23. Now that she’s famous, there’s talk of a Macy Gray cartoon.
It’s about her and a group of misfit kids
who become the stars of their school;
it would be a little like a girl-powered Fat Albert, she thinks.

24. Her long legs came in handy at school.
Gray ran the 440-yard dash on the track team.
Now that growth spurts have stopped,
she tops out at 6 feet in her Adidas.
Her favorites are the suede ones,
“but the catch is, if you wash them or they get dirty, it’s over.”
That’s why of the 35 pairs she bought, only six are left.

25. On The Id, Gray preaches for a “Sexual Revolution.”
Is there anything that’s taboo for Gray?
“Let me think,” she ponders.
“Oh, yeah, I don’t swallow. Not ’cause it’s taboo,
I just don’t like the taste or the way it feels.”

26. Ever had a menage a trois? Macy has.
She won’t specify the third party,
but she and her boyfriend broke up afterwards. ꄊ劫hreesy,” she cautions, “is a crowdsy.”

27. Gray’s favorite libation is red bull and malibu.
Malibu’s a coconut rum.
“Red Bull is disgusting by itself, but it goes with anything,”
she explains.

28. Gray was married once, in 1996. She won’t reveal his name,
only that he was a mortgage banker.
“We were together for four years,
and we were married for one.
He actually kicked me out of the house.
When we broke up, I was pregnant with Happy.
I went back and I stayed with my mom, and I had Happy at home.”
Her kids, Gray says, saved her life.
“When I got pregnant, I was really disillusioned.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
I kept fucking up.
I was having to borrow money from my parents,
and I was sleeping in my car.
Having Aanisah forced me to stay in one place
and focus on getting my shit together.
Don’t call me a single mom.
Or a divorced woman.
Those terms are depressing.”

29. She used to work at Mcdonald’s.
She also worked at Wendy’s and was a tour guide
at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in her hometown of Canton, Ohio.

30. There is a phat Brady Bunch sample on The Id’s “Freak Like Me.”
It was Gray’s producer’s idea.
Gray used to be a fan of the TV show,
until, as she recalls,
“I heard this really bad racist joke they did one time.
Mr. Brady was saying to Bobby,
‘Maybe you could be Wilt Chamberlain someday.’
And then Bobby said,
‘No, then I’d have to be black — ugh!’
” The tale turns out to be more urban legend than fact.
Either way, Gray says, “ever since then I’ve hated The Brady Bunch.”

31. Gray’s favorite film is Goodfellas.
“It beats the shit out of all those Godfathers,” she reasons.
If she were a criminal — and she thinks she’d be a good one
— her specialty would be bank jobs.
“There’s a real art to that.
I’d be the mastermind behind the whole thing.
And I’d have to hold the gun,
and I’d have to drive the getaway car, too.
I mean, I’d have people with me,
but I’d have to do everything, ’cause I don’t trust nobody.”

32. Gray would like to visit Venus and be invisible for a day.
She’d visit Venus “to see why it’s called the love planet”
and spend a day invisible
“to do some spying and secret-agent government shit.”

33. Gray will require a very large headstone.
She wants her epitaph to read:
‘We’re just pretending she’s dead.
She’s really somewhere else, chillin’. She’ll be back.’

October/Novemebr 2001



http://www.blender.com/articles/issue3/33_things_macy_gray.html