Dying Days

Everyone just died. Okay, that's hyperbole, but look at who just kicked it in the last day or so:

• Sally Menke (56), Quentin Tarantino's longtime film editor. She went hiking with her dog amidst the 113 degree heat yesterday. Menke and a hiking buddy set out about 9 a.m. to hike a trail in Bronson Canyon (near the Hollywood sign). An hour later, her partner decided to turn back. They found her body early this morning at the bottom of a ravine. No cause of death was immediately reported, and they're not saying if heat was a factor...but let's do the easy math.

• Gloria Stuart (100), who banged Leo DiCaprio and survived the sinking of the Titanic...on film. She starred in The Invisible Man, Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers Of 1935 and the Shirley Temple movies Poor Little Rich Girl and Rebecca OfSunnybrook Farm. Her turn as contemporary Kate Winslet in James Cameron's disaster film earned her a best supporting actress nomination. The cause was listed as respiratory failure.

• Joseph Cerniglia (39), the owner of Campania restaurant in New Jersey. Cerniglia was on Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” — and was told by the venomous TV chef that his debt-ridden eatery was “about to swim down the Hudson”.  It seemed like sound advise, because he was found floating in the river after jumping off the George Washington Bridge. He is the second chef to commit suicide after appearing on the reality-cooking series.  See, reality television kills not just my brain cells, but it's contestants.

• Ralph Vicinanza (60), the literary agent to such authors as Stephen King, Augusten Burroughs and the Dalai Lama. He also worked with Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan and Philip K. Dick, and upon founding his own agency in 1978, signed up some of the world's top science fiction and fantasy writers, including Terry "sword douche" Pratchett, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert and George R.R. Martin. King credits Vicinanza with the idea for serializing The Green Mile. Vicinanza died of a brain aneurysm.

• Nicholas A. Marsh (37), a Justice Department prosecutor in the prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens' corruption charges were eventually thrown out over allegations of prosecutorial impropriety, and he and the other attorneys were under investigation. Marsh committed suicide, which is a waste of all that study time trying to pass the bar. (I'd say who cares, but apparently it was important enough to make the national news pages)