I’m sure you are all thoroughly sick of the eclipse, so I’ll only share this one pic, taken at the moment of totality in Forest Cemetery, Toledo, where we were among just a few people set up to watch the show. We could have gotten another minute or two if we’d driven deeper into the zone, but I had to be at work at 5:30 and I knew I’d never make it in time if we went to, say, Wapakoneta, Ohio, birthplace of Neil Armstrong.
So Toledo it was. And a minute or so of totality was enough:
But let’s move on, if only to give you guys a fresh thread for comments. Next stop: The eternal city. (Yes, I’m packing my laptop.)
News just broke that O.J. Simpson is dead. Well, now. Like a lot of you, my knowledge of the man spans decades. I remember watching his 80-yard run in the 1969 Rose Bowl. I remember his TV commercials for Hertz rental cars. And I remember that for a long time, he was white America’s favorite black man, or at least in the top five or 10. Then everything happened, and who couldn’t have a memory of that?
In a running theme through my life, I was the only American to miss the infamous slow-speed Bronco chase. I was at a horse show in Battle Creek, and the B&B I stayed in had only over-the-air TV in the room, so I watched “The X-Files” and went to bed. Alan told me about it the next morning: “There were these people standing on overpasses, cheering,” he said, wonder in his voice. It was only the start of the weirdness.
I will grant him this: I got a few columns out of that trial, the first when I noticed the ’90s-era Sony monitor on Judge Ito’s bench had been enhanced, with paint or a Sharpie or something, so that SONY stood out in giant black letters whenever the camera was on him. I don’t recall anyone took the blame for it. My old college boyfriend Bruce, who lived in L.A., called regularly, especially after he hired a woman who, he soon learned, had been Nicole Simpson’s housekeeper. She’d been an eyewitness to much of the domestic strife between the exes, and he recounted this in her heavy accent: “Meester Oh-hay get berry berry angry with missy Nee-cole,” etc. She ended up leaving his employ after the National Enquirer paid her a modest four-figure sum for her story, and recounted the same stories in perfect English. There was the avalanche of media coverage, running from the gutter tabs to the prestige press. I’m grateful to… was it Dominick Dunne who covered it for Vanity Fair? I think so. I’m grateful to that writer and publication for teaching me that a blowjob is known in that community as “the Brentwood hello.”
And then, of course, the verdict. We all remember how that went.
I recommend two sources if you’re interested in revisiting the era: “The Run of His Life,” by Jeffrey Toobin, where you can learn that Marcia Clark thought she’d get a conviction because “black women love me,” due to her aggressive prosecution of domestic abusers. Also, “OJ: Made in America,” a multipart documentary series you can watch on Hulu. Very very worth your time.
So much other news this week, but honestly, I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Abortion restrictions in Arizona, whatever the former president farted out of his mouth in the last 24 hours, have at it. I’ll be back early next week, depending on the wifi strength in our lodgings.