We're So Famous (6 page)

It was good to see Stella again. Sometimes when you get so driven about something you forget to stop and think about the whole thing. Me and Daisy would be the first to admit that we partly wanted to continue with Masterful Johnson just out of spite because of Stella leaving, but really SaltBed was about the three of us, like we used to be.

We had some time to kill so the three of us milled around the Salt Mine, a camp of tents selling authentic Indian jewelry, potted cacti, beaded necklaces, vintage clothing, etc. Me and Daisy were surprised more people didn't recognize us. Stella bought one of those necklaces with a little vial of colored beads hanging from it. For luck, she said.

Besides us, the most exciting news that year was that the people at SaltBed were finally able to get a cool act that wasn't local. We don't know how they did it, but they were able to lure the Boston band Fuzzy out to Arizona to play. Fuzzy is one of the best pure power pop bands around. Me and Daisy think Hilken Mancini's and Chris Toppin's voices are right up there and once in awhile (like on the song ‘Glad Again' off their excellent album
Electric Juices
) the band reminds us of Bananarama. We have been fans since we got a bootleg of a show where Fuzzy opened up
for Dinosaur Jr. at some college. We like Dinosaur Jr. too but Fuzzy is the ultimate. Listen to ‘Miss the Mark' and then listen to ‘It Started Today' if you want to hear what a wide ranging talent they are.

So it was one of the highlights of our life to actually get to meet Fuzzy. And they were cool, really down-to-earth. We were nervous about approaching Hilken and Chris but they were sweethearts (the bassist and drummer are dreamboats, by the way) and we gave Hilken a copy of
We're Masterful Johnson
and she seemed genuinely eager to listen to it, which pumped me and Daisy up.

What pumped us up even more was when we were backstage getting ready and this short, thick man with dark hair and dark eyes came over and said ‘Excuse me' in a heavy accent that made me and Daisy think of Boss Hogg from
The Dukes of Hazzard
. He introduced himself as Scott Key, an A&R guy for Sony Records. Scott Key told us he thought we were terrific, just terrific. He said we were really going to be the Next Big Thing. When the floodgates open on you two, he said, the whole world is going to love Masterful Johnson. He said he'd been sent out from L.A. especially to see us and that Sony wanted to sign us. Me and Daisy and Stella just sat there with our mouths open. Scott Key asked us if we were free to sign with Sony. We said, What did he mean,
free?
He asked if we were under contract with Cactus Records for another album. It occurred to us then that as far as we had ever talked about it with Ian, we were free to sign with Sony. We thought for sure Ian would be happy that such a big record company was interested in us. Scott Key kept saying the floodgates
were going to open up on the whole world and he got me and Daisy pretty excited. He said we'd go to L.A. and shoot a video for ‘D.F.O.' to play on MTV. Posters, T-shirts, hats, bumper stickers—maybe your own cartoon series, he said. It all sounded good to us. He gave us his card. I have to leave immediately after the show, he told us. He had to be in Texas the next day for the South by Southwest festival in Austin to check out a whole roster of bands like the Paranoids, Ramona the Pest, and Astro Chicken. We said we thought he had a great job and he said it was only great when he found talent like me and Daisy. Scott Key told us to call him that Monday, and that's what we planned to do.

Summers in Arizona are notoriously brutal and the first day of the SaltBed Festival was especially so. In addition to giving away free bottles of water, a misting system was set up backstage along with industrial fans that whirred like a sky full of jet airplanes. The security staff took turns hosing off the crowd from the stage and it was hard to tell who was enjoying it more.

The heat was certainly a factor in what happened. In retrospect, the Falco story probably didn't help either. Plus we'd stayed up all night excited about our recording future. Plus we were excited to see Stella again after such a long time. Also some of the bands before us played longer than they were scheduled, adding frustration to our nervousness. Jammin' Jay was nowhere to be found until right before we went on and he said Ian wasn't going to make it at all. We thought Ian had found out about Scott Key and was pissed, and we felt extreme guilt about it. Another factor—and I
still blame Stella for this—was that Daisy had found Stella's Murder Book and found the page about Elliot and Hunter and Rick and, gruesome as she can be, Stella had autopsy pictures and Daisy'd ripped out the pages and had them in her back pocket. I found all this out later at the hospital and all Daisy said was, They don't belong in the book, they were real people.

