I have made it no secret that I was a tween and a teen during that magical musical time known as the eighties. Back in my day, we had fabulous magazines like Teen Beat and Tiger Beat and Bop!. The sole purpose of these fine periodicals was to deliver glossy photos of hot young movie stars, hot young TV stars, and hot young musicians. The teenage girls into whose hands these hot young photos were delivered would immediately cut those images out and tack them to their walls. I was one of those girls. It seemed to be a required step in the puberty process.

I’m sure, if you’ve ever read this blog before, you can guess who was on my wall: Duran Duran, the cast of The Outsiders, more Duran Duran. But also Adam Ant, The Pet Shop Boys, and this funny British guy with crooked teeth.

Yes, that is David Bowie. Why is he holding a cat? Who knows? I didn't care. Keep in mind that I was still a tween. I loved my British pop stars, but I also loved kitties. I might have had this photo framed.

I’d love to tell you that I admired Bowie because of his voice: so instantly recognizable, yet ever-changing; or his expansive talents—actor, artist, space alien. But I was a young, hormonal girl. Here’s what I loved: his hair, his eyes, and his teeth. He was hot.

His hair, because it always looked perfectly spikily coiffed, something that (despite my best efforts with Dep gel and Aqua Net) I could never achieve. His eyes, because they were not only two different colors, but one pupil was permanently dilated, and thus endlessly fascinating. And his teeth, because they weren’t perfect. (I had never been self-conscious about my teeth until a dentist suggested I have my front uppers and lowers capped to straighten them out. I didn’t do it—up until that very moment, I had never given their crookedness a second thought—but now I am painfully aware of my jack-’o-lantern smile.) Famous people with imperfect teeth hold a special place in my heart (Ethan Hawke, I salute you). If they don’t care about their haphazard grins, why should I?

My point is, as a teenager, I thought David Bowie was handsome and sexy and enigmatic. 

Eventually, I got through puberty and grew up. And happily, as an adult, I found David Bowie to be brilliant and crazy and bizarre and beautiful.

David Bowie was always part of the backdrop as I aged. While I was agonizing over pimples and bad dates and bad marriages and a mortgage, he was singing and acting and reinventing himself over, and over, and over. And in every interview, every video, every movie he popped up in, I thought Hey, there’s my old friend, David Bowie! I love that guy! And once: Hey, what the—did he fix his teeth? How could he?

Waking up Monday morning to the news that David Bowie had left the proverbial building was saddening in a way I wasn’t prepared for. My old friend was gone. His absence was immediate and huge.

Except . . . it isn’t. I have a lot of Bowie on my iPhone, and played his music all week while driving or at my desk. I put on Basquiat Monday night and watched him play one of my other favorite artists, Andy Warhol. Social media and the online sites have been posting tributes all week to this amazing man. And even scrolling through some of my old blog posts, I found references to Bowie that I’d forgotten—my love of his duet with Bing Crosby, only because it’s David Bowie. My love of Labyrinth, even though, let’s be honest, it’s not the best movie in the world. References to “Space Oddity” and “Changes” occasionally made because I’d assumed everybody knew these songs and would get the reference.

I have one coworker that is as deep in mourning as I am over the loss of Ziggy Stardust. We started talking about how absolutely brilliant he was to release Blackstar so close to his death. His swan song has skyrocketed in sales this week, and there has been endless speculation and interpretation around the lyrics and videos he left us with.

“Typical Bowie,” my coworker said. “Leaving us all guessing and wanting more.”

This is true. Typical Bowie—in that he never did the typical or expected.

I’ll miss you, old friend. 

