On The Bad, Don’t Dwell, Or So Says Patti Labelle
Patti LaBelle has reason to title her autobiography “Don’t Knock the Blessings.” She’s had a few in her life, but they go along with the knocks.
When she was 12, her parents split up. Then her mother’s boyfriend molested her. During a concert early in her career, singer Jackie Wilson tried to assault her.
But wait, there’s more. All three of the 52-year-old singer’s sisters died of cancer before they were 45.
“How do you live with so much heartache?” she writes. “I threw myself into my work. I wrapped my very soul in my song.”
It may have helped that she’s been married for 27 years to childhood sweetheart Armstead Edwards.
Loose talk
Denzel Washington on his forthcoming film “The Preacher’s Wife” (to People magazine): “We have so much negative stuff going on in the world, I was happy to be a part of a film that was saying something positive and upbeat.”
She once WAS a 34, if you catch our drift
Demi Moore turns 34 today.
We’ve always liked Wimpy Beast or Youth in Asia
You may notice that this family newspaper seldom gives feature play to the rock group Butthole Surfers. Can you guess why? Actually, that repulsive moniker was not the group’s first choice. Among other names that members rejected were Ashtray Babyheads, Vodka Family Winstons and Ed Asner’s Gay.
And you think that Jackie Collins writes fantasy
Aside from what she’s peddling in her own autobiography, Britain’s Duchess of York is characterized by writer Allan Starkie as someone who loves to play bad-girl sex games. In “Fergie: Her Secret Life,” Starkie writes that the duchess liked to have John Bryan “talk dirty” to her and, at least once, got him to “slap her hard across the face.”
He doesn’t want to give fathers a bad rap
How does Kenneth Edmonds, aka the rapper Babyface, handle all the different facets of his life? Not only is he a singer, songwriter, record producer, record company executive and film producer, he’s also the father of a nine-week-old baby boy. “The secret is knowing how to set priorities and then knowing when to shut the door and say, ‘I don’t want any calls. I don’t care who it is,”’ Edmonds explained.
He had some sense but hardly any sensibility
Enough from Jane Austen. Now it’s time to concentrate on a real-life hero, namely England’s controversial poet George Gordon Byron (1788-1824). Producer Billy Clark has contracted writer-director Charles Jarrott to write a screenplay based on Byron’s life. “Byron was not only the most popular poet of the day,” Clark told Variety, “but was considered the most scandalous, outrageous and erotic lover in all of Europe.” He wants Ralph Fiennes to star.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster