B-Movie Central Cheese Blog

Yep, she’s dead, and as with Michael Jackson when he died, all of a sudden everyone’s remembering what a great artist and performer she was and so sad that her life was cut short.  Excuse me while I gag.

Whitney Houston deserves neither praise nor respect.  She literally had everything anyone could possibly dream of.  Money, fame, not a care in the world, and she decided to spit in the face of everyone who dreams of having a life like that by polluting her body with drugs and throwing it all away.  It’s like, wow, drugs are bad?  Really?  Wow, I had no idea!  Anyone who puts drugs in their body after seeing how many lives and careers it’s destroyed for decades now, deserves no praise.  They deserve to be called what they are – an idiot, and an ungrateful one at that.

Look at Ted Nugent.  He managed to have a great career without drinking and without drugs.  He’s lived a long, healthy life, had bad experiences, like his first wife divorcing him and eventually dying of a drug overdose, being bankrupted by his corrupt accountants, getting re-married and divorced again, finally finding his soul mate, being in multiple band situations, touring all over the world, putting out album after album…all without drugs or alcohol.  He didn’t need them.  Why?  Because he has a strong, logical mind, and knows what drugs and alcohol abuse can do to you.  He personally saw it with Hendrix and a variety of other performers throughout his career, and he had brains enough to know that drugs and alcohol don’t lead anywhere good, and are not the way to party, handle stress or anything else.

As for Whitney, she did this to herself.  No one tied her to a chair, shoved a crack pipe in her mouth and made her smoke it.  She made the conscious decision to stick that crap in her body all on her own.  She was an adult and made the decision to do it to herself.  The funny thing about all this is, she didn’t even die of an overdose like everyone thought she would.  She took some prescription drugs and fell asleep in her hotel tub and drowned.  A fitting end to a life that had literally petered out with a sputter and a whimper, and so similar to what happened to Michael that it’s actually a bit weird, because they were both in the process of making a big comeback, and both died after taking something to help them sleep.

I’d like to think that this will serve as an object lesson to other performers out there, and maybe it will to some.  We can only hope.  Unfortunately, as long as there are idiots with too much money and easy access to drugs, there will always be tragedies like this, because your average idiot is convinced it could never happen to them, and just as with Whitney, there’ll be no tears coming out of my eyes when they roll the dice and lose.

Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer about this, but I’m sick of seeing all the posts on Facebook from people who are so sad and full of kind words about her now that she’s gone, but who didn’t spare even one second of thought to her in the past several years.  Now that she’s gone, suddenly they remembered she existed.  It happened when Michael Jackson passed as well, and I’m sick of seeing it.  She was nothing to be idolized or remembered fondly.  She was yet another life lesson and a casualty of the entertainment business that should be seen as a wake up call to others, and nothing more.  It’s fine to remember her early days, and to enjoy the music she made back when she was clean and healthy and singing her heart out.  It just irritates me that no one thought about her much after her decline into drugs, and eventually, even as she lost her home and her health and mental well being faltered, no one would even mention her name other than to talk about what a shame it was.  That’s like passing someone on the street who’s dying, shaking your head and muttering to yourself what a shame it is as you walk on by and head to your favorite restaurant for a nice meal.  Think about it.

I’m back, but where have I been?  Well, starting about the middle of December, I began going through another bout of depression, which is something that hasn’t happened to me in a very long time.  I guess it was a combination of normal holiday depression with some things that happened over the holidays that triggered it, but regardless of the cause, it lasted for well over a month before it started getting better.  The end result of it though is that I’ve gotten way behind on my e-mails and I’ve let a lot of other things slide that I shouldn’t have, and that I now need to try to dig my way out of so I can see some light and relax again.  Part of getting buried like that is that your depression becomes compounded with the fact that you know you’re not living up to your responsibilities.  Then there’s a sense of shame that creeps in, and the longer you let things go, the harder they become to go back to.  Anyone who’s experienced depression is very well aware of these feelings, and that feeling of getting buried under the things you let lag while you’re going through it.  The rest of you, at least those of an empathetic nature, I’m sure can imagine what it’s like.

So, I’m making a step right here to get back to things.  I haven’t made a blog post in a very long time, so I thought it would be a good way to make a little forward progress in motivating myself to do other things as well.  First things first.  Now that the magazine’s done, I need to get caught up on e-mails, and then I have some house cleaning to do.  Fun times huh?

I’m not sure what I was really intending to write here, but now that I’ve actually started writing, I’ve completely blanked.  I was just thinking however, that even during my most depressive of times, the one thing I treasured above all others was losing myself in a good book.  I’m really disheartened by the ever growing library of e-books and e-readers out there.  While it’s great in the sense that it gives you access to massive libraries of the written word, what’s lost, at least in my opinion, far outweighs the benefits.  You lose that ability to hold something real in your hands, and to feel the paper under your fingers as you go from one page to the next.  A book doesn’t need batteries or an AC adapter to enjoy it.  You can view it from any angle, and if the sun shines on it, there’s no reflection to blind you or obscure the text.  You can take a book anywhere, and read it anytime, and the images it creates in your mind combined with the tactile stimulus you feel as you pass slowly from page to page, combine to create a world where you can lose yourself in your own imagination, forgetting all of your problems and responsibilities, even if just for a little while.

I’ve always been an intense reader.  Often I would start on a book and literally read almost straight for twelve to eighteen hours or more until I had read it from cover to cover.  Sometimes it would be a longer book, so I’d sleep in between, wake up, shower, and then pick up right where I left off until it was finished.  Reading, for me, is the ultimate form of escapism.  When you read, you see everything in your mind, and what you’re seeing is unique to you and your own imagination.  No one else in the world will see everything exactly as you do, which means that you’ve created something unique to yourself that no one else can experience or intrude upon.  In those moments, nothing else exists except that world you’re seeing within yourself.  There’s nothing better than that.  I do have responsibilities to catch up on today, but after talking about all this, I think it can all wait just a bit longer.  It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book.  Far too long in fact.  Life it to short to not spend it doing things that you love, and reading has always been one of the greatest loves of my life.  In fact, I think that’s exactly what I’m going to spend the rest of my morning doing.  Now I just need to figure out which world of imagination I want to lose myself in this time.

I will try to post more often.  I’m really going to try to make an effort to re-discover my love of various things that life has unfortunately stolen from me.