Once Again - 'Tis the Season

Over the years, this little gem has become the way we usher in the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and while I'm still having a few doubts as to how wonderful this one's going to be, here goes.

Travelogue - Here's Grace (and Oscar, and Oysters and...)

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'Tis the Season

Well, it's time to kick off the festive season, and with that comes traditions - few dearer to me than starting off each year with this little gem as the first Christmas song I listen to on purpose (as opposed to all the elevator music that's been being pumped out hither and yon since something like the week after Labor Day).

After All These Years, Still Definitely Not a Fruitcake

Here at the Café, our Christmas holiday has started, so it seems appropriate to kick off the festive season in the way that's become something of a tradition hereabouts.

A View to a Month

A very happy May Day to all the Café's Gentle Readers, from Miss Grace and me...

Distinctly Not a Fruitcake

In many ways, I truly don't feel like the holidays are upon us until I've seen this a few [dozen] times.

Get This [Holiday] Party Started

Well, if we have to have a Christmas, we might as well get it under way right.  This season, I think we'll look at some highlights of pop-cult seasonal celebrations, and of all of them, this, I believe, is the greatest and most demented.  For one brief, shining moment, this was mainstream American television (Saturday morning division).

For any gentle readers eager to relive the whole superb extravaganza (or those who just need a refresher on making potato-stamp Christmas cards), it's available here.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Heeeere's Grace!

In a span of four days that took in everything from 1,000 ships on the Thames to a right royal RAF fly-past, she was the only thing that threatened, even for a moment, to steal focus from the Jubilee girl herself.

But only for a moment, for this was - Grace aside (not to mention Annie Lennox, Kylie, Dame Shirley Bassey, Sir Elton, Sir Tom - he is one by now, Mr. Jones, isn't he? - and many more) - entirely the trimph of Elizabeth II: indomitable, inexhaustible, as unlikely and fabulous in her own way as Grace is in hers.

Today, I thought, watching her stand - suddenly alone, temporarily without her Duke - at the end of the service at St. Paul's, she enters history.  I wonder what on earth she made of the hula-hooping Amazon who so enthusiastically celebrated on her behalf?

Putting the Rum back in Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum

Just in case you haven't seen it yet this year, the single greatest holiday moment in TV history. What are you waiting for, Christmas?

Beauté Sauvage

You know, I wouldn't half-mind having a Grace-Jones-shaped retractable supervillain's lair. That's the problem with Real Life - it's never as good as '80s Citroën ads.

But then again, what is?

Pull up to My Pity Party

Grace Jones played the Hollywood Bowl last weekend. She was by all accounts spectacular, and this is just one of something like 137 costume changes.

Even though I have never lived anywhere even remotely near Los Angeles, the very idea of not being there has left me oddly aggrieved - a side effect, I suppose of living too damn far away from everything.

UPDATE: And now she's in New York. AUGGGHHHH!!!

Mutual Admiration Society

Well, mutual at least in their shared, sincere, and wholehearted admiration of Grace. I'm going to hope this was a backstage, post-concert shot for Tina, 'cause otherwise she's a mess.

It's Definitely not a Fruitcake.

Or is it?

This is an old favorite, I know, but somehow I never feel like it's Christmas until I've seen it. Really the spirit of the season, if you ask me. Being the long version, with the credits, only makes me realize how very, very fabulous that little moment in time actually was.

Tell Me, Miss Jones, How Does It Feel?

Of course it's a momentous day, carissimi, but we mustn't lose sight of the true essentials - such as the remarkably charming interview that Miss Grace has given to a lucky reporter at the Telegraph.

She must have finally gotten the meds just right, for I've never heard the diva so funny, so sane, and so sage. A must read in those moments you can tear yourself away from less weighty news, like these elections we hear so much about.

She's Baaaa-aaaack!

Ladies and Gentlemen - here's Grace!

This is a summer of unexpected returns - Donna Summer, Judy Garland (make that highly unexpected returns, in some cases) - but few can be more welcome than that heralded by universal rave reviews in the British press, that of the truly inimitable Grace Jones.

To quote the Telegraph, "When she appeared on stage to open with the thundering Nightclubbing she brought all of the eerie, hollow glamour of the fashion world with her, yet her warmth and loony joie de vivre seeped through in every line... All around the gawping, whistling, cheering Festival Hall was the sense that this is how a star should be. Jones was by turns droll and dismissive. She giggled and then turned away in utter contempt."

"Loony joie de vivre" - now there's something to aim for.

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety; other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish."

The woman is 60. I'll have what she's having. Corporate Cannibal, her first album since grandpa was a boy, comes out this fall. If you could stand in line at i-Tunes, I'd be there...

Have You Met Miss Jones?

In her natural element: Studio 54

Uncharacteristically pensive...

Emoting, imperiously...

Simply being, via Mapplethorpe

It's her birthday. Tremble, children; she may or may not be 60.