All posts by stacy

A Zombie Walks Into A Bar…

May 11, 2025adventureGreg Nicotero, mammoth wvh, Robert Rodriguez, rock and roll, The End video, Valerie Bertinelli, Walking Dead, Wolfgang Van Halenstacy

The bartender says, “We have a drink named for you.”

And the zombie replies, “Great! I’ll have a Stacy!”

And that was the beginning of my first day of the undead: Two 12-hour slogs on the set of the nephew’s new music video, THE END, where I got to work with legends of the big and small screens. Check out my casting slouch in my audition for special effects wizard and Walking Dead director / executive producer Greg Nicotero.

Wherein Stacy does her best zombie shuffle in a feeble attempt to impress her hero.

“What do you want to do?” Greg asked. Vampire or zombie? Kill or be killed?

“I want it all! I want to be a vessel for your viscera!” I squealed, and he made my undead dreams come true: Two confirmed kills with three assists, plus I got to rip fake flesh from a victim and bathe in her fake blood.

“What have you done to your hair?” Greg asked, as he pulled the blood-soaked strands from my half-eaten cheeks. He sent the wrangler over to mist my rotting skin and restyle my stringy coif. Rookie mistake: Apparently you don’t have to get fake blood all over yourself to make it look real. They take care of that in post production.

The answer to your first question is: No, that’s not makeup. It’s a mask, and it was surprisingly breathable. The zombies and vampires that wore makeup endured three hours in the stylist’s chair and had to keep it on the whole time. I could take the mask off at will, but given that it was so comfortable – and that I was having so much fun jump-scaring my husband, my nephew, his wife, his mom, his bandmates and friends – I kept it on most of the time.

I had to stay in character.

#ForksUp! Hanging out with the professional monsters who had the starring roles. I learned so much from them.

The answer to your second question: Yes, it’s hard to be a zombie. I am not a professional actor, though I do have an IMDB page, and I am related by marriage to an Emmy Award-winning actress, bona fide Food Network Star and America’s Sweetheart emerita. That said, I have a fairly good idea of what it’s like to portray a middle-aged marketing manager, and I have observed pilates instructors, chefs de cuisine, computer programmers and legit rock stars to such a degree that I could conceivably play one on local access TV.

But to be a flesh-eating bit player in a million-times-viewed rock video that’s an homage to Robert Rodriguez’s cult classic From Dusk Till Dawn with a hat tip to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and nod to Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher?

Let’s just say, I was having trouble with my motivation.

What should have been eating brains was for me a knee-shaking case of: “HOLY SHIT! THAT’S GREG NICOTERO, DON’T EMBARRASS YOURSELF! OH CRAP, THAT’S ROBERT RODRIGUEZ! LOOK AWAY BEFORE HE SEES YOU! OMG! OMG! OMG! THAT’S DANNY TREJO! I WONDER IF HE BROUGHT US DONUTS AND TACOS?“

And that’s why Greg was there: To teach us living how to be undead – to thirst for tibias instead of tacos. In every scene, Robert would direct the live actors, and Greg would direct the dead. That might mean that my sister-in-law would be punching out my flesh-eating compadres while my niece-in-law, Draia “The Slaya” Van Halen, would be smashing vampire’s heads into a table. Meanwhile, I and my fellow horders would be crouched in split squats behind barstools and guitar amps, just waiting for Greg to say the magic words: “MONSTERS! ACTION!”

Then we’d jump up, attack, feast, attack more, feast more and wait for him to yell “CUT!”

Typically we launched about five attacks per scene – two rehearsals and three takes – for back-to-back leg days (with some necks, arms and shoulders chomped on for good measure). Split squats and burpee jumps notwithstanding, it’s hard to be a zombie. The flesh-eating melee in the mosh pit had to look REAL!

I mean, if I’m going to feast on a hapless concert goer, I’m gonna take them down to the ground and pin them so I can nosh on their neckmeat. If you’re an unwitting victim and a zombie is trying to feast on your frontal lobe, you’re not gonna just sit on your barstool and take it. The problem is that if you’re a hungry zombie trying to grab a quick bite or the aforementioned victim trying not to get bit, you’re likely moving out of the camera view in a hurry – either down to the ground or away from the kill zone. And if you’re an unwitting victim, you don’t want to appear as if you’re wittingly expecting an attack when you hear Greg shout “MONSTERS! ACTION!” because what’s the point in having a jump scare if there’s no jump?

