Top 5 Girlhood Crushes (Celebrity Edition)

Magnum P.I.

I remember drawing a picture of Tom Selleck/Magnum P.I. from the cover of TVGuide (and luckily enough, that same issue of TV Guide is currently available on Ebay). I remember the pattern on Magnum’s shirt giving me trouble, and adding in details on the trees in the background because I didn’t like the out-of-focus blob, and editing out the boring British guy. According to the date on this issue (Jan 2-8, 1982), I must’ve been five years old and on Christmas break. I can picture sitting alone at the kitchen table, it's dark out and probably past my normal bedtime, my Crayolas arranged by color and Tom Selleck staring back up at me.

I’m not sure if I even liked watching Magnum P.I. or if it was just something that my parents watched, but I was inexplicably drawn to this image of Tom Selleck. I don’t know what it was—the rugged moustache? The rugged eyebrows? The untamed forest of chest hair bursting between the two unbuttoned halves of the palm frond and parrot shirt? Or was it the impish grin, the dimples? The twinkle in his perceptive, understanding eyes? It’s weird that as a five year old girl I’d be innately pulled into an act of adoration for such a prototypical “masculine stud”. As I was taping the picture up over my bed my mom asked me why I liked Tom Selleck, the worry in her voice making me instantly embarrassed. I couldn’t explain why, I was simply answering an impulse I didn’t have words for.

The Fall Guy

 It wasn’t until I googled it that I realized Lee Majors played The Fall Guy. I have no memory of the show itself, but the opening credit sequence is burned into my brain—partly because of all the superfluous fire but mainly it’s the hauntingly melancholic theme song (I die for a livin’ in the movies and TV/But the hardest thing I ever do/Is watch my leadin’ ladies/kiss some other guy while I’m bandagin’ my knee). That song evoked a deep empathy in me, and made me feel genuinely sorry for The Fall Guy. Here’s a man who earns his living dangling from railway trestles, being dragged by teams of horses, defying all principles of physics in his personal jetpack—his body can withstand any and all physical punishment, but somehow it’s always his heart that ends up bruised.

Michael Palin

Although I think every member of Monty Python ranks equally as a Comedy Genius, I always thought of Michael Palin as the Cutest Python. He has “kind eyes”, and the nicest legs of all the Pythons.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus was an integral part of my morning block of television-watching my quasi-depressive summer between 10^th and 11^th grade. I would wake up, shower, and get dressed as if preparing to have a regular day doing regular teen stuff, then go down to the livingroom and flatten myself onto the couch for three hours of Comedy Central. I don’t remember what the other shows were, but everything was basically a pre-game for the episode of Monty Python that capped off this morning ritual, after which I’d return to my room and take a nap. It was during an episode of Monty Python on one of these otherwise wasted mornings when my brother suddenly freaked out at me and yelled that I was pathetic because I didn’t have any friends. I wasn’t in a position to argue with him, but I was secure in my knowledge that watching Monty Python was making me smarter, and with that sort of sophistication I didn’t need any friends.

Besides, I had Michael Palin for a make pretend boyfriend. Although I remember while watching Monty Python having this distinct yearning to have been born 30 years earlier, and in London, and to have had some involvement with television, so I could’ve been around to have maybe said Hi to an age appropriate Michael Palin. But just when I thought I’d exhausted the entire Monty Python canon, every episode, every movie, every album, along comes Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, with contemporary Michael Palin! And it’s Michael Palin as his congenial, inquisitive, super-polite Michael Palin self, and even though he’s older than my parents he’s still adorable! In the first episode of Around the World Michael Palin is in his bedroom packing a suitcase, and his wife makes a point of reminding him to pack his diarrhea medicine. And even though it’s kind of staged and his wife is clearly playing to the camera, it’s still adorable and it made me want to be the smart-assy wife of a chirrupy, influential comedian-turned-world explorer. My favorite episodes of those series were the first and last—the ones where he’s packing, and the ones where he’s returning home to his family and friends.

 

Joel Robinson/Hodgson 

Thoughtful, beleaguered, world-weary, sleepy… yet ingenious, mechanically gifted, and pop culture savvy. Joel always seemed kind of sad or in need of a hug, but not necessarily depressed—he wasn’t the kind of guy you needed to worry about, but he looked like the years in space with only sarcastic robots to keep him company were taking its toll. I always got the feeling that the character of “Joel” was probably not too far removed from the “actor” Joel, and eventually discovered that it was in fact the real life Joel who constructed the robots and inventions and was instrumental in fabricating this quirky, DIY TV show. My fantasies alternated between being the “girl character” on Mystery Science Theater 3000, wherein I got to hang out with Joel Hodgson and show him how funny I am and be on TV and show everyone watching me on TV how funny I am, and actually living on the Satellite Of Love with Joel Robinson and the bots and being trapped in space with a man who would have no choice but to be my boyfriend and we’d watch movies all day and make things together. Although I guess these two alternate fantasies are kind of the same thing, just in one the robots are real and not puppets and we are actually being held hostage by mad scientists, which seems like a weird premise for a romantic fantasy, and in the other I have greater media exposure.

