I'M EVERY WOMAN, IT'S ALL IN ME....

Yes, I tried the AI photo thing. My friend Misty put me up to it, but honestly I didn't need much convincing. This shit is fabulous! 

You have to submit a ton of pictures for the AI thing to really work its magic, which was initially a problem for me. You see, I had rhinoplasty back in April and most of the photos I have of myself are pre-nose job. I remedied this by making sure I uploaded a shot of my new profile, which seemed to work, as the AI program was able to incorporate my brand spankin' new, bought-and-paid-for schnozzle into most of the images. (Don't worry, I won't be writing a post detailing my rhinoplasty journey.* Nobody cares about anyone else's nose; it's only meaningful to the person who has the procedure. Well, and their plastic surgeon, hopefully.)

1940's Me.
John says it looks like a postage stamp.
I think I kinda look like a blonde version
of the Sun-maid Raisins girl. 

Ancient Greek Me.
This one is John's favorite, probably because
I look vaguely like a wood sprite.

Ottoman Bride Me. Random, but I like it.

Cyborg Me. I thought this would be John's favorite, 
since he's a big sci-fi guy.

1950s Chic Me. 
Not gonna lie, this set rules.

1950s Me, the non-chic version. 
They used my old nose here, but whatever.
I still like it. 

WWII Nurse Me. I think the uniform is cool,
but what the hell is going on with my mouth? 
I have never made that face before in my life.

Egyptian Queen Me.
YASSS QUEEN!!!

1970s Me, looking very Gloria Steinem.
I dig it, but where are my eyebrows? 

Okay, I fucking LOVE this one.

1980's Punk Me. My absolute favorite.

 
*Question: has anyone else noticed that everything is a "journey" now? It's all, "my pregnancy journey," "my weight-loss journey," "my colonoscopy journey," "my ingrown toenail journey," et cetera. The fucking Oprah-speak is everywhere these days. I wish George Carlin were still alive, because I'd love to hear his rant about this. He was so good at deconstructing and skewering that sort of bullshit. 

As long as I'm showing off pictures (and since I don't have much else to post at the moment), here are some paintings I did this year.

Stevie was my inspiration, although I didn't attempt to capture her floofiness.

I really enjoy painting fruit. I can see why it's a popular subject for artists.

Watermelon, watermelon.

This one is titled: There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon).

Sabrina is a freelance art critic.

Below is my latest work, painted two nights ago when I randomly woke up at 2:30am completely wide awake and realized I wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon. Inspiration struck, and I had a sudden urge to paint the Colorforms logo. I loved Colorforms. They were one of my favorite toys as a little kid, and they kept my sister and me entertained on many a long car trip back in the day. 

If you're unfamiliar with the creators of Colorforms, read about them here. It's one of the best starving artist success stories ever. The guy who ended up designing the logo itself was also quite interesting, a graphic artist from New York who also did the logos for IBM, ABC (the network), UPS, and tons of others. Brilliant dude. 

Anyhoo, here's my stab at recreating the Colorforms logo. It took me a lot longer than I anticipated; the hardest part was getting the proportions exactly right, which I think I did. It's still not perfect, but fine for a spontaneous, wee-hours-of-the-morning project.

And because lately I've been ending all my posts with videos, here is a random sampling of songs that I listened to a lot in 2022, according to Spotify:

As you can see, I kinda got into Habibi this year. They're rather brilliant. 

     

 ADVENTURES IN SCAMBAITING PART VIII:
EAT A DICK, ELON

With apologies to the late Warren Zevon:

Poor, poor, pitiful me

Poor, poor, pitiful me

These fake accounts won't let me be

Lord have mercy on me

Woe is me

Well, this one was certainly topical, I'll say that for him. Here's a hint: which famous shithead has been stinking up the news cycle over the past two weeks?

If your answer was THIS jackhole:

Congrats! You win a blue checkmark.

Use it in good health.

I was in a shitty, morose mood yesterday morning, having just learned of Andy Taylor's stage four cancer diagnosis. I was so psyched about Duran Duran's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and looking forward to watching Andy rock out with his former bandmates on the November 19th broadcast. Being blindsided with that horrible news about Andy sucked big time. And when I noticed I had an IG message from "creativeelon," well....I was a bit bitey, to say the least.

 

^^^^^ Yeah, this fuckface actually tried to call me through IG. Declined!

Guess I pissed him off. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, whatever. Time for some self-care, as the youngsters say. This song does it for me.

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.