Pop Culture Petri Dish

How strange and ironic that two of the pop culture firmament's most massive figures should pass away within 24 hours of one another. Farrah Fawcett (who died at age 62 after a long battle with cancer) wasn't just a TV star: She became one of the most enduring physical archetypes of the 20th Century, her decade's equivalent of Betty Grable , Marilyn Monroe, or Madonna; someone whose distinctive look continues to have ripple effects on fashion and beauty perception well into the new-ish millenium. I don't think it'd be difficult to convey the impact she's had to a kid of this generation: Hell, just open up any magazine or turn on a TV set. Some variation of Farrah will surely emerge from the page/screen--that California-girl smile, that trim and tan figure, and most importantly that exquisite mass of feathered blonde hair have all found replication amongst too many of today's actresses and models. When I was nine years old and just beginning to recognize the s...

( I wrote this interview for Seattlest.com , and it is reprinted on the Petri Dish with their kind permission. ) For a minute, it looks like the perfect photo opportunity. Joe Dallesandro—former bodyguard at Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory, star of several key Warhol-sponsored cult films in the sixties and seventies, and accidental avatar of the Sexual Revolution—stands outside the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, his back to me. He cuts an almost dangerous-looking figure. Clad head to foot in black, his compact body sits atop slightly bowed legs in an almost pugilistic stance as he smokes his cigarette. A soul-patched, dark-haired kid stops to bum a smoke, and both figures huddle, almost silhouetted thanks to the overreaching shadow cast by the hotel building, as vaporous off-white ribbons of smoke curl above their heads. But then Dallesandro begins to turn, and I don’t want to come off like some stalker before a formal introduction, so I retreat back into the hotel lobby. The sublime noir ...