a division of the Chersonian Institute

Category: What This Really Says About Me (Page 12 of 15)

Songs Cher Should Cover & 18 Things That Happened While I Was On Vacation in New Mexico

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1.  I became a fan of The Eels. I know, they’ve been around for over ten years. But better late than never, no? I’ve been listening to Essential Eels and in some alternate universe I think it would be good to hear Cher sing “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues” (the one that goes “God damn right – it’s a beautiful day!”) or “That Not Really Funny.”

And that made me wonder about what kind of rock album Cher plans to do next. I mean, what is a rock Cher album in this post-grunge world?

Mespeaking
2.  I gave a speech at my parents’ 50th Wedding Anniversary and I didn’t cry like my two older brothers did. I think this is because I was the first to give speech and my mother hadn’t started bawling yet, although she had her little travel pouch of tissues ready to start in. Either that or maybe sometimes I do have a heart of stone.

3. My sibs and I gave my parents a Hopi wedding vase as a gift. My first-born brother also gave a speech about family togetherness, which surprised me because we are usually fighting but he did bring up some funny stories, including the one about how they always used to fight over pieces of my mother’s fried chicken, including the livers. My other brother did a video about my parents and their friends which was very good and touching. He and I previously had a fight about who was going to say what about how my parents met (which was the whole subject of my speech). He called “dibsies” on me and I called his dibsies retarded (in a sibling skirmish and not handicapped sense), which pissed him off. Lots of therapy fodder here.

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4.  Our dog Franz Alonzo regressed while we were away and chewed up his nanny’s mattress. He ended up back at the kennel for that. 

Chimayo
 5. While visiting the famous church at Chimayo, the Lourdes of America, my car ran over a big rusty-looking object of a very solid nature and from then on my car started making funny sounds. Luckily it was only a bent exhaust pipe hitting a heating shield. Maybe the dirt at Chimayo truly is miraculous and Bluebelle had some of it stuck on her tires. My bf drew out a cartoon drawing of what he remembered the object looking like as we hit it and later my father could only surmise from the cartoon that we must have hit a very small UFO.

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 6. Northern New Mexico truly is the land of enchantment. Only there, could majestic rock formations, looming mountains, thousand-year old pueblos and quaint adobe casitas be overshadowed by awesomely choreographed cloud formations.

7. I can drive 12 hours in one day. Needles, California (“I only made it out to Needles” from “Never Been To Spain”/Cher, Foxy Lady, 1972) is hot and gas is expensive there.

Myrelatives
8. At the reunion, my bf was a definite hit with the distant relatives (including two who never usually come up and talk to me but made a point to tell me how much they liked him) as well as with the nuclear family, mostly for making a good gazpacho and steak-sandwich dinner one night at our Santa Fe casita.

Red10
9. I miss New Mexican red sauce already.

10. At my parents’ anniversary party, I spoke to the parents of my first childhood friend (he died of Leukemia when I was about 8). Back in the 1970s, when I would visit him on their ranch, I was always kind of scared of his dad, a tall and skinny cowboy with a big mustache who mostly leaned up against walls and looked like he could kick your ass just for the sport of it. But 30 years later I was surprised to find myself chatting with him and his wife and when they found out my bf and I were engaged, they told us their secret to a long marriage was sleeping in the nude.  Which was possibly TMI but I can top that because, (whisper) to be honest with you, sleeping in the nude makes me itchy.

11. My brother found some of our long lost family friends The Padillas on the Internet and he surprised my parents with them at an anniversary party and it made my mother cry again.

12. The tram from Albuquerque up the Sandia mountains is the world’s longest tram. 

Gorge1
13. There is a big awesome crack in the earth made by the Rio Grande river and you can see it from Taos, New Mexico. Click open the picture to the left and look closely. Then look at it from the Taos Gorge Bridge below.

Gorge2
14. When my bf and I drove my parents to Roy, New Mexico, where my Dad spent his summers with his grandparents and cousins, he told us a story about how his grandfather would drop him off on the ranch with an axe to cut down prickly pear trees all day. My dad said that years later it occurred to him that by cutting down all those trees he had actually been spreading hundreds of prickly pear seeds all over the property. My bf later told me he enjoyed hearing all of my Dad’s funny stories about growing up on the ranch, which is what I love about my bf b/c he likes the same quirky stuff I do.

  

15. I got stopped by a New Mexico cop for speeding through Cimarron with my bf and my elderly parents in the car.

16. You can eat a gelato in Santa Fe called sage and another called Strawberry Habanera. 

Hopi_pottery_1234xyz
17. My Dad’s former babysitter on the Hopi Indian reservation is now a famous potter named Olive Toney. We tried to find her on our way home through Arizona but were too shy to knock on her door at the first mesa to buy a pot.

