In Which to the Author’s Dismay, she has to concede that the girl rocks

Now this might be the weirdest thing I will ever say: I’m loving the new Ashlee Simpson album.

Who knew the spokeslady of the insipid generation would start channeling Avril, Gwen Stefani, Blondie lite, and a little Cyndi Lauper- possibly in time to redeem herself?

I hated even admitting such a thing, trust me. But Rolling Stone gave it the seal of approval and I thought, huh? Where am I?

So, yeah, checked it out. The lyrics are…horrible.. horribly unfortunate most of the time. But not all the time. It’s the type of awful that’s going to be embarrassing a few years from now when she’s putting out killer shit. And I think she will. Some of this already is.

I do so love a good pop ditty. I love silly boyfriend songs that thump and bump and jump about, stuff that takes you from the skipping rope days right through to the ol’ pine boat. But I’m heavily prejudiced by utter disdain for the Simpsons sisters. I’ve been embarrassed for them over the years, but at least Jessica’s got her beauty. The only thing interesting about Ashlee Simpson has been how her boyfriend made the word ‘guyliner’ part of group consciousness.

Though I cringe frequently at the lyrics, there’re other times when I’m genuinely thinking ‘clever.’ I would absolutely be up on the dance floor, and that’s getting rarer and rarer though I said it never would….

Some songs are getting better with repeated listening, always a real test in my mind. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, and I like to be silly and foolish a great deal of the time. Surely, Ash’s not the best voice in the industry, but not half bad, either. It’s the very first time I’ve ever seen the girl show a personality: tons of it! The Rolling Stone mentioned some ‘appealing honesty,’ and sure enough, a sprinkling of that and a good dose of genuine confidence really show her stepping up to the plate.

Most astonishing of all, there’s at least one track that I would call ‘brilliant.’ I couldn’t help but notice the title of Little Miss Obsessive right off the bat, given my blog name. Then I couldn’t help myself cranking it up loud, over and over. And I can’t wait to hear the long mixes at Fly, hands in the air, see you there!

Now how embarrassing is this? Go check it out.

Shut up and Dance

An ambitious, attractive, intelligent man I respected deeply was shocked to find out that a big ol’ intellectual like myself has a penchant for celebrity culture. While I’m sure not immune to the junky, addictive qualities of glossy gossip rags touting the latest infidelities, rehab trips and rivalries that are none of my business, I do believe celebrity mania has much more to offer. It’s not just about superficial pleasures like the latest Oscar gowns- celebrities are arguably more important to the people than politicians, and to some extent, they always have been.

Being famous is not a job I would do well, and while my friend argued that overpaid celebrities are a huge part of the wealth distribution problem, something I can’t disagree with, there’s also tremendous inspiration from our public pantheon. This criticism of those who are wealthy for ‘doing nothing’ came from a man who supports sports. I might argue that acting and singing are valuable arts and that sports icons earning millions for shooting a puck are the true leeches of our gladiatorial bloodlust, but I won’t. Millions enjoy watching sports, even if I don’t.

My friend was especially horrified that I had fallen for Angelina Jolie, the suicidal wrist-cutter who kissed her brother at an awards ceremony. He was definitely ‘team Aniston’, which even from a sex-appeal only perspective, I don’t get. I don’t wish the nicety Miss Aniston any ill, but I couldn’t believe that “Joe” didn’t see Jolie as a woman of substance. While critics have opposed adoption mania as an attention-grab, I can’t judge the intents of a woman who puts her hordes of dough into dozens of charities, and travels to the places we’ve forgotten in order to help the sick and the hungry. Sure, Mother Teresa was appropriately poor- but then we judged her, too, for being too religious. Jolie admits that her film work is ridiculously paid, and that’s why she gives a third of her income to charities. In addition to endless human rights advocacy, she’s currently helping to rebuild New Orleans.

Diana was walking through landmine territory hobnobbing with the legless, giving gloveless touches to AIDS patients, and hugging Bosnians who had lost all their sons in war. She paved the way for the powerful to use their luck and talent to help influence those of us with less to do the same. Though the princess definitely liked sympathetic attention, who doesn’t? I can’t imagine paparazzi snapping at me every time I finally make it out to yoga or finally get a date. If that were my world, I’d want to lap up some positive press that might actually benefit someone.

