy bears on overpasses.
I don't think I've seen any of the guy's movies. I was thinking "well, too bad, that's a sad old story" till I got to the bit where it said he had a daughter, and to be honest my first thought was "you selfish fucker."
24: 10 Things really was the six-years-early gay coming attraction movie. Not just Ledger, but also Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who went from affable nerddom to breathtakingly sexy in Mysterious Skin the same years as Brokeback.
Recent studies have shown that Maggie Gyllenhaal is a Friherrinna in the Swedish nobility.
If you die shortly after success, you don't have as many screw ups on your record.
Exhibit A: Stevie Wonder. Every time someone bemoans the music Jimi Hendrix/Jim Morrison/Janice Joplin/Kurt Cobain/etc. might have made if they hadn't died so tragically young, I want to play "I Just Called To Say I Love You" at them over and over and over again.
Exhibit A: Stevie Wonder.
Eric Clapton and Elton John.
Eric Clapton
Would we knooooow his name/If he'd gone younger to heeeeaaven?
excellent point Josh.
Plus, there is all that weight gain. When you die young, everyone remembers you as handsome or beautiful. That isnt to say that one cannot do great things despite some misses, but geez look at Marlon Brando and others who live past their prime.
is this turning into the most cynical thread ever?
When was Elton John's good period?
(Re BPOUS - Butt Plugs of Unusual Size - the GF once went into such a store and was like, come on, this is just for shock value, right? She was then escorted out of the store for being intolerant.)
God this is great. "How dare you question our dedication to Butt Plugs of Unusual Size."
If you haven't seen The Dark Knight trailer , you're missing out.
When was Elton John's good period?
When I was a lad every girl I knew had a copy of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. If I didn't know he was gay before that, the title of that album was a pretty good hint.
71: Especially given the number of aging rockers that find Jesus and stop rocking or start Christian-rocking.
Plus, there is all that weight gain. When you die young, everyone remembers you as handsome or beautiful.
Or lovably obese.
28: BPOUS
Like in WeHo's Pleasure Chest? I wasn't sure those weren't mooring bollards some sailors had left there by accident.
Those must take *lots* of practice to take. And probably not infrequent visits to the ER and proctologist.
Since it bugged me how much Ledger's death bothered me, I wrote about it. (I'd copy-and-paste the whole thing here, but that'd be even tackier than self-linking.) (I think.) (Plus don't want to re-do the HTML.) (Because I'm lazy.)
Bruce Springsteen as a counterexample to rockers who degenerated in their later years. Started good, became better, declined somewhat in the early nineties, then came back strong
Miles Davis is of course the canonical example of somebody who was amazing and innovative for a really long time.
I have to say that I hated Brokeback Mountain and gave up halfway through. Ledger was unintelligible, and the corny music over the pastoral scenes reminded me of old Timotei adverts. Boring. A friend told me the second half was better, but I couldn't be bothered to find out.
poking around wikipedia, it appears many articles about heath's movies have had "the late" inserted in front of his name.
86: I also hated the music, especially in the first half, but I think the "pastoral" element of it is necessary for the development of the plot later.
re: 85
I think that applies to a number of other jazz musicians, too -- in fact, as a genre, it doesn't really seem to suffer as much from 'getting shit with age' -- but yeah, Davis is the canonical example.
Also, in classical music, I can think of a couple of my favourite recordings which were recorded by people well into old age. Tatiana Nikolayeva's 'Goldberg Variations' is one of the two or three I like best, and she was nearly 70 when she recorded it.
I was thinking "well, too bad, that's a sad old story" till I got to the bit where it said he had a daughter, and to be honest my first thought was "you selfish fucker."
Do we know this was suicide (selfish fucker), rather than a Hendrix, Dinah Washington, Tommy Dorsey style accident (sad old story)? I wouldn't rush to judgement.
Current news says it was accident - a prescription and an over-the-counter medication reacted badly with each other
(He had pneumonia, apparently - and according to links from this website, dying in the US because you had pneumonia and took or were given the wrong combination of medications is more common than I'd thought...)
89. I saw Stan Tracey last year. Effing brilliant at 80.
re: 94
There's a good one, too. I love Stan Tracey.
dying in the US because you had pneumonia and took or were given the wrong combination of medications is more common than I'd thought
See also: Lester Bangs.
look at Marlon Brando and others who live past their prime.
Some things you see and you can't un-see them. The flabby, powdered Brando of The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of those things.
Personally, though, much as I fear becoming old and decrepit, being young and dead sounds even less appealing.
http://happylolday.blogspot.com/2008/01/heath.html
He had pneumonia, apparently - and according to links from this website, dying in the US because you had pneumonia and took or were given the wrong combination of medications is more common than I'd thought
Sad.
And I totally called it in 2. Fred Phelps is protesting his funeral and says God killed him for playing A Gay.