If she could turn back time ... Cher!

HALLIE EPHRON: In the mid 80s they filmed the movie Witches of Eastwick in my town and my daughter got to be an extra. Of the witches -- Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer -- Cher was the one who was approachable. She'd talk to the kids. Joke around. Sneak them cokes. As my daughter said at the time, "She was real."

Even at her most artificial, Cher has always felt real. Now comes the headline: At the age of 67, Cher's going on tour! The exclamation point goes with the headline. Her Dressed to Kill tour kicks off in Phoenix next March.

And I say:"You go, girl! After all the plastic surgery and ridiculous costumes, I still root for her.

I feel as if, along with Gloria Steinem, she led us through "the change" -- from being magician's assistant to magician, superhero's girl sidekick to superhero, Tina to Ike, secretary to boss, cheerleader to athlete. She started as arm candy and emerged as a star in her own right and on her own terms, strutting her anatomy decades before Miley stuck out her tongue.



In my family, some of us even been known to dress up like her for Halloween. A true homage.

Are you a fan? Or is she just too much leather, feather, and plastic to be taken seriously. Maybe Madonna or Joan Baez or Carole King is more your kind of pop icon?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: And I'll be getting tickets! Cher is my idol. And for all the reasons you so eloquently (must be a writer...) listed.

She's reinvented herself countless times - and you get the feeling it's not because some some exec advised her to. She seems fearless and I love that. I can still watch Mask and cry and Moonstruck and laugh out loud. "Snap out of it!"

Years ago, I saw her in a small shoe store on Rodeo Drive, she was sweet. Stephane Kelian. I wanted to buy the same boots she was trying on.

 But she's had plastic surgery...really? ;-)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: LOVE CHER.  Oh, my goodness. Don't we remember her with the weird Sonny-- and she was the coolest, the smart one, right? And that voice! She's brave and hilarious. And incredibly talented.

My sister is a caterer, and handled a few events for her--she said Cher eats Cheetos and hot dogs, all kinds of junk food, and that her face close up is PERFECT, but sculpted for makeup. My sister was blown away with admiration and affection.

Oh, I wish we had tickets, too. Ro, we hope for a full report! And would that we're even close to that cool when we're 67.  (Which will be soon...)

RHYS BOWEN: When I saw the newscast that she was going on tour and saw her again on TV,
 I blurted out to John "But she's my age!"  And still looks young and sexy.

I'm sure she's had facelifts etc, but that great bone structure makes her look fabulous. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she's still working. After all, I'm still working and don't intend to slow down any time soon.

I had just started working at the BBC in London when there was buzz about a new young singer called Cher. Then she joined Sonny and I remember thinking WHY? Why take a step down from being a serious singer to being half of a goofy comedy team. Of course he was so small and unassuming that she looked even more glamorous and gorgeous. And I did love I've got you, babe.

Also it's so reassuring that women of sixty plus are not automatically expected to wear granny shoes and sit at home doing knitting. It's great that society admits we can still be vibrant and useful and even sexy.

LUCY BURDETTE: I love Cher too, and wish her the best. (Though I also love the other women/icons you mentioned Hallie.)

Moonstruck is one of my all-time favorite movies--I need to watch it again. Loved her duets with Sonny!

I have to tell you, if you're ever in Key West on a Monday for happy hour, you must come to the Aqua nightclub on Duval Street. Two of the drag queens do an absolutely hysterical rendition of Sonny and Cher singing "I've got you babe"...not to be missed. Here's Randy Thompson, aka Victoria, doing his/her half of the song--he is a character in TOPPED CHEF too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cnAjZLptMg




DEBORAH CROMBIE: All you Cher fans, are you watching The Voice this season???? Cher is mentoring the singers on Blake Shelton's team. 

From what I've seen so far, she is funny, down-to-earth, and sharp as a tack.  She also seems genuinely interested in helping the singers improve.  Her advice is spot on.  And yes, she's still glamorous, but with her bone structure I think she'd have looked even more fabulous WITHOUT the plastic surgery...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm so jealous! I had no idea so many of you have had actual Cher

moments. What do you suppose the odds are on that?
 
I remember watching the Sonny and Cher show as a kid, sitting on my grandmother's battleship-sized sofa in my flannel nightgown (kids had to bathe before TV in those days.) Three generations watching (and other variety shows like Donny and Marie and The Carol Burnett Show) and everyone enjoying it. Good lord, it sounds like Laura Ingalls Wilder recalling hoe-downs on the prairie, compared to today. I had a friend who had long straight black hair lke Cher's and we were all envious.

