I obviously didn't plan for two celebrity death posts in a row, but no way could I ignore the passing of Anne Heche. I've been a big fan since Walking and Talking, a lovable little indie film starring actors who were mostly unknown at the time (Anne Heche, Catherine Keener, Liev Schreiber, Todd Field) who all went on to bigger careers. For me, W&T was one of those movies that came along at just the right time in my life, and it was so funny and true and I connected with it so deeply that I felt like it was made just for me. I think most people have a movie that's like that for them, and Walking and Talking was mine.

Although Amelia (Catherine Keener) is the one I related to back in the day--mostly for her hot mess of a love life--Anne Heche is equally fabulous as Amelia's neurotic best friend, Laura. 

Anne is brilliant throughout, particularly the bit where she reacts to her fiance's....gift. The whole scene is so bizarre and hilarious that I won't spoil it by revealing too much.

The Walking and Talking soundtrack is perfection. Not only does it feature Billy Bragg and Liz Phair, it also introduced me to artists I probably wouldn't have discovered otherwise, like The Sea and Cake, Frente, Pal Shazar, and Green House 27.

Speaking of Liz Phair, the use of her excellent and underappreciated song "Go West" in the scene where Amelia stalks Bill the video store clerk is E V E R Y T H I N G.

"Look at his legs. Look how they walk."

Walking and Talking must be one of those films that the studio had trouble marketing. The Roku description is downright inaccurate: "Neuroses and angst fill Manhattan yuppie best friends on the eve of one's wedding." Yuppies? Uh, not really. And the story doesn't take place on the eve of Laura's wedding, the bulk of it happens a few months beforehand. The writeup on the DVD box is even worse, making W&T out to be a generic zany romcom of the variety that Ashton Kutcher used to star in: "There are good dates, bad dates, and no dates. Wild fantasies. Long-distance phone sex. And an outrageous search for Mr. Right that turns up every oddball imaginable!" Okay, none of that happens, apart from the "long-distance phone sex," and that's an offscreen subplot involving Amelia's ex Andrew (Liev Schreiber). I don't know who shit out that synopsis, but he didn't watch the movie. And yeah, I suspect it was a guy who wrote that. Just a hunch. Whatever. Basically, don't trust any "official" descriptions of the movie, because they all seem to be bullshit.      

It's funny that I've always seen Anne Heche as this '90s indie movie queen, a la Parker Posey. The fact is, Heche's only indie movies from that era were Walking and Talking and a 1995 film she starred in called Pie in the Sky. I remember renting that one with some girlfriends for a movie night back in the day, which is a ritual I so dearly miss. My favorite thing to do back then was to grab a few friends, pick up some tapes at the video store, order Thai carryout and watch movies. I mean, I know we have Netflix and Prime and everything else now, but I think we can all agree that it's just not the same. Anyway, I remember all of us enjoying Pie in the Sky, an off-beat little flick about a traffic-obsessed 20-something dude (Josh Charles) trying to land his dream job as a helicopter traffic reporter in L.A. while pursuing a romance with an avant-garde dancer played by Heche. I recently discovered the full movie on YouTube while I was laid up with COVID, and gave it another look.

         

While PitS has held up well and is quite charming, it unfortunately features that lazy trope that panicking screenwriters often toss in at the last minute: "WHAT? You mean to tell me that (love interest) is on the way to the airport right this second to start a new life in New York/Paris/Australia/Timbuktu? Follow that taxi!" (Cue quirky song by Cowboy Junkies/Rusted Root/The Lumineers/et cetera). 

Although Heche had some high profile roles in the late '90s in Wag the Dog and Donnie Brasco, I feel like she didn't become known by the public until she was revealed as Ellen Degeneres's real-life girlfriend (which was in 1997, according to Wikipedia). After becoming famous for her personal life, her career picked up and she landed starring roles in major movies like the fun popcorn comedy Six Days Seven Nights and dramas like Return To Paradise and Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake. 

But then she and Ellen broke up and then...then came that batshit incident where Anne was found wandering in the California desert, knocking on random stranger's doors and claiming to be a space alien searching for the mothership to take her to heaven. When I read about it at the time I just thought, "Hmm, bad acid trip?" Although I think the official story ended up being that Heche was suffering from dehydration and/or nervous exhaustion. You know, the usual crap that a celebrity's PR people will fart out when their client has an embarrassing public meltdown. 

It's weird because in my mind I'd conflated a lot of those events. I was thinking that Anne Heche started dating Ellen Degeneres around the same time she was in that Harrison Ford movie, then like a month or two later came the Ellen breakup and the-wandering-in-the-desert episode, and then shortly after that Heche did the ill-advised "Celestia" interview and the press junket for her memoir, Call Me Crazy. According to Wikipedia however, all of that took place over a period of several years, between 1997 and 2001.   

In fact, it was 2001 (like a week before 9/11) when Anne did that infamous Baba Wawa interview where she spoke in tongues (Heche, not Walters--though that would've been hilarious) and claimed that she had an alter ego, "Celestia," who was a goddess in a parallel universe. I think she also said that she used to think Jesus was her brother? Or maybe that she was Jesus? I can't recall exactly, but I know Jesus was involved somehow.  

