Found on Threads:
Most advanced telescopes use mirrors so we really have no way of knowing how many vampires there are in space.This is important people!
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I’ve mentioned that Jen, Oni, and I have been watching (and LOVING) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. We’re at the point where she’s opening for Shy Baldwin in Las Vegas. The year is 1960.
Baldwin’s character was inspired by real life crooners like Harry Belafonte, Johnny Mathis, and Nat King Cole.
In the show, there’s no sign of the racism that existed and exists in real life.
As Sammy Davis Jr. once recalled, "In Vegas for 20 minutes, our skin had no color. Then the second we stepped off the stage, we were colored again...the other acts could gamble or sit in the lounge and have a drink, but we had to leave through the kitchen with the garbage.” (source)It was on March 25, 1960 that the Moulin Rouge Agreement was signed. Jim Crow restrictions were lifted. Black people were allowed to gamble, stay in Las Vegas resorts, and attend shows. Broad change did NOT happen overnight but change began.
Mrs. Maisel and Shy Baldwin are playing Vegas that year. Were they at an enlightened casino – one that didn’t need to be integrated by law, by force? Were Shy and his crew housed at the casino’s hotel along with the white performers or did they have to stay in boarding houses on the west (Black) side of town as Sammy Davis Jr. did (until Frank Sinatra stepped in and threatened)?
I’d like to know.
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I *think* that, because I’m watching Mrs. Maisel, so many odd memories from my childhood – fashions, clothes, cars, prejudices, names, places – are coming into my mind.
Fer instance:
Pia Zadora. Who the fuck was she? I googled. Incredibly (to me), she’s only a few years older than me and still alive. Apparently she was an horrific actress, winning multiple Razzies for Worst Actress and NYTimes film critic Vincent Canby’s pronouncement that her performances are "spectacularly inept.” Also, she was a decidedly failed chanteuse. I don’t recall ANY of her movies. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? Butterfly? Voyage of the Rock Aliens? Her music? Sorry, no fucking memories at all.
It seems her first husband was quite wealthy and much older. The second was a low level director. The third, near the end of her laughable career’s death, was/is a cop.
Her Wikipedia page reads like a broadly drawn caricature of every aspiring fame chaser with far more ambition and vanity than talent or self-awareness. WHY is her name cluttering up my mind? 
Then there’s Joey Heatherton, a low level actress, singer, dancer, and supposed sex symbol (for what audience???). I can’t say I’ve seen any of the teevee shows or movies she’s listed as being in. Not to sound elitist or anything but, somehow, I managed to miss The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington and Love, American Style.
I seem to recall her doing
commercials for mattresses back in the early ‘70s though. At the time I wondered WHO is
this and how does her name boost mattress sales?
I didn't know this then but she’s FIVE years younger than Grace Slick. She came off, to me anyway, as though she was from the previous generation. Like, she should've been appearing alongside Dean Martin, Perry Como, and Doris Day.
Wikipedia tells me that she was married to some football star who was into flashing his peen to 10-year-olds. Guess he was a Republican. She divorced him.
In any case, the site tells me she hasn’t done anything, film-wise, since 1990 when she was 46. Heatherton, unlike her career is still alive. Good for her.
Not everyone can be Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michelle Yeoh, Alfre Woodard or Viola Davis. Ya know?
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