25 Random Things About Pat Benatar

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note of 25 random things. At the end, you choose 25 people to be tagged. You are to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you it is because I want you to know more about Pat Benatar.

1. Born Patrick Andrzejewski, soon after Patricia Mae Andrzejewski following a coin flip.

2. Was accepted to the Julliard school.

3. Wrote “Love is a Battlefield” after she broke up with her Argentinian boyfriend, at the Battle of Goose Green during the Falklands conflict.

4. Her mother was a beautician who once sang opera at the Met.

5. Her father was a sheet metal worker once tossed out of Shea for spitting on a Met.

6. She once recorded jingles for Pepsi, which inspired her chart topping “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” a stirring anthem for the Cola Wars of the ’80s.

7. Once got with Roy Orbison until he started “Crying.”

8. Got her first break at an open mic night at Catch a Rising Star comedy club.

9. Can be recognized from Olivia Newton John and Juice Newton by her lack of Newton.

10. Reluctantly took on her husband’s last name Benatar after John Cougar reclaimed her first stage name “Mellencamp”

11. Her first hit was 1979′s “Heartbreaker,” which she wrote after disguising herself as a surgeon and intentionally botching John Cougar’s heart valve replacement.

12. Intentionally recorded a crummy cover of “I Need a Lover” to further spite John.

13. “You Better Run” was the second video played on MTV ever. Rocketing her to stardom among the three people who had cable at the time.

14. Turns out she never really wanted her MTV

15. Her live album, “Live from Earth” was ironically recorded on the surface of a large c-type asteroid

16. After divorcing Dennis Benatar, she married her guitarist Neil Giraldo in 1982.

17. In 1989, she appeared in an ABC Afterschool Special “Torn Between Two Fathers” where she played the wise old owl.

18. A 33rd degree Freemason, the subject of her last big hit “We Belong.”

19. Released three albums in the 1990s, for no apparent reason.

20. Spent fifteen years mastering the Hanzo sword bequeathed to her by her sensei.

21. Invented the thin keyboard tie in 1981.

22. Qualified in the biathlon for the Nagano Olympics. She didn’t compete, feigning injury so she could avenge the death of her sensei.

23. Bernie Madoff lost money to HER.

24. Her 2007 song, “Passion,” could be downloaded, for a time, from a Jell-O sponsored website.

25. Never responded to decades of correspondence with Greg Lester, unless you consider a restraining order a “response.”