Celebrity death that bummed you out the most...

[Elspode]

Soupy was awesome. Funny, funny guy.

[Major Matt Mason]

I remember getting very misty when Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion among many, many others, passed away in February, 1989.

Oddly enough, most other celeb deaths rank either "Oh. Too bad." or "Good riddance to bad rubbish." with me...

-MMM-

[DanaC]

RIP Edward Woodward. Star of many things, but probably most well known his role in The Wicker Man.

He's a household name in the Uk. One of those names that's been around forever (for my generation)... probably at least in someway because it's a fun name is fun to say.

Died yesterday aged 79.

[monster]

I always thought of him as the Equalizer, even thought I didn't ever really watch that. Starnge. He also always reminded me of Michael Caine.

[DanaC]

Oh he was always The Equalizer to me as well, and didn't watch it either! But for the Merkins he's probably better known for the cult classic.

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by DanaC

But for the Merkins he's probably better known for the cult classic.

Hey. I resemble that remark. Officer Howie was a truly great character.

[Sundae]

I brought home a male friend (who I had snogged) and he was terrified by my Dad.
Why?
Combination of my Dad not saying much, and what he did saw was in a gruff East London accent, and he looked like the Equaliser.

He did in some lights actually.
The rest was because he was terribly shy.
But it was quite good fun when the word was passed around that my Dad was some sort of East End hard man.

And no, I never watched it either. To me, Woodward was always Neil Howie. I have the Director's Cut DVD. I may have to watch it again tonight.

[Radar]

I've never seen the 1973 version of the wicker man. I've added it to my netflix queue.

[TheDaVinciChode]

Originally Posted by Radar

I've never seen the 1973 version of the wicker man. I've added it to my netflix queue.

You're in for a treat... That butchered piece of crap... is terrible. (The new one, I mean.)

That's what happens when Modern Cinema has to take from the past, because there are no new ideas - They rape classics.

Nicholas Cage is one of my favourite actors, and that's the only saving grace of this movie; I still refuse, however, to watch it... because I hate when American cinema rapes British classics just because they're all out of ideas.*

(* Not that it's just American Cinema that's out of ideas, of course... Most Modern Cinema is suffering from a terrible lack of unique, new ideas.)

--

EDIT: Keeping the thread on-track, I'd have to say that the deaths that have, this year, bummed me out, are...

(In no order.) Michael Jackson, Keith Floyd, Patrick Swayze. < All men who, with extraordinary talent, died before their times.

Keith was my all-time-favourite Chef / T.V Chef. Has been for a very long time. He had a very troubled life, at times, which is probably what drove him to alcoholism, but he kept it in check, I think, in a decent manner. He was a very extrovert T.V personality, and paved the way for all the cooking shows that we, today, enjoy so much... I loved his excessive use of incredibly expensive ingredients, too. Throwing a fistful of saffron into something that was also loaded with rare truffles... That's Floyd!

Michael was an incredible man. I'm not one of those crazy, I'd-sell-all-I-own-to-see-him fans, just someone who can appreciate a decent person, with a decent message, who wants nothing more than love, to love, to be loved, to spread the word of love, etc... Not for profit, not for "a place in heaven" (he wasn't religious,) but just... out of decency. That is so rare, it's almost completely extinct, now that he's gone.

Patrick, well... Not the best actor, but... He just had "that face." Anyone who's a fan, should know what I mean. One of the most emotive faces I've ever observed in an actor, and, for that, he was truly gifted... If you don't know what I mean, just watch "Ghost." I mean, come on... that's just brilliant acting, right there.

They all bum me out, though; Deaths. Not just celebrity, but, of course, the celebrities are the ones we build "connections" with, through their chosen medium. It's like losing a distant friend, someone you may've shared many years with, good times, and bad...

This is a depressing thread!

[wolf]

The original version of Wickerman is pretty well known among American Pagans ... most other Americans, not so much. I don't think enough people hereabouts were aware enough of it to qualify as a "cult," frankly.

Actually, I've noticed with a lot of recent remakes, the kids these days, don't understand that they're getting a recycled crap version of something that was really good and special. And totally not in need of being remade. Or reimagined. Or whatever they're calling plagiarism these days.

[skysidhe]

Originally Posted by wolf

Or whatever they're calling plagiarism these days.

artistic license

[BrianR]

Mike Penner/Christine Daniels apparently commits suicide

The day Mike Penner left the Los Angeles Times made the news. The longtime sportswriter wrote the article himself, a personal essay explaining that he was taking some time off and, upon his return, he would be known from then on as Christine Daniels.

