Tag Archives: Belinda Carlisle

blog news, lessons learned, money, overly helpful people, YouTube

Time to say farewell to the Blogger platform?

I’m sitting here thinking about what I’d like to write about today. I originally thought maybe I’d breathe some new life into an old post from 2016. It was about an interaction I had with someone I used to “know”, who regularly gave me grief on the now defunct review site, Epinions.com. Regular followers who knew me on Epinions know that sometimes I write about a man I like to call “Papa Smurf”. I know at least one person, who knows of whom I write, has also co-opted that nickname for him. He’s one of those people who tries to be all wise and act like other people’s “daddy”, and shit…

Papa Smurf is not who I was thinking of writing about this morning…

Instead, I was considering writing about an unpleasant run in I had with …tom… And if you followed me on Epinions, and are still following me today, you almost certainly know who …tom… is. That’s how he signs his “name” on just about everything on which he leaves his mark.

I long ago left …tom… in the dust, mainly because of the annoying interaction we had seven years ago today that prompted today’s memories. That incident wasn’t the last straw, but it was the beginning of the end of my tolerance for his highly obnoxious and unwelcome input. Most of my followers who know …tom…, also know of what I write. A lot of us had the same complaint about his irritating and provocative comments, even though he could be entertaining sometimes.

So this morning, I went to the Blogger platform to have another look at that old post and decide if I wanted to rehash it today. But, before I made it there, I decided to look at my AdSense earnings. I knew I was getting close to the necessary $100 level that would allow me to finally cash out, probably for the last time– ever– on Blogger.

I signed up for AdSense years ago. Back when I was using Blogger for my three blogs, I even got paid somewhat regularly. In order to cash out on Blogger, you have to make at least $100. I think I cashed out a few times during my blog’s “heyday”, which was when we still lived in Stuttgart, and a lot of people were reading about our travels. Some folks had also started reading the main blog, which attracted the most hits out of the three.

The nice thing about AdSense is that users can put all of their blogs on one account. On WordPress, users must have separate ad revenue accounts for each blog. I have already been paid once for the current version of OH, but I will probably die before I get anything for my travel blog. The travel blog hasn’t made ad revenue in a few months. I’m actually thinking about removing ads from it.

If not for a certain meddlesome reader, I’d probably still be posting on Blogger, conveniently getting AdSense revenue on the three blogs. Back in 2019, the Blogger version of my blog went through a crisis of sorts, when we were having trouble with our former landlady. Her ex tenant, a fellow American, brazenly admitted to “monitoring” me, even though she claimed she didn’t enjoy my writing.

I suspect she had enjoyed the blog for awhile, but then started to dislike it when I started to vent about the unfair way ex landlady treated me. I don’t know for certain if the ex landlady is mentally ill, or if we simply had a personality clash. But she was driving me crazy with her entitled, intrusive, and disrespectful attitudes toward Bill and me. She was especially rude and abusive to me. On rare occasions, I would vent about it on my blog. Yes, I now know that was unwise… but then, it never occurred to me that anyone, including the former tenant, would care about such things.

In retrospect, I think the former tenant knew full well that the former landlady is the way she is. She just wanted me to deal with it in silence, because my speaking out about it made it unpleasant and inconvenient for her. I think she flat out lied to us. And instead of just minding her own business and moving on, grateful that she got out of that situation relatively unscathed, she decided to monitor me, and attempted to shame me into being quiet.

It was an especially bizarre form of gaslighting– ex landlady was insisting that Bill and I are awful people who made her life hell by renting her duplex and expecting to actually live peacefully in it. And how dare we expect her to act like a mature businessperson, rather than some warped, dysfunctional version of our mamas?

Former tenant was insisting that ex landlady is always a sweet, fair, and kind woman, and if she was acting like an entitled harridan, it MUST be all because of me. Never mind the fact that she and her husband, themselves, only lasted about 18 months in that house, while Bill and I were there for a little over four years.