I’m off to put on my red shoes and dance the blues.    
__
This week from The Storyside:
Fabulous free fiction: "That Sounds Familiar" by Stacey Longo (hey, that's me!)
An overview of how to get your book written and published: "From Idea to Printed Page, Part 1" by Ursula Wong

Just last week, I was chatting with author Melissa Crandall when she said something along the lines of “Don’t get too close to your idols, or the gold paint will flake off.” (She was loosely quoting someone, and I’m loosely quoting her. This is so far off from whatever the original quote was that I couldn’t even find the original online. But you get the gist.) Prophetic words were never so true. I had two of my idols disappoint me this week.

Quick, who’s your favorite comedian? You’re taking too long. If a roving reporter were to shove a microphone in my face and ask me this very question, without even having to think about it I’d answer “Bobcat Goldthwait.” I own his HBO specials from the eighties on VHS, and I’ve dragged my sister to seedy comedy bars in Connecticut to see his stand-up act live. I do love me some Bobcat. So when the movie Willow Creek showed up in my Netflix queue, and I saw that Bobcat had directed it, to quote the man himself, I pooped a little.

What could go wrong? A Bigfoot movie directed by my favorite funny guy? I sat through all seventy-seven minutes, even though it felt like four hours. It was not good. I was not amused. There wasn’t even a Bobcat cameo. I debated making Jim Gaffigan my new favorite comedian. But most of all, I was sad. My comedic hero was not perfect.

Okay. I’m an adult. I guess I can live with that. Bobcat: not perfect. This was something I should’ve realized back in 1992 when Shakes the Clown came out. I’d forgiven him for that, right? I still love you, Bobcat.

Then a new week dawned. And with that new week, the ultimate betrayal of all: Berkeley Breathed told people how to do MY job, and he told them how to do it WRONG.

It is difficult for me to muster up passion, but the things I do care about, I’m fanatical about. I’m passionate about my need for coffee in the morning. I’m passionate about good books and writing well. I’m passionate about Bloom County and proper grammar and typography. Ah! See that? See how those last two things were in the same sentence? Then Berkeley Breathed did THIS to me:

Wait—what? Two spaces after a period?

NO, Berke. No.

I do not come on my blog and tell people how to be cartoonists. I am not a cartoonist, and would never dare to offer an opinion on how to do it. I will tell you what I like in a comic strip (up until very recently, Bloom County), but I do not give advice to aspiring cartoonists.

All I ask is that Berke Breathed, who is not a copy editor, pay me the same respect. But no. Instead, Berke has taken this issue to a public forum, having my once-beloved Opus the Penguin run for presidency on the platform of two spaces after a period. So not only is Berke making my job a political thing, he’s making Opus advise people to do the grammatically incorrect thing.

My emotions ran the gamut from betrayal to rage to . . . well, mostly rage. What was Berke thinking? Was he trying to be funny? Because joking about two spaces after a period (and in case I haven’t been clear, never, ever do that) is not funny. My hero had let me down.

I wailed. I wept. I lamented my fallen idol. And then, a few days later, I saw this:

Incorrectly formatted ellipses aside, see how Cozy’s dialogue contains two spaces after a period, and Cutter John’s contains one?

That’s kind of funny.


I suppose if I can forgive Bobcat for Willow Creek, I can forgive you, Berke. But you'd better be joking.

1. What you wear is important. I drove up to New Hampshire with fellow author Kristi Petersen Schoonover, who advised me during the drive that I shouldn’t wear green, orange, patterns, or too much makeup. I shouldn’t wear jewelry that was too sparkly, and now was NOT the time to try a new fashion trend. There were sound reasons for this: green would blend in with the green screen, making me look like a floating head with no torso; orange is apparently a bad color on me; patterns make people look fat on TV; makeup melts. Sparkly jewelry is distracting and can cause weird flashy things to happen, and a new fashion trend that I’d never tried would make me uncomfortable.

I wore black.

(Stacey's Note: While I often gripe about having too much on my plate, this week, I actually did. So I asked fellow writer and good friend John Valeri of Hartford Books Examiner fame to help out. Besides having a delightful sense of humor, John also has the endearing quality of not being able to say "No" when  you beg him for a blog post. I hope you enjoy John's reflections on the women in his life as much as I did.)


