Caine’s walk is over

Ok, so I don’t have much time this morning to write out a big ol’ thing on this but David Carradine was found dead in Bangkok yesterday.
Now here’s the thing.  I grew up watching him as an icon of strength and peaceful honor.  He was a childhood hero for me and I watched that cheesy show every day.  I remember actually LEARNING from that show.  Taking the things he said and using them in my life as I grew up.  Years later, I started studying Kung Fu San Soo, Tai Chi and Qigong alongside Taoism and various other Eastern philosophies.  The character of Caine always stood out for me, through everything I did growing up and on into my adulthood as someone to aspire to be.  An icon in the ways of the Tao.  As I grew into the philosophy and actually started reading things like Art of War and the Tao te Ching, the lessons from that show came back to me and I appreciated them even more.
(Ok, not so much from the second try on that in the 90’s, that was just kind of lame.)
I never much paid attention to his other films or pursuits, to be quite honest but there’s no question the man had skills.  In his life, he completed 214 projects in front of the camera.  He was an extra on countless television shows and mini-series’, everything from his character Justin LaMotte in the the Civil War novel adaptation, “North and South” by John Jakes to a demon in the TV series “Charmed” in 1999 and then of course, the “Kill Bill” collection by Quentin Tarantino in 2003 and 2004.
Now I know there was some drama regarding a role that he supposedly snaked away from Bruce Lee and apparently that was the role of Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu in the 1970’s but to be quite honest I never really cared about that.  All I knew is that this guy that was on TV, made me smile when I was a kid.  When you’re young, you don’t consider the writers.  You don’t think about the fact that there’s someone behind the process, all you see is the guy… saving people and being all detached and loving, wandering around with this peaceful kind of balance about his entire person.  I watched that show every day.  Other people might remember him for other things, other movies, television roles, there were better roles he played in waaaayyy better TV shows and movies. LOL… but that was my connection to him and the fact that he was found dead, hanging from the celing, half naked in Bangkok just makes me wanna cry.
Oh and this whole suicide thing… yeah, I don’t buy it.  I don’t care what they say.

So there it is.

Here’s the article from Foxnews.com:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525069,00.html

“Kill Bill” star David Carradine was found dead in a Bangkok hotel room Wednesday, his manager told FOX News Thursday.

Chuck Binder said Carradine, 72, was staying in Bangkok while shooting a movie. The film crew became aware of his absence when they went to dine out at a restaurant yesterday. When a producer went to his room, he discovered that the actor had died.

A statement on behalf of his family has yet to be released, but Binder called the death “shocking and sad.”

Binder told FOXNews.com Thursday that the cause of death is “under investigation.” While there have been conflicting reports as to the nature of Carradine’s death, That newspaper The Nation is claiming that an unidentified Thai police source said the actor was found hung in his hotel room from curtain rope in an apparent suicide.

The Nation also reports that the hotel maid discovered Carradine’s half naked body in a closet Thursday morning and that there were no signs of a struggle or assault.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith.

In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby.

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series “Kung Fu,” which aired in 1972-75.

He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine’s grandson in the 1990s syndicated series “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.”

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s two-part saga “Kill Bill.”

FOXNews.com’s Allison McGevna and the Associated Press contributed to this report.