"Black Market Baby"
'Mule Variations', 1999
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The fourth verse of “Black Market Baby” goes like this:
Well, she's whiskey in a teacup
She gives blondes a lousy name
She's a Bonsai Aphrodite
And a ticket back to Spain
She's a hard way to go
And there ain't no way to stop
Everytime you play the red the black is coming up
That third line, about "a Bonsai Aphrodite,” was based on a real person. And a famous one too. Tom explained in an interview that his wife Kathleen Brennan, who he’s elsewhere given credit for writing the bulk of the song, coined the nickname. From a Magnet interview in 1999:
Kathleen came up with that. We know this little gal who's just a gorgeous chick, but she's about four-foot-10, looks like she's been bound, like the Chinese do with feet. Kathleen said, "She's a Bonsai Aphrodite." It was Patricia Arquette. We told her about that, she said, "I love that, I'm gonna open up a Flower shop and call it Bonsai Aphrodite," which she did. But, apparently, it didn't last, went under.
Love that story! But it’s Tom so, as with pretty much any anecdote that seems too-good-to-be-true, you have to ask…is it?
This one at least comes close. On June 3 1998, the corporation Bonsai Aphrodite Flowers was registered to an address in Manhattan Beach, California. The timing lines up. True, Mule Variations wasn’t quite out yet, but it’s perfectly plausible that Tom and Kathleen told their friend about her nickname a year or two before. And the corporation’s registered Chief Executive Officer: Patricia Arquette.
But that’s all I can find. Tom claims the store went under, but I can’t find any evidence that the store ever actually opened. No old reviews on whatever version of Yelp existed in 1998, no local news articles about a celeb’s new flower shop, nothing. Patricia Arquette certainly had the idea to open a flower shop called Bonsai Aphrodite, and even went as far as filing some paperwork, but that might be it.
Still, I’d grade it only half a Pinocchio: Almost true! Which, by Tom-yarn standards, makes it pretty darn true indeed.
Update: Because this newsletter is all about serious reporting on the most important issues of the day, I emailed Arquette’s manager who confirms that she did have a flower shop. So there you go! Zero Pinocchios.