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Category: What This Really Says About Me (Page 8 of 15)

Last Weeks’s Outfit Wars

Cherladygaga3Cher presented the final award of the night at MTV's Video Music Awards.

According to:

http://www.ontheredcarpet.com/2010/09/cher-lady-gagas-meat-purse-was-genius.html?rss=rss-kabc-snippet-7665025

Cher praised Lady Gaga's "meat" outfit a day after she presented her with the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year for "Bad Romance", adding that the pop singer's purse, made out of the same material, was "genius."

"Loved doing VMA's!" Cher wrote on her Twitter page. "Lady Gaga rocked it. Meat Dress was So INTERESTING Up Close. The way it was cut & fitted to her body was AMAZING! Meat purse was genius! As Art piece it was astonishing! No moral Judgement!"

Lady Gaga won 8 little trophies Sunday night and made a few dramatic costume changes, which I think was overkill but then I think everything about Lady Gaga is overkill. And she's less interesting to me than Paloma Faith, who is doing similar theatrics.

Cherladygaga2 One of Gaga's dresses did cause a stir, her meat dress and purse ("I never thought I'd be asking Cher to hold my meat purse"…well, who would?). Apparently a similar "meat bikini" worn on Vogue caused a ruffle from PETA. Lady Gaga is allegedly a vegan so I don't know if that was a statement of some kind but…it's more of the vague, over-emotive-yet-emotionless overkill I come to expect from LG.

But no…it seems LG claims she wore meat to protest "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

Lady Gaga arrived at the ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday with several members of the U.S. military to protest the long-standing "Don't Ask, Don't tell" policy, which was recently overturned in California. "It is a devastation to me that I know my fans who are gay, who feel like bad kids, they feel like they have oppression, government oppression on them," she told Ellen Degeneres on her talk show following the ceremony, which saw her win eight awards. "That's actually why I wore the meat tonight."

Chergaga Huh?

Okay, I fully support bringing gay military to the event to protest Don't Ask, Don't Tell. You have me there…but trying to rationalize that with duct tape to your meat dress…makes no sense and is PR junk in my ear.

LG said about the dress:

"However, it has many interpretations, but for me this evening … If we don't stand up for what we believe in and if we don't fight for our rights, pretty soon we're going to have as much rights as the meat on our own bones. And I am not a piece of meat."

I guess everything has so many interpretations…you can always throw that asinine comment into the argument. But truth be told, some interpretations are stupid.

No judgment.

Cher, also known for her wild outfits, had appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards wearing a black bodysuit she wore more than 20 years ago in her 1989 music video "If I Could Turn Back Time", which was seen as risque when it premiered.

Anyway…for the best outfit of the week, I am voting for Zozobra, the marionette they burned last Thursday night in Santa Fe…like Burning Man but on a smaller scale.

It was just the enormity of the outfit and the fact it got torched at the end of the night…now that's entertainment!

Z3

Z2

Z10

Z11

Zend

Okay, now don't get me started on how big that Cher wig is.

Cherwig
   

Me So Sad and Cher, The Female Drag Queen

Front So here is a picture of our little desert oasis, our passive solar rental in the Eldorado area of Santa Fe. And the reason I haven't been posting is because I've been quite preoccupied digging us out of one snafu or disaster after another. This move sucked. Most majorly, our movers (Allied) tossed us aside for a larger client mid-move and we were without our stuff for a week and a half. When the apologetic driver finally showed up, I watched him move boxes upon boxes of Cher stuff into this ant-riddled house and I found myself thinking, who the hell am I?

This move.  It's been something else. We had a strange carpet stain that appeared in the living room of our old house in Redondo Beach mysteriously the day before we moved out.  The drive out was mostly calm, except for getting no sleep at the somewhat shady motel we stopped to rest at in Williams, Arizona. Then there are these ants, these very aggressive black carpenter ants we have found in our bed, crawling on us on the couch, running around in the bathroom, kitchen and dining room. No amount of product or professional extermination has deterred them yet.  Westside living in LA spoiled me for bugs.

Then we bought a dining table in desperation to have somewhere to sit until our furniture arrived and discovered one of the chairs was scratched. On the way to return it, we accidentally broke off one leg. Then we broke the living room ceiling fan. About five things I packed myself were broken in the move, including two of my homemade pots and a vase two girlfriends gave me back when I lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  My dad had to go into surgery suddenly this week due to a previous operation gone awry.  I’m sure there’s more bad news, I’ve just hit my mental capacity to keep processing it.

And I know, as they say, these are real first world problems. It's just the accumulative effect!

Paloma-Faith Coping mechanisms over the last two months: I just discovered Paloma Faith and her Want the Truth or Something Beautiful CD from seeing her appearance on Sundance Channel's Live From Abbey Road. She is fucking brilliant. I love almost every track. Her package, her lyrics, her arrangements, her awesome videos…perfect, perfect, perfect.

Before we left I also started watching episodes of Ru Paul’s Drag U on the logo channel. I have to say, Drag Race bored me beyond the first episode with its cattiness. But Drag U, I'm hooked. The first two episodes made me cry.  Okay, it’s possible that I am sentimental to drag, being a fan of Cher and all, one of the most famous female drag Queens in history. See, the word drag itself has been reinterpreted on this show to mean Embracer of Flamboyant Couture. And Ru Paul aims so altruistically to help a few of us hapless gals achieve the glory and confidence that dressing in drag can provide. Many women on the show are either insecure about their looks or uncomfortable with outward displays of femininity. The drag professors on the show (former Drag Race contestants) do what The Swan failed miserably to do: show these gals that beauty is all attitude. You can always slap enough makeup and wear something outrageous enough to kick-start that said attitude and feel, yes, powerful.

Two purposefully butch women in the first episode came to realize their power was not in masculine orDragulator feminine gestures, but in how they felt about themselves. I cried when I saw that. Another women struggled with what her mom might think to see her all slutted up. I cried when she came to realize only her opinion of herself was holding her back.  Btw, her mother thought her transformation was lots of fun.  Drag Queens know stuff.

Daren C. Brabham talks more about it in his online article "Power in Parody: Femininity 101 at RuPaul’s Drag U"

…the focus of Queer Eye was to make the straight man more suitable to a straight woman, to define the straight man’s identity and purpose in relation to his opposite-sex counterpart. The purpose of Drag U, however, is to make straight women better individually, to focus on self-improvement and self-esteem as a way to unleash an inner diva capable of doing anything, including attracting a man if she chooses.

This latter point is evident in Reyna’s transformation in the first episode. Reyna mentions her comfort wearing baggy men’s clothing because it hides her cleavage and femininity and allows her to avoid sexual harassment from men and to be taken seriously. She finds dressing feminine as a surrender of power. Yet RuPaul reminds her that he wears women’s clothes to feel more powerful, and that Reyna’s transformation is as much about attitude and confidence as it is about sequins and wigs. Essentially, to parody femininity in the exaggerated art form of drag is to identify the power embedded in the cultural performance of gender, and to distill that power and own it when the wigs and make-up come off. As the professors of Drag Ublur the boundaries of gender and sex so easily, and as they teach the contestants how to confidently play in this liminal space, they empower the contestants to take charge of their own definitions of femininity.

Plus the transformations are awesome and fun, too.

A recent article in the Vancouver Sun by Shelly Fralic called "Cher Grande Dame of Showgirls" reminds us of the power found in Cher's transformations with "drag."

Is there anything as radiant, and yet comforting and predictable, as the sun rising every morning in the eastern sky?

Well, yes. Cher, actually.

Cher’s a showgirl, the kind of entertainer whose fan base covers every demographic, from the casually dressed Las Vegas buffet crowd to high-rollers in diamonds and heels, from couples in their 30s to boomers wearing boas, from glittery teenagers to cheering sections of adoring gays.

Cher is all pop culture opera, an over-the-top modern day minstrel with a cute derriere and a big voice, and to say she was made for Vegas and backup dancers is to drastically understate the obvious, for nowhere does her confident campy persona fit so snugly as it does in the city of spectacle.

There is about her, and has been from the beginning, that rare magic fairy dust possessed by all great entertainers, from the Rat Pack of Las Vegas lore to Canadian chanteuse Celine Dion, for whom the Colosseum at Caesar’s was built.

Theirs is not flash-in-the-pan, flame-out celebrity, but something commanding and perennial and — like ‘em or not — it’s what keeps the turnstiles clicking.

http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/Cher+Grand+dame+showgirls/3268389/story.html

Oh The Horror–The 80s Are Back

Scan002Well, the 80s are trying to make a comeback. Can't say I'm happy about it. Can't say I don't feel a pang of distress to see bright-colored, alternative outfits similar to the ones I wore in high school as I was crying on the shoulder of a friend because of some heartless boy who most likely dressed in similar silly ensembles. If I wanted to go back to that fashion statement, I'd have Molly Ringwall's oeuvre of fine films to take me there, including particularly Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink.  Why do I feel like crap when I watch those? Because I felt like crap when I first watched those.

But the signs of 80s-revival are everywhere: big hipped, baggy, paisley monstrosities worn by contestants on this year's American Idol; David Bowie's "Modern Love" popping all up along my car radio dial; big, big, big hair in the fashion ads of LA Magazine. What's an 80s-era runaway TO DO??

It's funny that I remember the 70s bellbottom jeans revival of the 90s and my older co-workers having similar traumas flashing back to their own innocent eras ("I wore those in high school…never again!").

I never thought it would happen to me. The 80s were so in your face. Those shoulder pads. I spent hours un-sewing shoulder pads from various things. Even purses seemed to have shoulder pads. And of course, everything was pink, my hair was red, my earrings were huge (huge earrings are also back), I wore big obnoxious pink bows in my hair (all of which is pictured above). My friends all had alternative haircuts.

It's really hard to live through this again.

In the 80s, Cher made bombastic power ballads that we will soon be re-hearing on the radio again, along with the old Madonna, Duran Duran and redundant big hair bands. But for Cher the 80s was more than big hair and big music. It was also a new identity and respectability. Videos on MTV, Jack LaLanne ads, good movie reviews, an Academy Award, and tough-chick fashion magazine covers. I liked that part of it, the tough style of the chain mail and leather jackets, the rock-solid bod, the f-u attitude. Even the makeup was strong.

I did acquiesce a few days ago to this pathetic 80s scene. I heard John Waite singing "Missing You" on the radio and I thought, Ok 80s, you can come back.

My Husband Shoulders Through The Casablanca Years

6369420150_large Imagine my husband trapped in this car, which looks similar to my ride sans pimping.

Because I'm working on a zine article about Cher's Casablanca tenure, my husband was made to suffer listening through three Cher albums last night while I was driving us to Hollywood. First we stopped on LaBrea to eat in Little Ethiopia at Rahel's. It was amazing and vegan. Lovely interior. We were the only ones in there all night. Then I took us to Amoeba Records where I picked up 3 Cher lps and 2 used CDs. More on those later. I usually try to even out my Cher purchases at Amoeba with some Elvis Costello or some Eels…just because the place is so painfully hip. But not this time. The horn-ripped-glasses-wearing attendant didn't even seem phased. In fact, he tried to cross-sell me the Half Breed album that was sitting in the Recent Arrivals bin. Then we went to Hustlers to spend the wedding shower gift-card we received almost a year ago. I can’t tell you what we purchased there but let's just say it involves The Munsters.

So after a full run through of Take Me Home, Prisoner and the bulk of Black Rose, I have to tell you John did not hold up well. And he is usually loathe to critique Cher in front of me. Even at the aforementioned wedding shower during the cut-throat Newlywed Game. When asked to name something he was sick of hearing about, he refused to say Cher. This is despite the fact that all other guests were imploring him to say Cher. I said Cher without skipping a beat. He said Barry Manilow. It was an odd moment of pop culture shame for me, that wedding shower moment: a) because my celebrity obsessions were public knowledge and even I am creeped out by this, and b) Barry Manilow? I didn't even talk about Barry Manilow when I was 10 years old and obsessed. There's just nothing to explicate with Barry Manilow. There really isn't.

By the end of the car ride last night John was reduced to yelling at policemen who were holding up the 405 freeway and gesturing frantically for our exit. All I can say is I've had to listen to plenty of The Decemberists over the last four years.

Sonny & Cher…Get It?

Sunni & Shi'a

Sunni-shia

Wow. Hasn’t it been since like the late 70s since we’ve seen a good Sonny & Cher political cartoon?

(Thank you JeffRey for sending this to me.)

So I spent Easter day in San Diego and I must stay it was both a culturally enriching and perilous experience. Due to my old age and utter glee at being able to afford a short trip, I, many times over, forgot to pay attention to the GET GAS light that was blaring at me all morning. At one point my husband says, “Do we need gas” and I noticed the red and bright dashboard notice. Immediately after that, we passed the big blue inflatable King Kong waving to us from the east side of Highway 5 and I pulled off to the very next off-ramp…which alarmingly turned out to be the La Jolla Parkway! My beloved Bluebell sputtered and chugged out of fuel just as we were trying to make it over the steep Parkway overpass, a quarter of a mile from the gas station. 

Thank God, John mentioned gas when he did because just moments and ten yards of pavement sooner, we would have been stuck on a death-defying, shoulder-less stretch of lane-merging Parkway. The nearness of a possible wreck made me start to hyperventilate soon after we pulled over. John called AAA and we got gas within 20 minutes. But in those 20 minutes of waiting I was convinced a speeding, merging SUV would veer off the road and crush the three of us (our furkid Franz was along for the ride), smashing us into a little tin can. I couldn’t help but think of two things: 1) at least I will die with those I have most loved and 2) was I just singing “There But For Fortune” this morning when we passed that wreck on the 405?

But on the bright side…

We saw the lovely San Marcos area, took a hike with ocean views, ate at the scrumptious Los Primos Mexican takeout place in Carlsbad, walked around Old Town (where a new “heritage” cul-de-sac of Victorian houses hovers intimidatingly over the old adobe streets) and Balboa Park, where we marveled over the Easter flowers and international cottages. We took home some BBQ from Kansas City BBQ near the Martin Luther King promenade and the Gaslight Quarter. It wasn’t very good and I almost wished we had instead patronized Jim Croce’s wife’s restaurant Croce’s.

Because I love Jim Croce songs.

We were driving home during the big Earthquake happening just below the border, one that everyone else felt except us (even our friends up in LA felt it). Was it because we were driving? We stopped at a rest area around that time and our furkid went nuts, barking at everyone and sniffing the ground. I thought the stress of being stranded on a highway with half-wit human parents who keep stranding him on highways (if he remembers Christmas day getting stuck between Barstow and Needles with a blown-out tire and a Needles gas station worker telling us angrily “No one will help you today! It’s Christmas!”) and all this highway shoulder time was finally taking its toll on him. But quite possibly, it was his heightened sensitivity to Earthquakes.

  

Cher Party!

400_cher_100thshow_091202 Cher parties for her 100th Caesars show; Cher Scholar parties for the sake of scholarship.

Yes, I missed a week of blogging and I have no real good excuse. All I can say is that I've been very tired from overtime at work and negotiations and all I've wanted to do was read the novel The Lost Night by Rachel Howard.

However, I did do my Cher duties last Saturday night when I threw a dinner and video-viewing party to gather some material for the next Cher zine. My husband was an amazing sport about the whole thing, helping me cook for 7-8 fans, semi-fans and non-fans, including me. All were tasked with sampling food for the obligatory zine food article and commenting on 27 of 28 Cher videos. I cut the live video "All or Nothing" when guests started getting antsy. Yes, I realize the irony of cutting a song called All or Nothing from a long Cher-video-watching party. But I was facing a mutiny! Sacrifices had to be made for the more artistic "The Music's No Good Without You" and "Song For the Lonely" videos.

John cut his finger cooking, among other sacrifices, but helped me pull it together. Overall it was a trying and tiring party. People crapped out at pretty much at video 16…but we had some interesting discussion as to what makes a legitimate video. Most agreed TV and movie segments do not count, only  a promotional film EXCLUSIVELY made to sell a single, not as content for one’s other projects. The food was a hit (with everyone else, not so much with me). My friend made a very delish jello though, as a cross-over project for her blog, Julie and Jello, which is a take-off on the book Julie and Julia.

Anyway, there are some awesome, awesome things coming in the next zine. Notes on the director's screening of Mask, interviews with pop-culture feminists (so awesome), an essay on the Phoenix, Arizona, sites for the movie Chastity,and a new piece on the new Cher dolls that have come out since the last zine.

However, we can still use a bit more content. If anyone has any personal experiences of being a Cher fan that you would like to share, please contact me.

Bob Einstein Helped Rescue Me From Nightshift Madness

CurbLast week was quite a bit challenging for me. The company I work for, ICANN, held a high-profile meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. Terrorists threats were made against the meeting venue, notifications from high levels, many participants backed out, and therefore remote participation (meeting video, audio, transcripts) was in demand unlike for other more typical international meetings. My team coordinates with other IT personnel to make this remote participation work. Long story short, my work day morphed into a schedule that went from 2 am to 10 am. 

To keep awake, I played crime shows like Cold Case Files, First 48, Snapped, and The Investigators in the background (hoping to glean fodder for a novel) while I worked. All the murders…oh, the many many pointless and gruesome murders.. and the late nights of solitude drove me slightly bonkers. One night I saw an Investigators episode about LA celebrity-stalker prosecutor Rhonda Saunders who talked about Madonna's nutty stalker among other lesser-known cases. It was truly frightening, a notable quote being: "There's a thin line between a dedicated fan and a stalker." God, help us.

This quote inspired me to forgo visiting Elijah Blue's art show and instead spending my first day off, Friday, at Dog Beach with Franz and the hubby. There's always time for an obsession check, no?

Do one for yourself.

BrothersbiopageBut a Cher-connection-free  weekend in LA is slightly improbable.

On Sunday night I was fortunate to have been able to attend the Curb Your Enthusiasm cast panel at PaleyFest 2010. The awesome lineup included pre-teen pals Richard Lewis & Larry David, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Garlin, Susie Essman and Bob Einstein, who plays the always-disgruntled Marty Funkhouser on the show.

Young people may only know Bob Einstein from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Or you may be familiar with the character of his alter ego Super Dave Osbourne going back all the way to the 1970s John Byner Show or the 1980s John Byner show Bizarre.

Or you may know the quirky bit of trivia that Bob Einstein and Albert Brooks are brothers. See them above with their other brother, Clifford. How bizarre is that? They seem at total odds: Funkhouser and Nemo's father Marlin, Super Dave and the comedic schlub of many an 80s movie, including most notably Broadcast News and Lost in America.

Or you may know that Bob Einstein and Steve Martin where the famous writers to come out of The Sonny & Cher Comedy HourSONNY-CHER-tvs freshly plucked from their historic tenure as writers for The Smothers Brothers.

Again, there's a world of difference between the comedy of not only what came before Sonny & Cher's show, the political and sexual boundary-pushing humor of the Smother Brothers' show, but what comedy came after Sonny & Cher: The Jerk, Super Dave, Let's Get Small and the hilariously vulgar and cynical humor that Bob Einstein displayed Sunday night for the Curb Your Enthusiam panel, jokes that made even the stoic Larry David laugh and Jeff Garlin hoot like an owl. He stole the show from a panel of brilliant comedians discussing today's leading cutting-edge television comedy.

I've been retelling his jokes all day. The guy's still got it.

Mr. Cher Scholar Testifies for Vets

John1 We had a very exciting week at Chez Cher Scholar. My now-husband  was asked by his national union to speak yesterday on behalf of all claims processors for the US House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs.

And I'm proud to say he did swell. First of all, he’s a writer and so was able to deliver some well-made speech. And then he’s got this thing that I completely do not have: charm.

What an amazing experience.

Here's the video: http://veteransaffairs.edgeboss.net/wmedia/veteransaffairs/2010/100203b.wvx

Orleans It’s still pretty boring stuff if you don't have a lot of feeling about claims processing. But if you really love the subject, here are the written statements and the congressional names on the subcommittee, of which the 70s band Orleans guitarist and co-founder is the chair. (If you have this picture in your history and you still manage to get elected for congress…America is truly great!) http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?NewsID=524

Abc_cher02_060615_sp This week reminded me of Cher’s 2006 summer visit to the House Armed Services Committee in support of Operation Helmet. Although she didn’t speak, she raised awareness behind the testimony of Operation Helmet’s founder Bob Meaders. Here is one of Cher’s favorite shows, Washington Journal, talking about Operation Helmet and the congressional hearing that would follow the next day (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/192937-6) and news coverage about the hearing itself  (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2082716).

Watching a congressional panel, I think how funny the people sitting behind testifyers always look. Who is the guy with the gray beard behind Cher?

Keep giving to Operation Helmet. It may help prevent a future backlog of head injury claims to the VA in the future.

And apropos of nothing…

here are some people with Cher's name tattooed on them. http://spugwit.blogspot.com/2010/01/tattoos.html
(you may need to scroll)

  

Reasons Why I Will Never Run a Cher Fan Club

Nerdygirl  

Last week I joked about running an underground Cher fan club. But I've come to realize I am not a person who would ever do this.

 

 

  1. I am antisocial and the last person on earth who should be running a social club. I recently told my therapist that if I could get away with it, I would be one of those creepy persons who never left their house and had food delivered once a week. I’d only come out for my periodic garage sales which I would have in order that I wouldn’t end up in a Collier’s Mansion. I may be antisocial, but I hate clutter.
  2. It would leave me no time for Getting a Life. Time consuming.
  3. It's a muddy and thankless job and attracts fan-freaks like a mad-magnet.
  4. It would step on somebody's sensitive toes. Cher fans and their competing turf wars depress me.
  5. If you want a snarky Cher newsletter, hit File on your browser menu and click "Print"
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