Wednesday, December 31, 2008
STUMPED, ABOUT WHAT'S YOUR 2009 NEW YEARS RESOLUTION?
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
A DIVINE DIVA OF ALL GENERATIONS
Eartha Mae Kitt (January 17, 1927[1] – December 25, 2008)[2] was an American actress, singer, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her 1953 Christmas song "Santa Baby". Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world."[3] She took over the role of Catwoman for the third season of the 1960s Batman TV series,
Early life
Kitt was born Eartha Mae Keith on a cotton plantation in North, South Carolina, a small town in Orangeburg County near Columbia, South Carolina. Her mother was of Cherokee and African-American descent and her father of German and Dutch descent. She claimed she was conceived by rape.
Kitt was raised by her mother's sister, Anna Mae Riley, an African-American woman whom she believed to be her mother. Kitt claimed that she suffered abuse and neglect at the hands of a family to whom Anna Mae Riley entrusted her—"given away for slavery," as she described it in many interviews. Kitt said that as she was given away, she always wondered who would accept her and was afraid of being rejected. After Riley's death, she was sent to live in New York City with Mamie Kitt, who she learned was her biological mother; she had no knowledge of her father, except that his surname was Kitt and that he was supposedly a son of the owner of the farm where she had been born.Newspaper obituaries state that her white father was "a poor cotton farmer.
Career
Eartha Kitt began her career as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company and made her film debut with them in Casbah (1948). A talented singer with a distinctive voice, her hits include "Let's Do It", "Champagne Taste", "C'est si bon", "Just an Old Fashioned Girl", "Monotonous", "Je cherche un homme", "Love for Sale", "I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch", "Uska Dara", "Mink, Schmink", "Under the Bridges of Paris", and her most recognizable hit, "Santa Baby", which was released in 1953. Kitt's unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in the French language during her years performing in Europe. She had some skill in other languages too, which she demonstrates with finesse in many of the live recordings of her cabaret performances.
Film debut
In 1950, Orson Welles gave her her first starring role, as Helen of Troy in his staging of Dr. Faustus. A few years later, she was cast in the revue New Faces of 1952 introducing "Monotonous" and "Bal, Petit Bal", two songs with which she continues to be identified. In 1954, 20th Century Fox filmed a version of the revue simply titled New Faces. Though it's often falsely alleged that Welles and Kitt had an affair during her run in Shinbone Alley, Kitt categorically denied this in a June 2001 interview with George Wayne of Vanity Fair. "I never had sex with Orson Welles," Kitt told Vanity Fair, "It was a working situation and nothing else". In 1958, Kitt made her feature film debut opposite Sidney Poitier in The Mark of the Hawk. Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, Kitt would work on and off in film, television and on nightclub stages. In 1964, Kitt helped open the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. Also in the 1960s, the television series Batman featured her as Catwoman after Julie Newmar left the role.
However, in 1968, during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kitt encountered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. It was reported that she made First Lady Lady Bird Johnson cry.[citation needed] The public reaction to Kitt's statements was much more extreme, both for and against her statements. Publicly ostracized in the U.S., she devoted her energies to overseas performances.
"In 1968 she was invited to a White House luncheon and was asked by Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War. She replied: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.” The remark reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears and led to a derailment in Ms. Kitt’s career."
During that time, cultural references to her grew, including outside the United States, such as the well-known Monty Python sketch "The Cycling Tour", where an amnesiac believes he is first Clodagh Rodgers, then Trotsky and finally Eartha Kitt (while performing to an enthusiastic crowd in Moscow). She returned to New York in a triumphant turn in the Broadway spectacle Timbuktu! (a version of the perennial Kismet set in Africa) in 1978. In the musical, one song gives a "recipe" for mahoun, a preparation of cannabis, in which her sultry purring rendition of the refrain "constantly stirring with a long wooden spoon" was distinctive.
In 1984, she returned to the music charts with a disco song, "Where Is My Man", the first certified gold record of her career. "Where Is My Man" reached the Top 40 on the UK Singles Chart, where it peaked at #36;The song also made the Top 10 on the US Billboard dance chart, where it reached #7. The single was followed by the album "I Love Men" on the Record Shack label. Kitt found new audiences in nightclubs across the UK and the US, including a whole new generation of gay male fans, and she responded by frequently giving benefit performances in support of HIV/AIDS organizations. Her 1989 follow-up hit "Cha-Cha Heels" (featuring Bronski Beat), which was originally intended to be recorded by Divine, received a positive response from UK dance clubs and reached #32 in the charts in that country.
