Author: Cher Scholar (Page 27 of 102)

Honored in Brazil, Nick Vanoff, InStyle Mag, Kenneth Goldsmith

April 13, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Been tied up doing the National Poetry Writing Month challenge this month (I have to write a poem a day) and obsessively watching episodes of Schitt's Creek, the new Canadian sitcom on Pop TV staring SCTV's Catharine O'Hara and Eugene Levy. Thankfully it's Canadian and may not get cancelled just because it's on Pop TV and no one knows where that is. It's very funny.

Cher Stuff

A few weeks ago I received a few missives from the Cher store that items were 50% off if you spent over $30. As it turned out only three items were 50% (of which I only wanted one) and to get over the $30 hurdle without buying a $75 sweatshirt you didn't want, you had to buy one of the other sucky three items. So I went over to ebay and bought a Mark Twain magazine to abate my shopping frustration.

Peripheral Stories

Nick Vanoff’s house for sale: ‘Sonny and Cher’ Producer’s Beverly Hills Estate Listing for $25 Million

(Wall Street Journal) (Realty Today)

I love it when poetry and Cher collide. This month is full of that sort of thing. Remember David Essex on Cher's solo show? He now has a book of poems!

Take a look at him now and then watch him with Cher singing "The Long and Winding Road."

Honors & Awards

AIDS Activism

Cher was recently honored at the ‘Inspiration Gala’ in Brazil.

Articles announcing the award:

Articles about Cher's visit to an art gallery before the ceremony:

Artnet
Page Six

Cher's tweet Saturday: "Brazil is lovely. Went to art show last nite & fell in love with MAGIC GOLDEN Art piece by 85 year old woman…IT WAS SOLD. HAD FUN ANYWAY."

Coverage of the event:

amfAR CEO Kevin Frost spoke passionately about amfAR’s Countdown to a Cure for AIDS initiative, with the goal of developing the scientific basis of a cure by 2020. Announcing a $100 million cure research investment strategy, Frost stressed that “amfAR has the will, the commitment, and the know-how to get this done, and to truly make AIDS history.” Frost then presented the amfAR Award of Inspiration to Cher. Speaking of her willingness and ability to use her fame for the greater good, Frost described her as one of the great champions in the fight against AIDS. Cher received a standing ovation and encouraged the audience to “help bring an end to this terrible disease” before bringing fellow honoree Jean Paul Gaultier on stage for a kiss.

Cher World has great coverage with lots of pics: http://www.cherworld.com/cher-news/cher-honoured-at-amfar-2015-brazil/ (Cher World covering the art gallery event: http://www.cherworld.com/cher-news/cher-visits-brazil-for-charity-event/)

My favorite pics (click to enlarge):

Fashon

InStyle Magazine is inspired by Cher's timeless jeans.

Recognized for blunt tweeting

Must-follow-Monday: Cher

Cher Research

Good resource for research on Cher singles and international album covers.

The Perils of Fame

The National Enquirer on stands now claims that Cher is dying. Cher refutes this.

My co-worker sent me this amazing story about a guy whose iPhone was stolen and he became suddenly famous in China. Lots of good commentary on the perils of fame and why the famous need "teams."

A follow up on the Edith Hill and Eddie Harrison story:
http://entertainment.inquirer.net/167192/cher-paves-way-for-elderly-womans-homecoming-after-a-court-dispute

Arts and Literature

Review of the Scottish S&C Musical (The Guardian)

The April month of Poetry was dedicated to hip hop poetry and it was interesting to see so many kudos thrown to The Wu-Tang Clan. Kenneth Goldsmith is a conceptual poet who's conceptual manifesto is published in the same issue. Since Cher is often accused of being artificial (by rock and roll standards), I have long been collecting commentary about artifice in art. Goldsmith had three things to say about this:

"Authenticity is another form of artifice."

"At this point in time, it's hard to verify authenticity, singularity, or proper sources for anything. Instead, in our digital world all forms of culture have assumed the characteristics of dance music and versioning, where so many hands have touched and refined these products that we no longer know, nor care, who the author is — or was."

