CAMP: "A cornucopia of frivolity, incongruity, theatricality, and humour." "A deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love." "The lie that tells the truth." "Ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to or characteristic of homosexuals."
Lordy! The "Songbird of Athens", the woman who single-handedly made glasses a fashion statement, one of the biggest-selling artists in the world (with a seven-decade career and more than 200 albums in multiple languages under her belt) - the lovely Miss Nana Mouskouri is 90 years old today!
What a huge musical legacy - here's a mere sample of her repertoire:
Many happy returns, Nana Mouskouri (born Ioanna Mouschouri, 13th October 1934)
...like Signorina Lea Periconi, tennis maven, and style icon of the 1950s and 60s, who has departed for Fabulon. The higher the hair...
It's National Poetry Day! How about this one... As we used to say when I was studying for exams in school, "We done Donne!"
The Good-Morrow
By John Donne
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
Sublime.
Our Patron Saint of Post-Punk Poise, Miss Debbie Harry - at the venerable age of [gulp!] 79 - is the face of Gucci's "We Will Always Have London campaign, in which the couture house has launched "The Blondie Bag"!
"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age."
"Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical."
"Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got."
"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti."
"You have to be born a sex symbol. You don't become one. If you're born with it, you'll have it even when you're 100 years old."
Signorina Sophia Loren, Diva-above-all-Divas, is 90 years old today!
All hail.
