Tag Archives: boy george

Ketchup With Us #14


ME: Anyone remember a post I wrote a while back called Will the Real ODNT Please Stand Up?

YOU: Nope.

ME: Sure you do. It was a good one about how I looked just like another lady blogger.

YOU: (not even looking up from the book you’re reading, just shaking your head) Sorry. Don’t remember it.

ME: Aw, come on. The picture was in black and white? I even recreated it.

YOU: (sipping your coffee nonchalantly, you’ve actually taken another call at this point and are laughing at me with the person on the other end of the phone)

ME: (hysterically) ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME? DO YOU EVEN READ ODNT? (pulling out hair) Why do I try? Why, oh why, do I …

MEL/According to Mags: (ahem) Michele, you seem to have gotten off track, honey. Here. (smoothing hair) Why don’t you sit down and have a sip of your milk while I do the talking, okay? (turning away from the crazy) Hey, guys. This week’s prompt is pretty simple. Who’s your doppelgänger? Your twin? Your carbon copy? We want to know. To get you started, I’ve written one here for Michele. And she wrote one for me over at According to Mags. We’re interchangeable like that. (leaves room singing a familiar tune to herself) “But they’re bloggers, identical bloggers all the way … “


Michele’s Doppelgänger by Mel

The make-up applied just so. The hair braided, beaded and bedazzled to a tee. A signature hat that screams to a culture club. Of course, she added her own flair and style, but still unmistakable. This girl will tumble for ya and is a total chameleon. She has done Boy George proud. Her doppelganger he will be.

Her inspiration?

Uncanny, yes?

2015/01/img_9287.jpg


For a quick explanation of this link-up, click here. In short, Mel and I will post a picture or video with a writing prompt on the 1st and 15th of every month. You can write your entry in any form. We love creativity. And, with each prompt, we’ll feature a writer from the previous link-up. Which reminds me …

Our esteemed Ketchup With Us Featured Writer for today is …

Deana

* * * * * * * * * *

The Rules of Play

  1. Submit your entry using the linky at the bottom of our KWU posts.
  2. Follow us on Facebook (Michele /Mel).
  3. Follow us on Twitter (Michele/Mel) & tweet us your entry using the hashtag #KetchupWithUs.

Grab our Button!

olddognewtits.com


‘KETCHUP WITH US’ – Prompt #14

In 57 words or less, tell us about your doppelgänger.

20130314-201629.jpg

20120407-223706.jpg

 

The 30 People Who Can Share My Birthday Crown


Writer’s Note … I had the post below written and ready to go for today, but then I woke up to the most amazing surprise. Two of my best friends out there wrote their posts today about ME! Stupid, boring, pain in the ass me. And I honestly could not be more flattered. My family wasn’t even awake yet and I was already smiling from ear to ear. So, you know, please read my stupid post but, even more so, please take a look at the posts of two of the sweetest people I know. And then keep on reading them. They’re WAY funnier than me anyway. Thanks, you guys!

.

According to Mags

El Guapo

* * * * * * * * * *

Dear ODNT Family,

Is it appropriate for me to write something about my own birthday? It feels weird doing it … but it feels even weirder ignoring it. So …

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday. June 11. There’s actually a lot of great people born in June along with me. So, I picked 30 of them to honor today, listing each one on his or her actual birthday (i.e., 1 = June 1st and so on). I also listed my reasons for honoring them, even when those reasons sounded a little off the wall.

So, without further ado, I give you …

The 30 People Who Can Share My Birthday Crown

1 – Marilyn Monroe Because she’s a not-stick-thin hottie and standing next to her might make me look skinny.

2 – Jerry Mathers Because he had to go by the name ‘Beaver’ all those years.

3 – Suzi Quatro Because I’m still copying Leather Tuscadero’s hair. Although I could never master the snapping thing.

4 – Russell Brand Because his voice alone cracks me up. Forgive me?

5 – Kenny G Because including Kenny G on this list is simply hilarious to me.

6 – Robert Englund Because, without him, we might not have our June 9th honoree. Plus I was too scared to leave him out.

7 – Michael Cera Because his ‘George Michael Bluth’ reminds me SO much of my boy. “Breakfast?”

8 – Jerry Stiller Because of Frank Costanza. Enough said.

9 – Johnny Depp Because … well, duh. Have you been paying attention at all?

10 – Ruth DeBlanc Because she’s my grandmother, she’s awesome and she would have been 100 years old yesterday.

11 – Gene Wilder Because of …“Blucher!”

12 – Anne Frank Because she’s incredible and helped to get me reading as a kid.

13 – Paul Lynde Because I watched Uncle Arthur on Bewitched every afternoon. And because he somehow, amazingly, never came out of the closet.

14 – Boy George Because I dressed up as that man more times than I care to admit. And even won a contest once.

15 – Neil Patrick Harris Because he’s a fellow theater junkie. And because he plays a lothario on How I Met Your Mother.

16 – Laurie Metcalf Because Jackie was always way funnier than Roseanne.

17 – Barry Manilow Because he is music and he writes the songs (that make the whole world sing).

18 – Paul McCartney Because he’s Paul freakin’ McCartney. Seriously?

19 – Mia Sara Because I thought she was cool as Sloane Peterson. What ever happened to her?

20 – John Taylor Because of Duran Duran. And this mention is my shout out to all five of them.