I always loved the contrast between Cher's extreme glamour and her abilities as a comedienne. She was, and is, very, very funny. It's also amazing when you think what her career has straddled - starting as a singing act and going into a TV variety show was the sort of thing Dinah Shore did back in the fifties. Yet here she is in the Internet age, tweeting like a madwoman and releasing electronic dance music. You go, girl.

HALLIE: So please, share your memories of Cher! Have you seen her perform? Did her acting or singing or outspokenness speak to you at some time in your life?

Jan Brogan Turns Back TIme!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: YAY Jan! Our very dear blog sister, Red Jan, has entered the e-world. We've been talking about turning back time this week--are you humming Cher in the background?--and our Jan has managed it! She's taken her first book, which came out---well, let her tell it. (And if the fonts look funny, what can I say. I lost the battle with Blogger.)

JAN BROGAN: So if you could go back to 1991, what would be different?

Not that much, was what I thought. I'm not the most aggressive marketer, and I had allowed my first novel, Final Copy, to sit on the shelf for four years before I sold it to Larcom Press, a small New England publisher. Before publication, it needed to be updated.

In the early and mid 1990s, fax machines weren't standard in newsrooms - and although laptops existed, they were still expensive. Cell phones were practically the size of a shoebox and still pretty rare. In fact, when my husband, who was then in the cell phone business tried to convince me that someday even stay-at-home-moms would carry cell phones, I laughed and told him he was dreaming.

So since clearly, my talents did not lie in predicting the future, I decided to head to the past.

Instead of updating Final Copy to 2001, when the book would be published, I traveled backwards and set the novel even earlier - in 1991.

Remember 1991?

George Bush, the senior, was president and he launched Operation Desert Storm.

Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested after 11 dead bodies were found in Milwaukee.

Terminator II, The Silence of the Lambs, and Thelma and Louise were big movies.

And the Internet was just beginning to take off.

But the reason I chose 1991? Final Copy, and the main character, reporter Addy McNeil, starts off with a venture capitalist plunging to his death at a biotechnology conference on the waterfront, and a lot of the story has to do with the rough and tumble world of fledgling entrepreneurs that needed millions and millions of dollars to invent sexy new drugs. I wanted to choose a year when this industry was particularly desperate.

And I might have been stuck in 1991 forever if it hadn't been for some bad luck and some good advice.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What was the bad luck?

JAN: Larcom Press, an incredibly supportive publisher that put out quality New England mysteries, went out of just as I was finishing the sequel, A Confidential Source.

HANK: What did you do?

JAN: I cried for a while, and then I called my agent.

HANK: AW. And we can all relate, no question about that. So all worked out nicely, as things often do. SO what was the good advice?

JAN: Well, my agent thought A Confidential Source could still be sold to a bigger publisher, but wanted to call it "first in a series," which he said would generate a lot more interest from the New York publishers - so he asked me to change the man character's name.

HANK: Whoa. That's kind of weird. I mean--you'd written the entire book, heard Addy be called "Addy" again and again, and --you know, when you name a character, and there she is in print, it must be difficult to undo in your brain.

JAN: . It was remarkably hard to contemplate, sort of like renaming one of your children. But I realized that if I made that change, at least I wouldn't be stuck in 1991 forever. And my agent was right, two different New York publishers bid for the new series.

HANK: So for your reader fans--there's one little secret that may make FINAL COPY a bit of a, well, mystery. The protagonist of this book is named Addy McNeil. Your other mysteries have a protagonist named Hallie Ahern. But I must say, she reminds me just bit of Addy. What gives?

JAN: Well, yeah, now it can be told! Addy McNeil IS Hallie Ahern.

It did cause some confusion from reviewers who had liked Addy McNeil and couldn't help but recognize the similarities when Hallie Ahern made her appearance. Before I put the e-book up, I considered whether I should rename Addy McNeil and all those characters in Final Copy to be consistent with A Confidential Source.

HANK: Oh, no, talk about confusing!

JAN: But to tell you the truth, Final Copy has always been my favorite book, the one closest to my heart, and even all these years later, I still couldn't go in and change Addy's name. She was Addy McNeil in 1991, and she's Addy McNeil now.

