Well, this is terrible/sad/spooky/coincidental. I was just writing about the guy 12 days ago. Not cool, universe. Not cool.

No cause of death has been reported, but he had a brain aneurysm in 2001 at the age of 43, so perhaps there were some lingering issues that affected his health. Hopefully, his passing was peaceful. 

I really meant it when I said the man is a GOD. 

Just afloat on the sea

Find myself on a page of history

You know as I ride along

There's a memory of a song

About you,

And where you're meant to be....

One of his masterpieces (on the feel-good side)....

And I found a fantastic live performance of "Is It Like Today" from Late Night With David Letterman.

 

Dave always recognized musical chops, so I'm not surprised that he was a fan. 

 Sinead was just a badass.

I agree with this statement from Moz. He is 100% correct. The music industry and the media treated Sinead like absolute dogshit, and then one day she's gone and immediately we are waist-deep in sniveling, insincere, bullshit "tributes" from the same people and corporate entities that mocked, degraded, and dismissed her while she was alive. 

So I won't go there. I'll just say that Sinead O'Connor was a true artist and a genuine feminist, and how fortunate everyone--particularly Gen Xers who grew up with her music and her no-fucks-given, THIS-is-how-you-stage-a-fucking-protest badassery--was to have her around, unapologetically pissing off the mainstream, and doing her thing on her own terms.

I remember the Bob Dylan tribute concert in 1992, taped shortly after Sinead's infamous appearance on SNL. The show was an all-star event featuring (among others) Tom Petty, Eddie Vedder, John Mellencamp, Tracy Chapman, Willie Nelson, June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Chrissie Hynde, Sinead O'Connor, and of course Dylan himself. It was a concert to celebrate Dylan's 30 years in the music industry (which is funny to think of; while it's certainly a milestone, 30 years doesn't seem as long now as it did back then). 

My Mom taped the concert when it aired on PBS and we watched it together. It was generally a good show, but the thing that everyone remembers today is Sinead getting booed by the audience when she took the stage for her performance. Mom and I were appalled. We both had the same reaction: WHY THE HELL is an audience at a FUCKING BOB DYLAN SHOW booing an artist for staging a protest? Had they ever heard "Masters Of War," "Chimes of Freedom," "The Times They Are A-Changing".....literally ANYTHING Dylan has ever recorded or performed? Or perhaps they got lost on their way to an Anita Bryant concert? 

Seriously, FUCK that audience, every single one of them. 

   Kris Kristofferson has my undying respect for standing up for her.

But enough about that. Sinead was an amazing artist and deserves to be celebrated for her work, too. 

It's kind of a bummer that "Nothing Compares 2 U" is considered her signature song, when (in my opinion) it's so inferior to everything else she recorded. Take "Mandinka" for instance, which still sounds as fresh and innovative as the first time I saw the video on 120 Minutes back in the late '80s.

"I'm dancing the seven veils, want you to pick up my scarf...."

And this one, from the summer of 1991.
Gorgeous, devastating.
(The video features her firstborn son, Jake.)

But the quintessential Sinead O'Connor song in my mind will always be "Emperor's New Clothes." It was my favorite then, and still my favorite today. It just says it all really, encapsulating her whole career and so many other aspects of her life.

"Everyone can see what's going on.
They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable,
not because what I said was wrong.
Whatever it may bring,
I will live by my own policies,
I will sleep with a clear conscience,
I will sleep in peace."

***Mic drop.***

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.

O.N.J. - R.I.P.

Of course, Xanadu is my favorite. How could it not be? ONJ and Gene Kelly on roller skates, the music of ELO, that cheesy-ass Don Bluth animated sequence, Sonny skating into the brick wall to join Kira in the mural, "got to believe we are magic," the insane closing musical number? Love. It.

Grease is the word, but Xanadu is da bomb.

 

HOWEVER.....there happens to be an overlooked ONJ classic called Two of a Kind. There was a huge publicity campaign for this movie ("Olivia and Travolta--together again!"), and it was savaged by critics and ignored by moviegoers in 1983. It's flawed but fun, and I kinda love it. 

And the theme song is seriously one of the greatest things ONJ ever recorded. In fact, if not for the Xanadu soundtrack, I'd argue that this was her best song ever. And holy shit, how did I live 49 years without knowing this music video existed? It's amazeballs. ONJ and Travolta are both beautiful people, but I swear neither of them have ever looked better than they do right here. Olivia can really rock an '80s mullet. And I don't care if that's a hairpiece on Travolta, it's working for him. HOT.

