David Carradine, Grasshopper, Kaine, Bill. Poor guy's family is going through one of the most humiliating public deaths in recent memory and quite frankly, we're hooked. The almost daily revelations which at first seem to clear up and then only cloud the issues at hand seem almost calculated to lure us into this increasingly weird tale.
Facts are precious commodities in any case, but in this one so far they don't seem none too reliable. Of course there is already talk of a cover up when we may simply be dealing with incompetence or merely even misunderstanding stemming from the different ways the Thai police respond publicly to cases. Leaks are not unique to Thailand and maybe they too aren't in the habit of disclosing accurate information and details about their investigations. Maybe they just say whatever comes to mind to sate the press and then lay it out when they wrap it up. Or not. In short, who the fuck knows but the Turks?
The stories coming out of Bangkok are changing so rapidly LoS is gonna reserve judgment on this case. Instead we'll lay out the current strains of thought. The current newspaper consensus as of today seems to be auto-erotic asphyxiation. (We were shocked to read in one article that 500-100 people die this way each year in the US alone, which itself may or may not be a dubious "fact".) Earlier reports, later dismissed, suggested the actor's hands were bound together. This was amended to ropes around the neck and genitalia.
Update: Ex-wife Marina Anderson confirms in an interview with ABC the reports---originally presented on The Smoking Gun--that Carradine practiced "deviant sexual behavior which was potentially deadly." TMZ reports these words from another ex-wife, Gail Jensen: "He liked to be tied up. And he could tie himself up ... He spent days planning a different feature. He would go to a hardware store and buy the stuff."
Friends and family are adamantly ruling suicide out. He was to upbeat, not depressed. That doesn't mean of course he didn't simply fuck up or that his bondage ropes went awry as he passed out from lack of oxygen. Dangerous stuff, but not suicidal, necessarily. Foul play is the message they are sending.
And then, there's the photo published by Thai Rath. Are his hands in fact bound, or is that stuff around his wrists part of his gear, a safety net even, to take the pressure off his neck if he passed out? If they are in fact tied together, it would be hard not to draw the conclusion he was with another person. Which doesn't even mean foul play was involved. It wouldn't be the first S&M accident, surely. He wasn't young, he had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse.
Update: TMZ again, quotes forensic scientist Brent Turvey as saying that tying onseself is not as impossible as it seems. "Turvey says it's simple for someone to tie rope around his/her hands, by loosely tying the hands in front -- then raising them up to tighten. Turvey says undoing the knot is easy as well, allowing for a quick escape."
But be prepared for the alchemical renderings. At 4:30 in the following video clip, CNN correspondent Jerry Penacol drops the "secret societies" bomb. The beast is out of the cage....
You realize, of course, that "Carradine" spoken backwards sez "Need a rack".
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHo ho! I bow before the master!
ReplyDeleteMe, I'd only remarked upon the obvious coincidences that he died while shooting a film called Stretch in the town of Bang cock but I overlooked that, via backmasking, Bangkok could be read as cock nab!
Dear lord we're cold-hearted fuckers!
Did you see the video? What's with the secret societies theory, so clumsily introduced? King, to his credit, simply ignores such drivel, and only the lawyer guy picks up on it, just a little, before it's just as quickly dropped. Obviously not a theory the panel holds in high esteem. You'd think they'd elaborate upon the theme. I mean, how many more times could they fit "he did not commit suicide" into a fifteen-minute bit?
I have a theory that this was dropped into the dialogue from the family via the journalist--gives the statement credence ya know, the journalist has his sources and only reports credible info, right?)--in order to infect the blogosphere and media with a new meme.
I mean, either alone or with a sex worker, this is probably some kind of accident (as opposed to murder or suicide), and the details must be terribly embarrassing for the family. Humiliating. Not to say there's anything inherently shameful about this kind of sex play--diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks (hehe)--but still, it's the kind of thing he'd want to keep private. I mean, most guys wank but they rarely discuss it on TV, n'est pas?
So my theory is that they inject this secret societies thing knowing that already people would be looking for the coincidences, the strange names, numbers, dates etc. around which to build a conspiracy theory. I was looking for that kind of stuff in anticipation of exactly that and then, blammo.
I googled "David Carradine secret societies" immediately after watching the clip and there was nothing. Do it now and you get a whole slew of results.
But why do it? I think it's to inject a little dignity into an otherwise sordid tale. Much more noble to have been assassinated by Kung Fu Freemasons in retaliation for his investigations into their ways than to have died by accident while tossing off in the closet.