I remember watching the interview when it aired and just thinking, "Oh gurl, NO!" I hated that "my" actress from my favorite little indie chick flick was doing this to herself. I mean, I didn't give a shit about Anne Heche's personal life; I just loved her work and I was really pulling for her. I wanted her to have the career she deserved, and I was convinced that her wackadoodle behavior would surely torpedo any future prospects.

Note: pretty sure this was shot at the loft where they interviewed me
and my British cohorts in our 20/20 interview back in 2012.
(I always get excited when I recognize "our" loft in ABC interviews.)

But apparently I was wrong, because Anne Heche seemed to bounce back just fine, working steadily and--according to her IMDB page--completing over 50 projects between 2001 and 2021. 

I think it's a testament not only to Anne's talent and versatility as an actor, but also to how well-liked she seemed to be in the industry. After her death earlier this month, Emily Bergl was quoted as saying, "Anne was not only a genius, but one of the most astoundingly focused and prepared actors I ever worked with.....All day, scene after scene, her work would be technically flawless, and yet always remained spontaneous. I don't think she was capable of phoning it in. And then she would do it all again the next day." 

I'm not interested in rehashing the gory details of Anne Heche's car crash and death earlier this month. It's too sad and too sordid. I just hope that in time she's remembered less for her personal life and more for her work, because she truly was a gifted actress.  

I'm closing with my favorite track from Walking and Talking, which will always be the quintessential Anne Heche movie in my mind. I feel like this song is appropriate, since the lyrics describe a tempestuous relationship with a funny, free-spirited, eccentric woman....kinda like our gurl. 

I was actually surprised to find a video for this one; I had no idea Billy Bragg even made music videos. And watch for cameos by Michael Stipe and Peter Buck! 

Nice summation of Anne and her work from The Guardian. 

Good writeup from 2016 on the 20th anniversary of Walking and Talking here.

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY
"Dare to Fall in Love" 

A disclaimer: my inclusion of this entry in the RFO series does not constitute endorsement or approval, because, well...it's kind of shit.

In the midst of a recent insomnia-fueled Googling session, I was trying to find the name of a half-remembered song. I didn't even care for the song that much, but some of lyrics had become inexplicably lodged in my brain and that was enough to activate my OCD need for a definitive answer.

I'm a bit surprised that I was able to actually find the song, because the only lyrics I could recall went something like, "One kiss, it's a something something thing, I get what I deserve, if I something something thing." Well, it turns out the song is "Dare To Fall in Love" by someone called Brent Bourgeois, and it was released in 1990. 

According to Wikipedia, the song was only a modest hit but it received a fair bit of play on VH-1 back in the day. This puzzled me, because I was 16-17 years old in 1990 and I sure as shit wasn't watching VH-1. That changed later on in the '90s when the former soft rock music channel started producing fun shows like Pop-Up Video and the insanely addictive Behind the Music series, but in 1990 I was still very much a devotee of MTV, grooving on 120 Minutes, Post Modern, and--embarrassingly enough--Totally Pauly. You see kids, in 1990 I thought Pauly Shore was funny and irreverent with his stoner patois and oddball antics; this was before I learned that his bohemian hippie shtick was merely a gimmick and he was actually a privileged Hollywood brat who lucked into a standup career by an accident of birth (his parents owned The Comedy Store). I also thought Totally Pauly (I didn't yet know him as Pauly Shore) was kind of hunky, a view that some of my high school friends also shared, just so you know I wasn't the only freak who lusted after the future star of Jury Duty.

Give me a break, I was young and naive. We all were.

 

Oh hell, since I'm in confessional mode and we're being real, I also thought Married With Children was funny and irreverent. Yeah I know, but hey, at least I can proudly say I never watched Saved By the Bell. In fact, I didn't know anyone my age who watched that fetid turd of a show. I suspect SBTB was the type of pop culture ephemera purportedly aimed at high schoolers but really only watched by middle schoolers, kind of like how 13-year-olds read Seventeen magazine while actual 17-year-olds were reading Cosmo. 

True story: today whenever Saved By the Bell is mentioned as some sort 

of beloved Gen X touchstone....I die a little inside.   

Anyway, I don't know for sure where I heard this "Dare to Fall in Love" song, but I think I most likely encountered it through the piped-in music station at Milano's Pasta To Go, the Italian fast food joint in Broad Ripple where I began my illustrious, short-lived career in food service during the summer of 1990. The restaurant's sound system played a perpetual stream of the soulless adult contemporary dreck of the day; I swear I heard "Hold On" by Wilson Philips about 35 goddamned times during every one of my shifts. I still get PTSD flashbacks when I hear the opening chords of that syrupy song. There was also a shit ton of Gloria Estefan, Michael Bolton, Peter Cetera, Kenny G, and the like. It was hell. That's the reason I strongly suspect that this barely-one-hit wonder by Brett Bourgeois was foisted upon my tender psyche during the summer I was slinging pasta at Milano's and trying to remember why the hell I'd signed up for this shit.

Man I hated that job, but I guess that's sort of the point of having a fast food gig when you're a kid. It's important that you learn early how much working in fast food sucks so you can spend the rest of your life staying as far away from that career choice as you possibly can. To add insult to injury, I was the youngest employee there, so my dickhead manager Byron made me do like 90% of the grunt work. Whenever business was slow and Byron was around, I could be found mopping the floors, washing the windows, and (shudder) cleaning the toilets. I think since it was my first job, Byron felt the need to school me on having a strong work ethic. Either that, or he was just a prick. Probably a bit of both. 

