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It would take an even more compulsive mind than mine to have actually compiled something as useless as a ranked list of feelings, and I’m not sure it’s ever occurred to me until now that I might have a favorite feeling at all. But if I made the list tonight, here’s what I would write by #1: “There is a way that a record can make me feel, given just the right spirit and context, that I would trade for nothing; a moment on the cusp between a desperate yearning you’ve studied so thoroughly that you can trace its contours on the tabletop like they were reflected there, and that wild burst of pride when you see joy in the eyes of something you love more than yourself; a single point on the emotional curve where you escape the gravity of existence, just fleetingly.”

Can people do this for each other ? Can lovers, or children ? Part of me wants fervently to believe that they can, that I’ll someday feel this way about a real person, because attaching this much intense emotion to songs by people you’ll never meet seems palpably pathetic. But then, on the other hand, I’m not entirely sure that yearning and awe are the right bases for a personal relationship with another human. Part of what makes it possible for me to react to records this way is that they cannot respond or recoil Every time somebody drifts into a visionary reverie about interactive art, I see a CD about to dissimulate, compensate or blush.

I don’t want that. Art is one of the few areas of life where we can sustain the illusion that we are defying Heisenberg, able to study without influencing. It’s a lot easier to trick yourself into thinking you’re staring perfection in the eye if it doesn’t blink.

Sisters of Avalon finds me in precisely the right initial-condition mixture of frustration, anticipation, dread and confidence from which the feeling can arise. I’ve been waiting for this album, really, for almost four years, ever since Cyndi’s previous one, 1993’s Hat Full of Stars, catapulted her from the ranks, in my mind, of people like Fiona, Patty Smyth and Pat Benetar — not guilty pleasures, exactly, since I don’t feel guilty about liking them, but singers, at least, that I enjoy more readily than I endorse — into those of human angels like Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Jane Siberry and Sarah McLachlan.

It was my choice, in fact, as the year’s best album, above new records by Big Country, Kate and the Loud Family, three of my five favorite artists, and perhaps only people into whose souls High Fidelity sent a spectral chill of recognition will understand how much this gesture cost me. I’d liked Cyndi well enough before, even believing, in opposition to the prevailing critical consensus, that her first three albums got better as they went along, not worse, but in placing Hat Full of Stars ahead of Buffalo Skinners, The Red Shoes, Plants & Birds & Rocks & Things, When I Was a Boy and Gold Against the Soul I was asserting, if only to myself, my belief that it represented Cyndi’s maturation from a dynamic interpreter and astute judge of material (noble enough skills themselves) into a Musician, in the truest artistic sense.

The only instrument she’s credited with on it is recorder, but making music is at its heart a creative process, not a physical one, and the album’s integration of Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian’s mainstream bombast, Junior Vasquez’ hip-hop production, Allee Willis’s old-fashioned songwriter’s flair, Jeff Bova and Jimmy Bralower’s pulsing synth programming, African backing vocals, dulcimers, mandolins, flugelhorns, Celtic reel and pop balladry is a feat of cultural dexterity that makes Graceland look snap-together, and although anybody could in fact have been responsible for it, I chose to believe Cyndi made the music what it was herself, and if I was right, it meant she was as good as anybody.

I believed that then, and I still do, but my terminal failing as a gambler is that I bet like a storyteller, not a mathematician (although here’s a bonus prediction: “Semi-Charmed Life” will be this year’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), and so Sisters of Avalon, if it didn’t live up to its history, might have been the album that revealed this leap of faith to have been overestimation. A little more dread crept in when I read in advance reports (of which there were plenty, since the album came out months ago everywhere but the US) that the songs incorporated Euro-dance elements, though I was comforted by the recollection that reviews of Hat Full of Stars described it as nearly a hip-hop album, and I like hip-hop even less than Euro-dance. But some encouraging signs began trickling in, as well. Happening across a stray episode of The RuPaul Show on VH1 one evening, I caught Cyndi performing, with just a dulcimer for accompaniment, a breathtakingly fragile song called “Fearless”.

Her voice was a force of nature, she still had the world’s best hair, and the fact that she’d actually learned to play an instrument while singing, even one as simple as a dulcimer, on which you need more training to hit wrong notes than you do to hit right ones, could only be a positive sign. A few weeks later, watching the credits to Unhook the Stars, smiling already because I enjoyed the film so much (that and Big Night have restored my faith in movie endings), I realized with a start that it was Cyndi singing the solemn, elegant theme song. I rushed to the store to find the soundtrack, but a little web research, after I failed to locate any such thing, revealed that that song, too, was destined for Sisters of Avalon. So either the album wasn’t going to be 1,000 Fires after all, or else at least two songs had slipped through unharmed.

The album does open, though, its title track up first, with a chattering Euro-dance drum line. Not so techno that you reach for a stopwatch to decide which bin to shelve it in, but a calculated loop all the same, simmering with trebly noises and little blips the way everybody’s has ever since somebody finally made a sampler that didn’t pixelate the sense out of everything above middle C. A heyaahey chorus echoes the recent remixes of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, and for a breath I think this really is all going to turn out badly, but then a lithe bass rumble enters, piano chords chime quietly, Cyndi starts singing, and I know everything is going to be okay. By the time the song is done we’ve heard guitars wail and wah, drums rattle under human hands, Cyndi take a howling blues break that should keep Joan Osborne nervous, and the song transformed into something dancing in the courtyard between “Rubberband Girl”, “Jump in the River” and “The Way It Is”. As the song ends, Cyndi’s invocation of spirits dying away into a whisper, a tiny screech emerges from the mix, half modem-transmission and half radio-static, and as I realize that it’s been there all along, muttering in the background of the song, I decide that Cyndi is quite capable of molding any style to her own will, and I should stop worrying.

“Ballad of Cleo & Joe” starts off even more firmly in dance suspension, burbling synth-bass arpeggios strung between busy drum loops and whirring ambient flanging, but a bizarre upper-register duel between mutant accordion, sine-wave synth and what sounds like an Indian cobra hypnotism performed by a hyperactive oscilloscope keeps intruding where some strategic samples probably ought to be, and Cyndi blazes through a bluesy, heavily compressed and thoughtfully sympathetic transvestite character study that is neither the timbre nor the material of dance filler. Her RuPaul appearance, actually, ended with this song playing appropriately over the credits, and while the character in the song fights with his insecurities in a way that RuPaul, at least in public, never does, nobody on the set seemed to have told RuPaul what the song was about, and his un-self-conscious and unaware dancing, precisely where he should have been self-conscious and aware (especially with Cyndi cavorting diminutively beside him for scale reference), ended up revealing something of the person underneath, after all.

