I Found Some Blog...by Cher Scholar

Maureen McCormick Meets Cher

Maureen McCormick’s book about life as a Brady Bunch kid, among other subjects is now available. Cher Scholar Robrt sent me the excerpt where McCormick writes about meeting Cher.

The setup: the group The Brady Kids had their first musical appearance at a music industry show at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Sonny and Cher were there and met the Brady’s backstage.

I was enamored of Sonny and Cher. I couldn’t take my eyes off Cher. It was the first time I had been around a woman who thoroughly mesmerized people, who commanded your attention with her looks. We were introduced to her backstage. She was with her daughter, Chastity, a tiny blond cherub with her mother’s expressions. Eve (Plumb) held Chastity’s hand and sweetly asked, “Can you say ‘elephant’?”

Before she could respond, Cher cracked, “She can say a hell of a lot more than elephant, that’s for sure.”

First of all, in my fantasy version of this episode Cher says “She can f*#king say a lot more than elephant, that's for sure.” I don’t know why but that’s more believable to me for some reason.

Secondly, this brief exchange is interesting on many levels. For one, it shows how caustic and coarse Cher could be even among teen celebrities and her own kid. I’m not judging that; but I can attest to being jarred by it the first time I read Cher's language peppered with the f-bomb all through that People Magazine article of 1979. I was nine years old and sick with the flu at the time and my parents brought me home a milkshake and this Cher gift (Cher gifts becoming somewhat of a rare occurrence after it started to occur to them that I wasn’t outgrowing this Cher fetish). And this was right when my illusions of Cher being the classiest, vulgar-free princess were first shattered. I f*#king got over it but it took a while.

Secondly, it also shows how even the most lusted after teen blonde icon of the early 70s, Marsha Brady, #1 on every boys ToDo list and #1 on every gals ToLookLike list, was actually enamored of Cher who she saw as fully commanding with her looks; and meanwhile Cher is coveting the look of blonde princesses such as her mom, sister and Marsha-Brady-types. It’s insane, absolutely the stuff Dr. Seuss Sneetches fables are made of and evidence that our collective insecurities cause us to chase our own tales like idiots.

And not only could Chastity say the world elephant, she had probably already ridden one in that parade by then.    

Gay Idol (Continued)

Where does Cher rank in gay icon-dom, Part 2? Margaret Cho is interviewed by After Ellen and she has the following to say:

AE: In a girl fight to the death for the title of Ultimate Gay Icon, who would win: you, Cher, Liza or Madonna?
MC: Oh, my God, I think it would have to be Cher.

AE: Why?
MC: Cher is the greatest.

AE: No, I mean a knock-down, drag-out.
MC: Oh, I don't know. I think Cher could really kick ass. Or Madonna.

Margaret’s opinion matters in Gay Icon-dom, as she’s an underground Icon herself. This is a good sign that she sees Cher neck-and-neck with Madonna.
 

Battle of the Titans

Gay Spy lists Cher as one of the top gay icons. And for whom is this news?  Amazingly, she’s rated #7 of 10! Here’s my reworking of this list based on my know-it-all understanding of gay iconoclasting.

1. and 2. Madonna v. Kylie - This is a tie depending upon whether you’re European or American and is a ferocious flaming war of the Divas that will never die. I know this because a battle on the topic was often raging in the defunct Ape Culture forum. Who will win, we do not know; but their absolute domination in spirit and creativity in videos and live shows will keep them battling for the top spot for a while to come.

3. Cher – I believe Cher has surpassed Babs in the last ten years and is gaining strength.

4. Barbra Streisand – who would be at list top if she still had hits.

5. Shirley Bassey – for the gays with taste, as Margaret Cho's grandmum would say.

6. Dusty Springfield – ditto (speaking of Jerry Wexler...Cher’s Jackson Highway album was recorded the same summer with the same producers (almost) as one of the Earth’s greatest albums Dusty in Memphis)

7. Elton John – too fussy to be #1 and his latest songs are worse than the latest songs by Stevie Wonder.

8. Kate Bush – Well loved but a bit obscure for mainstream numbers.

9. Christina Aguilera – She’s so young yet and doesn’t have the I've-been-around-forever survivor-boost to be near the top of the list.