Finally Jammin' Jay materialized and we took the stage with all this on our minds but we tried to give the very best performance we could. Even though it was night, people were still fanning themselves, pouring bottled water over their heads. Most of the guys were shirtless and a lot of women were in bikini tops and bras. It
looked
hot from the stage and the industrial fans the crew had set up couldn't beat back the day's heat or the heat coming from the lights overhead. So yeah, you guessed it, we were just about to hit the refrain of our first song, ‘Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!' when Daisy flat passed out. Midway through spinning around, something she liked to do, she hit the stage floor. I thought she tripped and would get back up but when the crowd started craning their necks I looked over and saw she was out cold, her voice coming loud and strong through the speakers overhead. There was a moment of confusion where the festival paramedics rushed the stage while I frantically yelled for Jammin' Jay to cut the tape. The audience looked confused too but they quickly figured it out and started booing and hissing. The paramedics hauled Daisy offstage and Stella said she'd ride with her to the hospital. Jammin' Jay said, We best get out of here. The crowd seemed to be getting louder and the stage was
suddenly heaped with empty water bottles, plastic cups, frisbees and anything else people could find to throw. The only thing I could equal to the feeling of sneaking away from the SaltBed Festival is when you lose your wallet and you think, it's not that big of a deal. Then you realize you have to cancel your credit cards. Then you realize you have to get a new driver's license. Then you realize you didn't cash your paycheck and will have to have another one issued. Then you realize you had over a hundred dollars in your wallet. That's how it hit me, in stages. At the hospital Stella hugged me and I said, We're ruined. It was on the radio, she said. Daisy looked pale and she drank and refilled two full glasses of water. In our minds we were both thinking what would Bananarama have done if something like this had happened to them. Surely all the times Sara and Keren went on stages in London there was at least one mechanical problem. How would they have coped?

Why doesn't Ian call, Daisy asked. We dialed the number for the studio on the phone in Daisy's room, but the answering machine came on. We hung up and the phone rang; it was Ian on his mobile phone. He told us he was in an accident and that's why he couldn't make it. His voice was changed. He was really somber and we hoped he would tell us it was going to be all right. But he didn't seem to know anything about what had happened. We asked him if he'd talked to Jammin' Jay and he said, I've got something to tell you. We thought he was going to tell us it was all over—which of course it was—but what he said really floored us. The songs Jammin' Jay quote unquote wrote are old unrecorded Phantasm songs, Ian said, and
Phantasm is suing me personally and the group professionally for copyright infringement. Ian said what he was going to do when he got his hands on Jammin' Jay, but his cell phone cut out and he didn't call back.

A woman from the front desk came with some papers and asked Daisy for her autograph. Daisy dotted her
i
with a flower but the woman didn't notice. Stella sat next to Daisy and held her hand. She's going to be all right, someone out in the hall said. Stella said, This isn't anything, don't worry about it. Daisy opened her eyes and breathed in deep and then closed her eyes again. I felt faint and fell into the chair in the corner. What time is your flight back tomorrow, I asked and Stella said, I'll stay until we get out. But in the morning she was gone with a note that said, Please come visit me in California. Typical Stella.

In the morning we called Scott Key. As I tried to explain to the woman in Scott Key's office who we were, an orderly came for Daisy's breakfast tray and as he took it away I noticed the letters
SOS
traced in spilt salt.

The way you win a dead pool, if you're not familiar, is you pick a list of people you think are going to drop dead. You pick for the entire year. The one with the most right wins. Like anything. The trick is to have a couple wild cards, people that no one would ever pick. You get those by doing your homework, like reading the
National Enquirer
and those kinds of papers. But also you have to think a little bit, too. You read the regular news and think, Why is so-and-so canceling all of his appointments? How is so-and-so doing now that his wife is gone? Sometimes silence is the biggest clue. If you go a while without hearing anything about so-and-so, that's usually a good indicator.