Penner's public acknowledgment in April 2007 that he was transgender and would soon live as a woman shocked the world of sports journalism and turned his new identity, Daniels, into an instant celebrity. Daniels gave speeches, was profiled in Sports Illustrated, collected honors for courage from transgender groups and wrote a blog for the Times titled "Woman In Progress."

Except that the transition didn't last. In mid-October 2008, after a lengthy leave of absence, Penner, 51, returned to the sports pages and the Times newsroom as a man.

And just as suddenly, Penner's story, heralded in its early days as a triumphant example of transgender progress, has instead become a cautionary tale of the lesser-known phenomenon: transgender regret.

"It's unfortunate and it's relatively uncommon but certainly not unheard of," says Denise Leclair, executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education, a Waltham, Mass.-based transgender advocacy group. "The simplest way to think about it is being trans is something that never goes away. ... There's just a fairly constant social pressure to just go back. You don't have to be a genius to understand that society doesn't really accept this."

Penner, a 24-year veteran of the newspaper, did not respond to calls and e-mails for comment and has not written about his decision to resume life as a man. The blog and bylines as Christine Daniels have been removed from the newspaper's website.

Though there's no data available on how many transgender people abandon their new gender, psychologist Ron Lawrence of the Community Counseling Center in Las Vegas says about 5% of his transgender patients revert. Leclair echoes that estimate.

Adhering to a code

Transgender advocates say the case of Penner, who never had sex-change surgery, reflects the success of a system in which American sex-change surgeons, adhering to their own code of conduct, won't operate until the patient has had a year of intense psychotherapy while living publicly in the new gender.

"We're required (by doctors) to go through all this stuff for a reason, even though there are a lot of trans people who bristle at being told what they can and can't do," says Donna Rose, a male-to-female postoperative transsexual in Rochester, N.Y. "The thing that people have to understand is that even though Mike decided to retransition, that doesn't mean he's not trans. It's not like you go all of a sudden, 'Uh, I'm better.' Going back doesn't automatically clear the conundrum that causes you to get there in the first place."

Rose reversed course on her own transition at first because her then-wife became so distraught and co-workers were insensitive. Six months later, she went through with it and ended the marriage.

Transitioning carries with it the prospect of losing jobs, friends and family, as well as mockery from strangers who find the gender change visibly jarring, Rose and others attest. "You become a very visible minority," Leclair says. "The average male-to-female transsexual is taller, has bigger hands and feet, has more facial hair than most women. There are a lot of physical attributes that are hard to hide in a society that doesn't like you."

Religion sometimes comes into play. Joseph Cluse of Newport News, Va., lived his life as Joanna for 30 years after having the surgery in the 1970s. Yet Cluse, who was married twice and raised one husband's children, became religious in recent years and decided that God wanted him to resume his life as a man. Cluse, 54, stopped taking hormones and had breast implants removed.

Cases such as Penner and Cluse raise questions about the causes of transgenderism. Paul McHugh, director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, is a leading proponent of the notion that the cause is not biological, that transgender people have chosen this path.

He halted the university hospital's practice of performing gender reassignment surgeries in the late 1970s because, he says, a study indicated that postoperative transsexuals were no happier than they were before the operation. "You can live any way you want, but don't come to us and ask us to give medical resources to this proposal of yours, because we think it's a social construct and not a condition of nature," McHugh says.

"No one has demonstrated any physical mechanism or physical problem that causes this. The burden of proof is on them to prove that."

Debating the cause

Such comments are anathema to the transgender advocates, who insist the decades-old study McHugh cites was debunked. Like most transsexuals, Daniels told Sports Illustrated in 2007 that her urges to be female began as a child, and she wrote in the Times that same year: "We are born with this. We fight it as long as we can, and in the end it wins."

Claire Winter, a transsexual from Seattle who mentored Penner and spoke to him late last year, doubts the sportswriter's reversal will further confuse the general public about transsexualism.

"I think people are so bloody confused, I don't know if this has a significant effect," Winter says. "But maybe this will help people to understand that this is a very complex, highly difficult situation. This indicates the fundamental problem of trying to shove people into either end of the gender pole. It serves to point out the fact that it isn't as simple as flipping a coin.

"I would say give (Penner) some time," Winter says. "We have to wait for him to let us know when he figures it out."

[Clodfobble]

Um... "commits suicide?"

[BrianR]

Apparently

[classicman]

Penner was married to a fellow Los Angeles Times sportswriter Lisa Dillman.

Penner was found dead in his Los Angeles home on Nov. 28, 2009 of an apparent suicide.