10. Britney Spears – Last because how long can fans survive that sinking ship?

Conspicuously missing from the list: Judy Garland who should hover either above Cher or above Barbra, I'm not sure. What do you think?

   

Kathy Griffin Speaks On Her Gay Fan Base

From Reality TV Magazine: "The gays love me. I'm like Cher almost. I'm like Cher Light."

   

Elton John Influenced by Cher?

For the last few weeks I’ve been obsessed with a VH-1 show called Classic Albums. It’s similar to my obsession with Project Runway in that I love to see a project come together. I love to learn how artists of any kind make choices and decisions along the way.

Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was an amazing episode of Classic Albums. Many iconic albums seem labored over. Not this one. It’s like he whipped it out and went home early. One comment he made was very interesting to me as it related indirectly to Cher.

Elton said he started out only wanting to write songs with Bernie Taupin. He didn’t want to be a lead singer or be a singer at all. But they couldn’t find anybody who would record their songs. So they decided to record their songs themselves. They decided Elton would sing; but it just as well could have been Bernie. And Elton said that by the Yellow Brick Road album in 1973 he had finally come into his own singing style. Before that, he struggled to define a style.

Which is interesting because in a few earlier recordings it always seemed to me like Elton John was trying to sing like Cher. In fact, in the mid to late 1970s when I would often hear the song "Levon" on the radio, (Levon was a hit in 1972), I didn’t yet know who Elton John was and I would always be confused. Is that Cher? I don’t think that’s a Cher song. How could there be a Cher hit on the radio and I wouldn't know about it? (I was seven or eight and already a know-it-all Cher Scholar beeotch.) But yet it sounds just like Cher!

Later when I knew it was an Elton John song, I still thought it sounded like Cher.

Speaking of the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, does anybody think "Bennie and the Jets" sounds like an homage to S&C-like acts? Or more specifically about a group like the Ronettes but with the fashion sense of Sonny & Cher?

...Hey kids...(something, something, something)...electric music, solid walls of sound...(blah, blah, blah)...have you seen them yet...oooh, but they’re so spaced out...they’re so weird and they’re wonderful...Bennie, she’s really keen...she’s got electric boots...a mohair suit...you know I read it in a magazine...b-b-b-Bennie and the Jets...

According to VH-1 Classic Albums, the audience sounds are all fake, complete with British peoples clapping on the off-beats as apparently they are rhythmically challenged this way.

Turns out the audience cheering is from a Jimi Hendrix show! And people give Cher drama for her fake voice box bits. Hmmm. So it’s only cool when Elton fakes it...dressed in feathers.

 

Happy Mother’s Day!

For all the vampy mothers out there...

I wonder who picked up more makeup tips here: Chastity or Elijah? I never watched my mother put on makeup because my mother always puts on makeup in the car.

Best Movie Mom

Cher was listed as one of the best movie moms. Ah! That’s sweetness. She’s played one kick-ass moms. Was she technically a mom to that monkey in Good Times? No, I guess he was just a house guest. They did have that bald son chopping wood out back. In Witches she was a mom. Her teenage daughter looked put-upon...and frustrated about where to put her Richard Simmons video tapes amongst all the giant booby doll sculptures. In both Mask and Mermaids, Cher-as-mom always did a big scene of yelling, not a lot of cooking (a roast and some finger foods), and always flirted with men about town.

Does this describe your mom? My mom is unlike any of Cher’s movie moms. It’s a stretch but maybe she’s like Ben’s mom in Mask except she doesn’t ride a Harley or smoke pot. A few years ago, my mother wrote in to Ask Cher Scholar. This is a good excerpt of some of her ongoing concerns.

