DAVID CARRADINE:BRUCE LEE. UNSOLVED MYSTERIES.

I don't care how agile and flexible Kung-Fu star David Carradine supposedly was. It's irrelevant how sexually deviant or not he was either; as his ex-wife claims. I tend to question the accusations and allegations of ex-wives, ex-husbands, and ex-lovers. It's prudent to do so. Sherlock Holmes would have been more than perplexed at seeing Carradine's naked body, bound hands and genitals with adamant police authorities claiming that it was all an erotic/sexual game gone awry.

Have we all become such shlemiels? Anyone who'll believe that will believe anything! The one and only Houdini could not have pulled off this stunt. I think he wouldn't have even attempted it.

I read the family wants the FBI to investigate. What will the FBI hope to accomplish? They will still have to work with all the elements furnished them by the Thai authorities - if they deign to. Will the FBI send in agents who are familiar with Thai culture and history? Will they even speak Thai, a difficult language to learn for farangs (= Caucasians).

I would not have wasted my time calling in the FBI. There is nothing they will unearth. For one thing, the proud Thai investigators mostly trained by Scotland Yard and MI6 will not share useful information.

Americans are mentally still living in the stone age when their supremacy in all things was unquestioned. No longer. indeed, except as a killing machine America is more like the Third World than the Third World itself.

I feel for the family. I can empathize with them for wishing to clear the name of their loved one - brother, father, husband - whatever. In times like these, the jackals appear. The deceased person is vilified ad hoc, usually just for the hell of it. Even sons and daughters can be vindictive B_T-C_E_, for reasons fathomable only to them. Human nature is more dark and mysterious than the Milky Way. I urge my readers not to be hasty, rash or gossipy. It diminishes the individual who repeats it.

Nai Lert Park Hotel is a park dedicated to the spirit Goddess of fertility. I remember strolling on a beautifully kept pathway surrounded by flowers, with a powerful Thai friend in the Security business who showed me literally hundreds of lingams (penises) of all sizes and colors. It isn't far from the hotel. Offerings of lingams and flowers are made to the Goddess by women who want children and men who wish to have endless virility throughout their lives. How ironic that Carradine was staying in such a place.

I would not put my hand in the fire as to whether it was Murder or an execution. If ... as it is claimed by his family; he had begun an investigation into secret societies I very much doubt he would have gone farther than the door of a so called Friendship Society. With all due respect to him as an actor, my children and I enjoyed the Kungfu series on television a great deal. But that certainly did not qualify him to become an investigator or a researcher of martial arts/friendship/support societies in the Orient or even in the Chinatowns in America or Europe. I mean, how could he be so foolish? It demonstrates that for all his bravado on talk shows, HE NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE ORIENT. Few of us ever do.

While we are on this subject, I would like to say in no uncertain terms that the television series KungFu was conceived and created by and for Bruce Lee. Now that was a man with true charisma and magic. Hollywood politics and racism intervened. Carradine got the part. He and Bruce used to be friends. Was there a betrayal there somewhere? He made it a hit but Lee would have made it a legend. Just try to buy a set of Bruce Lee DVD's today. I paid over 60 Euros for two of them.

Bruce Lee knew what the Martial Arts meant. Indeed, no one has ever matched him ever again, notwithstanding the fact that the martial arts stars of today are surrounded with special effects worth millions and budgets which dwarfed Lee's.

I was visiting my dearest and greatest friend Merlina who was then living in Hong Kong. She knew Bruce Lee quite well. He and his wife were in Hong Kong because he was in the middle of filming a Kungfu movie. Merlina was studying acupuncture, Tai-Chi Chuan and Geomancy with an old Master(Chinese of course)

The Master used to prepare teas and tisanes for Bruce Lee which Merlina would then deliver to his apartment in a typical Chinese bamboo set of baskets.

"Come with me to see Bruce Lee," she urged me one early evening.

He opened the door dressed in a sky blue coolie ensemble with the blue cotton cloth shoes from China which he had launched in his movies. Merlina and I were clad in the same shoes; mine in blue silk, hers in an emerald silk.He was about 5 foot 8 or perhaps 5 foot 9. I remember standing eyeball to eyeball in our almost bare feet, for those Chinese slippers had leather soles not more than a millimeter in height. He had grown muscles which rippled down his lower arms.

In his first important movie shot in Rome, he had less developed forearms although his back was always sinewy and his waist was devoid of any fat. I think the fight - to - the- death scene with Chuck Norris at the Coliseum will remain one of the most beautiful and memorable fight scenes in the history of films.

"I have to drink this right away and do my meditations. Why don't you both come and visit me on the set. My wife will be there as well."

He was natural and direct, devoid of airs or humbug. The most un-selfconscious man I have ever met. He may have been photogenic in reel life but he was sexy and handsome in real life. Ecce Homo.

We said we would stop by his movie set. Both Merlina and I considered movie sets the most boring places on earth except perhaps Bruce Lee's.

"I'd dearly love to see how he choreographs his fight scenes," remarked Merlina.

"Is it true that the great Masters who are never seen by most, are angry with him for having divulged many secrets of the Chinese martial arts to the foreign devils - the gwailo?" I asked her.

"It's true. First he opened a school in San Francisco and then his films became so successful that the whole world of outsiders now know something of the secrets kept hidden for thousands of years. I have been told that much remains a secret but that as time goes by Bruce Lee is planning to reveal moves, thrusts, leaps and other esoteric stuff."

And then Bruce Lee was found dead one afternoon, not many days after we had talked to him.

The coroner said it was a massive stroke, another examiner said it was heart failure. What's that? He was physically fit and he was in his 30's. Another doctor claimed that he was on drugs and steroids.

Merlina was then seeing an extraordinary Spanish - Chinese lawyer who was appointed Prosecutor General for the Crown. Hong Kong was still a crown colony of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll. Once he took over the investigation a black curtain of silence descended upon Lee's mysterious death and speculation stopped, openly at least.

Today some claim a stroke, an aneurysm, even heart failure or a myocardial infarction killed Bruce Lee at the peak of his manhood and on the threshold of a brilliant and successful career at the box-offices throughout the world.

Merlina's friend released the Crown's findings three years later. Natural causes were ascribed.

No one in Hong Kong and in the Chinese world believed it. They still don't. His father had also died a mysterious death related to the Martial Arts. Then Brandon Lee ( son of Bruce) was shot accidentally while filming "The Crow." The gun had real bullets instead of fake ones. What was the prop department thinking of? Someone "forgot" that real bullets were in the gun? His death was ruled "Accidental".

Orientals do not believe in coincidences. All of that too is destined to remain a mystery.

In Shaolin Temple there is a saying: He who knows never talks. He who talks will never know.