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Cher Puts Fans in the Driver’s Seat with New Set List

December 8, 2013 / / 1 Comment

 

Set

If you are on the mailing list of Cher.com (which you should be if you are any kind of Cher zombie, Cher freak, Cher crew or Cher lovely), you received an email yesterday about visiting her new tour site and ranking 18 of the 50 listed songs to make your voice heard regarding her upcoming set list.

The voting page is a user-interface-friendly ranking list that even has a weighted top-5 mechanism.

I am continually impressed by Cher’s social media worker-bees. This was not only a generous gesture on Cher’s part, but a totally amazing fun thing to play with. I was chatting away like a Chatty Kathy Cher Zombie while my husband watched snowy football all afternoon, rooting for his Kansas City Chiefs.

Here was my ranking and reasoning (for those interested).

First of all, I did not vote for Turn Back Time, Believe or Dressed to Kill because I figured they would probably end up in the show anyway. Of those three, I would like most to see Dressed to Kill because I think Cher’s team would create a good visual segment and interesting costumes for this.

I also didn’t pick songs I may have liked but have already seen many times before, like The Power, Half Breed, Dark Lady, and Take Me Home.

  1. AllAll I Ever Need is You –  This is one of my absolutely favorite Cher songs, and one of my very top Sonny & Cher songs along with United We Stand and Somebody (all from the same record of 1972). Have never heard Cher sing this song live and would love to hear her sing a Sonny & Cher song she hasn’t done in a long while.
  1. Alfie – What a dreamy thing to hear Cher sing this song after all these years. A overlooked fan favorite.
  1. Sirens – One of my newest favorite Cher songs. I know Cher doesn’t love the ballads as much as the high-NRG songs but the world-wide consensus is that Cher does an unbeatable torch song. This was proven yet again on the new album.
  1. Welcome to Burlesque – Yes, I didn’t love this movie but I feel Cher herself knows more about burlesque, vamping, femme fetals and sexy performance than Steven Antin did and could really do a good visual presentation to salvage this song.
  1. Love Is The Groove—I thought a lot about this one. Cher has done this one live before I believe (was it in Europe?) but the song has such a good energy about it and might coincide well with the Zen-ness in Cher’s life.
  1. Favorite Scars – another favorite of the new album, this song actually made it on my annual best-songs (mostly alternative) of 2013 list I do every Christmas.
  1. Walking in Memphis – I know we’ve seen this one off and on in shows, but it’s such a fun, fan favorite. Even non-Cher-fan friends of mine love her version of this song. It never tires.
  1. The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore – This song was a recent hit with my husband on a car-ride to Kansas City. I think this would be fun, campy song to see done over the top.
  1. Taxi Taxi – I think this too was done before in a medley with Love is in the Groove but it has such ethereal lyrics. Would love to see it for myself in a big Cher shew.
  1. Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves – Of all of Cher’s narrative 1970s number one hits, this one really best holds up in the test of time: the most unique, superbly crafted, full of political hypocrisy and so, so beautiful – a perennial fan favorite. Can’t miss with this.
  1. AlfieI Got You Babe – Has Cher even done a full tribute to this song in concert since the 1970s? It would be good to see that. Also, if this is truly Cher’s last venture in touring, it would be a lovely full-circle moment to close with this song, her first hit.
  1. Song for the Lonely – I think Cher said this one was a hard one to sing so I didn’t place it up toward the top (afraid it would be discarded early on) but similar to Walking in Memphis, fans love this song and non-fans love it too. My non-fan friends actually love it more than Believe.
  1. Real Love – Love the 1970s kitsch of this song, an underdog choice.
  1. Love One Another – Nominated for a Grammy and would love to hear it live.
  1. Dov'è l'Amore – Good for some multi-cultural flavor.
  1. Save Up All Your Tears – My favorite Cher power ballad. Her best version of “Strong Enough/Woman’s World/grrrl-power kick-ass-ness.
  1. Many Rivers To Cross – I love Cher's version of this. Recently added it to an album of Jimmy Cliff I made up for my Dad. Although I first decided “loved it but seen it”…it might be interesting to hear Cher revisit this song again after 20 years.
  1. Bang Bang – The same can be said with this song. I don’t much want to revisit it again with the same ole same ole 1980s arrangement. But this song is one of Sonny’s most re-recorded. It’s arguably his masterpiece if one must judge it by how many diverse artists keep re-recording it and how they can deftly mould its moods.

