NEW YORK — Actor Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday of a possible drug overdose in a Lower Manhattan apartment, the New York Police Department said.

— CNN.com

Possible drug overdose, possible suicide! Oh dear . . . another blow to the theory that being rich and/or famous is the ticket to happiness.

I think most famous actors — not all, obviously — are convinced that they can do things that nobody else can do, that they’re not cardboard people who are adored for no reason.

Tom Cruise, for example, I don’t think will ever commit suicide.

Oh well . . .

I’ve never been lonely. I’ve been in a room — I’ve felt suicidal. I’ve been depressed. I’ve felt awful — awful beyond all — but I’ve never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me . . . or that any number of people could. . . .

— Charles Bukowski

ANAHEIM — Authorities say a woman apparently jumped off an Anaheim freeway overpass Thursday and died. The Orange County Register reports that 50-year-old Sally Brown plunged to her death just after 11 a.m. from the East La Palma Avenue overpass onto the westbound 91 Freeway.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

• Red Sanders decided to stay on as football coach at UCLA instead of pursuing the football coach/athletic director job at Texas A&M, a job recently vacated by Paul (Bear) Bryant. (Sanders would have a heart attack and die before the start of the 1958 football season anyway.)
• A father of three killed himself in front of his wife after losing his job on Christmas Eve.
• Silent-screen star Norma Talmadge died in Las Vegas. The Times gave her age as 60; according to IMDB, she was actually 62.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, my dad is explaining how he’s trying to count up all his assets and figure out if he’s got enough to retire.

“But,” he says, “you know what’s missing from all this retirement planning? The one thing you really need to know but you don’t know?”

Continue reading My Retirement Plan is a .45

. . . for anyone thinking of handcuffing themselves to a tree:

If you handcuff yourself to a tree you would die fairly quickly but maybe not as quickly as you would like.

Rolling Stone magazine has published Hunter Thompson’s suicide note, which he titled “Football Season is Over.” Thompson wrote the note last February, four days before fatally shooting himself in his kitchen.

Douglas Brinkley, Thompson’s official biographer, writes,

February was always the cruelest month for Hunter S. Thompson. An avid NFL fan, Hunter traditionally embraced the Super Bowl in January as the high-water mark of his year. February, by contrast, was doldrums time.

I don’t understand “avid” sports fans — they depress and frighten me — but I’d certainly encourage other sports enthusiasts to consider Thompson’s high-caliber doldrum-buster . . .

Florence Lawrence: The First Movie Star

Interesting fact: Prior to 1910, movies did not list the names of the cast members! Actors were just nameless faces on the screen . . .

Continue reading HW’s True Hollywood Stories

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.

— Jonathan Swift

I’m reading a great, very funny book called A Confederacy of Dunces, written by John Kennedy Toole in 1963. Unfortunately, Toole could not find anyone willing to publish the book and subsequently killed himself in 1969 at the age of 31.

Continue reading What I’m Reading

Depression occurs in up to 10 percent of youth, and 1,883 10- to 19-year-olds killed themselves in 2001. Some 1.8 million teenagers attempted suicide that year, a quarter of them requiring medical attention, according to Columbia University scientists . . .

— CNN.com, “FDA issues suicide caution for antidepressants”

Out of 1.8 million attempts, only 1,883 successes?! What methods are they employing to get a success rate of 1 in 1,000?

That’s not very good . . .

More whittling away at logic and critical thinking . . .

WASHINGTON (AP) — Patients on some popular antidepressants should be closely monitored for warning signs of suicide, the government warned Monday in asking the makers of 10 drugs to add the caution to their labels.

— CNN.com, “FDA issues suicide caution for antidepressants”

Continue reading Less Than Zero

My son is doing a 5th grade research paper on William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame.

“Clark was a much better man than Lewis,” he says.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

Continue reading Lewis vs. Clark

A colleague at work asked me, “Do you know how Alan Turing died?”

“He ate a poisoned apple.”

“His mom always maintained that he did that by accident.”

“Does his mom also maintain that he just never found the right girl?”

Continue reading Alan Turing

Clara “Auntie Em” Blandick

Clara Blandick was born June 4, 1880, aboard an American ship in the harbor off Hong Kong.

She appeared in over 100 films, most notably as Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

In later years, she suffered from severe arthritis and failing eyesight.

Continue reading HW’s True Hollywood Stories

There’s a sad story on Donnie Moore’s daughter in the Orange County Register today . . .

In 1986, the Angels were one out away from the World Series when Moore gave up a two-run homer to Boston’s Dave Henderson. The Angels lost the game, lost the next two games to lose the series, and — until this season — haven’t been in the playoffs since.

Three years later, Moore killed himself with a gun.

Continue reading Donnie Moore

A NY Times business editor took an apparently intentional header off the 15th floor of the Times building.

Too bad he wasn’t the crossword editor, it would have made a better headline. You’d want to work the phrase “15 Down” into it . . .

Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die . . .

— Bob Dylan, “Gates of Eden”

According to Slate, if NRA president Charlton Heston does in fact develop full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, California state law would compel him to surrender his firearms.

Continue reading Ironic Twist of the Year Award

A young couple in New Jersey held hands and stepped in front of an Amtrak train, electing to be simultaneously in one final embrace.

Relatives told The Associated Press that the couple were drug addicts who had been evicted from their apartment and saw suicide as their only way out, which takes a lot of the romance out of the story as far as I’m concerned . . .