And They Called It 'Puppy Love' ...

In my teen years my girlfriends & I obsessed over so many of the young heart-throbs, but we also liked guys in rock bands, one band especially liked was KISS. We waited downtown all morning on a Saturday, waiting for them to come out of their hotel room, and when they did, we had our camera & pens ready for them to sign our pictures....but alas, they came out without makeup on (before the unmasking of later years) and each rocker had a gal on each arm...we were told sternly by the body-guards, no pictures or we'll break your camera, yet when we offered up our pictures & pens for them to sign, sorry, too busy, and they got in their limo & drove away. I promptly gave away all my KISS records & vowed never, ever to go to one of their concerts. Now when I see Gene Simmonds on TV with his own show I also refuse to watch it....I guess they really, really let us kids down way back then, but I imagine there's still some fans who will still buy into their whole sctick still....but not me.

I first discovered Jonathan Brandis on Seaquest DSV. I thought he looked like an angel; the most gorgeous guy alive. I wouldn???t miss a show and I grew increasingly irritated when NBC picked Seaquest???s time slot to stick in ???irrelevant??? news broadcasts or other shows. I loved how his blue eyes seamed to sear through the screen and into my own. It was definitely an intense relationship. My most fond memory was the episode when he fell in love with Kellie Martin???s (???Life Goes On???) character, and played her a love song. I think that was his first DSV kiss. I went out and frantically looked for that version of the song (whose name I???ve long forgotten) but couldn???t find it. I dreamed he actually played the song for me. I loved him in Ladybugs too, by far my favorite movie of him. My crush of Jonathan lasted over a year in high school. I managed to find the phone number to his agent in some teen bopper magazine and called. To my utter jubilation a person picked up. I forgot what the very brief conversation was about, but I remember how I felt like I had somehow touched my big TV crush. I would line my walls with his pictures (every kind I could find). My friends at school even got in on it. One found a picture of him in a magazine that I swooned over for weeks and taped to the inside of my locker. I thought back then my crush for Jonathan would never ever fade. And I remember reading in an article of a bopper magazine that a fan eventually got over him. I couldn???t even imagine such an idea. But, of course, as the years went by my crush faded like every other teeny bopper crush. The pictures began to come down off my walls in 1???s and 2???s, until one day, my life size poster seemed too big for my wall. Way back when, it didn???t feel big enough. I guess as I got older, my fancy grew smaller as the prospect of ever meeting Jonathan became unrealistic. It was 2006 when I found out Jonathan had committed suicide three years earlier. My fascination with him was so over that I hadn???t even heard the news. I had to find out about it while perusing the web. I was crushed and saddened that my past love had gone away, and in so tragic a manner. I wonder if he ever received the letter I sent him when I was 14 that spilled over with uber love for him and his work. I wonder if he did read it, did it make him smile. I will never know what led to him committing suicide. I just know that in the years before he died, his appearances were sparing until he wasn???t seen anymore. I will always have wonderful memories of that time in my life when all I could dream of was Jonathan Brandis. His memory will always have a place in my heart.

Waaaaaaaaay back in the 1960s (wow, that's incredible) my oldest sister Deb was maaaaadly in love with Davy Jones. (I was too tall for Davy, and chose Micky instead.) My poor mom and dad had to put up with the all-night record playing (sometimes the same song over and over over), the holes in their walls from all the posters, and the usual teenage & pre-teenage swooning. My sister Deb went on to be President of one of Davy's many fan clubs (got to have lunch with him on more than one occasion) while my tastes moved on to others, and to this day, she's still "wild about the boy". She even got me backstage at their reunion tour. When Micky walked past me (my perfect opportunity to drool all over him), all I could was point and say "MICKY!" (and this was in my 20's; not back in the pre-teen years.) Heh. The Monkees gave us good, clean & safe fantasy material and for that, I'm eternally grateful.

After seeing the Barbra Streisand/Ryan O'Neal movie "What's Up, Doc?" I read in a movie magazine that Ryan was in the hospital recovering from a back injury he received when filming the movie. I sent a Get Well card to him via the address provided by the magazine. He sent me back 2 autographed 8" x 10" photos of himself with Barbra Streisand (who is my idol) with a handwritten note on the back of one of the photos!
I was so excited, I wrote back to thank him for being so kind. A few weeks later another envelope arrived, this time with 5 different photos of him with Streisand, all autographed!!!! Not stamped, AUTOGRAPHED!
With all the bad press he gets, you'd never know what a nice guy he really is!

I actually named my son (now 39) for the character Bobby Sherman played on 'Here Come the brides" - Jeremy. When I was a teen, I was ridiculously obsessed with Frankie Avalon. Looking back, I don't know if it was a safe way to express sexual desire or what, but it was a big part of my life as a young girl. (Do really attractive, popular girls do this as much?}

I went on Bill Balance's "Teen Talk" at KFWB when Bobby Sherman was scheduled because my girlfriend had such a crush on him. I was the brave one; she was shy.

KFWB was on Hollywood Blvd, and it was just a matter of going up a flight of stairs and asking the receptionist if I could be on. She said come back on Friday, when they would be record ing for Sunday's broardcast.

Bobby Sherman sat on my left at a round table and Connie Stevens was on my right. There might have been two other teenagers. And that was the start of many broadcasts.

Skip to many (many!) years later and, after reading a tiny blurb in the paper for casting, I was an extra in a Mel Gibson movie - "Forever Young". We did a scene together where he's walking behind me into the airport field. Not bad for a weekday; Mel Gibson, with Elijah Wood playing the boy who found the 'frozen man' and brought him home to his mother, Jamie Lee Curtis.

So simple, so innocent.