We all fell into jeering at MJ (found innocent over and over again, yet we’ve ruined him forever-was he innocent? I’m not God). But the headlines forgot to announce his constant and generous donations to children’s funds- giving the term babylover a whole different meaning. Landmine, amnesty, and environmental advocacy groups might all be bankrupt if we relied on our leaders to fund and publicize them. We may criticize stars for their generous deeds, but we should start criticizing our leaders for their inactivity, rather than judging Oprah and Madonna for funding whole orphanages in a fell swoop. Through the years, Bono has single-handedly made charity work manly, not just the realm of chicks and cheese-ball metrosexy megalomaniacs like Sting (I say such things tongue in cheek, for despite my loathing for smarmy, ‘adult contemporary’ music, I respect all of Sting’s charity work.)

The rich and famous may still party like its 1999, but they’ve always been at the forefront of philanthropy. Josephine Baker began the whole adoption thing long before Jolie or Oprah were born. The richest black woman in the world before the big O became everybody’s mother, Baker was deeply eccentric. While she lavished diamonds on her pet cheetahs, she was also prone to paying the coal bills for whole villages, speaking out against racism next to MLK, and she gained notoriety for adopting 12 children from all over the world, her ‘rainbow tribe.’ Perhaps Baker was luckier than we are, being a millionaire and all, but she wasn’t just a lottery winner- she was an amazing icon, a pilot like Jolie, and a dancer of rare beauty, talent and drive. As a little girl from extreme poverty who once made her bed next to her master’s dog, she rose (and fell) publicly, and the intents of her heart are not mine to judge.

But I do judge, and recently fell into the fun of Paula-poking, as the world’s second favourite American Idol judge got speared time and time again for showing up drunk, slurring words, and sleeping with Idol hopefuls. It’s not just charity that celebrities move us to: what dancer, singer or writer grows up dreaming without their favourite inspirations? Famous people may be luckier than other talented people who remain undiscovered, but we wouldn’t keep working if we didn’t aspire to anything. It’s easy to blast Madonna for being loaded, but she sure wasn’t loaded when she got off that bus in NYC with $35 in her pocket, and neither are the minions who keep singing or painting through their own poverty, working on their art against all odds.

Paula’s motherly warmth on American Idol often conjures up public criticism that she’s a wash-up or has-been, a second-rate celebrity relegated to sitting on her big butt passing judgement, so we think we can do so at home, too. And we can, and we do, and that’s part of that gladiatorial instinct we all have.

It’s fun to make fun, but recently I was reminded of something I believe in but had forgotten- you can’t really know anything about a person unless you actually know them.

See, I also thought Paula was a cheesy wash-up with a secret pill problem (and people who are wash-ups with pill problems are people, too- people like our mothers, husbands, and children). I’ve changed my mind, though, because Paula’s story reads like Greek tragedy, though she refuses to harp on it for public sympathy or acclaim.

Her career began cheerleading for the Lakers when she was 18, and she was such a feisty team leader that she became choreographer for the cheer squad. The Jacksons picked up her dance expertise and leadership qualities when she was only 20. Abdul went on to choreograph just about everybody who had anything to do with the 1980s. Prince, Duran Duran, the Pointer Sisters, Dolly Parton, George Michael, INXS, ZZTop, Luther Vandross, and Michael Jackson sought her out for video work.

I’d thought Abdul’s only claim to fame were the cringe-worthy blockbuster hits Straight Up and Cold Hearted Snake- I thought wrong. It would serve me well to remember that a lot of work goes on behind the scenes, and not all artistry is visible. After all, only a small few have heard of me, and it may be that I never write a New York Times Bestseller (I’m not ruling it out, though). Still, I work without ceasing on my art and writing, and have for decades.

Of course, I’ve never had to type with broken fingers and hope I never do. I complain that I’ve had some rotten luck in life and I’ve felt strong and courageous for forging forward when I felt I was dying. But we might all take a lesson about strength and courage from Abdul, who didn’t cancel her concert tours when she had a broken leg.

While the syrupy pop formula of her singing work has never been my cup of tea, millions disagreed with me and made her into a platinum-selling artist. I can acknowledge her lovely, sugared vocal tones and admirable persistence without being fond of that style of music. Her concerts were about more than singing hits, though- Abdul is a dancer, and she got out there and danced with a broken leg and no one knew it. (Paula’s second album was called Shut up and Dance!)

