When Ms. Petrillo died last September, I remember reading a few short articles on the New York Post and the Daily News websites, all in small print, on the side or near the bottom: ”Daughter of Murdered Scripps Newspaper Heiress Commits Suicide.” It was clear that not much was known about her — a divorced woman in her early 40s who had jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge. Still, a critical piece of  background information was inserted into all of these briefs. Her mother, Scripps publishing heiress Anne Scripps Morell, had been bludgeoned to death in 1993 by Annie’s stepfather, who had subsequently driven to the Tappan Zee Bridge to end his own life before he could be arrested for the crime.

Jesus. All the evidence you needed for the outright tragedy and absurdity of life was right there, compounded into the life of one poor woman and now oozing out from all sides of a buried brief. Most people — well, I honestly have no idea what most people would have done, but absent a photograph of a gorgeous dead girl or a name recognition factor more that was somewhat more boldface, I think most people probably just did an “OMG, whoa” eyebrow-raise and kept on news-surfing. But for me — a fervent newsgatherer of all things relating to crime, mental illness and family dysfunction — this was the equivalent of a end-of-season TV cliffhanger.

I web-searched every article I could find about Anne Scripps’ murder, looking for insight about how her violent death had affected her daughter. And it was all there, completely textbook. Just college-aged at the time, Annie Petrillo had been the one who had discovered her mother’s body. The one who had gone out that night to a party, leaving her mother at the hands of her violent stepfather. As far as I could see, her suicide was brought on at least partially by post-traumatic stress disorder. Make that extreme, searing, whiteout, blackout, never-ever-in-a-million-years-forgive-yourself trauma. For 16 years, this woman must have lived in her own torture chamber of personal pain — it’s a wonder she hung on that long.

Because it was this immensely sad and perhaps inevitable suicide, the story was not the kind journalists obsess over like an intricate jigsaw puzzle, nor was it newsworthy in the sense that Annie Petrillo was a public, or even glamorous, figure. Celebrity O.D.s routinely get front-page, full-panel-discussion media coverage for months at a time, guaranteeing that the ensuing narratives of tragedy and self-destruction will answer the question (supposedly) ringing in our minds: why? But when suicide is the apparent culmination of a lifetime of true, abject pain, brevity is an acknowledgment that reporting has limits. No need to go there. Yikes, in fact.

I suppose I’d figured this out in the weeks after Annie Petrillo’s suicide, when my lingering questions went stubbornly unanswered by the media. Her particular personal tragedy  — that is, how deeply and debilitatingly her mother’s murder had wounded her  — would, and could, never be told. She had taken them with her when she left the world. Fittingly, she had jumped into the water, signifying, perhaps, a determined depressive’s desire to vanish into the the deep, swirling well of lost humanity. Now there’s a phenomenon that can’t be tied up in a nice little narrative.

So it was a surprise when I saw the New York article yesterday, several months after Petrillo’s suicide and without any interim coverage.  Peppered with details about her divorce, her boob job and her drinking problem, it was the kind of story I might have pored over in the days after the news of her death, conditioned to crave such gratuitously gossipy follow-up details. But publishing this kind of story at a late date seemed like a desperate move on New York‘s part. Rude, even. Because I had gotten to feeling that it was actually nice that Anne Scripps Douglas’ remaining family members had gotten some privacy this time, as opposed to their last tragedy that ended up as a movie-of-the-week.

Ready? Oh, boy! Me too.

EWS

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EWS

It's like I'm 20 all over again. (Blush!)

xo,

EWS

Brought to you by the inimitable Bergdorf Goodman.

So I sucked it up and bought the song again. Obvs it’s ridiculously, absurdly good, as it’s always been. (I’m on an Amtrak now, listening to it on repeat.)

However, I have a new concern:  WTF EVER HAPPENED TO NIK KERSHAW? Did he finally suck it up and reunite with the Psychedelic Furs?

(Not that he was ever with the Furs, but IMO he should have been.)

Hotness. Also: Where Is This Man and His Hair These Days?

(Secondary question… is he still nearly as hot?)

Here’s what I could find:

Click to see the full story on Nik. (Wait, who edits these Wiki-bios anyway?)

And for your continued audio-visual pleasure, here’s the video for his second-biggest hit.

xo EWS

The plan is to put everything New Media and design-related on the Carpe Media blog and leave all the fashion and glamour for this one. Sounds easy, but it’s freakishly time-consuming, since I’m trying to learn and incorporate custom CSS. (And, not incidentally, because New Media and glamour often intersect in the darndest ways, forcing me to don my reference librarian hat and engage in the delicate art of cross-referencing.)

Greek Goddess-ish.

In the meantime, here’s a doozy of a profile about Arianna Huffington, written by the always-in-fine-form Lauren Collins for the New Yorker last fall.

Enjoy, but remember… Arianna owns you. Heh!

xo, EWS

http://www.vimeo.com/6197342

aka

<object width=”400″ height=”300″><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” /><param name=”movie” value=”http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6197342&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1″ /><embed src=”http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6197342&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always” width=”400″ height=”300″></embed></object><p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/6197342“>Lissy Trullie “Boy Boy”</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/honestly”>Emily Sussman</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

aka

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa4fhr_lissy-trullie-boy-boy_music

aka

LISSY TRULLIE, (a la Cass Bird).

Welcome to the Lady Titans (of New Media). http://cassbird.com http://myspace.com/lissytrullie http://emilywsussman.net

xo, EWS

Click image for link.

EVER.