See my ranking: http://tour.cher.com/my_set.php?me=276563

Create your own: http://tour.cher.com/set.html

In other news:

Cher News (via Boston Q) was kind enough to excerpt Cher’s favorite albums list and Top 10 Cher Commandments from Q Magazine. Homework for our next meet-up (which due to Christmas duties, may be a little while): http://www.chernews.blogspot.com/2013/12/q-magazine-interview-chers-10.html

       

New Additions to the Cher Doll Christmas Tree

December 8, 2013 / / 1 Comment

7It's Christmas time again and so that means it was also the time to put up the Cher doll Christmas tree last week and take blurry pictures of it with my iPhone.

This first picture shows my favorite Cher outfit and doll outfit (Foxy Lady) from the Cher show. And since full episodes of that show have not been re-aired in totally, I'm really enjoying reading about them episode by episode in thew new Josiah Howard book.

 

 

 

  

 

6The Mother Goose outfit from The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour was this year's addition to the tree. Love it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I located a Santa hat for the Sonny angel, procured from the head of a little stuffed bear. When I removed the hat from the bear, there was a smaller Santa hat underneath glued to the bear's head. This was a superfluous hat!

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Was also able to fulfill a life-long dream…which was to live in a house with a fireplace mantle so I could put my Mego Cher makeup head on it for Christmas. I ordered a child's size Santa hat which ended up being too big (but which is working in a sultry kind of way). Because the Mego makeup head is bare-shouldered, she looked a bit too naked for my Aunts who will be visiting next weekend. So I added the jester neck piece (which I bought for my dog Franz two years ago).

Merry Christmas to all the festive Cher Zombies around the world!

   

Cher Recipes for Food Holidays

December 1, 2013 / / 1 Comment

JaneSince we’re in the season of big family dinners, it might be fun to bright out the plethora of Cher recipes out there if you’re needing some Cher-themed inspiration for the holidays.

When I was in Junior High, I fell deeply into the world of celebrity self improvement and fitness. This started with Jane Fonda’s book, The Jane Fonda Workout. Christie Brinkley had a good book called Christie Brinkley’s Outdoor Beauty and Fitness Book. I also had Victoria Principal’s The Body Principal, Revlon’s The Art of Beauty and Raquel ChristieWelch’s yoga book, The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program. It was really hard to learn yoga from a book of still shots. Later I got into Susan Powter’s madness.

Fit
But I can honestly say, the long-awatied Cher beauty book with Robert Haas, Forever Fit, was the best of the bunch. Not only was it the most well-rounded, it was the least self-obsessed. It wasn’t filled with copious amounts of Cher photos and had very balanced and real advice and included a big recipe section of low fat foods, about 58 pages of recipes for breakfast, appetizers, soups, dressings and spreads, salads, sides, entrees, breads and desserts. The book also has a chapter on skin care.

Her later exercise tapes were more interesting for the same reason: she didn’t put herself out Victoriathere as an expert, just a student like the rest of us. Although those wacky exercise outfits were nutty!

Swingers
RaquelSo I always enjoy dipping back into celebrity Cher recipe books and just found another one online: Singers, & Swingers in the Kitchen, recipes to get hung-up on compiled by Roberta Ashley in 1967. Celebrities included: The Byrds, Leonard Nimoy, Paul Revere, The Mamas and the Papas, all the Monkees, Sam the Sham, Leslie Gore, Carol Burnett, The Buckinghams, Paul Anka, the Rolling Stones, Bobby Vinton, Donovan, Herman’s Hermits, Marlo Thomas, The Yardbirds, Larry Hagman, Jane Fonda, Bob Denver, Eva Marie Saint, Bobby Darin, Sally Field, Barbara Streisand, Soupy Sales, Liza Minnelli, Don Adams, Petula Clark, The Supremes, Simon and Garfunkel and some others I’ve never heard of.  It’s a slim 96-page book. Sonny & Cher are in the middle with a pork chop recipe and this intro:

