Let me preface this by stating that I am a firm believer in kicking them when their down. Especially if they are 6 feet down. Then I kick them even harder. Why? Because they can't fight back and if they're 6 feet under it's more than likely due to stupidity on their part. More on the "Darwin Awards" in a bit...
Which brings me to Amy Winehouse. Just typing her name makes be shake my head in bewilderment. I will be forever linked to weirdness in a truly strange way... She died on July 23, 2011. My birthday. If I ever get that as a Trivia question I am SO snagging a piece of the pie!!! Now, in all fairness, I did think she had a truly amazing voice and I loved the way that she barged through life like a rhino on steroids. Which apparently was about the only class of drugs she wasn't abusing. Schedule One's, Schedule Two's and a variety of Schedule Three's seemed to serve as a form of mother's milk to that train wreck. Oh, yeah, and let's not forget alcohol. That seems to have served as her alternative to oxygen from all accounts. She passed out on stage more times than I have been served with speeding tickets. She had more ink on her body than she did pink and had a fascination with over the top bouffant hairdon'ts that would make even the most seasoned drag queen run for the exits. One of the more exotic traits that she exhibited was in her touring contracts. She demanded that she be given a private dressing room and that it be stocked with two (yes, two) cases of Chivas Regal. That clause may have played a factor in the passing out on stage thing...
Yet, she had a wall of awards to her credit, including 5 Grammy's that she won on a single night which included 3 of the big 4. Tony Bennett recorded a duet with her and described her as the single most amazing female performer that he has ever encountered. OK, either she was really fucking amazing or he's so damned old he puts his Depends on backwards over his head!!!
So, she dies on my birthday. She was 27. Why do they always managed to die at the age of 27??? Her death did not surprise me. I waited with baited breath for the release of the coroner's report. I could only imagine that they would find enough drugs in her system to perform a root canal on King Kong. Guess what??? Nothing. Nada. Zip. She was clean. And just to deepen the mystery the coroner reported that all of her internal organs appeared to be in a healthy state. WHAT??? At the very least I was expected to hear about a liver that looked like something out of the Petrified Forest.
OK, so I'm getting my hair cut today and a "News Of The Weird" blurb comes on the radio and it's about Amy. The medical examiner released her official cause of death. Of course, my ears perked up. Would you believe "wreckless misadventure"??? Something to do with a blood alcohol level of .53. .53??? .53!!! Holy shit, what did she drink, fucking Milwaukee??? I cannot comprehend a blood alcohol level of that amount. Hell, I can't imagine having the ability to successfully find my mouth after I hit a .3 let alone maintain the ability to keep pounding them down to achieve a .53. Let's just say that I was sitting in the chair giggling my ass off at this news. Of course, my stylist is completely unfamiliar with the term wreckless misadventure so I had to explain it to her. I started out with the self-inflicted injury route but that just didn't seem to carry the weight I was looking for so I just jumped right into the Darwin Award's category. Which, btw, are ALWAYS awarded posthumously. It's just the nature of the beast. Think of that news story we hear every 4th of July of the idiot who blows himself up lighting off fireworks outside of his single wide while smoking a cigarette and standing next to 5 gallon can of gasoline. Or the idiot who takes his Hummer H3 out on the lake to go ice fishing. Or the idiot who decides to put his car battery in the oven to keep it warm in the winter. Oh, wait a minute, that was me... Or, my favorite, the idiot who climbs up to the top of his silo to get a really good picture of that funnel cloud. #1, you are too stupid to be allowed to live anymore and #2, you actually do pose a serious threat to the gene pool. My stylist, bless her heart, understood perfectly. Or so I thought. She asked me if the awards were televised. I mentally penciled her in as potential nominee.
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