A friend was moving, she couldn't take all of her pets with her, so please welcome to the stage another player--new kitty Staley. I don't really need another critter around here, what with the cat and the dog I already have, and Janie's cat, which will presumably be joining us shortly.
But Staley is fuzzy and gray, and darned if she doesn't look a bit like much-beloved and still much-missed Monika and...and she's just insanely lovable, is what she is. She's already shown she can hold her own against a leaping Beagle, and even though Delmar hates her, that's not too troubling, because of course Del hates everyone. (Except me, of course.) It's a little disconcerting to be reading in bed and suddenly have a fuzzy gray presence appear in my peripheral vision--for one brief moment, I think Monika's still around--but there's comfort in that presence, as well.
So again, welcome to Staley, but a sad farewell to Tura Satana, the iconic, magnetic star of one of Russ Meyer's greatest films, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Unfortunately for Satana--her real name, incidentally, which is one of the many awesome things about her--that film was released in 1965, a time when nobody in the filmmaking establishment was paying any attention to the disreputable likes of Russ Meyer, so her amazing performance, which should have led to a long, well-earned career, pretty much led nowhere.
She wasn't a great actress, but she was an astonishing presence--would it be too much to compare her to Cyd Charisse?--and she certainly deserved better than the Al Adamson crapfests she wound up doing. Later in life, as appreciation for Faster, Pussycat! became more common, she became famous for simply being, adored by fans for one great role.
And while it would have been great if she'd done more, what she did was more than enough.
