CNN is reporting that Heath Ledger is dead.

This sucks. First and foremost for his daughter with Michelle Williams, Matilda.

They have not said what the cause of death was yet. I hope for his daughter’s sake it wasn’t suicide or drugs. I imagine that would mess a kid up pretty good. I never saw him as the suicidal/druggie type. He seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders despite the whirlwind romance/marriage/divorce he had with Williams.

He was also a really good actor. More details available in the main news outlets.

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My Uncle Larry passed away this morning at 5:30 AM Pacific Time.

Jake has a really good post about Larry here. I just wanted to share my thoughts too.

Larry Beck was one of the best uncles that anyone could ask for. He was fun, quirky, and he loved his family. When I was growing up, my uncle was a magician at Magic Mountain. How cool would it be to have a magician for an uncle. he used to do all sorts of tricks for us and he would always get this wry smile when he saw how impressed we were.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if this was your card? That would be a pretty good trick, wouldn’t it?”

That’s what I remember him saying when he would put on his magic shows for me, Jake and all of our cousins.

The past 3 years have been increasingly difficult as I have watched his health deteriorate very rapidly. I’m really glad that Alli, Jake and my mom and I were able to go out there two Decembers ago. That was the last time I saw my uncle, and while it was in a hospital (he was laid up in UCLA Med Center at the time), it was a good trip. We laughed (although not as hard as usual because laughing was painful to Larry physically), we cried, and we talked. We spent almost the whole time there in the hospital in Westwood and while I LOATHE hospitals, I never thought about that once. I enjoyed every second of it.

That’s Larry on the left, his wife Paula, and my mom. I’m sad that I don’t have a picture of me and him from that trip. Despite his sickness, he was still the same old Larry.

I’ll miss him a lot. It’s really tough when some of your closest family live many miles away. I wish that we could have seen him more often. If only.

To those of you that read this, I ask you to please pray for my Aunt Paula, Larry’s two daughters, Cindy and Stacey, as well as the rest of the Beck family. Larry was a good man and he’ll be missed by all of us.

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