She also survived after being hit by a drunk driver, and she survived a plane crash as well. This remarkable woman’s body took an endless chain of batterings from all kinds of unrelated incidents, and I don’t feel quite as sorry for myself as I did before I knew all this. How inspiring that a woman who was told she would never dance again time after time keeps on going. I can’t imagine the heartbreak of everything I have to offer the world being taken away.

In fact, after more than 14 major spinal and neck surgeries (for starters) Abdul was paralyzed and unable to speak. She was told she would never sing again. She still sometimes has trouble formulating thoughts or speaking correctly, spawning all kinds of cruel assumptions and speculations about her being drunk on set. To make matters worse, she was diagnosed with a rare disease called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome, in which every part of her body is in extreme pain, all of the time. Some of the symptoms of this disease include pathological changes to the bone and skin, tissue swelling, and severe, burning pain.

Considering that I’m incapacitated every single month with the ordinary curse (and I still think that’s valid, given that I can barely walk) I give full kudos to someone who can be so kind and generous when she is constantly suffering. I give even more respect because she never whines about it, and rarely speaks publicly about her private pain. She did defend herself, much to public laughter, this year, saying she has never been drunk in her life, but she lets truth speak for itself if someone is willing to find it. She never whines or acts like a martyr. She just carries on finding new ways to work and never stopping.

It’s definitely part of the deal as a celebrity to have a rumour mill spin endless accusations, including the one where Paula (allegedly) inappropriately seduced a helpless teenage contestant (yeah, those helpless horny teenage boys). Of course she was cleared. Abdul is squeaky clean and it always comes out that way in the wash. There was that ‘hit and run’ incident that made nice headline follow up to the ‘hit and run’ lyric in Straight Up. Abdul spoke honestly of the incident as a side effect of the various treatments she tried in managing her physical pain. Laugh if you like, but the stuff you pop for fun on Fridays is a living hell for the people who need it (pain is why these things were invented, remember, and a perfectly noble reason for using them. Should Dilaudid not be available to cancer patients, but only to recreational users who later want to judge people who are truly suffering?)

Paula has lived much of her life in confusion, pain, paralysis, and exhaustion. Yet she never complains and constantly forges forward, mothering the nation with her warmth and wit, working behind the scenes in television, video, and film. She brings her extraordinary spirit into our living rooms each week. She could have long retired with her money to relax on endless beaches with endless fruity island concoctions and justify all manner of illicit drug use when the rest of us would have to confess we just did it for fun.

Though ridiculed when no one bid on her Meet Paula eBay auction for MS, perhaps that says more about our public inability to give than about this lady. The unstoppable Abdul also designs jewelry, works with kids who need more education, and speaks up for disaster victims.

I’m reluctant to call anyone’s public artistry or charity ‘a publicity stunt,’ even when it is. Considering, dear reader, that most of this is news to you, as it was for me, it’s hard to criticize Paula for attention-mongering. Let’s be inspired by stories like these to do our best even at death’s door. And let us also remember that celebrities may be public heroes, but there are plenty of similar stories right next door to us. How well do you know your neighbour? And who was it that said judge not, lest ye be judged?

There is Nothing New Under the Sun: Britney, Babylon, and the Modern World

Like everyone else on the planet, my addiction to celebrity addictions has reached a crescendo. It’s all consuming. Picture a group of four civilized thirtysomethings gathered in the big city for a night of gourmet Thai food and a good catch-up. Two girls, two guys: could be unused Will and Grace footage. Except the hairdresser is leaning intently over a tabloid that features a close up of Michael Jackson’s latest facial bandages. The restaurant manager reaches for Ebony- it’s got the MJ makeover pics, and we decide that’s probably as good as Mikey’s ever gonna look. The actress is circling all the known addicts in Life and Style with a purple Sharpie. The writer muses out loud that even squeaky-clean Nicole K’s husband is an addict. None of that, of course, is anywhere near as important as the story of the century- the public downward spiral of Brit-Brit Spears. This week’s latest chapter has us on the edge of our seats: did Brit’s mom really sleep with K-Fed and the new sinister-looking Arab hottie? Cause if it’s true, it would explain just about every damn thing that’s wrong with that poor girl.

