Entertainment Blogs

Archive for June 27th, 2009

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson “King of Pop” stuns world, death at age 50.

After letting a couple of days go by, I had a chance to reflect on the June 25th shocking death of Michael Jackson.

This celebrity death has hit me harder then I thought it would. When I found out, I was just finishing up a video tribute to Farrah Fawcett who died earlier in the day. Although Farrah’s death was sad, you had time to mentally prepare for it, after all she had been in the media for a while and we all knew she was battling anal cancer.

At approximately 4:25 p.m. CST I went to Twitter to share my link to the new tribute video for Farrah, when all of a sudden the news started flooding in, when I saw the first link I thought to myself, thats a really sick way to advertise on Twitter, then the second, third…I quickly switched to my MSN home page, and there it was. The headline…”Michael Jackson dead at 50 due to cardiac arrest.”

Still in disbelief I then checked my facebook page, and my friends were already sending in their condolences, now everything felt like a dream, quickly shifting gears to CNN live, it started to hit me, my childhood idol was gone.

As a DJ/Music Producer at the age of 15,   I was already remixing “Billie Jean”, “Thriller”, “Bad”, “Smooth Criminal” ect. In fact I remember the first time I got “Billie Jean” to sync up with “Like A Virgin”  from Madonna, I was in heaven. But back to Michael’s death, could it be? would I not be able to look forward to seeing him live in concert one last time?

Well after I had dinner and the evening set in, I kept noticing how slow the internet was, I couldn’t believe just how fast the news was traveling. Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook, every single media outlet was crushing the net with the countless speculations and stories.

Yesterday I had a chance to reflect on MJ a little bit more,  I was reminded of the time when I participated in  ”Hands Across America” I remember holding that strangers hand a hearing Michael’s sweet angelic voice after the seemingly forever minute of silence. I recalled what I was doing when on the radio they broadcasted that “Thriller” had just broken the record for how many weeks it was on the chart. Back then it was through the Casey Kasem show, and I was able to remember his words 26 years later.

Speaking of charts, I was reading on Billboard that  sales of 5 albums have skyrocketed and that brick and mortar stores can’t keep up with the demand. So next week it’s more than likely that we will see Michael Jackson on top of the pop charts more time, but this time he WILL break his own records and smash the records of every artist, making him truly the King of Pop.

Having all these found memories prompted me to do a tribute video, and I worked hard on it till one in the morning the day he passed away. It got me thinking though, that maybe I should do a mega mix remix and a video remix, and that’s what I have been working on this entire day.

I’ll remember these past days with wonder, nostalgia, and a sense of accomplishment. For if it weren’t for my childhood hero, I may not be who I am today. Thank you Michael for your musical genius, your spectacular live concerts, for being a trailblazer, for having the vision to create small video clips of your music that know will live on in hearts of millions and millions of fans. Thank you for your humanitarian contributions.

These are the things I hope this legend is remembered for, not all the court room dramas and strange behaviors of his later life.

To close this blog I’m reminded of a certain MJ song “Heal the World”, “Heal the world, make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race.” Let’s hope this line of song stays true.

Nitrogen-E

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Nitrogen-E’s Mega Mix tribute video pt.2

Nitrogen-E’s first tribute video for dragqueendiaries.com

March 6, 1923 - June 23, 2009

Ed McMahon, best known as the long-time side-kick and announcer of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, passed away on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, shortly after midnight at the Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California after a long battle with pneumonia, bone cancer and other medical problems.

Ed McMahon was 86 years old.

Born Edward Leo Peter McMahon, Jr. on March 6, 1923 to Elenor and Edward McMahon in Detroit, Michigan, Ed grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts and attended Catholic University of America where he majored in speech and drama, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. McMahon served our great country during World War II as a fighter pilot in the USMC decorated with six  Air Medals until his discharge in 1946, and remained in the reserves until returning to active duty after college. Sent to Korea in 1952, he flew unarmed OE-1 Bird Dogs on 85 tactical air control and artillery spotting missions.  He remained in the reserves retiring in 1966 with the rank of Colonel before being commissioned as a Brigadier General in the California Air National Guard.

Before The Tonight Show, he co-hosted a game show opposite the late, great Johnny Carson called “Who Do You Trust?” which ran from 1957-1962, before the dynamic-duo left to join the Tonight Show in 1962 and enjoyed a very successful 30 year run until Carson retired in 1992.  During that time, McMahon found time to host the successful weekly syndicated series Star Search beginning in 1983, which helped launch the careers of many of today’s actors, singers, and comedians which include Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Rosie O’donnell. McMahon stayed with the show during its entire run until it ended in 1995. In 2003, he made a cameo appearance on the CBS revival of the show hosted by Arsenio Hall.

