The Loveliest Donna Summer Image There Is
If you want to forget all the gay controversies that surrounded her and just remember the piping hot music, you can't beat this Alvaro illustration of the scintillatingly sexy singer Donna Summer.
If you want to forget all the gay controversies that surrounded her and just remember the piping hot music, you can't beat this Alvaro illustration of the scintillatingly sexy singer Donna Summer.
It was on a delicious little aria you may have heard of called "Happy Birthday."
At the HBO screening of Renee's YoungArts Master Class, the diva guided the crowd on singing that tune to YoungArts' Lin Arison.
I gamely started on the first few notes, but got a little intimidated as Fleming's voice soared as if she were doing Il Trovatore.
She and some brave other people finished out the tune.
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Just say that to yourself over and over again:
"Grace Jones singing 'Tomorrow' from Annie" until you believe it--because it was a reality, honey.
In 1977, the exotic Jamaican-born disco chanteuse lipsynched her version of the bouncy moppet showtune on a syndicated TV show called Celebrity Cabaret as jaws dropped.
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The queen of disco is gone, but her music will live on.
Here are my fave Donna Summer songs to boogie to through eternity:
*"No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)"
A slow-percolating, then explosive duet with Barbra Streisand. Could you imagine just being a fly on the wall in that recording studio?
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Before you all scream "Disturbia!", let me tell you the five titles that best encapsulate my own life's experience.
No, not "My Way". (Too self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing.) Not "Firework". (Way too annoying.) And definitely not "Redneck Woman". (I ain't no redneck!)
In no particular order, the song titles that do scream out my name are:
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Resorts casino sent me down for a gayola night of lavender luxury.
All on the lucky 13th floor of their Ocean Tower, I got to drop by:
*Pro Bar, the only gay bar in an Atlantic City casino.
Potted palms dot the dancefloor, where lesbians flail around, mixed with some gay guys, and a few slumming bachelorettes, as a hot go-go boy oversees from his perch. On Friday night, two yummy sheet cakes celebrated the place's one-year anniversary. Congrats, folks. And maybe it was my nudging that now has them openly promoting this as a gay bar? Whatever the case, I'm pro Pro Bar.
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Uptown cabarets are generally the places for high-priced, reverent song stylings performed on various well-oiled standards.
Michael Creagh
Well, at the Cafe Carlyle until May 12, Emily Bergl is infusing that format with some freshness and originality, bringing a little bit of downtown uptown.
She's utterly delightful.
Bergl--who's a little Glynis Johns meets Anne Francis--was in the Pulitzer finalist Becky Shaw, she played tragic housewife Beth Young in Desperate Housewives, and she's at home on a cabaret stage, where she enters in tuxedo tails, a white bowtie, and sparkle, looking like she fell off a gay wedding cake.
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Barbra's half sister Roslyn Kind has a strong, lovely voice, which she applied to a series of standards at Brooklyn College the other night--everything from "All That Jazz" to "Losing My Mind" to "Meadowlark" and beyond.
And she's funny, too.
Roslyn remarked, "Apple created the best phone ever, and they hire AT&T to service it. It's like hiring a hooker to babysit your child!"
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The '60s were mind-blowingly swingin', even if you don't remember being there.
One of the high points, as discovered by The Redundant Variety Hour, is this Shindig clip of Hungarian actress/socialite/yenta Zsa Zsa Gabor singing about her high-heeled sneakers, "and vearing that vig hat on my head."
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Classic singer Barbara Cook read off a bunch of them at her Feinstein's at Loews Regency performance last night, as the crowd howled with laughter.
Here are some of the all-time best, according to Barbara:
"If My Nose Was Running Money, I'd Blow It All on You"