Sure, I’ve been worried about my escalating compulsion to watch the latest breaking stories of Hollywood’s filthy fallouts on late night TV. Worse is the guilty knowledge that even the cheapest glossy rag is a waste of my hard-earned money. But I’ve already given up drugs and sugar, so I cut myself some slack- so long as I am still stopping by Book City for fresh Canadian poetry volumes, Discover Magazine, and cookbooks, so long as I am completing my non-celeb writing assignments, so long as I am eating and sleeping and taking regular baths and changing the kitty litter…

I’ve railed against a machine that drove Diana into the long tunnel from which she never emerged. I’ve lambasted a world that thinks it’s okay to take zoom shots of Britney’s panties, which prove, evidently, that the girl is not, today at least, pregnant with Adnan’s baby. But I’ve also defended the insatiable public appetite for destruction, for who wore what when and where, who took what drug at which party, and who is zooming whom. I agree with Camille Paglia, though I am not nearly so articulate as she, that the stars are the stars: humans always have a pantheon of gods and goddesses, from antiquity into the modern world, who reach unknown heights and plunge to sordid deaths. Greco-Roman mythology reads like the rags read today: Hercules was insane and murdered his wife and children. Arachne hanged herself. Zeus kills Semele while Dionysus is still in her womb. Murder, suicide, madness, incest, torture, revenge, drugs, secrets, prostitution: it’s all there, and it’s there in every mythology of the world, not just the much-studied classics. It is no mistake that Diana is another name for Artemis, Goddess of the moon, the hunter and the hunted one. Celebrity is our modern day mythology. It isn’t going to go away.

Camille said, “Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.” Whether or not it’s reprehensible, it is absolutely human. The gods are half human, and half celestial. With one foot on earth, and the other in heaven or hell, we look to them to play out the psychodramas in our own life, not, as many assume, to revel in their lives because we do not have one of our own. And perhaps this familiar tendency is not unique to humans, but to other animals. I’ve long believed my cats talk about my peeps and me when I’m not home. Surely I’m mad, but scientists have discovered that dolphins gossip- no joke. See, I told you I’m still reading some science here and there!

Perhaps at this point in history, post-Diana, where paparazzi is a household word and a lucrative career choice, where we are practically standing in gas-station bathrooms with a woman named Britney that we don’t even know, it would be a good time to stop berating ourselves for our very human hunger and see if we can create a future direction for our celebrity addiction. Can awareness of our need for this kind of theatre help us create a better world?

We feel guilty for our rabid obsessions with the mad, the mental, and the maxed-out. We shake our heads and say, ‘Why can’t they leave that poor little girl alone?” The nastier among us may think, “Crazy rich bitch, who cares.” I’m not down with that- though I might trade in my humble rental for a couple of million, I’m sure that a few good friends and a few peaceful hours to read a novel might be everything in the world that Britney Spears wants tonight. Still, if her world changed tonight, if she left her house and there was nobody outside, no cameras flashing, no headlines, the shock would kill her. We malign her for seeking out that attention, but we are all victims of our environment. The Amish children who leave go back home for the most part. People commit suicide when they lose a shitty dead-end job they’ve been grumbling about for years. We know what we know. Britney knows nothing else. It is not her fault that she has fed on the flash and the adrenaline for so long.

Regardless, the media vulture is not going to go away. If it did, Britney Spears would drop dead. It seems we are waiting with bated breath for that to happen- there is more than one contest up and running where whoever guesses the date and time of that event wins. Humans are a corrupt and bloodthirsty lot. We love a car crash; we love a bullfight, boxing, wrestling, and movies like Hostel. We love war. We are greedy and fat and neurotic and we beat our wives and children. We keep slaves and we sell our daughters. This bloodthirstiness is nothing new. It’s a given. I find it horrible and disgusting and sick and sad, but it has been true from the very beginning. While I applaud every single action anyone makes toward peace, goodwill, equality, generosity, and compassion, none of these noble gestures erase the fact that we are rotten to the core. We can’t afford to be sentimentalists: realism gives us a better foothold for change. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And even that glory, if you learn about Him in the Bible, is a vicious, savage glory, warmongering and smiting left and right.