Revlon“Sonny & Cher shared a pizza the afternoon they met. That was the day they both had jobs as background singers at a recording session. It’s been Italian food ever since. Cher doesn’t really know how to cook many dishes, but she’s learned a couple to please husband Sonny, who is Italian. At any rate, they always keep a gallon of olive oil on hand, and lots of different kinds of pasta. Sonny always cooks the pasta, and often have it with one of Cher’s specialties.”

It’s good for a game of Catch the PR Spin. Serve with spaghetti

Flax

Mrs. Flax’s Fun Fingerfoods was a promo piece created for the movie Mermaids. Although I didn’t love this 1990 movie, I am charmed by this little book of six pages of finger foods depicted in the film, from frozen fruit kebobs to BLT bites.

Ennis
Cooking for Cher by Andy Ennis is probably the mother of Cher recipe books. There are about 200 pages of recipes and includes a section on Cher’s pantry, kitchen equipment and chapters on starters, soups, seafood, pultry, meats, vegetarian courses, veggies, desserts and extra material of Cher guidelines to being lean, a 10 day diet and menus for special occasions.

All books have interesting biographical information and are fun to try, especially in competition with other celebrity cookbooks. I competed directly with a Jack Nicholson fan in Cher Zine 2 for entrees, sides and in a fat-free muffin-off.

  

The C-Word, Best Foot Forward, Cher History and Thanksgiving

December 1, 2013 / / 0 Comments

CherfeetI just spent an hour working on this post and my Firefox crashed. For the love of God! But my arms are shot and so it’s mostly lost forever. Here is a slim overview of what I said.

Cher scholar Robrt sent me a message reminding me about a good photo of Cher’s feet from the 1970s. I loved this photo as a child: the hair, the tan, the feet, the hand posture, the look, the accent over the E.

Cher scholar Michael sent me an email discussing the negative implications of Cher using the C word. I never got around to covering this last week. I was so wrapped up in talking about the ironic response. I do support people “taking back” negative word meanings. Gay and queer are a good examples of reclaimed words. Third wave feminists believe they can reclaim the words bitch, slut and whore, disemboweling them of their power to offend. However, not everyone agrees words can be reclaimed of their power to hurt. And when groups do try to reclaim words, this can cause confusion between culture groups. For instance, when gay men say something is “so gay” or when black men use the N word, many people can't understand the nuances of one group owning rights to certain words. However, I do believe language is always in process and undergoing change. I do think Cher meant to use the word pejoratively thought (much like Alec Baldwin last week when he used the f**g*t word). She meant the word to be insulting. In this case, we have to ask ourselves, why is this meaning assumed to be negative? Why is a woman’s va-JJ such a bad thing it can so easily be hurled as an insult by men and women?

I’m reading a book now by Kim Addonizio where she discusses writing about sex and the glam-box (my new term). She says the c-word comes from the Middle English word cunte. Middle English. Huh.

 Another friend also sent me word of Cher’s comments about Thanksgiving:

"Thanksgiving is a day to see family, eat food together and watch a movie…Not 2 celebrate the beginning of a GREAT Crime… We gave them Blankets laced w/ Smallpox,” Cher concluded.

This is interesting to me in light of my raised consciousness while working at the Institute of American Indian Arts last year. Some hot button issues in that community, (issues mainstream American is completely oblivious about), would be Thanksgiving and wearing their ceremonial clothing as costumery. I don’t know how Indian activists feel about Cher’s representations as Indian over her career; but I do think that since she has that history of costumery, because she claims Indian heritage, this is a positive statement from her about American Indian consciousness and makes available a high level of public awareness.