18. I am lousy at picking out motels. On our drive back I insisted on a run-down Howard Johnson in Flagstaff to save money and they over-flattered us and then over-charged us for a room right next to the train tracks where trains whistled by all night long. To add insult to injury, its restaurant served inedible french fries, practically a culinary impossiblily. Luckily we were able to eat at our favorite Flagstaff breakfast place the next morning, Let’s Eat.

  

Cher Tossled

Sandckewl I will be on a two-week hiatus from I Found Some Blog in order to work on a family reunion and my parents’ 50th Anniversary shindig. If I come back sane, I’ll tell you all about it. There is a chance we may never speak again.

So it’s a bummer that my last pre-hiatus post has to be about Cher fans behaving badly. Well, who knows if this arrested guy in the news was even a real Cher fan. He claimed his parents worked for S&C or something as he was grabbing at Cher’s hips at Tootsies Orchid Lounge, a famous honky tonk in Nashville. Yes, the man was plastered so who even knows what kind of a ‘Cher fan’ he was sober. And frankly, I think only sober fans should count.

There was a lot of fans behaving badly last week. Paparazzi (who are ultimately working on behalf of pop-culture junkies or fans in general) were attacked by surfers in Malibu. Could it be that the LA public is finally taking charge of an issue the authorities have been struggling over for too long?

Apparently photographers were at the beach stalking Matthew McConaughey and some local surfers got angry and pummeled a few of them. Here’s the LA Times story about it.

But the real story here is that paparazzi anger many more people in LA than the celebrities they stalk. The unfamous also feel the strain. A friend of mine from Larchmont recently reported that one day she couldn’t get from her car to her own apartment building as the paparazzi swarm wouldn’t let her pass on her own sidewalk. She had to bully her way through. Then when she reached her front steps she found them sitting there smoking on them. Who were they stalking? Lindsey Lohan on a movie location.

Articles about Cher in Nashville and the arrest are all over:

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Politics and Celebrity Obsession

Olympia There are two peripheral subjects I’d like to talk about this week.

For one, during my morning radio this week, the movie Moonstruckwas featured prominently. Apparently a New Yorker named Harriet was thrown out of the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws meeting last weekend (the one regarding the Florida and Michigan delegates) for refusing to stop sounding like Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck. The Stephanie Miller Showkept doing funny between Harriet’s “you’re throwing the election away and for what..?” with Cher’s Moonstruck-mom’s “Your whole life’s goin down the toilet.” Then they’d do the Cher drop “Snap out of it.”

For the record, Cher was supporting Hillary. I liked her reasoning: men have mucked it up for too long. However, I have been supporting Obama because every time Hillary gives a speech or makes an argument in a debate, she talks with the same spin that makes me crazy when the Republicans do it. I know Hillary is supposed to be a great gal behind the scenes; I know Obama and Hillary have basically the same platforms; I know Obama could be a slick as slick is, too, just like any other politician and not the wonderkind we're all making him out to be. But I have more respect for the campaigns he’s run thus far, including his civility under fire, his financial acuity with his fundraising, and his leadership with his staff.

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Kid in a Toystore

Kidinstore I am not even going to pretend I can talk about anything else this week but that fact that I’m going to see a new (hopefully new?!) Cher show this weekend in Vegas which means I’m expecting an awesome marquee and oh God….the Cher store – I can’t even imagine what Cher crap apropos of nothing I’ll find there! I am like a kid in a toy store, a toy store of all Cher toys!! Wait….I think I may be starting to hyperventilate. Don’t tell my mother!

My Pavlov’s dog response to Cher product is disturbing on many levels. Main thing being I’ll be 40 next year. I’m too old for this. I am a grown up, I swear it! I’ve been making the argument for who will be president next year for about 9 months now and I’ve stopped letting American Idol eat away at my life’s precious hours. Surely, that proves something. (Although I do like the David’s a lot.)

To prove to you that I am a grownup with other interests this week besides the new Cher stuff (!!), here is a list of 10 other things I care about right now besides the Caesar’s Palace Cher Store:

  1. My processional wedding music. My bf nixed my first choice, “Jerusalem” by Herb Albert. I can’t do something as high-energy as I think he would like (I’m just too contemplative and low key) and I hate that Here Comes the Bride Wedding March. But don’t suggest I “process” to Cher music because that would make Cher Scholar’s mother cry.
  2. Although…I would like to find a dance re-mix of “Gypsys Tramps and Thieves” for the reception cos we need a good Cher song to dance to from the 70s…but I’m Cher-gressing again!
  3. Winning trivia last night at Kings Head pub in Santa Monica. We came and we clobbered. We squashed all the other teams the first time we played a year ago but we had a new team this time and I was worried that the Europeans on it would show up late. They’re on EPT you know: European People’s Time. As it was, we had the start time wrong and so at 30 and 50 minutes late, they still made it on time. And were very helpful to our clobberings.
  4. Ordering Audio-Visual equipment for my parent’s reunion & 50th anniversary in 6 weeks. My father and brother have made DVD home movies to show and my father made me record myself reading a poem my grandmother’s sister wrote which was a huge crisis for me because every time I played it back I got hysterical when I realized I have been developing Richard Nixon jowls. My bf eventually had to tape it for me.
  5. Showing my bf the great state of New Mexico soon, specifically Albuquerque and Santa Fe. We’re driving out from LA because we can’t afford airline prices right now…even with our $100 vouchers. He loves Arizona; just wait til he sees NM.
  6. Teaching our furkid Franz how to roll over. He’s acting very put out about it.
  7. Learning the brave new world of Microsoft Office 2007 products which are suddenly on my new work computer. I can’t find clippy! Actually to be honest with you, I’m happy clippy is dead. I just want to be able to find the Thesaurus again.
  8. My Dad’s birthday is Monday and I don’t think he’ll like the gift I sent him via Amazon. But really, he’s unnecessarily hard to shop for and he never tells me whether he likes my gifts anyway.
  9. I start a new ceramics class in June and the bf and I start yoga next week! Whoo hoo! Not even wedding plans can keep me from the mud.
  10. The Edgar Winter Dog’s birthday party is coming in a few weeks. I was thinking of either getting him doggie sunscreen (cos he’s an albino) or poop freeze that I saw in the Skymall catalog on the way to Paris.

I’m off the see the wizard. We’ll talk on the other side.
   

What Shall We Talk About?

Okay…so the big day arrived this week and reviews are literally pouring in on Cher’s Caesar Place show. I don’t want to read them until I see the show next week. I don’t even want to look too hard at the photos. I don’t want to discuss the new stuff until I see it. Which is extremely,  extremely hard!

In fact, for any of the other tours (there have only been three I’ve been able to see live in my lifetime – Heart of Stone, Believe, and Never Can Say Goodbye), I’ve never been able to resist. And I’m getting very, very excited about seeing the show and reading over everybody’s thoughts. I just hope I don’t get hit by a bus before I can see it! (I always think that right before new Cher product drops).

In fact, I don’t feel like talking about anything else but this thing I can’t talk about!!

But I did post my France pics and here are the Cher-centric ones:

 

Seine John on the Seine like that Sonny & Cher album back cover pic.

 

 

 

 

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Don’t these chateaux entryways look like Cher’s house??

 

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I can totally see why Cher wants to be buried at Pere LaChaise cemetery in Paris. It’s very goth. I can see her with a tomb not unlike the one above, but hopefully with some subtle half-breed design in the stained glass…hey, for the fans.

 

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Cher river, Cher valley, Cher county seat…lots of Cherness in the Loire Valley.

I can also take this time to answer a few Cher questions from the blog.

Jimmy wrote:

“AND, Mary, why haven’t you digressed about the fact that these unlikely 3 would do something together so out-of-line for their personalities???? love and kisses-jimmy”

Jimmy is right. I could easily do an essay about the old 70s-variety format and how we just don’t get miraculous celebrity combinations singing medleys apropos of nothing like we did back in the day. It’s heartbreaking because I’d watch any show that could convince Bono to sing a Madonna medley with Barney and Tiger Woods. Who wouldn’t watch that?? It’s TV Gold.

Michael asked:

“Okay, so combining “she’s overdue a juicy boxed-set” and “It’s my dream job really”…How about you tell us what you would put in the ultimate Cher box? Anything you ever wanted on CD, DVD, books, whatever. I’m totally curious what you’d put.

There’s so much I could do as curator of a Chersonian Institute. Really, I don’t know where to start. Her video collection needs a serious overhaul.  More and more we’re finding amazing gems of foreign video clips for old Cher hits on the you-tubes.

I haven’t wrapped my head around what a good box-set of CDs would be. I know the mix I normally make my friends has too many non-hits on it to ever make bank. Other than the obvious of doing notes for the four-CD Warner Bros 1975-1977 re-release collection we’re so overdue, I don’t know what other regurgitation of her greatest hits I would feel morally okay with dumping into the pile of too-many-already.

I would love to do a coffee-table book of photographs and essays compiled by various writers on Cher’s career and her cultural relevance. That would be the dreamiest.

 

The Bf of Cher Scholar Speaks Out

Chenanceua_2 I’m back from my two-week trip to Paris. It’s been a bit of a crazy week managing between personal announcements, dramas, getting back into the swing of work and dealing with my general jet lag and discombobulation being back in the United States. It will take me a bit to get back up to speed with CherStuff.

In the meantime I will make these two small posts. Before our trip my bf answered a question posted by jimmydeanPartee on March 25, 2008: 

I would like to know from your boyfriend — what it is like being the significant-other of a SONNY & CHER fanatic like you and me…I ask because I know throughout my entire life everyone around seems jealous of my S&C devotion..plus, should IIIII ever get a boyfriend…

First of all, I’d link to point out the fact that this issue of finding a Cher-positive lover was once covered in my first Cher Zine, the answer to which appears on CherScholar.com: http://www.cherscholar.com/cherschool-2.htm#odyssey

However, this is John’s personal response:

I admit there was a time when I thought it’d be easier telling my friends I’d joined al Qaeda than admitting I was going to a Cher concert. But, after years of hiding in my cubicle at work surreptitiously listening to the new Cher-mix Mary had purchased off the Internet (which, by the way, always sounded strikingly similar to the last Cher mix Mary purchased off the Internet, except for some mystically incomprehensible rearrangement of the song order), hoping the ex-Marines I work with wouldn’t be able to make out the tinny strains of "Do you believe in life after love" coming from my Walgreens headphones, I have honestly embraced Cher. Oh, believe me, there were still frequent moments of awkward silence, for example when I told my Harley-riding, Vietnam-veteran friend Andrew that I was traveling to La Jolla with Mary to hear the San Diego Gay Men’s Chorus sing a tribute to Cher a few years back.

But over time, you begin not to notice the blank stares and gaping mouths so much, sort of the way black people, midgets, and hair bands must feel when they stop at hillbilly truck stops and must go in and order lunch from some toothless waitress who’s afraid to approach their table for fear of catching something. But honestly, all it took was one trip to the Cher Convention and I was hooked. I met some of the most sincere, fun, and yes, completely obsessed people I’ve ever met (and I’m a former drunk!), and I love every one of them.

So, when you ask me what it’s like living with a Cher fanatic, I’d have to say it’s like 1962 and I’m a 26-year-old short Sicilian dude from Inglewood who just met a 15-year-old runaway dropout who looks kinda hot and I’m thinking to myself, maybe, just maybe, there’s something here. In other words, it’s pure excitement.

And, besides, you haven’t lived until you’ve made love in a Sonny and Cher costume…I still haven’t found that damn mustache!

Note to readers from Cher Scholar: I saw many things that reminded me of Cher in France (more pictures of such to come but here’s one above: the fabulous chateau Chenonceau on the Cher River). It was truly a trip of a lifetime in many ways, the highlights being the amazing food we ate, the mind-boggeling history (from Roman ruins to Napoleon’s tomb to James Joyce and Ernest Hemmingway sights near our lovely hotel in the Latin Quarter), and the walk home after one diner at a Turkish cafe (where I got a little tipsy on a small bottle of Turkish wine) where near the steps of The Pantheon my bf proposed marriage. After three years of witnessing wonton Cher obsession, my nagging health issues (my knee completely gave out in Paris and I swear I’m in the beginnings thoes of menopause), I answered simply that I hope he knows what he’s getting into.

   

On Vacation

Babies1 Well kids and kidlets, France is upon me. I’m very excited and I’m getting a bit nervous. But mostly excited…for three reasons. First of all, I’ve never taken a long vacation for myself, even one week away that wasn’t obligated to some dysfunctional family event of some kind. It’s been 40 years of weekend trips here or there just for moi. Secondly, I’ve never left the US…period. Not from not wanting to, mind you. I’ve been wanting to since college. But either I had no money, no vacation time (due to traveling home for Christmas or 4th of July for aforementioned dysfunctional family events), or no courage to go it alone. Thirdly, going to France is a lifelong dream come true, way back to when my brother came home from a week in Le Mans after his high school French three-week trip, bringing back cheese, a porcelain mime doll and news of a hit from Soft Cell. Turns out they were a year ahead of us with “Tainted Love.” How cultured they were! I was in 6th grade and decided it was my destiny to learn French. But lo and behond, French class was pure hell…for six years. But then I met the former French-majoring, Proust-studying bf and he didn’t seem nearly as uptight as all my former French teachers were. My dream was soon re-awakened.

Babies3_2 The bf and I got our euros recently at the Del Amo mall. We have a suitcase full of maps and guidebooks and all our little tubes of toothpaste, fold-up toothbrushes and little bottles of lotions and shampoo. I’ve been cramming French phrases like Mon ami est une moyen-pantalon! and Quel dommage! I’ve started a carnet de voyage, a French-style journal of our trip.

And I promise to look for Cher references while I’m away but you shant be hearing from me. You’re on your own for two weeks. Here’s a list of Cher videos to keep you company.

      

 

Have a great two weeks!

   

Being Taught

Pottery8_2 I’ve been contemplating a lot lately about the act of being taught. I admit, I’m a total nerd. I love to read; I love to self-teach. At home, I have How To and Intro books coming out my ass. Over the last year and a half I’ve been self-teaching on Zen Buddhism for a poetry project. Alarmingly, looking back I counted 41 books I read to try to “get the jist” of it. Many of those books said clearly that reading books on Buddhism is pointless. You have to practice Buddhism to get it, something which includes meditation. Fair enough I thought. So I went out and bought a book on how to meditate. That books said you can’t teach yourself how to meditate from a book either! Crap. Not only do you need to practice it to learn Buddhism, but you must find a teacher not a book.

But I didn’t like that idea, quite frankly. I wanted to learn it ah-LONE. I was nervous about not picking it up fast enough in front of other people. Besides, meditation is about losing the chaos in your head and clearing out your mind. It’s practiced alone frequently. Why do you have to do it with other people when it’s something you must eventually come to understand all by your lonesome? So I practiced alone and it was good enough.

But then two things happened. I started taking a ceramics class (my first adult art experience) and then for work my department started taking Spanish classes (my first post-French trauma language class – I’m so not a left-brained/memorize-it person).

And a strange shift in my brain happened. I loved these classes. Like those green pants in that Dr. Seuss story, at first I was afraid of them; but then I loved them. In Spanish class, I actually started to feel the camaraderie of participation and to not to be freaked out by failing. Just trying and practicing felt good. Laughing about mistakes felt even better.

Then in ceramics I fell in love with my teachers’ passion for clay. At the end of our first class, many of us struggled with the wheel. It was so much harder than we could manage. Recently I found another teacher in a private studio who gently guides us through it step by step. She has a palpable love and respect for teaching and pottery. And I’m eating it up.

After our trip to France in a few weeks, my bf and I are going to start taking yoga mixed with meditation. And I’m really looking forward to finding a new teacher.

These generous acts of teaching truly move and humble me. They have helped me to understand my life is not about amassing knowledge and successes. It’s more about comprehending little lessons, these little sparks of life, moments of communication, precious gifts of being shown by hand how to ask a stranger “Te gusta comer los enchiladas?”, how to center your clay on a wheel, and how to center your shit on a spinning life.

Cher Week in Review

Cherbette I’ll be brief this week as I am in the midst of some dark nights of the soul this week over my writing non-career. However, in the midst of all this, one thing made me laugh out loud this week: a site simply dedicated to the absurd photos people post online of their cats with stuff on them (toys, boxes, you name it). Ridiculous but surprisingly funny. The site is called Stuff on my Cat. This weeks Cher reference was unusual and hilarious. Not what people normally pick on Cher for:
http://www.stuffonmycat.com/index.php?itemid=7900

My credit card bill came this week with $500 dolares of Cher tickets on it. This did not lighten my mood any.

Chastity’s birthday just came and went. Like me, her 40s are looming nearby. It seems mum may be buying her a stylin’ lounge chair or  barcalounger as a gift. I’m trying to talk my bf into one of those. He wants to get rid of his couch for a mission-style recliner chair which looks lovely but very uncomfortable. This is a guy who likes to nap and I envision him abandoning the lovely mission-style chair and hijacking my couch every night to nap on while I’m stuck on a very lovely but uncomfortable mission chair, unable to nap myself. Thus I’m lobbying hard for the recliner. But alas, he feels too refined to recline.

Anywho, TMZ was apparently on the scene of the Cher and Cher-daughter shopping event, taking video through the store window no less.  Creepy. And yet we watch.

Cher’s competition and supposed rival, Bette Midler, opened her Caesars show this week. I’m interested to see how they will compare:

And here’s more on the story that the Cher catalog was part of the song titles of Universal sold to a Dutch civil service workers pension fund. I’m sorry this wont be turning up as a 401(k) choice for us.

   

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