If Barbra Streisand has no more fans on this earth, it’s because I’m dead; I love her that dearly. She is the best type of celebrity: rich, out of touch, and the right kind of kooky.
Did you know that she loved her dog so much that she cloned her not once, but at least twice? I have only ever had rescue dogs, and normally an anecdote like that would horrify me. In the confines of wacky celebrity behavior, however, not only do I love it, but I’d put it on par with Terence Howard insisting that 1×1=2 and inventing a new type of math around that concept called Terryology. Cloning your dead dog when there are thousands, if not millions, out there that need loving homes, is a huge waste of money! It’s also deliciously weird. But this is Streisand we’re talking about. She literally has a mall in the basement of her home. A mall! There are no limitations to her wackiness.
Do you know how often I think about that mall? Way too much. It has a working candy store that serves soft-serve yogurt! That is a level of celebrity unhinged that I aspire to. Frankly, Streisand earned the right to be this wacky based on how fantastic The Way We Were was alone. And friends? Wacky she is.
My girl Babs has a new book coming out called My Name is Barbra, and as a little treat for everyone, she’s doing press for it, and the mystique around her just grows. See, it’s no surprise that she titled the book that because she takes her name very seriously. So much so, that when she discovered Apple’s AI assistant Siri was saying her name wrong, she decided to speak to Siri’s manager about it. Per CNN:
“In an interview about her upcoming memoir, My Name is Barbra, the two-time Oscar-winner told the BBC that she was fed up with Siri getting her name wrong.
‘My name isn’t spelled with a ‘Z’,’ she argued. ‘It’s Strei-sand, like sand on the beach. How simple can you get?’
In a move most of us could only dream of, the now 81-year-old called up Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to complain, she told the UK media company in an interview published Monday.
‘And Tim Cook was so lovely. He had Siri change the pronunciation… I guess that’s one perk of fame!’ she said, according to the BBC.”
So, first off, if you are ever lucky enough to encounter Ms. Streisand, you better come correct with the right pronunciation of her name. Especially because Siri can help you with it before you even get to meet her. Secondly, we’re all in agreement Streisand discovered this slight because she was using Siri to either search for herself or play her own music, right? How else would she have discovered that? Bless her, she is just the right kind of too much.
I will add this anecdote to the index of Streisand’s legend in my mind. We are all luckier for having learned another little factoid about the fabulous Ms. Barbra Streisand. I personally cannot wait for more details from her book to emerge. Specifically on the mall in her basement—one can never learn too much about that.
(via BBC, featured image: Taylor Hill/Getty Images)
