Thank you to everyone who stopped by and wished me well during my recent convalescence. I really appreciate it. Part of my recovery involved Whitney. I wasn’t going to be found dead stretched across a filthy bed looking like a wraith. I had to fight it for Whitney’s sake. We’ve almost reached full closure. The circle that started in Jersey ends in Jersey today.
Did they really think her funeral through? I don’t think they had time to practice. It needs some direction.
A little more Ooomph.
Some pizazz.
A little Sparkle over here at the Whitney Wake PLEASE!
Whitney is rolling over in her tub right now. Cursing at them. Shouting stage direction in her signature incoherent train of thought babble speak. Choreographing her last show from wherever she is watching her Home Going.
Is it wrong? Or an Omen that I was listening in heavy rotation to a mix tape titled, “Crack is Whack” for a month before she died? I sometimes pretend to portend these things when they happen. I find myself saying things like, “The signs were all there…She had the aura of death surrounding her in the end…So tragic and forseeable”.
In other news I need to drop off my laundry and see what’s going on at the mat.
Then I’m off to the parades.
In the rain.
Where I’m sure to catch my death.
And of course it would have all been so senseless and preventable.
Did you know that a certain area of upper Northwest Florida is riddled with caverns and caves? Well it’s true and if you are a land owner in that region and you don’t have a natural spring or a cave somewhere on your property then you are spoken of with pity. Like a parent of a mongoloid child, “He’s a nice person but, oh what a shame about his lack of formations”.
Such is the case of Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna, “The cave has dazzling formations of limestone stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, flowstones and draperies.” Trekking off the beaten path about an hour’s drive north of Panama City you arrive at the cavern headquarters which was built out of carved limestone by WPA artisans. It just has that wonderful federal old world feel about it.
Standing around waiting for the tour to begin and chatting up other adventurers you begin to sweat profusely in the hundred degree temperature, swatting mosquitoes and flicking flies, you become very cozy and intimate with strangers. Once the handsome and single park ranger tour guide arrives the temperature goes up a little more and then you descend into the opening.
The first thing he said that registered was that the average temperature inside the cave was a cool 63 degrees year round. This statement was met with a shocking lack of manners from yours truly and a hearty, “Out of my old lady”. Once inside I immediately wanted to move-in and began decorating in my mind.
This is the ceiling detail, hundreds and hundreds of years worth of work went into this creation.
This is the boudoir with bed of nails.
This is the dildo chamber which adjoins en suite de boudoir.
This is the shower.
This is the kitchen with flowing soda fountain.
This is the icebox.
I hope you have enjoyed the tour of my new home. My next Florida State Park roadside attraction will be Ponce De Leon Springs to take the cure from the purported and legendary Fountain of Youth. Where the waters are a constant 68 degrees and infused with limestone. You literally emerge glowing like a red hot rivet. If my post’s become increasingly more childish then you’ll know the cure has taken.
Madonna is 50! Wow that makes me feel old. Don’t get drunk and fall off your horse this year lady.
It’s Eydie’s birthday. I miss Steve and Eydie they're all over the place keeping the standards going when no one wants to hear them.
All Eydie wants is a little Frenesi and for no one to mention that she's 77.
Last but not least my friend Stacy who resents that she shares her birthday with Madonna and Eydie. She needs a little Frenesi in her life too. I’m sure to hear all about it tonight when I make my annual three-hour transcontinental birthday phone call. We’ve known each other since the third grade when I thought she was about the closest thing to a real live Jodie Foster. Have a happy 43 girl. Um Hum I said it.
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (b. Majel Leigh Hudec on February 23, 1932 in Columbus, Ohio) is an American actress, and producer. She is also the widow of television director/producer/writer and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. As a result of her marriage to Gene Roddenberry and the fact that she has been in every Star Trek series, she is sometimes referred to as “the First Lady of Star Trek.” She and Gene Roddenberry were married in Japan on August 6, 1969, after the cancellation of the original Star Trek series.
