“Debbie’s well-honed persona, the bawdy but good-natured Broadway chorine, serves her well here, where every side bend is carefully calibrated for minimum physical impact and maximum Borscht Belt shtick.”
Category: Munk’s Junk (Everything Else)
Blog posts
D.I.Y. Minnelli! The Liza Box is Completely Restored
“I ended up gifting the finished Liza Box to my little brother Robbie for Christmas that year. To gild the Minne-lily, I filled the box with all matter of Liza loot, including VHS copies of Rent-A-Cop and Arthur 2 from my personal collection and, the jewel in the crown, a customized Liza snow globe that played “New York, New York.” This feature gave me an unexpected thrill because the shaking movement required to activate the snow seemed to push Liza’s already erratic vibrato into previously uncharted tremulous territory.”
The Neon Piaf: Why Cyndi Lauper Matters
Being a lifelong outsider had informed everything about Lauper’s work, both musical and philanthropic. Her empathy has motivated her tireless work on behalf of the LGBT community over the years, despite being neither L, G, B, or T. She is only “C,” for “Cyndi,” but wholly “one of us.”
Whataburger’s Sexist Brand Messaging
For International Women’s Day, I thought it might be interesting to drag the Texas-based burger chain Whataburger into the 21st-century and give them a little of the #MeToo treatment. In this case, it should be #Hertoo, because the illustrated history of the brand that adorns the wall of each location is absurdly sexist and factually misleading.
How Marge Kaiser Went From “That Drunk Scrapbookin’ Lady Down The Street” to “That Drunk Scrapbookin’ Lady on National TV!”
Marge was born on Halloween 2009. I was casting about for a way to top my 2008 get up, the year I stunned Spring Street with a dead-on impersonation of my friend Elisa. I…
The Stargayzing Collection of Things I Collect
One of my oldest collections began before I was ten years old, when I bought my first two Pyramid books about film—about Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Published in the 1970s, the layout these books was perfect for a kid, as they simply presented a survey of the actor’s film work chronologically eschewing almost everything personal. Some of them were written by future film experts like Leonard Maltin. They are a great example of a collection that has little monetary value but means the world to me, as it represents the seeds of passion for my future film studies.
My Dream About Demi Moore
When I was a kid, I was exposed to two diametrically opposed perspectives regarding dreams. Grandma Frances, my father’s mother, was practical and notably un-analytic: she worked for the I.R.S. When I was ten or…
Stargayzing 2.0 is (Finally) Here
The hiatus of Stargayzing was meant to last a month and stretched on to nearly seven. During this unwanted extended break, I have learned a great deal about the technical aspects of WordPress, the difficulty and (ultimately)…
On My 50th Birthday, a Letter to Myself at 17
“I see the reason for your sadness: 12 years of institutionalized bullying—pervasive, relentless. I am touched by the exquisite coping skills you cultivated, the exaggerated belief in your own exceptionalism that you use like armor to guard against painful things, made to measure to compensate for what is being denied you or taken away.”
“See You in September!'” Exhausted Munk Takes Break
I’m so happy to report that Stargayzing has doubled its readership in the last twelve months, thanks to loyal readers like you. Indeed, to use a prominent metaphor from Jerzy Kosinki’s Being There, keeping Stargayzing thriving…
Who Posed in a Supermarket Refrigerator Better, Me or This Lady from BuzzFeed?
Imagine my bewilderment when I was scrolling through yet another inane BuzzFeed list and noticed this woman doing something that I had heretofore believed that only I was silly enough to do: lumber into the…
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