The dance strobe shuts off entirely for the wistful lullaby “Fall Into Your Dreams”, the album’s closest approach to a mainstream ballad. The verses toy with Madonna-esque sentimentality, but a round, melancholy synth-bass tone purrs solidly throughout, violin rescues what could have been a saccharine saxophone part, some braying-elephant synth interjections punctuate the swelling choruses, at several points it sounds like there’s somebody typing in the background, and Cyndi’s voice makes a baby-talk backing vocal babble, which sounds like a terrible idea, turn out more like a breathy and sinister foreign language than affectionate gibberish.

Majestically spare church-organ notes intone the intro of “You Don’t Know”, the album’s first single, Cyndi’s voice on the opening chorus echoing into the imagined cathedral. The body of the song replaces this setting with a clicking drum loop, pealing siturn (a cross between a sitar and a cistern?), squalling guitar and an elastic bass line. Cyndi rarely lets her composure crack, making this a little more like “A Night to Remember” than “Money Changes Everything”, but her thick, squeaky accent, which seeps in around every edge of her otherwise beautiful and controlled performances, is a constant reminder of her presence, and to me her voice, with its fearless flashes from graceful to guttural, is at its most vital when the music behind her is at its most mechanical for contrast.

The calm facade crumbles a bit for the pounding “Love to Hate”, a monster-blues stomp driven by viciously gated drums, ragged guitar and surging bass. Cyndi does her best impersonation of punk shrieking at several points here, but my favorite parts are the one in the middle where her yelps seem to trail off across the room like she got caught up in the excitement and forgot stay in front of the microphone, and at the end where the instruments fade out while she tries to catch her breath. The lyrics, an odd table-leveling exercise in mutual disdain, snap at precisely RuPaul’s sort of superficial, judgmental, fashion-centric culture, but I’m guessing he wouldn’t like the song anyway. For a contrast in mood, both musically and vocally, Cyndi’s trademark warble is rendered almost unidentifiable by the intimate recording of her even tempered performance of the gentle, pretty “Hot Gets a Little Cold”, a song that’s so close to the Psychedelic Furs’ “Heaven” that at several points I swear they’re quoting it intentionally.

Catherine Russell, the song’s co-writer, also provides assorted backing vocals, which at times pass through so much processing that it sounds like someone has accidentally opened an air vent in the recording booth that connects to an airplane hanger where Aimee Mann happens to be rehearsing. A variety of acoustic instruments twinkle around the borders of the central guitar part, and at one point I think I even hear an omnichord, one of the few instruments even easier to play than a dulcimer.

More zithers (or slide dulcimers or whatever they are) and some horns glitter through the measured waltz of “Unhook the Stars”, which probably isn’t the first song to use a grittily sampled drum loop in 3/4, but I can’t think of any others offhand. Without the loop the song might resemble “Time After Time” or “True Colors”, but the drums turn it into more of a meditation than a lament, a transformation with which the distracted hummed fadeout is in keeping.

The song is also a more cogent explanation of the film’s title than anything that actually takes place in it, but it does recapitulate most of the film’s emotional plot, so I don’t recommend reading the lyrics too closely until after you’ve seen the movie. The moody, drifting “Searching”, with its blunt electronic drums, churning bass, complicated vocal delays and reassemblies, fragmented synth hooks and flown-in sprinklings of acoustic guitar, sounds like it might be a preemptive strike, Cyndi and album co-writer/co-producer Jan Pulsford hoping to frighten off the drum-and-bass remixers who plague Everything but the Girl by showing them a song that already sounds like it’s been remixed from something. And “Say a Prayer”, with its finger-snaps, wispy drum-machine groove, mock-string-swells, spoken verses and smoky torch-song-scat choruses, is nearly straight-ahead R&B, the spell only broken by the abrupt organ entrances and exits, a piano part that sounds like somebody trying to work out what the notes are going to be with the idea of fitting them better into the song’s cadence later, and some tricky vocal processing that has Cyndi whispering “It can fill your cup with regret” into a microphone in the verses, and cooing in an entirely different room for the choruses.

If the album seems to have wandered into a stylistic cul-de-sac with “Say a Prayer”, though, the tense “Mother” quickly extracts it. Throbbing bass, rumbling drums, scattered world-beat percussion, accordion, a Japanese banjo and some choppy pan-flute-sounding thing (or do you play Japanese banjos by blowing on them somehow?) fill a bustling arrangement over which Cyndi sings a mesmerizing lead with a marked Kate Bush-like character, the comparison encouraged by how much the Yma Sumac samples used as backing vocals resemble the Trio Bulgarka backing parts on Kate’s The Sensual World. It is in a half-trance state, then, that the album finally reaches the awesome hush of “Fearless”, and it is here, somewhere in the first minute of the song, where that feeling I think might be my favorite hits me. The version here isn’t just dulcimer, but even with keyboards, a “Tennessee music box”, a scattering of percussion and a rainstorm, the music is still little more than atmospheric ambience for Cyndi’s hauntingly small and slightly afraid performance of a song about being small and slightly afraid. “But if I was fearless,” she asks, “Could I be your reckless friend?”.

And somewhere in this vulnerability, in this idea that part of the reason she’s able to make this music, the melody outlining her magic while the words sketch her doubts, part of the reason anybody’s ever able to do anything, is that they’re also scared, is a bit of even rawer honesty than I’d thought to hope for, and in an instant I know that I have underestimated her, not overestimated, and I am overcome with a fierce and irrational pride, as if somehow my confidence in her is part of what has given her the strength to transcend herself. And as pathetic and misguided as this thought is, the record must sense how important it is to me, and it has the immeasurable decency to indulge me without a reproach.

It ought to also, by all rights, end there. The pace and rhythm of the album strongly imply that we have reached a musical and emotional conclusion, and the sensible thing, then, would be to conclude. But in fact, there’s one song more. What’s worse, it’s a mood shift on approximately the same order as Bugs Bunny popping, carrot and perennial query in hand, up out of the desert sand at the feet of Almasy as he’s carrying Katherine’s body out of the cave. If you can stomach the non sequitur, though, the song itself, “Brimstone and Fire”, is a goofy classic, an exuberantly bouncy and hilarious pop gem in which the narrator tries to disentangle the loneliness and trepidation that make up her ambivalence about being the subject of another woman’s crush. The music is all wheezy synth-accordions and bubblegum-reggae guitar stabs, perhaps the closest Cyndi has come to the impish glee of her debut album since. “Now we have dinner every Saturday; / I make spaghetti, she brings cake. / I make spaghetti with tomato sauce, / Because that’s all I can make”. This, too, is pathetic and misguided. But so many good things are.