Barrett attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She came to Hollywood in the 1950s. She worked at the Desilu Studios on several TV shows, including Bonanza, The Untouchables, The Lucy Show, and The Lieutenant. She received training in comedy from Lucille Ball. In 1960 she played Gwen Rutherford on Leave it to Beaver. She was also briefly seen in the film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? at the very beginning, in an ad parody.
Majel Barrett has been in every incarnation of the popular science fiction Star Trek franchise. She first appeared in Star Trek's initial pilot, "The Cage," as the USS Enterprise's unnamed First Officer, "Number One". Barrett is said to have been cast as Number One in part because of her romantic involvement with Roddenberry. The idea of having an otherwise unknown woman in a leading role with a position of authority, because she was his girlfriend, is said to have infuriated NBC network executives who insisted that Roddenberry give the role to a man.[1] In Star Trek Memories, which he dictated to Chris Kreski, William Shatner corroborated this, but he added that female viewers at test screenings hated the character as well.
Her role in subsequent episodes of Star Trek was altered to that of Nurse Christine Chapel. In an early scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, viewers are informed that she has now become Doctor Chapel, a role which she reprises in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Barrett provided several voices for Star Trek: The Animated Series, including those of Nurse Chapel and the communications officer M'Ress, the felinoid (more properly ailuroid) Caitian who served alongside Uhura. Years later, she would return in Star Trek: The Next Generation, cast as the outrageously self-deterministic, iconoclast Betazoid Ambassador Lwaxana Troi. Barrett, as Troi, would also later appear in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
She also provided the regular voice of starship onboard computers for Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and most of the Star Trek movies. She reprised her role as a shipboard computer voice in the two episodes of the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise that involved an earlier time period--a century before the time of Kirk and Spock aboard the Enterprise NCC-1701. She has also lent her voice to various computer games and software related to the franchise. As a result of her providing the computer voice in the Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly", Barrett became the first and only actor to participate in all six Star Trek TV series, as well as in both the TOS and TNG film series.
Born to a middle-class family, he was the son of an army general. He grew up in Paris, France, after his father was appointed the chargé d'affaires at the Dominican consulate in 1920. He returned to the Dominican Republic at 17 to study law but did not complete his schooling, instead enlisting in the military.He was linked romantically to Dolores Del Rio, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Soraya Esfandiary, Veronica Lake, Kim Novak, and Eva Peron. He dallied with his ex-wife Flor during his marriage to Doris Duke, and with Zsa Zsa Gabor during his marriage to Barbara Hutton. He was named a co-respondent in at least two divorces, the husbands charging adultery. His suave manner and rugged good looks came with a prodigious male appendage and sexual prowess, both subjects of much gossip. Truman Capote described his male organ as "an 11-inch cafe au lait sinker as thick as a man's wrist". At the time, large pepper grinders were sometimes referred to as "rubirosas" in the fast international set.
Born Patsy Louise Neal, Patricia Neal grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. She studied drama at Northwestern University, before moving to New York, where, after only a few months, she got her first job (an understudy in the Broadway production of The Voice of the Turtle. Soon, though, she appeared in Another Part of the Forest (1946), winning a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play. In 1948, she made her film debut in John Loves Mary.Her appearance the same year in The Fountainhead coincided with her on-going affair with her married co-star, Gary Cooper, whom she had met the year before, when he was 46 and she was 21.
Wallace Shawn was born in New York City, November 12, 1943, where he continues to reside as of 2007. He is the son of William Shawn, longtime editor of The New Yorker, and journalist Cecille Lyon Shawn; his brother Allen is a composer. Shawn attended The Putney School, a private liberal arts high school in Putney, Vermont, and graduated with a B.A. in history from Harvard University. He studied economics and philosophy at Oxford, originally intending to become a diplomat; he also traveled to India as an English teacher. Since 1979, he has primarily made a living as an actor. Read all about Wallace Shawn...
"Celia Cruz (October 21, 1925 – July 15, 2003) was an Afro-Cuban-American salsa singer who spent most of her career living in New Jersey, and working in the United States and several Latin American countries. Cruz was one of the most successful Cuban performers of the 20th century, with twenty-three gold albums to her name and has earned the moniker La guarachera de Cuba." Read all about it...
