The Fat Lady has sung. The last dog has died.

And still she hangs on, clutching her barely-there 2-percentage-point victory in Indiana. From her cold, dead hands, children. From her cold, dead hands.

What I will miss most about my Hillary — for yes I am a supporter and yes I would vote for her again and yes, yes, I know, she is sooo cooked — is the way she would look at Barack Obama during the debates. That frozen glare behind the frosted smile. The slight up tilt of the forehead. God, that was priceless!

There would be ol’ Barry sawing away and saying nothing, all misty uplift about change and hope and the American people, slipping ever so carefully into just the palest of black preacher cadences, something for the home team, no Reverend Wright, of course; more Miss Diahann Carroll in an Oleg Cassini gown glossing her way through Aretha: R. E. S. P. E. C. T., ladies and gentlemen. That’s what y’all mean to me.

And there would be my Hillary in all her late-blooming, newly blondized, Georgette Klinger radiance, the robot who suddenly grew a heart and look ma, she’s even warm to the touch! All red-carpet razzle dazzle beside the dour law professor, with his down-turned lips and his solemn — here I risk a racist word — dignity. (more…)

Forget Clint-Obama-Rama. And our economy sliding over a cliff.

At Sunday’s Grammy Awards a cataclysm of titanic proportion occurred when Beyonce Knowles introduced a waiting-in-the-wings Tina Turner to a drop-jaw audience as … “The Queen.”

Come Monday an irritated
Aretha Franklin, always and forever to be known as The Queen of Soul, declared the following about the supposed contretemps:

“I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy.”

Franklin then made like Storm from the X-Men superheros team and with a severe sweep of her arm annihilated dozens of neighborhoods in Beyonce’s hometown of Houston Texas.

What Aretha may have lost in of-the-moment pop music relevance during recent years — where her musical output has been scattershot and weakly received — she seems to be making up for in sheer mass and madcap, could-give-a-fuck fashion chutzpah. (more…)

Who didn’t love Tammy Faye, who died this past week (but not before doing the full hour with Larry King)? She was crazy in that crazy American way. Singing and crying and loving on Jesus, then in the next breath telling you all major credit cards were accepted.

Her trademark was the triple-ply false eyelashes, mascara-streaked tears bubbling out through the blissed-out smiles, and an ability to sing, laugh and cry all in the same hallucinatory moment.

It was a talent later imitated but never quite equaled by another screaming-Mimi of the Christian Ministries, Jan Crouch, the Jayne Mansfield to Tammy’s purer, more sincere Marilyn.

Sincerity, that is, as far as it went for a wiggy televangelist like Tammy who would sprint off to dismal foreign slums for a day and wrap her on-camera arms around a starving child — some adorable wretch with big suffering eyes and flies alighting on his lips — and then all at once something kooky would happen.

The script would fly out of her head; Tammy could never linger too long on the negative. A sunburst would break through the tears, one of her notorious outbreaks of inappropriate giggling. She’d start praising the lord and thanking Jesus for all her own gifts, which could be yours too if you sent in the prayer money. Then, mission accomplished, sticky child removed from arm, she would store the big hair back on the private jet and fly home to one of several plantation-style mansions in the subdivisions of South Carolina. (more…)

Don’t kiss the world goodbye!

Unleash all the furies of hell on the fucker!

Like Sophie did.

Sophie?

Yes, Sophie Calle, the French artist who has brought grudge-fucking to a high art and become the hit of this year’s Venice Biennale — sort of a Cannes Film Festival for the art world and one of the most competitive venues in Europe for the bright and the new.

When Ms. Calle’s boyfriend emailed her a “Dear Jane” letter, she replied by setting 107 raving women on his ass — Furies, indeed — installing the entire “work” in a pavilion at the Biennale.

Reports the Washington Post’s sharp-eyed and shaper-tongued Blake Gopnik: (more…)

To feature a woman on Nightcharm’s front page she must be a creature who mirrors the pagan, crystal vision that inspires our staff to conjure all of the high quality juju we offer up to you, dear reader, week after week.

And who better to feature this week than the earth and moon-inspired blond witchy woman herself: Stevie Nicks.

When I caught Camille Paglia on tour recently she mentioned how the entirety of her new book Break, Blow, Burn was written with Nicks’ Trouble in Shangri-La spinning in the background.

Paglia considers Stevie Nicks a nature poet, a poet of the earth and sky: The planets, sun and the moon (and then some). A few audience members balked at Paglia’s statement, but I nodded my head in agreement while fingering my love beads.

As Joyce Millman from Salon reminds us: “The women in Nicks’ songs are free birds and gypsies: independent, unafraid to be alone, uncaged. In the manly world of rock ‘n’ roll, Nicks articulated a yearning female spirituality. She put her womanliness right out there, undiluted.” (more…)

Okay, so far its been 24/7 Anna Nicole.

Every cable news station has turned into Access Hollywood.

War in Iraq? Bombs over Iran? Who gives a hoot!

All we wanna know is did Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband father Baby Dannielynn?

And so Nightcharm will scoop them all with 10 Totally True*, Totally Shocking Things About the Anna Nicole that Nobody Knew.

And when we say TRUE, we mean The Star true. We mean The Globe true! (At left, Anna does Marlyn in an ad for the animal-rights organization PETA.)

Here then are 10 things you’ll soon hear repeated — we’re sure — by the Inquiring Minds at 24/7 News, ever on the hunt to hike up ratings with new Anna Nicole tidbits. (more…)

There she sat all listless, cocooned girth — occupying the couch completely. Her pooch Sugar Pie nuzzled against her belly. There would be no nap time interruptions — despite the spooky, toothless Texan cousin hovering outside the front door hankering to “just show Anna how much I love her.”

With her head buried into the sofa, Anna made slo mo swatting motions towards her lawyer and E!’s production crew.

But wait, suddenly she was stirring, squinting at the camera — the description of her cousin’s dental condition had captured her attention. Soon she was whining through a medicated haze, demanding “donut holes and chocolate milk.” Dough and libation were delivered.

Jump cut: Meticulously coifed and upright Anna. Gorgeous and glittering in her limo, ever-present drones beside her.

The Middle East crisis was broached. Anna: perplexed and blank and “Who’s killing the Jews?” she wanted to know. Her lawyer explained the political situation. Anna’s facial expression was pure female mall rat who’s just discovered that T.J. Maxx is no longer stocking her favorite shade of lipstick. Suicide bombers? “Why would they do that? Don’t they think it’s kinda painful?” (more…)

It’s getting a might scary looking in Peckerwood, hey, Dolly?

Dolly Parton, who has been out of the public eye for awhile, appeared last night to pick up a beribboned award, that was placed around her neck by the President, as one of five recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

The Kennedy Center Honors are considered to be the premier event in America’s cultural life: an award for very famous artists who are chosen by a a panel of very famous artists, and usually presided over by the President. (Barbra Streisand has repeatedly refused the award because she didn’t want to receive one — and you gotta love the sheer Babsyness of this — “while a Republican was in office.”) (more…)