21 –Leo Sayer Because he wrote some of the super groovy tunes I played in my early guitar days.

22 – Cyndi Lauper Because I met her once when she was with her son and she seemed like a really good mom.

23 – Bob Fosse Because of … Jazz Hands!

24 –Michele Lee Because she was the first person I ever saw who spelled her name the same way I do.

25 – Mike Myers Because of So I Married An Axe Murderer. Rent it.

26 – Jeff DeBlanc – Because he’s my grandfather and the only one here giving my grandmother a run for her money.

27 – Captain Kangaroo Because he gave me something to watch on TV when I was a kid. BEFORE cable.

28 – Mel Brooks Because of Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles & The Producers.

29 – Bret McKenzie Because of Jenny and everything he and Jemaine do in Flight of the Conchords.

30 – Ken Olin Because I so loved Thirtysomething back in the day.

Assembling this list was no small task but I had fun doing it. There were a few hard choices to make on some of the days and I was forced to leave out a number of pretty choice people. But I could only pick one person per day. Without rules, THERE WOULD BE ANARCHY… or maybe just too long of a post.

Anyway, I need to go celebrate my birthday. When I was nine, my family surprised me with tickets to see Donny & Marie live in concert. Who knows what this year will bring? Honestly, all I’m really looking for is a stress-free day where everyone is happy and my face hurts from so much smiling. And cheese.

Thanks for listening,

The Birthday Girl

20120610-192300.jpg

20120407-223706.jpg

read to be read at yeahwrite.me

“Throw your arms around the world at Christmas time” (except for George Michael – the guy from Wham!, not Michael Cera)


12/11/14 … I wrote this post almost tHREE years ago but it seems like a great fit for MamaKat’s writing prompt today: “Take a line from a song you love and turn it into the title of your next blog post. Let the content follow.” Easy.

I saw Rock of Ages a few weeks ago with Ashley and Vanessa, both of whom are a few years younger than me. Enough younger than me that I felt that the show offered more in the way of their coming of age music than mine. Not that the show wasn’t good. But its music all surfaced for me at the end of high school. And when I think of ‘coming of age’ … at least musically … I think of the stuff that brought me from grade school into high school. I was there on August 1, 1981 ‘wanting my MTV’ when the station was first launched with the airing of The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star. Truth be told, I still have that song and even another by The Buggles on my iPod. (I’d be surprised if anyone reading could even name another song by that band.)

So, a few years later, when all of those early 80s (British) bands came together in the interest of aiding world hunger to produce a single called Do They Know it’s Christmas?, I was ALL in. I remember excitedly talking about it right after it was released with a bunch of kids in my Biology class. I bought the album that week. And thanks to the fact that it remained at my parents’ house, I still own it (as it wasn’t among the many casualties of my home lost to Katrina).

I found it the other day and snapped a few pictures.

20111222-225330.jpg

20111222-224814.jpg

The front cover art was interesting enough but the back cover design was what really caught my attention … because it featured a picture of all the performers who sang on the album. And there was even a crude key for determining who was who in the picture. I stared at that album so much I could have named every face on the blank outline drawing without missing even one. Yet, I probably hadn’t read a page of whatever I was supposed to be reading in my English class at the time.

20111222-225130.jpg

20111222-225144.jpg

20111222-225154.jpg

Yeah, that’s right. How many of you knew that Kool & the Gang sang on the album? Don’t worry. I’d actually forgotten, too.

There were three songs on the album:

  1. The version played every holiday season
  2. Spoken holiday greetings of the performers (dripping with English accents and Irish brogues) set to the song’s drum beat. I can only assume this cut was included as filler.
  3. A combination of #1 and #2. The extended version that I played incessantly in my room. I loved listening to the foreign pronunciations and the ‘Happy Christmas’es. (I need to get my hands on one of those transfer-your-records-to-CD contraptions so I can hear it again.)

As weird as it sounds … and I know that it will … I listened to it so many times that I still have most of the spoken parts committed to memory, like David Bowie’s closing speech.

It’s Christmas 1984. And there are more starving folk on our planet than ever before. Please give a thought for them this season and do whatever you can, however small, to help them live. Have a peaceful New Year.”

Actually, Bowie went second to last among the spoken well-wishers. Bob Geldof, front man for The Boomtown Rats and more importantly the force behind the BAND-AID project, did the honors.

And, whether they like it or not, my kids know the song very well. My daughter even does the harmony. But they had not seen the video until I played it for them on YouTube this year. My son was mostly concerned about determining the genders of many of the singers. (In his defense, he was grappling with Boy George, George Michael and so many other long-haired, made-up dudes). My daughter took one look at all the ratted hair and tattered clothing and asked if the singers themselves were the ‘poor people’ for whom the song was written. And I … well, I just couldn’t get over how much Bob Geldof looked like Jerry Seinfeld.

So anyway, take a look if you’re interested. It’s been 27 years since this song was released and, for me, it will always remind me of my sometimes awkward, sometimes exciting, and always memorable early teen years and all the wild and wonderful, gender-bending music we listened to back then.

For more information about the album’s production, click here. They give all kinds of interesting details … like how Boy George had to be dragged out of bed to participate and, once there, wanted nothing more than to bitch slap George Michael. Merry Christmas, girlfriend! 

20120407-223706.jpg