Rest in peace, Livs. Your fabulosity will live forever.

  

  

NOTE: This post has been a long time coming, obviously. I started to write it months ago, then had to put it aside because everything was too raw and painful. I was only recently able to come back and revisit it. I still feel like it's rough and unfinished, but such is life. Here's my long overdue tribute to the girls.

ALICE JANE 

Alice came to me in Minneapolis when she was a year old. Her first owner, a friend of mine from work, was moving out of state and couldn't take Alice with her. I was living in a small apartment and still had Shelby and Riley at the time, so I was worried that a third cat might be a bit much. My friend was 21 years old and....not the most responsible pet owner (not judging, just saying). She informed me that if I didn't adopt Alice, she planned to "put her on Craigslist." That sealed the deal for me. I said, "Fuck that. I'm taking her."

Alice was not happy that first night. She'd been plucked from the only home she'd ever known by some random lady who stuck her in a carrier and brought her to a strange new place with two resident cats who were not exactly thrilled with this new addition to the family. After cowering in the bathroom for a few hours, Alice emerged and started hissing and spitting at me, clearly terrified. I grabbed her, scooted her into the second bedroom, and closed the door. Then I tiptoed in with some water, a bowl of food, and an extra litter box and left her in there to decompress by herself.

She lived in that second bedroom for about a week. I went in to visit with her every day after I came home from work, and I was able to get her to play with some toys and snuggle next to me. I read her The Rachel Papers (Martin Amis’s first novel, which I was re-reading for the umpteenth time) and she seemed to enjoy it. We watched some movies I'd rented from my neighborhood video store (streaming services weren't a thing yet, at least not for me), including an indie flick called Half Nelson, which we both liked.

By the time Alice was released from the second bedroom and made her official debut as a permanent member of the household, she was confident, playful, and affectionate. Although Shelby initially did the typical hissy pissy "I don't like you" thing that cats do with new siblings, she calmed down soon enough and began "allowing" Alice to groom her and even occasionally cuddled with her. Riley was pretty old and infirm by the time Alice came along, so he didn't have much of an opinion one way or another about this new cat. Still, he let her sniff him and gave her a brotherly headbutt once in a while.

Chilling on top of the kitchen cabinets in Minneapolis, 2007.

Simon Reid bought me this cat condo during our two month "relationship."

And check out my old iPod! (Minneapolis, 2008.)

Alice and her favorite teddy bear in Reno, 2013. 

Alice once broke Twitter with this photo. 

My favorite comment (from Anna Maltese): 

"I feel like this cat has called me into her office 
to ask why my productivity levels have dropped."

***********************************************************************

Riley passed away in 2008, and Shelby followed in May 2009. I was heartbroken and wanted to wait a little bit before adopting another cat. Alice, however, had different ideas. She'd gotten used to having other cats around and hated being on her own when I wasn't at home. I decided to go ahead and start looking at the Humane Society for a possible feline companion for my girl.

Enter Audrey.

AUDREY JOY 

 

Audrey started life as a stray and was found living on the streets of St. Paul. She ended up being rescued by the Woodbury Humane Society in March 2009, and two months later that's where I found her. I walked into the cat room of the shelter and immediately spotted a gregarious little patchwork tiger tabby reaching through the bars of her cage, beckoning me over. It took me about five minutes of petting and talking to her to realize that I'd found my new baby. The shelter staff told me she was approximately two years old and her name was Darby. I loved everything about her, except for that name. I decided she needed a more fitting moniker, something classic and feminine, but sassy. And so Darby became Audrey, and she came home with me the next day.

The first photo of Audrey in her new home, May 2009.

Alice wasn't exactly over the moon about this interloper. As much as she hated being alone, she was not keen on having to adjust to a new cat. (I think she was somehow hoping to get the old ones back.) It took Alice about two months to relax and embrace Audrey as a sister. When she finally accepted her, I breathed a sigh of relief. The era of "The Tabby Twins," (a.k.a. "The Minnesota Twins,") had officially begun.

Audrey was an amazing cat from the very start; a ray of sunshine in feline form. I could wax poetic about her forever, but mere words can't do her justice. You just had to know her. And everyone who knew her absolutely loved her. I always said she could make a cat lover out of anyone. And one day....she did.

Witness John's conversion:

"Hey human? Stop pretending you don’t like cats. I can see right through you."

That look says, "Yeah, I got him."

“Pfft, whatever. This human was easy.

Give me a real challenge next time.”

Audrey on his shoulder makes him happy.

