Friday, April 12, 2013

Annette Funicello

News of Annette's death hit me harder than I would have thought.  Firstly, it makes me feel older than a stone.  I remember Annette on the Mouse Club.  In those days that was the only TV show in the late afternoon that any self respecting kid would watch.  Annette was so pretty, so vivacious, she made the show.  Like most of my peers I had a crush on Annette.  And she was real.  Plenty of girls  had the hair color, the complexion, and the figure to look like Annette, she represented a real girl that one might, with luck, date and even marry.  The great movie actresses of the day were beautiful and all, but no girl in my high school had the peaches and cream complexion, the blonde hair, the figure, that Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield had.  And from a high school boy's perspective, they were old, old enough to be your mother, whereas Annette was just our age. 
   There were no scandals associated with Annette to shame her fans.  She didn't pose for nude photographs, she didn't get sent to drug rehab, she didn't have eating disorders, she didn't speed around her neighborhood in a Ferrari and get into altercations with the neighbors, she didn't show off her tattoos. 
   I'm sorry that the MS made her latter days miserable, and I'm sorry that she is no longer with us. 

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