![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Here's mine. Click to embiggen
Mountain Dew, ashtray, a year's worth of issues of Metropolitan Home, and a lovely book about the home and yard as art.
Posted Apr 29th 2009 12:00PM by Stephen L. Betts
Filed under: Legends, R.I.P.
Vern Gosdin, whose country hits included the chart-topping 'Set 'em Up Joe,' 'I Can Tell By the Way You Dance (You're Gonna Love Me Tonight)' and 'I'm Still Crazy,' died at a Nashville hospital early Wednesday morning. He was 74.
According to Nashville's Tennessean newspaper, Gosdin's administrative assistant Dawn Hall said the singer suffered "a pretty bad stroke" about three weeks ago. He died peacefully in his sleep.
Born in Woodland, Ala., on August 5, 1934, Gosdin was one of country music's most hardcore traditional singers, although his musical career encompassed a variety of genres. A one-time bandmate of The Byrds' Chris Hillman, he also performed with his brother Rex in the California-based band The Golden State Boys, and later as The Gosdin Brothers.
Gosdin charted consistently throughout the 1980s, with hits such as 'If You're Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right),' 'That Just About Does It' and 'This Ain't My First Rodeo.' In 1989, his Top 10 hit 'Chiseled in Stone,' co-written with Max D. Barnes, earned CMA Song of the Year honors.
An obvious influence on a new generation of country acts, Gosdin's 1982 hit, 'Today My World Slipped Away,' became a chart-topper for George Strait in 1997, and Brad Paisley's 2003 album, 'Mud on the Tires,' included his version of Gosdin's 1990 hit, 'Is It Raining at Your House.'
Earlier this year, in an interview with The Boot, Jake Owen said of Gosdin, "He's not as respected as he should be. To me, he's one of the greatest singers I've ever heard interpret a song. He's just got this coolness about him."
Funeral arrangements for Gosdin are incomplete.
When we strive to become better than we are,
everything around us becomes better too."
--- Paulo Coelho
have to dig around for other pics of the lower half...
[Ed Note - 'meow destruction' was not added, that's actually part of the NY Post article]
How bizarre does a story have to be for throwing three apples to not even get mentioned in the headline or subhead? Exactly this weird, apparently.
I'm doing a strappy Ophelia/Poison ivy frock in brocade. *shakes head*
How punk rock is that?
Here's the beginnings--spent three hours working on it last night before i ripped it off the dress form and came up with what you see below:
--Paul Monette, from "Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story"
Blossom Dearie, Vocalist Whose Wispy Voice Caressed Show Music and Standards, Has Died
By Kenneth Jones
08 Feb 2009
Blossom Dearie, the American singer whose little-girl voice and jazzy piano arrangements offered a unique approach to show tunes and the Great American Songbook, died Feb. 7 at her home in Greenwich Village, according to colleagues.
Cabarethotlineonline.blogspot.com cited Donald Schaffer, her representative, who said that Ms. Dearie, the singer-songwriter-pianist, died after a long illness. She was 82.
Into the 2000s, the blonde Ms. Dearie was tickling the ivories and singing her signature tunes, including "I'm Hip" and "Peel Me a Grape," in the now-defunct Danny's Skylight Room on Restaurant Row in the Broadway theatre district. Salty and seemingly sometimes more committed to her keyboard and mike than to her audience, she was known for telling listeners and waiters to make less noise while she worked. At Danny's, the septuagenarian was not above being a pitchwoman for her CDs, on sale at the venue. Sometimes personally prickly, she nevertheless greeted fans and signed autographs after shows.
Ms. Dearie was born in East Durham, NY, near Albany, in 1926. She reportedly got her first name, Blossom, after a neighbor brought the Dearie family peach-tree blossoms to celebrate her birth. Her given name was Marguerite.
She showed an interest in the piano as a child, and was seduced by jazz over classical. After high school, she moved to New York City. In the late 1940s and '50s, Ms. Dearie sang with jazz bands and plunged into the jazz-club community. She performed in Paris, which led to many fresh contacts for the singer. Norman Granz of Verve Records signed her to a contract of six albums, and the CD re-releases of those discs have now reached new generations.
With her chunky glasses, pageboy haircut and decidedly unsexy look, she nonetheless had a kittenish, wispy voice that was unlike any in pop music. While artists such as Peggy Lee or Julie London boasted smoky sexuality, Ms. Dearie, for decades, always sounded a little bit like a 14-year-old girl caught up in the cigarette smoke and syncopated swirl of the Manhattan club scene.
