Eddie Vedder sings Tom Petty for the Oscars

Most #MeToo noncompliant 3 seconds:



"You're a movie star now. You give them what they want, you can get anything."

Shockingly close to "And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."

"On a positive note we now know for certain he went painlessly and beautifully exhausted after doing what he loved the most, for one last time..."

"... performing live with his unmatchable rock band for his loyal fans on the biggest tour of his 40 plus year career. He was extremely proud of that achievement in the days before he passed."

Tom Petty's family communicates after receiving the news from the coroner that Petty died from an accidental overdose of painkiller drugs.

Like Prince, who also died from an accidental overdose of painkiller drugs, Petty suffered from physical injury in the hip bone. In Petty's case: "On the day he died he was informed his hip had graduated to a full on break and it is our feeling that the pain was simply unbearable and was the cause for his over use of medication."

I've written before about the "died doing what he loved" statement. It is what people tend to say, even when it's a tough fit. I've heard it used to adjust to a murder that happened to a person who was walking down the street. It's a big cliché, but obviously entirely understandable and only worth pointing out from a great distance.

In this case, if Petty went on stage after hearing this news and played one great concert, while overusing dangerous drugs, I'm not convinced he didn't decide to check out from this life, but there's no suicide note, and the family should interpret the evidence in the way it likes best. There's no greater truth than that we believe what we want to believe.

Stop dragging my heart around...

Hoping for the best for the great Tom Petty, who "was put on life support after being found unconscious in full cardiac arrest...."

He wasn't breathing when he was found, but EMTs were able to find a pulse on Petty. TMZ updated their reporting to say that a source close to the singer alleged that Petty had "no brain activity" when he arrived at the hospital and was later pulled off life support.

UPDATE: TMZ: "We're told after Petty got to the hospital he had no brain activity and a decision was made to pull life support."



AND: Back in the 70s:

The Kiss — a 10-item list.

1. After writing the last post — focusing on 2 magazine covers depicting a kiss — made me want to write a blog devoted to the kiss. It would be easy to keep a Google alert on the word "kiss" and blog every day on whatever miscellany relating to kissing happened to come up. I considered starting a new blog, but kiss.blogspot.com, kissblog.blogspot.com, and thekissblog.blogspot.com were all taken, so this post is a rough draft of what that blog would have been.

2. A Google news search on "kiss" brings up something I should already have blogged: Joe Biden, swearing in a Senator (Chris Coons) and wrangling various family members into good photo-op positions, got a little too cozy with a modest/nervous little girl and guessed wrong when he decided that a little cheek nuzzling would loosen her up. Reactions varied from "Holy Hell Would Be Unleashed On 'Handsy' Joe Biden If He Were Conservative" to "Awesome Little Girl Rejects Biden's Kiss At Senate Swearing-In." Hey, Joe, no means no... Mr. Violence Against Women Act.

3. Remember your first kiss? Kid Rock does — or is able to strain his voice Jack-and-Diane style in various assertions to that effect in this new video "First Kiss":



"And now these days when I drive through a small town/I turn my stereo up and roll my windows down/’Cause it reminds me of my first kiss/And those days that I always miss/Tom Petty on the radio." Tom Petty gets a big shout-out. Seems like John Cougar Mellencamp deserves a nod (or a peck on the cheek).

4. Kiss cam variations... including the deepest deep kiss:



5. "KISS frontman Gene Simmons... is as ubiquitous as ever with a reality-television show and a recent book on his business philosophy called 'Me Inc'" and a new restaurant in Oviedo called Rock and Brews. Quote: "You are alive, and you are supposed to keep moving... I'm 65, and, boy, do I look great."

6. "Tell me about the Root kiss. Was that a big gift for the fans?... Did you think it was a 'Goodbye forever' kiss, or a 'Shut up, I’ll be back' kiss?" Apparently, there's a TV show called "Person of Interest" and there was a kiss that made a big impression — "a much-anticipated kiss between the show’s electrifying women." What was so big about it? It can't just be that 2 women kissed on TV or even that 2 electrifying women kissed on TV. In the first nonplatonic 2-woman kiss the women were electrifying: Sharon Stone Mariel Hemingway and Rosanne Barr. "Television critic Frank Rich of The New York Times called 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' 'a small step forward for the stirring of homosexuals into the American melting pot' and a 'sophisticated half-hour [that] turned homophobia on its ear.'" The year was 1994.