These are not things my pre-zombiefied brain considered while consuming all 177 episodes of the Walking Dead. Suffice it to say, I spent a lot of my downtime practicing my attack.

The answer to your third question: Horror is scary, but shooting that video was so much fun. So many times, people erupted into applause after Robert yelled, “CUT!” Especially when when Uncle Vampire-Pat bit Garrett the drummer’s head off (they have a history), producing the money shot of all blood spurts. Although my legs were throbbing and bruises healing a full three days after we wrapped, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much (not that you could see it under the mask).

The answer to your final question: Clearly, Uncle Vampire-Pat had his star turn, but where was Aunt Zombie-Stacy in the video? For those of you who don’t know his work (and you should!), Robert Rodriguez is well known for his fast-paced, quick edits – which is perfect for a high-energy rock video, but hard for people trying to find your favorite middle-aged rookie walker.

I know you were looking because the video didn’t make it to 1 million views in nine days without a little help from my friends, who likely blinked and missed me. Because so many of you have asked, I watched the video at .25 speed and put together my annotated highlight reel. Click on the top-right button of each time-stamped scene and enjoy… The End.

Where I’m a hapless concert-goer enjoying the show, but am ultimately killed off screen.

Father’s Day – July 10, 2021

July 10, 2021Uncategorizedstacy

Daddy and I went to the 2020 Phoenix Open before COVID.
He spent the week with us and it was wonderful.

I am my father’s daughter. The eyes, the smile, the way we take pleasure in a good laugh, a good friend and a good turn of phrase. We are problem-solvers, he and I, but we are faced with a problem for which there is no solution, only grief.

In May, we moved him into Brookdale Senior Living Shreveport – Memory Care. We celebrated his first Father’s Day there in June. My mother helped him shower and dress.

“Make a touchdown,” I said, repeating his gentle coaching from more than 40 years ago when I was a child and he helped me get dressed for church or school. Daddy complied, thrusting both arms in the air, and Mom pulled the long-sleeved shirt over his head.

Today is his 75th birthday, and the man that finished among the Top 5 in his age group at the 2012 New Orleans Half-Marathon is slipping away from us.

“I’m healthy here, but not there,” he says, pointing to his heart and then to his head. He says he “smashed his brain and it doesn’t work.” It’s how my father, the mechanical engineer, explains how his current world.

Vascular dementia is not Alzheimer’s dementia. While both involve physical damage to the brain, the cause of Alzheimer’s is still debated — amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles and something about tau proteins — but vascular dementia is clearly understood: progressive damage caused by brain bleeds that seep into the different regions controlling thought, balance, memory, learning. Sometimes the cause is stroke. Sometimes, aneurysm. Tiny blood vessels in Daddy’s brain began leaking — Why? No one knows — but his iron-rich blood left microscopic metallic deposits in its wake, starting in the area where language forms. The alien invaders first stole his words, as he stumbled around “the white thing for my nose” to find “handkerchief.” As the damage progressed, it drew a shroud across the route back to the house and then the way to the bathroom and now, sometimes, my name.

Four years ago, we received a diagnostic description of the strange patterns on the MRI and the cause of his lost words: Superficial siderosis. A rare, progressive and fatal condition. Two years ago, his Barrow neurologist, one of the world’s leading authorities on dementia, diagnosed a mild cognitive impairment — not Alzheimer’s, to his great relief. She gently warned us that it would progress, but that we could try to slow the inevitable end if he ate right, exercised, attended speech therapy and stayed socially active. A year-and-a-half ago, he had, in the words of his Mayo-trained neurosurgeon, “the million-dollar workup.” She cried when she delivered the verdict: That there was no hope at the end of her scalpel.

Then COVID. Then seizures. Now memory care.

Two months ago, he had to leave home. Despite her best efforts, my mother could not continue to care for him there: He kept waking up in the middle of the night, turning on all the lights and wandering about the house. She could not leave him alone.

Now she tucks him in at night in his twin bed in the little apartment with a view of the courtyard and the birds that gather there. His new home is only 1.6 miles from his old one. He feels safe there, and we are grateful for that.

He is different now — a little unsteady on his feet, more than a little uncertain in his thought — but my Daddy is still there. My nephew introduced “Pops” to his girlfriend and said, “I finally got a girl to talk to me!”

Daddy laughed out loud at that one.

