a division of the Chersonian Institute
Excuse my confusion but this morning I woke up to The Bill Press Show on my iPhone radio and was amazed to hear Bob Mackie talking about the Romney campaign.
The same voice, the same laugh, the same vocal patterns and pauses. I couldn't believe it.
Only it wasn't Bob Mackie at all!! It was his vocal doppelganger, a man named Peter Fenn.
So weird!
More about Peter Fenn: http://fenndaily.com/
Cher scholar Rob in Michigan sent me the link to a new David Geffen documentary airing soon on PBS:
American Masters: Inventing David Geffen, premiers nationally on Tuesday, November 20, 2012 on PBS (check local listings). It’s an unflinching portrait of Geffen, who narrates his unorthodox rise from working class Brooklyn boy to billionaire entertainment power broker in extensive interviews.
American Masters explores the highs and the lows in Geffen’s professional and personal life through more than 50 new interviews with his friends, colleagues and clients, as well as other media luminaries. Irving Azoff, Jackson Browne, Cher, David Crosby, Clive Davis, Barry Diller, Maureen Dowd, Rahm Emanuel, Nora Ephron, Tom Hanks, Don Henley, Arianna Huffington, Jimmy Iovine, Elton John, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Calvin Klein, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Mike Nichols, Yoko Ono, Frank Rich, Slash, Steven Spielberg, Jann Wenner, Neil Young, and many others illustrate Geffen’s riveting story.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/david-geffen/inventing-david-geffen/2146/#.UErkRH
To take a step back down memory lane…here are a few photos of Cher and David (many with cowboy hats):
Burt Bacharach and Hal David composed many awesome hits of the 1960s including Dionne Warwick's "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" and Herb Albert's "This Guy's In Love with You." They also made it into the 1980s charts with Naked Eyes' version of "Always Something There to Remind Me."
Cher recorded Bacharach/ David songs in the 1960s as well. In 1966 she recorded the first version of "Alfie," later made into a hit by Warwick. And in 1968 she tried them again on her album Backstage with the song "This House is Not a Home."
To be honest, I do love Bacharach/David songs but I did not think they were well suited to Cher and her image at the time. Bacharach/David material, although catchy and infectious, seemed very suburban and mainstream. Cher's image was a bit too groovy and even her version of the lite-hippie was still too gritty for these songs. She scored more when she was covering sounds more "alternative" like Sonny's songs, Dylan's gems and other folk-rock ballads.
Personally, I will never forget moving to Los Angeles in early 2002 and ingratiating myself to the streets of the city while singing "and all the stars are parkin cars and pumpin gas."
Boom boom boom!
My cousin sent me news that a new Diana Vreeland documentary is scheduled to be released September 21. Diana Vreeland met Cher in 1967 and told her she had "a pointed head." However, it was Vreeland who introduced Cher to modeling in countless Vogue spreads from the late 1960s throughout the 1970s.
In the documentary trailer, Vreeland is credited with the idea of pushing a photo subject's faults, imploring her artists to "make that the most beautiful thing about them."
So brilliant.
And when legal wrangling with Sonny kept Cher off of television in 1974, Cher said it was these modeling projects that kept her afloat.
More information on Cher and Vreeland: http://www.elle.com/fashion/spotlight/fashion-high-notes-446376-5#slide-5
For more information on the movie and to see (clips of Cher) in the trailer:
How can we forget the following amazing collaborations between Cher, Vreeland and photographer Richard Avedon…
Cher doing one of many interpretations of Native American. Cher scholar Bruce points out that this photo is by Stephen Paley and not Richard Avedon, as part of the late 60s Jackson Highway album photo shoot. But it's super kewl so I'm keeping it up.
Cher in 60s mod-mode.
Elaborations on hair poses.
Full 1970s awesomeness!
More elaborations on hair and some of my favorites, the staircase photos.
Cher has posted a new song on YouTube, a cover of Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YJhdDq8biA
The song is somewhat of a duet between Jesse Jo Stark, Cher's God daughter and Cher and was created for Jesse Jo's father Richard Stark (of Chrome Hearts) for his birthday.
The youtube video also has a good photo-feed of candid Cher shots mixed with shots of Jesse Jo Stark.
The song, about airplanes taking lovers away, is melancholy and sweet and a believable lament for Cher's traveling songbird persona:
Silver wings
Shining in the sunlight
Roaring engines
Headed somewhere in flight
They're taking you away
And leaving me lonely
Silver wings
Slowly fading out of sight
Can we have a Cher country album pleeeeessse?????
A live Merle Haggard version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w99UIu9N44w
Nora Ephron, screenwriter for the movie Silkwood, has died of Leukemia.
