has opened up about the superstar’s children – insisting they are still traumatised by the singer’s tragic death.

Jackson’s mother Katherine was granted full custody of Prince Michael, 12, Paris, 11, and seven-year-old Prince Michael II aka Blanket, after the superstar passed away in June (09) and the trio moved into her home in Encino, Los Angeles.

La Toya admits it is heart-breaking to watch the youngsters deal with such a devastating loss.

She says, “Paris talks about her father all the time. She writes a lot and wears his shirts every day. They still smell of him and it helps her feel close to him. Her bedroom is covered in posters of Michael and she watches tapes of him all the time.

“Prince just doesn’t want to speak about it. He won’t even watch the DVDs – he just walks straight past the TV. It’s too soon, too touching. I do worry about him very much. And Blanket is just a very sad, shy little boy. He cries – he really does cry. No one can bring his daddy back – and it hurts so much. They all go to therapy and I truly hope Prince especially will be able to open up there.”

I heard today about the death of WWE legend Captain Lou Albano on Twitter, I learned about MJ, DJ AM and Kandi’s AJ among others on Twitter as well.

Does it seem like there are more celebs dying lately or perhaps we are just hearing about them more quickly and have more mediums to discuss them? Surely this year we have lost more celebs way too young but I just read that celeb death rates are not really growing, 31 deaths this summer—compared with roughly 29 in 2007 and 23 in 2008.

Let’s hope for fewer celeb name trending topics or that those trending topics mean something good!!

~Buzz

In June, an initial coroner’s report said pitchman extraordinaire Billy Mays had died of heart disease. Now, we’ve learned cocaine contributed to his death.

According to the Hillsborough County, Fla., medical examiner, the bearded Orange Glo hawker did indeed die from a heart attack while sleeping. But toxicology tests reveal that cocaine was a factor.

“Cocaine use caused or contributed to the development of his heart disease, and thereby contributed to his death,” the medical examiner said in a press release.

While the 50-year-old Mays had used the drug in the days before his June 27 death, the coroner said, he was not under the influence of cocaine at the time he died.

Previously, the coroner said Mays had prescription painkillers for a hip problem but had no known history of drug abuse.

A month ago, Discovery Channel it would pick up a second season of the Mays-fronted reality show Pitchmen “as a tribute to Mays’ legacy.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, Michael Turner, confirmed the death of the 72-year-old actor. He said the embassy was informed by Thai authorities that Carradine died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, but he could not provide further details out of consideration for his family.

The Web site of the Thai newspaper The Nation cited unidentified police sources as saying Carradine was found Thursday hanged in his luxury hotel room.

It said Carradine was in Bangkok to shoot a movie and had been staying at the hotel since Tuesday.

The newspaper said Carradine could not be contacted after he failed to appear for a meal with the rest of the film crew on Wednesday, and that his body was found by a hotel maid at 10 a.m. Thursday morning. The name of the movie was not immediately available.

It said a preliminary police investigation found that he had hanged himself with a cord used with the room’s curtains. It cited police as saying he had been dead at least 12 hours and there was no sign that he had been assaulted.

A police officer at Bangkok’s Lumpini precinct station would not confirm the identity of the dead man, but said the luxury Swissotel Nai Lert Park hotel had reported that a male guest killed himself there.

Carradine was a leading member of a venerable Hollywood acting family that included his father, character actor John Carradine, and brother Keith.

In all, he appeared in more than 100 feature films with such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman and Hal Ashby. One of his prominent early film roles was as singer Woody Guthrie in Ashby’s 1976 biopic “Bound for Glory.”

But he was best known for his role as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin priest traveling the 1800s American frontier West in the TV series “Kung Fu,” which aired in 1972-75.

He reprised the role in a mid-1980s TV movie and played Caine’s grandson in the 1990s syndicated series “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.”

He returned to the top in recent years as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s two-part saga “Kill Bill.”

The character, the worldly father figure of a pack of crack assassins, was a shadowy presence in 2003’s “Kill Bill – Vol. 1.” In that film, one of Bill’s former assassins (Uma Thurman) begins a vengeful rampage against her old associates.

In “Kill Bill – Vol. 2,” released in 2004, Thurman’s character comes face to face again with Bill himself. The role brought Carradine a Golden Globe nomination as best supporting actor.

Bill was a complete contrast to his TV character Kwai Chang Caine, the soft-spoken refugee from a Shaolin monastery, serenely spreading wisdom and battling bad guys in the Old West. He left after three seasons, saying the show had started to repeat itself.

After “Kung Fu,” Carradine starred in the 1975 cult flick “Death Race 2000.” He starred with Liv Ullmann in Bergman’s “The Serpent’s Egg” in 1977 and with his brothers in the 1980 Western “The Long Riders.”

But after the early 1980s, he spent two decades doing mostly low-budget films. Tarantino’s films changed that.

“All I’ve ever needed since I more or less retired from studio films a couple of decades ago … is just to be in one,” Carradine told The Associated Press in 2004.

“There isn’t anything that Anthony Hopkins or Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery or any of those old guys are doing that I couldn’t do,” he said. “All that was ever required was somebody with Quentin’s courage to take and put me in the spotlight.”

One thing remained a constant after “Kung Fu”: Carradine’s interest in Oriental herbs, exercise and philosophy. He wrote a personal memoir called “Spirit of Shaolin” and continued to make instructional videos on tai chi and other martial arts.

In the 2004 interview, Carradine talked candidly about his past boozing and narcotics use, but said he had put all that behind him and stuck to coffee and cigarettes.

“I didn’t like the way I looked, for one thing. You’re kind of out of control emotionally when you drink that much. I was quicker to anger.”

“You’re probably witnessing the last time I will ever answer those questions,” Carradine said. “Because this is a regeneration. It is a renaissance. It is the start of a new career for me.

“It’s time to do nothing but look forward.”