Hey Brenda / Shannon

I'm sorry. 

Sorry that I was a 90s cackling mean hyena about you. Being a star probably sucks. I bought the zine that said it hated you.

You did not deserve that.

Was I jealous? Certainly.

It definitely wasn't worth it because I did not know you and you did nothing to me. I lived for outrage and irony and 90210, and now I get to live with the memory of my meanness. 

I'm sorry that you suffered. Nobody deserves that either. 

In the end I was rooting for you.

Someone Paid 100 Tacos For This: A Haiku

Half Buddha candle

Celebrity root beer mug

Dennis Hopper's stuff

Celebrity Dreams: Courtney Love Edition

I dreamed that Courtney Love was giving college-level courses on horses in order to make extra cash.

Ripley's Believe it or Not

OK, I guess this is the second reference to Ripley's in recent times. Last month, there was a stir when Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum lent Marilyn Monroe's iconic "Happy Birthday Mr. President" dress to Kim Kardashian to wear at the Met Gala.

I have a few opinions on this, especially as the interwebs blew up with stories about how she wrecked the dress.

First, I find the Met Gala super vulgar. It's for a good cause (the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute), but I do not dig the lead up or the photos or -- I don't know. For whatever reason I shun the coverage.

My ears pricked up, however, when I heard that Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson were planning to attend (yay Pete Davidson!). And then when I read the coverage about her wearing the Marilyn Monroe dress, I had various feelings. First, I felt like nobody besides Marilyn Monroe should ever wear that dress. And then I also felt like that dress should never be seen by humans -- that it should exist only in photographs. And then I realized that Ripley's Believe it or Not is the owner of the dress. And then I realized that the dress is unobtanium, but at the end of the day it's just a dress. Good for you, Kim Kardashian.

People are now schvitzing over the fact that she wore the dress. That it might have been damaged by her wearing it. And to them I say a hearty "tough toenails". The owner of the dress may do whatever the owner of the dress wants to do with it. And if a real museum belonging to the AAM had been willing to pony up 4.8 million clams to own the dress, only a mannequin would have ever worn it.

But no museum would spend that much money, I imagine, to buy a dress whose story reveals the public besmirching of the presidency by a sitting president. It has been one of the most famous dresses of all time, to be sure. And it was worn by one of the most famous tragic beauties of the 20th Century. And the story behind it, that she and her voluptuous body had to be sewn into it at the side of the stage, is captivating. Over time, and even right now, how does the scenario of her affair with the sitting president, and singing to JFK, who was POTUS and her lover, much to the chagrin of the First Lady, sit with us? The dress is borne of a stunt and continues with a stunt... 

I didn't post this post at the time I wrote it, for some reason. I think it was because I decided to watch some Kardashian show, for the first time. I had judged without actually knowing anything about it. The jury is still out on that for me.

Anyhoo, I hear from a friend that since the Kardashianing of the dress at the Met Gala Ripleys Believe it or Not has draped the dress on a Kim-proportioned dress form. Instead of returning it to the Marilyn-shaped dress form. The story of the dress continues. It is probably worth less now, but that also remains to be seen.

Eldridge Cleaver

Nowhere in the Wikipedia entry for Eldridge Cleaver does it say that he liked a Denver omelet with two English muffins, well done.

That's the kind of essential information readers of mrsguy come to expect ;)

Princess Charlene

According to news reports this week, Princess Charlene of Monaco is not a runaway bride, made miserable by her marriage to loathesome Prince Albert.

She just has Bitchy Resting Face.

They didn't say that. I did.

I have long felt sorry for this poor woman. She never seems to look happy in photographs. People often compare her to Princess Diana, who made her misery abundantly clear in every photo opportunity at the end of her marriage to Prince Charles. 

But is it just BRF?

I leave it to you to decide.

Botched Gwyneth Restoration

This "Photoshop fail" of Gwyneth Paltrow reminded me of something:

Peg Leg Bates

The name Peg-Leg Bates turned up in one of my vintage boxing magazines recently. 

With a name like that, I had to know more. I found a nice biographies here, and here. 

Want to know more? Check out back issues of Billboard here.

He was a one-legged tap dancer who later opened up his own resort in the Catskills. Several articles on the Web mention boxers going there to train for upcoming prize fights. He died the night after a celebration in his honor in his home town.

The man in action:

Mysteries

There are very few headlines that demand that I read them, but anything related to Bigfoot, Amelia Earhart, and the location of Jimmy Hoffa's body always draws me in.

We have another alleged Hoffa burial location. How many times have we done the dig?

It just doesn't get old for me.

Japanese Oscars

Went to dream Japan last night, as Dennis Hopper's escort to the Oscars. The whole thing was being taped in Japan and green screened so it would look as if it had been taped at Kodak Theater as usual.

Dennis disappeared pretty close to the time his category was going to be announced. I looked for him in the theater, which seemed pretty empty all of a sudden. Then I noticed that all the male nominees were stripped to the waist and participating in some sort of skit in which they were rowing a huge ship. Again, it was being green screened. I went to check on Dennis, because he was very ill. Everybody knew this would be his final awards season.

While I looked around for Dennis Hopper, I noticed Chiyotaikai walking up the aisle. I was dying to find someone who could tell me if there were other sumotori in the house. An usher helped me find my seat, which was next to that tall gangly new guy on The Office.

Oh Kanye

Why'd you have to do it?

A Bone to Pick

I come out of self-imposed vacation blogging exile to say that Berry Gordy has it all wrong.

Michael Jackson was not the greatest entertainer the world has ever known.