Her beloved early-career discs include "Blossom Dearie," "May I Come In?," "My Gentleman Friend," "Blossom Dearie Sings Comden and Green," "Once Upon a Summertime," "Give Him the Ooh-La-La" and "Soubrette Sings Broadway." In recent years Verve released two Dearie compilations (in the Diva series and the Jazz Master series) drawing from the label's vaults.
Ms. Dearie also wrote her own songs, collaborating with Johnny Mercer, Jack Segal, Johnny Mandel, Duncan Lamont, Mariah Blackwolf, Sandra Harris, Walter Birchett, Dave Frishberg, Len Saltzberg, Michael Conner, Jim Council and more. Her songs — many recorded in the 1970s and into the 1990s, sometimes boasting unusual "mod" arrangements and singular vocal riffs — include "Bye-Bye Country Boy," "I'm Shadowing You," "Sweet Georgie Fame," "Long Daddy Green," "Flame to Fire," "Touch the Hand of Love," "Winchester in Apple Blossom Time," and more.
Latter-day recordings of her own work were released independently on her own label, Daffodil Records ("Our Favorite Songs," the two-disc "Blossom's Own Treasures"and "Blossom's Planet," among others).
Some of her best known and most loved recordings are of songs by Dave Frishberg, Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Cole Porter and Michel Legrand.
Ms. Dearie once told Tony Vellela of the Christian Science Monitor, "I choose material that I like. The music has to be of a certain standard. If the music is no good, I'm not interested in the song."
In 1983 Ms. Dearie was the first recipient of the Mabel Mercer Foundation Award.
A new generation of listeners knew her voice from the 1970s educational cartoon TV series "Schoolhouse Rock!," for which she sang "Figure Eight," "Mother Necessity" and "Unpack Your Adjectives." She also sang obscure show music on the idiosyncratic record producer Ben Bagley's series of "Revisited" series on his own Painted Smiles label.
=
More and more, we aren't recognizing artists for what they're painting -- we're freaking out about what artists are painting on. A framed masterpiece is nice, but a grizzly bear you painted on a turkey feather is sweet. To further accentuate the distinction between a traditional canvas and a ZOMG evoking stand-in, we've curated an exhibit of sorts of our 15 Favorite Painted Things. Hands, teeth, coffins and guns, television sets etc. -- prepare the FW e-mail, you guys.
http://www.urlesque.com/2008/12/04/15-b
LOS ANGELES (Dec. 12) -- Pin-up icon Bettie Page died in Los Angeles on Thursday after falling ill with pneumonia following a heart attack earlier this month. She was 85.
Page was a ubiquitous sight during the 1950s, propelled to stardom when she posed for Playboy as Miss January 1955. Soon her image was gracing playing cards, record albums and bedroom posters across the country.
She stopped modeling in 1957, retreated from the public spotlight and turned to religion. She enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the 1980s, as a new generation of fans became obsessed with her legacy.
Her agent, Mark Roesler, said Page was admitted to a Los Angeles-area hospital four weeks ago. She never regained consciousness after suffering a heart attack earlier this month.
With her dark bangs, alluring blue-gray eyes and wide smile, Page cultivated an innocent girl-next-door persona. The one-time school teacher was nice, but clearly also naughty. Some of her photos featured spanking and bondage.
"Bettie Page embodied the sterotypical wholesomeness of the Fifties and the hidden sexuality straining beneath the surface," authors Karen Essex and James L. Swanson wrote in their 1996 book "Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend."
Trailer for 2006's 'The Notorious Bettie Page' Starring Gretchen Mol
Page professed to be mystified by all the attention, saying she never felt particularly attractive and had to wear a lot of makeup to cover up her large pores. After she found God, she was initially ashamed of having posed nude.
"But now most of the money I've got is because I posed in the nude," she told Playboy last year. "So I'm not ashamed of it now, but I still don't understand it."
Bettie Mae Page was born on April 22, 1923, in Nashville, one of six children. She and two sisters were sent to an orphanage after her father went to jail and her mother could not cope on her own. Page later described her father as "a sex fiend" who started sexually molesting her when she was 13.
Page, armed with an arts degree with Peabody College in Nashville, did her first modeling work in the 1940s after moving to San Francisco with the first of her three husbands. After they divorced in 1947, she pursued modeling in New York. Photos from a shoot with Miami photographer Bunny Yeager ended up in the pages of Playboy.
The layout featured Page winking at the camera wearing only a Santa hat as she decorated a Christmas tree. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner described it as "a milestone in the history of the magazine," which he had founded less than two years earlier.