There were a few high points though. One time I was working a late night shift with a skeleton crew that consisted of myself, Carl (the cool manager), and Doug the kitchen guy, when Don Hein--the sports anchor from the Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR--rolled up in the drive-thru. I remember this mostly because he ordered manicotti and when he got to the window, Carl informed me that, oops, we were out of manicotti, and when I had to break the news to Don Hein he got really pissed off. I think Carl offered him some free breadsticks or something, trying to smooth things over. It didn't seem to work because ol' Don just heaved a loud sigh and said, "Oh for Christ sake, just forget it," then peeled out of the drive-thru in a huff. Carl and Doug and I sort of looked at each other and we were like, hey, wasn't that Don Hein? And then we laughed. You had to be there I guess, but trust me. It was funny.

Do not come between this dude and his manicotti. Seriously, just don't.

Then there was Mike, one of the cooks that I used to goof off with whenever we were left unsupervised. Mike was one of those hip hop loving white guys who sported an early '90s "fade" hairstyle with complicated designs shaved into the side of his head. To be fair, I'm pretty sure he was one of the few white dudes who came by his urban trappings honestly since he was an incoming senior at Broad Ripple High School (David Letterman's alma mater!), which, yeah, it was in Broad Ripple but was also an IPS school, thus a lot rougher than other northside schools. Mike and I had a bit of a flirtation going on, but he was really only interested in ladies of color so I don't think he ever took me seriously as potential girlfriend material. We had a lot of fun, though. We used to hang out in the kitchen where he would crank up WTLC (the local rap/R&B radio station), and he would always go nuts when they played Bell Biv DeVoe's Poison, one of the big tracks of the summer. Personally I couldn't stand that song, but I enjoyed watching Mike dance around the kitchen to it. He could bust a move and was really good at the sort of hip hop/club style of dancing that I now associate with Bobby Brown--lots of running in place and throwing of elbows and such. 

BUT there did happen to be one hip hop tune that even I--the Depeche Mode-loving, 120 Minutes-watching, clove smoking fashion victim that I was--could not resist, and that song was Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance. I think Mike considered it a personal triumph when he got me to do The Humpty Hump with him, right there in the kitchen. (No, it wasn't a sex thing.)

"This is my dance y'all, Humpty Hump's my name!"

Then there were the various "older" (twentysomething) guys that came in on the weekends to line their stomachs with pasta and other carbs before a heavy night of barhopping in Broad Ripple. Yes, sometimes they were cute, and sure, oftentimes they didn't care how underage I looked, and of course, I'd be lying if I said my dumb ass wasn't flattered by their inappropriate attentions. Whenever they asked me where I went to high school, I'd dodge the question by saying, "I go to school in southern Indiana, I'm just here for the summer." (Which was TRUE! You couldn't say that wasn't true, dammit.) And they'd be like, "So you're in college? Where?" And I'd say "I go to a private school down near Evansville. Marian Heights? Yeah, it's really small, you probably haven't heard of it." And with no way to verify what the hell or where the hell Marian Heights was (ah, the joys of the pre-internet age!), they bought into my bullshit. Not that I ever benefited from this in any real way, but standing behind the cash register in my hideously dorky Milano's uniform, a bit of ego-fluffing now and then certainly didn't go amiss. What can I say? I was every inch the Stacy character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. 

"You look like you could still be in high school."

"Ha. Yeah, everybody says that."

Unlike Stacy, however, I didn't have a Linda to fall back on. I was sadly Linda-less. That really sucked for me, because if ever there was an unsophisticated 16-year-old need of a hip, worldly-wise older girl to shepherd me through what would be an increasingly difficult year in my teenage existence, it was my awkward self.  

I did have a Gretchen, however, but she wasn't much help. Although she was friendly enough, my fellow cashier Gretchen was one of those girls who was convinced that any and every male who came within a one-mile radius must be madly in lust with her. I mean, Gretchen was girl-next-door cute in a preppy sort of way, but she wasn't exactly the teenage temptress she fancied herself to be. For instance, like some dude would wander up to the counter to ask for extra packets of parmesan cheese, and as soon as he was gone she'd be all, "Oh my God, did you see that? He was totally hitting on me! You mean you didn't notice? God he's being sooooo obvious, it's really annoying." She pretty much swore that every single male employee at Milano's, even sweet, laid-back, grandfatherly Carl (the aforementioned cool manager), was hopelessly obsessed with her. I didn't see it, but whatever. I wasn't going to be the one to burst her bubble.

I do remember a funny incident where Byron (the dickhead manager) called Gretchen, Mike, and me into his office for a Serious Talk. Apparently it had come to Byron's attention that certain members of "the team" were utilizing the Milano's store phone for personal calls, thus wasting the company's time while they were (GASP!) on the clock! (Yes, that's exactly how Byron spoke: he was your garden variety, cartoonishly sincere, middle management hack.) Anyway, Gretchen immediately piped up and was like, "Yeah, that was probably me. See, my dad called me here at work because he heard a rumor that I'm dating this older guy, and he's trying to keep tabs on me, and yada, yada, yada," and just gabbled on and on for like five minutes as Byron's eyes glazed over, and Mike bit his lip to keep from laughing, and my brain floated off somewhere into the stratosphere. Finally Byron--pissed off that his big Teachable Moment had been hijacked by Gretchen's inane prattle--just cut her off mid-sentence and he's like, "Right. Bottom line, no personal phone calls on the clock. Got it? Good. Back to work."

