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Let me preface all of this by saying that I am not making light of mental illness or suicide. We’re not going to treat it with any sort of whimsical disregard, nor will we ever. If you’ve got a problem, you seriously need to talk to someone.

So, the stern warning is out of the way. Now let’s get on to passing out awards. Ballgowns and prepared speeches at the ready? I’m wearing my borrowed Harry Winston diamonds right this moment.

I have a morbid fascination with people who kill themselves. It could be because my mother was a funeral director in a beachside resort town and consequently, I got to peek in at some really phenomenal hard luck stiffs. Haters frequently gripe that suicide is the easy way out; I beg to differ. How can you call it the easy way when you’re leaping headlong into the afterlife– or glaring lack thereof?

Celebrity magnifies everything, from pimples (witness Jessica Simpson’s skanky Proactiv shots) to depression. In honor of Richard Jeni, and because everyone likes some morbid celebrity curiosity (as evidenced by the dog and pony show that we’ve come to call Thanks For The Mammaries: The Anna Nicole Fiasco), we offer this: The Celebrity Suicide Hall of Fame, a collection of checked-out celebrities worthy of remembering, if for nothing other than their fantastic method of snuffing themselves.

Best Suicide Note
This honor belongs to a writer, natch. Hunter S. Thompson, who gave us Gonzo Journalism, also gave us Gonzo Killing Yourself. Hunter kicked it old-skool style in February of 2005 at his fortified compound (no kidding) Owl Farm in rural Colorado. Pissed off over chronic pain and the fact that he couldn’t blow coke like he used to, Thompson resolved that he’d had enough. On the phone with his wife Anita who was on her way home from the gym, Dr. Thompson asked her to hang on just a sec and– kablooey, an old-fashioned manly gunshot wound to the head. His ashes were packed with fireworks and shot from a cannon into the sky as Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man played in the background. Again with the kablooey.That is so fucking cool.

He wrote this note and four days later, he was gone. The world was immediately less awesome:

“Football Season Is Over.
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax– This won’t hurt.”

Wow. That’s balls, baby.

Most Fucked-Up Family of Suicides
Bing Crosby, dapper fellow with his fine song stylings, smooth, dulcet tones and the undisputed purveyor of holiday kitsch was evidently not the kind of daddy you wanted. His two sons, Lindsay and Dennis killed themselves in 1989 and 1991, respectively, both with shotguns. After their mother crawled down the neck of a bottle and died early of cancer, the Crosby boys– evidently not prepared to cope with life in the shadow of a really famous dad (other founding members of that club include Marlon Brando’s kids and Christina of Mommy Dearest fame) took their buckshot exit tickets and brought another variety of fame– this more dubious– to the family.

Honorable mention goes to the Hemingways. Margaux in 1996 with downers, and her granddad Ernest in 1961 with a shot from a bolt-action Abercrombie & Fitch rifle. If I was a gambling woman, I’d wager that, if Papa Hemingway happened to see what vomitous retail nonsense had befallen his beloved outdoor outfitters Abercrombie & Fitch, he’d shoot himself again.

Most Demonstrably Emotional Method
Pills is pills is pills, and common as dirt. Gunshots are messy. Heroin overdoses are shameful. Jumping off buildings and bridges has a level of unresolved, manic desperation that most celebrities cannot abide. Enter, then, the very best method I have ever seen: Elliott Smith, depressy rock star (think the soundtrack to Good Will Hunting) stabbed himself. In the heart.

Throughout 2003, those of us who were fans of Elliott checked his official website obsessively, looking for news regarding a rumored upcoming record. Rumors had flown around regarding Elliott’s heroin use and failed attempts at rehab, and hardcore fans theorized that the next record would be fucking killer, man, really kickass as Smith was known to produce exceptional material when he was strung out. What none of us anticipated was that the album we were waiting on would be his last. Elliott killed himself before it was completed and about a year later, From A Basement On A Hill was released posthumously in the tradition of Tupac.

The sad-sack stabbed himself. Let me repeat for clarity: In the heart.

And it’s also worth noting that most of his albums were released on Kill Rock Star Records. I hear a Robert Stack voiceover regarding coincidence in my head right this moment.

Lamest Failed Attempt
Ted Kaczynski, AKA The Unibomber was known not just for bombing universities but also for bombing Penthouse with his tedious manifesto of general freakout diatribe. Dr. K (yes, he has a legit Ph.D) brought up a lot of things that bother most of us, like overcrowding, dissociation from nature, social conformity, rapid pace of technological change, consumerism and corporate domination. The difference between us and this guy is that he bitched about this stuff from a plywood shack about the size of the average North American bathroom. And then he sent it off to a poonie mag. Penthouse published the crazy man’s crap, but sadly, not under their famed Forums section. (Talk about shrivel factor.)

After he was caught (it took the Feds 17 years to pinch him), convicted and sentenced to supermax federal prison forever and ever amen, Ted did two wacky things: First off, he made pals with Timmy McVeigh. I would have thought there would have been too much ego, but evidently they’ve got lots of antiestablishment things in common. Secondly, on January 7, 1998, Teddy tried to hang himself with his underwear.