"Auto-tune your next book of poems."

Movie Alert, Toto Bro RIP, Cherity and Cher Impersonators

March 22, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Toto

Another Toto member and Porcaro brother has died. Toto's bassist, Mike Porcaro, died last week at age 59. David Hungate was their original bassist. Mike's brother, drummer Jeff Porcaro, died in 1992 at the age 39. David and Jeff were members of Sonny & Cher's band during the early 1970s, later becoming founding members of Toto with David Paich (also of Sonny & Cher's band and of "David's Song") and Steve Lukather. Many Toto members have worked with Cher over the years as studio musicians and as inspiration. Read Mike's New York Times obit or more about the history of Toto.

The Wrecking Crew Movie

Great news! The Wrecking Crew documentary is coming to an art house near you! I saw an LA screening of this movie back in 2008 and did an expensive blog post about it. Cher in not only interviewed but you learn a lot more about the musicians Sonny & Cher were working with in the 1960s. There is some good old S&C footage here and as the press for the movie states, these musicians were “the unsung heroes of the West Coast Sound."

About the movie: http://www.wreckingcrew.tv/
Screening dates near you: http://www.wreckingcrew.tv/screenings.php

Go see this movie!

Cher Offers to Help 96-Year Old Edith Harrison

In other big news this week, Cher offered to help 96-year old Edith Harrison return home in Virginia.

The Washington Post story:Cher, yes that Cher, fights to help 96-year-old keep her Virginia home
The Today Show story: Cher pledges to help 96-year-old woman with dementia return home
The Huffington Poststory: Cher Promises To Help 96-Year-Old Woman With Dementia Return Home

Cher offered to help pay for needed upgrades to Hill's family home in Alexandria and some medical expensive because Cher was inspired by the love story between Edith and her husband Eddie Harrison who died after they were forcibly separated in December. The story was picked up in at least 145 outlets as of last week.

Cher Impersonators

Stef and Johnny, Peter and Lily, and Sonny and Cher

There are a plethora of Cher impersonators. In my humble opinion, (thffffffft), the best ones don't try to sing. Maybe they can perfect the Cher twang or vibrator or her smokey contralto, but they just can't get the deadpan, cool distance of her persona, which is why our most famous Cher impersonator doesn't sing.

It's rare to find some Sonny & Cher impersonators (even harder to pull off), but there's a new Scottish pair doing a tribute play called "And the Beat Goes On." The Sonny might just be on to something with his stern Sonny stare. But the clothes need a little workup and what's with the teddy bear?

Kathy Griffin Opens Up About Her 'Fashion Police' Exit

Griffin does a very funny Cher impersonation in her act and her friend Cher expressed support last week when Griffin quit Fashion Police…and I do, too. I love how Griffin and Kelly Osbourne have stood up to bullying, especially calling it out among the LA fashionauts.

New Twitter Fight, Wu-Tang Clan, Cher Musical, Movie Premiere

March 14, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Twittery Punches

Cher's Latest Twitter SmackUp Participant: Piers Morgan.

These things are starting to feel like setups, like you know when the Porter Waggoner show got really bad in the 1980s and you would have bet money the no-talent guests were paying Porter to be on the show? I wonder if somewhere there are auditions to have cat-fights with Cher on Twitter. I’m not criticizing…just saying it’s getting vaudevillian.

Stories:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6487640/piers-morgan-cher-fishnet-stockings-twitter

http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/cher-smacks-down-piers-morgan-for-tweeting-she-s-too-old-to-wear-fishnets-1.2980404

Music

Apparently, Wu-Tang Clan previewed their Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album recently at MoMA PS1 in New York City. Previously they auctioned the album online and the album wont' be made commercially available for 88 years. In this article from Art News the interviewer presses the artists about working with Cher, who replaced Ol’ Dirty Bastard on part of the project. We find out that not only is Cher singing in a small part of one song, but that clip ends the album AND that Cher appears earlier in the album in a skit!