Lady-Gaga-The-Muppets-Holiday-Spectacular-will-air-on-November-28-for-ThanksgivingSo after I questioned Lady Gaga’s ability to do variety TV last week, she goes and does a Thanksgiving special with the Muppets. I had no idea and didn’t see it. Was she any good? The ratings were bad according to reports. I wonder if American might be suffering brand confusion with Gaga (similar to what American experienced with Cher between her Vegas shows, Sonny & Cher on TV and the Allman & Woman and Black Rose products and tours). Gaga did topless photos in V Magazine. She releases a meta-single called “Applause” and then does work with the Muppets. Is she an adult or all-American act?

Am loving the new Cher bio. Am very impressed with the copious amounts of research and interviews Howard has done. Am learning a lot and finally, another Cher historian who cares about surname spelling!

For next week: Cher on Vivement Dimanche — see the clip on Cher News. 

   

Cher Feets and Tweets

November 21, 2013 / / 3 Comments

CherfeetI finished reading The Guardian piece. I found Cher's response comment to Sinead O'Connor about women as sex objects interesting in light of all the Vamp skits I've been watching and their  representations of femme fatales. In fact, in most skits on the shows, Cher characters portray a powerful sexuality. But unlike femme fatals prior, her character always comes out on top (no pun intended). More on that later. Cher also talks about how violence in video games is a much bigger problem (such as Grand Theft Auto), and how although Sonny wasn't a "great statesman," he had the ability to bring everyone to the table, Democrats and Republicans. She also speaks candidly about Burlesque and she elaborates on the Salvador Dali, Sonny and Francis Ford Coppola dinner story.

I also read the Facebook Q&A excerpted on Cher News. She talks about a fun Cher Show halloween party, hints around about her tour's opening act and tells a story about her mom buying art supplies after receiving a tax refund. She says she'd like to perform in the play The Glass Menagerie on Broadway (that would be sweet!) and tells her fans "her imperfections are boundless." But in a Zen equation that also means her perfections are boundless. She also says that if there are fires at the house, she always grabs one jacket she doesn't even like.

Fires at the house? Plural? Who is the pyro in Cher's house?

ACherfeet2lso in recent Cutsie news (I can't remember the full Cutsie News jingle or I'd regurgitate it here), Cher had foot surgery last week as she mentioned on Twitter. She's probably crutchin-it-up at home. Her friends and fans have wished her get-well-soons. I'm attaching Cher foot photos here for positive foot energies. Take care of your feet,  some Buddhist said. I've seen quite a few Sonny & Cher videos of her dancing around like Mother Nature. I hope she can do this again soon.

Her final twitter wishes pre-surgery were about throwing in the  "Tea-haddists" and she got into a tweet-fight this week with Sarah Palin, a spat that is full of ironies. Cher said thusly: 

"Go to a dictionary and look up the 'C word'… Next to the definition, you'll see a picture of Sarah Palin! No… wait… she's under 'dumb C word''."

Sarah Palin posted a response from her brother:

"Dear Cher, I was sorry to hear that you tweeted out such vile comments about my little sister yesterday. It's sad because Sarah has never had a harsh word to say about you. In fact, our grandmother was one of your biggest fans. Have a good night, Chuck"

This is interesting on many levels. First of all, Palin's brother must be working 24/7 to defend his defenseless sister. At the end of the day, if you dish it out, you gotta be able to take it, lady. But at least Chuck's sentences have subjects that match their predicates. His message is condescending in tone ("I was sorry to hear about you," a common bullyish tactic along the lines of "I pity you.") The use Cher-Feet-318319 of the words "vile comment" is terribly and comically ironic when used to defend Sarah Palin (who basically traffics in vile and offensive comments). Does Cher care what Palin might have said about her personally? Many of us are not upset about what Palin has said about us personally, but rather what she has said about other people and groups. So that's a pointless point. And finally, he tries to take a jab at Cher's age and hints at her being a has-been only grandmothers were into. This is ironic in light of the fact Cher has been dominating younger acts on Billboard and being invited to appear on the highest-rated TV shows. But conservatives love to throw out this attack at Cher. It defies logic, showing yet again that wishful thinking trumps reality-based thinking. If Cher's such an old has-been, why do her tweets bother them so much? Plus it just sounds weak, along the lines of "nana nana boo boo, stick you head in doo doo." 

Read all about it on Cher News. This way you can avoid having to visit reactionary conservative websites, which are the only ones talking about this story right now.

To read for next week: Cher News reports on Cher favorite song list from BBC Radio.

   

My Sonny & Cher Mesostic

November 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

RrrSo one of the reasons I’ve been lagging at posting in the last few weeks is I’ve been finishing up a University of Pennsylvania MOOC (massive open online course) on Modern American Poetry.The class (attended worldwide by about 35 thousand people!!) was haaaarrd. Harder than the graduate poetry classes I’ve taken. Not only did it require hours of lectures and four essays but the poems were mostly experimental and difficult, starting with Emily Dickinson and going through head-scratching modernists like Gertrude Stein, the language poets and experimental conceptual poets. Our last essay tasked us with writing a mesostic poem.

A mesostic is similar to an acrostic poem (where a word spells down the left spine of the poem) exFin-ale-c06442-dcept a word gets spelled down the middle and the source text is a jumble of words from a “found” text. There’s a complicated set of rules on how to select individual words from the “seed text” that has now been developed into a computer program developed for an experimental poet named Jackson Mac Low and used heavily later by experimental artist John Cage.

We were asked to find a source text and pour it into an online program called a Mesostomatic. The program would do the calculations and produce poems for us based on the formula. Since this is not typical creative authorship, it is called writing by “chance operations.” Most people think this type of writing is hooey but some writers believe lovely art can come from chance operations (Jackson Pollock was one) and some fans of these mesostics call the program an “oracle” for the eerie results it produces. I believe humans read into all art something of themselves. If you want to see something, your mind will see connections. And that’s the real oracle about it. But whether you believe in divine intervention or the power of the human mind, it’s all fun.

Since I’ve been in Sonny & Cher TV Land for so many weeks, I decided to use Sonny & Cher lyrics. I also had to choose “spine words” for my poems, those words that flow down the middle. And I had to produce an essay “explicating” (reading meaning into) the output. Here’s what I did:

“My source text is composed of three of Sonny’s three most popular songs (composed for Cher to sing: “Bang Bang” from 1966,  “The Beat Goes On” from 1967, and “I Got You Babe” from 1965), and one song lyric that was a collaboration in authorship that included Cher (a 1973 reworking of a Seals and Crofts lyric for the song “Chastity Sun,” a tribute to Sonny & Cher’s then-daughter Chastity—now Cher’s son, Chaz Bono).

The spine terms I chose were BIOGRAPHY (because Cher text raises many questions of reinvention, identity, drag, authorship and autobiography); SONNYANDCHER (because the lyrics—and Chastity—were all “authored” in some way by Sonny and Cher); DAUGHTER (in light of Chaz Bono’s 2051624609_c4e89a63b7 recent gender reassignment and the fact that Sonny and Cher both conceptualized their child as a daughter); and the term POSINGATARTIFICE (“posing at artifice” because Sonny and Cher have consistently attracted controversy around the idea of “being artificial”). This final long phrase, however, seemed too much for the Mesostomatic and returned the least amount and the least sensical results.

Because “posing at artifice” produced no usable results, I made that the title of the completed set. I deleted the mesostics I didn’t like, added punctuation, a word or two (noted with an asterisk), and re-ordered them.

The results were very cryptic and I definitely used matrixing (a term from the show Ghost Hunters for the human tendency to try to make meaning from noise) to make my meaning. My biggest “ah-ha” moment in this exercise came with an awareness that being a fan (of anything including poetry) involves the same kind of matrixing.

The formatted poems are attached here:  https://cherscholar.com/files/posing-at-artifice.pdf [13 KB]

In Section 1—Biography, I see black as dealing with being an outsider and a fighter, juxtaposed with the idea of Sonny & Cher music as light music for teenyboppers. The emphasis on rhythm connects to Sonny Bono’s emphasis on the rhythm section when producing albums.