Later years
Eartha Kitt in concert, 2007
In 1992, Kitt had a supporting role as Lady Eloise in the hit film Boomerang starring Eddie Murphy. In the late 1990s, she appeared as the Wicked Witch of the West in the North American national touring company of The Wizard of Oz. In 2000, Kitt again returned to Broadway in the short-lived run of Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party opposite Mandy Patinkin and Toni Collette. Beginning in late 2000, she starred as the Fairy Godmother in the US national tour of Cinderella alongside Deborah Gibson and then Jamie-Lynn Sigler. In 2003, she replaced Chita Rivera in Nine. She reprised her role as the Fairy Godmother at a special engagement of Cinderella, which took place at Lincoln Center during the holiday season of 2004.
One of her more unusual roles was as Kaa the python in a 1994 BBC Radio adaptation of The Jungle Book. Kitt lent her distinctive voice to the role of Yzma in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove, for which she won her first Annie Award, and returned to the role in the straight-to-video sequel Kronk's New Groove and the spin-off TV series The Emperor's New School, for which she won two Emmy Awards and two more Annie Awards (both in 2007-08) for Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production. She had a voiceover as the voice of Queen Vexus on the animated TV series My Life as a Teenage Robot.
In recent years, Kitt's annual appearances in New York made her a fixture on the Manhattan cabaret scene. She would take the stage at venues such as the Ballroom and the Café Carlyle to explore and define her highly stylized image, alternating between signature songs such as Old Fashioned Millionaire, which emphasized a witty, mercenary world-weariness, and less familiar repertoire, much of which she performed with an unexpected ferocity and bite that presented her as a survivor with a seemingly bottomless reservoir of resilience: her version of "Here's to Life", frequently used as a closing number, was a sterling example of the latter. This facet of her later performances was reflected in at least one of her recordings, Thinking Jazz, which preserved a series of performances with a small jazz combo that took place in the early 1990s in Germany and which included both standards ("Smoke Gets in Your Eyes") and numbers ("Something May Go Wrong") that seemed more specifically tailored to her talents; one version of the CD includes as bonus performances a fierce, angry Yesterday and a live rendering of "C'est Si Bon" that good-naturedly satirized her sex-kitten persona.
From October to early December, 2006, Kitt co-starred in the Off-Broadway musical Mimi le Duck. She also appeared in the 2007 independent film And Then Came Love opposite Vanessa L. Williams.
In 1978, she did the voice-over in a TV commercial for the album Aja by the rock group Steely Dan.
Personal life
After romances with the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and banking heir John Barry Ryan III, she was married to John William McDonald, an associate of a real-estate investment company, from June 6, 1960, to 1965. They had one child, a daughter, Kitt (b. 1962, married Charles Lawrence Shapiro). Eartha had two grandchildren, Jason and Rachel Shapiro. A long-time Connecticut resident, Kitt lived in a converted barn on a sprawling farm in the Merryall section of New Milford for many years and was active in local charities and causes throughout Litchfield County. Subsequently moving to Pound Ridge, New York, then in 2002 Kitt moved to the southern Fairfield County town of Weston, Connecticut to be near her daughter's family.
Kitt wrote three autobiographies – Thursday's Child (1956), Alone with Me (1976), and I'm Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten (1989).
Death
Kitt died after a long battle against colon cancer on Christmas Day, 2008 in Weston, Connecticut at the age of 81.
Awards :
1960 Hollywood Walk of Fame—6656 Hollywood Boulevard.
2001 Annie Award for Best Voice Acting by a Female Performer in a Featured Film—The Emperor's New Groove
2007 Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production—The Emperor's New School
2007 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program—The Emperor's New School
2008 Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Television Production—The Emperor's New School
2008 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program—The Emperor's New School
Nominations
1966 Emmy Award for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Drama—I Spy
1978 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical—Timbuktu!
1996 Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series—Living Single
2000 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical—The Wild Party
2000 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical—The Wild Party
Works; Discography
C'est Si Bon (1954)
Santa Baby (1954)
Santa Baby (1955)
Under The Bridges Of Paris (1955) (UK #7)
Just An Old Fashioned Girl (1958)
Che Vale Per Me (1968)
Where Is My Man (1983) (UK #36)
I Love Men (1984) (UK #50)
I Don't Care (1986)
This Is My Life (1986) (UK #73)
Arabian Song (1987)
Cha Cha Heels (Feat:Bronski Beat) (1989) (UK #32)
If I Love Ya Then I Need Ya (1994) (UK #43)
Santa Baby (2007) (UK #84)
Sunday, December 28, 2008
A LIL SOMETHING FROM CHARLOTTE'S CLOSET !!!!!!
