Heath Ledger

[biggy]

Pegged it ain't he.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7203797.stm

[6FeetOver]

[deleted]

[weebleswobble]

No interviews for The Dark Knight then?

[ozjohn1]

god, Australia is gonna mourn this one, they only just got over Steve Irwin...

[EvilBastard]

[voice from the cold dark heart]

Another GenY-er fails to deal with fame and attention, ill-equipped as he was to face up to the obligations that go along with them. Takes his own life in a foreign land. His failure to face up to responsibility can be evinced by his abandonment of his own child.

While it is saddening that his child has lost her father, this self-destructive tendency is pervasive among the generation that never had to face up to the harsh realities of life, cosseted as they were by a society where self-reliance was replaced by laws that were supposed to protect them from themselves.

In the final analysis, no number of "Caution - the beverage you're about to enjoy may be extremely hot" warnings can save them. Perhaps, had they grown up in the shadow of The Bomb, things might have turned out differently for them. Alas their reliance on the safety net of society, which turned out to be a sham, has been their undoing.

[/cold dark heart]

Really must stop posting when I've had too many beers - it makes me a maudlin drunk. I'm far more fun on hard liquor

[weebleswobble]

Nothing proven as yet-he had a major film coming out this summer and he was filming in London with Terry Gilliam (that man must feel cursed). I hope it was accidental, because as tragic as that is it's beter than suicide.
That's not an IMO, to believe otherwise is just cnutish...

[silentNate]

Great post EvilBastard- very true

This would have been his year and I'm gobsmacked that he has done this. I could say something childish like why didn't he learn to share or why was it not Amy or Pete but I won't....

I pretty much despise the way the media hero-worships someone when they do this, sorry

[radiojamaica]

RIP mista Ledger.

[Izzy HaveMercy]

Nothing has been proven yet. Could be overduse, suicide or murder.

IZ.

[markfiend]

I'm guessing it's an accident rather than suicide.

[EvilBastard]

At 2:45 p.m., the massage therapist showed up for Ledger's appointment, knocked on his door and got no answer. She later noticed Ledger was unconscious and called Mary Kate Olsen, whose number was programmed into Ledger's cell phone, to seek advice.

Olsen said she would send over her private security. In the ensuing moments, the massage therapist realized that Ledger might be dead, called Olsen again, then called 911. Paramedics _ and Olsen's security people _ arrived minutes later.

Right there, people - right fcuking there. It's not enough that the world (or, at least, some parts of it) is mourning the death of a young actor (and plaudits have been flying in from such luminaries as Mel "I don't really hate yids or darkies" Gibson and John "Thank god for Quentin Tarantino or right now I'd be doing late-night infomercials for adult incontinence products" Travolta, so you know this guy was one of the Hollywood greats, right?).
Oh no - now the world has to be told that this guy had Mary-Kate Olsen's phone number programmed into his phone. That's something close to admitting that Debbie Gibson is one of his greatest influences.

Now, granted - Mary Kate could be considered by some as "hot", if you're into the whole blonde celeb-fukcing, "She was really cute in 'Full House' " pseudo-paedo thing. And maybe Mr. Ledger was - who's to know, and who among us could cast the first stone in this case, let's face it?

So, anyway - picture the scene: the housekeeper, who has heard Mr. L snoring (so she claims), comes into his room, finds him naked, motionless, unresponsive, surrounded by pill bottles, with a rolled-up $20 bill on the floor by the bed. I mean, she's GOT to be thinking John Belushi here, right? Ok, so John had a bit more around the middle than Heath, but the comparison stands. And who does she call? The paramedics? The police?

Our survey said "Uh-uuuuuuuuh!" No, she calls Mary-Kate Olsen, a young lady who would know very well the uses that a rolled-up $20 might be put to. Mary-Kate's response? "Surely, EB - she told the house-keeper to call 911, right?"

No - Mary-Kate sends round her security people (after all, that's what Heath needs now, right - a couple of big guys in bad suits and sunglasses?), presumably to make sure that anything that the aforementioned $20 might have been have been used for is carefully bundled into a pocket just in case someone leaps to an unjustified conclusion.

Freakin' Gen-Y - at least when John Belushi checked out he did it in some style, speedballs, coke, and H with Robert de Niro. Errol Flynn went out after a week-long toot and was interred with half a case a scotch. John Bonham choked to death on vomit (maybe his, maybe someone else's, no-one rightly knows).

The enduring memory of Heath Ledger? A post-mortem phone call to Mary-Kate Olsen.

I rest my case.

[Spigel]

I Found this on "Pitchfork" today.

The Heath Ledger/Nick Drake Connection
Actor claims obsession with Drake, simulates suicide on 2007 video to Drake's music

The already startling death of actor Heath Ledger has taken on another startling dimension following the revelation that Ledger courted a self-proclaimed obsession with another tragic figure, late English folk singer Nick Drake. This obsession even manifested itself in a Drake music video.

