It has been 60 years since Marilyn Monroe died on August 3rd, 1962. I remember we had just started our family trip to the '62 World's Fair in Seattle. We were taking a meandering route to see some of the Northwest and our first night out we were in a motel in Susanville, CA. My dad had purchased the local paper, as one did in those days, and Monroe's death took up the whole front page. At 11, it was my second or third brush with confronting the reality of our own mortality. Marilyn just didn't seem like someone who would die to me. I had already experienced the death of an older neighbor lady all the kids loved, and an elderly uncle. But this was different somehow. Monroe would be 96 today if she were alive, which is pretty mind blowing.

Every Summer in Hollywood the cops would crack down on the prostitutes walking the track on Hollywood Blvd. and Sunset to clean it up for the tourist trade coming into town. Being as nighttime cabbies and hookers had a symbiotic relationship, it put a dent in my income. I developed a little side gig of taking tourists around to Hollywood landmarks during the day. Marilyn Monroe's grave was by far my number one request to see. I have been there more times than Joe Dimaggio. I would even throw in going to her home where she died on Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood. I have never been to Monroe's grave without other people there gawking.

A romantic ode to Marilyn, "MM on 10" was the very first punk rock song I ever wrote, though it never was performed outside of the original Masque punk rock club in Hollywood, where my first band with a name so vile even the Masque's owner Brendan Mullen squirmed, practiced. My buddy David sang it. At least we can say we 'played' the Masque for our punk rock street creed.

Monroe is still a huge cultural icon. Now with all the buzz about that new movie 'Blonde' coming out, that should goose her popularity yet again. She will always be bigger than her legions of imitators. I have a feeling the only thing more tragic than her early death would have been her getting old before the public's eye. That is really what killed her at 36. She saw it coming too.