Category: Women

Posted on

Chick Singers who I have liked

Back in my college days, a friend of mine remarked, after seeing my music cassette collection, that I had a thing for chick singers. I looked at him funny and said “What?” and he said that most of my tapes were of female singers. I looked them over and sure enough most of them were. My favorite chick singers back then, and still are, Blondie, Pat Benatar, the Go-Go’s and Madonna.

Why female singers? I really don’t know. I just seem to like a woman’s voice singing.

Blondie

My first recollection of Blondie was seeing them on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in 1978 or 79. It was at that time I learned they had come up from the Punk scene of New York performing at CBGB’s along with the Talking Heads and other soon to be stars of the 80’s New Wave scene. Of course Debbie Harry was easy on the eyes but the music is what made me a fan.

Although I love “Heart of Glass” my favorite Blondie song is “Dreaming” with the staggering drum line by Clem Burke leading the charge.

Pat Benatar

The first female singer I fell in love with was Pat Benatar and who wouldn’t. She was hot. I owned every single album through “Seven the Hard Way:. Her music was so popular it garnered a mention in the cult classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. Her voice was so powerful – having trained awhile in classical music – and the music rocked. She also had a great drummer – Myron Grombacher who added flair to the music.

My favorite song is “Heartbreaker”

Go-Go’s

A whole band of chick singers who came up through the punk and club scene in LA. Their music had a dash of Surf music in it and that’s probably why I liked it so much. It is ironic that their videos showed them as wholesome while in real life they partied hard – very hard.

My favorite song has to be “Head Over Heels” from the album “Talk Show”

Madonna

Seeing Madonna vamp around on the gondola in the video for “Like a Virgin”, I knew she would be a star. I just didn’t think she would still be popular some 20 years later. She was fierce, independent, and not afraid to reinvent herself from time to time. She came up through the disco and club scene in New York so most of her early music is dance music. I am still a fan of the early albums even after she moved on to more “adult” tones and content.

My favorite song is “Holiday” off the album before “Like a Virgin” called simply “Madonna” issued in 1983.

I still like women singers but only if they are similar to the women mentioned above. That is they have real talent and aren’t just eye candy who “sing”.

Posted on

No moose in the headlights, but Palin still lost the debate

Well it seems Sarah Palin knows how to cram for an exam. Her debate with Senator Joe Biden lacked any “moose in the headlight” moments, mainly because there were no follow ups, but her folksy question avoidance didn’t win her or her ticket any help in the election. Tactically she did a good job but she lost the war. Her effort was a white flag of surrender for McCain-Palin.

The people have spoken:

CNN vote of debate watchers: Biden 51, Palin 36
CBS poll of undecideds: Biden 46, Palin 21

Most scary moment:

IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?

PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

Yes, she wants more power than Lord Cheney. Did you feel that chill?

In the lead up to the debate the right punditry went nuts about the fact that the moderator, Gwen Ifill, had written a book about blacks in politics – as if this some how made her biased. The right also complained about Palin mucking up her Katie Couric interviews – blaming the bad old liberal media and its “gotcha” journalism.

It is a the usual classic conservative attack mode – attacking the media.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon magazine summed this up perfectly:

Go pick whatever right-wing journals or polemicists you want and (with some isolated exceptions) what you will find is this simultaneously self-loving and self-pitying worldview permeating virtually everything they say, think and believe. You can reduce most of their arguments, and all of their group-based drives, to a rudimentary logical proposition: “I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness.” It doesn’t matter what “X” happens to be for any one of them — conservative, male, Republican, Christian, Jewish, religious, white, Western, American — that is the formula that expresses how they perceive the world and their role in it.

Petulance and self-pitying grievance is what fuels them. This endless need to self-victimize would be one thing if the groups to which they belonged were small minorities targeted by a hostile and more powerful majority. But the exact opposite is true. By and large, the groups to which they belong (and therefore see as oppressed and treated with unparalleled unfairness) are the most numerous and the most powerful in the country and always have been. Yet still — nothing is their fault; they face hopeless obstacles imposed by Evil and Omnipotent Forces which hate them; “I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness.”

They have run the country for the entire decade. For the last 14 years, they’ve controlled the House for all but 20 months. They spent substantial parts of the last eight years in control of all branches of government simultaneously. They’ve won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections. The country’s largest and richest corporations — including the ones owning the most powerful media outlets — pour money into their party and perceive, correctly, that their interests are served by the Right’s agenda. But still — they can’t get a fair shake; everything is deeply oppressive to them; it’s all so unfair.

The right’s two-pronged religion of rage and self-pity

So as we get closer to the election – including the next 2 presidential debates – look for more whining from the right as they assume their place on the victimhood mantle.

Posted on

Palin sets bar so low you would need to be paper to go lower

Sarah Palin has many things going for her. She is attractive, has a decent family, and is ambitious. She also had to be able to influence and develop personable skills any good politician needs to get to the next level. After all she went from local town politician to governor of Alaska.

The problem with Sarah is what is wrong with a majority of Americans. She doesn’t have any good knowledge of things a Vice President of a country needs to have to be qualified for the job.Obama Pictures and McCain Pictures

It is pretty sad when someone like me, who is extremely interested in politics, knows more than the chosen candidate for such a prestigious job as Vice President of the United States.

