The Queen

Ladies and gentlemen, the Queen has left the building.

Sadly, Aretha Franklin (also known as The Queen of Soul) passed away yesterday at the age of 76.  The prolific singer, songwriter and actress was known for her unmistakable soulful sound.

But while her sound was unmistakable, apparently her image was not, at least to Fox News who posted a tribute graphic that included a photo of Patti LaBelle!

This sadly suggests at least someone at Fox News couldn't distinguish one African American diva from another.

Oh, but what fodder for Facebook!  Almost immediately memes starting showing up that frankly had me laughing out loud!

At least the laughter from these memes helped ease the pain of such a great loss to American music.  Aretha will be imitated but never duplicated.

R.I.P. our Queen.

Diva

This coming weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the Blue Moon restaurant and bar. As a part of the weekend's celebration we're doing an encore performance of the Legends show Sat night.

Its been over a month since we performed these characters so the bar owners asked each of us to come in today to run through our segments. I went today at 3:30 to rehearsal my Neil Diamond routine. I'm very comfortable with the material and really didn't need the rehearsal, but I dare not say so.

See, the night of our very first Legends show I was the last performer and after finishing my medley I left the stage knowing I had just a few short minutes to change out of my Neil Diamond costume and into my finale tuxedo. So as I exited the stage I handed my mic to the show coordinator and simply said "mic", then yanked my silk scarf from around my neck and handed it to the costume coordinator and said "scarf" and began unbuttoning my shirt. Thanks to this, the show coordinator gave me the nickname Diva.


So I dared not tell them I really didn't need today's rehearsal. That would have cemented my Diva status for sure!

After finishing the rehearsal we talked briefly about plans for the Legends Christmas show. I love Christmas music!! I was thrilled to learn that I'm going to be impersonating Neil Sedaka and singing 'Merry Christmas, Darling' - one of my all-time favorite Christmas songs!