The next stanza refers to lines from “The Beat Goes On” and speaks to “times a-changing” in the mid-1960s. This stanza into the next continues with the idea of perseverance (“climbing, I got so tight”) and asks, are hits proof of value? I tampered with the line (changed his to make it hits…it was so close!), but you can find a feminist reading if you revert the word to “his.” The stanza ends with a kind of a confrontation of the 1960s term baby or babe.

The next stanza can be read as Cher’s image-making and costumery juxtaposed with her alter-ego as a activist tweeter, ending with the Sonny & Cher ethos of simplicity and togetherness.

Section 2 deals with Chaz Bono and his struggles in being Chastity (how she grew “Round”), how he altered his life and “his-tory” and gained “gROUND” in transformation. Stanza two deals with sexual identity and rage, ending with an emblematic sign of femininity/sexuality, the miniskirt. Stanza three brings God into the picture. I was surprised how many times the Mesostomatic invoked God from the text. I read this stanza as ‘God is Good,’ as an affirmation of sorts.

Section 3 is more universal and asks us not to over-intellectualize history and culture (good luck with that) and possibly is the machine’s subtle dig at my attempt to make “posing at artifice” a spine word, although history has changed music by changing the means of production, creating a mass-production consumer culture, especially affecting young girls.

Stanza two says “I got this, baby,” an understanding of the hidden perils of innocence, who God ultimately loves, and how endings are beginnings. The third stanza is one that brought the most chills. We kiss Sonny goodnight (in death) and the stanza expresses a kind of one-ness between Sonny, God, and Chastity as all coming from the same source.

I included a coda of the scraps the Mesostomatic generated after each spine word grouping. Again God is invoked, along with will and hesitation.”

So, the point of this is to show how explicating art takes work and some amount of matrixing and that randomly generating things can be pretty at times.

I created a page for this Sonny & Cher Mesostic (including youtube song clips of the source text and references) from: https://cherscholar.com/cherblog/sonny-cher-mesostic-2/

 

My Sonny & Cher TV Study

November 21, 2013 / / 0 Comments

HopejacksonsI had a breakthrough last week on my survey of the Sonny & Cher television shows. The project all started when someone wrote in to Cher Scholar to ask about a particular Vamp episode (where the characters whine for Caesar). I've always felt bad that I've never attacked this huge oeuvre of work with any real scholarship. I had just watched all of The Mary Tyler Moore Shows in a row this summer and given up cable for a while so this seemed like a good time to open out the Cher tome of television.

I have to tell you, I've found so much to talk about: memes, subtexts, latter-day ironies. Look for this to be the centerpiece of Cher Zine #4. Not this year, maybe next year. But anyway, I finally found the episode my scholaring student was seeking. It was a Vamp skit from The Sonny & Cher Show (which I'm calling the Yellow show as opposed to the Orange show), episode #9, starring Tony Randall as Caesar and Cher as Cleopatra. She's an unusual Cleo this time, however, doing either her Mary Hartman impression or rather more like a whiny Laverne Defazio. (Is there a non-whiny Laverne Defazio?) It's actually very funny but, sadly, not to be found on the youtubes or in any online stills.

I also recently found outrageous evidence of Cher actually ordering a pizza! I was so shocked I captured it with my smartypants phone. As you may know, Cher and Kathy Griffin claim Cher does not, in fact, know how to order a pizza. I'm surmising she may just not know how to look up the pizza parlor phone number. She should channel her inner Rosa.

(Note: I really loved the King Kong hand skit when I was 7 in 1977).

 

Mr. Cher Scholar has been passing through as I've been going through some of these episodes and he said the other day how self-aware Sonny and Cher were and how he couldn't fathom any acts today willing to be so self-deprecating on a show. He said, could you imagine Lady Gaga being the butt on a joke? I wonder if maybe young pop stars might do it once or twice for fun…but I do think many stars today construct their "images" with hyper-sensitivity and would be afraid to take the piss out of themselves week after week. I don't know how many times I've heard the name Bono taken in vain over the past four months. And not only do I have trouble imagining pop stars doing this, I'm having a hard time imagining comedians doing it. Dave Chappelle comes to mind. But you can't have good variety showings without self awareness (see Carol Burnett).