His sense of humor is still intact, and sometimes he cards on his fellow residents: “They’re so old!” he says. Even though his face is creased with worry that he doesn’t understand his current state, that the past is vanishing from his mind and that the future is too scary to imagine, he still laughs, and smiles that warm and friendly smile. My smile.

We don’t ask him if he remembers something from long ago: It frustrates and upsets him and reminds him of what he has lost. Instead, we talk about the past with him as a full participant — which he was — and we meet him where he is. Sometimes confused. Sometimes afraid. Always gentle, always kind, always happy to have a laugh.

Always my Daddy.

For Father’s Day, we made him a shadow box for his apartment with pictures of the whole family and a short biography. He likes it much better than the old nameplate.

Frequently Asked Questions of a Rock Star’s Aunt upon the Announcement of Tour Dates

June 1, 2021adventure, rageguns n roses, live music, mammoth wvh, rock and rollstacy

Can you get me free tickets?

No.

Can Pat get me free tickets?

No.

But he works for the band, right?

Yes, but he’s not going to buy tickets for you. Tickets are not free. They are paid passes that grant the bearer access to a concert, which in turn, helps the band and venue pay their bills. Ain’t nothing in life that’s free, and that includes concert tickets. Ask me how I know this.

How do you know this?

Because I buy my own tickets.

Well, doesn’t your nephew have some sort of secret stash of comp tickets? Can I have one of those?

Are you friends with my nephew? Do you have his phone number? If you called or texted him right now, would he respond to you immediately? The opening act is allotted a limited amount of complimentary tickets by the headliner — so limited that you could count them on two hands. Spoiler Alert: His girlfriend, his mom, his record label and publishing house, his agents and management team are more important than you, and there are more of them than can be counted on two hands.

Can I buy tickets just to see Mammoth WVH?

No, but if it makes you feel better: When you buy Guns N’ Roses tickets, you get see Mammoth WVH for free!

Fine. I’ll buy the tickets. Can you get me backstage?

No. On the tour announcement, you’ll notice that the nephew’s band is listed as a “special guest” which means he is not the headliner. He is performing at the pleasure of the headliner, which means there won’t be strangers hanging out backstage, courtesy of the aunt-by-marriage of the opening act.

Can I get a laminate?

No.

What’s a laminate?

Laminates are all-access passes assigned to band and crew members that allow them to move about the venue freely and securely in order to DO THEIR JOBS. Would you like to give me an all-access pass to your cubicle at work while you’re trying to do your job? I could rummage around in your candy dish looking for brown M&Ms while you’re in your 1-on-1 with your boss. Maybe I could take selfies of myself sitting in your desk chair when you get up to go to the bathroom, or better yet, I could follow you to the bathroom! Then I could snap some picks of us peeing together. I could also capture some candids while you’re on the phone trying to make sales calls, that is, when I’m not trying to steal used paper clips from your desk drawer or DNA from your coffee mug. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Can I hang out with Pat before the show starts?

No. He’s working. He’s not there to host you, to ferry autographs for you, to have snacks with you, or to take your T-shirt orders. His job is to make sure the opening act has everything it needs to put on a great show for the paying customers.

What about you? Can I hang out with you at the show?

No. I can’t afford to attend every show, but I will try to make it to a handful of geographically attainable performances in order to have conjugal visits with my husband in a hotel room I’m paying for because the opening act sleeps on the bus with ten (10) men.

That bus sounds cool! Can I see it?

No.

According to the tour schedule, your nephew will be in [ HOMETOWN ] on [ DATE ]. Can he play my [ RELATIVE OR ACQUAINTANCE ]’s bat / bar mitzvah / birthday / retirement / anniversary / charitable event / grand opening / backyard barbecue?

Unlikely. Unless you have $20,000 for a booking fee and access to a professional grade A/V system and a big enough electrical outlet to plug into as well as an accommodating homeowners’ association and favorable noise ordinances, in which case I can put you in touch with his agent.

OK, could he just do a drive-by then? Maybe a little meet-and-greet?

No.

Have you always been such an asshole?

Yes.

Seriously, the show is going to be great. Get vaccinated. Buy your tickets. Support live and local music whenever possible and rock on through the end of the pandemic!

AZD-1222 Part 2: The Answer

May 16, 2021adventure, Uncategorizedstacy

Sitting inside the Arizona Coyotes hockey arena freezing my vaccinated ass off after receiving my second dose of Pfizer/BioNTech goodness.