Besides Gretchen, there were a few other cashiers I worked with. One was Maggie, a pretty blonde Butler student. I was usually paired with Maggie on weekdays, and we would often reward ourselves for surviving the lunch rush by splitting an order of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. Milano's was the first place I'd ever encountered mozzarella sticks and I thought they were the greatest culinary invention ever. I mean, cheese--fried AND battered? Yes please! I never got to know Maggie all that well but I thought she was cool, although I remember Mike having some vague reason for not liking her. I think he claimed she was stuck up or something. Whatever. She shared her mozzarella sticks with me. She was a good egg.

Then there was a girl called Christy. She was hired a few weeks after I was, so she was the "new girl" for a while. She was quiet and a bit awkward, but nice enough. I remember us bonding over our shared dislike of Madonna's "Vogue," another song that was everywhere that summer. We both agreed that it was dumb and annoying. (I was a fan of Madonna's first three albums, but by 1990 she'd started in on that "I'm a serious artiste" bullshit, and I was over it.) Then one evening, I arrived to work the dinner shift to find that Christy had just up and quit earlier that day. Apparently, she had refused to wear the sandwich board.

For the uninitiated, this is an example of a sandwich board:

Of course, the purpose of the Milano's sandwich board was not to broadcast the wearer's desire to discuss male genitalia; it was meant to advertise the restaurant. The sandwich board was Byron's bright idea, of course, and he made it mandatory for every single one of us (excluding the managers) to do the sandwich board walk of shame up and down Broad Ripple Avenue. We all thought it was lame, but I didn't mind it too much because it was at least a chance to get outside and away from the store for a bit. I mean, I felt like a complete dork walking around wearing the stupid sign, but I considered it a small price to pay in exchange for an hour of freedom while still on the clock.

My coworker Christy, however, was not so chill about it. When she arrived at work that day to find it was her turn to do the sandwich board shuffle, she put her foot down and said no. Byron informed her that she could either comply or hang up her Milano's apron forever. Christy chose the latter. I remember Mike being livid--absolutely livid--about the whole situation. He was like--what--did this bitch think she was too good for sandwich board duty? I didn't get why he was so bothered about it. Actually, I was inclined to side with Christy. I mean, fuck Byron, and fuck his stupid sandwich board. Damn the man, fight the power, and all that jazz. Good for you, Christy. I hope you're still raging against the machine, wherever you are. 

Image source: Mississippi Mayhem on Etsy

Speaking of The Man, I got called on the carpet myself that summer for inadvertently charging an expired credit card. You see kids, back in the day when a customer wanted to pay with a card, we had to take the card and run it through this contraption that Google tells me is a "manual imprint." It was a pain in the ass, is what it was.

I should mention that credit card transactions were extremely rare, since 99% of our customers paid with cash, as was the norm; Milano's was considered ahead of its time since we were one of the few fast food restaurants that even accepted credit cards back then. It was so long ago that once in a while I'd even get people asking if we accepted personal checks as payment, and I was supposed to say brightly, "I'm sorry, we no longer take checks, but we do accept Visa and Mastercard." 

When we did get a customer paying with credit, we had to ask for a driver's license to check that the name on the card matched up with the ID, and--most importantly--we had to verify the credit card's expiration date. Guess what I forgot to do late one night when some jackass handed me a card that had (apparently) expired the month before? Yep.

Dude, Byron was pissed. When my oversight was discovered a few days later, he made a big production out of calling me into his office to show me a photocopy of the credit card imprint and asking if I saw anything wrong with it. (Can I just say that condescending bosses who treat their employees like they're first graders should be shot out of a cannon and into the sun?) I looked over the paper, and finally I was like, "Okay, I see it. The card was expired." Byron was like, "Yes, very good! Congratulations, you got yourself a written warning." (Oh, the bastard was loving this.) So he pulled out this official looking sheet of paper that basically stated that I'd fucked up, that it had been brought to my attention that I'd fucked up, that I understood the extent to which I'd fucked up, and would I please sign on the dotted line below to acknowledge that I'd fucked up? It probably also said I was a lawless degenerate who shouldn't be allowed to breed or vote. I don't know, I didn't really read it. I just signed the damn thing and got the hell out of there. 

I think Byron was expecting a bigger reaction, probably hoping that I'd burst into tears and grovel at his feet for forgiveness or something, but really I couldn't be arsed. Mostly because it was the beginning of August, I'd given my two weeks notice the previous week, and I had like four more shifts left before I said arrivederci to Byron and Milano's. 

At the end of my afternoon shift on the last day of work, I hugged Mike and Gretchen, promising to visit whenever I was back in town on school breaks (which I actually did a few times), then clocked out and quickly scooted my ass out the door in order to avoid bidding Byron a final farewell. It was real, it was fun, but it hadn't been real fun. As I said earlier, it was a summer job. You weren't really supposed to like it.  

As for Milano's, I'm sad to say that the restaurant folded around 1993 or so--about the time Fazoli's opened up a bunch of Indianapolis locations and swallowed up Milano's customer base. 

Fuck off, Fazoli's. Your spaghetti sucks.