Davis said she wanted to design for Belk because she's from Columbia, South Carolina, and used to save her allowance to shop at the store. Leave it to the "Charlotte" in Kristin to progress wholesome childhood memories. I love that the actress/designer shares her style sensibility, not a life full of ponies, with her character, which totally makes me like her more, NOT TO MENTION THE TOTALLY AFFORDABLE PRICES!!!! The Kristin Davis line has debut in August at 126 of Belk's 307 stores but can be bought online @www.belk.com and cost from $4 to $240.
- THE KRISTEN DAVIS "AMETHYST" BEAD DROP EARRINGS $4.99
- THE KRISTIN DAVIS "FITTS" TALL BOOT $54.50
- THE KRISTIN DAVIS SHADOW GREY "AGNETTE" PURSE $28.99
- KRISTIN DAVIS "BETHY" PLATFORM TALL BROWN SUEDE BOOT $84.50
- KRISTIN DAVIS DEEP V NECK BLACK "NATILE" HALF CARDIGAN $28.09
- KRISTIN DAVIS HOT PINK, BOW FRONT "VALENTINE" SLEEVELESS BLOUSE $23.49
- KRISTIN DAVIS SLEEVELESS PRINT "OMBRE" TEA PARTY DRESS $47.99
- KRISTIN DAVIS LINEN "SPARKLE STARDUST" TRENCH COAT $61.66
Thursday, December 25, 2008
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Etymology:
The word Christmas originated as a compound meaning "Christ's Mass". It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038.[3] "Cristes" is from Greek Christos and "mæsse" is from Latin missa. In Greek, the letter Χ (chi), is the first letter of Christ, and it, or the similar Roman letter X, has been used as an abbreviation for Christ since the mid-16th century.[8] Hence, Xmas is often used as an abbreviation for Christmas
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
11 items for last min gifts!!!!!!!
1. The Clapper: The subject of the best television commercial in history is also the best gift for your friend, relative or spouse who has everything. Don't hook it up to something boring like a lamp. Try the Clapper on a blender ... or a life-support machine. Sure to get a round of applause. $24.95 at As Seen on TV store
2. Any Biggie or Jay Z album: Well if your not already a fan, any one of their albums will get you through some questionable times GUARANTEED!!!! Sure, it's does not have to be the latest album but any from them.
6. Risk or any card,board game : Who needs video games when you have the coolest board game of all time (sorry, Strategy)? Get the old-school version, not the stupid sequels and offshoots. What's next? Risk: Desperate Housewives edition? $21.99 at Target (remember uno cards target $2.00
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
"now that, I DONT KNOW"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Financial Intimacy
Cohabitation Agreement : Documentation for, If you're living with a partner (or planning to live with a partner) to whom you're not married, you may want to consider signing a cohabitation agreement.
*This is something that same-sex couples definitely should consider as well.
A cohabitation agreement is a written contract that sets forth your mutual rights and obligations with respect to joint and separate property, as well as stating any other financial or general obligations or expectations you wish to agree upon in advance of (or even after) moving in together.
You and your partner will need to hire separate lawyers to review and sign this agreement. This Cohabitation Agreement is provided by attorney Frederick Hertz, for a couple that is keeping most of their assets separate, and agreeing to not provide any post-dissolution support to one another (the unmarried equivalent to alimony). Frederick Hertz practices real estate and land use law in Oakland, California. His practice emphasizes the formation and dissolution of real property co-ownerships and property and financial agreements between unmarried couples (both same-sex and opposite-sex couples).
He also serves as a mediator and arbitrator in disputes between unmarried partners, both gay and straight. Mr. Hertz is the author of Legal Affairs: Essential Advice for Same Sex Couples (Henry Holt & Co./Owl Books) and co-author of the Nolo Press' Legal Guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples and Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples.