Dammit. Will we ever hear this skit? Excerpts from the Art News interview:

Frere-Jones asked about a sample of a voice he heard at the end of the last track.

“That’s actually,” Cilvaringz said, rubbing his jaw. “Cher? That’s Cher.”

Frere-Jones followed-up about Cher, who apparently acts in a skit on the record and sings, and why she appears on the record.

“I wanna ask you a question,” RZA said. “Did you ever have a crush on Cher?”

“Yeah, of course,” Frere-Jones said.

“Well, okay then,” RZA said.

“Not to get on Cher too much,” he said a few moments later, but she truly was “the kind of woman where they only made one of her. Like who made that?” he asked, waving his hand vertically. Sade, he said, is another woman like that.

Though he didn’t draw the comparison himself, RZA said he wanted the album to be something like that and made reference to another one-of-a-kind woman, this one more related to Staten Island.

“It’s like the Statue of Liberty,” he said. It exists in only one place but belongs to everyone who experiences it.

A Springfield, Illinois, man has created a musical featuring 23 Cher songs called Dark Lady. "I discovered a story line in her songs," creator Mike Sheedy says.

I have a friend who wrote a play based solely on the lyrics of Paula Abdul. These kinds of projects fascinate me. This, however, is more like Mamma Mia! or Movin’ Out (featuring the songs of Billy Joel). I think they call these jukebox musicals. As Sheedy has found out, he can't mount his show without securing the rights to all the songs. No small boulder to roll up a hill. In the meantime, he's created a show poster with his daughter in the staring role.

Movies

Cher World is reporting that Cher attended the premiere of the film Dignity with Chaz who appears in the movie as Jerry the Hoarder. I made the mistake of reading the comments on this post. I never do that. I don’t know why I did it this time. Some fans have critiques of Cher’s look and latest concert that confound me. They want her to be something she’s not, like Katy Perry. Why do I read comments??!!

The pic at the top is from the same premiere only showing Cher's full outfit and a very stern look in her eyes that reminds me of when I met her at a bookstore all those years ago.

Chaz's IMDB page has a great pic.

Press

The Boston Herald declares Cher still in a league all her own. So don’t compare her look or her work to things kids like Katy Perry are doing! Sheesh people.

Cher Teases with Tweets: A New Perfume in 2015?

March 1, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

I've been felled for two weeks by a cold virus! I literally came home every day from work and downed night-time cold juice and then slept for ten hours until I had to do it all over again the next day. I'm barely over it but we have some Cher news to cover.

My friends have been in a donnybrook over Morrissey's continued disses of Madonna, including of her then-upcoming performance on the Brit Awards. Although Morrissey does have a point to make about award shows being more about promotion flim-flam than about talent awarding, he complicates his argument by continually being a bitter butter ball.

In any case, Morrissey was probably gleeful to see Madonna take a nasty fall during her Brit Awards performance last week. Listening to The Stephanie Miller Show, I found out that Cher and Liza Minnelli had given public support to Madonna after her fall. Someone on the show joked that falling on stage was like a Tuesday for Liza. Funny. But Cher's tweet reminds us how stressful dance performances can be, especially considering Madonna's wardrobe malfunction.

"Heard Madonna Fell On Stage This is Something WE ALL DREAD…MADGE, I GIVE U PROPS, U R a CHAMP 4 FINISHING YOUR SONG…I HOPE U R UNHURT"

Cher World is reporting on some other Cher tweets involving 2015 projects. She's planning to launch a new perfume. More Cher crap to buy! Awesome! I truly hope she poses with another giant jug of the new stuff (see pic above). Cher World also posts some of her latest pics and says that she's still working to restart her tour.

I saw the laconic Don Williams perform last night at our "big" showroom at the Isleta Indian casino. He was awesome although much older than I expected. They had to prop him up on a bar stool to play for an hour and 10 minutes. He barely moved but then he barely moved back in the 1970s. But with that voice, who needs dancers and wardrobe malfunctions? I've been watching old country acts on Pop Goes the Country and itching to see some of them. Unfortunately, most of them have died or retired.