 

Neil Finn

In 1991 Neil Finn burst into my livingroom in the middle of the night singing a brassy song about Americans being fat, Tammy Faye Baker being ridiculous, and bowling being an inane thing to do after delivering a child. As a moody, disenfranchised 13 year old full of unvoiced opinions about the hypocrisy of American patriotism, the corrupting effects of organized religion, and the inanity of bowling, he had clearly composed this song for me, personally. I was smitten.

 I was either on break from school or preparing for a sick day, because I was watching 120 Minutes on MTV which I remember as only being on at 2am Sunday nights. I also remember being alone in the livingroom, which would’ve been extremely rare—I’d either managed to stay awake longer than my insomniac brother, or had somehow convinced him to not only watch 120 Minutes but also remain quiet for at least four minutes.

 Through this anomaly in program scheduling and TV viewing habits, I managed to catch the Chocolate Cake video during one of the probably four or five times it aired in the US, and thus Neil Finn and Crowded House navigated the broadcasting wormhole into my life—although I’d soon find out that Crowded House was a That Band That Did That Song (Don’t Dream It’s Over) and That Other Song (Something So Strong), two radio favorites that in the United States were relegated to Easy Listening stations and dentists’ waiting rooms. (I would seethe with rage years later when Crowded House was featured on a One Hit Wonders special on VH1.)

I ran upstairs to my bedroom to scribble down the info that flashed in the video credits. I can’t remember if Woodface was purchased at the mall or ordered through Columbia House, or how many weeks passed before I got my hands on the album.  When I finally placed the cassette into my Walkman, my heart swelled with the familiar chords of Chocolate Cake. But then! The songs that followed were completely different in tone, and had nothing to do with American obesity trends or questionable definitions of sporting activity—they were songs about love! And sex!

Politely-worded songs about sex (Read me like a book/that’s fallen down between your knees/please, let me have my way with you)—he said please! Neil Finn’s not going to coerce you, he may beg a little bit but only because he adores you so. And how about this: The finger of blame has turned upon itself/And I'm more than willing to offer myself/Do you want my presence or need my help/Who knows where that might lead. If you’re feeling sad or lonely, Neil (and his brother Tim) Finn have offered to come by and hang out. Neil Finn’s willing to sit by you and listen to you cry about your unhappy childhood or whatever’s bothering you and if you just want to snuggle, he’ll snuggle with you but if you want to put out he’s totally up for that too. He totally likes you but like, no pressure.

Neil Finn wrote and sang about sex in a way that didn’t make it seem scary, dangerous, or in any way foreboding—he made it sound like something I might actually want to do someday. Like Barry White for the hypersensitive, artistic, Monty Python-quoting white teenage girl. But the Crowded House canon is also steeped in melancholy, the kind of melancholy that a brooding adolescent can wrap around themself like a fleece blanket. Except in Neil Finn’s case, his songs express a melancholy earned through experience, exploring the ways love, lust, longing and loneliness weave together. His lyrics and his voice are imbued with wisdom, maturity, and tenderness that other performers popular at the time—for instance, Vanilla Ice, or C + C Music Factory—failed to capture in the same way.

Of course I couldn’t have articulated this at the time, and am surprised I’m even able to articulate it now. At the time all I could do was sit in my bedroom, gazing at the inner photo of my cassette tape insert, hoping that someday I would experience the type of enduring, beautifully painful romance that Neil Finn sang about.

It wasn’t until 10^th grade that I decided to draw a portrait of Neil Finn from the Woodface band photo for my Advanced Drawing and Painting class. I felt weird about it, maybe because I was openly admitting to admiring this musician but also maybe because no one else in my class had any idea who he was. I was working on it at home one day when my mom came into my room. She looked over my shoulder, studied the drawing and said, “Downturned eyes are a symptom of depression.” I wasn’t sure where she was getting her phrenology from, and I especially bristled since it was those smoldering, downturned eyes that I found most attractive in Neil Finn (along with his floppy hair and the general shape of his head). His eyes didn’t look sad to me, they looked “knowing”. Like someone wise and patient, like someone who’d experienced both the greatest highs and the greatest lows possible in love, and now was going to sing you a song about it.