Which Cher Movie Mom is your mom most like?

Does Your Mom Look Like This?

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/cher%2Blalanne/video/x1wlsc_cher-jack-lalanne-health-spa-commer

Demanding Moms

Does your mom demand that you send her a physical card for Mother’s Day and not just an e-card? Mine does. I learned that the hard way last year. I call this a Mom Rider (a list of things Mom demands).

Concert riders are discussed on the site After Ellen. The comments about Cher made me laugh out loud.

Cher — If you've ever seen Cher live, you know she changes her costume more than she sings songs. In her rider, she requires a room just for her wigs. Cher also refuses to wear a backstage pass. I'll give her that one: if you don't know Cher on sight, you have no business working at an arena.

Here’s more of Cher's rider on Smoking Gun.

I hope everyone has a good Mother’s Day: whether your mom is cool, dysfunctional, or has passed on.

   

Peripheral Melodrama

It's been quite a week of celebrity scandals. One for the books, you might say. What a sad story is the life and death of Anna Nicole. If you’re interested in my thoughts, check out the Ape Culture blog.

 

This Ryan O’Neal family drama is particularly ridiculous. If you haven’t heard, apparently there was a brawl between Ryan and his sons and a girlfriend or his son and a girlfriend or his sons with him intermediating. Everyone has a different story but long story short: girlfriend has a black eye. In any case, one son is accusing Ryan of battery, Tatum appears to be is supporting her brother who is, for some reason, telling her to bug off. And meanwhile, the step-brother was allegedly tied up in a basement at one part of the fracas and Farrah, his mother, is just a mess over it. And that last part is the only thing that’s not news.

   

I saw the E! True Hollywood Story on Ryan which, if it is to be believed, suggests he has banked up a dastardly large amount of bad karma in his life…which is probably what is kicking him in the fracas right about now. Whether he did anything or not.
 
Which inevitably brings us to Faithful, that painfully slow and unbelievable Cher movie that came and went back in the mid 90s. Why-oh-why did Cher get tangled up in a Ryan O’Neal movie thereby forcing me to suffer through his awful, charismatically-challenged, whiney performance? Much like his performance in front of the paparazzi this week. Is there a wailing wall for situations such as this?

I have never in my whole life understood the hoopla over Ryan O’Neal. I’ve always seen him as a over- rated Playboy, skinny (now bloated), pasty-faced, white bread, absentee father near-do-well who has skated by his whole life all too easily like some asshole high school sports hero from some Americana small town. To add insult to injury he carried around some air of Hollywood entitlement and I just don’t get it. On top of that he raised dysfunctional kids. Remember Tatum on The Cher Show? Awww…poor little white-trash rich girl. She’s a mess now. And she’s the good one!

    

Ryan is one of those people who remind me of that great scene in The Color Purple when Celia’s sister Nettie is running away. I see Nettie staggering back along the outside of the fence sobbing, “Until you do right by me, everything you do is gonna fail!”…except it isn’t Danny Glover she’s cursing at, it’s Ryan O’Neal.

    

By the way, my iPod shuffle feature continues to be an education in juxtaposition. Yesterday, I heard back-to-back Sonny’s ode “Laugh at Me” (S&C Live Vol. I version) followed by Neil Diamond’s “Captain of a Shipwreck.” And a most interesting, groovy shipwreck it was.

 

Wait a minute....

Judge not ye Cher fan, least ye be judged. Shortly after I posted that Diva Skank post, I remembered a public faux pas that happened with Cher back in 1979 at a roller skating party. Some photographer captured Cher's "shelf" (as my mother would call it) when the camera flash penetrated the mesh of Cher's black top. Unexpectedly. It was scandalous. People wondered the same thing at the time: was that an accident or a skanky publicity stunt? I can't find the paparazzi shot, but it looked something similar to this outfit to the left.

Truly, Shakespeare (and Agatha Christie) had it right: there's nothing new under the sun.

