The Day the Music Died

For the majority of you Cyrsti's Condo readers who live in the United States, you would have to be living in a cave to not know this week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

I was a newly minted 14 year old wandering the halls of the school I attended when the news came across the public address system. The day turned out to the first of two (so far) in my life, when time stood still. The other of course was the 9/11 attack.

My first thought was assassination?   What the hell happened and wasn't that just something you read about in history books and not a modern reality?

Well, as the coming years were to prove, the term was going to become all to common. It's not up to me to dwell on the charisma and leadership Kennedy brought to our country or the idea Kennedy was perhaps the last President to be totally claimed by two completely diverse generations.  My parents, because he was a hero in their war (WWII) and a hero to mine because he inspired us to be proud of who we were as a country.  We backed down the Russians, were going to the moon and established a radical idea like the Peace Corps to help other less fortunate countries. Plus lets not forget his wife Jackie whose style and grace seemed to elevate his charisma to another level or the sexy, mesmerizing Marilyn Monroe "Mr President"  birthday song which quickly erased all thoughts of Jackie's style.

So quickly, the era was over and with all due respects to Don McLean and his "American Pie" classic song, JFK's death was the day the music died. Vice President Lyndon Johnson took over and with him any hopes of me not visiting Southeast Asia with him.  All of the sudden our government was not inspiring anyone except with handouts and a totally ridiculous war.  The pressure got to be so much LBJ bailed and "Tricky Dick Nixon" stepped in.  The antithesis of JFK in many ways Nixon stepped into the presidency in 1968, the same year as the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Finally let's not forget the fall of 1970 when the music really did begin to die along with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

Certainly, John F. Kennedy benefits from being frozen in time. We will never know what directions our country would have taken and I'm certainly not smart enough to speculate.  In my life though, November 22, 1963 was the day the music died. Somewhere deep down inside, I knew it.


 

The Top Drag Queen in History!

I was watching the classic Seven Year Itch movie last night and realized I was watching one of the great drag queens of all time, Marilyn Monroe-of course!   Yes silly's I know (or think I do MM was genetic) But where was it written that drag queens have to be men?

Of course I am not the first to push this idea of the over the top female movie stars such as Marilyn being the ultimate drag queens- in that they represented a totally unachievable level of femininity to the greatest majority of genetic women.

Just between you and me though, I'm still jealous of the famous scene of Marilyn's iconic white dress being blown up over the subway grate in the sidewalk! Shown on your left.

Let's not forget to mention one of the female impersonators (Jimmie James) who used MM to build his career. Here he is on a 1987 Phil Donahue show on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen:

Blondes and Fun?

We got mail!
 From Stephanie: "I only have Dial-up internet so watching a video is out of the question. But.....if you have doubts that blonds don't have more fun, you being brunette, put on a bright blond wig, some bright red lipstick, and take a drive down the road. There will men hanging out of their trucks to wave at you! ....(someone who's been both blond and brunette!) on Blondes Do Have More Fun!"

Stephanie, I too have been blond and brunette and red! I agree with what you wrote but would like to add my two cents.
I have always thought that blonds do get more attention but how that translates to fun depends on the individuals! Ha!
One of my "best and worst" of all blond worlds is similar to yours. I had a streaked summer blond wig which I ended up naming "suicide blond".
The best of time was driving the interstate in my denim mini with mirror sunglasses distracting guys everywhere. The worst of time was when I stopped anywhere and continually getting busted as a guy. As one of my women bartender friends so "kindly" put it-"aren't you a little over the top?" Very simply I was attracting too much attention. Presenting female was sooo much tougher of course with all the extra scrutiny.

I don't know if there is a scientific reason why blonds naturally do get more attention or if the whole deal is PR motivated. Just a few examples would be classic blond movie stars Jean Harlow or Marilyn Monroe.  Of course there are beautiful women of all hair colors but somehow a blond just seems to stand out more.

Years ago, I did have a "kinder and gentler" long blond wig which I dearly loved and was able to negotiate the public gauntlet quite well in. Now though, my own hair is colored almost as dark as the picture at the top of the blog and is very close to my natural color (without the gray). I prefer to think "dark and mysterious".
My friends though are quite fond of asking me if I'm a natural blond when I go off on some sort of a totally "ditz" binge.

I smile and tell them to lay off the stereotypes...and go back to my own little off the wall padded world!

Some Like it Hotter!

Today I saw (again) bits and pieces of the classic film Some Like It Hot.
Without wasting words and time, I still had to pause for a second and marvel at the production.
No matter how you feel about the entire cast of Jack Lemmons, Tony Curtis et all- Marilyn Monroe's casting was the genius move by Director Billy Wilder.
Think about the ramifications for those of us in the transgender community. Two men playing women with one falling in love with Marilyn who was in herself a huge caricature of women; an impossible feminine ideal too strong for even Marilyn herself And how many of us came away from the movie with the yearning to play music in an all girl band?
If all of that wasn't enough, there is always the wonderfully improbable final line in the picture when Jack Lemmon unveils himself as a man to a hopelessly infatuated Joe E. Brown. " I'm gonna level with you. We can't get married at all... I'm a man. 2) Well, nobody's perfect" - the reply. (Joe E. Brown) Ha ha! So cute!!!!
Remember this all took place in 1959 when even dressing as the opposite gender in public in most towns was a crime and of course being gay was unheard of!  Hollywood just had to be the biggest gay closet in the country. Way to go "Billy Wilder"!
All of this was happening ten years before the "Stonewall Uprising" during the summer of 1969 in New York City.

The Stonewall Inn, taken September 1969. The sign in the window reads: "We homosexuals plead with our people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village—Mattachine".<sup>[1]

If you haven't had a chance to catch the special  on "PBS" about Stonewall, check it out!</sup>