Living in Hollywood helps, too. You hear a million rumors and all it takes is for the wildest one to be true and you move ahead of everyone else (any pick under age forty-five pays double dividends). Different dead pools have different rules; some say the obituary has to appear in at least three national newspapers to count, some prohibit two players from choosing the same celebrity, others are lotteries
(names are drawn from a hat for $10 each and when a celebrity dies that ticket holder wins, clearing out the jackpot).

I'm in all the big pools: The Lee Atwater Invitational (
http://stiffs.com
), Chalk Outlines (
http://pwl.netcom.com.~jluger/chalkout.html
), and the original dead pool, started in the '70s, The Game (
http://members.aol.com/ggghostie/home.html
). I had Kurt Cobain in '94 and two years ago I had Chris Farley (yeah, for a heart attack—but points are points). But I haven't been able to win it. This year my trump is Bryan Metro, the rock and roller who, my sources tell me, has fallen off the wagon in a big way. Metro canceled two shows in Tokyo last month due to ‘fatigue.' So far, no other pooler has added Metro to their list.

My boyfriend, Craig, thinks I'm a sick puppy. He's just jaded about Hollywood, though. I met him when we both went to network on a pilot. The show was called
La Brea
and was about these ten friends who all worked at a restaurant called—you guessed it—La Brea, and I was to play Katy, the waitress/photographer and Craig was going to be Blaine, the pool shark/model. Craig had already been cast as Blaine and they brought me in to read opposite him and the scene was one where Blaine asks Katy to take some head shots of him and they end up falling in love. It was sort of romantic, even though the room was full of people, and I was clicking away on an imaginary camera. The audition was my one millionth in the few months I'd been living in California, and there was a weird sort of connection with me and Craig. He's not my usual type; he's more handsome than the guys I dated back in Phoenix.
I mean he's too
handsome
. He's a dead ringer for Christopher Reeve, which he thinks has hurt his career. People look at me and see Superman, he sighs. But it made him perfect for the role of Blaine on
La Brea
and even though I didn't get the part, I moved in to his apartment at Highland Gardens, a '50s hotel on the corner of Vine and Outpost someone had converted to apartments. The show wasn't picked up though, so Craig had to go back to his old job doing dinner theater at the Starion, an old morgue turned into a restaurant down on Sunset Boulevard.

Since Craig is the star of the Starion, he was able to get me a job there, too. When it opened in the early '90s the dinner theater was primarily based on the works of Agatha Christie. It was my idea to do celebrity deaths (the restaurant was a morgue, after all). Monday night we do the murder of Lana Turner's mobster boyfriend, Wednesday is the drowning of Natalie Wood, Friday is a medley of automobile deaths: James Dean, Isadora Duncan and Jayne Mansfield. I suggested adding the murder of Bob Crane and a couple celebrity suicides, but management didn't think the crowd would want snapped necks or bashed brains with their linguine and clam sauce.

Due to an exceptional review in the
Los Angeles Times
, Monday night is packed with guys in suits and their elegantly dressed ladies, everyone giggling nervously as the wait staff attend to filling water glasses and taking dinner orders.

Break a leg, baby, Craig says, kissing me on the mouth.

Break a leg, I say back. I put my hand on my stomach to calm the butterflies.

The house lights go down and the crowd hushes, squinting through the low light from the candles on their tables at the red-curtained stage. Craig switches on the microphone.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Monday night at the Starion. Now that your waiters and waitresses have your orders please stay seated and silent. Our presentation lasts an hour, without intermission, and we expect to hold you spellbound for that hour. If you should need your waiter or waitress, please extinguish the candle on your table and wait patiently. We hope you enjoy the show
.

Craig switches off the microphone and takes two deep breaths.

On a rainy April night in 1958
, he begins again into the microphone,
the police were summoned to 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills… the home of screen star Lana Turner
.

That is my cue. The stage lights go up on Lana's gorgeous pink bedroom and I pretended to be folding laundry on the bed. I wear a white blouse and black pedal pushers with my hair up under a pink scarf. I'm barefoot, like Lana was that night. Craig's voice booms as I walk back and forth to the closet and the dresser.