7. The previous post — the post that got me started on this list — discussed a Charlie Hebdo cover showing 2 men kissing which I assumed was an intentional allusion to the famous New Yorker cover showing a Jewish man and a black woman kissing, and Meade said: "You know what else you should have included?" I said: "Brancusi's 'The Kiss'?"



No, he was thinking of the famous photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse: "V-J Day in Times Square" by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Scanning my Google image search results, I saw Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" and said: "As ubiquitous as Gene Simmons." No, I said: "How many dorm rooms have you seen this in?" And "There's also that Rodin."

8. For a less famous, less over-liked artwork called the kiss, consider Tino Sehgal's "The Kiss": "On the [Guggenheim Museum's] ground floor, a man and woman entwine in a changing, slow-motion amorous embrace.... As choreography it will hold no surprises for anyone familiar with contemporary dance. Taken as living sculpture, it has amusing moments: every so often, the performers strike erotic poses derived from Courbet, Rodin, Brancusi and Jeff Koons." I'd already thought of Rodin and Brancusi, but let's check out the Courbet and the Koons.

9. Hey, Koons (#8) and Coons (#2). It's like the stars are in alignment. Is there a constellation called The Kiss? No, but The Arctic Monkeys sang: "And her lips are like the galaxy's edge/And her kiss the color of a constellation falling into place."

10. "Kiss" is a very old word in English. The OED — giving the first meaning as "A touch or pressure given with the lips... in token of affection, greeting, or reverence; a salute or caress given with the lips" — has the oldest appearance of the word circa 1000:

Ælfric Homilies II. 32   Ic hine to minum cosse arærde.

I don't read English well enough to understand that, but the language becomes more recognizable by the 1380s, when a translated Bible had: "Kisse he me with the cos of his mowth." And here's a great poet: "Ah why refuse the blameless bliss? Can danger lurk within a kiss?"

Dylan's "Chronicles": Chapter 4 (part 1).

Continuing with my reading of Dylan's autobiography. (I do Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here, and Chapter 3 here.)

How Dylan felt in 1987, coming off a tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:

I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck. ... Wherever I am, I'm a 60's troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. [P. 147.]

How he felt about his old songs then:

It was like carrying a package of rotting meat. [P. 148.]

Line on p. 147 that foreshadows the role the Grateful Dead would play in his revival:

It's nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough.

Obviously, the Grateful Dead, who show up on p.149, knew how to do live shows that stoked a hunger to see multiple shows. The Dead challenge him to do much more with his old songs than Tom Petty ever had, and he runs off, has a drink in a bar, and feels transformed by the singer of a jazz combo in the bar. Then he's able to go back and sing again with the Dead. He seems to enjoy giving credit to the unnamed jazz combo in the bar and unwilling to credit the Dead. Somehow, I suspect it was the Dead that shocked him out of his complacency, that their ability to inspire people to come back to see them over and over made him jealous, and that the drink and the mellow music only allowed him to calm down and meet the challenge the Dead had laid in front of him.

Most grandiose statement in the book so far:

If I didn't exist, someone would have to have invented me. [P. 153.]

Dylan's attitude toward his fans from the 60s (like me):

[T]his audience was past its prime and its reflexes were shot. [P. 155.]

Secret to a system of playing the guitar taught by aging blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson:

[T]he number 3 is more metaphysically powerful than the number 2. [P. 159]

Second reference in the chapter to songs as meat:

I had been leaving a lot of my songs on the floor like shot rabbits for a long time. [P. 162.]

Thing on TV that bums Dylan out: Johnny Carson does not ask soul singer Joe Tex to come sit on the couch after his song. P. 163. He seems to view this as a specific rejection of Joe Tex--did Johnny invite the singers over generally?--and he identifies with Joe Tex. Outsider.

Great play that just seemed like a big drag: "A Long Day's Journey Into Night." P. 167.

What spending time with Bono is like: "eating dinner on a train." [P. 174.]