Category: What This Really Says About Me (Page 9 of 15)

Three Cher Jokes I Am Deathly Tired Of

January 28, 2010 / Cher Scholar / 1 Comment

In the movie Silkwood, Cher's girlfriend, the makeup artist, had a great quote: "I am sooo tired of your jokes."

1. Sonny Bono is short
Roseanne dug this one out of a coffin recently. The joke is older than cable; it's geriatric; and exposes nothing note-worthy other than the advanced age of the person telling it.

2. Cher is made of plastic materials
The in-the-know-adage today goes that it's hard to find an actor or actress in America over middle age who hasn’t had “work done.” Sad but true. Modern reality just makes the Cher joke a moot point and has all the surprise and subtlety of a beaten dead horse.

3. The only thing to survive a nuclear holocaust will be cockroaches and Cher
There are so many things wrong with this joke, my head spins trying to decide where to begin. First of all holocaust equals comedy killer. Second, they say the same joke about Keith Richards. So who will it be? Richards or Cher? Or is it supposed to be both? Well, then it's just not funny: cockroaches, Keith Richards and Cher. And finally, the thing that bothers me most about this joke is that it belittles the awesome achievement that is surviving in Hollywood and still getting job offers five decades straight. For real, you can throw a dime anywhere in LA and hit an out-of-work actor, singer, or still-famous person. Even they can’t get hired! I heard the other day someone say, only in LA can you go to an old apartment building you once lived in and run into some actor living there who used to be on a television show you loved in the 1970s (or 80s or 90s!) Lasting longer than 10 years in entertainment is rare, rare, rare, rare and rare. Hundreds and hundreds of people have made it their life’s only mission to keep trying that feat. And they will all fail. If you think it 'aint so hard, let’s see you do it.

Here’s a clip of Cher winning a Golden Globe for Silkwood in the early 80s — with her charming, old teeth, Chastity with a mullet, and Jeff Bridges announcing her name and then standing behind her while she accepts. Which is pleasant symmetry with two Sundays ago at the 2010 Golden Globes when Cher announced a Golden Globe winner for Jeff Bridges' current movie.

Cher winning a Golden Globe for Silkwood — that was over 25 years ago!

Beware of the Sconces

January 7, 2010 / Cher Scholar / 2 Comments

I’ve found it really hard to get back into the swing of blogging since the holidays came and went. Post-Wedding, then Thanksgiving. Christmas. Parents visit for New Years. House is a mess. My space is cluttered. My head is feeling cluttered and lethargic. There are poetry and other writing projects I’m itching to do. But all I seem to have the energy for is curling up on my couch with my Furkid, a mimosa, and a book. I’ve got about six of them going: The book of essays about Sarah Palin, Going Rouge, Pattie Boyd’s biography, Wonderful Tonight (I can’t resist co-dependent rock-star wife stories), Mastering the Art of French Cooking (to read for tips, not to make any of the recipes, are you kidding me?), The Collected poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Richard Wright’s biography.

Wright is one of my favorite writers and I’ve always wanted to explore more about his writing style, there’s so much going on there, not to mention the drama surrounding his life. There's the dramatically racial component of his life which overshadows his craft, for better or worse. I just wanted to learn what his influences were. But it's impossible to separate that out from his experiences inter-racially.

I'm tempted to cope with my lethargy by shopping. Buying a sconce wason my list of things to do. However, Cher Scholar, Robrt Pela, recently commented to beware of the sconces.

Are they flammable? Are they agents of big brother? In poor taste? Are they a portal to the netherworld. A poor investment? All of the above?

Well, lucky for me I am broke. Or at least I plan to be broke after I purchase the new Google Phone tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

December 24, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Happy Holidays to everyone!

A New Year, A New Caesars Program

December 17, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 2 Comments

Give to Caesars what is Caesars.

Last weekend, a friend of mine went to Vegas and stayed at Caesars Palace. One morning, she said, there was no hot water…those Vegas hotels–even the nice ones get a little rickety. And she dropped by the Cher store for me to pick up the new Cher program Vol. 2 which is now available. But she changed her mind when another fan informed her that only 2-4 pages had been added. Allegedly, only the new Mackie costume sketches were put in.

Ahem. "Update" and "Volume 2" are two very different concepts.

Another inhumanity of lazy product reselling! Bah humbug, Cher.

In me news: this was a week of moving my Cher junk out of an office and it reminded me how much I love my Cher posters and Cher fan art. Which made it so timely that Cher scholar Peter sent me a wedding gift of two Cher art pieces. I love them and I’ll try to grab a picture soon as I unpack my camera. They are very kewl!

Here’s what Peter had to say about them:

Of course I did those! I did them in HIGH SCHOOL! All my art projects were based on Cher. The WITH LOVE print was a silk screen – I still have 4 in various colors which I have been meaning to have framed individually for my hall…. I have to say I just LOVED that image of the album cover so much and I thought I TRULY represented Cher….. the STARS is a block print – I still have the original block.

This reminds me that whenever I had to learn something in school–or now–how to search the library periodical books for magazines and news clippings, how to use the Internet, how to use a new online shopping services or databases (like allmusic.com), I always start by searching for Cher things.

Anyway, someday I hope to flesh out my office full of posters as phase one of the Chersonian Institute.

But for now I only have next year. And I’m excited about next year. I’m ready to get some work done, some new pottery, some new writing, I want to turn my old dollhouse into an art piece (I bought it when I was 11 and inspired by Queen Mary's Buckingham Palace dollhouse–pictured above). Hopefully we will have more interesting interviews for Cherscholar.com. I also plan to start the third Cher Zine in January. From Cher we should get a new movie (Drop Out) and hopefully a new album. Who knows what that will turn out to be: oldies, duets, repackaged old albums?

Now that I’m a married lady, I think it’s time I bought a sconce.

My Cher Fantasies

December 11, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 1 Comment

So I don’t have fantasies of hanging out with Cher like most of my other straight female Cher fans (all five of us). Because when I try it, it never ends well. In those types of fantasies Cher and I would disagree over everything, like why we have to go shop for shoes all the time; or I would egregiously bore Cher with my whining about shopping for shoes all the time; or Cher gets cross at me for the lame shoes I’m wearing (pretty much my Keens every day, with flip flops on special occasions). So these hanging-out-with-Cher fantasies are not fantasies that are useful to me in any way.

My fantasies involving Cher, going back to when I was eight years old, do involve Cher doing duets with other people I am celebrity obsessed with. I know this seems like a very narrow type of fantasy situation in terms of possible plots…but it does keep me entertained on rainy days, of which today is one.

My first childhood Cher fantasy, after imagining Sonny & Cher getting back together in dramatic soap opera scenarios, was my fantasy of setting up Cher with Barry Manilow. Now I know what you’re thinking. Spare me, please. I NOW KNOW WHAT A BAD IDEA THIS WAS. Inconceivable (and yet I did conceive it), ridiculous…but you imagined it for a minute, didn’t you. And now you’ll never be able to get that out of your brain’s data bank now.

But let’s move on.

Last week I had a fantasy that Cher and John Waite would unite to record a cover of Elbow’s awesome song “One Day Like This.”

And I just wanted to share that with you.

Jimmydeanpartee sent me his Cher poem he mentioned last week in a comment and I hope he doesn’t kill me for posting it here. But I think this very fine Cher poem goes a long way toward showing that JDP and I are sharing thoughts in some weird way about both Zen Buddhism AND the discomforts involved in hanging out with Cher.

Cher

What if we met
on a lone beach
below
your malibu digs….

And sat on a BIG rock.

Would we
have something
to
talk about???

I think
we would be
silent….

And breathe.

Wedding Photos

November 29, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 11 Comments

Oh my…so much to blog about…so little energy with this flu I caught on my honeymoon!

The Cherlights: my friends chipped in and got me the ringmaster doll for my wedding! What a surprise! I love it!

I also want to talk about the end of the book Julie & Julia which I read on my honeymoon. I didn't like the book but I did feel the end related in some ways to this blog. I also can't wait to talk about the honeymoon: a drive up to Oregon and back. Between my mom's hometown, the dreary fishing & lumber village of Port Orford and the town to the north, Bandon, there is a Bono road. I remembered this from my childhood. There was also a local fishing boat called Half Breed.

Anyway, the wedding was quite fairy tale. And I'll describe it in detail as soon as possible.Here are some good pics:

Taken by our photographer Stephanie Howard

Our venue, the Redondo Beach Historic Library, taken by Stephanie Howard

Before the wedding, taken my by mother-in-law, Donna McCray

My groom and me behind the library, taken by Donna McCray

Our tables, taken by my boss, Marc Salvatierra

Father daughter dance to Sonny & Cher's "Turn Around", taken by Marc

Taken by Marc

Our table cards made to look like library card catalog files, taken by Dave Fein

Our seating cards made to look like library cards, taken by Marc Salvatierra

Taken by Stephanie Howard

We Can’t Turn Back Time and Make This IGYB Cover Any Better

November 6, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 3 Comments

So Cherkids, I’m leaving. And I’m going to be gone for a few weeks…like a few weeks meaning three. Three whole weeks. Please don’t forget me when I’m gone. Please don’t buy an overabundance of Olivia Newton John albums. And please don’t take any wooden nickels. Just be good. Be safe. Is that too much to ask? I’ll getting married. By some miraculous stroke of universe functioning. So just keep it cool for a little bit. Okay?

But before I go, I do what to leave you with two small Cher items for discussion in your own small groups and committees:

I received this note from my friend Coolia a few days ago.

Subject: Top 40 1989

I was just listening to a countdown by the original VJs on Sirius radio from the top forty of this week in 1989. Cher came in at 38 with just like Jesse James and 35 with turn back time. The VJ said that turn back time reached #3. I thought it hit #1, no? Also they had a quote from Cher saying she didn't like Jesse James because it had too many lyrics

So I wrote back saying TBT, although one of Cher’s iconic hits, only made it into the top ten, reaching #3. Although it did reach #1 on the Adult Contemporary Chart and it did hit #1 in Norway allegedly although I wasn’t there to confirm this. So why did it stall out at 3? Does anyone want to put forth a theory?

This also passed my desk this week: David Bowie and Marianne Faithful singing IGUB.

I dig this crazy version, I really do…including the ending guitar riff, the nutty backups and Marianne’s muck ups.

…but “We won’t find out until we go?” Does he mean until we kick it? What are your thoughts?

Please discuss all Cher-matters with civility and respect for all diva-creeds. Larger things are happening in the world…like my wedding. 🙂

Wedding Bell Blues

October 9, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 2 Comments

So as you can see, I Found Some Blog is in virtual hibernation as I happily slog through wedding duties. I’m actually having a really great time compiling our programs and cutting down songs. Everything is falling into place. Knock on wood.

I was thinking last night that in many ways this has been a fairy tale wedding in planning (knock on wood again), from the Parisian proposal to the awesome invitations, to all the ideas and creative bells and whistles John and I have contributed to the basic structure of a wedding, which has made the process more fun for us, hopefully more entertaining for our friends, and so much more personal and meaningful.

But there have been a few snags, as there always is. And in a strange way, John and I have bonded over this as well. In a sad way, it has furthered the fairy tale motif: feeling rescued by a Prince Charming from childhood troubles and sad relations with certain family members.

The only grief over this wedding (and I do use the word strongly) has not been over bridezilla-eque wedding details gone awry, but family drama.

Now both my therapist and my good friend Ann warned me over a year ago that weddings often bring out the worst in families, especially narcissistic family members. And I have some of those…not all of them (there have been some in my family who have been very helpful to us during this time)…but there’s been some whopper moments from the others.

Weddings are clearly a case of something that is all about you. And narcissists have two ways of dealing with that: they will either parade around like peacocks in order to draw attention back to them or refuse to participate altogether…in any case, keeping things squarely all about them and their needs on what is to be your very special day. All advice (online, on the couch, over drinks) recommends holding steadfast to yourself. In this time of your life, it really is all about you.

It’s still heartbreaking when it happens. And I have to say, a few relationships have been changed as a result.

Putting together my wedding has been mostly an awesome experience that I’ve enjoyed immensely. Cataloging my worst day to my friend Ken, he said “I am sorry you are going through this…weddings bring out the worst in people.”

So between the actual happy moments of the past few weeks and the head-shaking f*#k-ed up moments, this is the reason I have fallen off monitoring Cherabouts. I have no idea what’s going on in Cherdom but I have plugged in The Best of Cher into my CD player a time or two just as a coping mechanism.

I do seem to recall Cher’s mother giving Cher these comforting words: “If it doesn’t matter in five, years, it doesn’t matter.” Unfortunately, I do think some of my experiences lately will still matter in five year. But it is comforting to think of your trials in the context of geological time, which is why this song by Beth Neilson Chapman comforts me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9z1Fc7hUYs

“Solid stone is just sand and water baby,
sand and water…and a million years gone by.”

You know what else cheers me up sometimes?

PUPPIES!

These two handsome gentlemen are seen as cruising the streets of LA
(pic taken by their chauffeur Julie W.)

Circling Back

September 23, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

So the wedding is in high gear, just under 60 days away. We’re busy deciding things, arranging things, assembling things. The table cards that I made, like the seating cards, had to be redone by the designer who did the invitations (I have good ideas; but suck at execution). We’re getting great feedback on the invite and I’ve been stressed about the more Me elements of the wedding, like my hair, my skin, my weight. But we’re scanning for readings, organizing favors and all that stuff.

Meanwhile, I saw Big Fantwo weekends ago and although it was really good and Patton Oswalt’s performance was Oscar-worthy, I was essentially disappointed that his character never, not for a moment, was able to see his own self-destructive behavior. Not even a glimpse of it sideways in a mirror. So there was no growth there, which to me was essentially nihilistic and depressing.

And maybe character growth wasn’t this writer/director’s big aim; but seeing the failings of the modern celebrity-obsessed for an hour or so on the big screen without some kind of insight seems like pointless entertainment, or rather…more of the same thing that it describes.

But I did take time to watch the Roseanne video of Cher and Chaz, mostly due to the good comments it received in response to my last post. Let me just say comedy is highly subjective and there were no big LOLs for me here.

Cher is dressed circa the 90s, but makes asides to the camera like on her TV show in the 70s. Chaz is just a big bear of a guy in a blond wig and rainbow shirt. I get it.

I did get some low-level chuckles: rhyming beaver (bevah) with diva, the basement full of Sanctuary knick-knacks, the pink berry joke got a snort, as did the f-ing retarded headdress line. But Cher’s actress sounded too whiny for me and the writing was way too talky.

By the way, Roseanne didn’t write or appear in these skits. She just produced them.

In episode 2, Sonny makes an angelic appearance, but looks more like Michael Jackson. The Elijah reference is surprisingly insider (Elijah just isn't as famous as Chaz), and Cher’s headdress keeps bouncing around in the over-the-shoulder shots, annoyingly upstaging the Sonny (which is just an overkill short joke).

For me, this skit tries a bit too hard, goes on for too long, and has the quality of amateur night. And the theme song is just dippy. If you love Family Guy and Flight of the Concords or read any kind of snarky celebrity blog Dlisted or Defamer, the bar is set awfully high for irreverent, snarky pop culture roastings.

The kids today are faster, meaner, smarter and at the end of the day funnier.

Again, Eddie Izzard – what say you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjC3R6jOtUo

In other news: William Shatner came out recently in support of Lucy the Elephant. The USS Missouri is dry docked. And predictably the Witches of Eastwich TV show sucks.

Turn Around and You’re Two…Turn Around and You’re Four

August 28, 2009 / Cher Scholar / 2 Comments

This has been a busy week of weddingness: we assembled and sent our especially designed invitations, my dress came in and I had my first fitting, we met with the photographer and walked around our venue looking for photo shots. So I didn’t have much time to contemplate Cherdom this week. However, something pretty amazing happened, Cher-related.

So I’ve been a Cher fan since I was about four or six years old (1974-1976). I’m not really sure when I started exactly. I do remember it was one of the first aesthetic decisions I made, but the timing is so hard to place, looking back. I remember watching the first variety show with my parents when we lived in Albuquerque — so that must have been in 1974 (I would have been four). I loved both the show and the two records my parents had (Look at Us and All I Ever Need is You). My Albuquerque friend Stacy got the Cher doll before I even knew there was one. This must have been in 1976. I was mildly outraged and discouraged that someone who was as passionate as I was about Sonny & Cher was not the first one on my block to get the doll. So I petitioned for it for Christmas and got one with a handful of outfits. I remember thinking that a fan of my caliber should have all the outfits. This is how it has always been you see. I took that doll to show-and-tell in first grade and, along with Stretch Armstrong, it was the most popular show-and-tell toy. Both dolls were broken that show-and-tell day as a result of their being so manhandled. Cher’s hands were broken off and Armstrong was punctured until his innards started oozing out.

I got the S&C TV Guide cover soon after, which I adored. Until my oldest brother told me I should stop slobbering over it because S&C were divorced. Tragedy of all tragedies! Why hadn’t anyone told me! Then we moved to St. Louis (and I think this is where I got the idea that moving was a diversion to heartbreak) just in time to watch the second variety series when my parents agreed to let me stay up past my seven-year-old bedtime once a week in order to watch it. But those good times were all over before I knew it (cancellation) and I was left to lick my wounds with that awful 1979 Solid Gold special which launched the very lame lip-synching series of the same name. I think it’s right around that time when gold started to lose its luster for me.

For Christmases and birthdays during the brief era of 1977 to 1979, my parents purchased Sonny & Cher albums as gifts for me. And when I was sick with the stomach flu in 1979, my mom bought me the famous Cher People magazine cover issue with the hole-fit and the pink boa.

But this is all a long, long backstory just to say that SINCE THEN my parents have definitely not approved of my Cher obsession, and certainly not long after I learned how to drive and immediately chose to cruise across town to used record stores for Cher lps. Enough was enough already. Normal kids don’t have celebrity obsessions and if they did, they were more current acts like Duran Duran and Don Johnson (God help me—you see what I had to choose from?).

Flash forward to this year. These are the songs I picked as choices for my wedding’s father-daughter dance: “Take it to the Limit” by the Eagles (which was nixed because my brother and father interpreted it to be all about sex), “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack (which my father didn’t love), “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armtrong (kind of clichéd, I felt), “Heavenly Day” by Patty Griffin and “IGUB,” which did come up but was controversial because it was sweet as a father-daughter dance but essentially a couple’s song. Between the two of us, my father and I didn’t agree on or couldn’t find anything on the many online lists of father-daughter-dance suggestions full of maudlin and sappy sentimentalities. One big problem I found was that most suggested songs were for younger brides (“everything she owns I bought her”) and in my case, I’m more the mature bride, not the fresh-faced innocent depicted in country songs.

Last weekend, my father ended up considering a pretty obscure Sonny & Cher song of all things (well, mostly a Cher song on a S&C album), a song called “Turn Around,” one I had suggested actually but not the S&C version which I didn’t even remember. I was trying to find a Harry Belafonte version (he wrote it) and found many other recorded versions by Kenny Loggins, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye, and the soundtrack of a famous Kodak ad eons ago. My dad maybe saw the S&C version listed on iTunes – I’m not sure. But I was frankly shocked when he suggested it.

Category: What This Really Says About Me (Page 9 of 15)

Three Cher Jokes I Am Deathly Tired Of

Beware of the Sconces

Merry Christmas!

A New Year, A New Caesars Program

My Cher Fantasies

Wedding Photos

We Can’t Turn Back Time and Make This IGYB Cover Any Better

Wedding Bell Blues

Circling Back

Turn Around and You’re Two…Turn Around and You’re Four

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