WHAT MUSIC DO YOU CURRENTLY GROOVE TO ?

I’m excited by this new CD Drums & Bass. I love anything rhythym-orientated. When I need to zone out I listen to the first Tricky record. I like Massive Attack, and Sponge, who have this great song called Wax Ecstatic: it’s rock but not in the sense of old rock and roll, it has a sense of manic urgency. Alice in Chains- the chords, rhythm and dissonance are so brilliant.

I like old jazz sometimes, and Celia Cruz. And Dr. Dre’s new band. Don’t know the name but the video was fabulous-Dr Dre dressed up like the Pope in Day of the Dead make up, and the guy from Cypres Hill dressed like a golden devil, and they’re playing chess. And The Prodigy ! Fabulous ! and I’ve just discovered Skunk Anansie-I love stuff that pushes the envelope. And I like En Vogue, Don’t let go, and that MC Lyte song; I like the party that rocks the body….

WHAT IF PUSH COMES TO SHOVE, IS YOUR ALL TIME FAVORITE ALBUM ?

Joni Mitchell’s Misses, for the song Case of you. Maybe the Tricky record. And Coolio. And Peter Gabriel’s So, that song Mercy Street is so wonderful.

WHAT WAS THE FIRST RECORD YOU BOUGHT & WHERE DID YOU BUY IT ?

The Beatles’ PS I love you. This girl Adrienne, in my 4th grade class, I went to her birthday party. I bought it for her at the candy store where they sold 45s, in Queens,New York. I speak the Queens english, Ha Ha.

WHICH MUSICIAN (OTHER THAN YOURSELF) HAVE YOU EVER WANTED TO BE ?

When I was a kid I was trouble. Whatever I last watched on TV is how I acted. Everyone said “What an actress”. I thought I was nuts.

WHAT DO YOU SING IN THE SHOWER ?

If I’m feeling wacky I’ll sing some wacky shit. Sometimes an old blues song, or a girl group thing. This morning I didn’t sing, I was moaning, I was up at five.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SATURDAY NIGHT RECORD ?

Right now it’s jungle music, & Firestarted by the Prodigy.

AND YOUR FAVORITE SUNDAY MORNING RECORD ?

Tricky, Sponge, Cypress Hill & Tupac, except when I listen now it makes me sad, though the rhythm and sound is out of this world. The lyrical harshness, the poetry, is realistic and I understand it. But it makes me feel opressed the way women are talked about. I know so many gifted, wonderful women of colour that should be raised up and not pushed down. It’s the kick the dog syndrome.

NEW YORK – (Feb. 21) -As the April 1 release of ”Sisters Of Avalon” draws near, Epic Records continues to strive to illuminate Cyndi Lauper as an artist of greater creative substance than the often-cartoonist figure who became a leader of the MTV generation in 1983 with the kitschy ”Girls Just Want To Have Fun.”

Produced by the singer with Jan Pulsford and Mark Saunders, the album plays to Lauper’s considerable strengths as a vocalist and her marked maturity as a songwriter, with broad stylistic leanings that range from textured hip-hop and dance to guitar-driven alterna-pop. Despite its seemingly disparate musical elements, ”Sisters Of Avalon” is a cohesive and remarkably powerful collection that is notable for the absence of the novelty ditties that have long been associated with the singer.

But is the world ready for the ”serious” Cyndi Lauper ? ”There are certainly some preconceived notions that we have to overcome,” says David Massey, senior vice president of Epic (U.S.). ”There have always been two sides of Cyndi. There’s always been a musically adventurous side, as well as the zany personality that became dominant in the ’80s. We believe that with perseverance and the right exposure, we can gradually knock down any barriers ahead.”

”She’s one of those unique artists who has loyal followers that literally clamor for every bit of music or memorabilia they can get their hands on,” says Marlon Creaton, manager of Record Kitchen in San Francisco. ”I agree that there are some people who will initially write this album off without listening. But it’s a good-enough record to change a lot of those minds. If the label stays committed to the record for longer than a couple of months, I think they will.”

Ironically, Lauper doesn’t view ”Sisters Of Avalon” as such a dramatic departure. ”To me, this album is a natural progression from the songs on ‘Hat Full Of Stars,’ ” she says, referring to her 1993 album, which showed her dabbling in more textured, experimental rhythms and weightier lyrics.

If there is a difference between ”Sisters” and the albums from her ’80s heyday, Lauper says, it’s in the way these tunes were assembled.

”While I was on tour for ‘Hat Full Of Stars,’ I found myself fortunate to be working with musicians I felt I could record with,” she says. ”Remember, I started out as a singer/songwriter in a band called Blue Angel. Those are my roots. It’s always been strange to go into the studio with one set of people, and then go on the road with an entirely different group of people. I was longing to have a more cohesive experience.”

It was during the worldwide tours supporting ”Hat Full Of Stars” and the 1995 greatest-hits collection ”12 Deadly Cyns And Then Some” that some of the songs for ”Sisters Of Avalon” started to take shape. ”I cannot begin to explain what a fabulous experience it was for all of us to be jammed into my hotel room every night, spontaneously putting our ideas together,” she says. ”It was exciting because everyone comes from such different backgrounds and perspectives.”

Among the band members with whom she most closely connected was Pulsford, a keyboardist who first tweaked Lauper’s interest with a tape of a world beat/funk groove that would eventually evolve into the song ”Searching.” ”It was while I started putting words to that piece of music that I started to understand that we were on a special journey that felt so right,” the singer says. ”Jan and I are extremely compatible collaborators, because she is so well-studied and I approach music in a real primal manner. We complement each other perfectly.”

Once the tours ended, Lauper and Pulsford recruited Saunders and began seeking an ideal setting in which to assemble the various ideas accumulated on the road. Their search led them to a mansion in Connecticut that they renovated into a studio.

”It was ideal in that we were able to make it as technically proficient as we needed it to be, but it also provided a warm and homey space that fed our souls,” Lauper says. ”It was so beautiful to be working on a vocal and smell lilacs.”

With the experience of recording ”Sisters Of Avalon” a pleasant memory, Lauper says, she is itchy to get out on the road again. ”I’ve never been more proud of a group of songs,” she says. ”It will be interesting to see the shape they take onstage. I can’t wait to find out.”

When Cyndi Lauper made her debut in the early ’80s, I sometimes got her confused with Madonna, strange as that may seem. At that time, the two female artists had very similar images. Their clothes had a kind of trashy/funky style, and their songs dealt with themes such as the need for women to be independent.

Since then, of course, the two singers have had very different careers. Madonna, whose music I’ve never really liked, became a true global superstar. But Cyndi Lauper never really recaptured the excitement of her debut album, “She’s So Unusual.” Many people apparently thought she was too unusual, as she became more interested in getting involved in the weird world of professional wrestling instead of music.