   

Diva Stank

So I'm assuming everybody has seen the recent skanky Britney Spears photos. If you're underage, I'm hopefully assuming you haven't. I'm not quite sure this was the best way to clean up an image after Kevin Federline's long-overdue exit; but I'm not a bonafide Stylist so what do I know about the latest celebrity look.

In a recent New York Post blurb, Cher's publicist, Liz Smith, encourages Britney to hang with Cher instead of Paris Hilton, saying Cher is "clever and level-headed." Liz also snipes that Cher is "actually famous for something."

Now, I wholeheartedly agree with Liz; but I know more than a few snarky rock fans out there who will jump all over that one. Cher once had her own legitimacy problems out in the arena of public opinion.

In any case, haven't they all released perfume lines? Heiress, Curious, and Uninhibited. Although, rumor has it Cher now wears a chocolate sent called Comptoir Sud Pacifique Amour de Cacoa. Go buy these if you simply must smell like your favorite Diva or if you're Britney and you have some recent smell of public skank to cover. Britney! Don't make Paris look angelic, now. What would Bob Dole think?

Anyway, Cher wouldn't hang out with Paris Hilton. Cher's had enough drama with the Hilton's of this world, way back to 1965 when Sonny & Cher tried to stay at the London Hilton and press reported them getting booted for looking like skanks themselves. I found this photo today on Google images. It purports to be S&C actually at the Hilton back when Paris, who wasn't born until 1981, was just some skank-potential floating around her mum's young fallopian tubes.    

Well at least Cher can exit a car like a hippie lady in those pow-wow chaps.

   

The Cheekbones of Katharine Hepburn

Hey now, the Official Cher Fan Club site is up again! I’m excited. For a minute. Then I find out the Join feature is still disconnected. “Check back soon.” Oh, you can count on it. So my wait to join this Cher fan movement continues. And I continue to feel like an outsider to their particular shenanigans.

As I’m surfing through their website, I’m also watching reruns of the 70s talk show classic, The Dick Cavett Show (there are no fan sites of Dick Cavett--don't think I didn't try). Cavett Show reruns are on my roommate's tivo. This one is Katharine Hepburn. For about five years I’ve been working on a long-form Hepburn poem based mostly on Barbara Leamings biography of her family history, "Katharine Hepburn: Star as Feminist" by Andrew Britton (read my review), "The Making of The African Queen" by Hepburn herself and "Tracy and Hepburn" by Garson Kanin (Kanin and Ruth Gordon and Hepburn and Tracy were apparently a friendly foursome). Anyway, that mess of verse is now sitting unfinished in a box. Meanwhile, I’m watching this show as I blog, thinking she sure is a Chatty Cathy. But this is actually an historical TV moment, the Cavett episode where she throws down one of my favorite Hepburn quotes. I get vaklempt every time I hear it excerpted on a Hepburn documentary:

Fear is what you and I suffer from trying to be fascinating; which is asinine position to be in, you know, really. Here I am and aren’t I great department and it’s embarrassing; and you’re never sure that you can do it. If you have been taught basic freedom from fear and a basic belief in what you’re doing that is sufficient to carry you when everyone and his uncle thinks you’re wrong; and you still think, God  damn it, I don’t think I’m wrong. I think I’m right and I’m gonna do it.

Cavett then quotes someone who stated Hepburn had the best cheekbones this side of Dover. This side of Dover: that must be an old 70s turn of phrase. Hepburn does have great cheekbones. But Cher’s are better. Well, they were better when Cher carried more of a gaunt look. I hope that’s not an effect of Botox, loss of cheeckbone definition. Because that's a high price to pay for a lack of wrinkles. I’d go for the cheekbones any day and twice on Sunday. But then I’m a true blue for people with beautiful cheekbones. My short list: Cher, John Waite, Katharine Hepburn. All the gals in Witches of Eastwick have good cheekbones.