Never mind that ex tenant was insisting that I respect her privacy, while she totally shat all over mine, and encouraged an actual smear campaign. And never mind that former tenant, who was trying to make me out as some kind of crazy, mean-spirited, disruptive person, exited life on her own terms last year.

Prior to therapy, I might have kept quiet about the unpleasant and uncomfortable situation we were in, but as a confirmed truth teller, I don’t keep abusers’ secrets anymore. Because of those circumstances and the ensuing small claims lawsuit over the deposit that was predictably and illegally withheld from us, I moved the original OH blog to WordPress, which offers functionality that Blogger doesn’t. Now, I pay to post my blog, and it doesn’t make me any money. But I have a lot more security here than I did there. Moving the blog meant starting over, which was hard for me, since it had taken several years to build a meaningful readership on Blogger. Thankfully, it took a lot less time to get this blog going at full speed.

In the wake of the minor blog stalking incident, I decided to keep my music blog going on Blogger. The music blog had very little personal information about me, and practically none about the situation we were in back in 2019. The other two blogs– this one, and my travel blog– were relaunched on WordPress. Once the situation with the landlady was settled, I made my old travel blog public again, but no one really looks at it. It’s not connected to AdSense. The old original OH blog is still hidden and probably always will be, since there’s some dated, useless stuff on there that doesn’t need to be public.

I told myself that once I hit $100 on Blogger, I’d discontinue the music blog, which is mostly about the campy music I loved when I was a kid. I haven’t updated it since New Year’s Day 2023. Most of the traffic comes from a handful of posts, mostly about Richard Carpenter’s daughter, Mindi.

It’s taken me ages to finally hit the last $100 I needed to cash out. Most of that $100 was made from the original OH blog prior to February 2019, before I moved it to WordPress. So… that means that to get those last painful bucks from Blogger, I had to wait several years, earning pennies from AdSense every month. As you can see from the featured photo, I finally managed to reach that goal today… and it’s exactly $100! How often does THAT happen? I figure it must be a sign.

Now… do I delete Dungeon of the Past, or just leave it up for posterity? I do still get comments on it, but they’re mostly bizarre comments from Carpenters’ fans. There’s one person who has repeatedly posted that Richard Carpenter and his wife, Mary, are biological first cousins. Their official story is that Mary was adopted. I don’t know if she was adopted or not, but I figure it’s none of my business. They’ve had five healthy children together. What difference should it make to me, or anyone else, if they’re biologically related? I occasionally get other comments. Like, I wrote a review of Belinda Carlisle’s book and reposted it on my Dungeon blog. I got a comment from one of her half sisters, which I thought was interesting. I have since moved that post to this blog.

I may decide to move some of the more interesting Dungeon posts over here, and just delete my Blogger account. Life is short, and even though I have lots of time on my hands, that account is just one more thing to keep track of. I don’t think I have any true regular readers there, who eagerly look forward to new posts, though some content continues to attract hits. I’ll take some time to think about it, as Bill and I also decide where to go on vacation, and whether or not to get another dog… and when it should happen.

Lately, I’ve been having some fun on YouTube. I don’t know how long it will last… but it’s fun for me to make videos of songs I want to try. My latest video is actually doing surprisingly well. I think some people get a kick out of women who sing Led Zeppelin songs.

This was fun to do. I just have trouble lining up the video and audio parts.

Music is less controversial… except people like to see singers on camera, and I’m not very comfortable on camera. Still, I’m kind of proud of some of the videos… and they seem to attract a lot fewer idiots. So maybe instead of writing about music, I’ll just make it. I hope at some point, I can write my own song and play it. Baby steps… however, although the friend who encouraged me to record a couple of Zeppelin songs thinks I should dance and wear a boa, I won’t be doing that. I won’t dance. Don’t ask me. 😉

Maybe later I’ll actually write about the post that ultimately led me down this divergent rabbit hole that took me in a totally different direction. Or maybe not. The sun is out today. Noyzi might enjoy a longer walk.