That honor goes to Sammy Davis, Jr.

Entertaining was Sammy's passion.

He danced, sang, played drums and trumpet, did impressions and was an actor on stage, in films and on television. He stayed in the public eye doing all of those things from the time he was very young until the year before his death at the age of 65. On occasions when he felt like he hadn't completely won over a crowd he'd continue to perform for hours, if necessary, to do so.

Michael Jackson was a great entertainer, and not on the same level as Sammy. Michael stopped performing quite some time ago and seemed to try to avoid it even when he committed to perform.

A great entertainer? Yes.

The greatest the world has ever known?

Calm down.

Anniversary Road Trip

The summer before I entered grad school, we contemplated moving to a small funky town on the water that was about an hour closer to school than the town where we were living.

That plan never got beyond the "Hey, let's go live over there" point, and I'd never seen the place in real life until this weekend, when I asked mrguy to take me there for our anniversary. Time for a road trip. We had a lovely breakfast outdoors:


Then we went to that small town and walked their trails for a while:


Then we wandered around and took pictures of old stuff.


Then we headed to another small town nearby that has a hula halau and some Victorians. On the way to our final destination we stopped at a rummage sale in a mobile home park.


Our final destination was another small town that coincidentally happened to be celebrating Charlie Chaplin Days. Charlie Chaplin impersonators scare me a little bit, but if you pretend you don't see them they can't get you. As an anniversary present to ourselves we bought a page from a calendar produced by the Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company.

Goes well in the kitchen.

Trifecta

Advertising icon + Japan + baseball = happiness

Jubilant Japanese baseball fans throw a statue of Colonel Sanders into the river in Osaka to celebrate a big win.

Many pennant-less years follow.

A Japanese television show tries to find the statue and remove the curse.

The statue is found serendipitously this week. Minus a few body parts and glasses.

The glasses are replaced.

Maybe it's time to bring my Colonel Sanders bank out of retirement. And to dig up the infamous Colonel Sanders tape. I don't recall exactly what was on it (him swearing while filming a commercial?). I only remember that the flipside was a pirated live recording of late-period Elvis unable to keep it together without laughing in the middle of a song.

To the garage!

Eldridge Cleaver

Denver omelette.

Two English muffins -- well.

Hot sauce.

Josephine the Plumber

On the way home to watch the debate with mrguy, I was stuck in traffic behind a woman whose car had a Yes on 8 (restore marriage) bumper sticker. She was weaving in and out of her lane, while text messaging at the wheel. Then she brushed her teeth.

Once ensconced in the happy Guy home, I heard a lot about Joe the Plumber.

I'd much rather talk about Josephine the plumber. She was my favorite advertising character in the day. In commercials she talked out of the side of her mouth, wore lipstick, and taught you how to get stains out of your sink with Comet.

7 years ago I saw her (the actress Jane Withers) at an event in LA. She looked amazing. She was wearing a bright colored blazer and her hair was in a bouffant. She reminded me of my favorite co-workers from the diner, out for a night on the town.

If they'd been movie stars.

All-One!

It's Olympics time again. I usually manage zero hours of Olympics viewing but mrguy and I watched the opening ceremonies last week. They were nothing short of stupendous.

The first summer games I can recall were in 1972. Olga Korbut made every little girl want to be a gymnast. Mark Spitz made every boy want a mustache.

As the games approached this year, I wondered what became of Mark Spitz. Then news of him suddenly appeared at the intersection of celebrity, soap and the law. Yup, he is suing Dr. Bronner for calling him a prophet and referring to him on their wackadoodle labels. Hate it when that happens.

For more on Dr. Bronner, there's a documentary.

Can't wait to see it.

Beans. Queens.

This week I learned that mrguy once ate beef stroganoff with the Ramones.

Brushes with greatness just don't get much better than that.

Celebrity Meat

Dwight Yoakam, hot vegetarian singer loved by ladies the world over, has a line of meat and meat-enhanced products.

That's good enough, but one's called Chicken Rings of Fire, and I thank whoever thought up that name but didn't think *about* it, for leaving it for us to enjoy.

The Scratch Sheet

I could do an hour on how I like to read obituaries.

I read the obits in three newspapers: SF, Honolulu and LA. I think of them as little biographies of folks you didn't get to meet. Occasionally they're of people you did meet, and as we get older they're of our parents, our friends and eventually us. About once a month I consider writing my own, just to get a start on it for whoever needs to do the deed eventually. Sometimes I think that when I retire I'd like to work on the notices desk at the local newspaper :)

I got the obit bug from Pop, who read them every morning. He called the obit page the scratch sheet, and said if he wasn't in it it was going to be a good day. When the time came to write his, I did the honors.

Thursday's scratch sheet had obits of two people I met: Big Al, and Roscoe Lee Browne. I saw them both in restaurants where I was working. Albert was the father of one of my kindergarten friends. Already ballsy, he swallowed the self-help bait in the 1970's and got even more so. He'd swan into the middle of Diet Restaurant where I hosted and would ask loudly where his table was, no matter how many other people were waiting. Forceful and charming, he really had my number :)

And Roscoe Lee Browne, bearer of the remarkable resonant voice for which he's famous, may have been the first celebrity I ever met. He was narrating poetry for a friend's show at the station upstairs from the diner, and the need for cigarettes brought them downstairs. My friend the poet made a point of introducing us, and Mr Browne kindly made small talk with me. It was a surreal moment. Just even hearing him say "Umm-hmmm" was inspiring.

Today's obits are free of connections to mrsguy.