I got a shoulder full of sugar.

As a fully informed volunteer for the AZD-1222 clinical trial, I had a 66 percent chance of receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine when I reported for duty on November 24, 2020 at a doctor’s office in Central Phoenix. As previously reported, within the first 48 hours, I suffered mightily most of the side effects associated with this vaccine:

Headache
Muscle ache
Fatigue
Diarrhea
Chills

Come to find out, those are also widely reported symptoms of middle age.

After my second shot on December 22, 2020, I experienced mild fatigue compounded by intermittent smugness: Though I brandished my gilded caveat of “well, we don’t really know for sure if I got the shot,” I was certain – certain – that I had been inoculated against the great scourge of the 21st century. I had put my body on the line again for SCIENCE and HUMANITY!

Yes, I continued to preach and practice the gospel of mask-wearing, hand-washing and social distancing, and I was certain I was doing my part to win the fight at both societal and cellular levels.

I certainly have an active imagination.

The placebo effect occurs when the brain persuades the body that a fake treatment is actually curative, triggering a physiological response. Here’s a fascinating study from Harvard Health about it. Though smarter people than I have confirmed this phenomenon, it doesn’t blunt the snickering coming from Pat Bertinelli.

“I’ve always said you have a really powerful brain,” he chuckled, as he departed to get his second dose of authenticated Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on March 31.

At my third blood draw in January to test for my imaginary antibodies, I was re-consented into the clinical trial. Because mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna had begun distribution and the single-dose Johnson & Johnson/Janssen jab coming online, the AstraZeneca trial could not in good conscience keep volunteers like me from accessing potentially life-saving treatments. At the same time, they needed to maintain participation in the trial to ensure the safety and efficacy of their vaccine. They had settled on an elegant and ethical compromise: As new each new demographic became eligible for inoculation, we would secure a vaccination appointment and then call the trial administrator to be individually unblinded from the trial. That way, if we were in the test group, we could cancel our appointment and free up a vaccine for another person, or if we were in the placebo group, we could go ahead and get our shots.

But this was all a moot point because AstraZeneca would soon apply for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration and we would all be unblinded, likely as soon as early March.

It’s May.

We all know how that worked out: AstraZeneca vaccine tied to rare cases of rare blood clots. AstraZeneca reports dosing error in trial, delaying approval of vaccine. AstraZeneca misreports vaccine efficacy data in trials.

AstraZeneca’s crack team of communications “professionals” bungled basic communication practices and undermined faith in vaccines in general and their product in particular. Their jaw-dropping miscommunication has also thrown shade on the very good doctors, nurses and bench scientists doing the hard work on the ground to conduct the trial, and it’s annoyed volunteers like me who now get to field a ton of well-intentioned questions about a vaccine that I truly believe in because it SHOULD be easy to distribute to rural areas without a cold-chain infrastructure (if they can just get the damned shot approved).

I dedicated six years of my life to communicating complex scientific principles to everyday people. It’s not that hard to tell the truth in small words and big type so everyone can understand.

On March 24, Arizona opened COVID-19 vaccinations up to all adults, and I dutifully signed up and logged on, refreshing my screen about 200 times over two days and finally took the first available slot – 4:18 AM on Friday, April 2 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Sure, it was at an ungodly hour at a six-hour drive from my temporary residence, but I didn’t care. I was certain – certain – I’d received the AstraZeneca vaccine back in November.

So on March 26, I called the AZD-1222 hotline to get unblinded so I could cancel my Arizona appointment and do the big reveal.

“Stacy Bertinelli? And can I have your birth date again? And your participant ID, please?” the trial administrator said, as I doodled on my calendar, ready to scratch out April 2.

“You’re in the placebo group.”

“Wait, what? Placebo? Can you check the spelling. That’s B-E-R-T…”

“All the data is correct. You’re in the placebo group, Mrs. Bertinelli. Please do not cancel your regular vaccine appointment.”

“But I had all the side effects – chills, muscle aches, worst headache of my life?”

“Well, Mrs. Bertinelli, the mind is a powerful thing – but we appreciate your continued participation in the trial. Please bring your vaccine card to your next appointment.”

Suffice it to say, I rescheduled my Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine to a more godly hour, following our return from California. I got to do the drive-thru at State Farm Stadium on April 11 and then got to return for a walk-thru at the Gila River Hockey Arena on May 2.

