Who will buy?

So France - home of Madame du Barry and fellow courtesans, "Irma la Douce", "Satine", La Dame aux Camélias, "Zaza" and a cavalcade of grandes horizontales - has introduced a law making it illegal to pay for sex. You couldn't make it up.

By way of tribute to those hard-working ladies (soon to be out of a job?), here are a couple of classics...

...from Miss Merman...

Ethel Merman - Ten Cents a Dance

...and Mr Fierstein in Torch Song Trilogy (of course)!

Oo-la-la!

Thought for the Day

Bad news for gayers over in the US. Again.

Nina Simone says it best:

Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddam

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Picket lines
School boy cots
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Mississippi is the first American state to pass specifically anti-gay laws in recent memory.

Bumpy night, indeed

It is the birthday today of the mother of all of us, arch Patron Saint Miss Bett..e Davis! [Said in the style of the inimitable Charles Pierce, of course.]

Sharing a birthday today with such diverse characters as Gregory Peck, Nigel Hawthorne, Jane Asher, eccentric film-maker Peter Greenaway, French cabaret pioneer Mistinguett, decadent poet Algernon Swinburne, James Bond producer "Cubby" Broccoli and the delightful John Le Mesurier, Hollywood's ultimate "Grande Dame" would have been 108 years old.

By way of a tribute, I have no qualms about revisiting a classic I raved about five years ago - here (again), for your delectation, is Pshycotic Beats and Bumpy Night:

Pshycotic Beats - Bumpy Night

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (5th April 1908 – 6th October 1989)

And any barmaid can be a star maid if she dances with or without a fan

Apparently today in 1850 the City of Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality. Any excuse, really, for a truly tacky spectacular...

And who better to provide it on this Tacky Music Monday than Holland's finest, the strangely dead-eyed Star Sisters - and their own version of Hooray For Hollywood? As well as spotting all those stars who were actually still alive when this was recorded in 1984, look out for the finale. It's something else.

Star Sisters - Hooray For Hollywood

As I lug myself around in my "big boot" splint (I went to the hospital today for a fitting), I think I'll avoid doing too many boogie-woogie moves.

Facts:

• The sisters were formed out of the chorus of the loathsome "Stars on 45" that parasitised our charts in the early 80s.
• Two of the group actually were sisters, so it wasn't a contravention of the Trades Descriptions Act.
• One sister Yvonne Keeley was the girlfriend of Steve Harley in the 70s, performed backing vocals on Cockney Rebel's Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), and duetted with Scott Fitzgerald on the song If I Had Words.
• The other sister Patricia Paay was the first nude glamour model in the Dutch edition of Playboy in 1984.
• The fate of the third "sister" remains obscure.
• Star Sisters performed the end credit song on the Japanese film The Return of Godzilla.

Everybody loves me, yes they do

It's (another) Doris Day!

She's 92, you know...

Doris Day - Everybody Loves a Lover

Everybody loves a lover
I'm a lover, everybody loves me
Anyhow, that's how I feel
Wow, I feel just like a Pollyanna

I should worry, not for nothin'
Everybody loves me, yes they do
And I love everybody
Since I fell in love with you

Who's the most popular personality?
I can't help thinkin' it's no one else but me
Gee, I feel just about ten feet tall, havin' a ball
Guess ya might call me a Pollyanna!

Indeed.

Dem bones

I have broken a bone in my foot.

Apparently it is known as the footballers' fracture".



Funny, that. The only balls I like playing with don't seem that dangerous...

We go to Rio

It may be April Fools' Day, but this is no joke.

As we finally head into what promises to be a fine weekend (for a change), I think we really should avoid wearing beige at all costs, and I really don't think asking one's hairdresser for "The Barry Manilow" is a great idea either. This is evidently the style chosen by one Gary Criss - accompanied by his (possibly deaf?) gang of "dancers":

Gary Criss - Rio de Janeiro

How to make Rio seem as appealing as Carlisle...

We can do better than that - so let's Thank Disco It's Friday!