This was going to be a straightforward introduction to Detroit native Della Reese (1931-2017), who once sat next to a friend of mine on a plane, but it got sidetracked, as always, by devoted fanboys on YouTube, who insist on making every waking hour of a famous person's life into its own mini-documentary.
(BTW, I finally caught the joke about an alternative reading of "Isle of Dogs" being "I Love Dogs". Watch Hollywood quickly churn out imitators like "Isle of Ice Cream" and "Isle of Drawing Moustaches on Concert Posters".)
Hubba hubba
The gold standard for the Damn Yankees tune "Whatever Lola Wants" was the originator, Gwyneth Evelyn "Gwen" Verdon (wife of Bob Fosse, despite his philandering), who did not have, despite what Wikipedia claims, "the exquisite beauty of a pin-up girl". She was a fabulous dancer and choreographer, but there was no confusion over who was who when she taught pin-up girls like Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth how to dance. Della, too, is a bit of a reach with her longish everything, including face, but for straightforward singing of this rather lightweight number, I'd take Della or Sarah Vaughan or even Bebe Neuwirth (killing it in this Letterman clip from 1994) over Gwen as the Devil's chanteuse Lolita "Lola" Banana.
All building up sideways to the collapse of a space-age pedestrian bridge in Florida (outlaw bridges) and a 2007 movie you likely haven't seen, filmed in Egypt and Morocco with an American lead and French production company. Here's the poster, but check out the YouTube clip that highlights the song, and then rent the entire two hours from Nexflix on your next date night. Exotic sparks will fly, and as Bebe hints rather ribaldly, someone's SAG card will likely be showing before all's said and done.
According to the IMDb website, some portion of the movie Hostiles was filmed in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Does this look like Pagosa Springs? The movie is gorgeously shot, and the locations are breathtaking. Being somewhat familiar with Pagosa Springs, though, I'm having trouble matching any of the exteriors with anything within a 10-mile radius of Pagosa Springs. According to IMDb The railway station at Chama, New Mexico served as the stand-in for Butte, Montana. Chama is about 50 miles away from Pagosa Springs, and Pagosa Springs definitely sent some of its own down to Chama to serve as extras, one of whom is currently pedaling coal from the Chama location on Ebay. A big-budget movie filming in a community of 2000 is generally a newsworthy event. Filming of Hostiles took place in the summer of 2016, and Pagosa Springs' newspaper of record, the Sun , made no mention of stars Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, or director Scott Cooper hanging ou...
This tree will be of interest to no one except those attempting to quiet title to land F.O. Stanley donated to the town of Estes Park in 1936. It was produced in a matter of hours today starting from zero and using only the internet. It contains tens if not hundreds of errors, and probably scores of missing descendants. What will be fun (at least for me) will be the time lapse of how this tree improves and fleshes out over the next few weeks, now that I am enlisting the help of living family members at the bottom of this tree by sending them this horrible tree. Nothing like errors in your own history to light a fire. Even just a little accurate information bootstrapped from the internet shows how wrong prominent internet entries can be, and how convincing this misinformation becomes when it is picked up and repeated by other websites. F.O. Stanley and F.E. Stanley sold their Stanley automobile manufacturing operation BEFORE F.E. Stanley's death in 1918, r...
Would Julie Andrews eat at a restaurant with two major health violations? "Good" means one major health violation, "fair" means two. [Singing:] The chicken in Estes restaurants falls mainly on the floor.
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