Elva Ruby Connes (October 5, 1907 – July 5, 1997), who recorded under the name Mrs. Elva Miller (and usually simply called "Mrs. Miller"), was an American singer who gained some notoriety in the 1960s for her versions of popular songs like "Moon River", "Monday, Monday", "A Lover's Concerto", and "Downtown" rendered in an untrained, Mermanesque, vibrato-laden voice, often out of tune and off the beat.
Kristen Johnston, (born September 20, 1967, in Washington, D.C., United States), is an Emmy Award winning American stage, film, and television actress. “Best known as the husky-voiced, no-nonsense Lt. Sally Solomon on the hit NBC fantasy sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001) — a role she played, opposite heavyweights John Lithgow and Jane Curtin, for the entire six-year run of the series — fair-haired Kristen Johnson parlayed her success from that effort into a handful of A-list cinematic releases, beginning in 1999.”
Anne Francis (born September 16, 1930, in Ossining, New York) is an American actress, famous for her role in the science fiction film classic Forbidden Planet (1956) and as private detective Honey West in the television series Honey West (1965-1966).
Nell Carter (September 13, 1948 – January 23, 2003) was a Tony Award-winning American singer and film, stage, and television actress. Born Nell Ruth Hardy to Horace and Edna Mae Hardy in Birmingham, Alabama. She broke into stardom in the musical Ain't Misbehavin, for which she won a Tony Award in 1978. She also won an Emmy for the same role in a televised performance in 1982. Additional Broadway credits included Dude and Annie. In 1979 she had a part in the Miloš Forman-directed musical film adaptation of Hair. Her famous vocal talents are showcased throughout the motion picture soundtrack. One of the more memorable moments in the film involves her rendition of the song "White Boys" where she can be seen dancing playfully as she performs the song.
Maria Muldaur is forever famous for just one song and as a folk and blues singer who was born, September 12, 1943 in Greenwich Village, New York.
I remember riding in my father’s car, tuning in the easy listening radio station on Sunday mornings headed for church and “Midnight at the Oasis” would come over the airwaves, it made the ride there a lot better.
Okay since the original video I posted won't let me embed it into my blog I have decided to show some other much better versions of this song...including a drag queen and a hot guy named Said playing base along to the tune. Play them all at once and Enjoy.
Yma Sumac was born September 10, 1922 in Peru. She is the queen of exotica music and during the 1950s she produced a series of legendary lounge recordings featuring Hollywood-style versions of Incan and South American folk songs, working with the likes of Les Baxter and Billy May.
She's my all time favorite lounge artist possessing a haunting 4 octave vocal range and is reported to be an Incan Princess. I remember listening to my Dad’s boxed set of 45’s of Voice of the Xtabay and pretending to be her. The old girl still show’s up occasionally for unannounced performance dates and I remember she was on the David Letterman Show in the late 1980’s.
"Michelle Lynn Johnson (born August 29, 1968), professionally known as Meshell Ndegeocello, is a German-born American singer, songwriter, rapper, bassist, and multi-instrumentalist. She has been hailed in the music press as a redeemer of soul music. Her music incorporates funk, soul, hip hop, reggae, R&B, rock, and jazz. She has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards."
I have fond memories of early morning psychedelic cartoons such as “Pufnstuff” and “The Bugaloos” where Martha Raye “The Big Mouth” would inevitably appear as a witch or the evil villain Benita Bizarre. Good times, good memories, good childhood.
"Culkin's rise to fame was kick-started, thanks to his lead role as Kevin McCallister in the blockbuster film Home Alone (1990), where he was reunited with Uncle Buck's writer and director John Hughes. He reprised the role of Kevin in the 1992 sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which was also a success. Around this time, Culkin struck a friendship with pop legend Michael Jackson, making an appearance in the Black or White music video. Culkin also starred in a Saturday morning cartoon, entitled Wish Kid and hosted Saturday Night Live in late 1991."
"In 2005, Culkin testified on behalf of Michael Jackson's defense during the pop singer's child molestation trial. On the stand, he said that he had never been molested by Jackson, and said that he felt that the charges against Jackson were outrageous."