Women I Love (Besides My Wife) by John Valeri

“Your poor wife! She must be a saint ...”

Those words have become a familiar refrain in my life, and while most people tend to trail off at that point in some semblance of politeness, the “to put up with you” is clearly implied. Allow me to set the record straight: my wife is many things, but a saint is not one of them. Fortunately, she is good-humored. Quite beautiful, also. And impressively tolerant.

I, too, am many things. Obsessive. Compulsive. Fanatical.

I’d like to think that these traits make me the ideal life partner. After all, obsession and fanaticism are pretty much synonymous with loyalty. And who doesn’t want a loyal husband, right?

Of course, when you consider that this loyalty also applies to the women that came before my wife, you understand the potential for conflict. Fortunately, all of these prior relationships have been of a platonic nature.

And while some people might question this seemingly endless parade of lady friends, I firmly believe that I have the capacity to love them all … 

Gloria Estefan

I can’t tell you how many people have asked if, or assumed that, Gloria Estefan is my wife. That’s not to say they always recognize her as “the Conga Queen,” but the picture of us that adorns my desk at work—and the second one that serves as my computer’s backdrop—apparently creates the false impression that we’re a bit more intimately acquainted than is actually the case. Go figure. Having said that, I do maintain that Gloria is (and was, and always will be) the first lady of my life. Long before Chelsey became the music of my heart—hey! See what I did there?—Gloria turned my beat around, providing the soundtrack to my youth. Chelsey has made her peace with this, and we’ve since followed Gloria across the globe together (all the way to Canada!), incurred bucket-loads of debt, and done all kinds of shameless things in pursuit of the true G-spot.   

Oh, and in my defense: my wife’s picture also holds a place of honor on my desk—it’s just a tad less prominently placed than Gloria’s ...

Marcia Clark

Yes, that Marcia Clark. She may have come out on the losing side of the “Trial of the Century” but she won in the court of public opinion—and in the recesses of my teenaged heart. I’ve been told I have a thing for older women who possess, ahem, strong opinions and colorful vocabularies. Perhaps this little infatuation is the proof? Anyway … seventeen years after my twelve-year-old self took up the Marcia mantle I met her while she was traveling on a book tour. (Did you know she’s a brilliantly accomplished crime novelist now? No? For shame!) I knew we were destined for BFF’dom from the very moment that I asked her not to take out a restraining order on me and she replied: “Everybody knows those only make you try harder.” And then she laughed—she does that often, and infectiously—and we’ve been compadres ever since. Bonus points: the rhythm dun got her, as Marcia is a fellow Glo-head.

Neve Campbell

What can I say? As a neurotic and perpetually anxious child, I avoided horror movies like the proverbial plague. And then one night I made the fateful decision to watch Scream alone in the dark. The only thing that tempered my absolute terror was the hot, frightened girl-next-door who had the moxy to drop a TV on her would-be killer’s head. Snap! Nobody does the strong-yet-vulnerable thing better than Neve Campbell, and I’m a sucker for a woman in need of saving. (That’s no reflection on you, Chelsey—I swear!) Which is probably why, when writing my own obituary for a high school Journalism class, I fancied myself transitioning to the great beyond during a moment of coital bliss in Ms. Campbell’s trailer. And yes, she was screaming—but the good kind. For that reason alone, I forgave her when she dropped out of the TV pilot based on Marcia’s books.

Are there more women? Of course there are! But I don’t want to brag. Besides, I’ve got packing to do. Gloria’s expecting me in Chicago. Don’t get the wrong idea, though—I invited my wife to join us …

(Stacey here again. If you enjoyed John's post, please take a moment to go visit his Hartford Books Examiner page at http://www.examiner.com/books-in-hartford/john-valeri. Because John is not only awesome, but he really saved my neck this week. Thank you!)