Edited to add: I see that almost a year ago, I wrote about being paid by WordPress for the first time. In April 2022, I had $98 on Blogger. So, you can see, it took me a year to make $2. I hope certain people will remember that the next time they try to accuse me of exploiting anyone for money on this blog. 😉

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book reviews, celebrities, music

Repost: Belinda Carlisle unzips her lips…

Here’s a repost of an Epinions book review I wrote in July 2010. It’s currently reposted on my music blog, Dungeon of the Past, but I’m giving some thought to discontinuing that blog soon. Since this repost has gotten good views on my other blog, I’m going to preserve it as/is here on this one.

Summer seems to be the time for celebrity memoirs. I happen to love a good celebrity tell all, so I’m always game for reading and reviewing them. I’ve just finished reading Belinda Carlisle’s Lips Unsealed: A Memoir (2010), having picked it up a couple of days ago, thinking I needed something more lightweight to read after the somber subject of my last book review. *Sigh* As it turned out, Ms. Carlisle’s memoir didn’t quite fit the bill for easy, breezy reading material.

Who is Belinda Carlisle?

Here’s an explantation for those of you who did not grow up in the 70s and 80s or did not listen to pop music back in that era. Belinda Carlisle is the lead singer of the 80s era punk/pop girl band The Go Gos. She’s also done quite a few solo albums over the years, though her hey day as a solo artist was in the late 1980s. Since that happened to be the time I was in high school, it made me part of Belinda Carlisle’s targeted group of fans. However, while I did like Belinda Carlisle when she was a Go Go, I never liked her as much as a solo artist.

So why did I read her book?

I read Belinda Carlisle’s book for several reasons. First off, while I wasn’t a big fan of Belinda’s music, I did always think she was kind of cute, likeable, and perky. I liked the Go Go’s; when they were popular, they were among very few all girl bands.  Reading Carlisle’s memoir opened my eyes to the host of personal problems she’s struggled with, apparently throughout her life.

Blame it on dad…

Belinda Carlisle grew up in southern California. She was her mother Joanne’s firstborn child out of a total of seven kids by two different men. Belinda was born when her mother was 18 years old. Her father, Harold Carlisle, who was Joanne’s first husband, was about twice his wife’s age.  He was out of the house a lot when Belinda was growing up, due to his work.  Harold and Joanne were terribly incompatible, yet they still managed to have two more kids before Harold Carlisle permanently left the home. Belinda was seven years old and very upset about the split. However, Joanne had been keeping company with a neighbor named Walt. He eventually moved in, married Belinda’s mom, and took over daddy duties, fathering four more kids.

As Belinda tells it, they were always very poor and her bio-dad wasn’t around at all. Apparently, he never paid child support or visited. And Belinda’s mother had encouraged her kids with Harold Carlisle to call Walt “Dad”. Belinda writes that she still calls him that and thinks of him in that way, even though Walt was abusive and an alcoholic.

As the oldest child, Belinda had to take on a lot of responsibilities around the house.  This was in part because her mother suffered from a mental illness and because with seven kids in the house, there was a lot to do. Belinda also had a very fragile self-esteem. Because her family was poor, she didn’t have a lot of cool clothes and she had a less than svelte body. Her classmates made fun of her.

As she came of age, Belinda Carlisle went from being an awkward, chubby kid to a wild teenager. She writes of hanging around her friends at concert venues in Los Angeles, drinking, doing drugs, and occasionally shoplifting. She developed an affinity for punk music and eventually ran into the other women who would help make up the Go Go’s.

Making music and getting laid and snorting cocaine and getting drunk… lather, rinse, repeat

Once the story progresses into Belinda Carlisle’s music career, an unpleasant image of her begins to emerge. She describes herself as a very troubled person, not particularly talented as a songwriter, not able to play any instruments, and not even the greatest singer. But she was the lead singer for the Go Gos, despite those shortcomings. Her status as a lead singer opened doors for her, created resentments for some of the other band members, and apparently made her feel very insecure.

