When I volunteered to live-blog the awards shows this year, I could never have imagined I would be writing this round-up in memoriam of Whitney Houston for Grammy night. Via Spin Magazine, Whitney Houston’s Four-Decade History at the Grammy Awards:
Click to go to Spin Mag... Whitney Houston at her first Grammy Awards in 1986. (Photo: Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images)
On February 25, 1986, a 22-year-old Whitney Houston made her first appearance at the Grammy Awards. She’d picked up three nominations for her debut album, 1985’s Whitney Houston, and “Saving All My Love for You” beat tracks by Madonna, Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, and Linda Ronstadt to win Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. She took the stage that night in a ruffled red dress with a wall of hair sprayed to attention atop her head, and blew the doors off the Shrine Auditorium as her mother, Cissy Houston, cheered her on. One of our generation’s hugest voices made a stunning debut at Music’s Biggest Night.
It wasn’t scandalous by tabloid standards, but it was a rebellious act for the young women at the Mount Saint Dominic Academy, a small all-girls Catholic high school in New Jersey. Whitney Houston, class of 1981, sometimes wore mismatched socks and rolled up her sleeves.
The mischievous gospel singer would then push the maroon-colored dress code just a bit further. She would “roll up her little skirt, just a little bit above the knees, and wouldn’t care if she got a detention,” said Dr. Maria Pane, who lives in Lutherville and sat next to Houston in high school home room.
A day after the 48-year-old Houston’s unexpected death on Saturday in Beverly Hills, Calif., left the music world in mourning, Pane fondly recalled her old school days in Caldwell, N.J., and the unpretentious Houston, whom she described as an “ordinary high school girl, just like all of us.”
1979: Whitney juggled singing with her studies at a Catholic girls school in New Jersey Getty 1979: Whitney spent her teen years accompanying mum Cissy on nightclub tours, occasionally joining her on stage Getty
Secondly–before I turn this over to the comment section for some Grammy live-blogging/OPEN thread–I’d like to leave you with Whitney’s Grammy debut in 1986…
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Hello news junkies… the political scene is bumming me out even more than usual. See the top story on memeorandum as of 2:35 AM Friday night/Sat. morning…or go directly to the Think Progress piece, entitled “GOP Ups The Ante, Introduces Legislation To Allow Any Employer To Deny Any Preventive Health Service.” (Also, stay tuned because later this weekend the one & only Minkoff Minx will have a barn-burner on all the mass hysteria over free Magdalene pills!) It’s not even just that alone, though. Don’t even get me started on the rest of the current event stories that are dominating the headlines in general–not only are they bumming me out, but they are boring the daylights out of me–Wonk the Vote, a bona fide news junkie. That is, if they aren’t making me want to cry my eyes out first (see bombings in Syria, via Reuters). I guess you could say I have a case of Political Affective Disorder, though that’s nothing new. I’ve been dreading the 2012 cycle for the last four years anyway. Perhaps my condition is just reaching a tipping point, because I am utterly depressed by the fact that–during a week when American women have had to fight tooth and nail for their basic autonomous, civil rights and health care not to be torn asunder by C-Street– “One Million” Moms finally mobilize…to try to defeat the… Evil Dancing Ellen?!? Gahhhh. This is the moment “one million moms” have been waiting for? What, is Ellen’s association with JC Penny going to mean the onesies they sell are going to have some kind of gayish-cooties and turn America’s babies into adult RuPauls big giant day-glo orange crying John Boehners or something? Come on, don’t these “activists” already have enough supermarket freezer cases across the country to protect from Ben and Jerry’s Schweddy Balls?
All this to say…it definitely smells like manufactured political theatre across BOTH aisles at work to me (and we’re not even officially into the general election yet.) I’m deeply cynical about this. Wedge issues during an election year and all that. Sorry, I’m not all Woo-Hoo President Oprecious over his fake-saving of our rights–which never were in contradiction with the constitution anyway. From right to left, it all seems calculated for emotional-political effect on some oligarch’s part. Plus, I’m still waiting on someone to make sure none of my oh-so-fungible tax dollars never go to war, torture, or capital punishment. Just my… ya know… very humble, girly-wonk two-pieces-of-copper.
At any rate, I’m super-duper-dejected by all the news leeching off of the body politic’s oxygen tank at present, so I’m going to focus the rest of this round-up on a few links this week that either left me a) happy, b) intrigued, or c) thoroughly entertained.
Click for more "Neuroscientist Ryan Gosling"...
Oh, and also on Ryan Gosling.
If you’re like me, and you love the “Hey Girl” flashcards all over the internet, both for the eyecandy quotient and the sheer hilarity+nerdy-girl-utility of it all…You’re welcome. If you’re with Historiann and you don’t understand what’s so appealing about Mr. “baby goose,” then my apologies. It’s only one Saturday morning. You’ll live. 😉
So here’s the happiest link I read all week, via Sci Am:
A PET scan's bright areas reveal the concentration of amyloid beta, a protein that forms a plaque in Alzheimer's patients. The scan compares the brains of a healthy patient (left) and a patient suffering from Alzheimer's (right). Image: Alzheimer's Disease Education and Referral Center, NIH
Science is bringing some understanding of the heritability, prevalence and inner workings of one of the most devastating diseases
By Daisy Yuhas | February 6, 2012 |
This has been a big week in Alzheimer’s news as scientists put together a clearer picture than ever before of how the disease affects the brain. Three recently published studies have detected the disease with new technologies, hinted at its prevalence, and described at last how it makes its lethal progress through the brain.
