A Hobby that Involves the Pursuit of Grave-ness

Stew Thornley has an interesting hobby. He's a "graveyard hunter." His own death is even a source for material, as he and his wife have posed in front of his future grave for their holiday cards. He got started with his hobby after visiting some famous graves a decade ago.

Thornley, a 52-year-old Roseville resident, has nurtured a preoccupation with "grave hunting" or "grave surfing" since 1997, when he and a friend visited the graves of President Benjamin Harrison and gangster John Dillinger in Indianapolis.

Since then, he has photographed hundreds of graves, including those of every buried U.S. president, vice president, Minnesota governor and practically all of the 200-plus Baseball Hall-of-Famers. He's also visited the sites of a slew of Civil War generals, movie stars and other celebrities - even victims of Charles Manson.

Thornley published a book dedicated to the graves of Minnesota's most famous' graves and is considering putting together another one on the resting places of well-known ex-baseball players. You might expect that someone who has spent so much time visiting these graves of the famous fallen would have some sort of emotional or philosophical connection to the deceased. You'd be wrong.

When visiting the grave of a celebrity, he said, "I've never really felt I'm connecting with greatness. It doesn't stir any emotions. It's just empty remains."

He views his own plot with no great reflection, either. He just admires gravestones the way one admires architecture, and he talks about good graveyards the way one describes fine parks.

As long as Thornley sticks to admiring the gravestones' architecture and not the texture of those buried underneath, we think this hobby toes the better side of the line between fascinating and creepy.

Look here for more celebrity grave locations.

[Dickinson Press]

Esquire Magazine Keeps Heath's Ledger

Margaret B. Jones
Misha Defonseca
Ishmael Beah

What do these people have in common? Well, all three were not drug selling gang soldiers living amongst wolves. But that’s not all. All three are liars, too.

As it turns out, none of these authors did even one of those three. Despite claims to the contrary, Jones did not run drugs for the Bloods of Los Angeles, Defonseca was not rescued from the Holocaust by wolves, nor was Beah actually a child soldier. All three were recently revealed to have lied in their memoirs. And an upcoming piece in Esquire Magazine may be catching up on the fad.

In this month’s Esquire, Lisa Taddeo jots down a controversial fictional diary entry entitled “The Last Days of Heath Ledger.” In the piece, Taddeo conjures up the last few days before Ledger’s surprising death including details of who he spoke with (Jack Nicholson in person, Michelle Williams on email, Mary-Kate Olsen on the phone), what he ate (steak and eggs, banana-nut muffins), where he hung out (The Beatrice), what he wore (a ski mask), and whose music he listened to (Nick Drake).

The penultimate part of the story (as if banana-nut muffins wasn’t epic enough) comes in the last section entitled “The Final Curtain,” where the ventriloquist Taddeo has Ledger explain:

What I'd ask of you, out of respect, not for me--I'm deaf and blind to it now--but for the living I left, is to leave it alone. Don't investigate my last few days, because these could be your last few days. Play your own part. And don't tell me what I did. I didn't play the piano or fuck Lindsay Lohan or fill my goody bag to the brim at the Venice Film Festival. In fact, I'm not really sure I did too much that you personally should remember, beyond make a beautiful little girl, the one thing every guy wants to be able to say he did. So that's it, my final unedited shot: Matilda. She is what lives on. The rest is just bullshit.

Is it ironic for Taddeo to investigate Ledger’s last few days and voice the thought that the rest of us shouldn’t? Well, it depends if you know what irony is. If you do know the definition of irony, then yes- it is ironic.

Why write the controversial piece? Taddeo answers it herself, at the start of the piece:

It becomes theatrically important, after you die, what your last few days are like.

Theatrically important, eh? I wonder if Esquire may have done it because it is financially important, too…I bet there’s more money lying around the Esquire offices for banana-nut muffins nowadays.

[Esquire]
[NY Post]

Vampires and Zombies Welcome Arthur Lemay to the Undead

We agree with Arthur Lemay. A 50th reunion is a great time to pull a prank on your former classmates. We don't, however, think his prank was a very good idea.

In a ruse Mark Twain might have concocted, Lemay, a retired management consultant from Northern California, circulated his own obituary on a Harvard '59 e-mail listserv last month, then sat back and watched classmates' reactions.

"Arthur knew he was dying as early as September of 2007," began the death notice, which was signed by Lemay's wife and posted in late January. Ascribing his death to kidney failure while vacationing in the Caribbean, it contained descriptive touches such as: "He loved to play roles: the agent provocateur, the crazed right-winger, the insane bomber..." According to his wife, Lemay also left behind five postings intended to be shared posthumously. "Communications from the grave," she called them.

That's when the responses started to pour in on their communal list serv. Some former classmates talked about the great respect they had for Lemay. Some even left tributes to him in the form of famous lines of poetry. Once some messages started to pop up explaining what a pain others found Lemay to be, Lemay revealed the hoax to his classmates.