As Carlisle writes it, she was constantly snorting cocaine and drinking because she didn’t like herself. She also didn’t like her bio dad, who, once Belinda became an adult and was famous, tried to reconnect with her. She writes of an incident in which he showed up at a concert with his second wife and their daughters, whom she claims he “replaced her with”. Belinda met them while extremely high on cocaine. She says he tried to explain his side of the story. She tuned him out, claiming that he was just blaming her mother– who no doubt was responsible for at least some of went wrong. Then she expressed bitterness that he would try to contact her “just because she was famous”. I daresay if she was that high on cocaine, her perceptions of what was actually said in that meeting are probably very skewed.

Later, bio dad and Belinda’s sisters from his side of the family tried to reconnect again. She refused to see them and eventually told her dad she didn’t want a relationship with him. And yet, throughout this book, it’s pretty clear to me that his unexplained departure when she was a little kid had left a huge void. As far as I can tell, that psychic wound is still very painful for her. Yet, as she proudly proclaims her sobriety and newfound sanity, this is an area she evidently still refuses to address.

A bizarre anti-drug PSA by Belinda Carlisle. She had cute hair, though.

I’ll admit…

My husband is one of those dads who left his children when they were young and no longer has a relationship with them thanks to extreme parental alienation. Because of that, I feel some empathy for Belinda Carlisle’s father. Granted, everybody’s situation is different. Harold Carlisle might very well be the jerk Belinda Carlisle makes him out to be. But, I do think it says something for him that he tried on several occasions to reunite with her. Yes, he did find her when she was famous, but this all occurred at a time before the Internet. Maybe that was the only way he could track her down.

I don’t get the comment Belinda Carlisle made about her dad “replacing her” with daughters from his second marriage. First off, it would be impossible for Belinda’s father (or any other parent) to replace one child with another. And secondly, clearly Harold Carlisle wasn’t all bad.  He did apparently stick around and raise his younger kids.  If he was a total bum, he would have left them, too.  Finally, Belinda’s mother had four kids with her second husband and she considers them her siblings. Why isn’t her father allowed to have a life post divorce? Clearly, her parents didn’t belong together, but Belinda makes it clear that neither of them were angels. Why heap all the blame on dad?

Like father like daughter…

Another issue Carlisle never seems to address is that for all her complaints about her father’s absence, she was apparently often absent from her son Duke’s life. She was using cocaine and alcohol frequently when Duke was a small child, traveling a lot, and partying a whole lot. Yes, she was still married to Duke’s father, but by her own admission she was not around much and was certainly no paragon of parenthood. I’m sure she’d blame that on her bio father, too.

Beyond Belinda’s daddy woes…

There’s an awful lot about drugs in this book. It seems that Belinda Carlisle spent about thirty years of her life high on cocaine. For that, she was rewarded with fame and fortune. She doesn’t make fame out to be as great as it seems, except when she starts name dropping all the celebrities she’s met over the years. Since this is a celebrity memoir and the nature of a celebrity’s work puts them in contact with other celebrities, that’s to be expected. But it does seem to me that Carlisle got more than her fair share of second and third chances. More often than not, she comes off as a bit self-absorbed and selfish.

Despite my griping…

I will admit that Lips Unsealed is well-written and interesting and, for that, I’m giving it four stars. Belinda Carlisle must have a guardian angel, since she found a husband that she describes as “saintly”. They’ve been married for over two decades and their son has apparently grown up healthy and functional. They live in Los Angeles and the South of France. They must be doing something right.

Overall

Belinda Carlisle’s memoir did annoy me on more than one occasion, but I think it’s worth reading if you’re a fan of hers or the Go Gos. She claims that now that she’s in her 50s, she’s clean and sober. I truly hope she is and has learned from her mistakes. Judging by this memoir, however, I think she’s still got a long way to travel on the road to recovery.

And here are the comments left on my Dungeon repost. One was from Belinda’s sister.

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