I'm about 4 or 5 episodes from watching all I have available to watch. But I keep finding more in my garage. So many people have sent me episodes over the years, very degraded VHS copies hidden in tucked-away places. One year, my ex sent me some tapped off of VH1s 7 Days of Seventies; one year I begged my friend to send me some from TV Land; in 1999 I bought some on the underground market; some have been legitimately released on VHS and DVD. It's taken me time to catalogue them and match them up to online and book lists. 

As I said, I have plenty of deep scholarly thoughts about the shows and their effects on culture and culture's effects on them, covering topics like

  • Evolving race relations in the early 1970s
  • The evolving roles for women and how the show operated in reaction to and in ironic support of feminism
  • Sexuality and the femme fatale

I'm really enjoying this project and it's interesting for me to think about how the shows are perceived in hindsight and how they may have been perceived at the time.

   

Help Cher Save the Elephant

November 9, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Billy Cher is asking her fans to help her save Billy the elephant from the LA Zoo. She has offered half-a-million dollars to help get him released to an animal sanctuary in San Andreas, the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS).

Like Cher I love elephants and have my own diminutive elephant collection (that I will be unloading at a garage sale next spring). And similarly, I dislike zoos and circuses. So joining this effort seems like a done-deal for me.

Billy is an Asian elephant. You can tell by his little ears. This is an African elephant (dressed like an Indian)…

African elephant

Cher said, "Billy has weighed heavily on my mind for many years. I would give half-a-million dollars for his release to the place that Bob Barker talked about (PAWS). LA Zoo holds Billy hostage! LA Zoo has abused him until all he does is rock back-and-forth, alone."

She continues, "Go to this site: Earth in Transition. 14 Elephants have died in LA Zoo and Billy has spent almost all of his 27 years in a tiny space. Think! You are all so smart and kind, please put your heads together! I've just signed a letter that will be read Downtown tomorrow. Boycott circus!"

This is a continuation of Cher's efforts from 2009.

How you can help: http://www.helpbilly.org/howtohelp.html

I'm not a resident of California anymore (although that doesn't need to stop you from contacting local legislature there) but I did donate some cash to the cause (which was super easy via PayPal).

Chershirt

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cher Press and Dancing with the Stars

November 9, 2013 / / 1 Comment

GauntletsMr. Cher Scholar was very concerned after we returned from Red River Monday afternoon that I might not be able to see the Cher tribute live on Dancing with the Stars so he re-rigged our TV and we were able to get ABC finally. So glad because this was more than a typical Cher performance on a music show (she performed twice), and more than a tribute show (amazing as that was), but Cher was also a guest judge. Unheard of!

And she was delicately political about the whole judging thing, too, other than one 10 second beep where she said God-knows what.

Well, Elizabeth Berkley knows. Follow the stories of her appearance:

I've been a fan so long, it truly is hard to expect a Cher appearance that breaks the mould after 40 years, but this show was truly surprising. First, I had to acclimate myself to all the celebrity dancers. Since Chaz Bono's season, I haven't watched a single episode of this show.

Ozzy Osbourne's son Jack was interesting to watch and his cerebral or anti-cerebral attitude about his experience there. He said he knows how Ozzy get bummed when people muck up his tributes and he just hoped he wouldn't bum Cher. It was touching to see his parents there cheering him on like typical worried parents. Jack did a tango to "The Beat Goes On."

Elizabeth Berkley (infamous from Showgirls) seemed herself a Cher fan, picking "Bang Bang" for her jazz dance as it had special meaning for her and giving Cher a verbal tribute after the judging was completed. She thanked Cher on behalf of women for showing that you can create your own rules and for her resiliency.

Leah Remini also seemed to have a special understanding of Cher and was abrasive and wise-cracking in a way that I felt was sort of its own tribute to Cher. She danced a Viennese Waltz the depicted the meeting of Sonny & Cher to the song "I Got You Babe," a tribute that seemed to genuinely move Cher (although the dance was factually inaccurate in that the meeting was love at first sight only for Cher and not for Sonny).