And for the side-effects? I was tired, took a nap and went to be early after each one, and my shoulder hurt with both shots, but fatigue, aches and pains accompany me through middle age.

If this has taught me anything: Science is still wonderful and vaccines give us hope. Go get your shot so we can all get back to living.

AZD-1222: Pandemic Pioneering

November 25, 2020adventurestacy

I am participating in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trial. — Behold, the evidence of injection. I don’t know if it was **THE** injection or an injection, and won’t for another two years, but I have my suspicions…

My head hurts.

Is it allergies? Is it stress from the white-knuckle madness of Los Angeles traffic? Is it the two glasses of red wine I drank last night?

Is it a cellular response to a self-inflicted invader? The harbinger of Immunity.

I won’t know for certain for two years.

Yesterday, I enrolled in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Phase III Clinical Trials (AZD-1222), volunteering my blood and guts to fight the greatest threat to humanity since the Cold War: SARS-CoV-2, which has infected 60 million people worldwide since December 2019, killing 1.4 million of them.

As opposed to the sexier mRNA-based vaccines developed by Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna, the AstraZeneca vaccine is vector-based: It uses a common cold-type virus as a Trojan horse to introduce an altered gene for the coronavirus protein into my cells in hopes of training my immune system to recognize and destroy COVID-19.

Or not.

It’s a double-blind trial, so I will not know if I got THE shot or merely a shot for two years. Until then, I will wallow in hypochondria – or at least for the next 48 hours. The clinical trial nurses advised me to watch out for certain side effects during the first two days:

Headache
Fatigue
Fever or chills
Muscle or body aches
Diarrhea or nausea

Test kit — I gave blood and urine samples, learned I wasn’t pregnant (duh), and had the back of my skull scratched with a swab. Yay me!

I will spare you the gurgling details, but my stomach is upset.

Is it a side effect of THE shot? Or merely a symptom of yesterday’s truck stop feast of Lays Limon-flavored chips, Oberto peppered beef jerky, orange-flavored Gatorade Zero, and Australian Licorice (assorted fruit flavors)? Don’t judge.

Enrolling in the trial was a breeze: Sign up online and wait for a call.

AstraZeneca is still recruiting volunteers and especially needs African-American, Latinx, and Native American participants. It’s important because people of color are historically underrepresented in clinical trials – in part because these populations have been victimized by unethical practices, see Henrietta Lacks, Tuskegee Health Benefit Program, et al, and also because lazy researchers didn’t actively recruit and study populations that reflect the diversity of our nation. Most critically, African-Americans, Latinx and Native Americans have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 – and are more likely to die from it – so volunteering for the vaccine trial can help scientists identify differences that may not be apparent if a bunch of white people like me show up.

Apparently if they don’t spark tears, they aren’t doing the COVID test right. Ouch!

My left shoulder hurts. My knees bend audibly. Intermittent pain steals through my joints: Are these the aches they warned me about? The physiological echo of an existential battle inside my cells?

Or is it just a by-product of being a 48-year-old woman who has crashed her mountain bike on more than one occasion?

My day started at the appointed 8 AM in a nondescript doctor’s office in Phoenix. They reviewed the 26-page consent form, which I had read prior to my visit and which detailed my rights as a volunteer: I can withdraw at any time, no questions asked. If I contract COVID, they will funnel me into a different study and manage my care. I will have two shots spaced 29 days apart of either the real deal or a placebo, and 66 percent of volunteers receive the real deal. I will have seven visits to this doctor’s office over the next two years and several phone calls as they monitor my progress.

Sign here and here and here. Initial there and there and there.

Then the delightful Matt did a blood draw, from which they’ll extract my genetic material for study.

Nice stick, Matt. I told you I was a bleeder.

Then I got a physical exam from the doctor and walked down the hall to meet my destiny.

Somehow, it seems like Nurse Ratched should be manning this room, but actually, the nurses were AWESOME. An easy stick… but was it the real stick?

The nurses walked me through the consents again and reminded me of the aforementioned symptoms to monitor for the next 48 hours. I went to bed at 8:30 last night and slept soundly until the splitting headache awakened me at 4:27. I got winded climbing the stairs then fell asleep in the hammock this afternoon. Are these the telltale signs of vaccine-induced fatigue? Or just symptoms of middle age?

I won’t know for another two years, but even if I learn that I got a shoulder-full of saline solution, at least I’ll know I did my part.

Stacy B-log

opinions are my own and often profanity laden