{"id":681,"date":"2005-01-11T02:05:22","date_gmt":"2005-01-11T02:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:58","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:58","slug":"throw_away_live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=681","title":{"rendered":"Throw Away Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The L.A. Times today has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-spector10jan10,0,2010917.story?coll=la-home-local\" target=\"browser\">recounting of the death of Lana Clarkson<\/a>, who was shot in Phil Spector&#8217;s home here in L.A., quite possibly by Spector in a drunken fit of sexual frustration. It&#8217;s quite a read; the product of multiple reporters, it reads in part like a detective novel:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>An hour before sunrise at the end of a very long night, Officer Michael Page was struggling to pin Phil Spector as the famed music producer wrestled with Alhambra police in the foyer of his hilltop mansion.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><i>Page pressed his knee into Spector&#8217;s back and held down his arms. The officer had discarded his Taser after two shots from the stun gun failed to drop Spector, and now Page&#8217;s submachine gun was slipping off his back. Another officer grabbed the weapon before it fell within Spector&#8217;s reach.<\/p>\n<p>\nPage turned to make sure his Taser wasn&#8217;t lying close by, and that&#8217;s when he saw the woman in the chair.<\/p>\n<p>\nShe was blond, tall, freckled. She slumped, half in, half out of the seat, her long legs extended in front of her. Her head lolled to the left, and a great deal of blood had flowed from her face down to her chest.<\/p>\n<p>\nIn the struggle, she had escaped Page&#8217;s notice. But on first sight the officer knew she was dead.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It was a depressing read for me; a recounting of two sad people, one blessed with success in the world and one not.<\/p>\n<p>Biggest Guy is in town for a week, and I&#8217;m home, and so we&#8217;ve been sitting and talking a fair amount. I realized this morning that my whole objective as a parent is to keep my children from becoming either Phil Spector or Lana Clarkson, each victims in a way of their belief that a hit movie or record, a Mercedes, and a big house will make you whole or happy.<\/p>\n<p>Reading about Spector, I was reminded so much of Harlan Ellison&#8217;s great book &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1565049616\/armedliberal-20?creative=327641&#038;camp=14573&#038;link_code=as1\" target=\"browser\">Spider Kiss<\/a>&#8216;; I know it&#8217;s about Elvis, but in truth it&#8217;s about our worship of the &#8220;bitch goddess success,&#8221; and the lives we throw away at her feet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The L.A. Times today has a recounting of the death of Lana Clarkson, who was shot in Phil Spector&#8217;s home here in L.A., quite possibly by Spector in a drunken fit of sexual frustration. It&#8217;s quite a read; the product of multiple reporters, it reads in part like a detective novel: An hour before sunrise [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}