The guy from the show Pretty Little Liars did a dance to "The Shoop Shoop Song." He seemed to think much of himself and I wasn't sad to see him booted off.

Bill Engvall said Cher, along with Farrah Fawcett, was one of his 1970s fantasy girls. He did a disco number to "Strong Enough" and told Cher what a huge fan he was.Amber from the show Glee did a rumba to "Turn Back Time."There was a dance-off to "Woman's World."

Cher wore two memorable performing outfits, descending for her entrance to sing "Believe" in a demure miniskirt (it's shocking that now a 67 year-old Cher in a miniskirt caused such controversy recently in the UK) and an awesome feathered wig and fringe outfit for "I Hope You Find It." Her judging outfit was appropriately understated (and didn't detract from the other stars).

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There were many dance tributes to Cher covering her long career and pieces of her music played to transition in and out of commercials, including "Welcome to Burlesque,""Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves," "I Found Someone," "Song for the Lonely," and "Walking in Memphis,"

Cher received standing ovations and the show, the audience, and the contestants seemed over-the-moon about her appearance there. Many of the contestants mentioned being "freaked out" that she would be there.

She was asked how she picks dancers for her shows and she says she sees so many talented dancers, it comes down to an "it" factor.

It was nice seeing Cher as a judge, although she was very hesitant to stick out as a judge. Now that's she "been-there-done-that," maybe she'll do more of it. People love her whether she's being stern or motherly. Or stern and motherly.

This week I tried to catch up on my Cher appearances after our weekend trip to Red River. Cher talked on the E! interview about how profound mentoring on The Voice was. 

Introducing her Attitude Award, Graham Norton talked about Cher's friends who showed up to see her accept it (Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley) and how the word legend is overused unless describing Cher. Cher later said legend was gay-code for fun. Cher also said that gay men either "love you or they don't even notice you're on the planet." I would agree with this assessment. Cher also said "gay men love women who are having a breakdown constantly. Judy Garland has nothing on me."

GnCher's appearance on BBC's Graham Norton was also fun. Her drink of choice was Dr. Pepper and she talked about the rumor last year that she had died due to Twitter hash-tag confusion over Margaret Thatcher's death (#NOWTHATCHERSDEAD). She also talked about how lonely the road is. She gave Michelle Pfeiffer a big hug and she complemented fellow-guest Jennifer Saunders over what a fan of French & Saunders, hoping they'd get back together sometime. Sound familiar? Saunders gave that same uncertain look out to the audience that Sonny or Cher probably doled out whenever anyone said the same to them.

Some interesting asides, Cher talked about how bad reviews of Come Back to the Five and Dime ruined the once popular Broadwasy show and she described a very funny dinner she had once with Robert De Niro and how he scared her drag-queen fans.

A UK website called Chart Shaker had this to say about Cher's recent showing in the UK charts:

"Should [Closer to the Truth] maintain its place in the Top 40 until midnight on Saturday, it will earn Cher her first UK Top 40 hit in twelve years but, more importantly, it will make her one of – if not THE ONLY female artist to have scored a solo Top 40 hit in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 00s and the 10s. Six decades. A feat matched by David Bowie (who added to his tally earlier this year) and Sir Cliff Richard who started a decade earlier but has yet to add another Top 40 single to his tally this decade.

Cherilyn Sarkisian. 100 million solo albums sold. Another 40 million records shifted as one half of the massively successful television and musical partnership Sonny & Cher. The woman behind the biggest selling single by a female solo artist in the UK (Believe). That dance number, co-written by Xenomania founder Brian Higgins, has shifted over 1.7m copies in the UK alone. She has won Emmys, Grammys, Golden Globes and an Oscar. And she has just released her 26th studio album Closer To The Truth."

Star Pulse recently posted excerpts of Cher recent Facebook Q&A, which I haven't read yet (see below), where she talked about missing Sonny but imagining him (or joked to imagine him) in hell. She also effused about Jack Nicholson and a recent hand-painted bull he gave her in tribute of the fact they were both Tauruses.

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