(Bye-bye, Ennis.) You might want to grab some tissues for this one.........

Australia-born actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his NYC apartment today. It is reported that he allegedly died of either a drug overdose or hanging at Mary-Kate Olsen's apartment. More details as they come in. Sad. Very much so. Read more about the actor here and here. You may start any and all Brokeback Mountain references starting...now. UPDATE: According to our parent site, Gothamist: The housekeeper and masseuse tried to awake him and......

It's about 3:30 a.m. and some dude you just met a couple of days ago on Craig's List is shaking you awake. Crawling out of your thin, damp sleeping bag in the dark, you knock over a mug of watery, long-cold cocoa left over from earlier in the evening. The dank marine air cuts to the bone. You grimace mightily while pulling on your clothes, which are soaking wet. Your crotch still hurts from the last time, but you agreed to do this so there's nothing to do but bite the bullet and take your pull.

A bonus scene from the recently released interactive Brokeback Mountain DVD? Nah, it's just a glimpse into what about 600 lost and tortured souls will be experiencing this weekend during the 24 Hours of Laguna Seca. Part of the 24 Hours of Adrenaline nationwide series of 24-hour endurance cycling events, the 24 Hours of Laguna Seca mountain bike endurance relay race runs this weekend on the Fort Ord trails surrounding the Laguna Seca racetrack outside Monterey from 10:00 a.m. Saturday to 10 a.m. Sunday. Twenty-four hour events typically run from noon to noon, but the start time for this race was moved up in deference to Mama Hallmark's retail guilt trip.

In endurance racing, teams of racers complete laps on a circuit course. The team with the most amount of completed laps wins. In addition to the teams, many racers choose to solo, or ride the entire race by themselves. Yeah, that sounds like fun.

Cheeseball mountain bike clock from Bar-Decorations.com. Sorry.

Have you seen many of the Oscar nominees? We haven't (which doesn't make this excellent Fametracker post any less funny to us -- the Brokeback Mountain TV series pitch with Gavin in the sweeps episide left us with chest pains of hilarity). We have a lot of the screeners lying on our desk, gazing at us reproachfully as we while away the hours watching Tyra crap out on stripping and Ginger Snaps Back. We're......

Confession time: It's not that we hate Valentine's Day exactly, but... well, let's just say we're actually glad we're moving on the 14th. But if you're looking for smoochy, cuddly things to do down in the south bay (and really, who isn't?) we have some ideas for you. Of course, they're ideas from our bitter, black hearts but whatever - they're at least less cliche than a red rose and some overpriced dinner. If......

Today is the President's State of the Union speech, which basically means staying completely away from the TV or the non-Lindsey Lohan obsessed internets for the night lest we get over-run with a tidal wave of bile that these things cause. We hear this year's speech is going to be a doozy too-- while W. shreds the constitution, all the Republicans in congress will sit back and smoke cigars lit by $100 bills given to them by Jack Abramoff. Which raises the question of what to do? Well, there's always NetFlix, of course, as well as good old TiVo. It's also a good night to go to the movies and while Brokeback Mountain is all too obvious of a choice, not to mention something we've all seen by now, we'd like to suggest the Underworld: Evolution as there's something appropriate about watching a blood-drenched movie featuring both Vampires, Werewolves and Kate Beckinsale in a black leather outfit. Ba Bow! ...

We'll start with the fun stuff. Beth Spotswood manages to score the hottest ticket in town, and returns with an "Only in San Francisco" review of Brokeback Mountain. Distraught after the loss of the Hayes Green temple? SF Mike finds solace at the festive Marlena's. SF Leef, on the other hand, is a little jealous of the new 826 Valencia satellite store themes. And remember, kids, Santarchy comes but once a year! Coastsider reports......

We hate to admit it, but all this modern mania for Brokeback Mountain has simply passed us by. At this point, we're dreading the inevitable trip to the Embarcadero to watch the damn thing, borne solely out of our sense of obligation to stay on the cutting edge of anything related to buggery. (And even that motivation has waned, now that the movie's being advertised as a heterosexual love story.) Honestly, it's only barely......

As we look ahead to week 14 of the 2005 NFL season we see a pretty dreadful slate of games featuring the hometown teams. So we tried to think of a compelling reason why you should watch the games this weekend instead of going out with your homies to see the "gay cowboy eating pudding movie" (you know you want to) and we actually were able to come up with a few things. The biggest,......