McMahon was also co-host until 2008 of the annual Labor Day Jerry Lewis Telethon for MD appearing 41 times, second only to Lewis himself. In 1982, he and Dick Clark hosted NBC’s TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes. He stayed with the show intil 1998 when Clark decided to move the show to ABC.

In 2004 McMahon became announcer and co-host of Alf’s Hit Talk Show on TVLand, along with authoring two memoirs, Here’s Johnny!: My Memories of Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show, and 46 years of Friendship and For Laughing Out Loud.

In 2007, McMahon was injured in a fall, and in March of 2008, it became public that he was recovering from a broken neck and follow-up surgeries.  He subsequently sued Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and two of its doctors claiming fraud, battery, elder abuse, and emotional distress, accusing them with dicharging him with a broken neck after the 2007 fall and botching the two later neck surgeries.  In 2009, it was reported that McMahon was in an undisclosed L.A. hospital (which turned out to be in later reports as Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center) for almost a month in serious condition and the ICU. Reports were that he was admitted for pneumonia, but reports that he had been diagnosed with bone cancer would never be confirmed or denied.  McMahon would remain here until his demise.

For more than 30 years, McMahon introduced the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson with a drawn-out “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!” His larger than life persona and hearty laughter alongside the “King of Late Night” earned him nicknames such as “The Human Laugh Track” and “Toymaker to the King, and Conan O’Brien, present host of the Tonight Show, paid tribute to McMahon later that evening of his passing by saying “It is impossible, I think, for anyone to imagine The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson without Ed McMahon. His laugh was really the soundtrack to that show”, adding that along with Carson, they created “the most iconic two-shot in broadcasting history.”

There will never be anything like that or him ever again.

Rest in Peace, Ed McMahon

Until Next Time!

Michael Queenstown

Follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/MQueenstown

June 10, 1922 - June 22, 1969

Forty years ago on July 22, 1969, one of the world’s brightest stars went dim and the  LGBT community lost one of its most cherished  icons when Judy Garland passed away.

Born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, and through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years, Garland attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, a recording artist, and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for her work in films, as well as Grammy Awards and a Tony Award.

After appearing in vaudeville with her sisters, Garland was signed to MGM as a teenager. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney, and of course, the film with which she would be most identified, 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.  It took 15 years, but Garland was released from the studio and gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a critically acclaimed concert at the legendary Carnegie Hall, a well-respected but short-lived series on television , and a triumphant return to the silver screen beginning with 1954’s A Star is Born.

Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and overweight. Plied with drugs to control her weight and increase her productivity, Garland endured a decades-long struggle with addiction. Garland was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes, and her first four of five marriages ended in divorce. She attempted suicide on a number of occasions. Garland died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 47, leaving children Liza Minnelli, and Lorna and Joey Luft.

The Grammy Awards posthumously awarded Garland the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 Garland was posthumously awarded and several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. and in 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI)  placed her among the ten greatest female stars in the history of American Cinema.

Garland always had a large fan base in the gay community. The reasons often given for this status (especially by gay men) are her ability as a performer, the way her personal life struggles mirrored those of gay men in America during the peak of her fame and her value as a camp figure.  Also, coincidental or not, the timing of her death and funeral in June of 1969 and the Stonewall Riots (which for most marked the starting point for the modern day Gay Liberation movement) has become a part of LGBT lore.

Of an up-coming feature film based on the life of Judy Garland (who would have turned 87 on June 10) called “Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland” and starring Anne Hathaway in the leading role, Garland’s daughter, the equally as legendary Liza Minnelli has urged the makers of the film to not just depict the dark side of her mother’s life by focusing primarily on her drug addiction phase, and though Minnelli has no problems with Hathaway playing the role of her mother in the movie, her mother’s talent and virtues should be highlighted.

“Well, I love Anne Hathaway. And I hope it’s a good movie and I hope that it’s true.  You know, they just don’t concentrate on crap like they used to”, says Minnelli.  People usually end up talking about her mother’s problems and forget to talk about the real Judy Garland, like her doting mother quality and how wonderful a human being she was.

“I Hope”, says Minnelli, “that they talk about her the way she should be talked about which was she was a fabulous entertainer, a great mother and just a wonderful human being.”

We ALL hope for the same thing, Liza. And we STILL love and miss you Judy!!

Until Next Time,

Michael Queenstown

Follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/MQueenstown