Best Superbowl Commercial

This is what got me thinking about Abe Vigoda and Betty White yesterday.

Love those two.

D.

You’d think he would show some appreciation.

That’s what I need. A yeoman.

D.

Enough with Michael Jackson.

The back-breaking straw: yesterday, MSNBC preempted their usual nightly news programming to air yet another celebration-of-the-life/tribute/post-mortem. Enough. Is this really what people want? Is this what jacks up your ratings?

And I can’t get through a grocery store without seeing a half dozen or more images of the man. I am impressed with magazines’ and tabloids’ ability to find countless different photos of Jackson looking sad, lonely, soul-searching, pensive, or wistful. It’s as if they want us to say to ourselves and to each other, “That poor misunderstood man, how horribly the world treated him!” Or, “He was warped by fame — fame he didn’t ask for.”

When it comes to fame and its warped minions, I think of Cintra Wilson, whose book A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease, dealt with the Jackson Phenomenon, as well as the Jaggers and Chers of the world. Her obit for Jackson? She reprinted the relevant chapter on her blog. Here’s a snip:

Michael loved women, too, but in a strange, slavering, idolatrous way that made it impossible for them to love him back : Liz Taylor, Diana Ross, and later Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, the Mother of His Children, all seemed to care very deeply for Jackson while staying at least a six-hour plane trip away from him at all times. He looked wrong with anyone too near his body. When he and Madonna were each other’s dates to an awards ceremony, they looked as uncomfortable sitting next to each other as two morbidly obese people on the bus. There are some auras whose size and radiance requires miles of solitude, like a nuclear accident, and Michael’s seemed to be one of them.

Her take on things might seem mean-spirited, particularly if you’re one of his mourning fans; but I doubt anyone will disagree with Cintra’s prescription, sadly not followed: “Run away, Michael. Go to an island and live out your days in the sunshine. Disappear before we, the world’s mean-spirited publications, kill you with our obsessive, smothering need to know you better.”

D.

Whatever happened to . . .

Listening to t.A.T.u.’s cover of Morrissey’s How Soon Is Now? on my drive home from the gym tonight, and for some reason I remember this old Lance Kerwin TV show from 1977, James at 15, and how much it enraged me back then. How Soon Is Now? is such an angst-filled song . . . perhaps that’s what triggered the memory. James at 15 tried and failed to capture the angst of a difficult adolescence, mainly because James — white, solidly middle class, and challenged by little more than a recent move from Oregon to Boston — really had nothing to kvetch about.

I, who was also 15 in 1977, had plenty to kvetch about. I remember thinking: I’m a sensitive 15-year-old, intelligent, creative, perceptive of my surroundings. They should create a show about ME! (Would have been a lot more interesting than James at 15, eh Sis? I would cast Liz Taylor and Richard Burton as our parents, the actors revisiting their roles from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, minus the alcoholic charm.)

It was the first of many shows I shunned because it was too close to home: material I knew well enough to improve upon. Add to James at 15 just about any medical drama produced since 1990.

So, what happened to Lance Kerwin? Turns out the real life Kerwin was far more interesting than sensitive young James. Kerwin had drug and alcohol problems. In the 90s, he got religion, left Hollywood. Now he’s a minister and lives on Kauai with his wife and kids.

I don’t know why Hollywood always has to soft pedal adolescence. But wouldn’t it be cool if Kerwin wrote a TV series about what his life was really like at 15?

D.

RIP, Bettie Page

Bettie Page died on December 11, at the age of 85. From the BBC news obit:

“Bettie Page, one of the most famous US pin-up models of the 1950s, has died in Los Angeles, aged 85.

Her provocative poses – often in bikinis – made her a cult figure and she was one of the first models to appear in Playboy magazine.

Bettie Page was credited with helping to pave the way for the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Some pictures of her showing bondage and spanking generated controversy and attracted a congressional subpoena. ”

I hit puberty in the 70s, so Bettie was an icon of a previous generation. I remember first seeing her photos in books, the pin-up collections that would show up fleetingly in Berkeley’s used bookstores. In residency, I used to go to Amok, a way cool LA bookstore that catered to everything and anyone at the fringe. There I found whole books of Bettie.

The woman was amazing — to be doing the things she did, at the time she did them? BBC News’ “helping to pave the way for the sexual revolution of the 1960s” is no overstatement. I suspect it was rare in the 50s for a brunette to be considered pin-up material, though I could be wrong. But for a brunette with strong fetishist leanings to hit the mainstream? Truly remarkable.

Here’s her Wiki. There’s an interesting story of her fall from the limelight and her subsequent resurgence. Also, here’s a rare interview with the older Bettie (from the 1990s).

The interview is correct: it is the smile. Rest in peace, Bettie.

D.