HANK: SO, back to the future. You've written four very successful novels, all via traditional publishers. Why are you putting out Final Copy in digital yourself?

JAN: Larcom went out of business, the rights reverted to me. I sat on those rights for a long time. But now as epublishing has taken off, it seemed like the time - and an opportunity to reach more readers.

HANK: Clearly, from the amazing numbers, epublishing and self-publishing is a juggernaut. Even so, it's--still a bit cutting edge. What were the pros and cons for you--and what have you learned about the self-publishing world?

JAN: What I've learned about e-publishing so far is that there are a lot of different opinions about it. But one thing is for certain, the author has to get out on the Internet and promote it. Also, pricing was baffling me, I had no idea what to charge for the book - so I went with suggestion I found on the web, at $2.99 per E-book - which is a huge bargain compared to what my other E-books cost.

The big controversy simmering now is about whether authors should join Amazon Kindle's new Select program, which makes a self-published e-book part of a "lending library." Amazon promises authors a percentage of a pot, but to take part, you have to make the book available exclusively on Amazon Kindle. That seemed a little bit like strong-arming the author to me, so I didn't opt in.

HANK: Let me ask you: How are you different now from when you started? How do you see the mystery world now? And your place in it?

JAN: Hmmm, let's see. When I wrote Final Copy, I was more experimental, but as I got into the Hallie Ahern series, I think I began conforming to certain perceived rules of mystery writing. Now after four books, I care less about getting a book published and more about creating a new and interesting work.

HANK: What did you learn on your recent adventure in France (besides acquiring the fabulous leopard dress)?

JAN: It's only taken like....twenty years....but now I'm into the process of writing and stretching myself. And in part, I learned some of that on my adventures in France. My friends there are all writers and artists, ex-pats who lives in southern France because they live and breathe art. A friend who is the director of the art school there always makes the connection between literature and the visual arts and he was really able to penetrate this sometimes-thick head of mine.

But you cannot blame any of these friends for the inappropriate leopard dress decision - that was actually two years before that when I was in Provence with my daughter. I haven't worn that dress ONCE at home, and I didn't even bring it back to Provence last summer so I could wear it there.

Anyway, one thing I've learned about my role in the mystery world is that I'm definitely not mainstream. I'm more fringe -- and I'm really much more comfortable on those edges.

HANK:. And now, Where can people find you? Besides here, of course!

JAN: Final Copy is available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com right now and soon with smaller distributors. Here are the links, since you asked :-)

http://www.amazon.com/Final-prequel-Hallie-Ahern-ebook/dp/B006JEE8K4/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&qid=1323896627&sr=8-1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1004534461?ean=2940013814394&itm=1&usri=final+copy

HANK: And since it's all about time here this week--just tell us when you'd rather be living--French revolution? Civil War? D-Day? Restoration? Roaring Twenties? Or--what's your choice of another time? (And one lucky commenter will win Jan's new/old/new book! )

Fifty Dresses

JAN BROGAN - At my book group Christmas party each year we all have to bring a book we've already read and wrap it up for a Yankee swap. The swap last year reduced me to quite a bit of scheming to grab and then hold onto a book that caught my attention.

Yes, I was willing to play dirty to get Fifty Dresses That Changed The World -- from the Design Museum. Once I got it home and actually read it, I had to laugh. Nabbed by book title hyperbole. Did I really think that dresses could change the world? Like the UN or Mother Theresa or Adolph Hitler? Still, it's an interesting list of fifty dresses. Maybe not that changed the world, but reflected world changes. Or likely, but not always, changed the fashion world.

At any rate, what attracted me to the book was the cover: Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly wearing that classic "little black dress" with the long black gloves. We all remember that dress, so clearly it had some impact on our world.

But I thought it might be interesting to see if my fellow Reds and our blog readers could guess some of the forty-nine others. Some are really insanely obscure -- which I'm pretty sure means they had no real effect on anything other than the fashion world and probably for a limited amount of time - but others you can probably figure out.

I'll give you some hints. A couple of Oscar awards dresses made the list. A few important wedding dresses (but not Kate Middleton's which came too late for the book) as well as dresses that changed the style we were wearing at the time. At least three are associated with specific designers with names we actually know, and four come from television shows or movies. Some involve new technology, and others reflect a Japanese influence.

