Agnes Moorehead

I went with my friend Jade to Dayton, OH on Friday of last week. I really just wanted to go to have a mini-road trip, but the reason I specifically chose Dayton was because it is the burial place of Agnes Moorehead.

Agnes's name is one I'm sure is not familiar to a lot of people, but she was an intelligent and incredibly talented woman, and she is worth Googling if you ever get bored. She had a very prolific career as a character actress and radio personality, and she also worked as a teacher for a time. (She had a Masters in English - a woman after my own heart!) Most people who are familiar with her would know her as Endora on the beloved '60s sitcom Bewitched.

Visiting celebrity gravesites is sort of a dream of mine, if that's the proper way to phrase it. I would say hobby except for the fact that this would make only the second one I've visited, so I guess interest is a more appropriate term. Anyway, I found it to be an interesting experience this time around, and I am so lucky to have a friend like Jade to do these things with. Many people would be creeped out by it, but she enjoys the history aspect of it. She also accompanied me to Rosemary Clooney's gravesite a few years back.

Aside from the visit to Dayton Memorial Park's mausoleum, we went to the Dayton Art Institute, the Cox Arboretum MetroPark, and ate dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Dayton. We had a very nice and full day, even if it was scorching hot.

The reason I post this now is because last night I had a dream about Aggie. It was present-day and I was at some sort of picnic or outdoor gathering. Jade was there as well. I saw Agnes from far away and kept trying to get closer to her because I wanted to meet her, but I never succeeded. The part about this dream that made it so unusual (I often have dreams about famous people and interacting with them) is that Agnes has been dead for 36 years and would be over 100 if she were alive today. Yet in my dream, she looked very youthful, as perhaps she might have looked if I were to see her up close and personal in the late '40s to early '50s. It was a very pleasant dream, and all I wanted was to be close enough to Agnes to admire her lovely face and hear her speak. A very interesting dream indeed.

Will the real Stevie Nicks please stand up?

I love Twitter, and I will say that the main reason for this is that celebrities are on it. A lot of them probably have their assistants do the actual tweeting, but others do not, which is clear from their incessant rambling. Now, one of my favorite celebrities, Stevie Nicks, is completely technology-illiterate. If things are as they have been, she still doesn't even have a cell phone. Obviously her assistant does, and this is how communications with the outside world occur, but she doesn't do e-mail, none of that. For a while now, Stevie fans on Twitter have been swearing up and down that a completely inactive Twitter account called @RealStevieNicks is indeed Stevie. Personally, I didn't believe it and wanted to know why so many did. I was told that someone on Fox News helped Stevie actually set up the Twitter account on-air. They provided me a link to a video of this, but I actually never watched it. My major reasoning for not believing the hype, aside from Stevie's shun of all things technological, is that Lindsey Buckingham (@Lndsybuckingham) was not following this @RealStevieNicks account. Granted, his account has not been verified, but who is going to create a fake Lindsey Buckingham Twitter? Seriously?

So, sometime yesterday someone started tweeting from this account saying that they were Stevie's assistant Karen and that they were going to answer some fan questions. Stevie fans were FREAKING OUT. But all of the answers to said questions were incredibly vague, things that could have easily been written by someone not associated with Stevie personally. Well, @DaveStewart from the Eurythmics, who has been recording an album with Stevie over the last several weeks, tweeted this earlier today: "the @realstevienicks site is nothing to do with Stevie or karen , I'm on the phone with Karen now talking about tomorrow's recording"

I felt like shouting from the rooftops: "Bitches, I told you so!"