I still keep hoping Cher will come near Albuquerque but looking up our biggest venue, the sadly small Tingley Coliseum at 11,571 seats. Which I guess is why all the somewhat decent acts prefer the Indian casinos.

The Music Times has done a review of Cher's non-variety-show TV work, including her appearance on Scooby Doo. This reminds me, I met a huge Scooby Doo fan at work a few weeks ago. We deconstructed the shows together. I lamented not being able to find Scooby Doo bandaids and she told me when to expect their return to the market. I asked her about her feelings on Scooby Dum and Scrappy Doo (not favorable as expected) and I said I was a purest for the original creepy series. I especially didn't like the celebrity series because it was too light (visually), to silly and not scary enough. She agreed, she said, with the exception of the Sonny & Cher episode!

Christina Aguilera does a Cher impersonation on The Tonight Show. This remind me, do you notice how many times Bravo plays B?. How far Bravo has fallen. I'm taking to making a list of everything that annoys me about that movie. It feels like a scholarly project. Mr. Cher Scholar is helping. I keep suggesting we watch Silkwood as an antidote.

Cher criticizes the Arkansas governor over not vetoing his state's anti-LGBT bill.

One of my friends has sent me subscriptions to three celeb rags: Us Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, and the Star. Having the Star (or any tabloid) home delivered feels surreal. The February 16 issue has Val Kilmer dying for his religion, which apparently is Christian Science. Another piece praises Chaz for getting buff, losing 65 pounds down from his high of 250 pounds. They claim he wants to try out for Mr. Universe and is on a low carb, no sugar, no dairy diet. Fellow tabloids TMZ and The Daily Mail also reported the story. In any case, Chaz is now celebrity fit.

The Star also shows a full page of Kim Kardashian wearing various outfits involving furs. Boo! She's now my least-favorite Armenian celebrity, which means there's a pretty wide gap between the two Armenian celebrities I know.

Mary Cheney’s Comments About Drag and Blackface

February 7, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

CNN obtained a private Facebook post by Mary Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney where she equates drag queens with white people donning blackface. Read the story here.

She says, "If a man has all the right in the world to put on a high wig, sequined dress and a full face of makeup, why isn’t it socially acceptable for a white person to don blackface?"

Apparently, a commercial for the upcoming season of RuPaul's Drag Race sparked her question.

She continues, “Why is it socially acceptable — as a form of entertainment — for men to put on dresses, make up and high heels and act out every offensive stereotype of women (bitchy, catty, dumb, slutty, etc.) — but it is not socially acceptable — as a form of entertainment — for a white person to put on blackface and act out offensive stereotypes of African Americans? Shouldn’t both be OK or neither?”

Cheney is not the first woman or feminist to raise the issue of drag being anti-feminist but I'd like to take this apart for a moment. I've been reading quite a large amount of academic essays on camp and drag lately.

I first became interested in drag (and gender theory) when I started reading academic pop culture essays in anthologies and periodicals with a particular interest in applying what I was reading to Cher. Pop culture academicians kept calling her a 'female drag queen.' They called Dolly Parton one too. I went in search of what that meant. Was it a negative slur, as in Cher is a poor imitation of a real woman? Turns out calling Cher and Dolly drag queens just meant that their style of feminine dress was so over-the-top and exaggerated, it served to expose the "put on" nature of femininity. The artificiality of it.

This coincided with recent theories of gender being performative, the idea being you have no core gender self. You take on a performance character by choice. Being butch, fey, girlie, tomboy are all cultural and not biological ideas and as such are roles that can be switched, roles that are culturally-defined and arbitrary.

Right off, I imagined Cheney didn't accept performative gender theory. And because of this she wouldn't accept that that one's gender is therefore more perforamative and fluid (even hetero expressions of it) than is one's ethnicity.

