Say Goodbye to Hollywood - RIP Heath Ledger

This afternoon the news broke: Heath Ledger was found dead in a NYC apartment.

According to MSN: Authorities are saying that his death is likely a suicide or accidental overdose. The report goes onto say that Heath was at the apartment for a massage and when the housekeeper went to notify him that the masseuse had arrived, he was found naked in bed and unresponsive. After receiving no response and moving his body to the floor, the called the authorities. NYPD is investigating the possibility of an overdose since pills were found in the vicinity of the bed. The full article can be found @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22788914/?GT1=10755 for your reading pleasure.

While this is a very sad report, I have some questions:

• If he was naked and unconscious in bed, why did the housekeeper and masseuse (I presume) move him to the floor?
• The report stated that pills were strewn around him and also in the vicinity. Which is it? I have pills (Advil) in the vicinity of my bedroom as well, they can be found in my bathroom medicine chest which is not so far from my bed. If I were found dead in bed that it would be assumed that I committed suicide because pills are in the vicinity of my body?

Whatever the case may be, the sad fact is that Heath Ledger is no longer with us. There will be no more great movies starring him such as: 10 Things I Hate About You, Brokeback Mountain, Monster's Ball and a Knight's Tale.

Happy New Year!!

In the famous words of my good friend the Queen, I just want to wish my one faithful reader a safe, happy and healthy New Year.

For me, sadly, there were no festivities on this crazy night of nights, instead I was home, curled up in my chair with a nice warm blanket, a hot cup of Earl Grey, cough medicine and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve!! I thought I could watch and then jump back into my warm and smunchy bed before all of Texas was counting down. Looking back at the holidays of this year, I was lucky enough to be sick for Thanksgiving. Nothing worse than actually having time off from work and being sick. I was great for Christmas and then wouldn't you know it three days later, WHAM, bronchitis. Going out for New Year's Eve has never really been my thing, there are too many crazies out there and it is just not worth the risk of your life to go to a party! But, thinking back, the past few years, I have not been well on New Year's. I remember back in the Stone Age when I was in my 20s and we would go to my friend Chiquita's house for New Year's Eve. It was right in the same town we lived in, there were always parents and "responsible people" available to come and fetch you at 4am when you when tired of trying to party like a RockStar! There were a few times in New York when I was both young and stupid, that I went like almost every other New Yorker to Times Square to freeze my butt off just to watch an over sized light bulb slide down a pole at midnight. I know that it is something that you have to do at least once in your life being from New York but it is sooo overrated.

So when midnight came along on the East Coast, I listened to that song that no one really knows all the words to and thought about it. "Should old acquaintance be forgot" . . . How many people have you known in your life that seemed to be there one minute and gone the next? How many friends have you had that you just stopped talking to? Not because your were angry about something they said or did, but just kind of lost touch with? In my life I have noticed that as I get older, I invite fewer and fewer people into my inner sanctum. There have been so many ups and downs and changes that have occurred over the past few years and very few people have been along for the whole ride. When I was in my teens and 20s I had oodles of friends. But over the past few years, I have just simply lost touch with people. Nothing really caused it. I can't think back to a particular day in my memory and say, I remember that was the day that I stopped talking to so and so. It was never my intention to do this, but you get wrapped up in life and next thing you know months have turned into a year and you wonder what happened to people. Frequently I will be talking to two of my friends Heidi or Madi and find myself saying or thinking, yeah I wonder what ever became of that person. Unfortunately even my contact with them has been ridiculously limited to say the least over this past year. When I first moved to Texas from NY, I was on the phone with Madi almost every day. There were very few days that went by that we didn't talk and would actually think that something was wrong if we didn't. Now, if I have talked to her twice in the past 30 days it is a lot. It is not because we are mad at each other or no longer friends, we have just both gotten wrapped up in our lives.

The neat thing about these friendships that we forge over the years is that they never go away forever, unless we chose to slam the door on them. Connections grow and fade as we journey on the path of our lives.

"Should old acquaintance be forgot" the famous song goes, I certainly hope not. But in the the end you will find that it happens to the best of us. It's not the end of the world. We will remember all of them eventually. In my years I have learned that forgetting and disappearing are two very different things. My New Year's resolution, is to remember the difference between the two and not be the one that just disappeared.