Perhaps there is the other side to the story. The side that has to follow every anguished cry of Our Lady of Madness because her cry is ours. Perhaps we are hoping for her to ‘get help’ because it illustrates our own struggle, the fumble to find ecstasy, or just peace of mind for crying out loud. In the midst of success, we may feel isolated. In the midst of marriage, we may be terrified we made a poor choice. We may fear our parenting skills. We may be scared of our drug use. All these stories do is play out on a large screen scale the same trials and woes we all have. From what to wear to dinner, to whether or not this week’s shrink appointment is going to make a rat’s ass of difference to the astonishing emptiness we feel. Britney was crying in the chapel, and so are we.

While the narrow philosophies I was raised with would tediously refer to Hollywood as ‘glorifying sin’, perhaps instead it illuminates the best and worst of our obsessions. We sneer this week about how ‘everyone’s going to rehab since Heath jumped ship.” Did you ever think that the public travails of Anna Nicole Smith and Lindsay Lohan made it amazingly easy for the rest of the world to start tossing up the word ‘addiction’? I think it’s amazing that in the fall out of this particular tempest- the unexpected death of a very talented actor, and our fear that brilliant new songstress Amy Winehouse is at the edge of that abyss, people are looking at their own issues and saying “no more bullshit. I’m going into rehab.” We can only try. Trying is everything. Maybe rehab won’t work out for Winehouse, or for Eva Mendes, or for Delta Burke. But maybe it will. Maybe Winehouse hopes to make an even better album instead of dying. I sure hope it works out for her because I’d love to hear it.

The thing is, there is no specific solution. It’s romantic and naïve to think humans have ever had one. We are incredibly contradictory, and though solutions have been thrown around since the beginning of time, (some of these bright ideas have included exterminating the race of enemies, bringing slaves to build our countries, torturing mental patients, castrating women…) we don’t have any fucking solutions. We only have our tricky history of violence and obsession, mixed with our amazing contributions and discoveries. We will never evolve to our full potential, because, just as technology has made us into magicians who can chat over breakfast with friends across the world, our natural greed has scourged the earth. On the smaller scale, we must have witnessed in our own life that sometimes finding Jesus worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes therapy or rehab worked, but sometimes we lost the fight and buried a loved one. Sometimes a new medical breakthrough saved the life of our child or gave us back mobility. Sometimes it didn’t, and helpless, we watched cancer or AIDS or diabetes take someone from us.

We can’t know how things will work out. It isn’t personal- when a hurricane sweeps through a city and demolishes it, it isn’t personal. I wasn’t a better person just because the hurricanes have not so far struck Toronto. You aren’t a better person than Britney just because you take your Prozac like a good little girl. Don’t be so sure that nobody at your church knows about your secrets. They do: if only because they share them.

It all takes us back to square one. We are going to do what we are going to do. Good and evil will always rival inside of us, a tug of war that never finds resolution. So that means we keep on striving to become better, but don’t fall off an imaginary pedestal when things- big surprise- don’t necessarily work out. We can’t stop war, but we keep trying because it’s the right thing to do. We can’t stop every violence or poverty in the world, every disease or despairing heart, but we can help one child, we can give one homeless man a banana and a coffee. We can’t win over all of our bad habits, but we can probably change a few of them. We can’t eradicate all of the darkness inside of us, but we can strive for light. After all, as Oprah said, to do less than your best is a sin.

www.thegirlcanwrite.net
Lorette C. Luzajic

I hope you will visit my site above and explore my writing. If you think your friend will like me, please pass me on! You can order my poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos online through indigo or amazon.

Hope for the Flowery (while listening to Elton John)

You know it’s a melancholy day if you’re listening to Elton John at five pm. It might even be the kind of night that I shut off all my phones and my Mac, the kind of night I stay inside and read Cooking Light in the granny chair. Hell, somehow I’ve acquired an afghan this winter…yeah.

Seriously, I’m really feeling the lull of Elton’s gorgeous schmaltz. Elton annoys me, overall, ever since he recycled Marilyn’s song and dedicated it, along with that England’s rose tripe, to poor Diana. Did not the Great Huntress and Hunted deserve her own exquisite lullaby? He ruined a moment, but hell, no one seemed to notice but me. I can’t doubt that the grief he was experiencing at the time made him crazy, but certainly you could have come up with something just for Diana? You’ve got to wonder why he forewent the chance to earn another zillion when my trashiest girlfriend, Anna Nicole Smith, tripped the light fantastic last year. And he mustn’t miss the Britney opportunity ahead!

