Monday, April 25, 2011

She's Tabitha, and She's Taking Over.

"Just When I Thought That I Had Seen it All, My Eyes Popped Out, My Dick Got Hard, and I Dropped My Jaw." - Red Hot Chili Peppers

I thought I'd seen it all, till this video. Embedding is blocked so if the link is not working, please go to Youtube.com and look up "3 Year old crying over Justin Bieber."

The surprise I get from this is not the little girl's obsession. It's how young she is. And her wicked sense of humor at minute 4:13. Granted, my first celebrity crush was for Davy Jones when I was only 5, but it wasn't powerful enough to make me cry let alone SOB. For the first four minutes, this girl is inconsolable.

I may not understand What It Is about Justin Bieber, but I still understand. Jason Bateman's nakedness in the movie trailer for The Change-Up reminds me I once wanted to marry him. A love so strong and so true it could only be broken by watching Back to the Future and wanting to marry Michael J. Fox. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, and my house is 100% unadulterated glass. I cannot make fun of any girl aching for someone she does not know.

It's a phase I think most girls go through. I know men will admit to having owned THE Farah Faucett poster. Not the same. When I think of Elvis and The Beatles I think of their music and immediately think of the screaming girls. When I think of New Kids on the Block, The Backstreet Boys and the Jonas Brothers, I can only think of the screaming girls because I don't know their music. Perhaps young femme are asked to be more repressed with their sexuality than boys of the same age, so the easiest way to express it is by obsessing over a Teen Idol and decorating her walls with his posters. He will smile at her no matter how bad her hair looks that day. It's a subject close to my heart because I had it BAD, but I have yet to find a name for it so I'm naming it myself, and I'm naming it Tabitha.

I was your average, weird little kid like all little kids when Tabitha Took Over. I was innocently watching Eight is Enough when Ralph Macchio's character was introduced, and my fragile little mind snapped, and I was forced to hand Tabitha my keys. Ralph, Ralph, Ralph, Ralph, Ralph. Till I saw Tristan Rogers on General Hospital. Tristan, Tristan Tristan. Just a blip on my radar till Rocky Horror's Tim Curry shined bright like a light over at the Frankenstein place. But then MTV came to Manhattan Cable, and I got a look at Cheap Trick's lead singer Robin Zander who I replaced five months later with Duran Duran's keyboardist Nick Rhodes, easily the most prominent of my teen idol crushes. It was Duran Duran that wallpapered my bedroom, it was Duran Duran I saw live five times in two months, three times in front row, once in third, and once in tenth, and it was Duran Duran I stood in line for in 1983 at a Tower Records signing. Line is hardly the best term for the mob of girls pushing their way forward hoping to get in before the band was whisked away. Being so very close up front, I learned that the force of that many people pushing forward affects those up front more than those in back who actually were just standing in a line. I was so stunned by the pressure surrounding my body I lifted both feet off the ground at one point just to see what would happen. It was a stupid thing to do, yet I never fell to the ground. That much pressure. The band was escorted out some back exit and when the police let us know the band was really gone, we had to wait for layers of girls to leave before we could go. I will NEVER forget what I saw. There were three cars parked at the curb of the store and they were crushed. Girls had been standing on them hoping to get a glance over our heads and into the store, and they flattened them. FLATTENED. I shit you not. But I digress.

Footloose's Kevin Bacon ended the Nick Rhodes era, followed immediately by the crush on Jason Bateman which ended, or rather, was replaced by Back to the Future's Michael J. Fox which just faded away. Tabitha and I went through her Final Recommendations, she was happy to see that I'd done my Duty as a Teenage Girl, and she mercifully handed me back my keys.

In 2004 I saw The Libertines in Chicago. Being a shorty, I asked my buddy if we could get there early so I could be close to the stage. We were right up at the front except for the four very young girls who were lined side by side protecting their 10 foot span of Front Stage Property in front of John Hassall. When one went to the bathroom, the other three spread out to protect her spot till she came back. My buddy shot me confused looks and them dirty glances. I told him it was OK, that I was the same way when I saw Duran Duran live. The girls turned around to look at me.

"You saw Duran Duran?"
"Yeah, a few times."
"Did they sing Come Undone?" I told you they were young.
"No, this was during their Seven and the Ragged Tiger Tour." That's about twenty years earlier.

These girls who had been banning me from a spot of stage I had no plan to steal from them suddenly worshipped me. I was their hero. Till I told them that John Taylor threw his towel to me and my friend AJ, but she caught it. Now AJ was their hero.

You can ask any woman whose posters and magazine collages dominated her bedroom walls in her teenage years, and there is always an immediate answer. I know only one woman who has denied any teenage obsession, and if she's telling me the truth, I pity her. She's missed out on something. A cognitive step, a rite of passage, a Wild Fucking Ride. One that costs less than cocaine but more than marijuana and causes fewer deaths than drunk driving but perhaps slightly more than roller coasters.

Tabatha is a timeless phenomena. And a Hard Ass Bitch of one at that.

She warned me to keep up the good work because you never know, she might come back. We'll see what happens after the Change-Up ...

I Think I Love You ☯

You must chill. 
I have hidden your keys.

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