Man Who Tries to Live Like Bear Grylls Dies Like Christopher McCandless

02.01.12 Written by Dustin Rowles

Inspired by Bear Grylls, a 29-year-old British man, David Austin, decided to embark on a year-long adventure in the Scottish wilderness. Unfortunately, the man died in under a month, likely from hypothermia. His body wasn’t discovered until weeks after he had died.

Austin is said to have known what he was getting into. Apparently, he had taken a few courses on bushcraft skills and outdoor survival for the past two years. It was always his dream to rough it out for a whole year, and he had taken time off of work to accomplish this. He wanted to be at the mercy of the harsh winter so badly that he did not even carry a mobile phone with him. Last November, he had informed his family that he would be heading north on a survival mission and now the news of his death has left them dumbfounded. (Source: OddityCentral via Burnsy)

The exact cause of his death will always remain a mystery, although “it was f**king cold” could be described as the inexact cause. I feel bad for the guy’s family, but then again, David Austin knew what he was getting himself into. If you’re going to emulate Bear Grylls, besides drinking your own urine, you might also take a cell phone, a camera crew, and spend a few nights in hotels. If it’s any consolation, Austin lost to a much bigger force than Bear Grylls. Nature is out there, and it’s play or get played. Mother Nature is a bitch, and no amount of urine drinking will spare you from 12 months — or even three weeks — of freezing temperatures and heavy snow.

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R.I.P. Patrice O’Neal

11.29.11 Written by Matt

Comedian Patrice O’Neal died last night, one month after suffering a massive stroke. The longtime Comedy Central presence had previously battled diabetes, which served as the butt of several jokes in his final TV appearance, the roast of Charlie Sheen. He was 41.

O’Neal’s TV credits included a stint on “The Office,” regular appearances on “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn,” and a memorable one-off as the pyromaniac T-Bone in “Arrested Development” (There’s always money in the banana stand). He was also the second-best part about In the Cut (banner image & video below), which reminds me: R.I.P. Meg Ryan’s original face.

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What’s on Tonight: R.I.P. Heavy D

11.08.11 Written by Matt

Tonight’s listings come with a big bummer: rapper Heavy D has passed away at the age of 44. Now that we’ve found out this terrible news, what are we gonna dooooo… with iiiiiiit?

Glee (Fox) — Kurt and Blaine have virgin gay sex with each other, and of course the Parents Television Council has its temple garments in a bunch over a TV show portraying something that happens.

Roll Tide/War Eagle (ESPN) — A new documentary about the rivalry between Alabama and Auburn, the last two NCAA football champions. It’s probably the only thing that makes the state of Alabama noteworthy on a national level.

90210 (CW) — Vinny Guadagnino from “Jersey Shore” guest stars in an episode where the kids go to Las Vegas. Because that’s what high school kids do: go someplace where a 21+ age limit is strictly enforced everywhere you go.

Frontline (PBS) — Meredith Blake goes inside the opposition movement in Syria. Darren Rovell wants to know why they aren’t leading with Kim Kardashian’s divorce.

Sons of Anarchy (FX) — There’s a lot of positive buzz about this week’s episode, as Clay scrambles to get renege on the hit he put out on Tara — except the cartel is all, “Sorry, no takebacks.”

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R.I.P. Andy Rooney

11.05.11 Written by Matt

Crotchety rambler Andy Rooney has passed away, just one month after his final “60 Minutes” appearance and slightly more than a week after suffering complications from minor surgery. In honor of his passing, I’ll be just as respectful about his death as he was about Kurt Cobain’s.

Rooney was an unremarkable, cranky bore whose bitching about simple annoyances struck a nerve with other aging white people who were frightened by or opposed to change. His view of America was essentially a collection of Rockwell paintings, and he complained about any facet of life that strayed from that impossible vision. When technological developments improved commerce or people’s lives, Rooney only saw the inconvenience of learning something new. In every TV appearance of his that I saw, he came off to me as intellectually incurious, and he happily took a paycheck from CBS for 60 years while brushing away the fans who sent him letters or tried to approach him in public. I don’t understand why people who didn’t know him should stop and mourn a man who never cared for people he didn’t know.

Rest in peace, Andy Rooney. The world has moved on.

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R.I.P. Steve Jobs

10.06.11 Written by Matt

This is a television blog, so at first glance it might not make sense to eulogize Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs. However, the mere fact that this is a blog and you’re reading this website on a computer or handheld device — possibly on one designed by Jobs — warrants mention of his passing. He was an absolute giant in making our world what it is. Over the last 30 years, he was the key force behind the Macintosh computer, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and oh yeah he also ran Pixar, so thank him for all the Toy Story movies plus Up and Wall-E and Finding Nemo. Steve Jobs made me cry more in the last decade than all of my friends who died in Iraq.

If you’ve never seen it, watch Jobs’s 2005 commencement speech at Stanford above. The college dropout talks about his life as an adopted child, taking a calligraphy class that would shape the way every person in the first world uses a computer, being fired from the company he founded (and later saved), perseverance (“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick”), and — most poignantly — the way looming death shaped his life.

No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new … Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Jobs ran a business the way all businesses should be run: he hired the most talented people he could find, then he pushed them to their limits to create better work. That’s how innovation happens, and it’s how Steve Jobs changed the world. His death is a profound loss — an old that had no new to replace it.

[Essential reading: Wired's long but awesome obituary]

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