7. SHE'S GOT A MUTE MAN
And wouldn't we all dig one of those? Except hers – the Oscar for Best Song ("I Need to Wake Up" from Al Gore's docu-pic "An Inconvenient Truth") – is missing dangly bits. And that kind of sucks. Unless you're like Melissa.
6. HER PARTNER IS HOT!
I know, ladies, that you wouldn't mind getting with Tammy Lynn, Etheridge's longtime partner. But you're SOL. The rocker – according to a tune off "Awakening" – says "no" to threesomes.
5. HARDY-HAR-HAR!
Just 'cause she sings about war, global warming and stomped-on hearts doesn't mean that the chatterbox can't muster up a funny. Take her Oscar acceptance speech: "He's the only naked man that will ever be in my bedroom."
4. OUTTA THE CLOSET
"Yes I Am," her 1993 career-defining hit opus, answered the one-hundred-dollar question: Whoa! Is Melissa Etheridge … does she … ? She likes women! For that, she deserves a street in Provincetown. Or a new pantsuit.
3. SHE'S A GAY MOMMY!
And I just friggin' love that.
2. SHE'S HUMBLE – STILL
When I gabbed with the guitar-wielding rocker in September, and thanked her for being a resilient fighter – for both breast cancer, which she's a survivor of, and in the political arena – she graciously praised me for being out, and for BTL's work. Aw-shucks, Mel!
1. COMEBACK QUEEN
Bald, brave and irrefutably like a bolt of lightening cutting right through a tree, she returned to the stage with Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" with more drive than an eight-cylinder.
Melissa Etheridge
'The Revival Tour'
8 p.m. Aug. 3
Detroit Opera House
http://www.motopera.org