But Lauper remained a talented singer, songwriter and performer, and her fans in countries such as Japan stayed loyal to her despite Lauper’s declining career in the United States. I think the reason Lauper didn’t become as popular as Madonna is that she just doesn’t have the genius for self-promotion that Madonna so obviously has. Musically, I’ll take Lauper any day — her voice alone is much, much better than Madonna’s.

I think that’s one reason Lauper is still very popular in Japan. Foreign artists who rely too much on hype and image tend not to do well here, for the simple reason that Japan has lots of home-grown performers like that. But foreign musicians who consistently produce good music and pay attention to the Japanese market usually win the long-term loyalty of their fans.

Another reason is that people — correctly — see Lauper as someone who’s doing what she really wants to do, without regard for image or hype. Her best-known song, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” artfully sums up that attitude.

Still, I can’t imagine Madonna doing a TV pizza commercial like Lauper recently did in Japan.

I’ve just been listening to Lauper’s latest single, “You Don’t Know,” and her fans will be happy to hear that it’s classic Cyndi. It’s a little more subdued than some of her previous work, but her tough-but-romantic personality still comes across very strongly. And the lyrics are intelligent and to the point, which is a nice change from the banal crap that passes for lyrics in many pop records.

The single’s “B-side” is a very interesting tune called “Mother” done in the “trip-hop” style, with a distinct Indian feel. It’s a real change of musical direction for this very talented performer. It will be interesting to see what Lauper’s stage show will be like when she tours Japan in late November and early December — will Lauper rely on a “greatest-hits” approach, or will she challenge her fans with unfamiliar music?

Eleven years ago, Cyndi Lauper was bigger than Madonna. What happened?

And, with those words, Cyndi Lauper did something she doesn’t often do – she apologized, in that inimitable Queens (N.Y) English of hers, for being a little too colorful.

As co-grand marshall of last month’s gay pride parade, the float-riding singer had thrown the shiny stuff at a rate of a dozen handfuls per block, making a glorious mess along Fifth Avenue, and breading her fans as they marched happily behind.

For days they’d be pulling high-tech dandruff from their hair, each fleck a reminder of their reunion with a pop star who seemed more like an old friend – a straight-girl gal pal – than a new-wave icon whose glory days were behind her.

On that June afternoon, dressed like a cartoon Calamity Jane, her hair the color of an optic-yellow tennis ball beneath a five-gallon hat, and later that balmy evening when she took the stage at the annual pier dance wrapped in a rainbow flag, Lauper was surrounded by a bevy of cross-dressing beauties and performed before an audience she recognized as “the same people who were at the concerts” way back when. “I didn’ t realize how much `True Colors’ meant to the whole movement,” she said.

As the drag queens cavorted to a chorus of “Hey Now, Hey Now,” a hook borrowed from Redbone’s 1974 hit “Come and Get Your Love,” Lauper debuted her newest song, singing her heart out as she’d done the year before at the Gay Games closing ceremonies. That performance and her recent one proved 11 years after she burst upon the pop music scene that girls (real and otherwise) still just wanna have fun.

And, these days, none more than Lauper herself.

Although she hates the word “comeback” – “They called `True Colors’ my comeback record,” in 1986, she says – Lauper could use one. She has been seen on the TV comedy “Mad About You” recently, but the American public has forgotten that the kooky cookie with the Technicolor hair was once the most popular rock singer in America. Her latest single is a reggae-tinged reworking of her oldest hit. Dubbed “Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun),” the new/old song is the first to be taken from “Twelve Deadly Cyns. . .And Then Some,” a 14-song career retrospective album that hits stores Tuesday; the same night she’ll play the Academy on West 43rd Street.

Already a smash in Europe, Asia and South America, “Twelve Deadly Cyns” has sold almost 3 million copies since its overseas release last fall. The compilation (slightly revised for its domestic issue) includes the best songs from Lauper’s four albums, plus two new songs: “I’m Gonna Be Strong,” a soaring vocal take on the Gene Pitney classic, a song she has sung since her days fronting the band Blue Angel, and one which, in live performance, Lauper now heart-wrenchingly recasts as an AIDS elegy; and the singer’s own “Come on Home.”

Come home is exactly what Lauper has done, so to speak, with her newest album. The 42-year-old performer and Epic Records are hoping “Twelve Deadly Cyns” will reacquaint hometown audiences with a singer they never really stopped liking but did stop thinking about.

“Not everyone is aware of how incredibly talented she is,” says David Massey, vice president of A&R (artists and repertoire) for Epic. “This album reveals just how much she can do.”

People have needed a reminder since the late 1980s. Except for the Top 10 single “I Drove All Night,” Lauper’s third album, “A Night to Remember,” was forgotten soon after its 1989 release. (Lauper herself is not enamored with the record or that time in her life. “I just wanted to flush myself down the toilet at that point,” she says.) Her fourth and most recent album, 1993’s “Hat Full of Stars” – which she believes is her finest and most personal – sold only about 300,000 copies and received little radio airplay. But she calls it a “monumental” achievement, because it was exactly the record she wanted to make.

Lauper’s people know there’s a perception problem in America – she’s remembered more as a appealing goofball than a serious artist. “We’re very aware that she needs rebuilding here,” Massey told Billboard magazine last month. They’re hoping that “Twelve Deadly Cyns” – something brand new but familiar – has the potential, though, to put Lauper back on top and banish, once and for all, any lingering memories of the singer’s ill-fated foray into the world of professional wrestling. That mid-’80s career blunder cost Lauper much of her credibility. Other career setbacks – abdominal illness in 1985, a messy breakup with her original manager Dave Wolff – didn’t help.

But, Massey says, “The company is very committed to Cyndi. We’ re really hoping the public `gets’ this record.” To help make sure they do, “Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)” will be featured in the upcoming film “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar,” the big-budget drag movie starring Patrick Swayze to be released this fall. In the best-case scenario, as Massey sees it, each of the new songs on “Twelve Deadly Cyns” will be released as a single and the name Cyndi Lauper will enjoy the same kind of dignified return to popularity that Tina Turner saw in the late 1980s.

Lauper wouldn’t complain if that came to pass. “The kind of success I want wouldn’t be like what I had,” she says. “I want to be allowed to be myself all the time. That would really be success.”

LITTLE MORE than a decade ago Lauper had more success than she could have ever imagined when she first picked up a guitar at age 12. Her debut album, 1984’s “She’s So Unusual,” which sold 4.5 million copies, produced four Top 5 singles and earned Lauper a Best New Artist Grammy award. By the time she made the cover of Newsweek in March, 1985, with a story on “Rock and Roll Woman Power,” there wasn’t anyone who didn’ t know all the words to “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” “All Through the Night” and, of course, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Cyndi was the “It” girl.