The building (strip mall, actually) that housed Milano's is still standing, and although 1035 Broad Ripple Avenue has been home to various small businesses over the last few decades, it's now a Mexican cafe called Biscuits. I've never been there, but my sister tells me they serve a really good brunch. Looking at their Yelp page, it's changed a lot on the inside. The biggest difference (besides the Mexican-inspired decor) is that they've rearranged things to a diner-like setup where the kitchen is front and center and you can see the food being cooked right there, whereas with Milano's, the kitchen was hidden in the back where the cooks could goof off 80% of the time and the cashiers like me were at the counter on the frontlines.   

But I am happy to report that the storefront proudly sports 

the same green awnings from the Milano's era.

Oh hell, now see what I did? I got all carried away talking about my teenage years and summer jobs and fast food pasta joints that I completely forgot the reason I started writing this post in the first place. 

Anyway, yeah, Brent Bourgeois and "Dare To Fall in Love." There's not a lot to say about the song, it's just your typical soft-rock yuppie ballad. The video is nothing to write home about either; just some arty shots of bored-looking models floating around a hotel room while Bourgeois (apparently that's his real name) lounges around lip syncing moodily. One notable aspect is Brent's hair, which manages to combine two of the worst early '90s hairstyle trends: long, thin, 90210-inspired sideburns and a greasy, over-gelled mullet. 

According to his Wikipedia page he now records Christian music, which I can totally see because he looks a lot like the lead singer from Creed. 

Damn, I mean....he really looks like the guy from Creed. WOW. Are we sure he's not Scott Stapp's dad? (Apparently he's not, but holy shit, the resemblance is spooky!)

  

ADVENTURES IN SCAM BAITING PART VI:

HOW CAN WE BE LOVERS IF WE CAN'T BE FRIENDS?

(OR: Love in the Time of COVID-19)

Just a quick one to give us all a few laughs while we wait out the Apocalypse.

This is a guy who contacted me on Instagram yesterday. The thing about this one was that it took me a while to notice that he was claiming to be a celebrity. I guess I wasn't really paying attention, I just accepted his message request and started right in quoting some Kate Bush lyrics at him. 

Heh. I love that crazy ass song.

He's got a lot of chutzpah to call me out on a fake photo. How does he know I'm not Kate Bush?

Okay, below you can see the moment where I realized he was pretending to be Michael Bolton. The '90s balladeer, obviously. Not the character from Office Space.

An aside: I assumed that his bogus Instagram would be set to "Private" like 99% of these scam accounts are, so I was surprised when I checked and saw that the dude actually made an effort to swipe some pics from MB's official social media, like this one of homeboy wearing a scarf and enjoying a matcha. Poor Michael. I bet he had no idea that this very photo would one day be used by some random mouth-breather to try and dupe some unsuspecting soft rock aficionados.   

So once I realized who the dude was claiming to be, I decided to hop on that pony and ride it into the dirt.

Okay I should provide some backstory on my OJ Simpson comment above. Paula Barbieri (C-list model/actress and OJ Simpson's paramour during the time of the infamous murders) wrote a book called The Other Woman: My Years With OJ Simpson. I tracked down a copy around the time of that OJ miniseries--I wrote about the show here BTW--(jeez, was that really four years ago?) and it was a tawdry but enjoyable read. Some of the random stuff from the book I remember is that Paula was with OJ in the early/mid-90s and while he wasn't physically abusive, he was given to throwing tantrums and acting like a petulant asshole if he didn't get his way (big surprise there). He also either cheated on her a lot or she suspected that he did, I can't recall which. OJ was also buddies with a certain pseudo-billionaire hanger-on by the name of Donald Trump, and there was a anecdote where Paula was with OJ at a golf tournament somewhere and Dumpcake creepily put the moves on her as soon as OJ turned his back. Paula told OJ about it later and instead of actually doing something constructive with his psychotic roid rage, OJ just sort of shrugged it off like, "yeah well, that's just Donald being Donald." Ugh. Wastes of oxygen, the both of them.

An image from the book: 

Paula stands between a future murderer

and a future fascist cult leader.

Anyhoo the relevant bit here is that after a lot of on-and-offing with their relationship, Paula finally decided she'd had enough and, during the weekend of the murders, she told OJ sayonara and flew to Las Vegas for a rendezvous with Michael Bolton, as she had recently appeared in one of his music videos and had been digging his chili ever since. The song is called "Completely" by the way, and hoo boy, is this a giant gooey hunk of Velveeta right here.

Sorry, but why does he always sound so constipated? Dude, senna leaf tea. Natural and effective. Just sayin'.

So Paula's in Vegas all set to ride Michael's Bolt-on when news of the murders hits the airwaves, and in a fit of guilt she decides to return (oh gurl NO!) to stand by OJ, a misguided decision I'm sure she still regrets even though her relationship with him went down the toilet for good as soon as his trial was over.

And that brings us up to speed.     

Come on, I don't really think Paula and MB's hookup--whether attempted or successful--had anything to do with OJ killing his ex-wife. I was just being facetious.

As above: I assume "Telegram" (?) is some sort of messaging app currently popular in the scamming community, but I've never heard of it.

So below: The dude kept me hanging for a while and I was itching to just block, report, and forget about him, so this is how I ended it.

It turns out that Michael Bolton is a man of many talents; while doing a search on his name I discovered that he wrote a children's book in 1997. It's available on Amazon, and the description makes the story sound suspiciously similar to that of Siddhartha Guatama:

"An award-winning singer and songwriter pens his first children's title in this charming story of a king's son who, disgusted with the greed that power can bring, leaves his father to travel the kingdom as a commoner."

I want a framed poster of this to hang up in my guest room. 

Seriously. It's awesome.

It has mostly favorable reviews, too. Back in 2012 an Amazon user named Gail rated it five stars and wrote: "I got this for my granddaughter. Michael Bolton did a great job with this story and she loves reading it."

Really does sound like the perfect book to read to a youngster while you wait out the End of Days, doesn't it? And the good news is, you can get a used copy for under 10 bucks! Go for it.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

I'm a bit behind, but I wanted to comment on Episode 6, the Marcia Clark-centered installment of the People V. OJ . Kudos to the writers for providing a window into the nastiness Marcia Clark had to deal with from all sides in regards to her appearance, because even in a supposedly progressive decade like the 1990's, the most important aspects of a powerful female public figure were still her hair, her clothes, her "likability," and precious little else.

It's another aspect of that freakshow trial that they got right; I totally remember seeing a clip of that whore Lance Ito making bitchy comments about Marcia's hair from his perch on the bench. (Seriously, when will men learn not to pick on a woman's hair? Especially when most males are so severely lacking in the follicle department?)

Because if anyone is qualified to rate someone else's looks, it's this hunka-hunka burnin' love.

(Is this Lance's version of "blue steel?")

Marcia should have fired back, "Oh hey Lance, nice work on the comb-over today! You almost managed to cover up that bald spot." Then she should have pointed at OJ and shouted, all lawyer-y and indignant, "YOU! Wipe that smirk off your face before I come over there and do it for you. And Johnnie? Bite my lily-white ass." Of course, she wouldn't have said any of that in court, but I'm sure she was thinking it every damn day of the trial and undoubtedly launched into daily profanity-laden rants about Ito, OJ, and that whole slimy defense team to her friends and colleagues behind closed doors. According to the book the series is based on, Jeffrey Toobin's The Run of His Life (which I read last week. A bit slow in the middle, but otherwise a good read. As dense as it was, I ripped through it pretty quickly), Marcia swore like a longshoreman, chain-smoked Dunhills, and had a hot fling with Christopher Darden. She was more of a bad ass than any of those bitches on the defense team. In fact, she could have totally eaten them all for breakfast and picked her teeth with Cochran's bones, but she was so hamstrung by the gross, sexist atmosphere created by the media and all those assholes at the OJ table, who I believe were secretly petrified of her.

And don't even get me started on that washed-up boozebag F. Lee Bailey and his lame courtroom reference to his lap hog in the midst of all the glove-trying-on shenanigans, trying to awkwardly imply that his own hands were also too big to fit those stupid gloves. (And how ironic that this episode aired just days after Trump made a similar joke during the Republican debate. What is it with these elderly white males and their penis obsessions? Whatever.) And what was with his crack that "(Marcia's) eyesight is as bad as her memory?" Was he implying that she failed to recognize his alpha male virility because she hadn't gotten any in such a long time? Girl, please. M.C. was getting more action than anyone in that courtroom. And unlike F. Lee Bailey, she never had to pay for it.  Marcia should have shut down old F-LeeBay by calling his bluff: "Well whip it out then, whisky dick, and let's see what you got!"

I do love Nathan Lane as F-Lee. Another stroke of genius casting.

People V. OJ Ep 5

Holy shit, I totally remember this! 

I've been wondering about this Hodgman character and waiting to see if the show would address his sudden absence from the trial, because it's one of the incidents I remember quite well. 

Turns out, yep--they did! But in a totally melodramatic it-didn't-really-happen-that-way fashion. 

In the show, they had John Hodgman (Marcia Clark's litigating partner) suffer a heart attack and dramatically keel over right there in court after getting all pissed off at the defense (specifically, Johnny Cochran). Watching that scene, I actually shouted "Bullshit!" at the TV, because I didn't remember it going down like that. Turns out, I was right.  

From Vanity Fair: 

According to Toobin, it was during a closed-door meeting among Clark, Hodgman, and D.A. Gil Garcetti, after the opening statements, in which the discovery failures were revealed and where Hodgman started to feel chest pains. Paramedics were called and he was treated for a temporary stress condition, which did result in his stepping down from the case.

From a writer's perspective, I can see why they took some license with that, even if it was a bit over the top.

Here's what I remember...

The first week of the OJ trial, I was sitting in class talking with my friend Heidi and some other people from school,* and someone mentioned that one of the prosecuting attorneys in the Simpson case had been rushed to the hospital with chest pains the day before. That's when my classmate Cindy said disdainfully, "Yeah, he's having chest pains because he's lying! He knows he's lying!"

It's worth pointing out here that Cindy--a "good ole girl" from Texas--had an African American fiance and two bi-racial children. Cindy was cool; extremely blunt, very funny, and a blast to hang out with (she was part of a group of us who would sometimes high-tail it over to the nearby Chi-Chi's for nachos and margaritas at lunchtime), although she was obviously one of those "OJ is innocent!" people, a stance that I think had something to do with the fact that she was a white woman living in the black community.