OK , LET ME JUST STATE FOR YALL THAT "I LOOOOVVVVEEEE ME SOME SUZE ORMAN" BUT DID SHE JUST LOSE HER GODDAMN SAPHIX MIND!!!!! LOL, BUT SERIOUSLY I KNOW MARRIAGE IS BASED ON LOVE AND THE DIVIDING AND PROTECTION OF ASSETS. BUT I WORKED SO HARD AND GAVE MY SWEETIE THE BEST YEARS OF MY THIGHS, IF WE WASN'T ALREADY MARRIED AND THIS WAS BROUGHT TO ME .....IDK. I MEAN ME AND MY SWEETIE HAVE SOMETHING DRAWN UP LIKE THIS, BUT IN OUR CASE ITS NOT TO TAKE AWAY FROM ME, ITS TO MAKE SURE I'M PROVIDED WITH ( IF OUR MARRIAGE {knock-knock on wood} WAS TO EVER FALTER) AND NOT SEND SWEETIE TO THE POOR HOUSE. SO I GUESS EVERYONE NEEDS SOME KIND OF AGREEMENT THAT GIVES THEM SANITY ........BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, WHEN YOU SHACK UP, AND OR GET MARRIED ISN'T IT SUPPOSE TO BE BECAUSE YOU TRUST THIS PERSON WITH YOUR LIFE AND ALL YOUR ASSETS?
I KNOW LIFE IS UNCERTAIN BUT IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT THIS AND YOUR LAST NAME ISN'T ; CARTER, ROCKEFELLER, KNOWLES OR TRUMP THEN DOESN'T THIS JUST MAKE HE/SHE "NOT THE ONE" ANYWAY.
HAPPY PROTECTING OF ASSETS ( I GUESS)!!!!!!!!!!
SUSHI....THE OTHER WHITE MEAT!
Saturday, December 20, 2008
STEPPIN IN THE SNOW!!!!!!!
WITH THIS COLD WEATHER SNOW BLAST WE JUST HAD ITS IMPERATIVE FOR
A LADY TO STAY WARM AND STILL FASHIONABLE, ABOVE ARE JUST A FEW
EXAMPLES ON HOW TO GO TIPPIN NOT SLIPPIN IN THE SNOW.
*NOTE MOST EXAMPLES HAVE A RIDGE OR RUBBER SOLE....GREAT FOR BAD WEATHER!!!!!
1:GUESS 'TEDDIE' BOOT $119.00 ( ZIPPERED SIDE PLATFORM KNEE BOOT)
2:BETSYVILLE 'LALA' PUFFER BOOT $77.00 (FLORAL DRAWSTRING BOOT)
3:JESSICA SIMPSON 'LOPEZ' BOOTIE $149.00 (BUCKLES ACROSS & DIAMOND ACCENT HEEL)
4:MIA 'MIDNIGHT' BOOT $53.40 (PLATFORM W/ GATHERED ELASTIC OPENING)
5: VIA SPIGA 'JONAH' COLD WEATHER BOOT $109.00 (SHINY KNEE BOOT)
HAPPY STEPPIN!
Monday, December 15, 2008
Tuxedo Black Christmas Tree
Tuxedo Black Tree, is ready for a night on the town…(Almost) always ready for a party or special event, this elegant tree is perfect for any time you want that extra touch of sophistication.
I happen to love this new idea of the black Christmas tree!!!! no its not very traditional,
but it will be in my house.
I cant wait to decorate my stylish tree.
p.s cant find and/or afford a black spruce? get a tree and some black spray paint and go to town...just remember to open a window and cover your floors!
Happy creative tree shopping!
Friday, December 5, 2008
IN- FRINGE-ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS MUTHAF%*$@! is sick. I cannot possible contain myself around this fabulous shoe/boot invention from the tina forever collection of Christian Louboutin, I cant even begin to imagine what I would wear with these besides.......my lil black dress! of course. With this perfect shoe/boot COMBO......I'll wear nothing, the boot/shoe says it all!
KUDOS TINA !!!!!!!!!-
Camel suede. Peep toe; hidden platform. Fringe shaft. 4 3/4" covered heel. Signature red sole.
Made in Italy.
Christian Louboutin
Fringe Cutout Boot
Price:
$1,795.00 @ http://www.neimanmarcus.com/
NMF09_X0A9X
Thursday, December 4, 2008
PET THIS!!!!!!!!
find these and all Judith Leiber products @ http://www.judithleiber.com/ or any fine department stores
Dog
Elegantly put together with its multi-colored hand glued Austrian crystals, push down snap closure, and detachable chain strap. Comes beautifully boxed with a keepsake bag. Dimensions: 7" wide, by 5.5" high, by 2" deep. 20" strap drop. Imported.JU-M31654
Ships within 1 business day (M-F 9-10)
Made in the USA
$4395.00
Cat
Fully detailed in hand glued Austrian crystals, this bag features top snap closure and detachable chain strap. Comes beautifully boxed with a keepsake bag. Dimensions: 6" wide, by 6" high, by 1" deep. 19" strap drop. Imported. JU-M31734_WHISK
Ships within 1 business day (M-F 9-10)
Made in the USA
$3695.00