Hot Diva Dish: Cher & Cyndi & Pat & Donna & Grace & Inaya

Girls just want to have fun ~ in Brooklyn! Cher came to the outer borough and to Barclay's Center with her tour, bringing NYC native Cyndi Lauper (from Queens) along as her opening act. In the '90s, I saw La Lauper open for Cher at a concert at Jones Beach, NY. It was a fabulous and unforgettable night.

Perez Hilton wrote of the Brooklyn show: "the singer brought some of her favorite ladies on stage to sing with her: Liza Minnelli and Rosie O'Donnell." That alone made this one of the gayest evenings on Earth ever! And then there was Cher, who I last saw on the pier in Greenwich Village, performing on LGBT Pride Day. http://djbuddybeaverhausen.blogspot.com/2013/07/on-pier-with-cher-and-hot-cox.html

The New York Times gave Cher a very positive review. "Her show equated inner strength with Las Vegas razzle-dazzle," Jon Pareles wrote. "No one has to put Cher on a pedestal. She did it herself to start her show at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Friday night. When a curtain dropped, there she was on a pillar in a giant feathered headdress and a silver-and-sheer dress that flaunted her flanks. 'I’m strong, I’m strong enough to rise above,' she sang in her 2013 single, 'Woman’s World,' and no one who’s heard Cher repeatedly ascend the pop charts since the 1960s would doubt it....

"Soon afterward, in something like an opening monologue at an awards show, Cher, who will turn 68 this month, taunted, 'What is your granny doing this evening?' She went on to call herself both a 'drag queen' and an 'icon,' and to say that her current tour... is her 'farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell' tour. Then she gave an arena-scale wink to the video camera. It seemed no one in the crowd would object to Cher touring forever."

Cher returns to New York, Madison Square Garden, September 17 through 22, where her opening act will be diva Pat Benatar (from Brooklyn).

May 17 was the second anniversary of Donna Summer's untimely death. At the time, I wrote the following tribute:

http://djbuddybeaverhausen.blogspot.com/2012/05/last-dance-with-donna-summer.html

May 19, however, is Grace Jones' 66th birthday and to this we give praise:

http://djbuddybeaverhausen.blogspot.com/2012/05/grace-jones-birthday.html

Meanwhile, my favorite club, Icon, in Queens, recently announced that the divasational Inaya Day will perform on the eve of Queens LGBT Pride, May 31. More details to come shortly. Below is my exclusive Q&A with Ms Day:

http://blabittobeaverhausen.blogspot.com/2013/12/inaya-day.html

And that's our diva dish until next week. In the meanwhile, keep on dancing and spread a lot of love! ~~Dj Buddy Beaverhausen

Has-Been or Never-Was? Presenting Ms Victoria Jackson, Tea Party Comic

OMG! I just read the Village Voice article on Victoria Jackson, the lousiest Saturday Night Live member ever! Pictured at right (of course) with her idol, Michelle ("Know Nothing") Bachman, the talent-free, bird-brained, baby-voiced Miss Vicki -- who was fired from SNL for haranguing cast and crew with her Bible thumping and relentless right-wing point of view -- is now trying to climb the ladder of success as a Tea Party politico. Hilarious or sad? I can't decide. Think Anne Coulter with even less class and a lower i.q. (obviously a Tea Party requisite).

In a December article entitled "Victoria Jackson Continues to Spew Absurdities and Hate," blogger Perez Hilton wrote:

That's it. She has to be messing with us. She just has to be. Nobody could ever keep this up without planning a big "JUST KIDDING" reveal at some point.

Right?

Well, if not, then here Victoria Jackson goes again:

"I just went to a briefing in Washington DC, across the street from the Capitol, at the Longworth building at 8:30 am two days ago and it changed my life. For six hours, I saw pictures and names and dates and facts and Islamic law books and Korans, Surahs for six hours and they proved to me… that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our highest positions in government and this is serious."

"Michelle [sic] Bachmann and Rick Santorum are the only GOP candidates so far to acknowledge the above facts and warn against the present threat of Islamic Law replacing our Constitution. Very few people in America are informed and educated as I am."