You know the job held by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, founders of this country, Teddy Roosevelt who built the Panama Canal and created the National Park system, and Lyndon B. Johnson, who improved civil rights for minorities and helped the poor.

Palin is like most Americans who have no clue what goes on outside our borders and knows little of important history like Supreme Court cases.

I don’t think she’s stupid or uneducated only that she is ignorant of the stuff a high elected official ought to know before they get the job.

The proof is she doesn’t have pat concrete answers to basic questions like what newspaper or books she reads. She also couldn’t name another Supreme Court decision she disagreed with besides Roe v Wade. Knowing her evangelical religious background one would think she could instantly name Abington Township School District v. Schempp (1963) which ended state sanctioned school prayer.

Then when her ignorance is saved on video tape and in print she excuses it as an attack on her by the “elite liberal media”.

Right. Showing your ignorance is their fault. Yep that is also an average American response – “It’s not my fault its their’s.”

Bob Cesca wrote in his article on The Huffington Post:

The presidency, as we’ve learned the hard way, matters. An incompetent chief executive, no matter how he or she has been packaged, tends to breed disaster. There was a time when we could rest assured knowing that, even if the president wasn’t all there, he was surrounded by competent people who could grab the wheel if he blacked out. But those who are supporting the Republican ticket based on superficial appeal need to ask themselves: since when has the word “competent” been used to describe the current batch of operatives surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin? These are the same handlers who camp up with the laughable “Alaska is right next to Russia” line. Put it another way, the man who first coined that line was Steve Doocy.

In the real world — a world in which America needs serious people making our most serious decisions — Alaska’s proximity to Russia has less to do with national security experience than a ’78 Nova without its back windshield has to do with a truck. It’s just not. Likewise, Joe Six-pack, while qualified for many decent jobs (governor of Alaska, too, I guess), is simply not qualified for our highest national office. Sorry, Joe! And sorry, Sarah. You’re just not up for this, regardless of what you’ve tricked yourself into believing.

Sarah Six-pack Needs To Put Country First by Stepping Down

Just as I don’t want Joe Six-pack doing brain surgery, I don’t want Sarah Six-pack one heartbeat from the Presidency.

Posted on

Whew, I am SO glad I was wrong about Sarah Palin

I was one of those who questioned her foreign policy experience but after her field trip to the UN on Tuesday, she’s put my mind at ease.

I got a good chuckle out of the Moose cooking tips she shared with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

A few years ago I had the pleasure to meet race car driver Bobby Rahal, so catch me driving in the Indy 500 next year. Since I live near a bank, the government will let me deal with the massive Wall Street bail out.

Posted on

It’s Xanadu

There was an AP story on the Internets Saturday that floored me.

NEW YORK – Brandon Purves is the kind of guy producers of “Xanadu” only dreamed about. He liked the Broadway musical so much the first time that he saw it again. And again. And again — for a mind-boggling 86 times and counting.

“It’s nice to have an hour and a half to just laugh and not worry about everything else that’s going on,” says Purves, who works in fundraising for the Roundabout Theatre Company.

Purves, 28, is one of a legion of die-hard “Xanadu” fans who have fueled both excitement and ticket sales for a musical few thought would be a hit.

Swept away by the show’s upbeat spirit, devotees will line up at the box office to get tickets for another viewing only moments after the curtain has come down. They’ll wait to chat with the performers, organize group evenings and swap photos and stories in a burgeoning online community.

Such a reaction wasn’t always expected when the show debuted this summer. Many feared it would be mocked like the film on which it was based — the 1980 roller-disco flick with Olivia Newton-John as an ancient Greek muse who lands in modern-day California and grooves to Electric Light Orchestra songs like “Magic” and “I’m Alive.”

But critics embraced the satirical script and stars Kerry Butler, Cheyenne Jackson, Tony Roberts, Mary Testa and Jackie Hoffman. Even after roller-skating injuries took out key performers, the show kept packing ’em in.

Fans of ‘Xanadu’ fuel excitement, sales

Xanadu is one of my favorite movies from the 80’s. How can you not love Olivia Newton-John, music by ELO, and roller disco.

Newton-John played a muse named Kira who inspires an album cover artist named Sonny Malone, played by Michael Beck, when he falls in love with her. She encourages him to build a roller disco club. Along the way they meet up with a previous “client” of Kira’s – Danny McGuire, played by Gene Kelly – and there is a 40’s vs 80’s subplot.

One of the musical numbers featuring the subplot has a big band challenging a rock band. The rock band was played by The Tubes.

The reason I loved the movie was for the music. Most other people felt the same way. The movie flopped but the soundtrack was very successful. The song “Magic” went hit number 1 on the U.S. music chart.

When I read that it was a “satirical” adaptation I was a bit worried. I actually saw it in the theater in 1980 and didn’t think it was a bad movie. I have it on VHS and I’ve watched it more than a few dozen times.

Check out the cast of the show singing one of the songs on a talk show back in September:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1F8dypj3qZY

More info:

Xanadu on Broadway

About Proudly powered by WordPress