The racial tension surrounding the OJ case is something that is definitely not exaggerated for the sake of the show, as it was a very real and very unfortunate aspect of the whole thing. It couldn't be avoided, especially in LA circa 1994-95, when the LA riots following the Rodney King verdict had happened just a few years prior. It's easy to see why the defense team played the race card like they did. Were they dirty opportunistic shyster assholes for doing so? Oh hell yeah. But still, it was pretty much a no-brainer. Of course they'd make it all about race, especially when Mark Fuhrman made it so damn easy. That's why I totally believe the scene where Christopher Darden tells Cochran he hopes they can be respectful to one another in the press, and Cochran goes, "Brother, I ain't trying to be respectful. I'm trying to win." It's another moment comes off a bit melodramatic, but--even if it didn't happen--it totally seems like it would have.

    Oh, just kiss him already.

On another note, I think Robert Morse is perfect as Dominick Dunne. I always get so excited when actors from Mad Men pop up on TV shows and movies.  

Burt Cooper!!!

The dialogue in the judge's chambers where Ito says something like, "I know you have a special interest in this case because of your daughter's murder" was a bit ham-fisted but I guess it was necessary because at this point most people probably wouldn't know or remember that his daughter, actress Dominique Dunne (she played Dana, the older sister in Poltergeist) was strangled by her ex-boyfriend in 1982. Trivia: her murderer, a chef named John Sweeney, really did get off with a ridiculously light sentence (6 1/2 years, and he served only 3 1/2) and soon after his release got a job as head chef at a fancy restaurant in Santa Monica. Upon learning of this, Dunne and his family decided to serve up some Goldman-style realness, standing outside the restaurant handing out flyers that read "The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunne." Soon after that, Sweeney quit his job and left town.

Dominique Dunne in Poltergeist

In yet another strange Hollywood murder coincidence, Marcia Clark was the attorney who prosecuted Robert Bardo, the crazy stalker famous for killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989. At least in that one, Clark was able to send the scumbag down the river (he got life without parole). I've read a lot about that case, and it's super creepy. One of the things that surprised me was how young Robert Bardo was--only 19 years old--when he killed Schaeffer. You wouldn't think that to look at him, because dude looks at least 35 in photos from the trial, but I guess all that crazy can age a person. By the way, I'm too superstitious to post a photo of Bardo's creepy mug on my blog. Google him if you're curious, but be sure to wear garlic around your neck and sprinkle salt around yourself for protection (I'm only half-kidding) because ewwwwwww. As another blogger wrote, you can almost hear the demon wings flapping inside his head.  

I was glad to see that the show included the infamous "redecorating" of OJ's mansion, where the defense went in and cleared out photos of OJ posing with (white) Playboy models, golfing buddies and girlfriends, replacing them with African art and photos of black family members...supposedly some of the photos they planted there were of random black people OJ didn't even know. And I love that Coolio's "Fantastic Voyage" played over that scene, because how appropriate is that? 

What's the deal with all those rappers wearing button-down flannel shirts at the beach? 

Didn't they get hot?

It also reminded me that Coolio actually did do a song that I liked back in the day, because I hated his one other hit, "Gangster's Paradise," which was so annoying and inescapable that year. (For the record Weird Al's take on it is sooooo much better.) 

*I attended school to be a court reporter from 1993 - 1995. It came to a sudden end when the school folded and declared bankruptcy. (The bright side? I got my student loans forgiven!) I was about 6 months from graduating. Needless to say, I ended up going in another direction job-wise, one of many "Plan B's" I took during my twenties, which was really a decade full of "Plan B's".

OJ Simpson, Paula Barbiedoll, Bolton Bits, and Kardashian Krap

I know I expressed misgivings about it in the last post, but they've (mostly) been laid to rest; I am really enjoying The People V. OJ Simpson. Now that I've seen the first two episodes, here are some unorganized notes on it: 

• I love Travolta's portrayal of that preening, high-on-the-smell-of-his-own-farts douchebag Robert Shapiro. And it's not that I loathe Shapiro--I have no more distaste for Shapiro than I have for the rest of the whores that comprised OJ's defense team--but man, Travolta is killing it. I know a lot of people are complaining that Travolta is the "weak link" in the cast, but I vehemently disagree. He's a bit over-the-top, but that can be a good thing in the hands of the right actor. He's awesome at the subtle stuff, too; my favorite moment of last night's ep (the second of the miniseries) was the brief scene of Shapiro grooving to some smooth jazz Al Jarreau in his Merc. (To be fair, it is a bomb-ass song.)
• I like what David Schwimmer is doing with Robert Kardashian, and it's interesting to see him in a role outside of Friends, but I have trouble with the whole "St. Kardashian" thing. I think the writers knew where they're going with that, however. It's like, you can pray all you want and tote that Bible around, dude, but it doesn't change the fact that you're best buds with an abusive, murderous psychopath. And I believe that he covered for that jackass after the murders, either knowingly or *wink*wink* "unknowingly." And then after the criminal trial, he expresses "doubts" about OJ's innocence? Oh thank you. Fat lot of good that did for the victims, dick. And while we're on the subject, can that one little jokey shot of the Kardashian kids watching their dad on TV please be the last time we see his spawn portrayed in this series? Because I don't like being reminded of their existence.
• And as for Kris Kardashian/Jenner, Faye Resnick, and the rest of the Brentwood bitches? I know they think everyone is fascinated with that lot, but I couldn't give a shit about any of them. I hope their screen time is minimal, too. Seriously, if I wanted to know about that crew, I'd watch one of those stupid Real Housewives shows. 
• And more Marcia Clark, please. I love Sarah Paulson's portrayal so far, and I absolutely want to hear more of her outrage at the cops and the system that turned a blind eye to OJ's years-long abuse of Nicole. Still disgusting. 
• Hoping for some scenes with the Goldmans, who have been nowhere to be found so far. I like Fred and Kim Goldman and I appreciate how outspoken they've continued to be about keeping Ron's memory alive and their justified furor at how the whole mess was handled. They kept it real in a case and trial that was teeming with bullshit from the very start.

