2009 will surely go down as the dyingest year in celebrity history, when the only gossip about stars was that they'd suddenly stopped breathing. It's only July, and so far we've already lost the lustrous likes of:

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If David Carradine really died in drag, as the New York Post reported, it wasn't the first time. In full cross-dress regalia, he played Pearl, a co-kidnapper of a screaming baby, in the obscure 1989 film Sonny Boy. Leonard Maltin describes the movie as a "repulsive, socially unredeemable waste of cellulloid," but Carradine brought his usual magnetism to it--and he sure did look pretty in polka dots.

Way before David Carradine's sad and possibly kinky death by strangling, obscure character actor Albert Dekker (Dr. Cyclops) met a similar freaky fate. According to an upcoming book called Morbid Curiosity by Alan W. Petrucelli, in 1968 Dekker was found not only dead, "he was naked, kneeling in the bathtub, a noose tightly wrapped around his neck and looped around the shower's curtain rod," plus Dekker was decked out in handcuffs, a blindfold, and a ball gag
in his mouth.

What's more, there were needles sticking out of his arm, a vajayjay was drawn on his stomach, and his nipples had been...no, you sickos will have to wait for the book for the rest of the bizarre details. You can't make this shit up!!!

Sadly, David Carradine--Oscar nominated star of Bound For Glory and Kwai Chang Caine in TV's Kung Fu--was found half naked and hanging in his hotel room in Bangkok, where he was making a movie.

Weirdly, the attached report says police are investigating the cause of death. How else could you end up hanging dead from a cord if you didn't kill yourself? Are they implying it was autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong? It is Bangkok, after all, and the cord was supposedly around several body parts (not announced yet).

Whatever happened, it's all so sad, and I hope they at least get to the bottom of what happened. But if the maid who found Carradine is the same one who came upon Heath Ledger's corpse, forget about it.