October 23, 2010 · 1:00 am

Rose’s Turn: Your Choice

It’s one of the most famous roles in American Musical Theatre.

Moma Rose in “Gypsy”.

Alas, there is no footage of the original Mama Rose, Ethel Merman…but

Thanks to YouTube, there are videos of many of the most famous Rose’s doing the famous “Rose’s Turn”  or other numbers from the show.

Who’s the best?  Your choice….tell us.

Tony Award Winner Tyne Daly

Bernadette Peters:

Betty Buckley:

Patti LuPone:

Angela Lansbury:  No video of Rose’s Turn, so this number will have to do:

Bette Midler:

Rosalind Russell:

Kurt …from Glee

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October 23, 2010 · 12:29 am

Cagney and Lacey: The Musical

I love this video…

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October 22, 2010 · 11:15 pm

My First Broadway Show

I just found some clips from the first show I ever saw in New York on Broadway.

Over a hundred shows later, it was still one of the best…

Damn Yankees. 1994 Revival

 

 

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October 22, 2010 · 10:36 pm

In Honor of the That Old Devil Moon…

That Old Devil Moon.

One of my favorite songs from one of last year’s Best Revivals “Finian’s Rainbow”.

I loved seeing this show…

It’s a full moon.  The pagan in me wants to celebrate…with show tunes.

With one of my favorite Broadway performers, Cheyenne Jackson and the wonderful Kate Baldwin.

And…with Judy doing it…

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October 21, 2010 · 8:13 pm

Top Companies Aid Chamber of Commerce in Policy Fights – NYTimes.com

Great article in the NY Times:

Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.

Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed new rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities.

And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation that has helped wage a national campaign to limit the ability of trial lawyers to sue businesses.

These large donations — none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group which keeps its donors secret — offer a glimpse of the chamber’s money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall’s Congressional elections.

They suggest that the recent allegations from President Obama and others that foreign money has ended up in the chamber’s coffers miss a larger point: The chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help.

via Top Companies Aid Chamber of Commerce in Policy Fights – NYTimes.com.

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October 20, 2010 · 10:20 pm

Embracing Memory’s Tough places – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

Another wonderful column from one of my favorite columnists:

Actually, old times there are forgotten quite a bit.

For 145 years, ever since a grim-faced Robert E. Lee rode away from Wilmer McLean’s house in Appomattox, Va., where he had surrendered his army, apologists for the South have been trying to induce the rest of us to forget the causes of the Civil War, to imbue an act of treachery and treason with a nobility of purpose it did not, in fact, possess.

“State’s rights,” they say. “State’s rights to maintain a system of human slavery,” they do not say.

It is the social and political equivalent of an extreme makeover. The thinking seems to be: when history collides with cherished self image, change history.

Something very similar seems to be afoot with regard to a related event much closer to us in time: the civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s.

Just a few months ago, we saw conservative activist Glenn Beck claim ownership of that movement, in defiance of historical memory. “…[W]e were the people that did it in the first place!” he cried.

Last week, in an essay in the Washington Post, University of Virginia Professor Gerard Alexander analyzed voting trends from the civil rights era to bolster his thesis that social conservatism is not intolerant. Somehow, he never got around to explaining how it is, then, that social conservatives were always the ones standing in schoolhouse doors, blockading polling places, burning buses, and cracking skulls.

More:   Embracing memory’s rough places – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

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Filed under Education, History, Politics, Religion, Social Commentary

October 20, 2010 · 8:44 pm

Democrats Target Black Vote as Tea Party Collects Converts | The Guardiann

Scary….

The enormity of the task facing the Democrats in the midterm elections is all too evident at the Midwest church of Christ, which lies in a predominantly black neighbourhood in Louisville. Its pastor, the Reverend Jerry Stephenson, is a registered Democrat but he will be voting in the US Senate race for the Republican candidate and Tea Party favourite, Rand Paul.

Stephenson, 61, is furious over the school drop-out rate among African-American children in his neighbourhood – which has one of the highest crime rates in the city, especially among teenagers – and across the nation.

He felt pride when Barack Obama became the first black US president, but that pride has been tempered by a growing belief that he is not up to the job. “There has to be change that we can not only believe in,” he said, echoing an Obama campaign slogan, “but that we can see.”

The pastor is so angry that he has embraced the Tea Party movement, in spite of it being overwhelmingly white and repeatedly accused of racism. He speaks at their rallies across Kentucky, delivering fiery speeches in the cadences and rhythms common among southern black preachers.

Stephenson is in a minority of African-Americans likely to back the Republicans, estimated at little more than 10%. African-Americans traditionally back the Democrats and Obama won 95% of their vote in 2008. That loyalty appears to be holding: a Pew Research Centre survey in September found he had an 88% approval rating among black people, more than double that of the white population.

