I wanna do it 'til I can't get enough

Those of you who knew me well my 1L year--to date, the worst year of my life by far--know that this song, KC & The Sunshine Band's Boogie Shoes, in a not-totally-hyperbolic way saved my life. Studying for finals in December of 2006 (unbelievable it was that long ago) in the green-carpeted dungeon of a library, hating my life, hating myself, hating everything...I saved my sanity with that insanely catchy hook. I listened to it at least 3 times a day, a lot of days close to 20 times. That is not an exaggeration. What? It's only about a 2 minute song! It's also the song that kicked off the dancing at my wedding, after I had put on my boogie shoes.

So it is not lightly that I say that this morning, during my weekly Top 20 VH1 Countdown viewing, I thought...holy shit, who is this band, and are they seriously the second coming of KC&SSB? So I sit, transfixed by the 80s sunglasses, and 90s pop hooks, wondering. Who is it? When it got to the end and the band's name came up, I just laughed. I mean, really. Well played, young sirs.

That was way harsh, Tai

So, as you either know about by now or absolutely won't care about once I tell you, Brittany Murphy died at the age of 32 this week. It's hard to say why I'm as upset about this as I am--celebrity deaths rarely affect me, and it's not as though I was a HUGE Brittany Murphy fan so that this just brings my world tumbling down.

Part of it is that she was in two of my most favorite movies of all time, and two that were pretty formative for me. The first of those, Clueless, was her breakout role and one of her best-known. She's fabulous in it.

The second is Drop Dead Gorgeous, where she plays Lisa Swenson, a misfit not totally unlike Tai, her character from Clueless. Sort of awkward, very sweet, always hilarious.

Both Clueless and Drop Dead Gorgeous were huge movies for me. They shaped my sense of humor, my sense of style, maybe even my sense of self the way that movies only can before you graduate from high school. And in both cases I related way more to the Brittany Murphy character than the pretty blonde protagonist (Alicia Silverstone and Kirsten Dunst, respectively). They're silly high school movies, but at the same time they're subversively funny and with great heart. One of them is almost always my go-to when I'm having a bad day and want to watch something fun.

As has been well documented across the internet, after those movies she got very blonde and very very thin and started playing more ingénue types. People speculated that she was doing a lot of drugs or developed anorexia. People have, of course, speculated that one or both of these things caused her death.

It just makes me sad that, whatever happened, the world lost such a great comic actress and such a part of my teenage life. It also breaks my heart and turns my stomach how the entertainment shows and magazines and blogs all assume it was drugs or disordered eating and, frankly, we don't know. We don't know her life or her husband or her medical history. Why can't we just remember fondly her bizarre, hilarious, snorting kind of giggle? Or at least keep our damn mouths shut until we actually KNOW something--anything?

Anyway, as Kevin Smith apparently tweeted, Brittany, I hope you're rolling with the homies somewhere nice. I'll miss you.

on MJ

So I had composed this whole long post about how confused I am about the reaction to Michael Jackson's death--and how upset people are, and how no one is talking about the fact that he may or may not have molested a bunch of kids (and, at the very least had an unsettling relationship with many of them) and that, in his later years, he became a total weirdo with the surgery and the KID NAMED BLANKET and whatnot.

But then fucking JOHN MAYER of all people goes and says it better and less hurtfully than I could have.

Michael Jackson proves, in a really sort of perverse way, that maybe we're not as offended by your behavior as we are entranced by your music. And think about that. Think about what level of quality you must have to attain to have somebody say, "I know that you're accused of having molested children, but I can't hate you for that as much as I love you for your music." I'm not saying that's right or wrong. But I'm saying that its fascinating. That somebody could be that great. That somebody could have that much of a marriage with your emotions just through music.

Sigh. It really is fascinating.