Speaking directly to the issue of blackface, part of the offensiveness of it was the racism that accompanied it and how disparaging it was to black culture. The same is not true for drag. To equate the two is based on a false premise of intent. I do not read drag as dismissive, as some feminists do.

In fact, Cheny's own commentary betrays her. She takes on the the male chauvinist view when she says, "[they] act out every offensive stereotype of women (bitchy, catty, dumb, slutty, etc.)." Gay men can be just as bitchy, catty, dumb, slutty. So can straight men for that matter. Whose to say these are not just basic human diva traits? To assign them to women is sexist, sexist from men, lesbians or feminists. It's buying into the patriarchal view of women and refusing to see how powerful a glamazon character can be. It sends a message to both women and drag queens: tone it down; outrageousness is not okay.

That is why is was so powerful to see a butch lesbian feel empowerment going thru Drag U. And for me, the show Drag U is what proves that not only do costumes drive feelings, (think a karate outfit, a policeman's uniform or a glamazon's couture), but that finding value in glamour isn't self-hating for women or anti-feminist for men.

It's very different from blackface due to how women are being interpreted. This is not to say there aren't women-hatin drag queens. But they're rare. In any case, drag isn't really about "aping women." It's about finding your inner power. Its about taking on the character of the glamazon. No drag queen is performing an eek meek.

Considering RuPaul is the most prominent drag queen and a black man, I was particularly looking forward to his rebuttal. Unfortunately, he didn't address the drama of blackface directly. He just presented a history of the political history of drag: http://www.mediaite.com/online/rupaul-tells-mary-cheney-how-dressing-in-drag-is-different-from-blackface/

I was hoping for more but Betty Bowers had a good quote about it, one that assumes you know that Mary Cheney is a lesbian:

"Men in clothes traditionally worn by women is blackface, says Mary Cheney, wearing clothes traditionally worn by men."

Cher’s Angry Tweets, The Seventies: Glamour, Ratings & Concerts

February 7, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 2 Comments

The New Year brings new apologies for the lag in blog postings. I've been on the new job for just about a month. No, I'm not teaching at my local community college. I'm continuing my day-job of web content specializin'. And I've been a bit more swamped with family reunion duties that I predicted. My novel-writing and blogging schedule has slipped all to hell!

But…I'm working in a communications department full of really interesting and creative people, our studio department has an animator and an award-winning director, our web team has two visual artists, two photographers, a competitive dancer and a soap maker. Similar to my experiences at ICANN, I've arrived just in time for a sweet web re-branding launch. It's been fun so far.

But anyway, time to move on to…

Cher's Angry Tweets

Cher made some tweets about Hitler and the cloud last month that hit many news outlets. My guess is the tweets were meant to be a joke but I didn't read into them too closely. These people made the attempts to sort it out:

Mediaite
"It may not matter in 5 yrs, but Hitler Tweets are forever."
Tech Times
"Our best guess is that Cher was expressing frustration with Apple's iCloud service. Or maybe she was commenting on the recent scandal involving nude photos of celebrities leaking from iCloud thanks to hackers."

Twitchy.com covers Cher's tweets about U.S. Congress. Cher Scholar's old friend Doug Wemple, who wrote a wonderful heart-felt story in Cher Zine 1 about coming out and his long, frustrating journey to try to see Cher in concert, gets caught up in the tweet sweep too.

Which all reminds me of the trailer I saw last weekend for a movie coming to my local independent movie house, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry. This movie reminds me so much of the situation surrounding Cher's tweets. The trailer chronicles the expression of anger from feminists in second and third wave actions and protests and how uncomfortable this made (and continues to make) some folks. People who disagree with Cher's politics consistently try to characterize her as a nut. It's not a new tactic as this film shows. Looking forward to seeing it.

Giddy Gossip

Lot's of gossipy stuff in the news:

A Story about Chaz, Cher and Bruce Jenner's transgendering

The Closer reports Cher is still working hard to get back on tour after illness threatened her kidneys and heart

Seventies Glamour

Just finished the affordably-priced coffee-table book Seventies Glamour by David Willis. It covers all the icons of 70s style, including Margaux Hemmingway, who's photo at Studio 54 (not in the book) has forever fascinated me. She seems so "over it" and strangely comfortable in her pose.

