Birthday Girl: Trouble Proof

Our very dear TJB has reminded me that today is Dusty's birthday. Here puts a wistful, almost anesthetized, and very, very effective spin on a song I don't otherwise associate with her.

Au Reservoir

Carissimi, the Café is going on a little break.

Once More, With Feeling

From all of us here at the Café (that is to say, the Yorkie, the Mister, and me), it's once again my pleasure to wish each and every one of you a happy and enamored Karen Valentine's Day.  May your celebrations be more successful than the ill-fated and utterly unremembered Karen...

A Pain in the Ice

Two formidable ladies join forces, and the result is... curious.

Redux (and an Obit): Up to the Glitter

Word that Hugh Hefner has shuffled off this mortal coil at 91 seems like news from a vanished era. I ran this marvelous clip from 1969, of soul diva Carla Thomas at a televisual Playboy party, a couple of years ago, and it seems right to revisit it today.

Everything is Fine.

It's David Lynch's birthday. Appropriate, somehow...

Girl Singer

So she would have been 75 today. How one wishes she were...

If You Truly Wish To Be

I'm sorry. Some things I refuse to believe. He couldn't have been 83. That stunning, mad, sparkling mind couldn't have been extinguished even before he boarded the Great Glass Wonkevator this last time. Not that one more thing, right now.

Shameless Monday Camp Explosion: So Special

Thus, the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice.

- Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp

O Cohors, Induamur Spectaculum!*

And now for something completely different...

All the Sluts and the Saints

For no good reason other than it was released forty years ago today, let's spend a few minutes with Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band and their curious semi-hit, "Cherchez la Femme."

Let the Bright Seraphim

Funny the places one can find solace and inspiration.

Birthday Girl: It was a Party

We need a little cheering up hereabouts, and who better to take on that daunting task than today's birthday girl, the heavenly Miss Ann Miller?

So This Happened

Three staunch ladies, lunching at the Russian Tea Room. What one would have given to be a fly on the wall...

So This Happened: Yuletide Edition

Who knew that Cher went through a Kay Francis-impersonating phase?

Three Girls Three

Lo, how the mighty...

Ring It Off The Wall

Today, whoever it is who handles Things Digital for Miss Debbie Harry and company decided to startle me by pointing out that this little ditty first thrilled the waiting world 37 years ago today. As is now quite routine, I feel Old.

See the Man

I don't believe I'd thought of Martin Milner, in anything more than the most fleeting of ways, in 20 years, at least until the sad news of his journey to Fabulon came out over the weekend.

Heaven Much Better

If you're looking for a little diversion for a Sunday (or any other, for that matter) evening, may I recommend the above?  Here, in its glorious entirety, is the video record of the Divine Miss M.'s Depression Tour, which is best known as the basis for her epic double album (remember those?), Live at Last, but which was apparently (and unknown to me) also turned into a cable special called The Better Midler Show.  I just love finding essential pop ephemera that I should have known about during the Carter administration...

Broken Goddess

I rarely wax dictatorial, but today if you're able, I'd like to recommend you do a good turn for a great lady.