Deaths Aplenty in SoCal 2020

Due to other breaking death news, this posting has been updated overnight July 13-14, 2020.

Elvis' Grandson, Club 27, and Calabasas again

Benjamin Keough, the son of Lisa Marie Presley and grandson of Elvis Presley, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his torso. He was 27.

Lisa Marie is the only child of Priscilla and Elvis.

Keough died Sunday, July 12, 2020, Calabasas Park Estates, in Calabasas, California.

"Kobe [Bryant] died very near to the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District. 5.7 miles or 11 minutes from where Benjamin [Keough] died. Or less, as the crow flies." ~ diamondmind311

Calabasas again? This is near where Kobe Bean Bryant's helicopter crashed on January 26, 2020, killing him, his daughter, his pilot, and friends on board.

Calabasas =

It is generally accepted that the name of Calabasas is derived from the Spanish calabaza meaning "pumpkin," "squash," or "gourd." Some historians hold the theory that Calabasas is derived from the Chumash word calahoosa, which is said to mean "where the wild geese fly." Owing to vast presence of wild squash plants in the area, the squash theory is more prevalent among local residents. At the top of the Calabasas grade, which is east of Las Virgenes Road, legend has it that in 1824, a Basque rancher from Oxnard spilled a wagonload of pumpkins on the road en route to Los Angeles. The following spring, hundreds of pumpkin seeds sprouted alongside the road. The area was named Las Calabasas—the place where the pumpkins fell.
In honor of its namesake, the City of Calabasas and the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce hold an annual Pumpkin Festival in October, including carnival games, exhibits, demonstrations, and live entertainment. The festival has evolved from a small-town fair to a significant annual event. Though the current Pumpkin Festival is held at Juan Bautista de Anza Park in Calabasas, the original festival was believed to have taken place where the traveling wagon carrying pumpkins overturned and started the area's first pumpkin patch.
The city's official logo, depicting a red-tailed hawk flying over the Santa Monica Mountains. Source.

Keough also was the brother of actress Riley Keough and son of musician Danny Keough. (Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough divorced in 1994.) His maternal grandmother is Priscilla Presley. Keough also has twin sisters, Finley and Harper Lockwood, 11, whose father is Lisa Marie Presley's ex-husband Michael Lockwood.

Besides marriages to Danny Keough and Michael Lockwood, Lisa Marie Presley was married, in between those two husbands, to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.

Keough was said to be an Elvis look-a-like.

Scientology Syncs 

Lisa Marie Presley was brought into the Church of Scientology in 1977 by her mother, Priscilla. 

By coincidence, on July 12, 2020, Kelly Kamalelehua Smith, who was known by her stage name, Kelly Preston, died. She was married to John Travolta, with whom she collaborated on the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (2000). Both Preston and Travolta were Scientologists, and married on September 5, 1991, in Paris by a French Scientology minister.

When reporting on Benjamin Keough’s birth in Tampa, Florida, the Associated Press quoted a spokesperson who said the 24-year-old Presley delivered the 7-pound, 8-ounce boy “naturally and in complete silence in a calm and supportive environment” under guidelines set out by Scientology’s founder, Lafayette Ron Hubbard, in his book Dianetics.

Lisa Marie Presley grew discontented with Scientology and finally left the church in 2016. She released a song, “So Long,” in 2012 that decried churches that “don’t have a soul” and “corrupt” religions that run people’s lives.

In another temporal coincidence, on June 17, 2020, Los Angeles prosecutors confirmed that actor Danny Masterson had been charged with the rapes of three women in the early 2000s following a lengthy investigation. The That '70s Show alum, a noted member of the church of Scientology, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Mythbusters and Glee

Also...

Former MythBusters co-host Adam Savage has been accused of sexual abuse by his sister.
In a lawsuit filed June 30, 2020, in Westchester Supreme Court, Miranda Pacchiana says she was "sexually abused as a child by her brother."
Documents state that from 1976 to 1979, when they lived together in Sleepy Hollow, New York, Savage, now 52, "would repeatedly rape Miranda Pacchiana and force oral sex upon her, and forced Miranda to perform oral sex on him, along with other forms of sexual abuse."
At the time of the alleged abuse, Pacchiana was 7 to 10 years old and Savage was 9 to 12, according to the documents.
In a statement to USA Today provided by attorney Andrew Brettler, Savage denied the allegations.
"While I hope that my sister gets the help she needs to find peace, this needs to end. For many years, she has relentlessly and falsely attacked me and other members of my family to anyone that will listen," the statement says.
"By spreading numerous untrue stories about us in pursuit of a financial bonanza, she has tortured our entire family and estranged herself from all of us. I will fight this groundless and offensive lawsuit and work to put this to rest once and for all."
Brettler also provided a statement from Savage and Pacchiana's mother, Karen Savage.
"It makes me very sad to say this, but my daughter suffers from severe mental health challenges, and it’s devastating that she’s putting Adam and our entire family through this," she said.

Meanwhile, the discovery of the body of missing and presumed drowned (on July 8, 2020) Glee star Maya Rivera was recovered on Monday, July 13, 2020, at Lake Piru, Ventura County, California. This comes seven years to the day after Glee star Cory Monteith died in Vancouver, British Columbia. Monteith died from "a mixed drug toxicity" consisting of heroin and alcohol.

Intriguingly, behind Glee (2009–2015), as well as Nip/Tuck (2003–2010) and American Horror Story (2011–present), is Ryan Patrick Murphy (born November 9, 1965), an American screenwriter, director, and producer. In Nip/Tuck, he decided to do a series of story lines on Scientology, and according to one site, has finished 15 Scientology completions.

Grant Imahara, 49, former MythBusters (208 eps) & White Rabbit Project host, dies July 13, 2020. Cause brain aneurysm. 

Jessi Combs, 39, MythBusters guest host (7 eps), dies in horrific land speed attempt accident, August 27, 2019.

MythBusters guest host Jessi Combs, 39, who died Aug 27, 2019, had appeared in a cryptofiction film, Interviewing Monsters and Bigfoot (2019). The movie also starred folks with familiar names: Tom Green, Les Stroud, Stacy Brown, Jr., and Rick Dyer.

===

Is there a thread, sync, dots to be connected here? Nay, just crazy coincidences, right?

Wicker Man Deaths

Is there wicked handwriting on the wall?

In January 2009, I pondered the original 1973 film, The Wicker Man. 

The time is ripe to revisit this synchrocinematic classic, for 2016 has much to say to The Wicker Man-aware. 

Eddie Lin posted the following four-photograph-montage shortly after The Wicker Man director Robin Hardy died on Friday, July 1, 2016. Hardy only directed three films, The Wicker Man (1973), The Fantasist (1986), and the sequel to The Wicker Man, The Wicker Tree (2011).

Robin St. Clair Rimington Hardy (2 October 1929 – 1 July 2016) died at the age of 86.

Lin tells me he posted the four images because of Hardy's link to The Wicker Man film. But they were not added to his montage for any specific reason.

However, I was interested in their relationship to death.

For example, Christopher Lee died in 2015. Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee CBE (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) died at the age of 93.

Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, and Robin Hardy during the The Wicker Man (1973) filming. Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE (1 June 1930 – 16 November 2009) died at the age of 79.

Cinefantastique devoted a commemorative issue to the film, asserting that the film is "the Citizen Kane of horror movies" – an oft-quoted phrase.

Christopher Lee considered The Wicker Man his best film. Edward Woodward meanwhile once said that The Wicker Man was one of his favorite films and that the character of Howie was the best part he ever played. In addition to Lee's admiration of the final shot of the film (of the collapsing Wicker man), Woodward said that it was the best final shot of any film ever made.