It's interesting to go back and read some of the articles that were written about the case at the time. This one details the timeline of events on the day of the murders, and boy is it illuminating. It starts out detailing what the victims and suspect did the morning of June 12, 1994: Ron Goldman played softball at a local park, Nicole Brown Simpson bought some toys for her kids, and OJ--shocker!--played golf and hung out at his country club. Early that afternoon, though, things got more interesting: 

2 p.m. - House guest Brian "Kato" Kaelin sees O.J. in the kitchen of Simpson's Rockingham estate. O.J. makes a series of calls to women, beginning with girlfriend Paula Barbieri. They fight over her request to attend Sydney's recital. Paula winds up flying to Las Vegas to spend time with singer Michael Bolton. During a call to Traci Adell, O.J. says he's unhappy. He also calls actress Jasmine Guy.

Okay, am I the only one morbidly fascinated by the fact that OJ's girlfriend ditched him that day to run off to Vegas with Michael Bolton? 

To be clear, I'm talking about this Michael Bolton....

....and not Michael "Mike" Bolton from Office Space. 

Wouldn't it be cool if she'd run off with Mike Bolton, though? 

Alas (being a fictional character), that wasn't an option. 

Isn't that just weirdly fitting, though? What a spot-on summation of all that was good and bad about the 1990's. The Good: Mike Judge's Office Space, a biting satire of the 1990's corporate culture. The Bad: Michael Bolton (the singer) representing (to quote Peter Gibbons, speaking about his boss) "ALL THAT IS SOULLESS AND WRONG"--a phrase that also perfectly epitomizes the Simpson murder case and that unholy abortion of a trial. 

As the timeline indicates, Paula Barbieri--D-list model and OJ's sometime girlfriend--took offense to OJ barring her from his daughter's dance recital that night, and (I like to imagine, anyway) screamed "Screw you OJ! I'm going to Vegas to be with Michael Bolton! Love is a wonderful thing!" Seriously though, at least with Michael Bolton you'd have a better chance of surviving the night, as he seems way less stabby than OJ. Come on, dude couldn't even take a pair of scissors to his mullet. That's a peace-loving man, right there. 

Also noteworthy but not as interesting: OJ later called Jasmine Guy (Whitley from A Different World!), whom I hope immediately slammed the phone down on his sketch ass. But we'll probably never know.

Fast-forwarding to the trial, another interesting detail concerning OJ and Paula's relationship saga came in the form of testimony from a witness for the defense, Carol Connors. And when you get a load of the soft-serve bullshit she was shoveling for the defense, it's no wonder they trotted this woman out on the first day of their testimony. 

Apparently, on the night before the murders, OJ and Paula were being lovey-dovey with each other at a fancy charity fundraiser, and--well--Connors testimony of their PDA is just soo special: 

"I happened to witness a very exquisite romantic moment that took place between the two of them," she testified. "And being a writer, I was able to compute it into my brain, and to understand it, and to wish that I had been lucky enough to be in a situation of what I had watched." 

Pictured: Conners and her facelift.

Even better? Said "exquisite romantic moment" was taking place while Simpson was stroking Barbieri's face with Natalie Cole singing "Unforgettable" onstage.*

True story: I had the same hair as Paula from 1989 - 1993. And I had a black dress like that, but mine was from Kohl's. (I'm guessing hers wasn't. Just a guess.)

FUN FACT, KIDS! According to Wikipedia, Carol Connors is a former porn actress (not that there's anything wrong with that) who is married to fellow porn actor Jack Birch, the father of mainstream actress Thora Birch. I've read a bit about Thora Birch and her fucked up parents. To be fair, I think it was this article explaining why Thora Birch seemed to disappear from Hollywood just when her star was on the rise (after making the excellent Ghost World, one of my favorite movies) and the author of the piece blames Porno Dad, who is also Thora's manager and who insists on being an on-set "advisor" during his daughter's sex scenes. Creepy enough for ya? So anyhoo, I guess that Carol Connors--Mama Birch--never experienced the sort of face-stroking Natalie Cole "Unforgettable" love that OJ and Paula Barbiedoll possessed, which I find hard to believe. Seriously, Mama Birch? There were no exquisite romantic moments that (being a writer) you were able to compute into your brain when you were with Thora Birch's Porno Dad? I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked! Love is officially dead.   

If you want to witness Mama Birch's testimony, it starts at about the 1hr:02min mark in this video. You might want to have a barf bag handy. It's so cringe-inducing, even Johnnie Cochran was gagging.  

*OMG Natalie Cole! Speaking of the dearly departed. Let's all take a moment now to remember where we were when we heard the news of her death. Okay, I'm done.