I've Fallen But I Did Get Up

Let's party and by party I mean lie back down again

Happy Friday, Dames Nation. I’m just getting myself back together after being sick with a disgusting cascade of illnesses one after the other for almost a month! To top it all off, when I was finally able to enter the world again I took a much-needed shower and slipped, only stopping myself from falling out of the tub and bashing my head directly onto my sink and toilet (I have a very small, very janky bathroom) by pulling the shower rod down upon said head. I turned off the water and, more naked than I’ve ever been before, somehow, mopped up the bathroom with one of my last clean towels, my still-soapy head dripping suds into my eyes. I wondered if I’d once again narrowly dodged my fear of dying in some stupid, embarrassing way, leaving my body to be found at a later date, perhaps gnawed on by my 20 year old cat, which would be the most attention she’s paid me over our two decades of cohabitation.

I think I’ve written here before about my love of living alone, a love that has made things odd for me relationship-wise and challenging money-wise. Well, one of the other downsides of this lifestyle is constantly catastrophizing about the possibility that my lifelong clumsiness and tendency to move fast and break things (not in a Mark Zuckerberg way, much to the chagrin of the startup I briefly and poorly worked for years ago, but in an extremely all too literal way) will result in a goofy fatal fall with no one around to call an ambulance and perhaps wrap a fallen shower curtain around me to preserve a modicum of dignity. Does Life Alert still exist [yes] and should I be wearing one at all times? Speaking of which, please enjoy this Phoenix New Times 1990 interview with Edith Fore, the woman who played Mrs. Fletcher who had “fallen and [couldn’t] get up” in the Life Alert commercial that was so ubiquitous that New York’s Limelight nightclub included a celebration of it as part of a birthday party for Michael Musto, presenting Fore with “a Fallen Woman award” and demanding she say her catchphrase?!?!?!

There she is

Yep, here’s a Catherine McGann photo of Musto and Fore at said party along with a bevy of very early 90s New York nightlife celebrities of a certain age, including Robin Byrd, Joey Heatherton, and Sylvia Miles. Fore isn’t even identified, just listed as “the star of the Lifetouch commercial (“I've fallen and I can't get up!”).” That might be the ideal amount of fame as far as I’m concerned — she wasn’t even an actor, she was an actual person who had fallen and couldn’t get up and called Life Alert and coined her now-famous phrase! A true icon. She died in 1997 — R.I.P.

Some other things:

Have you listened to the podcast Finally! A Show About Women That Isn’t An Aspirational Nightmare? It’s everything I hoped reality TV would be when it first came on the scene in yes, the very early ‘90s — just people going through their days and talking about their lives. There’s no host, which is another bonus, though it’s produced by Jane Marie, a podcast host I enjoy. (I have her book based on her podcast The Dream, Selling The Dream, on hold at the library.) Every episode is fascinating; I particularly enjoyed “Finally! A Show About An Appalachian Songsmith,” featuring Valerie June, who also appeared in the excellent Little Richard documentary I wrote about here last year.

There she is...

I’ve been listening to her music constantly and love her performance of “Big Dream” on songwriter Alice Randall’s new compilation album My Black Country, which is a companion to her book of the same title, which I’m also waiting for from the library. As Randall writes on her website, “I knew it was now or never to have my say about what it was like to be a Black woman working on and around Music Row for forty-one years. I didn’t know My Black Country would enter the world just in time to be a self-guided course in why Beyoncé’s Act II [act ii: Cowboy Carter] is a pinnacle achievement in an long-ignored and erased tradition!” What a time to be alive! Randall wrote one of my all-time fav country songs, “XXXs and OOOs (American Girl)” as originally recorded by Trisha Yearwood, and there’s a hot as hell new version sung by Alice’s daughter Caroline Randall Williams on My Black Country that’s reimagined as a tribute to her mom PARDON ME WHILE I CRY!

My mom (hi, Mom!) put this Body Fantasies Fresh White Musk spray in the Easter basket I was finally able to retrieve last weekend (illness! it got me!) and friends, it smells SO GOOD! Very reminiscent of my, here we go again, ‘90s fav White Musk by The Body Shop. I’ve been alternating it with Lalique’s Encre Noire, which I bought in a daze after reading this incredible recommendation from Krista Burton in her gloriously named newsletter O Caftan My Caftan. It’s still $25 (!) and is a must if you’re a vetiver freak like me.

There I am, psychologically

These Herr’s Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup Cheese Curls are a little too real in a Willy Wonka the snozzberries taste like snozzberries way (I assume), but I love that and ate a whole bunch of them and maybe you might want to as well.

I'm a comedian who peaked 25 years ago & let tell you about the problem with comedy these days by Gena Radcliffe.

Bye!