HA! See the punch line there? You know, the one where she claims that only a "few people are as informed and educated" as she is?

Unless she means that there are only a "few people as informed and educated" as her in the sense that she's so ridiculously misinformed and uneducated that there are barely any others in the world that match her low level… because let's be honest: this is ignorant hatred with no foundation in reality.

Gus Garcia-Roberts' Voice article is obviously well-researched and subtly gives us a psychological insight to his subject. Please check it out at villagevoice.com. (Or, pick up The Voice!) It's a truly brilliant piece of journalism. The Tea Party has hemlock in their brew and Jackson is their neo-Nazi, ditzy-but-evil and foolishly opportunistic darling, desperately trying to cling on to a return to the limelight. (She has political aspirations yet!)

Read the Voice article about her family upbringing and feel sorrow for this creature as it would be enough to make anyone bonkers.

Here's her Tea Party ode and, let's face it, despite her odious point-of-view, it just plain sucks!



By the way, I sometimes confuse her with Denny Dillon, who I really do think is funny. So, when I realize who Victoria actually is, I breathe a sigh of relief.

Nobody Cares How You Wear Your Hair, Darlin'

So howled Tex in the Disco Tex & the Sex-o-lettes dance classic, "Get Dancin'." But somehow it is all about hair, it always is, it's what things boil down to in the final analysis. Everyone does care how you wear your hair after all. All the great thinkers throughout history have said it in one way or another. Vidal Sassoon, father of the geometric perm, famously stated in his ads: "If you don't look good, we don't look good." It gets that serious; it is, as I just said, all about hair, people.

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton knows this. Newly thin, he has become quite image conscious and that's what drove him, perhaps, to write the fashionable children's book, "The Boy with Pink Hair" (Penguin Group (USA) Inc).

In 1948, Dean Stockwell played an 11-year-old boy whose hair turns green in the Joseph Losey film appropriately titled, "The Boy with Green Hair." After his parents (Americans in London) are killed during the Blitz, the boy's hair gets to be this way, presumably from trauma. Or maybe it's something in the air over there. Anyhow, the movie is generally regarded as a parable about social prejudice with a pacifist message I've been told. Subsequently, Losey was blacklisted during the McCarthy hearings just for saying, essentially, "It's not easy being green." That was one bad hair day, although Losey went on to famously direct in the UK and Europe, attaining critical acclaim for films like "Accident,""The Servant" and "The Go-Between." He also directed "Modesty Blaise," "Boom!" (a bomb with the Burtons) and the notorious "Secret Ceremony" (Liz and Mia Farrow (not still sporting her celebrated Vidal Sassoon cut)). So there you have it.

I'm sure Perez Hilton knows all this, too. But "The Boy with Pink Hair," while also using hair as a metaphor, stays on its positive message, restated in the book to make sure every child, no matter how dull, gets it. (No child left behind here.) The message? "Your difference makes a difference." Deep? No. Good for children? I believe it is.

Cartoonist and children's illustrator Jen Hill's work here is joyously goofy and nicely representative of the story's tone and narrative.

Perez, known to be good friends with Lady Gaga, begins the book, "He was born that way...." Coincidence or tie-in? You decide.

Blurbs on the back jacket heap praise on the book. They come from such discriminating literary connoisseurs as Lady Gaga herself, Cher, Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, Dolly Parton and Selena Gomez. Does that give you an idea of the book's target audience? It ain't just kids, honeys. After all, we've gone from green hair to pink on the color coding spectrum, and this kid likes to cook, too.

"'Surprise,' he said as he presented a delicious pink marshmallow sandwich with pink potato chips." If your child is a diabetic or if nutrition is important for your family, this may not be the children's book at the top of your list. But if you want a story perfect for very young attention spans (and me) that's seemingly silly but actually soft-sells a positive message about self-esteem, you might want to consider this for your holiday gift list.

This may very well be the gayest children's book since Bette Midler's "The Saga of Baby Divine," though maybe not quite that gay. Available at Barnes & Nobles stores and on-line, Amazon.com or, in Chelsea NYC, at Rainbows and Triangles, 8th Ave betw. 19th & 20th Streets.