The Death of Heath Ledger

If you know me, you'll know that I'm not overly obsessed with celebrities. In fact, you've probably never heard me refer to them except in the context of discussing their movie, music, or television show and their merits as an actor or musician.

Unless I was warning you that they were evil, but that's a different story.

So it surprises me a little that I've been so obsessed with the death of Heath Ledger the past two days. I was shocked to hear the news yesterday afternoon, in part because he was so young. He was 28. I'll be 28 in less than a month. Maybe that's part of what struck me about his death.

Of course the suggestion of suicide is another part of the intrigue on this one. I was equally obsessed with Owen Wilson's attempted suicide last year. It seems so unnatural that a person as successful as either of those two actors would have any reason to want to end their own life, although I understand perfectly that depression is independent of reality.

Of course, there's no telling at the moment if Ledger's death was suicide. There were prescription sleeping pills in his room, but they were on the night stand in their packaging, and he'd been taking them for a while since he'd begun having trouble sleeping while filming a movie. Who knows, it could have been a congenital heart problem that had been previously undetected, or just one of those bizarre deaths by causes that would seem tragic but normal for a man in his fifties, but just bizarre for a man in his 20s.

I actually came to school today, knowing that I was behind on grading papers, and started searching to see if there had been any updates on Ledger's story this morning. I've never done that before on any celebrity news item. I noticed that his face had started showing signs of wear in the most recent pictures and he looked like he'd been living hard, but then that could just be my looking for something to explain this and the changes in his appearance are just from the fact that he was getting older and having trouble sleeping.

Of course, this doesn't mean I'm mourning a celebrity I've never met as much as I would anyone I actually knew. In fact, I cracked a joke about it this morning, but I've either forgotten it or decided it was inappropriate considering the overriding tone of this piece.

On an unrelated note, I'm perfectly aware that yesterday's post sucked as a behind the scenes special, so sometime soon I'm going to do something where the entire point from the beginning is a behind the scenes special, so I'll actually have something a little more interesting. Did anyone notice that yesterday's post looked a little like table tents?