The zeitgeist of the 70s with its "tarnished luster" and the "complex broken mirror ball glamour" is covered. Cher is listed as one of "the beautiful people," a new version of the 1960s "jet set." She's listed in an uberclass alongside Liza Minnelli, Halston, Truman Capote, Divine, Hugh Hefner, Calvin Klein, Liz Taylor and Jackie O. Not too shabby. Although Cher is not cited as an influence or contributor to it, glitter and glam rock are discussed. Cher has one page dedicated to her with a picture of her Stars album cover of 1975 and the joyous color poster for Cher…Special in 1978. I found some groovy out-takes of that session online (above and below).

Seventies Ratings

When I was working on my eBook about Writing in the Age of Narcissism, I came across an article by Lev Grossman called "The Beast with a Billion Eyes," Time Magazine, 2012. He said "for every minute that passes in real time, 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube." And this was in 2012! He talks about how YouTube, like cable TV before it, has challenged network ratings, chronicling the tumbling numbers, decade to decade, from the 80s The Cosby Show to the 90s Seinfeld show to 2008's American Idol. He says, "Obviously No. 1 isn't what it used to be."

I often don't know what these ratings numbers mean. Are they talking about audience share, Nielsen rank or actual audience views. When people talk about ratings, they never use the same measurements.

For instance, allegedly, Carol Burnett averaged $30 million people a week in her heyday. But in 2004, Nick and Jessica Simpson won their slot with 11.4 million. But it's complicated by the fact that fewer people were watching TVs in the 1970s. There were fewer devices at least. I decided I need to make a list of Nielsen rankings for Cher's TV shows that covers all three dimensions: total audience, audience percentage share and Nielsen rank. So far I've only found this source that lists each year's top 30 shows: http://www.classictvhits.com/tvratings/

The Sonny & Cher Comdy Hour 1971: http://www.classictvhits.com/tvratings/1971.htm

Rank #27, viewers: 12,544,200

The Sonny & Cher Comdy Hour 1973: http://www.classictvhits.com/tvratings/1973.htm

Rank #8, Viewers 15,424,600

In 1972 and 1974, they weren't in the top 30. Cher's solo show also didn't crack the top 30 in total. Nor did The Sonny & Cher Show of 1976-7.

A Topless 1979 Show?

When speaking to my cousin and Aunt a few weeks ago, they divulged to me that they saw Cher in Las Vegas during the 1979 "Take Me Home" tour. My aunt said she'll never forget it (in a negative sense) because the show featured scandalous topless dancers.

I started to say, "But I saw the show on TV and it didn't have…." and then I thought, well, of course it wouldn't.

Can anyone help me out there? Did Cher's 1979 Vegas show feature topless dancers?

Cher Scholar Has Another Book Out

January 19, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Over the weekend I posted a small little eBook called Writing in the Age of Narcissism. It's about the narcissism epidemic in our culture and how this affects literary criticism and poets.

Here's the blurb:

If you’re a poet or writer in any other form or genre, you’ve probably witnessed many modern, uncivilized behaviors from fellow students, writers and academic colleagues—their public relations gestures, their catty reviews and essays, and their often uncivil career moves. Like actors, visual artists and politicians, cut-throat pirate maneuverings have become the new normal. It’s what occurs whenever there are more people practicing an art than any particular economy can support.

The difference with writers is their ability to develop highly conceptualized, rationalizations in order to prove their worth and ideals. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has reached a critical mass in meaningless attempts to pull focus in a society obsessed with the show-biz spotlight.

This essay traces how the narcissism epidemic affects writers, including our gestures of post-modernism and irony, and proposes an alternative way to be a more positive writer, critic and reader.

End of blurb.

For any Cher Zombies who also happen to be literary zombies, this might be of interest to you.

