Thursday, April 30, 2009

ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

. . . except it's coming from an ultra-right-wing subhuman douchebag! Hopefully the citizens of North Carolina will have the good sense to vote this turd with legs out of office. This is as ridiculous as a bunch of skinheads screaming that the Holocaust never happened.



And the appropriate response . . .



Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Amy Walker Channels all the Judy Garland's

from age 16 to 46, Via Towleroad

Amazing, for us aficionados:

I can even name the concerts she's channeling...
I see:
1939 Movie Wizard of Oz
1950 Palace Theatre
1955 Ford Star Theatre (TV)
1961 Carnegie Hall
1967 Palace Theatre
1969 Talk of the Town or Merv Griffin

Monday, April 27, 2009

the Adelphi Theatre

This just plain sucks!

Thanks Alderman 49, or rather Aldercritter 49, Joe Moore, Cretin, KaChing to you campaign warchest! Always have your finger on what really counts

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Bea Arthur - RIP

Has passed at 86. From "Golden Girls" to Pearly Gates.

Friend to liberals, and gays alike.



I remember her 1st appearance in "All In The Family" as Edith's cousin and Archie's Bane, "Maude".

Then found her on my original cast recordings of "Fiddler On Th Roof" as Yente the Matchmaker and "Mame" as the unforgetable Vera Charles, where she sang the above.

Heaven holds a special place for her like.

Update: How could I forget! Lucy Brown in the 1955 Broadway "Threepenny Opera". It was her breakout role!

'Single Ladies' Invade Leicester Square

Or, Val, would this be Piccadilly Circus?

For my Volleyball Teammate David, Just to make him jealous:

David would have made a welcome addition to this crowd, though he would be the one "shakin' it" from the bar stool. The head roll at 2:07, simply sublime.

I guess this one is professionally staged by Trident, yet still sprung on an unsuspecting populace.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Here's your hat, Texas...hasta lavista douchebags!

Think about it.

There was a write up today about gay marriage in the Redeye. I, for one, am all for it. Equal opportunity to be miserable I say. As a former divorce lawyer, it would have doubled my client base. That said, let's think about it. The equal rights thing is a no brainer. I cannot imagine not being allowed into my son's hospital room because I was not married to their father legally. I know, not the same, but still, I cannot begin to imagine it.

My biggest fear is not that gay marriage will cause the downfall of Western Civilization, we know it will ;-), but rather that gay couples around the country will flock to the states that legalize gay marriage in an attempt to make a statement. EVERYONE should strongly consider their options before walking down the aisle. My fear is that, like alcohol and the 21sit birthday party, something that was long denied and now legal will spark a frenzy of binge marriages. Do you want it only because you cannot have it?

One of the most loving, cute and devoted couples I know is a gay couple. They know who they are, and their bird knows too! I envy their love, devotion and relationship and am jealous of what they have. That they are unable, by law, to get married bothers me. My only question to any gay couple is, "Are ya sure ya realllllly wanna spend the rest of your life with THAT person?" If your answer is no, DO NOT GET MARRIED. That goes doubly for all the heteros and homophobes as well.

Monday, April 20, 2009

The Kite Man

Kerry was the kite man.

Over Christmas we built a huge kite sculpture on the sands of Sanibel, and scattered his ashes around the periphery.



A sweet, gentle, poem made its way to me today. One of the Sanibel family members wrote this poem, who knew him for this passion.


"Julia had to do a poem for her English class about something "serious". She
drafted this winner on her way to the dentist Saturday
- a perfect cloudless, breezy day":


The Kite man
A rainbow of kites,
Above the beach,
People laugh,
As they watch a jungle,
One man to tame it,
Then one year,
No kites flew above the beach,
No people laughing,
No man to tame the jungle,
Now only one kits remains,
Carved from sand on the beach,
And the man,
Has flown higher,
Higher than his kites.
-Julia Spiegel

The Gathering Storm - The Auditions and Finished Prod

HIGHlarious:

And the Finished Product:

Thursday, April 9, 2009

YELP! Doesn't WANT to be Political!

Got this eMail from Yelp! today. Screw them!

Hi there, I'm writing to let you know that we decided to remove your review of Evanston Century 12 & Cinearts 6 after it was flagged by the Yelp community. It is undoubtedly a controversial issue for a business or one of its employees to take a stand on Proposition 8. While we encourage you to exercise your free speech rights with respect to this issue, consumer reviews are not the place to do it.

As our review guidelines state: "Reviews aren't the place for rants about a business's employment practices, political ideologies, or other matters that don't address the core of the normal customer experience." We trust you recognize that our decision impacts both sides of this debate equally, and that our policy has been in place long before this issue emerged.

Regards,CeciliaYelp User Support


So consumerism has nothing to do with service/product provider politics? Since when?!

Assholes!

The song in my head

For some reason I've had the song "What did Della Wear/Delaware" running round in my brain since yesterday. (I won't inflict on you the only version from YouTube I could find - it was a bunch of schoolkids.)

It made me think of Della Jones, the Welsh mezzo-soprano who used to sing with English National Opera in the days when I was a regular visitor. Here she is as Valencienne in The Merry Widow:
Della left her husband, who had been her childhood sweetheart, for the conductor Stephen Barlow. He had only been married to his young French wife for six months. Della was 8 years his senior.
These days, Stephen is married to Joanna Lumley, also eight years older than him. He pretty well left Della in the lurch. She had a breakdown on stage during a performance of Handel's Julius Caesar in Geneva.

One of Della's co-stars in Julius Caesar was the bass John Tomlinson (now Sir John). I found this clip of them singing together at The Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall several years ago. It enables me to name-drop. I was on first-name terms with all three musicians back in the day. Never met Joanna, but my friend Julie's partner was at college with Stephen and they used to have them over for dinner. (Lumley smokes like a chimney, which I think shows in this picture.)



For fans of Inspector Morse, I hope they keep you supplied with Lewis now the old man is gone - in an episode to be screened here next week, Lumley plays a superannuated rock star. Looks good.

Fabulous Spontaneous Performance Art

Ah my Dutch kin being fabulous in a Antwerp train station.

It is so much better than that smarmy movie!



Yes, I come from a long line of Fase's and Vanderplougen's, Vanderpleorgen's, er something like that...

But it seems I missed the train

Speaking of Bigots

They are liars and bad actors...

HRC got their hands on the audition tapes for one of those anti-gay commercials. John Avarosis at Americablog editied them into the commercial:

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

For Val: "Avenues and Alleyways" by Tony Christie

I first heard this song as the opening music for a European based television show called The Protectors with Robert Vaughn (Man from Uncle) the timelessly elegant Nyree Dawn Porter and the late Tony Anholt, whom I had such a crush on when he played 'Tony Verdeschi' in Space: 1999.





Actually, here's the opening of the show, The Protectors...no idea who the bald dude at the very end is. He was not part of the cast.