Her only real competition back then was a tarty upstart who rolled around in a gondola like no virgin the world had ever seen. Her name was Madonna Louise Ciccone. Anyone guessing who would be the bigger star of the two picked the orange-haired oddball in the mismatched vintage clothes rather than the Marilyn Monroe wannabe in the underwear. Not only could Lauper sing, she was a good actress and funny, too.

“Of them all, the most exciting and unusual star is certainly Cyndi Lauper,” raved Newsweek. “She’s a maverick – a new-wave Betty Boop with the heart of Janis Joplin, the lungs of a screaming punk and the unflinching spirit of a never-say-die feminist.” The world was hers. “It was really a miracle that something like that could happen to me,” Lauper says. “But you get to the top of the mountain and plant your flag, and you say something, and the movie credits don’t roll. It wasn’t the end of the movie.”

Lauper continued to write and record after her initial success, releasing 1986’s “True Colors,” an album whose title track went to No.1 on the pop charts and was nominated for a Grammy. She went on a world tour and co-starred in a film called “Vibes,” which was not successful but garnered good notices for her. (As an actress she has appeared in several other films since then and last year was nominated for an Emmy for her recurring role on “Mad About You”).

She never matched her first success, however. Over the years Madonna eclipsed Lauper, of course, reinventing herself with every passing fancy, proving herself to be the savvy marketer Lauper never was. “The business stuff, the big strategy, that’s not my field,” Lauper admits. “My job is to make the music and the album covers and the videos.” That she has done with “Twelve Deadly Cyns,” directing the video for “Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun)” and co-producing the three new tracks. Her appearance Tuesday should help to get the ball rolling back toward mainstream success for a singer who has always appealed to anyone who ever felt like a misfit.

Lauper has always been cast as the Catholic girl who rebelled against straitlaced society, the strong one who refused to bend, the funny one whose offbeat beauty triumphed in the end. She still doesn’ t think she’s pretty – “I’m not beautiful. I fix up good” – and explains away the unique sartorial style that leads her to wear a colorful Moroccan vest, a baby T-shirt with the word “Cookie” on it and vintage men’s pants at the same time. “I never thought it looked nice enough or dressy enough, so I just kept adding. When I had enough money to buy stuff that matched, I didn’t want to.”

Her feistiness hasn’t changed either, even if she has mellowed a bit more than her hair color (“It’s yellow. . .”) would lead you to believe. Although Lauper says she is learning to deal with her anger, she still rails against the “lack of gentleness and compassion” of the Catholic church – the religion in which she and her sister Elen, now an acupuncturist, were raised – toward not only gays, but women in general. The church taught her “hatred of self,” she says, and that “women are evil,” and she’s been fighting back ever since. When she passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the gay pride parade, she says, “I was thinking about all my [Catholic] stuff. But I’m recovering.” She recorded the original “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” as a response to her parochial education – she and her sister attended a convent school for a while – and sexism in general. “I wanted to get even for what was done to me and countless others. It was one for the girls!”

That spirit is not lost on the remake.

“I’m trying to see life differently and get to where I don’t take things personally at all,” she says, waxing philosophical. “When you’ re creative, you’re really sensitive and self-centered. Maybe I was so sensitive that my skin became so thin that I shut down. But maybe that sensitivity is what allows me to open up so much when I’m singing.”

A successful relationship has helped her, too. Four years ago Lauper was married to actor David Thornton in a ceremony performed by Little Richard. Patti Labelle sang. Since then, the couple, along with their dog and several cats, have divided their time between Manhattan’s Upper West Side and a country house in Connecticut, where the locals don’ t always know what to make of Lauper. “I was used to being iced and not being talked to before I was famous. . .but they’re used to me now. They’ve seen my hair go through purple, yellow, blond and brown.” Besides, she likes Connecticut. “I loved New England ever since the Pepperidge Farm commercials,” she says.

Today, positively Cyn-ful, Lauper knows she couldn’t blend in there or, for that matter, anywhere else on the planet (except perhaps the East Village) even if she tried. “I can’t walk in the same parade as everyone else,” she says, as glittery as ever, “But I know there’s a parade out there for me to walk in.”

Cyndi Lauper was a club singer from New York who had recently made it big with a hit record in the charts. It’s not clear who came up with the idea (perhaps Lauper’s manager Dave Wolf), but one evening out of the blue she turned-up on a WWF television show where an altercation broke out between her and long-time wrestler/personality, Lou Albano.

After several weeks of of this routine and a lot of hype on MTV, they decided to settle their differences in the ring. Of course Lauper had no intentions of wrestling Albano so she needed a stand-in. This angle gave birth to the so-called “Rock & Wrestling” connection. Richter would represent Cyndi Lauper against Albano’s stand-in, “The Fabulous Moolah”, for the world title in Madison Square Garden.

The WWF had promoted women wrestlers on numerous occasions but never as headliners. Nevertheless, for the first time in memory a girl wrestler was being billed as a main attraction by a major promotion. This stroke put women’s pro wrestling back on the map, and culminated in Richter being crowned WWF world champion after defeating Moolah. Richter’s popularity and marketability mushroomed and the WWF took advantage by promoting her heavily. However, as in the past, things would change.

The introduction of cable television would change the landscape of pro wrestling and create the super promotions that basically control wrestling to this day. As far as women’s pro wrestling is concerned, it’s been an on-again, off-again affair. Richter, a major star, went on to defend her lady’s title for another two years but the WWF, as it had in the past, began to phase the girls out of the picture. In a dispute with WWF about the direction of its women’s division, Richter decided to leave and jobbed the title to Moolah, masquerading as a wrestler called the Spider. Ironically, this ridiculous story-line also signaled the end of Moolah’s storied career as a wrestler. Richter left the WWF and moved on to various promotions, eventually winding up with the AWA, Verne Gagne’s ailing promotion out of Minnesota.

Cyndi Lauper Interview

An Interview with Cyndi Lauper By Michael Lano and Evan Ginzburg

At the top of the today’s charts is Cyndi Lauper, who helped give Hogan and McMahon credibility and attention by participating in the Rock and Wrestling Connection. She originally sang for the [Other] group Blue Angel. Although she was one of the top celebs at the We Are The World taping.after going multiplatinum with her debut album, She’s So Unusual , U.S. sales skidded for one of the best singers in the business. She’s recently made an amazing comeback. Mike Lano and Evan Ginzburg interviewed her after she cut the opening day ribbon at Virgin Records’ S.F. store on 8/17/95.