We normally see death by panties as an accident, and the guy from INXS is a good example. Not this time. Evidently, Ted’s about as good at killing himself as he is at building hermit shacks in the woods, and he continues to rot away in the least natural environment imaginable.

Whoops! Accidental Overdose Award
Overdose counts as suicide but only a little bit. You did it. You didn’t mean to do it, but you did it anyway. Unfortunately, this is how the best of them go. As I sit here writing this, I’ve considered a list of celebrity overdose deaths that is entirely too long and yet nowhere near complete. Someone will take issue with this, I know. I’ve considered Lenny Bruce, Nick Drake, Chris Farley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and even Sigmund Freud, and the award goes to… Mitch Hedberg. Two years ago this month, Mitch was found dead in a New Jersey hotel room. He was 37. Since he died, pop culture junkies, pundits and other comics have tried to decipher exactly what was so fucking funny about Mitch. Could be his one-liner delivery, which is a bit like Steven Wright except funnier. Could be that he looked exactly like the dude from the band Rush. Could be that most of us have smoked weed with a guy just exactly like Mitch (think Hyde from That 70’s Show, and that’s what made him so funny. That’s also what made it so painful when he turned up dead, and suddenly, the drug jokes– “I like the FedEx man; he’s a drug dealer and he don’t even know it!” and, “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too,” weren’t so funny anymore.

Okay, that’s a lie. The drug jokes are still funny. They’re just also kind of poignant and bittersweet, too. Especially when you watch the live performances and see the jitters. And speaking of uncomfortable jitters, sorry this clip involves that Harlan asshole, least funniest jackass ever.

Stern Resolution Award
This is the “holy shit, no fucking way I could do that” award. Leslie Cheung gets a definite nod in this category for defenestration from the 24th floor. That’s a long way down and a long time to think about changing your mind. Guess what’s worse: 66 days without eating. Obscure only to North Americans, IRA badass and hero Bobby Sands didn’t eat a damn thing for 66 days, on hunger strike in prison. It was less than two months after his 27th birthday. Hunger strikes can only affect two possible outcomes: you either get what you’re demanding and have a sandwich to celebrate, or you starve to death, hungry and unsatisfied. Bobby’s hunger strike was a success, in that it killed him. His previous prison rebellion attempts– the Blanket Strike, where he refused to wear a prison uniform and instead wrapped in a blanket, at the Dirty Strike, where he and others smeared their own shit on the walls– were less than successful. Also of note, Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament while in prison. This didn’t make the British even a little bit happy, and they rushed some legislation through to prevent convicted prisoners from serving more than a year in Parliament. Spoil sports.

Bobby kept a secret diary for the first 17 days of a the 66 day strike. You can read it here.

Should Have Killed Yourself Award
The last award of the evening is sort of a lifetime achievement, meaning that the suicidal person, through no fault of their own, manages to die of natural causes.

Frances Farmer, starlet and enfant terrible of Hollywood managed to make it to age 56 when, by all accounts, her life should have ended some 20 years before. Here’s how it breaks down: As a high school senior, our girl Franny writes an essay called “God Dies” about atheism. It is published by The Scholastic and kicks off a national freakout. This is not her first time stirring the shitpot and certainly won’t be her last, Baby girl does not play the Hollywood game. (Frances Farmer was her birth name; unlike most of the starlets, she refused to change it to something sexier.) After fighting with her home studio Paramount over things like her hair, clothes and boyfriends, she’s loaned out like a cheap whore to other studios. Then she gets stopped for driving with her headlights on during the WWII Pacific coast blackout. On the police report, she lists her occupation as “cocksucker.” She’s tossed in the drunk tank to dry out overnight and fined $500, which she only pays half of. Not long afterwards, the cops come a-knockin’ for the rest of the fine and Fran gets violent. Next thing you know, she’s got a six month jail sentence and shortly thereafter, she’s shuffled off to Western State Hospital in Washington. Though she may not have had that famed transorbital lobotomy, she did make it almost five years in the sanitarium, after which she barely survived through another 20 years of cheap secretarial work, failed attempts to make a celebrity comeback and her ongoing issue with alcoholism. In 1970, Frances Farmer was 56 years old and not getting any nicer. She died from cancer of the esophagus. The shittiest part is that none of the stuff that got our girl in trouble would have been quite so, well, troublesome if she’d been a guy. Hollywood’s boys club was engaging in far raunchier debaucheries and far filthier exploits than Dame Frances, and yet she got tossed in a loony bin because clearly, pissy behavior is so far out of character for a woman that it must be a sign of the crazies. If she’d killed herself when she had the chance– ladylike barbituates, a demure sliced wrist, the convertible running in the garage providing a deathly sleep free from visible marks– Fran would have made it to the highest echelon of Hollywood’s tragically doomed stars, like Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. Instead, her fate was far more tragic. Robbed of her dignity, looks and wealth, Frances Farmer lived out her days and has faded into virtual obscurity.

We can thank Kurt Cobain for reminding us of Frances Farmer’s impending revenge. Kurt himself might be exacting a little revenge himself. We’ll find out in the upcoming Celebrity Death Awards Part II: Murderous Murders and Murdering Murderers Who Murder.