Laurie Sandell

Harvey Pekar’s Final Collaboration

I may have mentioned a traveling comics show that I will be part of called Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women. It will feature a variety of Jewish, female auto-bio comics creators (though I suppose you could have figured that out by the title), and will make its debut on October 1 at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. This morning, The New York Times released a story in their ArtsBeat blog which will run in tomorrow’s paper, about Harvey Pekar’s final collaboration, a story he wrote with the artist Tara Seibel, will be featured in that very show. What an honor.

After The Rapture, I will take your dog

A woman in Westfield, Indiana has created a website dedicated to the care of pets left stranded by the coming of Jesus. The tagline reads, “If The Rapture happened right now, what would happen to your pets?” Presumably, millions of Chihuahuas, Pugs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, and even elephants would be stranded in their empty homes and cages, bereft of food, water and companionship. But for the low, low price of $15/month, you will be assured that after you leave this mortal coil, your pet will be taken care of by a heathen Jew or other non-Christian like myself!

A question in the Q/A: “Isn’t the world going to be totally collapsed after The Rapture?” A: When all the Christians on the planet disappear, there will certainly be mass devastation. However, the majority of people will still be on earth, and communications will be their first priority to maintain. As far as the data about all registered pets, it is located on Google servers (the most secure servers in the world) as well as our own server in Lansing, Michigan (away from political and military hot spots to minimize chance of destruction if there is a post-Rapture war.)

Isn’t that refreshing! Just so this hilarity is properly credited, my friend Merrill Markoe sent this to me, and it was sent to her by Elayne Boosler. According to Merrill, this is real.

RIP Daisy Simpson

I found this story about Jessica Simpson’s dog, Daisy, getting snatched by a coyote really upsetting. First of all, she’s the last person I profiled for Glamour; you can read that interview here. I hadn’t seen her in about five years, when I last interviewed her. Back then, she was living in Calabasas, California, and still married to Nick. She was being followed around by six carloads of paparazzi. (We were sitting in a coffee shop and they were pressed up against the window.) She was young and goofy, wearing a ponytail and a sweatshirt, happily signing autographs for the stream of fans that approached our table. This interview was different. I met her at the upscale Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was less bubbly, more businesslike. She’d taken a beating in the press for her weight after wearing “mom jeans” onstage (a Vanity Fair profile was particularly cruel; you can read that interview here.) Her relationship with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo couldn’t have been going well, either, since a week after I interviewed her he broke up with her. I know she really adored her dog, Daisy, and when you’re going through a rough time–particularly in the public eye–pets can be a godsend. They give unconditional love like no human being can. So I feel bad for Jessica. That’s compounded by the fact that I am a dog owner, myself, and if something ever happened to Violet, I would die. I don’t agree with Martha Stewart that Jessica “should have been watching her dog more closely.” She was in her own backyard when it happened, and dogs need to run around off-leash. I hope Jessica finds some kind of closure; I really can’t imagine losing your dog so violently.

A few words about DJ AM, a guy I adored and admired

Photo: NZT/AP

I first met DJ AM in 2004, when I attended Glamour’s annual “Don’t” party in L.A. I’d stepped outside to get some air, and spotted him standing a few feet away. I turned to a woman I was with and said, “I have such a crush on him.” To my enormous embarrassment, she grabbed him and brought him over and said, “This is Laurie Sandell. She’s an editor at Glamour. She has a crush on you!” I was mortified (to say the least), but he just smiled and said, “Aww, how about a hug?”

Three years later, I was sent by Glamour to interview him at the W Hotel in Union Square. The story, which you can read here, was about his horrific descent into drug and alcohol abuse, culminating in a suicide attempt that didn’t work. When I met him, he was a few months shy of his 10th anniversary sober–and I had just celebrated one year. When I shared that with him, he was so excited to talk about how sobriety had changed his life. He said he’d nearly given up in the first few months, because he felt he couldn’t deejay sober. But when he shared that in a meeting, a man approached him afterward and said, “I promise you, if you stay sober, your career will go further than you ever imagined possible.” And look how far he went.

But his success as a deejay wasn’t the most impressive thing about Adam. He was humble. He was accessible. We stayed in touch after that interview, and talked a lot about recovery, and he allowed me to give his number to any guy I met in a meeting who was in trouble with his sobriety (in recovery programs, men sponsor men and women sponsor women.) In Portland, I heard a young guy speak at a meeting whose story reminded me so much of Adam’s. It was the same hellish spiral of drugs, sex, and low self-esteem, and I knew this young 20-year-old kid would benefit from talking to someone like Adam; someone he could look up to. So I e-mailed Adam and asked if I could give out his number. He said, “YEAH!!! Definitely, tell him to call me anytime.” And he meant it. How many celebrities do you know who would allow such a thing?

After his plane crash last year, I sent him a heartfelt letter to console him about the death of his friends and to suggest that maybe it wasn’t his time, he still needed to help more people. The guy was in a burn unit in a hospital bed, and he still wrote back within a few days, thanking me and saying he hoped to catch up face-to-face soon.

Never happened.

Our last correspondence was on August 17th. I told him he was featured in a panel in my book and he said he hadn’t yet received the copy I’d sent, because he’d been on vacation in France. He said he’d download it on Kindle. And that was the last I ever heard from him. The hardest thing about all this is the fact that this guy was the picture of sobriety. He attended meetings regularly, did service, helped other alcoholics, and shared his story with the world in order to help people. Yet he died surrounded by drug paraphernalia. A very wise woman I spoke to in the program said, “Laurie, here’s the hard truth: He was a garden variety alcoholic. People die of this disease every single day.” Not to end this post on a down note, but I think it’s important to remember what happened to this lovely, adorable, extraordinary guy. He  died an ordinary death. And that is just tragic.

Oh no!

Gregg DeGuire/WireImage.com

Yo quiero RIP.

The “most trusted man in America” is gone

Woke up to sad news: Walter Cronkite passed away last night. He was 92. In 1969, he reported the first moonwalk; broke the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination; traveled to Vietnam and influenced the president; thrust Watergate into the limelight and covered every presidential election until 1980. There’s an excellent video and article on nytimes.com detailing his life and career. (Interestingly, in his last years he was dating Carly Simon’s sister.) A friend of mine who works at the Times has actually interviewed people for their “video obits;” meaning The Times will approach a person of note who is getting on in years, and ask if they’d like to be interviewed for a video posted upon their death. (Cronkite’s is not one of these.) That would be a strange and unsettling phone call to get.

RIP, Mr. Cronkite. You will be missed.