You seemed to be having fun singing. You sang 4 more songs than anyone else.
CL: You mean I could’ve gotten away with just one? (laughs). I’m having fun here. It’s a hot day, [Japan] very sunny. Very beautiful here.

ML: Your new cd, 12 Deadly Cyns has one of the more creative titles next to Bette Midler’s Bette of Roses. You’ve redone several of the songs like Time After Time and Girls Just Want To Have Fun in a different musical style.

CL: A friend came up with the title, after my name. We had a great time, changing the presentation and there’s some new songs I’m proud of on the album. It was only recently released in this country, but it’s sold well like my other albums abroad.

ML: Did you know it’s already sold 3 million copies and has eclipsed Michael Jackson’s History on the billboard charts?

CL: Thank you. That’s great! I don’t usually read that stuff because I’m too busy writing songs. I don’t read the papers much either-too much negative out there. I’m just really unaware on some levels and on others I’m like a sponge.

ML: Wasn’t Hatful of Stars your most moving, personal work that few people heard? And what are your latest projects?

CL: Yes, thank you. I was frustrated, but I’ve just added songs to the new To Wong Fu, Julie Newmar movie. I wrote a song for Cassavetes son’s movie starring his wife Gena Rowlands and for a new movie I Love You, I Love You Not. . I’ve been writing a lot and I’ve been nominated for an Emmy twice for Mad About You. They let me go and play with them, but I can’t stop doing the music. That’s who I am. Sometimes I feel a little odd being a celebrity by day and doing my music at night.

ML: Evan has some questions… EG: I’m from WBAI-FM in New York.
CL: Oh, that’s a great station!

EG: Thank you. Can you tell us about some of your musical influences? You mentioned Ella, Billie, Sarah Vaughn.

CL: Lester Young. Charlie Parker. That was my foundation.

EG: You sing with a lot of soul also. Are there any R&B singers that influenced you?

CL: When I was young, I couldn’t tell the difference. I listened to just great voices. I was lucky enough to learn and listen to Patty Labelle, Aretha Franklin. Even the Supremes, and the Beatles.

EG: And was your family very into music also?

CL: Yeah. My mom listened to a lot of Pucini and Satchmo. Being Italian-American, a lot of the Pucini operas and the way my family acted was the same(laughs)! I went to see a great tragedy and I thought-that’s not so strange. I’ve seen that before! I’m only kidding. It’s a little joke.

ML: You’re not involving your family or your mother any more in your videos?

CL: Oh yeah. My mom is still involved. She’s kind of shy. I discovered I was like a stage daughter. I kept prodding her to do this and that and now one day she was really shy. And she say’s to me “I’m really shy. I don’t want to do this.” And she told me it was because she was only working (in my videos) so we could spend time together. I said, “Look, ma. I’ll just make time in the schedule; you don’t have to do this.” She does other things behind the scenes with me.

ML: Was Time After Time the last video she was in?

CL: Oh no. She was in a video called Take Hold Of My Heart, that was the last video she did. But SheBop, had my Aunts Gracie and Helen, and my two Aunt Maes were in it.

EG: How did you like working with Lou Albano?

CL: He’s a very funny, funny guy still. He was very much into the M.S. charities and I still do as much as I can, but not as much as him.Women’s rights, AIDS projects and all. A very good guy.

ML: Do you feel your association with pro wrestling negatively affected your career at the time, or did you take some positives from it?

CL: No, it was positive. Me with Hulk at the Grammies just got more attention from different areas than from people watching MTV. My ex, Dave Wolf, was always into the wrestling. He loved it. I remember watching Bruno and my Ma loved wrestling. Dave just thought we could reach out to a bigger and different audience by getting involved with the wrestling. He did everything, and set it all up. He still loves it, but I don’t follow it as much. It’s not like it used to be. Poor management and my pr guys not doing their job was what hurt me, I think. Not the wrestling. I enjoyed my time with it. If it was up to Dave, I’d still be involved with the wrestling. He and I are still friends, and talk. Who said it was a negative? P.R. is P.R. and I will always look at it as a positive. Dave just wanted more p.r., but we were doing pretty good airtime on MTV then. I learned a lot about hype and production from the wrestling, I have to say.

ML: Have you seen some of these Japanese lady wrestlers with the makeup? You started all this. How about the wrestlers on a personal level?

CL: They were really nice to me. They’re all characters-forget about it. You think the people in music are “different”…I tried to make my music like wrestling-an event. And that’s how I want to get back to it now-my music. Music is my great joy. It’s a very freeing experience for me, despite the movies, and tv and everything else. The music is the most important to me. I just heard Burning Spear and that band really inspired me.

ML: You looked like you had a lot of fun with the creative Lost Boys video that had Lou, Moolah, Blassie, Sheik and Volkoff, Wendy Richter…

The busy San Francisco corner of Stockton and Market streets was a little noisier than usual yesterday.

Amid the rumbling buses, pounding jackhammers, wailing sirens and screeching brakes came the sound of amplified music echoing from some unseen place.

It was drifting off the roof of the new Virgin Megastore, where a passel of musicians — Cyndi Lauper, Jill Sobule, Rosie Gaines and the Beggars among them — were on hand to hype the store’s opening.

Billed by the company as the biggest record and video store in the country — 53,000 square feet — the three-story entertainment emporium is the latest in Virgin’s 60-store worldwide chain.

The store, which has 125,000 CD and cassette titles, 2,000 CD-ROMs, 15,000 video titles, a small bookstore, a cafe and 500 listening posts, actually opened Saturday.

But yesterday was the “grand” opening, with Lauper, her short-cropped hair the color of a canary and the texture of cotton candy, starring in a ribbon-cutting routine witnessed by a couple of hundred fans and passers-by crowded around the corner.

Lauper, dandy in blue-and-green checked peddle pushers, shiny black cowboy shirt with red fringe, green ’40s-style open-toed heels and blue toenails, wielded a giant pair of fake gold scissors while a Virgin official did the actual snipping. He made a remark that was drowned out by traffic. Lauper said something like, “Music, music, music! Shout, shout shout!” then was hus tled away by a pack of bodyguards and guys with walkie-talkies.

“Yeah, this is my first roof gig,” she said as she disappeared into a side door.

“Beach Blanket Babylon” star Val Diamond was also a roof virgin. “I hope we don’t have to climb up there on scaffolding,” she said with a smile.

Yesterday’s scene was a far cry from the famous Beatles performance on the roof of Apple Records in London in the late ’60s. The south side of Ellis Street between Powell and Stockton was blocked off to traffic to make room for spectators, but it was empty. You couldn’t see the performers on the roof anyway.