The question for Obama is whether they will turn out in record numbers again to vote Democrat or whether they will stay at home, either out of apathy or disillusionment with the slow economic recovery.

via Democrats target black vote as Tea Party collects converts | World news | The Guardian.

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Filed under Education, Politics, The Economy, The South

October 20, 2010 · 7:41 pm

YogaSlackers take a Rest Day – Kinda’ | Wend Magazine – iWend

Yoga Teachers:  Don’t be getting any ideas….

 

From the accompanying article:

This past weekend, we were busy.  Sam, Chelsey and I hosted the largest gathering of advanced acroyogis (blend of acrobatics, yoga, and flying massage) that has ever converged in Arizona. We taught and practiced for nearly 10 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday. It was a beautiful sight, to see so many people pushing themselves and trusting each other. Chelsey and I taught a very difficult sequence – possibly the most difficult acrobatic flow that has ever been publicly taught in a workshop setting. We demanded a lot from ourselves, and even more from our students. They did not disappoint.

Sunday night, as we finally made our way to bed after midnight, we looked forward to a sleeping in and waking up to a lazy rest day. Our friend and majestic bodywork Guru — Charlie Roach (Four Rivers Massage 520.406.4703 – worth visiting Tucson for!) — has been working on us off and on over the last year and urged us to take a bit of a rest. The acrobatics, constant race training and serious yoga practice had been taking it’s toll. We were still not fully recovered from the 1080 miles of the YES tour. We all joke about being super-human, but our shoulders, hips, and wrists were all feeling the overuse.

I slept until 7:30, which seemed pretty late since the previous week Chelsey and I had woke at 5:30 AM every morning to practice. I taught a yoga class at 8:00, intending on a leisurely breakfast and lazy afternoon. Unfortunately, Sam and Dan (yogaslacker from Minnesota who was in town for the Acro workshops) showed up to my class, and insisted that we take advantage of Dan’s last day in town. Suffice to say, I am gonna need another rest day after my rest day….

More:   YogaSlackers take a Rest Day – Kinda’ | Wend Magazine – iWend.

 

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Filed under Education, Entertainment, Style, Uncategorized, Yoga

October 19, 2010 · 10:33 pm

Margaret and Helen’s Pledge to America

Here is the latest from the girls!

Margaret, the problem with Populism is that the population includes asses like Sarah Palin and her Tea Party.  Someone needs to remind them that this is America.  The government is elected by the people.  Questioning your government is patriotic.  Hating your government, one the other hand,  is simply a form of self loathing.

And let’s talk about that hatred.  It seems so at odds with the supposed Christian morals they so proudly espouse.  They hate big government but instead of taking issue with the largest part of that government – the military – they take issue with healthcare.  They hate big government in healthcare but they have no issue with government being big enough to intervene in the private health decisions of a woman seeking to end a pregnancy or the private decisions of a husband wanting to end the decade long sufferings of his wife.  They hate big government but they don’t seem to hate using government to legislate hate against homosexuals.  And they hate big government, but they don’t seem to hate it when they can use it to fuel their hatred.  Gosh I hate that…

And now those morons in Washington with the “R” after their names have made another pledge to America.   I guess it’s just one more thing they can do today and then ignore tomorrow .   A Contract With America.   A Pledge to America.  Mission Accomplished.   For goodness sakes how many times are we going to fall for this prank?  They spend years screwing everything up and then eventually pledge to not do it again.  How about not doing it the first time… or the second time for that matter?

MORE:   Margaret and Helen.

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October 19, 2010 · 10:09 pm

Koch Industries and Network of Republican Donors Plan Ahead – NYTimes.com

All those years ago, Hilary was right.  There is a vast, right-wing conspiracy…

From the NY Times:

A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to Palm Springs for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.

Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning an invitation-only confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.”

The invitation, sent to potential new participants, offers a rare peek at the Koch network of the ultrawealthy and the politically well-connected, its far-reaching agenda to enlist ordinary Americans to its cause, and its desire for the utmost secrecy.

Koch Industries, a Wichita-based energy and manufacturing conglomerate run by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, operates a foundation that finances political advocacy groups, but tax law protects those groups from having to disclose much about what they do and who contributes.

With a personalized letter signed by Charles Koch, the invitation to the four-day Palm Springs meeting opens with a grand call to action: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”

The Koch network meets twice a year to plan and expand its efforts — as the letter says, “to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.”

Those efforts, the letter makes clear, include countering “climate change alarmism and the move to socialized health care,” as well as “the regulatory assault on energy,” and making donations to higher education and philanthropic organizations to advance the Koch agenda.

MORE:   Koch Industries and Network of Republican Donors Plan Ahead – NYTimes.com.

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