From the Wall Street Journal:
As a screenwriter, Ephron was nominated three times for Academy Awards, for "Silkwood," ''When Harry Met Sally …" and "Sleepless in Seattle," and was the rare woman to write, direct and produce Hollywood movies.
Ephron was once married to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, one of the two reporters to break the Watergate story and she wrote about their marriage in the movie Heartburn.
Many celebrities tweeted about Ephron's passing, including Cher who said:
"Im Extremely Sad ! We had Wonderful times on Silkwood ! She told HILARIOUS STORIES"
Last week, Cher and her posse attended 
a Los Angeles LGBT fundraiser for President Obama. Before the event Cher and company took some photos at home to post on Twitter.
To the left Cher's sister Georganne, her mother Georgia, son Chaz, Cher and friend Paulette Betts.
Seriously, is that camera on a fireplace mantle? Doesn't Cher have a live-in photographer already?
You can see many more photos before and during the event posted on both Cher News and Cher World, including some with Jewelry Designer Loree Rodkin:
– http://chernews.blogspot.com/2012/06/photos-cher-and-family-before-obama.html#more
– http://chernews.blogspot.com/2012/06/cher-and-family-attended-president.html
– http://www.cherworld.com/cher-news/cher-chaz-fundraise-with-obama/
The next morning on The Stephanie Miller Show, Stephanie Miller couldn't stop talking about getting a photo with Cher (to right). 
She practically devoted the entire show to Cher moments, playing her songs and kidding herself about the napkin outfit she seems to be wearing. Stephanie, Producer Chris and Voice Deity Jim also discussed the chance of Cher appearing on the radio show and decided it was slim to none because as Chris said, everyone knows Cher sleeps until noon. He said he could tell by her tweet schedule. When he gets up at 4am to get ready for their morning talk show, Cher is still up winding down on her tweets.
But for real, it's a perfect show for Cher to discuss her politics. Or am I just rationalizing in an attempt to bring two of my favorite things into one product?
I suppose I am.
To read the LA Times story on the event: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/06/nation/la-na-obama-gay-fundraiser-20120607
I can’t stand losing all my divas!
Especially all my divas of color. Whitney Houston, Donna Summer and honorary diva Luther Vandross should all still be with us.
I’ve been out of town for the last two weeks so I’ve been unable to post my tribute to Donna Summer. She died from cancer just as I was leaving on my trip. I drove from Santa Fe to Los Angeles, singing all my iPod’s Donna Summer at the top of my lungs all across the desert.
For many girls (and gay boys) my age, Donna Summer’s double greatest hits album On the Radio was one of the first albums we ever owned. Staring at the cover, I could never get over how uncomfortable and stiff her pose looked on top of that jukebox. 
On the album, each anthemic disco track ran into the next, which was great for “an evening with Donna Summer” but tragic for stealing out songs for a mix tape.
I don’t know a single pre-teen immune to the charms of “Macarthur Park,” who didn’t re-enact it’s melodrama alone in their room with a jump rope handle for a microphone.
As older girls in college, we all identified with the unusual oddity of “Enough is Enough,” the marathon of dueting between Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer. On a kitsch level, it was a bonding moment of bitchy girl power.
Ten years connected to LA gave me a better appreciation for “Sunset People” and “Dim All the Lights” ranks right up with Rita Coolidge’s “All Alone” for sultry scene setting. I never tire of the toot toot heey beep beeps of “Bad Girls” or the duet of “Heaven Knows”…and wasn’t “On the Radio” the anthem of our ever-hopeful teenage love lives? The sentiment is so innocent it’s almost painful if it wasn’t so lovely.
I even remember, with some amount of preserved disgust, Steve Allen doing a reading of the lyrics of “Hot Stuff” on some awards show in the late 1970s. Although reading inane pop lyrics was part of his shtick, I was irritated by it seeming so condescending, square and…a bit humorless.
Cher tweeted her memories of dancing at Studio 54 in the late 1970s: "I remember 'Last Dance' ended my nights at Studio 54! By that song, I was drenched! Hair too!"
While Cher was dancing in Studio 54, I was hearing “Last Dance” inevitably as the final song of the high school dance. It was a melancholy moment every time, for if the boy crush of the season had not asked you to dance all night, this was his last chance. The song was literally calling him out. What a Cinderella moment we were all waiting for. But he never did. You loved the song but hated what it meant.
But in your bedroom fantasies, blasting the album on the record player while you were all alone after school, the boy crush did ask you to dance which made the song magical. You could play Donna Summer so loud you could hear it in every room of the house. In each room you were the diva singing on a stage to the universe.