The first study strengthens the body of evidence that says early-onset and late-onset Alzheimer’s should be classified as the same disease. The other two studies shed light on how the tau protein–the buildup of which causes the protein to tangle and kill brain cells–spreads through different brain regions.
As the adage goes, knowledge is power…can’t wait until these “cracks in the plaques” build up to a critical mass of findings that inevitably breaks the myelin-implicated mystery wide open and points the way to the cure!
Ok, this next one didn’t make me happy per se, but it made for some pretty stimulating geek-grist… it’s another one from SciAm (guess Bostonboomer–who did a Science-y post last night–and I have been on similar wavelengths!):
Click to go to the Nature article... The current continents (left) are set one day to merge into the supercontinent Amasia (right), centred over the Arctic. Mitchell et al, Nature
In 50 million to 200 million years’ time, all of Earth’s current continents will be pushed together into a single landmass around the North Pole. That is the conclusion of an effort, detailed in the February 9 issue of Nature, to model the slow movements of the continents over the next tens of millions of years. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)
One World, One Continent, One Love after all! So maybe in about 50 million to 200 million years, the military-industrial complex will finally wane a little? Hey, a satyagraha-loving Wonk can dream… 😉
Until then, we have plenty of idiocrats to keep us entertained…especially everybody’s least favorite body politic fluid, Rick santorum! Speaking of whom–my last “read” is a “political” link that just made me laugh my heineken off, via a blog called “Tyranny of Tradition” (this is satire–or is it? Hard to tell the way Rick santorum oozes his crazy for all to see these days):
Rick Santorum has been on the offensive lately, but his target has not been Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney or even President Barack Obama. For the past week, Santorum has been using his campaign to take aim at an issue he feels to be the single most dangerous force in America today: Satanism in heavy metal. “If you listen to the radio today, many of these brand new, so-called heavy metal music bands like Black Sabbath, Venom, The WASP and Iron Maiden use satanic imagery to corrupt the minds of young people,” announced Santorum at a 10,000 dollar a plate sock-hop in Valdosta, Georgia on Thursday.
To which my very first automatic response was…Inert Gasses Declare Non-Reactive War on Rick Santorum! And, I had the perfect Lolcat in mind when I thought it too:
Alright, well that’s all I’ve got… turning this over to y’all in the comments. What’s on your reading lists this weekend? Anything extra nerdy? This is the place to share!
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Hillary Clinton Meets With Cultural Ambassador Kareem Abdul Jabbar At State Dept.
In This Photo: Hillary Clinton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Cultural Ambassador Kareem Abdul Jabbar at the State Department January 18, 2012 in Washington, DC. According to the State Department, Jabbar, a National Basketball Association superstar and hall of fame player, “will lead conversations with young people on the importance of education, social and racial tolerance, cultural understanding, and using sports as a means of empowerment.”
(January 17, 2012 – Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
And in the last two decades, dozens of conflicts have persisted because peace efforts were unsuccessful. Talks broke down, agreements were broken, parties found it easier to fight than to negotiate. And far too often in these failed efforts women were marginalized, making up, by one estimate, just eight percent of all peace negotiators. And when you look around the world, as a number of us are privileged to do in the positions that we hold now, or that we have held in the past, you see how hard it is to make peace under any circumstance. But the exclusion of women, I argue, makes it even harder.
Because there is a great story about an effort to try to resolve aspects of the conflict in Darfur a few years ago. And the men had been arguing and arguing for days about authority over a particular riverbed. And finally, a woman heard about this and just made herself walk in and say, “But that river dried up. There is no water in that river.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 2012. (State Department photo/ Public Domain)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Nirupama Rao at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 2012. (State Department photo/ Public Domain)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hosts the inaugural meeting of the International Council on Women's Business Leadership at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on January 24, 2012. (State Department photo/ Public Domain)
Dipnote has a bunch of great posts right now! I’ll just highlight a couple:
I’d like to close by directing your attention to (and shamelessly plugging!) my first post in a series that I’ll be doing over at Taylor Marsh’s — Cinematherapy in Feminist Perspective: Daisy Bates. Teaser:
Click to view my post over at TaylorMarsh.com...
Can I just say that I am so glad PBS chose to kick black history month off by spotlighting a *feminist* leader of the civil rights movement? (The late Dorothy Height would have been an excellent choice too!)
Funny how women always pay “dearly” for ego in anything political, but today’s Newts and Romneys and–yes, Obamas, too–all self-inflate with reckless abandon and don’t seem to suffer for it all that much–or have their names disappeared from the history books.
Oh, and though I was rooting for the Patriots… congrats to Hillary’s NY Giants!
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The Scrren [sic] Actors Guild will honor its own Sunday night at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center, live on TNT and TBS at 8 PM ET.
