Richard Simmons leaped up on a couch and kissed this portrait at the MIX 999 reception area. A symphony conductor (whose name escapes me) told me that my eyes danced in the photo. And it’s been made fun of more often than I care to remember!
Everyone assumes this photo is from the 80s. No ma’am, this is the 90s! The early 90s, but still the 90s. I eventually stopped getting my hair permed, but I really thought that by submitting to an afternoon in toxic fumes and little curlers, I was getting the body and volume I wasn’t born with.
Oh how I loved that jacket. I remember the day the sleeve snagged on a nail in a doorway and that was the end of it. I may have cried. But I digress.
I was so proud to have my portrait in the same proximity as the likes of Dan Williamson and Bill Hayes, pros whose deliveries I’d soak up and learn from. Tom Rivers was there for a time, too, as was Humble Howard. I’d better stop naming names or there will be questions about why I’m mentioning some and not others. It was my first visit to the bigtime and looking out from the studio over the corner of Yonge and St. Clair never got old. I saw the Scud Stud’s infamous helmet-waving moment during the Persian Gulf War. We transitioned from CKFM to MIX and it was exciting. I interviewed Mario Andretti, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Barry Williams, and dozens more. Go ahead, make fun of that hair. Barry “Greg Brady” Williams touched that hair!
It’s so memory-stirring to hear the fondness you had for that jacket. I often think of things I passed on and wish I hadn’t, although they’d be 10-20 years out of style now and I would have changed sizes – up and down, up and down – five times since last I’d worn them. Sigh. You looked lovely. I got perms too but after I had a baby, my hair curled naturally on its own, just as it had been when I was a kid. Motherhood: enough to curl your hair, you might say! Oh, and who can forget the farty smell of perm solution? Good times!