"I have to eat humble pie and admit it was very silly and stupid of me to do this," wrote Lemay, promising to be less confrontational in future postings. Or, as he put it, to become a "more philosophical person who has genuinely buried the old Arthur."

He also said the death of a close friend, coupled with a near-death experience of his own, had given him the idea for posting the obit.

Although many were aghast over Lemay's prank, still a few found it fitting to think philosophically about Lemay's death and undeath. In truest Harvard form, comparisons were made to both literature, old popular culture and poetry to help understand attribute Lemay's inspiration. As we believe Thomas Edison once put it, "Pranks are 10 percent inspiration, 90 percent resurrection."

[Boston Globe]

You Can't Plant Decomposition Without Composition

Piet Oudolf takes his gardening extremely seriously. For him, a garden - or even some hedges - is reflective of emotion. It can express a story. However, sometimes the stories are more tragic.

For Mr. Oudolf, in fact, the real test of a well-composed garden is not how nicely it blooms but how beautifully it decomposes. “It’s not about life or death,” he said, admiring the dark, twisting lines of the fennel. “It’s about looking good.”

"He’s gotten away from the soft pornography of the flower,” said Charles Waldheim, the director of the landscape architecture program at the University of Toronto. “He’s interested in the life cycle, how plant material ages over the course of the year,” and how it relates to the plants around it. Like a good marriage, his compositions must work well together as its members age."

The symbolism at play here is immensely powerful. Amid the beautiful and prosperous plants in Mr. Oudolf's garden are also many dead or decomposing ones.

“You accept death. You don’t take the plants out, because they still look good. And brown is also a color.”

However, we don't necessarily agree that brown is the assigned color of death. We tend to side with The Sixth Sense here that the color of death is red.

[New York Times]

Heath Ledger is no Rebel; Will he have a Cause?

Heath Ledger died tragically last week at the age of 28. Does this give him "immortal" status? Is he this generation's James Dean?

Consider the wisdom of wikipedia (remember Michael Scott said that "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information."):

As with Buddy Holly, Bruce Lee, Marilyn Monroe And Heath Ledger his death at a young age helped guarantee a legendary status.

Consider, too, the statistics...


James Dean:

• Starred in surprisingly few films (3)
  
• 2 Oscar nominations
• Hunky in a sexually ambivalent sort of way
• Died in his twenties
• Looked damn good in a cowboy hat
  
• Icon

Heath Ledger:

• Starred in surprisingly few films (19)
• 1 Oscar nomination
• Hunky in a sexually ambivalent sort of way
• Died in his twenties
• Looked damn good (to Jake Gyllenhaal) in a cowboy hat
• Icon?????

Within that final bullet point lies the question. Will Heath Ledger achieve "icon" status? In the accelerated age of the Internet , will the ever present media coverage change the way cult figures take their shape? Chris Epting, author of James Dean Died Here, thinks Heath Ledger is the litmus test:

"Heath Ledger is one of the first Dean-esqe people to die in the Internet age, so his death will be the testing ground to see how long the Net will fan the flame. It will be interesting to see: Will he be immortalized or will the next big thing totally supplant him in a couple of weeks?"

Why would the internet culture cause Heath to not fall in alongslide Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bob Marley, Jim Morrison, John Belushi, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, and Tupac Shakur, to name a few?

"There's something mystical, some magic about them because (pre-Internet) not everyone knew everything about them when they were alive," says Lynn Bartholome of Monroe Community College

Already the swirling media will be putting this theory to the test. There are already reports of a purported Heath Ledger tape to be aired tonight on Entertainment Tonight:

According to Perez Hilton, Entertainment Tonight has exclusively obtained a video of Heath Ledger doing drugs. The tables at the party are filled with drugs, one person who has seen the tape tells us. Ledger also talks about his drug use and other not so pretty things are seen. “I used to smoke five joints a day,” Heath reveals. And that’s not the only thing. It’s being reported that Ledger also battled addiction to heroin, cocaine, alcohol and prescription pills.

The question remains: Icon or no?

Ironically, in this age of immediate media, only time will tell if Heath Ledger will be the next James Dean or the next William Hung. We already know that "he bangs..."

[USA Today]

We Talkin' Bout Malpractice

Why do bad things happen to good people?

While we can't answer phiosophical questions about life and death, we try to reveal the practical reasons for people's deaths. Or at the very least what gets listed by the coroner as the cause of death. And then there's medical malpractice which goes and throws off the entire system.

We rely on doctors to care for celebrities when they're sick. But sometimes even doctors can make mistakes. As was the case for John Ritter says his family.

Early next month, in response to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Amy Yasbeck and Ritter's four children, a Los Angeles County jury will be asked to decide: Did Ritter have to die?

Lawyers for the plaintiffs fault the care Ritter, 54, received from two doctors -- one who interpreted the results of a body scan he had in 2001, the other who treated him the night he died. Defense attorneys say their clients did nothing wrong and that Ritter would have died no matter what doctors did.