"I was obsessed with an artist by the name of Nick Drake," Ledger explained at a September 2007 Venice Film Festival press conference [via MTV.com]. Ledger was promoting I'm Not There at the time, in which he plays Bob Dylan, along with several other actors and actresses.

"I was obsessed with [Drake's] story and his music and I pursued it for a while and still have hopes to kind of tell his story one day. But it kind of died away, faded away, because I...He was a very mysterious figure and I felt like I would be taking too many liberties."

The body of 28-year-old Ledger was found yesterday (January 22) in a Manhattan apartment. Since sleeping pills were found nearby, Ledger's death was widely reported as being most likely drug-related. However, according to the Associated Press, an autopsy performed today proved inconclusive, and TMZ.com reports that Ledger had pneumonia at the time of his death.

Drake, meanwhile, died in 1974 at the age of 26 from an apparent overdose of the antidepressant amitriptyline.

Ledger created a black-and-white video clip that was shown at a pair of exhibits devoted to Drake last year, according to MTV.com and Billboard.com reports.

As the MTV.com report explains, "A representative for Drake's estate described the 'gorgeous' and 'extremely moving' clip as a stark black-and-white composition, consisting mainly of the director turning the camera on himself. In the end, Ledger is seen drowning himself in a bathtub."

The song playing during this is Drake's "Black Eyed Dog", purportedly the last song the English singer ever wrote and allegedly a reference to Winston Churchill's description of depression.

The estate of Nick Drake, which owns the Ledger video, has not yet decided whether to release it.

[markfiend]

Westboro Baptist (The 'God Hates F*gs' people) have said they'll picket his funeral.

[Big Si]

Them lot? Again!?!

[ryan]

can they get to perth?

[Dark]

Anyone up to organising an expedition to Westboro to firebomb the motherfuckers into oblivion? See if their f**king "God" will protect them when they're screaming in the pain they deserve.

[James Blast]

just imagine the welcome they'd get in Australia, they'd be lucky to make it out the airport terminal

[markfiend]

I don't think they realised that his funeral will be in Oz.

Incidentally, anyone notice their zip-code? Topeka, Kansas 66604

[6FeetOver]

For further reading, in case you're interested...
If only folks could learn to roll their eyes, shake their heads, and walk away from deliberately-inflammatory crap like this, rather than continue to feed the media machine and keep the hype building, "no publicity is bad publicity" groups of morons like these wouldn't be nearly as powerful, perhaps..? I dunno.

[James Blast]

"Welcome to Oz mate, now take this fist right up yer Yabby Creek"!

[markfiend]

"no publicity is bad publicity"

I don't know about that; I was reading a blog about Westboro and someone said in the comments:

When I was the editor the Daily Bee up in Sandpoint in the late 1970s, we were faced with the tough decision of how to handle the increasing visibility of Richard Butler's neo-Nazi Church of Jesus Christ Christian, based at the Aryan Nations compound some 30 miles down the road in Hayden Lake. After much hand-wringing, we decided it was best not to give them any coverage, since publicity was what they craved, and it would only encourage their radicalism.

What we didn't understand was that the silence was ... interpreted as consent.

[...]

I'm pretty sure that Phelps and his ilk have at least one thing in common with the Minutemen, the Christian Identity people, the neo-Nazis, and the rest of that crew: They really, genuinely believe the cr-ap they're spouting. Letting them continue to spout it unmolested will either lead to anti-gay hate crimes or else give them an opportunity to try to mainstream their bullsh-it.

[James Blast]

and on the other hand we have

[weebleswobble]

Still very sad.....

[6FeetOver]

"no publicity is bad publicity"

I don't know about that; I was reading a blog about Westboro and someone said in the comments:

When I was the editor the Daily Bee up in Sandpoint in the late 1970s, we were faced with the tough decision of how to handle the increasing visibility of Richard Butler's neo-Nazi Church of Jesus Christ Christian, based at the Aryan Nations compound some 30 miles down the road in Hayden Lake. After much hand-wringing, we decided it was best not to give them any coverage, since publicity was what they craved, and it would only encourage their radicalism.

What we didn't understand was that the silence was ... interpreted as consent.

[...]

I'm pretty sure that Phelps and his ilk have at least one thing in common with the Minutemen, the Christian Identity people, the neo-Nazis, and the rest of that crew: They really, genuinely believe the cr-ap they're spouting. Letting them continue to spout it unmolested will either lead to anti-gay hate crimes or else give them an opportunity to try to mainstream their bullsh-it.

Someone's going to buy into the bullshit, whether it's completely ignored *or* whether it's plastered all over every newspaper and website, though. There's no accounting for sheer stupidity, in this world. What's the answer, then? No one can really prevent folks from believing or following anything, can they? One needs only to look at Hitler's legacy. Ultimately, the masses of followers are often far more dangerous than the lone lunatic could ever hope to be...

[markfiend]

Aye. Tough call, isn't it?