Consortium of Seven

Jean Kerr's best-known work was the bestseller  Please Don't Eat the Daisies, but long before her collections of humorous essays were published, Kerr was writing plays, first for college productions and later for the Broadway stage.  Jean Kerr had one big Broadway hit ("Mary, Mary") and she wrote or collaborated on (sometimes with her husband, critic Watter Kerr) a number of theatre projects which were not hits. Each of them, in my view, however, contributed something valuable to the world. For example, look at this wonderful photo of Don Ameche and Elaine Stritch laughing.  The two are recording the soundtrack for the musical "Goldilocks," which has a title which sounds like a children's matinee about the Three Bears. But "Goldilocks" was more interesting than that, something along the lines of "Annie Get Your Gun."  Stritch plays a silent-film star whose contract forces her to appear in something called "Frontier Woma...

I have loved and been restored mentally and physically by the music of the Carpenters for the last fifty years. Karen's voice, in particular, has a healing effect upon me. They were with me when I was trying to find my identity as a young gay man. They came back and offered their healing vibrations when I was traumatized by HIV/AIDS. They were there again when my Mom passed and many, many times in between. They were there for the less painful moments when I also benefited from their music and for those times I was able to just love it in more joyful times, like when I lived by the ocean. I love many artists including some favorites like Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. I have loved Neil Diamond for nearly as long as Karen Carpenter and many others, but none could heal my soul like Karen.  Of course, I was devastated when she passed and can only imagine what she would have created had she not. It's a place I don't allow myself to visit very often.  I am foreve...

Country Squire, Ford 1966 I know that even if I could acquire a Ford Country Squire 1966ish and drive down Jamieson Avenue playing, Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again, I could not force the past to come rushing back fresh and new. I know that. But it seems like just the recipe, doesn't it? Maybe if I wore green striped seersucker shorts and Keds and got a pixie haircut? We are a little closer to time travel, I read this week. I was not a big fan of this song at the the time, but it was on the radio quite a bit in 1971, and now, I find many songs that I never went out to buy when they were popular, make me happy when I hear them. I'm pretty sure the staff in the nursing home will have no trouble keeping my ass happy. In the car-culture of the USA latter half of the 20th century, car radio is a prominent groove in the collective cerebral loop. Maybe if I drove out Watson Road to Luigi's for pizza, that would trigger the space time continuum in m...

"Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light" (Gluck) In the weirdest and possibly most splintered Pride month, LGBT+ artists of all disciplines and mediums will need the support of allies more than ever. Pandemics aside, the world is more fractured, more dangerous & more uncertain than it’s been for many years. LGBT+ people are seeing hard-won rights & protections being eroded as laws change & overarching nonsense prevails. Since today is the “official” Global Pride date, described online as a “no in-person attendance” event, I’d like to celebrate some LGBT+ artists, acknowledge the difference they make & appreciate a few of the artworks that have enriched our lives. The title idea for today’s blog comes from the slogan for Global Pride 2020, empowered, empowering & insistent. As ever, all opinions are my own… 1) Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564)  Detail, Sistine Chapel Arguably from where all mo...