Now try to use your actual memories before going straight to Google. (And no googling the actual book, that's cheating!)

RHYS: One that immediately comes to mind--Marilyn Monroe's dress with the skirt blowing up.Jacqueline Kennedy was such a fashion icon that her look had to be part of a list. Dior's "new look" after World War II. And since my new book features Chanel, I think that the Chanel look, especially the tailored masculine look she invented, definitely changed the world. Presumably Kate Middelton's wedding dress would be part of a future list!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Scarlett O'Hara's curtain dress, maybe? Oh,this is so fascinating. Cher's ridiculous Bob Mackie at the Academy Awards? Princess Diana's wedding dress, certainly. Oh, Grace Kelly's lace-bodiced wedding dress? So there must be an Issey Miyaki, although I never understood those clothes. Gosh, Sharon Stone's Gap outfit at the Oscars? Liza Minelli in red Halston? Diane Keaton in Annie Hall? (But that wasn't a dress.) Michelle Obama's green dress and coat at the inauguration? Twiggy in Mary Quant's mini-dress? Oh, the Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress! I have a photo of me in that, somewhere, from--1972? Jannie, this is so interesting, I can't wait to hear.

HALLIE EPHRON: There's gotta be an outrageous Rudi Gernreich (of the topless swimsuit) and Pucci (pink psychedelic) from the 60s. Yes Jackie Kennedy's sack dress (with the pillbox hat). Someone must have started the shirtwaist, the June Cleaver look (maybe something Grace Kelly wore?). A mini of Twiggy's? YES, of course, the von Furstenberg wrap dress which is still going strong. The flapper dress (though I don't know which). Remember the maxi look? And of course, a Chanel suit (though it's a suit, not a dress - does that count?) Defniitely Diana's bridal gown, and if that book were coming out now, Pippa's Maid of Honor.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Hmmm...all the good ones are taken! Lady Gaga's meat dress, Bjork's swan dress at the Oscars, JLo's plunging neckline at the Grammies, Streisand's see-though outfit at the Oscars, the credit card dress from the Oscars, Calvin Klein slipdress, Ally McBeal suit (thinking tv here....)

JAN: So I'm truly impressed by your world-changing-fashion knowledge. Yes, Rhys, Chanel, Marilyn Monroe's 7 Year Itch dress and I'm really blown away you got the "New Look" by Christian Dior after WWII - which if you don't know it - and I wouldn't- looks like one of the dresses Lucille Ball used to wear on I LOVE LUCY with the simple short sleeve top, cinched waist and full skirt three quarters down the calf. Maybe that's what Hallie was thinking of when she mentioned June Cleaver because I think she wore it too.

ALthough Scarlett O'Hara's dress did not make the list (and I think it should have) Hank still gets a bunch of gold stars for guessing Cher's ridiculous Bob Mackie dress at the Oscars, the Halston halterneck dress, Mary Quant's mini-dress and the wrap dress. Hallie gets additional points for Twiggy's mini, the flapper dress, Diana's bridal gown (I think Hank got that one too). While Jackie Kennedy's sack dress and pillbox hat, surprisingly, did not make the list - but another one of her outfits did.

And Ro, congrats on the Calvin Klein slip dress!

Everyone else, put on your thinking caps. There are still are few more that you might guess including another Oscar gown, two more from television and a wedding dress or two.

Answers will be announced on the comments page later today! And tomorrow I'm going to preempt our regularly scheduled programming to post pictures of some of these dresses.

What are you wearing??

ROSEMARY: It's Friday so it's time for some fun. I know most of us aren't practicing our Oscar speeches (although, ahem...some of us have Emmys) but lots of us do watch awards shows and frequently wonder what the heck some of those people were thinking when they went out the door that night.

Other than on your wedding day, what's the fanciest occasion you've ever had to dress up for and what did you wear?

For me it was probably New Year's Eve at the Metropolitan Opera. I've done that for the past two years and that's a dress-up night. Two years ago it was Carmen so I went for a slightly trashy cigar girl look complete with red satin rose at waistline. This year a black and gold strapless but I don't want to get too specific...I may wear it to the Edgars. Didn't get too dressed for the Agathas or Anthonys the year I was nominated. There's probably a picture somewhere but dang if I know what I was wearing. Ten dollars says it was black.

So what's your go-to party girl outfit - and let's just hope it isn't a swan dress like Bjork's.