Exactly what comprises “its own” may be changing for the actors. Over the weekend, executive boards at both SAG and AFTRA approved a merger plan that would bring under one umbrella SAG’s roughly 120,000 members and AFTRA’s 70,000. Both memberships have to approve the plan for it to take effect.
[…]
Presenters include Kathy Bates, George Clooney, Sir Ben Kingsley, Melissa McCarthy, Brad Pitt, Zoe Saldana, Owen Wilson, Kristen Wiig, Kevin Bacon, Kenneth Branagh, Kyle Chandler, Matt Czuchry, Patrick Duffy, Jean Dujardin, Tina Fey, Linda Gray, Judy Greer, Larry Hagman, Armie Hammer, Ed Helms, SAG President Ken Howard, Regina King, John Krasinski, Julianna Margulies, Natalie Portman, Maya Rudolph, Kyra Sedgwick, Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams.
(Reuters didn’t mention it but I see on the SAG site that Jessica Chastain, Don Cheadle, Bérénice Bejo, Glenn Close, Bryan Cranston, Viola Davis, and Shailene Woodley will be among those presenting as well.)
You can catch up on the red carpet arrivals on the SAG twitter feed.
SOFIA VERGARA / Gloria Delgado-Pritchett – “MODERN FAMILY” (ABC)
BETTY WHITE / Elka Ostrovsky – “HOT IN CLEVELAND” (TV Land)
Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
BOARDWALK EMPIRE (HBO)
BREAKING BAD (AMC)
DEXTER (Showtime)
GAME OF THRONES (HBO)
THE GOOD WIFE (CBS)
Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
30 ROCK (NBC)
THE BIG BANG THEORY (CBS)
GLEE (FOX)
MODERN FAMILY (ABC)
THE OFFICE (NBC)
Screen Actors Guild Awards 48th Annual Life Achievement Award
MARY TYLER MOORE
Okay, I’m not really up to speed on the SAG awards other than to say…
a) as far as TV awards go, I’m rooting for Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Betty White– she’s nominated twice! Work it, Sue Anne Nivens… neat little synchronicity for that and Mary Tyler Moore getting the Lifetime Achievement Award tonight.
b) Motion Pictures…my votes go to both The Help’s Jessica Chastain and Miss Viola Davis herself… Speaking of which, I don’t have an Iphone, but if I did, I would so totally buy this phone case (memorable line from the movie)… this cracks me up and gives me the warm fuzzies at the same time:
Turning the soapbox over to y’all…please have at it.
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The first few links I have for you this Saturday are all about: PANDAS! Well, sorta…
Baby pandas–celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year; “act like monkeys in trees.” (Video at the link.)
Kung Fu Panda 2 gets an Oscar Nod. Yay. The GG snub was a travesty! 😉
Did you know that “only five percent of the top 250 grossing films last year were directed by women,” one of which was KFP2?
Political notes:
Guv. Goodhair’s approval ratings plunge to lowest in a decade. Perry proved what many of us already knew here in Texas–he’s not ready for primetime. Hopefully his un-presidential run this year was his first and last foray into the national rodeo.
Sunday morning talk shows are stacked with Republicans. Show of hands on who here is surprised? (Beuller? Anyone?)
The only grown-up that ran for the GOP nomination is out of politics, at least for now.
The Wasilla Mooseburger’s facebook is back in the headlines. It appears she’s thrown her lot in with Newt Gingrich. So much for the moxie she showed when she blessed Karl Rove’s heart and told him to “buck up” back in 2010. Throwing her lot in with the ultimate “neanderthal’s” sinking ship now shows just how desperate she is to get back in the limelight, if you ask me. Or as Taylor Marsh puts it, “Sarah and Newt, bookends of Ego’s library.”
Vastleft’s latest might be his best yet: Pragmatic. (h/t Joyce)
Teamwork: if only the 99% could work together...
If only Glen Ford’s “response” to the State of the Union address was the one televised on Thursday night instead of Demented’s DeMint’s. Ford exposes the backstory/devil-in-the-details when it comes to Obama’s “mortgage fraud unit.”
Also, I must add here that I would love to see Ford and his co-contributors at the Black Agenda Report regularly included on the Sunday morning panels, providing a counterpoint to all the oligarchy-approved talking points from *both* the Republican *and* the Democratic hack-pundits. (A wonk can dream…)
Biden says the Dems will take back the House and Nancy’s going to take the gavel back from Boehner. So on second-thought, I won’t bring out those pom-poms just yet…
On January 29, 1926, after five years of practice before the high court of Illinois, Anderson was admitted to practice for the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first black woman to attain that stature.
please give the link a click and a look-over when you get the chance! It’s a brief but fascinating profile. Anderson accomplished so many “firsts.”
Alrighty, I’m keeping it light for a change… this should give us enough to get things brewing this morning… as always, please share what’s on your reading list in the comments and have a great Saturday!
And, though it isn’t a panda, I just can’t resist sharing the following warm fuzzy:
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I thought the Sky Dancing community could use the momentary break from politics… please feel free to live-blog in the comments with us!
Good morning, news junkies!
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