"Silly human, you know you can't resist me."

And so it went. Over the years we moved our little family from Minnesota to Louisiana to Nevada to Utah to (again) Nevada and then to Texas. Alice and Audrey hated traveling but always settled in fairly quickly once we reached our destinations. 

The Minnesota twins in Utah, 2016

Along the way our quartet became a quintet when we adopted Cassie, a “cow cat” John fell in love with when he spotted her at a Petco in Reno back in 2014.

Cassie "helping" with the laundry in Reno 2018

Alice had her 14^th birthday in August 2020. She’d always been a healthy eater and a rather large lady, but I noticed her appetite had started to flag and she’d lost a little weight. In September I found a lump on one of her mammary glands and took her to the vet to get it checked out. There was talk of surgery, but first I had to get her feeling better and get her weight up, so she was prescribed a cocktail of drugs, special food, and an appetite stimulant. She started to feel better but I had a hard time putting weight on her. We decided to keep her on the meds and keep her comfortable in the short term, realizing that surgery might not be an option given her age and overall health.

I spent a lot of time with Alice those last few months. She was a one-person cat, and her person was me. She also had a PhD in cuddling, so we spent a lot of time in her favorite bed (the one in the guest room with the awesome memory foam mattress) where we snuggled and had deep philosophical conversations and watched DVDs on my laptop—including Donnie Darko, one of her favorites—as I did my best to make her comfortable and help her feel safe and loved and pampered. It occurs to me now that those last months with Alice mirrored the first weeks I had with her back when I brought her home in 2007; the two of us just hanging out, having girl time, bonding and enjoying each other’s company.

We ended up losing Alice two days after Christmas. She had an appointment the following morning for an examination at the vet, where I planned to talk to her doctor about the "quality of life" decision I would be making very soon. But that evening of the 27th she took a turn for the worse, and I knew her time was near. I held her close as her breathing became increasingly shallow....and then she was gone. It was expected, but still devastating.

In the meantime, Audrey had also begun slowing down. Instead of losing weight like Alice, she started gaining weight and getting rounder, which in turn put strain on her joints, which made her move around less, which made her pack on more weight, which put more strain on her joints, which made her even more sedentary, and so on and so on. It was a vicious cycle. I took her to the vet in February, and they ran a bunch of tests but didn’t find much wrong with her aside from a mild ear infection. They gave me drops for her ears (which she hated of course—who wouldn’t?) and sent us home.

On the morning of March 3, 2020 John was working in his office upstairs. I was in the kitchen dishing out breakfast for Audrey and Cassie when John called out, “There’s something wrong with Audrey.” I dropped everything and rushed upstairs to the cats’ bedroom. John was kneeling on the floor next to Audrey, who was lying on her side in one of her beds wheezing and gasping for air. I held up her head as John and I talked to her and struggled to figure out what was happening, trying not to panic.

It happened in less than a minute. Audrey breathed in and out a few times, then sort of faded slowly away. John and I were mute with shock. I sat on the floor for a long time holding my little tiger cat, rocking her back and forth, completely shattered. I called the vet’s office, managed to get her doctor on the phone, and described what happened. The vet said it sounded like Audrey had most likely “thrown a clot,” which is is also referred to as a pulmonary embolism, something that can happen to animals and humans alike. As horrible as it was losing Audrey so suddenly, we were at least somewhat comforted that she went quickly and (hopefully?) with minimal suffering, with John and me right there next to her.

That’s the thing about pets: if all goes well, you outlive them and are there to care for them til the very end. That’s the best case scenario. It’s unbelievably heartbreaking to lose them, but it’s the way things should be, really.

Audrey and Alice were the second “generation” of cats that I’ve owned, and if anything they were even more difficult to part with than the first. Not that I loved Alice and Audrey any more than I did Shelby and Riley; you love your cats the way you love your family, and it’s not a matter of loving any one of them more or less. It’s all the same, but it’s all different, if that makes any sense.

So after a short time as a one-cat family, we decided to add two more. This past spring we went to SPCA Texas and brought home a pair of Siamese sisters we named Stevie Nicks and Sabrina. They’re three years old and still full of that goofy young cat energy, chasing each other up and down the stairs, attacking houseplants, and chattering at the birds outside. They’ve lately become lap cats who purr appreciatively when I sing to them (favorite selections include The Doors’ “Hello, I Love You” and McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs.”) I’ll write a bit more about them sometime, but not now.

This post belongs to our Minnesota twins. Forever loved, forever missed.

Shine on you crazy diamonds.

