Afternoon Greg: The death of David Carradine; Whitney’s return; Kyra on Kevin’s Googling

Good day all. So glad that June gloom is gone – for now – and that I was able to enjoy a nice lunch outdoors at the LA Farmers Market with my pal, Brent. We hit the Gumbo Pot which was, as always, delish!

It resonates with me a little more than it might otherwise because the week before I was laid off by the LA Daily News, I interviewed David who became a TV icon in the 70s with the series Kung Fu. We mostly talked about his music because he was going to be performing with his band David Carradine and the Cosmic Rescue Team.

“I had (another) band at one point in the ’60s and I was drummer and manager. I fired the band because they wouldn’t let me sing,” he said. “Right after that, I discovered myself writing a song, writing down the verses on the walls of my house. I invited Barbara Hershey to come live with me, and the whole world changed. (He and Hershey have a 36-year-old son originally named Free who later changed his name to Tom).

We also talked about his various spiritual journeys over the years.

“Some were down blind alleys, some weren’t,” he said. “And we have to have something in there about love. I love my dog, my kids, my wife. I love Angelina Jolie and the birds and the trees and I’m in love with Obama.”

Rest in peace, David.

WILL WE ALWAYS LOVE HER? It’s been a few years in the making but Whitney Houston is finally ready to re-emerge with a new album due out Sept. 1. We’ve only seen glimpses of this once great star lately – mostly at private industry events involving her mentor Clive Davis.

The singer’s last album, Just Whitney, was released in 2002 to mixed reviews.

“The same way her debut album took a while to put together, you just don’t do it by going into a computer. You wait for the material to justify a new album,” Davis told MTV earlier this year. “Pretty much, it’s come in.”

It’s been a decade-long slide for Whitney who was on top for so long with such hits as I Will Always Love You, Greatest Love of All, I Want to Dance With Somebody, Saving All My Love, I Have Nothing and many more. She also had a thriving movie career which was launched in a big way opposite Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard followed by the smash hit Waiting to Exhale. She also starred opposite Denzel Washington in The Preacher’s Wife and co-starred in and produced a 1997 TV version of Cinderella.

But marriage to singer Bobby Brown, which produced a daughter, also seemed to bring a superstar at the top of her game way down and she admitted to abusing various drugs. Only good things seem to have happened since she split from Brown and hopefully, at 45, she can begin a new chapter in her career and make up for some of the lost time.

Good luck to Whitney!

KYRA SEDGWICK’S TABLOID HELL: Kyra Sedgwick kicks off a new season of TNT’s The Closer on June 8 and the role of Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson has been the part of a lifetime for this terrific actress. It’s a scandal that she’s not won the Emmy for her performance despite nominations every year. She carries her show and you can’t take your eye off of her.

But I digress.

Kyra does a Q&A with Entertainment Weekly and talks about how strange it was for her and husband Kevin Bacon – they’ve been married for 20 years – to be in the tabloids when it was revealed that they had invested money with Bernie Madoff.

“I have such newfound empathy for people who are always on these covers, like Jennifer Aniston,” she said.

And it was kind of hard to ignore all the press about it: “My husband is a Google Alert guy. He has one on himself and me and I’m like, Dude, I don’t want to know what people are saying.”

Well, if they have any sense at all, they’re saying that Kyra and Kevin are one of the classiest couples in showbiz. The fact that they have been staunch supporters of LGBT causes makes them even more cool.