We don't envy the position these doctors are in now, having to publicly justify why the medicine and procedures they prescribed were the correct courses of action at the time. It'll surely be an emotional trial for Yasbeck and her kids. What is conclusive, according to all sides, is that Ritter is dead.

Know who's not dead? Former football player Ron Springs. Yet his family is in a similar position at the complicated juncture between medicine and law.

The unexpected turn in Springs' promising and much-publicized recovery led his wife to file a medical malpractice suit Tuesday against two doctors who Adriane Springs says caused brain damage to her husband during a routine surgery to remove a cyst.

"My husband was doing so well after the kidney transplant," Adriane Springs said. "This is just a very tragic outcome."

Even though she's filed the lawsuit, Ms. Springs is still hoping that her husband will someday wake up again.

Adriane Springs is not giving up hope, saying that she rebuffed a neurosurgeon who broached the idea of taking her husband off his medication.

Proving medical malpractice, from what we've read, is a difficult process. It also costs an exhorbitant amount of money to pursue.

We think we can resolve both of these cases using simple logic. At the root of the word "malpractice" is "practice." Now, at the time of Ritter's collapse, he was practicing his part at rehearsal for the television program "8 Simples Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter." Springs, on the other hand, was not at football practice at the time he went into his coma.

Therefore, in our expert opinions, Ritter's suit should stand up while Springs' should be denied. Next case.

[Los Angeles Times]
[ABC News]

Bucket Lists, Happiness, and You People More Famous Than You

Hard to say this wasn't unexpected. With "The Bucket List" winning the weekend box office, now is the time for reporters to discover that people have made their own "bucket lists," or things to do before you die. But that's not news in 2008. After all, these lists have been commonplace for some time; to wit, a movie based on the concept is now in theaters. Today's news is about digging into the reason people make these lists. And what might the inspiration be? You guessed it, happiness!

What constitutes true happiness? Two weeks ago, cries of "Happy New Year!" rang out across the land, but how do we make it happen?

But wait, there's more! Who cares about the happiness of the average person when you can learn about the happiness of famous people?

Maybe having money, looks, youth, fame, professional success, and heartthrob status would do it. Or maybe not, to judge by comments from a fellow most observers would assume to be sitting at the top of the world: New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

"Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me?" Brady asked in a "60 Minutes" interview from 2005 that was rebroadcast a few weeks ago. "I mean, maybe a lot of people would say 'Hey man, this is what is.' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, 'God, it's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't, this can't be what it's all cracked up to be."

If you want more "Deep Thoughts" from additional celebrities, click the link above. But the thing to keep in mind here is that celebrity misery, especially among young celebrities, could take a disastrous toll, leading to potential celebrity death, and the fruition of The Anna Nicole Smith Corollary. (Consider this the third post in the "ANS Corollary posts happen in threes" theorem, and expect not to hear about it for awhile. Or at least until Britney gives us no choice.)

Moreover, there is genuine life-and-death philosophy discussed that we at BDPE take very seriously.

Author and TV host John Izzo asked 235 elderly people how and where they found happiness. "I've always been interested in the question of why some people live well and die happy, and some people die as if they missed the party," explains Izzo. So he asked his interviewees, who ranged in age from 60 to 106, such questions as "What brought happiness to your life?", "What do you wish you'd learned sooner?", and "What do you regret?"

"Almost no one regretted something they tried in their life that didn't work out, yet almost everyone said they wished they had risked more," Izzo says. "They said the greatest fear at the end of life is not death or failure. It's that you didn't even try."

Reminds me of the quote on The Death Pool's official Death Cup: "The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference." -- Elie Wiesel

[Boston Globe]

If They Do the Wave, I'll Be Impressed

Sports fans often live and die with their teams, but the Boca Juniors, Argentina's biggest soccer club, are taking that to a whole new level. A special section of the Parque Iraola cemetery outside Buenos Aires has been sequestered for the Boca faithful. A corner of the locker room, I mean- cemetery, has been reserved for Diego Maradona.

Not surprising, then, that a corner the cemetery has been set aside for Maradona. Boca's most famous player has been awarded a plot free of the charge from the club, although he has made no public comment regarding the gift yet.

Antonio Rattin, Boca's 1960s era star, closed this story so much better than I ever could have: "It's so nice, it makes you feel like staying." It's great to have a place to go when the life referee shows you the red card.

[Time]

Knowing is Half the Battle

"Well, it's the age old question. Do you want to know how and when you're going to die or would you rather not know?"
"And what is the professional consensus?"
"Oh, you don't want to know. Knowing makes it ten times worse..."

It seems like an epic disagreement... Saturday Night Live vs. Time Magazine, who writes this month:

When asked to contemplate the occasion of their own demise, people become happier than usual, instead of sadder, according to a new study in the November issue of Psychological Science.

Wow, I guess Tuesdays With Morrie was right, after all...

[Saturday Night Live Jet Blue Sketch]
[Time]