People poured through the store and milled around outside, where the roof action was broadcast on TV monitors and speakers. Around 1 p.m., writer Jessica (Decca) Mitford sang the Beatles’ “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” to kazoo accompaniment by the Dectones.

Remember the ’80s? How could you forget them? They just happened ten minutes ago.

Not so fast. It may be hard to fathom, but Wham! happened a full ten years ago. With ’90s music innovations like, um, gangsta rap, is it any wonder why the ’80s are making a comeback?

The songs of the ’80s are returning in the form of shockingly true covers. HiNRG artists like Nicki French are cashing in with beaucoup-BPM remakes of hits of ’80s classics. Nobody has remade any Cyndi Lauper songs yet. Who’d dare? Who has a four-and-a-half octave voice and a Queens accent that would make even Archie Bunker cock his head and grunt, “Huh?”

Cyndi herself, that’s who. The quirky singer of 1984’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” is riding the crest of the ’80s revival with a new song. But she’s one-upping the nostalgia buffs by redoing her own most famous hit.

Lauper has a new hit with “Hey Now (Girls Just Want to Have Fun),” the debut single from her greatest hits release Twelve Deadly Cyns … and then some. Her collection of 14 songs was a worldwide smash in 1994. It was a hit everywhere … except in America, where it was finally released by Epic in July.

Still brandishing the brassy humor and accent that made her famous, Lauper is more sophisticated. Gone are the eye-popping thrift-store rags of yesteryear. She dresses distinctly, but with a downtown flair. Her face is made-up like a ’40s film star’s, and she looks 15 years younger than her true age of 42.

Cyndi Lauper talks as freely as most people think. She doesn’t hold anything back. For example, she is upfront about why not all of her biggest hits made Twelve Deadly Cyns. With characteristic frankness, she grimaces of her No. 10 movie-theme hit “The Goonies ‘R’ (Good Enough),” “I hated that.”

Besides ten certified hits and “Hey Now,” her CD contains a brand-new song, “Come on Home, ” which has been whipped into club-ready techno by co-composer Junior Vasquez.

The multi-talented Lauper directed the video to “Hey Now” herself. The video for the original featured girls led Pied Piper-style down the streets of Manhattan by urchin-chic Lauper, sporting her trademark orange hair. In the update, Lauper’s hair is canary and the girls are, well, boys: Director Cyndi playfully chose a cast of drag queens as her co-stars, always out to shock the hinterlands.

“Hey Now” will shock listeners with its fresh reggae beat. The revamping happened when she tired of singing the same old “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” over and over in concert. It was a stroke of genius that has sparked an international comeback.

“Hey Now” marks a return to form for Lauper. Though her debut She’s So Unusual sold more than 4.5 million copies in the U.S., she lost the ears of many fans when she championed the virtues of pro wrestling, and of her then-sidekick Captain Lou Albano. As Lauper learned the hard way, hanging out with a guy wearing a rubber band in his cheek will get you nowhere fast.

When Lauper’s outrageousness wore thin, so did her success in America. Her last Top 40 hit was 1989’s cover of Roy Orbison’s “I Drove All Night.” Her most recent studio album, 1993’s critically praised Hat Full of Stars, failed to chart in the U.S.

But pop culture is fickle. Acts deemed laughably passe five years ago are irresistible today. Cyndi’s comeback was inevitable. Lauper sang “I’m Gonna Be Strong,” a ballad she first recorded with her old band Blue Angel, at both last year’s Gay Games and at the Pier Dance after the 1995 New York Gay Pride Parade. Her appearance in the parade on her float with Greg Louganis and her performance at the dance were greeted enthusiastically.

Following are excerpts from an interview with Lauper.

MR: How was your gay pride weekend?

CL: It was really fabulous. I have a great company: They got me a float and then they gave me Greg Louganis!

MR: What was Greg like?

CL: He’s so sweet. And cute. And shy. Poor little one, he’s shy!

MR: What do you think of your gay following?

CL: That you always have to remember-no matter what you’re told-that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.

MR: Speaking of God, you’ve always been an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church-

CL: [Interrupting.]-That’s because I’m a recovering Catholic. I went to a few of their organizations and schools. I speak from experience. … There’s, y’know, the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, and it just so happens that I was with the Sisters of No Charity and No Mercy At All.

MR: Were all the nuns and priests who schooled you rotten?

CL: When you take a group of people and you repress them and they cut themselves off from their feelings as a human-and a human being has sexual feelings, has bodily feelings-what you are handing over to children is a monster….

Maybe God’s a woman … I’m against their teaching that women are evil and that their power and their sexuality is evil. [The Church] is losing popularity anyway. They’re not selling the tickets that they used to.

Ever-outspoken, Cyndi’s a proud liberal who says she voted Democrat in 1992, despite the fact that Tipper Gore once spear-headed a campaign that labeled Cyndi’s No. 3 hit “She-Bop” -a veiled ode to another favorite Catholic pastime, masturbation-as “filthy.” The flap enraged Lauper, though she laughs over it now. Tipper is not forgiven.

CL: I voted for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Gore! [Giggles mischievously.]

MR: Your message has always been feminist…

CL: It is not a dirty word, “feminism.” We are taught not to like ourselves as women, we are taught what we’re supposed to look like, what our measurements are supposed to be. And there’s a lot of angry women. Me? I’m trying to deal with it. I’m gettin’ to the point now where I’m hopin’ that it’s really my own belief system…

MR: Do you channel your anger into performing?

CL: For me, singing is magical. You feel hooked in, grounded, and connected above and below. I feel alive. There’s something very healing about music.

MR: How was it growing up in Queens as such a talented kid?

CL: I felt like an alien. This counselor made my mother cry. He told her that-’cause at the time my mom was a waitress-“Do you want your daughter to wind up being a waitress, too, and have no career and no life?”

MR: You can answer the question “Are you big in Japan?” with a resounding “Yeah!”

CL: It’s really great to come back home where it’s nice and calm. It’s hard to be famous. ‘Cause it’s really just me, anyway. Always was.

Cyndi Lauper in 1995 remains who she has always been: A woman whose love of music keeps her working non-stop, whether singing, writing, producing, directing, or even acting-last month she won an Emmy nomination for her recurring role on NBC’s Mad About You.

Cyndi Lauper is not desperate for a comeback, but this is one star of the ’80s who may have to give up her stateside quiet time if her new song-and her old material-takes off.

Cyndi Lauper doesn’t see her career retrospective-greatest hits package “Twelve Deadly Cyns…And then Some” as a return to the pop-music arena.

“I’m not re-entering, because I never went anywhere,” said Lauper, who took two years off from touring while “Hat Full of Stars” and “Cyns” were released.

