I post a weekly diary of the historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I featured this past week in "Cheers & Jeers". For example .....
By Request SEPARATED at BIRTH from side pocket - two women of intrigue: Russian spy suspect Anna Chapman (a/k/a Anya Kushchenko) and Elliot Spitzer's 'friend' Ashley Alexandra Dupré (a/k/a Ashley Youmans). Whaddya think?
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
ART NOTES - works by Norman Rockwell - which are owned by film directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg - are at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. through January 2nd, 2011.
AMAZING GRACE is the only way to describe the Massachusetts resident Grace Cyr who has shared her home with 93 foster children over 44 years and - at nearly age 90 - still wears a hot-pink blouse knotted at the waist and Chanel No. 5.
CRIME NOTES - a man has been charged with six felony vandalism counts of spray-painting onto numerous bridges and freeway overpasses (in the Los Angeles region) the images of demons, angels ... cats.
TUESDAY's CHILD should be a poster child for animal shelters everywhere.
A RECENT CARTOON from Tom Tomorrow discusses "The Sensible Liberal".
IT WOULDN'T BE UNUSUAL for a married couple to have one spouse who likes heavy metal and the other to favor John Denver and the Carpenters. But for the new president of Germany, Christian Wulff - it is his wife Bettina who likes the German headbangers The Scorpions.
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Moe Howard of the Three Stooges and Joachim Löw - head coach of Germany's World Cup team.
SPORTING NOTES - not unlike the French team that won the 1998 World Cup with several immigrants: as an essayist for Israel's Haaretz newspaper notes, the success of this year's team from Germany depended in part on 1/2 of its players with ancestry from Brazil, Nigeria, Turkey, Ghana and Poland - all stemming from a change in Germany's citizenship laws (ten years ago) away from bloodlines.
Although they lost in the semi-finals, the team took third place yesterday; a better-than-expected showing for a very young team and one which lost its captain (Michael Ballack) to an injury before the tournament).
All of this not only has Neo-Nazis upset .... but when an early round game-winning goal was scored by German-born Mesut Özil (of Turkish descent) - a University of Hannover professor was delighted that an old man was politely corrected (by a shop-keeper) when he complained that a Turk won the game for Germany: "That is not a Turk, that is a German".
ART NOTES - an exhibit entitled Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries is at the National Gallery in London, England through September 12th.
SHADES of GEORGE W. BUSH - Denmark's centre-right Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen attacked Denmark's Social Democrats with the words "The opposition has produced something that reminds me of treason".
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Hadley the Cat - a Michigan pootie recovering nicely from an intentional severe burn attack last year, and his Facebook page describes him as being "in a relationship."
HAPPY 75th BIRTHDAY to Penguin Books - immortalized by the late actor Rex Harrison, during the filming of "My Fair Lady". Convinced that US screenwriter Alan Jay Lerner would be unfaithful to George Bernard Shaw's original "Pygmalion" - whenever Harrison was uncertain about the dialogue, he would ask Where's My Penguin? and peruse his Penguin edition for accuracy. This ended only when - after repeated such requests - Lerner wheeled out a taxidermist's stuffed penguin (to much laughter).
ARCHITECTURE NOTES - A temporary hotel, designed by German artist H.A. Schult and built almost exclusively from trash collected on Italian beaches, was open for business for four days last month, intended as "mirror of our time."
ART NOTES - an exhibit entitled Calder to Warhol is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through September 19th.
FILM NOTES - once limited to horror flicks and cult-like films, midnight movies are now almost expected .... even for run-of-the-mill dramas and comedies.
MUSIC NOTES - a pictorial from Rolling Stone is entitled, "Mullets, 'Fros & Beehives: From Bowie to Bieber, Rock's Most Iconic Hair Styles".
SPORTS TV NOTES - the World Cup final match between the Netherlands and Spain takes place today not on cable TV - but on ABC, at 2:30 PM Eastern (11:30 AM Pacific).
THURSDAY's CHILD is Suki the Cat - an Australian kitteh under consideration as 'the face' for a cat food brand.
LEAVE IT to HUGO CHAVEZ for drama: dirt representing the 'symbolic remains' of the lover of Latin American forefather Simon Bolivar were taken from the Peruvian mass grave from which she was dumped in 1856 and interred next to Bolivar in Venezuela's national pantheon building.
ADDING TO his list of awards, former President Carter was presented with the Cataluña International Prize by the regional government of that Spanish region.
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Dustin Hoffman (in "All The President's Men") and the star of Argentina's World Cup team Lionel Messi .... who went home goal-less.
FARMING NOTES - in the wake of the recently-completed Wimbledon tennis championships and its favored fruit, the growing of strawberries with the help of plastic polytunnels is under fire with environmentalists in parts of Britain.
POLITICAL NOTES - the Spanish region of Catalonia - centered in Barcelona - has had some of its controversial autonomy charter provisions overturned by Spain's constitutional court.
FRIDAY's CHILD is an Atlanta Humane Society rescue cat up for adoption.
FINANCIAL NOTES - the bassist for the Irish band U2 Adam Clayton has sued his bankers and accountants for negligence arising from claims his former personal assistant misappropriated more than $5 million from his bank accounts over a five-year period.
