mitzie’s blog

The Golden Girls quote of the day

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:47:22 -0700

Sophia: The change of life didn't change her life!

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Goodbye Michael..... We Had Him

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:38:34 -0700

The memorial yesterday for Michael Jackson was beautiful. I was not fortunate enough to get a ticket and watched it on TV. I really wished I could have watched it with other like minded fans but I had to go to work. A lot of great moments celebrating his life and music. Definitely shed a tear listening to John Mayer's rendition of "Human Nature":

John Mayer performing Human Nature Michael Jackson Memorial Tribute

Cried a bit more listening to the end of Jennifer Hudson's rendition of "Will You Be There". Michael's voice at the end was just ....

Jennifer Hudson - WILL YOU BE THERE / HOLD ME: Live @ Michael Jackson Memorial, Staples Center

And Dr. Maya Angelou's poem read by Queen Latifah was beautiful:

We Had Him

Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing, now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace. Sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon.

In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell time. No oceans can rush our tides with the abrupt absence of our treasure.

Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.

Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance.

Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, and took a pose on his toes for all of us.

And we laughed and stomped our feet for him.

We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing. He gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square.

In Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama, and Birmingham, England

We are missing Michael.

But we do know we had him, and we are the world.

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My Own Goodbye...

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:03:36 -0700

Super last minute, Tuesday night I found out a friend was driving to Neverland Ranch the next day. I thought it would be cool to go and miracle of miracles my super cool boss let me go. It was a great road trip up to Los Olivos in Santa Barbara County to the ranch.Two hours and change each way playing MJ's music and reminscing about his great moments and wondering about the iffy ones. Learned some things I never knew like Janet Jackson sings on the end of Wanna Be Startin Somethin and all the names of the Jackson kids - Tito (I always remember his ha!) Jermaine. Randy. Marlon. Michael. Latoya. Rebe. Janet. Hmmm I'm missing one. And I know its a J...... hang on...... JACKIE! (Well that didn't stick in my head long?)

Anyhoo the drive was really nice though in the winding roads we passed, you could see the scorched earth where the Santa Barbara fires were.

DSC04708

We knew we were close by the glut of SAT trucks and media vans lining both sides of the tiny street. In between were people's cars and tents.

I never thought I'd really be that person that left a note or flowers in memoriam of someone but there I was writing a note and leaving it at the gate of Neverland Ranch. Doing that and listening to his music on the road trip with the girls was a great way to say goodbye. He'll have a memorial here in LA on Tuesday and I signed up for the lottery but I won't be devestated if I don't go. I said my goodbye.

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R.I.P. Michael

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:44:04 -0700

I can't really believe it. Michael Jackson died today. I truly never thought this day would come (which is silly of course but nevertheless the truth)! His music has always been a part of my life. And though he had many troubles and allegations and all sorts of weird things going on with him, his genius and talent cannot be denied. The craziness does not negate the brilliance. I regret that I never got a chance to see him perform in person. I do hope he can rest in peace.

Michael Jackson - We're Almost There - 1975 - R.I.P

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The Golden Girls Quote of the Day - Dorothy Zbornak edition

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:35:41 -0700

I still can't believe Bea Arthur is gone. It's just a bummer to know that
another Girl is gone. Thought I'd do some Dorothy quotes. Her and Estelle
Getty had some of the best lines:

Dorothy: [to Sophia] You're a furry little gnome and we feed you too much
_______________

Dorothy: It's wonderful dating in Miami. Every single man under eighty sells
cocaine.

_______________

Rose: Charlie once had a business partner who was also a lying, cheating,
evil, slimy human being!

Dorothy: Wait, Rose, let me guess. Hans
Zinglefruberdanshoodlegadenhinkelmeier?

Rose: Yup! That's the louse!
_______________

Dorothy: Now look here... you withered old Sicilian monkey!

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Estelle Getty items auctioned

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:40:45 -0700

So a bunch of Estelle Getty items are being auctioned off this Sunday at Bonham's and Butterfield's. Among the items you'll find her purse, glassesand some awards. I really want this http://is.gd/Z9Sp but I may be outbid as so many people loved Estelle and her work!

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Random Tweets of the day...........

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:04:31 -0700

Random Tweets of the day...........

21:07 I'm as jumpy as a virgin at a prison rodeo! - Blanche

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Great Article about the Golden Girls

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:13:46 -0700

Four Old Women Share an Apartment *Why The Golden Girls was sitcom genius.* By
Troy Patterson
http://www.slate.com/id/2217147/

As if presiding over a festive wake, both the Hallmark Channel and WE tv are airing *Golden Girls*marathons
this week. This heavy-rotation tribute to the show's top-billed star, Beatrice Arthur, provides die-hard fans with a low-key alternative to rending their garments. Additionally, it provides us all with a fine opportunity to assess the sitcom anew. We begin with the observation that *The Golden Girls *is way too good for WE, where it rubs its '80s shoulder pads with *Amazing Wedding Cakes* and *Women Behind Bars*.

The Golden Girls

The show debuted in September of 1985, a time that, in TV terms, is as distant as the Enlightenment. *The Golden
Girls * joined an NBC lineup that featured *The A-Team*, *Remington Steele*, *Hill Street Blues*, *St. Elsewhere*, *Miami Vice*, *The Cosby Show*, and *Cheers*. To be sure, there was room for raw idiocy on the schedule of programming executive Brandon Tartikoff. *TV Bloopers & Practical Jokes* aired on Mondays at 8 p.m., thus anticipating the current strategy of programming executive Ben Silverman: Howie Mandel's *Candid Camera* knockoff does the practical jokes while his thought process behind greenlighting dreck like *Crusoe* covers the blooper angle. Those were different times, and *The Golden Girls* aired during a two-hour block of Saturday-night comedies. Yes, children, people used to watch network TV on Saturdays, instead of going to meth parties or diddling their Twitters or whatever passes for an evening's entertainment nowadays.