Now, in all this drama, apparently some sweet little girl tweeted something to Dave about how her birthday was today and he should get Stevie to sing to her. All he said was something along the lines of: "I'll show her your tweet, that's all I can do." She has been waiting on Twitter for HOURS for him to reply and let her know what Stevie said about her tweet. Okay. He never said that he would tweet anything to her. She just assumed this. So there she sits, tweeting away about all of her fantasies involving Stevie pulling her up on stage to sing to her, or calling her on the phone to sing to her, and how she's getting impatient waiting for Dave to tweet her back, and I just feel sorry for this girl. I mean, I can be pretty obsessive about my celebs, but this is just ridiculous. But hey, I guess at least it's a good thing that she doesn't have a job, because she might lose it being on Twitter constantly for the past seven hours.

Shirley MacLaine

I watched the film The Apartment on Sunday night. It was the first time I had ever seen it. I am a big Shirley MacLaine fan, and have been ever since I developed a girl crush on her in middle school. I know (and adore) Shirley as the incarnation-believing wacktress that she has been for the last thirty years or so, so it's nice to see her as the wide-eyed ingenue. Her performance in this film was spectacular and really displays the range of her talents all together. Of course, she's also a decent singer/dancer, but as far as her acting talents go, nothing shows her range quite like this movie. It was also really interesting to see Fred MacMurray as sort of the bad guy. The utter sexuality of the movie was the most shocking thing - men in the corporate world openly portrayed as having sexual affairs. Obviously this thing had been alluded to before, but we may as well have been viewing blatant sex scenes it was all so obvious. I loved the dialogue, and the relationships between the characters really developed throughout the course of the movie without it seeming contrived or rushed. Despite his sunny disposition, it's clear from the beginning that Jack Lemmon's character is truly sad within. You want him to succeed and be happy, but yet you feel as embarrassed as he does for the way that this success unfolds. We know he's better than that and he knows he's better than that, but it seems he just doesn't know how to stand out any other way.

Okay, I'm sort of babbling about the movie at this point, but I did really love it and encourage any one to see it, if you can stand watching black and white film. (This movie wouldn't have been right in color; it would have been too distracting.) All this post has really done has kept me from being completely bored for the last ten minutes or so, and it reminded me how fascinating I find Shirley MacLaine and how I need to watch another one of her movies very soon. I may do a Terms of Endearment/The Evening Star marathon if my tear ducts can handle it.

Which reminds me, Shirley MacLaine is the first woman over the age of 60 that I recognized as sexy. Many of my other "loves" have caught up to her now, age-wise, but I loved her as an older woman before I ever saw her work in her younger days.

I like men, I swear I do.

Lindsanity

Considering I have been at work all day, I am slightly embarrassed to admit I have spent the majority of my day watching the Lindsay Lohan court hearing. I have always gotten sucked into real-life crime dramas easily, and actually this is the most minor offense I have ever found this much intrigue in. Of course, that being said, I have never watched any court action go down as it was occurring. There was the Simpson trial that EVERYONE watched, but I was very little when that happened, so even though I saw parts of it, I didn't fully understand what was going on or why it was so important.

I probably watched about 85% of the hearing, maybe slightly more. I did have work to do from time to time, but even when I wasn't watching I was listening. To be honest, I was surprised by the judge's decision. At the same time, I am glad. I think the only thing left that can save Lindsay from herself is the sentence she received. Of course, I realize it's unlikely she'll spend the full 90 days in jail, but I can hope, can't I?

I know it's ridiculous that I even care, but I kind of feel like I grew up with Lindsay and I want her to do well and succeed, and be healthy while doing so. She's in a downward spiral and I sincerely hope rehab will help her. I don't want her to end up like Anna Nicole.

Vicious Cycle

Teeth gnashing,
palms sweating,
the rage takes over.
Loneliness,
fear,
betrayal.
My feelings are useless,
ignored.
Why not me?
Why this?
Why now?
Questions repeating over
and over
in my head.
Loss of control
and lack of self-control
bring me to this point.
Then a kiss,
a reassurance.
Beautiful, loving.
Three words that still
make my heart stop,
even after everything else.
When will it end?
Before I'm ready,
but after it needs to.
And so we are here again.

Oh honey, no.