    

   

 

"That you are here, that life exists....that the powerful play 

goes on and you may contribute a verse."

Well it seems 2020 has turned me into one of those weepy middle-aged fraus who are perpetually hand-wringing over relatives and friends who are sick, dying, or deceased, but in the words of Hard Harry, SO BE IT.  

Two days ago I got word that Mr. Duane Verkamp--my favorite teacher from my beloved alma mater Marian Heights Academy--recently passed away from pneumonia. Fuck this fucking year. 

Me with Mr. Verkamp and his wife Maureen

at MHA Alumni Weekend, summer 2000.

In truth, Mr. Verkamp was so much more than just my favorite teacher, but it's near impossible to explain what that means to anyone who didn't know him. The only way to sort of explain it--to people from my generation, anyway--is to picture Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, but like a mellow hippie Boomer version. And instead of a New England boys' prep school in the 1950s, the setting was an all-girls Catholic boarding school in rural Indiana in the late 1980s - early 1990s. (Also, we weren't sneaking into the woods at midnight to read poetry to each other; we were sneaking into the woods to smoke and/or make out with our townie boyfriends. But that's another story.)   

A few photos from my high school yearbook, 1990-91 (junior year)

Jeez, could they have made the faculty photos 

look any more like mug shots? 

In addition to teaching English, Mr. V was also my forensics coach.

(Forensics club was what most other high schools called debate team.)

And then there's me at 17. 

I was a naughty Catholic schoolgirl before it was cool.

There's really not much I am able to put into words at the moment; grief has made me its bitch. All I can say is that an amazing human being is gone and I'm heartbroken and I didn't picture it happening this way. In the words of that song, I always thought that I'd see him again. 

I think I've earned the right to post this:

"All hands on deck at dawn, sailing to sadder shores...."

On August 28th my brother-in-law Roger (my sister's husband) passed away from colon cancer at the age of 47. He was just diagnosed in June, so it took him pretty quickly. Despite the giant COVID tornado down here in Texas, I ended up flying to Indianapolis so I could be there for his wake and funeral. In the end I was glad I went. Sometimes you just gotta throw caution to the wind and go with your gut instinct. This was one of those times. 

I've been playing Echo and the Bunnymen's Ocean Rain (from the album of the same name) a lot over the past few months. I don't know if Ian McCulloch intended for it to be a mourning song, but it has that feel. It's melancholy without being maudlin, and it's brought me some comfort.  

I hope that better times are ahead, but I don't know. I do know that if a certain right-wing fascist and his cronies are voted out on November 3rd that it would at least give us all some hope. It wouldn't fix everything, but at this point nothing will.

RIC OCASEK 

:-( 

I've said it many times and I'll say it again: one of the things that really blows about getting older is losing idols from your youth. I'm not ready for that. Sure, Ric was 75 (75! That's weird too! My mom is 75 this year. And BTW how is my mom 75?) so you know, it's not like he was 30 years old and passed out with a needle in his arm or whatever, BUT STILL. I'm so not ready for this to keep happening. 

Probably my favorite Cars song ever, and the greatest video they made, IMHO. I love the part with the shoes escaping out the door. 

I know they got a lot of attention for You Might Think, with all the expensive visual effects and whatnot, but that song is so overplayed. And I got sick of seeing the video all the time. "Since You're Gone" is where it's at, man, and don't let anyone tell you different. Nothing compares to early MTV. That channel was golden circa 1981-1983.

Yes Donald, homegirl is "special" all right....

Man, it's been a dreary winter. We've lost some loved ones (my in-laws...I may write about them soon), a sweet friend (Miss Susan, my Baton Rouge "mom"), and a few icons (Bowie, et al). Seriously, 2016 is too young to be sucking this hard already. 

But even in these dark times, the stars and planets align, God shuffles His feet, and we get something like this...... 

Some stray observations.....

• Christ! Her voice could peel paint! 
• I try not to pay any attention to Trump, so maybe someone can clue me in: what's with his facial expressions? Does he always look like he's holding in a painful fart?
• The audience sounds like its on opioids. 
• Speaking of opioids, what exactly is Sarah Palin on? I'm being serious. I've always suspected she was a pillhead (trust me, I recognize the signs) but I think she's taken her "dabbling" a bit too far. My best guess? Suburban speedball (Adderall, Oxy, and white zin).
• In light of her son's arrest the night before ("Track done beat up his lady friend 'cause of Obama!") I'd say she's definitely on something.

You know what though? None of this shit matters, so here's Bowie: