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My Stupid Obsession

March 2, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Every Cher fan goes through this at some time or another, the Cher show you have great tickets for (6th row!) gets cancelled. Two weekends ago, I was one of these fans who trekked out to Las Vegas right about when Cher cancelled a weekend of shows due to illness.

As I was crying in the bathrooms of Sam’s Town, (the casino that inspired The Killers album/song), I counted and this would have been my 13th Cher concert. Poor me. Some fans have yet to see one. I wasn’t literally crying in the bathroom. I was drunk in the bathroom and still managed to count all the Cher shows I've been to. I literally cried three other times: an aggravation cry in the car on the way to Vegas (around Laughlin) when I got the tragic email from TicketBastard, one short ugly cry in the hotel bathroom where Mr. Cher Scholar couldn’t see it, and one long soulful cry after I got home, a cry that was just as much about the collapse of all that is good and holy in this world as it was over missing that Cher show, but nonetheless a cry initiated by watching a bootleg video of the new show's opening Cher descent.

My weekend in Vegas was full of rationalizations:

For me it's more about the stuff, right? (I felt much better after being able to buy tour swag.)
We gotta wean ourselves off Cher sometime, right?
This show's gonna come out on DVD anyway.
How can you blame Cher for touching bohemian hands and catching fevers?
I'm too fat to sit in the 6th row anyway.
Concerts aren’t my thing anyway, right? I dutifully go for the stuff (see #1).
I've pretty much seen this show already.

Then why was I having such a dramatic crisis of the heart?

It’s not like going to Vegas to see Cher is some kind of pilgrimage, right? That's where celebrity obsession needs a body check. There was one woman outside the casino, close to Cher’s looming picture (above), literally sobbing into a friend's shoulder. For like a long time! I was hoping her cat had died or that she’d just experienced a traumatic breakup with a pathetic loser because I didn’t want to think she was crying (1) that hard (and 2) in public over missing a Cher show. But I surmise the greater distance and effort you spend on the trip to Vegas to see a Cher show, the harder the cry. I only drove from Albuquerque.

And there were other repercussions of a cancelled Cher show. We couldn’t get into any other shows, (no Diana Ross, no Beatles Cirque du Soilel, no Absinthe). Shows half full on Friday night booked up quickly by Saturday afternoon. All those damn Cher fans set adrift. I can’t tell you how my party salvaged this weekend, (what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas), but I can tell you it involved a very hot Robin.

I have now been fully initiated as a Cher fan, long suffering. Some very muted highlights of the trip:

I went to the Park Theater anyway to see the Cher stands and promos and dragged Mr. Cher Scholar on a mission to photograph all three "era" posters:

Standup near the back door / poster in the lobby / billboard on the south end of the strip (click to enlarge).

I was also able to play the Cher slot machine which was set up outside the Cher swag store. Mr. Cher Scholar had to sit through my playing it only twice (I get easily bored gambling). I was very amused at the slot symbols that were made to represent Cherness: leather jackets, tambourines, VIP concert passes.

When I would hit anything big, loud Cher music would play for such a length of time that nearby gamblers would move seats for ten minutes until the machine stopped bellowing. Good footage of the drama. You're seat would also vibrate if you won or came close to a win. I hope someday these things are cheap enough for home purchase.

Because there is pop-culture grace left somewhere in the universe, the Monte Carlo Park Theater Cher swag store was still open and I was able to get a program. The swag store does have a few new things but many of the items are hand-me-downs from Dressed to Kill tour.

Two sides of the big Cher store / the lobby store.

And the weekend wasn't entirely sucky with good food and good friends.

Bang Bang, Anderson Cooper, Lily Tomlin and Cher Scarves

February 15, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Bang Bang

I recently found some more "Bang Bang" covers:

Petula Clark (1966)

Cliff Richard (1970) He does a gender switch that doesn't quite work but there are some interesting string arrangements.

Did I ever post Lady Gaga's version? (2014) Meh.

Peripherals

Anderson Cooper talks about how Cher was his mother's (Gloria Vanderbilt) fantasy daughter and how Cher now calls him little bro and how charitable Cher's been since Cooper reported on Hurricane Katrina. (The Huffington Post)

Lily Tomlin talks about working with Cher (Parade)

How Cher Succeeds (Fast Company)

Cher Scarves

Cher called into Home Shopping Network earlier this year:

Visit the main scarf page: https://shopvida.com/collections/cher (and don’t miss the video shot at Cher's house.)

Cher on the Stage

February 15, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Classic Cher

So the new Cher show live began last Wednesday and I’ve updated the Cher Scholar site with a few early pics and reviews:

Cher Scholar Live & In Concert

Cher's Concert Reviews

There have been two reviews or sort of reviews. Is a Vegas review ever really critical?

Cher Is a Classic Diva (The Las Vegas Review Journal)

Cher Returns to the Concert Stage with Glitz and Hits (Billboard)

Promotional Material & Peripherals

The 7 Faces of Cher

Cher, Diana Ross and Jennifer Lopez collide in Las Vegas in the Diva Super-Fabulous Bowl

The Bob Mackie Archives

The Musical

Thanks to Cher scholar Tyler for sending me this one: What Does Cher Think of the Musical About Her Life (New York Post)
Includes information about the actors playing the roles:

Jillian Mueller (young Cher)

Lesli Margherita (mature Cher)

Lena Hall (middle-age Cher)

Jarrod Spector (Sonny)

Fans and Stars and Politics

February 15, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Politics in America have finally come to a head and both sides have long since become vitriolic. I actually think this is a good thing. Americans are finally learning civics again and what defending a democracy requires of them. Millions of people on both sides of the fence have dropped their Entertainment Weekly’s and must-see-tv to join groups, make phone calls and just generally just show up. They’re getting connected in a way I’ve never seen before. My whole life I heard my grandfather, a former coal miner, mechanic and sawmill owner, try to convince our family to get engaged in the political process. Imagine this in the 1980s when I was a teenager. Time Magazine was declaring feminism dead by the end of the 80s. Nobody cared if it wasn't the latest MTV video.

It’s an amazing, yet scary, time right now. People are yelling at the barricades. And don’t think for a minute there would have been peace if Hillary had won; anti-Hillary groups were already threatening election day violence. See “Some Donald Trump Voters Warn of Revolution if Hillary Clinton Wins.”)

So I often wonder how fans are getting along in this political climate, all super fans whose politics don’t match the politics of their celebrity obsession. There are celebrities who are artfully abstaining from even commenting about politics to stars who are right there in the trenches. Think Kayne West fans who are Democrats. Or think of the Trump supporters who like Cher.

When I was 8 years old my grandpa sat me down at the dinner table and asked me how I could be such a big Cher fan when I didn’t even know her politics. I didn’t know how to answer that. I surely didn’t know her politics. Although she was quite clear about them on The Sonny & Cher Show. She supported Jimmy Carter and Sonny supported Gerald Ford. And if you followed the 1970s paparazzi, (which I didn’t), you may have seen her attend the Carter inaugural party with Gregg Allman.

I found out much later that Cher was a Democrat. How would I feel if she wasn’t? The same way I felt about Sonny? And what even is that? Sometimes you and your obsession just don’t match. Personal experiences are just so varied. I remember not liking such or such position Sonny might have taken as a U.S. Congressman. But then there were issues where we overlapped. I wasn’t as big a Sonny fan by that time so it didn’t seem to affect me personally. He wasn't my congressman, after all.

Now things have become very personal. And how are we all going to respond to celebrity activism? I find it hard to believe a Cher fan could just now could be realizing Cher is a Democrat. She’s supported democrats on her television show back in the 70s and campaigned with them since the late 1960s. And then you have the indisputable tweets. I mean the tweets alone! You’d have to be completely ignoring YEARS worth of wonderfully incendiary political tweets. Suddenly this election comes and it matters?

But then I think if I had a Cher blog and suddenly Cher became a rabid Trump supporter, I guess I would struggle with it on my blog. Maybe I would try to work it out there, too.

I also wonder how Cher will be perceived by generations looking back. Like how we now look back on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall when they were the first prominent stars to finally stand up against McCarthyism and the blacklisting of actors, directors, writers and producers in Hollywood. Will Cher be a famous footnote to yet another scary political era? Will her activism give her greater prominence as something beyond a pop star? Will she be understood as a pioneering tweet activist followed by Millennials and pundits who were never really fans of her music or her movies?

Or will she be marginalized by her detractors because she was a "has-been" celebrity who “got into politics.” I guess it depends on who perseveres to write the story.

Here are the political Cher stories of the new year:

Alec Baldwin (Channeling Donald Trump), Robert De Niro, Cher and More Celebs Attend Anti-Trump Rally in NYC (US Magazine)

Alec Baldwin, Cher, Robert De Niro among celebrities at anti-Trump rally (My Statesman—Austin)

Thousands protest in Washington, New York City in defiance of Trump (USA Today); Same story in The Irish News

Cher on the resistance to 'unbelievable narcissist' Trump (MSNBC)

Cher, America Ferrera, Katy Perry and others set to headline the Women’s March on Washington (Washington Post)

Katy Perry, Scarlett Johansson, Cher among celebs set to join Women's March on Washington (CBC)

Ivanka Trump Shows Off $5,000 Dress in Midst of Immigration Chaos … Internet Reacts (Cher joins in the crowdsourced Twitter fury) (Yahoo)

From Shonda Rhimes to Cher to Tim Kaine, Public Figures React to Obama's Farewell Address (Yahoo)

Cher TV Shows

February 15, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

We went away for Martin Luther King Day weekend and much drama ensued. First, we braved a Midwestern ice storm. Then, while we were gone, our landlord accidentally set off our house alarm and the police showed up. We came back Monday exhausted, (after a Chief’s playoffs defeat), to find one of my favorite Sonny & Cher show episodes airing, the one with Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. which I love because they sing one of my childhood jams, "You Don't Have to Be a Star," and it’s one of the few episodes I remember seeing when it originally aired. It also has an amazingly progressive satire of Gone with the Wind where McCoo and Davis Jr. play Rhett and Scarlett.

But it wasn’t taping!! Oh, the horror. I have actually had obsessed fan dreams about this exact thing: I find Sonny & Cher shows in the TV Guide but I can’t tape them, or I find rare record albums in store bins but I can’t get them to the checkout counter. What would Freud say? I don’t have a clue but I was definitely experiencing missing a Cher show anxiety. Then I realized GetTV was not categorizing each Cher series correctly and that’s why the McCoo/Davis Jr. show wasn’t taping. Lucky for me and my obsession, GetTV has been airing reruns of the reruns and I caught the show a few weeks later.

So I’ve become a bit ambivalent about GetTV recently. First there have been the aforementioned DVR issues. There are three separate shows to track, understandably unavoidable, but when I set up a Comedy Hour series recording, DISH can’t recognize all the future airings of Comedy Hours. And furthermore, and this is a persnickety, obsessed, scholarly issue, GetTV mis-titles some Comedy Hours as the later day S&C Shows and vice versa. Criminy!

And then there are times of plenty and times of scarcity, like mid-January when GetTV aired as many as three new shows a Monday night. Then a month later you get no new shows and lots of reruns of reruns. They are keeping us on our toes, DVR-wise.

In any case, there have been way too many shows in the new year for me to even research online. So that whole idea of keeping up in the blog isn’t going to work, even with sketches of recaps. But I do want to address these shows in a blow-by-blow way and have decided that when GetTV has finished it’s run of them, I’ll start from the beginning and do recaps of every skit, song (with links if possible), and information on which channel aired what skits. And I'll include some scholarship that proceeds with the evolution of the show.

In the meantime, to tide you over, here are a slew of show promos:

And here's a Sonny Comedy Review promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q2ihScKfbc

And here's a thing called a Bumper. What is this thing called a Bumper?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ak-yYrVCQ
Note where the bumper says: “the Indian always wins.”

The Cher Show Begins

February 9, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 1 Comment

I'll be updating my concert pages on Cher Scholar with the new stuff as I find it:

Concert overview (spoiler alert with set list),

Concert dates and reviews.

Movies, Music, TV – It’s All Happening

January 11, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Current Events

Wow. So much is happening right now. It's overwhelming.

Here's the lowdown:

– Cher's involved in a TV movie about the Flint, Michigan, water crisis.
– The documentary In This Climate should be coming out soon.
– Cher talking to the Washington Post.
– Cher's new song "Prayers for this World" will come out in the documentary Cries From Syria directed by Evgeny Afineevsky. HBO will air it.
– Cher is being sued over the typeface art of Closer to the Truth. (The rags TMZ and Daily Mail reporting this.)
– Jack in the Box tacos have been in the news.
– The Broadway Cher show continues to percolate. The New York Times article an all the diva Broadway shows and Playbill's article on the January reading.
– Cher tweets about the heartbreaking passing of all the celebrities over Christmas:

"This is tragic. I loved Debbie, she was tough, funny, told the best old 40's-50's showbiz stories and lived through Hollywood bullsh*t. A huge testament to her".

"This is beyond heartbreaking. Debbie was an idol… I have seen Singing In The Rain a million times. Loved all her films… Words are inadequate."

So sad about Carrie and George, I have no words. I keep forgetting and then suddenly remember. Such great artists dying, and many are too young. Am heartsick."

"Talked to her on the phone: ironic, sarcastic and hysterical at the same time. Went to a few wacky Penny [Marshall]/Carrie Birthday parties".

"One time I was talking to George at a disco. I got up, danced six songs, came back, leaned over him, and didn't realize that I was sweating drops all over his shirt. We laughed."

– More media love for Cher tweets: "Cher’s Twitter is the only pure thing left in this world" and "Find a Tiny Bit of Solace in This Cher-ified Chick Emoji."

Cher News is Back

And I'm happy to report that Cher News is back! Actually, it's been up since last March! So much I missed. Go here for all your up-to-date Cher news.

Daniel Wheway, the site's mastermind, has some eBooks out now too:

Cher Bible Vol. 1 and Cher Bible Vol 2. I've downloaded them but haven't read them yet.

Speaking of eBooks, I've also downloaded the eBook Cher Toons by Scott Clarke which was very fun and also just purchased Scott's physical coloring book version.

But over the past year almost, Cher News is packed with awesome stuff (if you haven't checked it out already). There's info about the Syrian documentary, and Cher's song on it, "I Got You Babe" made it into the Grammy Hall of Fame and you can watch clips of Cher on ET (October 6) and Extra.

Daniel also did plenty of scholarship last year, posting Cher rankings for Billboard's Roundups including 100 Greatest Acts of All Time (Cher ranks #43 and Daniel notes she is the 16th highest female solo singer), Vogue's list of 22 Fashion Icons from the Music World (Daniel's recap), Marie Claire's reporting on plastic surgery requests and Cher's jawline (truly odd but interesting), Daniel also recaps a few Oscar Roundups from Vanity Fair, The Independent and The New York Times, and About.com ranks Cher songs (Daniel's recap).

He also reports that Get TV only purchased 30 Cher shows. Has anyone else heard about this?

And two big bombshells:

1. I missed the AXS Cher Biography from last year. Does anybody have a copy of this?? Looks like it has some good talking head Cher scholarship! Watch the trailer.

2. Cher posted a video of makeup tips! How awesome!

So don't miss your Cher News!!

Old Stuff

Recently I came across Paul Mauriat's musak version of "Mama." And we watched the Johnny Cash Christmas special on GetTV over the holidays. I learned that "Someday" is a Gene Autrey song! The Johnny Cash Christmas special was amazing. Watch the Sun City Studios reunion of artists, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison sing "This Train." (Wow…that’s some great TV right there). And the whole cast does an amazing "Children, Go Where I Send Thee."

Whew! And that's just the first two weeks of January!

Cher’s Cover of Walk on Guilded Splinters

January 11, 2017 / Cher Scholar / 0 Comments

Huh…so those are the lyrics.

I recently came across the differing versions of lyrics to "Walk on Guilded Splinters." One of my favorite Cher songs and one that was most likely the closest single to my birth date in 1969.

Cher's lyrics on Google Play

Dr. John's lyrics on Google Play

They're very different. Huh. Cher is singing: Kon killy, killy kon kon. Who knew?

Here is a good video essay of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNd40VOQmPY

Je suie le grand zombie!