Another Hallowhog over...

...a new one just eight nine* months away.

Yes, it seems like only a third quarter* of a year ago that Hallowhog began. But what an arbitrary four three*-month cluster of holidays beginning and ending with non-moveable feasts it's been! Britney acting increasingly insane...the first almost-real Presidential primary (on both the Democratic and Republican tickets!) in decades...and Heath Ledger, Brad Renfro, Bobby Fischer, Christian Brando, Benazir Bhutto, Margaret Truman, former Indonesian President Suharto, Suzanne Pleshette, Edmund Hillary, Oscar Peterson, Ike Turner, Evel Knievel, Dick "Mr. Whipple" Wilson, Dan Fogelberg, Lee Vincent, Al Scaduto, and Norman Mailer, among others, all shuffling off the mortal coil.

On top of all that, I have no idea if the groundhog saw his shadow today or not. Stupid groundhog.

Video clip time. This is a mean one, dedicated to all the young rising stars who are having a hard time keeping their heads screwed on. It's a video I first saw on a syndicated late-night video program that featured videos from a single artist - locally, this was late on either Saturday or Sunday night. (This was before my family had MTV.)

This video blew my mind when I first saw it. This was back in 1980 or 1981. I was watching the video show because that week it featured videos by the band Blondie, and I was lusting after Debbie Harry - who, ironically, was 36 when this video came out; by most measures of celebrity, she had already missed out on fulfilling the message of the song. I was only familiar with a handful of Blondie songs at the time - "Heart of Glass", "One Way or Another", "Rapture", "Call Me", and "The Tide Is High". The last, with its tin drums and reggae influences, more closely resembled this song than any of the others. But what really freaked me out were the masks, the incoherent backing vocals, and the giant joints that everyone is smoking. Was Blondie a...a...drug band? My 13-year-old mind reeled at the thought. Or were they suggesting that the excesses of life would lead to the title of the song coming true?

So, for all you nihilists out there, here's Debbie Harry and the boys - the one and only Blondie - with "Die Young, Stay Pretty":

(Debbie Harry is still pretty today in her 60's.)

While we're on the subject of death, stop on over at Tiffany's place and hear what William Shatner has to say about it.

*I wonder if the new schedule will keep me from doing things like thinking February 2nd is actually February 29th.