The Queens, N.Y., native, who performs Sunday at the Mix 98.5 Fall Fest on Boston Common, became a household name in 1984 when her feminist pop anthem “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” skyrocketed to No.2 on the Billboard singles chart. It was the first single from her debut, “She’s So Unusual,” which quickly sold more than 4 million copies.

But the eccentrically dressed and oddly tressed singer’s fortune didn’t stop there; her hits literally followed one after the other. “She’s So Unusual” spawned four consecutive Top Five singles that year: “Girls,” “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” and “All Through the Night.”

And they’re all on “Cyns,” along with other faves such as “Change of Heart” and “True Colors,” remixes of “Money Changes Everything” and “She Bop” and three previously unreleased songs: a reworking of her first hit, “Hey Man (Girls Just Want to Have Fun),” “Come on Home” and “I’m Gonna Be Strong,” a song Lauper wrote with her first group, Blue Angel.

The album’s first single, “Hey Man,” was the result of Lauper’s quest for growth, her recent fascination with techno and the opportunity to work with labelmate Patra. The reggae-tinged dance number shows Lauper eyeing the club circuit.

Similarly, reggae influences abound on the new “Come on Home,” which echoes Bob Marley’s early work and distinctly resembles the Rastafarian’s “Simmer Down.”

Experimenting with musical styles and taking chances is nothing new to the 42-year-old singer.

CYNDI LAUPER, for those of you with very short memories, was the pop music sensation of 1984. She was nominated for numerous Grammy Awards for her album She’s So Unusual and for her song “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” Her daffy charm made her one of the early darlings of the original MTV Generation, and her mutlicolored hair and mismatched thrift-shop wardrobe spawned legions of imitators.

Her new album, Twelve Deadly Cyns, is a greatest-hits collection that also features some new songs, including a new arrangement of “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” She thinks her music is better than ever, despite the career glitch she hit in the late eighties. (“They tried to sell me in the easy-listening Prozac radio stations, but my music was not easy for them to listen to. I said the hell with this and had a little revolution. I won.”)

She thinks people are hung up on her image and her offbeat style. (“They’ve got a problem that I dye my hair and dress funny. They always wanted to change me from day one.”) She feels, in retrospect, that her public image was indeed a fair representation of the real Cyndi. (“It’s hard enough to be yourself, let alone somebody else.”) Nowadays she colors her hair scrambled-eggs yellow. Her makeup is toned down. (“I do believe that less is more.”)

She is fond of wearing fringes, fishnet, leopard spots, tiger stripes, and polka dots. She tawks, in a high-pitched voice, with a Betty Boop Brooklyn-Queens accent. She is still girlish, and refuses to discuss her age. (“This country is hung up about age, which I relate to being hung up about death and sex. I figure, when they ask a woman who does stuff how old she is, it’s like they want to kick the tires and see if the chassis is still good.”)

She was born on June 20, l953, at Boulevard Hospital, in Astoria, Queens. (“My mother’s doctor was a sexist idiot who kept telling her she was fine, but then her water broke. She nearly had me in a cab. At the hospital, the illustrious doctor wasn’t ready. I started to come out, but he closed my mother’s legs on my head. I must have really been pissed off. Ever since then, I’ve been a little late.”)

She spent her first four years in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. She loved living across from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and a train trestle. (“It was magical, like a book–all those people from far-away places. Sailors, Hasidic Jews, Spanish people, Italian people, Irish, German. They all looked really exotic to me. I remember sitting and thinking that the gate to the Navy Yard looked like a castle.”)

Her family then moved to Ozone Park, Queens. She mistakenly thought it was a move to upscale Long Island. (“I wasn’t so good at geography.”) She says her home life was not what one would call stable. (“I lived in a nut house: my mother and father had a turbulent relationship. My mother and stepfather also had a turbulent relationship.”)

Her school years were rough. (“I was considered a slow child because I have dyslexia and read slowly. I never did my homework.”) She dreamed of going to Music and Art High School but settled for a fashion school. (“I flunked everything. Then they put me in a class for ‘nonachieving geniuses.’ But I flunked that, too. Afterward, I went to four different high schools. I was seventeen and still had three more years to go. So I said forget it and quit.”)

She always wanted to sing, but was discouraged by everyone. (“They said, ‘You can’t do that. Somebody’s got to clean the fish.'”) She was a horse walker at Belmont Park. She worked at a kennel in Vermont. She went to art college, but fantasized about singing. She eventually landed a gig as a background singer. (“All of a sudden my world changed: I didn’t look odd any more. I was where I was supposed to be, I guess.”)

She lives in Connecticut and Manhattan with a dog, three cats, and her husband of three years, actor David Thornton. (“He tells me I’m a tough guy, like Karl Malden in On the Waterfront.”) She has tried acting herself, and was nominated for an Emmy last year for her guest role on Mad About You. She blames an acting job–in the unreleased film Off and Running–for her worst haircut. (“They told me I was gonna look like Louise Brooks or Sophia Loren. I looked like Marco Polo.”)

She believes manners count, but admits that she can be quite rude in the wrong circumstances. (“If somebody is very arrogant, I give them the business. If they don’t want to sit next to me, I make sure I sit next to them and then I turn into the slobbiest eater, spill water, and become a real thorn in their side.”) She is ticked off by stupidity. (“Of course, I’m a little stupid myself.”) She admits to having engaged in fisticuffs, but is not proud of it. (“The circumstances were not good. I changed my environment immediately.”)

She says that, her video experiences notwithstanding, she is no hoofer. (“You call that dancing? I would be kind and call it ‘movement’!”) She is heavily into computers. (“It really helped me because being dyslexic, I had a great fear of writing and couldn’t read fast or aloud well. I felt nervous and sounded like a dummy. With the computer, I can write treatments for my videos. I can make the print size big and correct the spelling and, because I can read it, I don’t have fear.”)

Her favorite bagel is raisin (“With fish action, like salmon spread. It’s very exotic. When I was a kid, we never had fish in the morning.”) She confesses to being hooked on sugar but tries to drink protein shakes; she mixes in cranberry juice, banana, prune juice, and blueberries. (“The [shake’s] natural flavor is hideous.”)

She has brass beds in both Connecticut and New York. She sleeps in the nude, except in cold weather, when she wears a long-sleeved pajama top. (“If I want to arouse my husband, that’s different. I wear something like black stockings, and I pretend, ‘Oooh, I forgot to take them off!'”)

She sometimes tosses and turns, especially when she’s away from David. (“Then I usually fall asleep watching an old movie. I’ve been watching them since I was eight, a lot of Bette Davis. I just loved the women in those really funny clothes. I think I was born out of an old movie.”)