Writing in the Age of Narcissism
Mary McCray (2015)
Trementina Books
72 pages
eBook

Kindle $1.99 Buy
PDF, epub, Sony $1.99 Buy

More about the book, including bonus discussion on writing strategies and narcissism.

Cher’s Greatest Twitter Hits

January 19, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Page Six is reporting that Cher used Twitter to help son Elijah find his lost puppy Morris. The web article says Morris was eventually located and that Elijah and Cher are slowly mending their relationship.

Speaking of Twitter, here's a website that has collected Cher's greatest tweets from 2014.

"When perusing the Turn Back Time singer's social media outlet, it is very much like walking into a Hall of Mirrors with the eight members of the band Stereo Kicks: Confusing. Enlightening. Saddening Sometimes spiritual. But always a joy from month to month. It took us a long time to scroll down Cher's timeline, so please god, please appreciate this."

Perez Hilton also recently posted a Best Of Tweets List.

I caught up with Cher's latest and greatest tweets today and I see that she is promising not to drink a drop of Dr. Pepper until her first resumed tour rehearsal, whenever that shall be. If this sacrifice works anything like sacrificing picante salsa works for me, it's a worthwhile incentive of deprivation.

Cher also promises that when she gets better she will write a book:

Walked 1hr & Worked Out [arm muscle emoticon] Felt GOOD.Its a Long Road,but I feel myself getting a little Stronger everyday [ghost emoticon] When this is over im WRITING A BOOK‼️

I will remember this promise.

Cher Scholar Interviews June Millington from the Band Fanny

January 18, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

OMG! I just interviewed June Millington from the band Fanny! This is the band who unforgettably performed on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in August of 1971.

Pinch me!

Read the interview on CherScholar.com.

Cher Homes, Calendars, Tour Stuff , Screen Sirens, Oscar Winning Chart Toppers

January 12, 2015 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Happy New Year! I started my new job this week at Central New Mexico Community College. So far so good. Everyone is smart, interesting and involved in cool extra-curricular projects.

Over my two week break between jobs I started to go through my back log of emails. I found plenty of Cher links to keep us busy until Cher is back to selling us stuff.

It's the new year and you may be in need of some fan-made Cher Calendars. Here are some places to get some:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cher-DESKTOP-CALENDAR-2015-NEW-Dressed-to-Kill-D2K-Tour-Closer-to-the-Truth-/261688900218?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3ceddfba7a

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cher-CALENDAR-2015-NEW-Dressed-to-Kill-D2K-Tour-Closer-to-the-Truth-Magazine-/251663378456?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a984e6818

Links

My friend Julie sent me this link, a vacation rental in Palm Springs billing itself as Sonny & Cher's love nest. Does anyone recognize this house?

The Cher Look Book – a 101 picture slide show of Cher in New York Magazine.

A short little interview in the Times Union.

Cher doesn't just like running with a younger crowd — she likes outrunning them: a long interview in The Wisconsin Gazette

Video

Cher's Caesar's Palace monologue.

Factoids

Cher scholar Jefrey noted that in the March 23rd 2012 issue of Entertainment Weekly, (I know! I can't believe that was sitting in my email still), Drew Barrymore co-hosted Turner Classic Movies with Robert Osborne for a special called "The Essentials." They played classics movies like Gilda and Diabolique. Barrymore was asked who her favorite screen sirens of all time were.

She chose Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Annette Bening and Cher. Wow. Awesome company there. Barrymore said about Cher, "She's strong and comedic and
incredibly brave, but shows vulnerability. I think she's the epitome of rock & roll." (Can Barrymore talk some sense into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?) She cited Silkwood, Moonstruck, Mask, and The Witches of Eastwick as some of her favorite Cher performances.

My friend Christopher also notified me that in December of last year Jennifer Lawrence became the highest-charting Oscar-winning actress on the Hot 100 since Cher took "Believe" to #1 in 1999. Lawrence hit at #12 with a song from the latest Hunger Games movie, "The Hanging Tree."