It aired at 9 p.m., between *227* and *The Facts of Life*, two other gynocentric comedies, the one celebrating the role of women in holding communities together, the other inculcating a fetish for prep-school girls. But *The Golden Girls* —about a group of older women sharing a Miami house designed like a multichamber sunroom—trafficked in something like pop feminism, and it's terrifically apt that Arthur played the Carrie Bradshaw figure in a sketch deftly spoofing on *Sex and the City*.

Created by Susan Harris—a pioneering producer and the writer of the famous abortion episode of Arthur's *Maude*—*Golden Girls* boasted characters who were sharp in their humor and secure in their freedoms, which included the freedom to be mean. The show's most biting laugh lines—which are shaped so well that these scripts would work
for radio—achieve that ideal bitchiness animating *The Women*. In a typical moment, Blanche, the vain Southern belle played by Rue McClanahan, preens, "One thing I know for sure, I have not lost my hourglass figure." Which is the cue for Arthur, as acid Dorothy, to snipe, "And it looks like somebody poured about 90 minutes of extra sand in the glass." The in-studio audience laughs, and Blanche laughs it off. That the characters insult one another so viciously indicates their intimacy. When addressing the comforts and frustrations of friendship, *The Golden Girls* is more interesting than *Friends* (which had its moments) and as compelling as *I Love You, Man* (which has some rather awesome moments). Call it *The Sisterhood of the Comfortable Slacks*.

Let us review the girls' bios, as if you need reminding: Blanche Devereaux was the youngest and most sexually ambitious, occasionally catching the vapors, sometimes mincing rhythmically. Blanche vamps along as a cartoon
version of a Tennessee Williams hothouse flower, with her first name swiped from *A Streetcar Named
Desire* and her regular references to her father as "Big Daddy" nodding to *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof*. But McClanahan brings the part to life by coming on like a light-farcical version of Maxine Faulk, the rapaciously lusty widow played by Ava Gardner in the underappreciated film version of *The Night of the Iguana*.

Rue with a Pearl Earring

Betty White played Rose Nylund, who had relocated to Miami from St. Olaf, Minn., where all children are subnormal, based on the evidence of her cracked anecdotes and gloriously dingbatty self. *The Golden Girls* is a broad ethnic comedy, and she is its Norwegian-American emissary of the upper Midwest, as affable as Marge Gunderson's accent, though without any brains. Not just the daffiest of the girls, Rose is also the prettiest, and the combination gives her an aspect of Elsie the Cow.

Betty and Child

Estelle Getty was Sophia Petrillo, the mother of Arthur's Dorothy. From Sicily by way of Brooklyn, she slices off her lines like Catherine Scorsese in her bit part in *Goodfellas*. Because *The Golden Girls* made the scene before the political correctness and identity politics of the 1990s, its writers didn't get hung up on inappropriate jokes, and Sophia, because of her advanced age and old-world attitude, was given the most tasteless. In a fairly tame instance,
she wonders, of a girl-on-girl hug, "What is this, Wimbledon?"

The Birth of Estelle

Which brings us to Dorothy Zbornak, who, despite having been raised by Sophia, speaks in the Catskills cracks and vaudeville cadences of Jewish humor. Either Dorothy is intended as a generically ethnic New Yorker or else
she picked this up during her decades of marriage to ex-husband Stanley. Significantly, while the other three girls are widows, Dorothy is a divorcee. Her lines are the most bitter and world-weary. She exudes the strongest scent of desperation about dying alone.

Mona Beasa

Wrapping up the first night of its *Golden Girls *marathon on Monday, WE aired the series finale, the second half of a two-parter titled "One Flew Out of the Cuckoo's Nest." For a valediction, *The Golden Girls* married Dorothy off to an eligible bachelor played by Leslie Nielsen. In her angular white wedding dress, she looked like a hybrid of Ivana Trump, Krystle Carrington, Cruella DeVille, and a snowy egret. The episode ends with a group hug and then an encore of the hug. What was this, the LPGA tour? Then Dorothy disappears into the sunset, perhaps the one from the first scenes of the opening credits, with a jet sliding in front of an orange disc like a friendly vision of the great grand finale in the sky.

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The Golden Girls Quote of the Day - Dorothy Zbornak edition

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:12:51 -0700

I still can't believe Bea Arthur is gone. It's just a bummer to know that
another Girl is gone. Thought I'd do some Dorothy quotes. Her and Estelle
Getty had some of the best lines.

And as much as Dorothy loved her Mother, she had plenty of names for her!

Dorothy: [to Sophia] You're a furry little gnome and we feed you too much
_________________________________________________________________

Dorothy: Good night, Rose. Go to sleep, honey. Pray for brains.
__________________________________________________________________

Dorothy: [to Sophia] Get back here, you deceitful little Sicilian gekko!
__________________________________________________________________

Dorothy: You remember my lying vicious toad of a mother?
__________________________________________________________________

Dorothy: Shady Pines Ma! Shady Pines!

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Random Tweets of the day...........

nobody@vox.com(mitzie) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:02:59 -0700

Random Tweets of the day...........

01:19 Please Rose. What I forgot you'll never know. - Sophia

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