The Tide Is High

Mark Allen emailed me this week to tell me he'd come across that old Showtime movie "Intimate Stranger," in which Debbie Harry plays a haggard phone-sex operator being stalked by one of her customers. Both of us both remember thinking it was low, even sad, moment in Debbie's career -- "Def, Dumb and Blonde" hadn't done any better than "Rockbird," so dreams of solo success had all but died forever -- but looking back we both agree the film isn't half-bad. Debbie's weird way is highly evident -- she's a little overweight, and the chainsmoking makes her sideways mouth all the more evident -- but I started wondering if it was really such a career low seeing as it was one of the few film roles she ever had in which she carried the film. (The two songs her character sang, including a Janis Joplin classic, are pretty damn good, too.) It's nearly 25 years later and my friend Scooter LaForge was just saying that in a lot of ways, Debbie is currently at the highest she's been in her career since her actual heyday. She looks incredible in recent magazine spreads -- these three shots from FLATTmag say it all -- and Blondie's tours and appearances are so beloved. (Dick Clark, GMA, Andy Cohen all want.) What's hilarious, though, is that I haven't even bothered to buy the new album. Everything I've heard from "The Ghosts of Download" is horribly underwhelming, and that disc or re-recorded hits just reeks of unwarranted desperation. Enjoy it, Debbie & the gang. You deserve it.