I must forgive any of this cheese, for the madcap genius and originality of his better numbers. There’s something so old-school about the EJ experience. I must forgive the man for thinking he was locked in a closet- anyone who wears such outlandish, garish, exquisitely flaming clothes is definitely making a statement. Loud and clear, sister. And on top of all of that amazing gaiety, there are the odd moments of musical brilliance and those soaring, friendly, sad-tinged happy vocals. Certainly as an entertainer, El is absolutely, well, entertaining.

I’m not super versed in the man’s magic- I’m scared off fast by shit like Blessed and Can You Feel the Bile. It’s not cruel: if I’m a harsh judge, it’s only because of the moments when Elton gets it. Those moments are pure artistry. Creativity and originality at their apex, with a stellar set of pipes and a stunning engagement, intensity and depth. I’m talking about Rocket Man, Sacrifice, about Benny and the Jets, I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues, Sad Songs. Operatic, but easy going. So what’s going on when dude sells out to this kind of Lion King ballad pap? I don’t know, man, I don’t know.

The very gay bravado of his cinematic selections and collaborator Bernie Taupin’s thoughtful songwriting make sketches of kooky people we might even know. Elton’s blend of swishiness, sentiment, and madness is a very unique brand. He’s just the epitome of flaming, in the most grandiose and chummy ways possible.

And then he might make smarmy, poorly thought out barbs at Madonna, who made a world where he’s allowed out of the closet, but I guess that’s just him being the cranky old queen that he is now. He ain’t getting any younger. My bravado lies largely in my youth, also, as is the way for nearly every sentient being.

Still, for both of us I hope our best is yet to come. A fine moment like Nikita can be a nostalgic trigger for a finer moment, just as velvety, and darker. And pure, polished bubbles of tremendous joy and shininess like Don’t Go Breaking My Heart may be a glossy memory next to another frivolous morsel of sweet nothingness. Despite that my heart was broken by such predictable consumerist slickness as that Lion King debacle, in truth that was something of the comeback to respectability EJ had to have after a rattling career. Recall how many queens hid behind Glam Rock, as if no one could tell. The flamboyance we now revel in, the Gok Wans and Co Jos, all owes a debt of heritage to Elton John. All this ridiculous movie soundtrack balladry just proves that the wildest of us will mellow out in middle age. It’s true that the stress of being forced to admit he was bisexual in the mid-70s closed off the brightest chapter of his career, and from then on was a struggle. He even married a woman, an act I might call cowardly with my cavalier attitude of the Free to Be generation. But I can’t know what it’s like to be afraid your career will end because you are gay. Of course dude had cocaine and alcohol problems and an eating disorder. So did Elvis. Under the stress of fame, a girl needs a little something-something, and how easily that spins out of control as you become a spin-off in our disposable world.

It doesn’t matter if I feel ready to hurl when I hear songs like Tiny Dancer and Circle of Life. There are dozens of shining gems and hundreds of perfectly good rhinestones: I can leave the plastic on the shelf for someone else to coo over. I also have to respect the man because I know he tries to be flexible. He’s been brave enough to bridge the flaming arts with the testosterone riddled fury of gangsta in unusual creative endeavours like Ghetto Gospel. He bravely moved on from the hissy fit (so did Moby, still waiting for B y George to come around) and performed with Eminem in front of the world at the Grammies. This is what I love- to be surprised, to have the unexpected happen. Stan is one of the more unusual chunks of collaborative genius out there. This kind of spectacle is truly diversity. Rumour has it that he’ll be on Eminem’s next project, as well, and that his upcoming solo album might be hip hop. This is THEATRE , dahhhling.

It’s not just limited to the hot and tragic hip hop boys, either. There are more dazzling surprises: Kate Bush changed Rocket Man into a crisp, icy blade, it’s own ethereal world, clean and fantastical. Take three, Baby Stewie. I know the day that Stewie reads my poetry is the day I can say I did what I set out to do.

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Order my book The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos at indigo.ca or amazon.com.