Ingrid Pitt (21 November 1937 – 23 November 2010), who collapsed on the way to her fans' celebration of her birthday, and died a few days later, passed away at the age of 73. After The Wicker Man, in which she had an important but small part, she became Hammer's Queen of Horror or more generally The Queen of Gothic Horror.

Ingrid Pitt

The Wicker Man's 1973 Rowan Morrison was played by Geraldine "Gerry" Cowper (born 23 June 1958).

For such a well-received cult classic, it would not be until 2006 for a followup film, the remade The Wicker Man, starring Nicolas Cage.

In 2006, Rowan was played by Erika-Shaye Gair (born on 12 December 1998, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada).

Nicolas Kim Coppola (born January 7, 1964), known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is related to several people in the movie industry. Through his father, he is a nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and of actress Talia Shire, and the cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman.

According to Cage, he owned the "Most Haunted House in America," a home located in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Known as "The LaLaurie House" after its former owner Delphine LaLaurie, the house was foreclosed and sold at auction on November 12, 2009, along with another New Orleans property for a total of $5.5 million, in the wake of Cage's financial problems.

Compared to Edward Woodward, Nicolas Cage's part of the policeman investigating the disappearance of Rowan has been roundly criticized. Many movie critiques have noted that Cage overplayed the part versus Woodward's highly praised portrayal.

As noted in my original discussion of the 1973 film The Wicker Man, the movie's red-coated child, Rowan, is linked to several other films' red-clad girls. Again Rowan shows up in red, in the 2006 version of The Wicker Man.

Cage's over-the-top policeman versus Woodward's terrified human sacrifice.

+++

Finally, in 2011, Hardy's sequel to The Wicker Man was released, The Wicker Tree. In some cases, it was showed as a double-feature with the 1973 original.

Brittania Nicol played the May Queen, Beth Boothby in The Wicker Tree.

The legacy of The Wicker Man lives on, and continues to be a significant moment in Pagan horror films, worthy of wonder among synchromystics. In this special year of deaths appearing to come frequently to important players, why should we not expect The Wicker Man to have it's moment in the sun?

One of the most celebrated and remembered characters in the original Wicker Man film is Willow who attempts to seduce Police Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward). Willow was played by Britt Ekland (also spelled Britt Eklund, sometimes).

Britt Ekland (born Britt-Marie Eklund; 6 October 1942) is 73 years old, as of July 7, 2016. She has been married to Peter Sellers (m. 1964; div. 1968) and Slim Jim Phantom (m. 1984; div. 1992), and her partners have been Lou Adler and Rod Stewart.

Summerisle in the Hebrides holds its secrets well.

Peter Sellers' and Britt Eland's only child was a daughter, Victoria Sellers. Victoria Sellers may have been a Moon child, for she appears to have been conceived on Sunday, April 26, 1964, a full moon. Victoria was born on January 20, 1965.

Should we be on the lookout for news of some kind from Ekland? Or her daughter?

+++

Or will something be in the wind from others linked to the Wicker Man movies (1973, 2006, 2011) during 2016?

+++

Britt Ekland re-posted Willow's Song on her Twitter account in tribute to The Wicker Man's director Robin Hardy.

In many ways, Robin Hardy's role in The Wicker Man/The Wicker Tree movies is as Puck. Puck may also be called "Robin Goodfellow" or "Hobgoblin," in which "Hob" (the Devil) may substitute for "Rob" or may simply refer to the "goblin of the hearth" or hob. The name Robin is Middle English in origin, deriving from Old French Robin, the pet form for the name Robert. It's is a circular name game that ends up back with a very Pagan meaning.

Hardy is an English, Scottish, and French nickname for a "brave or foolhardy man," from Old French, Middle English hardi "bold," "courageous" (of Germanic origin). Irish: in addition to being an importation of the English name, this is also found as an Anglicized form (by partial translation) of Gaelic Mac Giolla Deacair "son of the hard lad."

Thanks to an initial idea from Eddie Lin.