In 1983 “She Works Hard for the Money” was an early MTV staple. It was played so often, you grew tired of seeing it. Last week, my friends and I struggled to find a full-length version of it on the youtubes.
In 1984, Donna released Cats Without Claws which had The Drifters ballad “There Goes My Baby” which didn’t do so well on the charts but I loved to belt it out in my bedroom when it came on MTV and my high school friend sang it at the high school follies show. I loved the whole album: “It’s Not the Way,” “Eyes,” “Maybe It’s Over” and the spiritual ballad “Forgive Me.” Although I didn’t identify myself as Christian, I was still deeply moved by its brave spiritual message of self honesty to “love more than I accuse.”
Later in the summer after I graduated high school, I remember loving the single “Only the Fool Survives”(1987 from the album All Systems Go) she did with Mickey Thomas from Starship.
I had my first and only chance to see Donna Summer in LA in 2005 at the Gibson Amphitheater at Universal’s City Walk. I had an unabashedly good time and reviewed the show for the webzine Ape Culture.
At the end of the day, we don’t expect our earliest MTV stars to be leaving us so soon. I am beginning to feel like the 80s-generation kids are more attached to our music stars than are older or younger generations. I don’t know if this is because we were utterly consumed with pop culture growing up, with MTV, award shows and arena concerts. Music stars pervade our memories. We so identified with 
those upbeat, offbeat 80s images.
I read on the Cher News blog that Justin Timberlake has signed to play Neal Bogart in a movie called Spinning Gold about the Casablanca years: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1671556/justin-timberlake-spinning-gold.jhtml
Cher and Donna Summer are the two biggest disco divas to have shared time at Casablanca Records (see picture to the right). You can read about Cher and Donna Summer and the Casablanca Years in Cher Zine 3.
Cher tweeted about the death of Donna Summer: “So sad. One of the GREAT voices of our time!…She was exquisite!"
Chad Michaels (far right) made it to the top three of Ru Paul’s Drag Race at the end of the season along with with Phi Phi O’Hara and Sharon Needles (middle, who won). It would seem there was no official second or third place on Drag Race this year.
I watched the entire season for the most part in three days last weekend. By far, Chad was the prettiest in most challenges, and in some challenges the only one to really get it right (see the inaugural ball challenge below).
He was thrown some shade for his age (being over 40), his plastic surgeries and (from judge Michelle Visage) for being too perfect and not messy enough. Ru Paul also challenged Chad at the end of the season to tap into his emotions more.
Chad did a pitch-perfect Cher send-up in the impersonation challenge f
or the “Snatch Game” episode, which was a spoof on The Match Game show. See the animated gifs of the episode from “Of Coursets a Drag.”
Chad, Sharon Needles and Latrice Royale were my favorites. And if Chad was not destined to win, I’m glad it was Sharon.
Sharon Needles pushed the envelope, was witty and cute as a button in his scariness. He raised the competition to a level of performance art.
At the end Ru told Ch 
ad he raised the level of the competition this season and was a real class act. Which was true: he played the adult in the room, the negotiator, the conversation starter, the mama of this den of bees, always trying always to stay above the DRAMA.
But he was in a real bind competition-wise because it was only in the moments of messy fighting that Chad was able to show that emotional side: fighting with Sharon’s icky hetero-drag-model, confiding in Sharon about Phi Phi’s treachery (on an Untucked episode), and crying when discussing gay marriage and when apologizing for being harsh on Phi Phi’s innocence/immaturity.
If he had showed too many of these moments, maybe he wouldn’t have looked so classy.
I’m a huge fan of Drag U but this is my first full season watching Drag Race. This is because watching bitch-fights sometimes gives me high anxiety. But this season was exciting (Willem getting kicked off suddenly, the spectacle of the big finale) and emotional (drag queens crying) and also sometimes uncomfortable (the political challenge, the episode trying to drag out butch dads).
Watch for Latrice on Drag U next month. Her blue boat/blue hair outfit killed me!
Latrice Royale
Chad Michaels
Sharon Needles
Reading reviews of Gregg Allman’s new autobiography "My Cross to Bear" I notice quite frequently that reviewers go straight to find out what Allman has to say about Cher. Columnist Liz Smith says it best.
"President Obama is on the cover of [Rolling Stone]. As a politically concerned citizen, I knew I should have headed straight for the president's interview with Jann Wenner, the magazine's editor and publisher. But the gossip columnist in me took over…Anyway, I went right to Allman's memories of Cher.
As much as people want to claim they are too cool to be interested in Cher, they secretly are.
Here's a 14-photo image tour of that old Hollywood tabloid couple we loved to talk trash about:
Their formal side
Their country side
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