Later in life, Page was furious that Yeager made a fortune from the photos and never compensated her.
Some American lawmakers were not as impressed with her modeling abilities. Page was served with a subpoena to appear before U.S. Senate investigators trying to discover a link between juvenile delinquency and pornography. Page never appeared. Soon after, she completely disappeared from the scene.
After two other brief marriages failed, Page battled acute schizophrenia beginning in the early 1970s. Her comeback gathered momentum with the 1991 movie "The Rocketeer," based on a comic book where the hero's girlfriend was Page. Fan clubs and websites proliferated, and Page made a good living signing memorabilia at conventions. On the rare occasions that she gave interviews, she insisted that she not be photographed.
Page had no children. There was no immediate information about funeral plans.
Douglas Yeager said Odetta passed away late Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, after a decade-long fight with chronic heart disease and pulmonary fibrosis in her lungs.
"May Odetta's luminous spirit and volcanic voice from the heavens live on for the ages," Yeager said in a statement. "Her voice will never die."
Odetta Holmes, born in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 31, 1930, told the Times in a 2007 interview the music of the Great Depression, particularly the prison songs and work songs from the fields of the deep South, helped shape her musical life.
While she recorded several albums and sang at New York's Carnegie Hall among other prominent venues, Odetta is perhaps best remembered by most Americans for her brief performance at the August 1963 march on Washington, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement at which she sang the song "O Freedom."
The Times said Rosa Parks, the woman who launched the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, was once asked which songs meant the most to her. "All the songs Odetta sings," was Parks' reply.
Odetta, who moved from Alabama to Los Angeles with her mother in 1937, earned a music degree from Los Angeles City College. But she told the Times her training in classical music and musical theater "was a nice exercise, but it had nothing to do with my life."
She said she found her true voice by listening to blues, jazz and folk music from the African-American and Anglo-American traditions.
Odetta began singing professionally in a West Coast production of the musical "Finian's Rainbow," but said she found a stronger calling in the coffeeshops and nightclubs of San Francisco.
Her first solo album, "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues," influenced another American folk legend -- Bob Dylan. "The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta," Dyland said in a 1978 interview with Playboy magazine.
In that album, Dylan said he heard "something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record," which included "Mule Skinner," "Jack of Diamonds" and "Water Boy."
In the early days of the civil rights movement, Odetta said her songs channeled "the fury and frustration that I had growing up" in segregated America. The many benefits she headlined helped underwrite the movement's work.
While Odetta's career cooled and her performances and recordings became fewer after the late 1960s, she retained her vocal and dramatic power even late in life. "Odetta's voice is still a force of nature," critic James Reed of the Boston Globe wrote of a December 2006 performance.
RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday November 19, 2008
Print This Email This
Nationally syndicated conservative columnist Kathleen Parker believes that the Republican Party's recent election woes can be summarized as "Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D."
In her latest column, "Giving Up on God", Parker cautions Republicans not to "overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit."
Writes Parker, "To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh."
After Obama's election, "like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian," she continues.
"Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians," observes Parker. "Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting."
Continues Parker, "It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs."
After calling for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to quit the race in a September 29 column entitled "How Palin can save McCain," Parker revealed that she received hate mail from angry right-wingers.
"Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves," Parker had written. "She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country."
Two days later, Parker wrote, "Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should 'off' myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated?"
Undoubtedly, Parker's e-mail box will fill up with angry invectives, threats, and, perhaps, prayers for her soul. And the same right-wing bloggers that claimed to have never heard of her before her infamous Palin column will most probably again blog ignorance.
by AP News
eHarmony agrees to provide same-sex matches
Settlement with NJ calls for eHarmony to provide same-sex matches
Staff
AP News
UMM...no thanks
Nov 19, 2008 11:07 EST
Online dating service eHarmony is adding another personality trait to its 29 dimensions of computability.
The California-based company will begin providing same-sex matches under as part of a settlement with New Jersey's Civil Rights Division.
Garden State resident Eric McKinley filed a complaint against the online matchmaker in 2005.
Under terms of the settlement, the company can create a new or differently named Web site for same-sex singles. The company can also post a disclaimer saying its compatibility-based matching system was developed from research of married heterosexual couples.
Neither the company nor its founder, Neil Clark Warren, admit any liability.
In addition, eHarmony will pay the division $50,000 to cover administrative costs. It will pay McKinley $5,000 and give him a free one-year membership to its new service.
