Sherry Britton, whose hour-glass figure, jet-black hair and rambunctious presence made her one of the queens of the burlesque stage in the 1930s and ’40s, died Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 89 and lived in Manhattan. She died of natural causes, her cousin Melaine Britton said.
Along with Lois de Fee, “Queen of the Glamazons,” Betty Rowland, known as the “Ball of Fire,” and Zorita, known for her sensuous snake dances, Ms. Britton was one of the last stars of a once-thriving sprinkling of theaters in Times Square (and other spots in Manhattan) where ostrich-feathered fans fell away to reveal sequined pasties, G-strings and sometimes more. Sometimes Ms. Britton — at 5 feet 3 inches tall with an 18-inch waist — peeled off chiffon evening gowns to the strains of Tchaikovsky; sometimes she balanced glasses of water on her breasts.
NEW ORLEANS - David Bowie has donated $10,000 to a legal defense fund for six black teens charged in an alleged attack on a white classmate in the tiny central Louisiana town of Jena.
The British rocker’s donation to the Jena Six Legal Defense Fund was announced by the NAACP as thousands of protesters were expected to march through Jena on Thursday in defense of Mychal Bell and five other teens. The group has become known as the Jena Six.
“There is clearly a separate and unequal judicial process going on in the town of Jena,” Bowie said Tuesday in an e-mail statement. “A donation to the Jena Six Legal Defense Fund is my small gesture indicating my belief that a wrongful charge and sentence should be prevented.”
And you wonder how our little gang of miscreants found each other? Don’t blame the blogosphere, or our shared views on this crumby woild, or our nasty sense of humor. It’s genetic.
The researchers studied the peer groups of approximately 1,800 male twins, having each subject describe the level of social deviance among their friends, such as how many of their friends got drunk, used or sold drugs, or damaged property. The research showed that an individual’s selection of friends–whether they chose to socialize with fewer or more socially deviant peers–was shaped by genetic factors.
RM: Never underestimate a shared loathing for arcane French poetry and Monday morning eye-openers.
Naturally, he brought up Axl and the whole “what happened with Guns ‘n’ Roses thing, asking whether [Duff] ever wishes that he had the same understanding of personal problems that individuals struggle with a little earlier so that maybe other, more well-documented estrangements (i.e. GUNS N’ ROSES singer Axl Rose), could have possibly been avoided:
Said Duff:
“Umm, I know what you’re getting at. I just think that that experience is where I earned my understanding, you know? I mean I was fucked up then, and so a lot of all that shit kind of fed each other. The machine was just so big. There was no way out, and there were just so many yes-men, and there’s a myriad of reasons. Mostly it’s because it was out of control. I know I self-medicated my way through the entire ‘Use Your Illusion’ tours. It wasn’t til it was done did I know I had a health problem, and I got sober. That’s where I got a lot of experience in dealing with people and strange situations — I got a crash course from ‘86 through ‘93, an expert education. There was a time where if it were up to me, I would have salvaged things, and even Slash tried many times. We all wanted to save it, it’s not like we all walked up one day and said ‘fuck you!’
“You see, he (Axl) was a singer in this meteoric rock band that sort of captured the imagination and hit some sort of nerve with a whole reputation, and while every member of than band was important to making that happen, he was the singer. The focal point. I know that more yes-men came his way, and I think that soon your sense of reality gets a little eschewed, and that the real friends you have either change on you or those other people close them out. I can’t speak for Axl now, and I haven’t hung out with him for a real long time now, but a lot of this happened to me… but I wasn’t the singer. So I was able to escape it. So yeah, it’s sad, man.”
What scares me is that I understand what he’s saying.
Kudos to Mitten Artworks for their incredible design … as you may have noticed, MRev “officially” launched yesterday from our beta-design-in-progress to our now-grownup-and-classy page design. We’ve been bugging Mitten for ages, which is especially obnoxious when it’s a favor, and we (me, Alex, Paul, and RodMe - who is off in the wilds of the midwest at the moment) all owe her a huge THANK YOU as well as a large gift card for the local Liquor Mart.
i’m off hunting lobster rolls and enjoying marshmallow fluff and other delights. don’t let things get too dull around here. remember: offend as many as you can! we almost have all of the list checked off. or maybe ALL of it?
+ =
RM: I can’t remember the last time I found a ribcage so hot.
whoo-ee! it was this weekend three years ago that i finally walked out on my post-911-meltdown-marriage husband. i should have walked out the morning after our vegas wedding, when he gave me a sleeping pill instead of the zantac i asked for, causing me to pass out in my cheeseburger at the bellagio. but i’m tenacious, and i tried. well, after a few weeks of him refusing to sign the divorce papers, i had no choice but this:
now, memorial day for me is my own personal fourth of july!
