First of all, my condolences to all the Ozzy Osbourne fans out there. I have a few friends in mourning today, including my friend Julie, a.k.a. Coolia, who is a huge Ozzy fan, collector and attendee of many of his shows. My mentor in many new online things, Coolia inspired one of my earliest online handles (before Nerdia even), which was RemovedCherRib after her OzzyBat (our handles from scandals). Anyway, Ozzy had many, many fans out there who are sad today so cyber hugs to them. For so many years, Ozzy seemed indestructible. He was also one of my very few celebrity sightings in Los Angeles. I crossed paths with him on the sidewalk once in Santa Monica during his reality TV show days as I was heading to the promenade.

When In Rome

Cher has been spotted. She performed a few weekends ago at the Dolce & Gabbana’s 2025 Alta Moda event in Rome on 12 July and then was seen around and about at parties and on the go.

News stories about it:

Stealth video:

Cher Universe has posted bits of Cher’s performance edited together. It’s interesting how they had dancers pose as a kind of soft paparazzi (to the music of “Bang Bang”) to begin everything, especially considering they were in Rome, the birthplace of the term paparazzi.

Cher starts by lip synching (there are a few mistakes) to “Song for the Lonely” in a big puffy jacket over a black, sparkly vest (it almost looks bullet proof) and a kind of grass-green sparkly pantsuit.  She’s wearing a long blonde wig.

Cher then talks for a bit about how she came to be involved in the movie Tea with Mussolini. She leaves to change outfits and a solo male dancer does a flamenco to the introduction to “Dov’è L’amore.”  This also appears to be a lip sync, especially since there seem to be some hiccups with the backing audio when she exits the stage. At least the backing instrumentation is new for these songs. The hairstyle is the same here, only black and she’s in an outfit similar to the “Dov’è L’amore” video.  I keep forgetting what a great song this is.

Finally, Cher returns again in her hole-fit (the latest incarnation anyway) and lip syncs “Turn Back Time” and “Believe.”

The trip produced lots of shots of Alexander Edwards and Cher having a bit of Roman romance, which was very sweet. Hopefully, Cher got a break from family issues to work and play with friends.

Cher Food

A few months ago I received a message that Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported. This means, for one, no more Cher zines. But it also means I now have to rescue my prior zine content (electronically-speaking) from my old Publisher files. I had already planned to start publishing some of my food-related articles from past zines and creating a new food section on the Cher Scholar site.

And that new section exploded like a batch of hot liquid from the top of an out-of-control blender. I ended up breaking up the existing Sonny & Cher (and family) recipe page into multiple pages. And while I was at it, I’ve cooked three more recipes from the Cooking with Cher cookbook by Andy Ennis, all which were a home run.

To be honest, I’m at a disadvantage when I make these celebrity recipes. For one, I’m a vegetarian and also not a low-fat diet. So sometimes I make modifications that don’t match the true historical experience if the recipe. Secondly, I constantly make mistakes. Not as many as I used to make before a few years making dinner with Hello Fresh, but still plenty of mistakes. So my results should not be taken as the value of these recipes. I’m doing my own thing here.

But anyway, we have a food home page now, https://www.cherscholar.com/cher-food/, divided up into sub-pages of yumminess as follows:

The Original Sonny & Cher Recipes Page
https://www.cherscholar.com/sonny-bono-recipes/
It’s the spot for most of Sonny’s recipes I’ve been able to find and the cookbooks that feature Sonny and or Cher. It also contains the link to the Mike Douglas cooking spot from 1969 and expanded information about Sonny’s restaurants and food ventures.

The Pasta Sauce Recipes
https://www.cherscholar.com/the-secret-pasta-sauce/
Because I am now on a spaghetti-sauce quest, I broke the pasta sauce recipes out onto their own page.

Movie Food
https://www.cherscholar.com/movie-food/
This is rabbit hole. I’m sure there’s more to add here but I had some basic information about Mermaids food from a promo cookbook. Then I remembered those Moonstruck eggs! And then more foods as seen in Witches of Eastwick, Moonstruck, Mermaids, Good Times and the 1969 movie Chastity. Plus bonus links to movie drinking games!

The Jack Nicholson Cher Muffin-Off
https://www.cherscholar.com/the-jack-nicholson-cher-muffin-off/
On 4 April  2004 I had a small dinner party in Los Angeles with my friend mentioned above and Ape Culture co-editor Julie Wiskirchen. For Cher Zine 2, we had a cookoff between the cookbooks Cooking for Jack and Cooking for Cher.

My Armenian Dinner Party
https://www.cherscholar.com/my-armenian-dinner-party/
On 20 March 2010, I threw an Armenian food party in Redondo Beach on the night of a Cher Video Marathon, all for Cher Zine 3.

Progeny Recipes
https://www.cherscholar.com/recipes-of-the-children/
Last night I made Chaz Bono’s Italian Spinach and Onions dish and Elijah Allman’s Mustard-Caper Burgers. Both turned out great. It felt like a good time to send good vibes to Cher kids via their foods.

Updates to the 1970s Variety Shows

First off, my many, many thanks to Cher scholars Jay Pickering and Barbara Lorenz for their help this month cleaning up the TV Variety Shows page. Jay helped me update The Sonny & Cher Show episodes 19 and 31. And Barbara helped me revamp all the re-airings based on better information she had, which included reminding me of the fact that the Sonny & Cher shows were syndicated in the early 1980s. (I think I assumed that was just some weird dream I had or strange St. Louis vortex I was in when I made cassette tapes of those airings (and then repressed it completely).

Anyway, we’ve cleaned up the episode guide main page to include a summary of all the re-airings and made edits to a ton of the episodes thanks to Barbara’s materials and notes from watching the shows during their first airings.

I’ve also gone through Cher’s YouTube channel to replace missing or taken-down videos. Cher has been great about restoring some long-lost clips of musical numbers and I was about a year behind linking relinking to them. And I missed some truly great never-re-aired numbers:

The restored video of Cher singing “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” from Cher, episode  23.

The restored video of Cher singing “You Turn Me On” from Cher, episode 20.

Barbara also corrected me on a song title which led to my finding the video for “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” the solo from The Sonny & Cher Show, episode 2.

It’s been a fun few weeks of Cher catch-up.