ALTHOUGH it was a minor part of a successful day, the recent Pride Day parade in Helsinki, Finland was marred by a pepper-spray incident.
AROUND THIS DATE circa July 10th, 1964 - is believed to have been the killing of Joe Gaetjens - the man who scored the goal for the US in the 1950 World Cup to defeat England in one of the greatest upsets in that tournament's history. Although apolitical, he was nabbed by the new President-for-Life Papa Doc Duvalier's secret police in his native Haiti and is believed to have been executed in the notorious Fort Dimanche prison circa forty-six years ago.
If you have nine minutes to spare - watch this video - it is a hard-hearted person indeed who can not be moved by this story of a son in search of his father.
.....and finally, for a song of the week ............... the history of American popular music in the post-war era is replete with tragedy and early deaths but - along with Buddy Holly - there may be no greater tragedy than the fate of Tammi Terrell the soul singer. Musically talented, photogenic and gifted academically: her future seemed limitless before a cruel illness took her life (a few weeks shy of her 25th birthday) forty years ago. Mercifully, she left an amazing body of work in only a short time.
Born as Thomasina Montgomery in Philadelphia, she won some talent shows in her youth and by age thirteen in 1958 was a regular opening act for singers such as Gary "U.S." Bonds and Patti Labelle. She was signed in 1961 to the local Scepter label and released songs such as "The Voice of Experience". James Brown caught her live act and signed her to his Try Me label as an eighteen year-old in 1963, where she released "I Cried" and "If I Would Marry You". And if that wasn't enough: she did all this while a pre-med student at the Ivy League's University of Pennsylvania.
But she left Penn after two years in 1965 when she was discovered by Motown's Berry Gordy (while she was performing with Jerry Butler). At first, she recorded solo as Tammy Montgomery (naming herself after the 1957 Debbie Reynolds song "Tammy") - releasing tunes such as "I Can't Believe You Love Me" and "Come On and See Me". And it's quite possible she could have had a successful solo career (over the long haul) but her Motown recordings were not big-sellers and Gordy had a different idea in mind, that catapulted her into stardom.
And this was her pairing with Marvin Gaye as a duet singer (as well as Gordy's choosing Tammi Terrell as her stage name). They clicked right away and - especially with the Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson husband-and-wife songwriting team on their side - released songs you may well remember. "Your Precious Love" and "If I Could Build My Whole World Around You" made the Top Ten, Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing was a hit before it became a Coke advertising jingle, and their best-known tune Ain't No Mountain High Enough spawned numerous cover versions by others.
Tammi had a tempestuous romance with singer David Ruffin (as was shown in the Temptations Forever TV mini-series) that ended due to his drug use. All along though, Tammi Terrell began to suffer severe migraine headaches - which nonetheless failed to prepare everyone for what lay ahead.
While the two performed at the October, 1967 homecoming concert at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, Tammi Terrell collapsed in Marvin Gaye's arms, and a subsequent hospital examination revealed that she was suffering from a malignant brain tumor. And it was all downhill from there (for the remaining 2-1/2 years of her life) as she underwent eight operations, enduring loss of memory as well as ultimately being confined to a wheelchair.
But though she never performed live again, Tammi was determined to record what she could. For their first full duets album United - in some cases, Marvin Gaye overdubbed his voice onto some previous solo recordings of Terrell's. In others, he and the band worked to complete the basic recording, and it was she who grafted her vocals later.
One controversy arose over the recording of their final duets album Easy in 1969. Valerie Simpson maintains that she had been brought in to provide guide vocals (temporary, not intended for final release) but Marvin Gaye later told his biographer David Ritz that Valerie Simpson's vocals were in fact used (and merely uncredited) at the suggestion of Berry Gordy when Terrell's condition had deteriorated to a certain point. Tammi Terrell's sister wrote a book siding with Simpson's account, claiming it was in fact her sister's voice.
Tammi Terrell finally succumbed to that brain tumor in March, 1970 (just a few weeks short of her 25th birthday). Marvin Gaye was so distraught that he left touring for two years, and the turmoil that was an integral part of his landmark 1971 album What's Going On was (in part) a reaction to the loss of Tammi Terrell.
She has several compilation albums of note: one a personal retrospective that leans more heavily on her solo recordings, another featuring the best-known of her duets with Marvin Gaye and - for completists - a comprehensive album of Marvin Gaye-Tammi Terrell duet recordings. All are fitting tributes to a special singer.
Of all of their work, I'm partial to You're All I Need to Get By - another Ashford & Simpson composition. It was recorded in July, 1968 when Terrell was recovering from her first few brain surgeries and - since it was produced by Ashford & Simpson themselves - it featured a more mature, soulful sound than a traditional Motown youthful pop arrangement. It has been covered by everyone from Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin to Michael McDonald, and a duet version by Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams in 1978 reached #47 on the charts.
And below you can listen to it.
Like the sweet morning dew
I took one look at you
And it was plain to see
You were my destiny
With my arms open wide
I threw away my pride
I'll sacrifice for you
Dedicate my life to you
I will go where you lead
Always there in time of need
And when you lose your will
I'll be there to push you up the hill
There's no looking back for us
We got love sure enough, that's enough:
You're all I need to get by