Monday, December 29, 2008

Pause [updated and corrected]

I'd gotten "Bigger, Faster, Stronger" for Christmas, and was watching it in the morning. I'd paused it yesterday at about the 1:05 mark, when filmmaker Chris Bell's brother Mark was talking about lying to kids on the football team he was coaching about whether he took steroids.

Last night, we see the news that other brother Mike "Mad Dog" Bell was dead at age 37.

This morning, as I unpaused the film, and watched a confession to the Bell parents about trying steroids, I read that Mike had been found at a California rehab center, and that he'd been "clean" for 60 days. He'd been in treatment for alcohol and pain killer (ab)use.

While I read that, his dad was talking about Mike's delusions, how he wasn't facing up to what he was doing, and how he was afraid one day, Mike would be found dead.

His mother agonized over what could have made her boys be unsatisfied with their bodies, and not content with the perfection God had given them as they were.

Email informs us that Mike had been diagnosed as bi-polar, and had been on and off medications intended to treat it.

Our condolences to the Bells.

If anyone would like to attend his memorial service in the NY area it will be held on January 10 at 10 AM at Faith Assembly of God, 254 Spackenkill Road, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603.


2 comments:

daniel m (a/k/a Rant) said...

My condolences to the Bells, too. What a sad, apocryphal story.

Mike Solberg said...

Very sad.

syi