In a message dated 10/4/2006 10:54:07 AM Pacific Standard Time, [J]
writes:
How was the Mariah Carey show? Did you see it got written up in the
Chronicle?
-<<-Jeremy
You don't happen to have a link to the Chronicle article do you
Jeremy?>>
M. and I had a lot of fun. She cried before leaving Petaluma because
she didn't know if she could make the trip, when you're so injured 8
hours, in a wheel chair, getting down there and watching the show and
getting back was a challenge. The facilities for disabled people at the
Oakland Arena are fantastic! We had a balcony, with about 30 yards to
move around on, I could even pace up and down and dance, with only one
person, probably a management person sitting there. There was also what
is called a 'family' bathroom for disabled people, an individual room
guarded by paramedics, who would assist a disabled person, if they were
alone. Busta Rymes was the entertainer who opened for Mariah. He
mentioned that there were double the number of women at the concert
than men. He was sexist and could only relate to women as a 'piece of
pussy.' I did get to see hip hop crowd though, that was nice.
The Mariah concert was really fun She looks totally fantastic--like an
unearthly goddess or something--with her body revealing costumes and
her new extremely fit look. She handles the crowd with strength and
poise. The best thing she did was she had a dance stage set up in the
middle of the crowd and towards the later part of the show she walked
through the crowd and mounted the stage on the other side of the
basketball floor. Where my friend and I originally had our tickets we
would have been able to gaze up at the celebrity from a pretty close
distance but we had to exchange our tickets for the disabled balcony.
I've mentioned that there is nothing wrong with women or liking things
created by women or done to women, (like the act of having
intercourse--which men in this culture are taught to despise--like the
expression anti woman expression 'Getting Fucked.') I know you
understand about people being equal. We met a pretty interesting dude,
who happens to be Black, and from 77th street area of Oakland who was
in a wheelchair too, wearing a Raider hat. I was wearing my 49ers
hooded sweat shirt. Maybe he was so open with out because M was in a
wheelchair too. He had been shot in the lower back and it screwed up
his spine (he is now paralyzed) also something about his scapula and
the bullet coming out his throat. He was a genuine guy maybe because we
were open with him and M finds it particularly easy to meet people. He
told us all about the jails he was in and I told him about my
experience with jail with political protest, but he said his jails were
tougher although I have witness 5 corrections pigs almost beat a
college kid to death for just asking 'why' he should be stipped
searched. And they kicked out another guys teeth for fun.
The funny thing about him, his name was Mike, was that he was a foot
fetisher. When he talked about Mariah, he raved about her feet, and the
opened toed high, high heels she always wears. I'm saying "Man that's
the last thing I noticed about her." (I like her fake boobs
particularly--that's what I notice and of course her super pretty
face.) And we were talking and I asked how did he grow up and happen to
get into feet? And he said he thought it might be his kindergarten
teacher. He was small and that where he was able to look at, at his eye
level, at that age. And he was telling me what 'sexy' feet were. And I
responded: "Gosh, what are un-sexy feet like?" And he emphasized that
dirty feet were bad because his dad used to emphasize when he was young
that if you saw a person's feet were dirty then their intimate parts
were dirty too or if a woman with nail polish on her toe nails, if they
were chipped then that was a turn off. Later I was talking to a pretty,
female paramedic (who was tall)--she was guarding the disabled private
restroom--and mentioning this crazy guy who talked about Mariah's feet
all the time and she said once a man on a date asked her to show him
her feet. She thought it was weird. I said that something like foot
fethishing sounds pretty innocent to me, there's all sorts of crazy
things humans are into, a person crazy about feet wouldn't scare me.
Also, I heard that All American Elvis Presely was a foot guy and he
could have any woman in the world and he told his handlers "Don't
introduce me to any women, if their feet weren't 'right.' And I told
the female paramedic that there MUST be female foot fetishers too who
gushes about a dude in sandals.
So that was the Mariah concet, head to toe.
ninerspeak@
yahoo.com wrote:
> REVIEW
> Carey fans hang on her thrill ride of highs and lows
> - Jaan Uhelszki, Special to The Chronicle
> Wednesday, October 4, 2006
>
> It wasn't just Mariah Carey's dancers who were doing backflips at
> Monday's sold-out show at the Arena in Oakland. By the opening number,
> the diva-in-absentia had the crowd on its feet, as she time-traveled
> back to some of the messier moments in her personal history.
>
> It's not as if she didn't warn the 19,000 faithful, kicking off her
> 90-minute set with a short, thrill-inducing cinematic climb up a roller
> coaster, with Carey narrating platitudes about her opulent soap opera
> come to life.
>
> "When I was little I was so scared of roller coasters, but you learn
> you have to face your fears," she said breathlessly. "But just when I
> thought the scariest part was over, something more terrifying would
> happen."
>
> Like detonating her marriage to music mogul Tommy Mottola, being
> released from her recording contract, the failure of 2001's "Glitter"
> album and quasi-autobiographical movie of the same name and attendant
> canceled tour dates, the hospital stays and the famous glass- and
> dish-throwing episode in a London hotel room, all documented in
> tabloids and by Carey on her own Web site.
>
> To the singer's continuing credit, she doesn't try to conceal any of
> those tawdry details from fans, as if she could in her barely there
> outfits. Instead, she used them as rather touching fodder to detail
> many of the two dozen songs she performed. "How many times have I had
> to apply this song to my own life?" Carey mused mid-verse during
> "Hero," her self-penned 1993 song that became one of the unofficial
> anthems of 9/11.
>
> After the conclusion of the short film, the singer ascended from
> beneath the stage, like a goddess rising from the depths of the ocean,
> screaming over the din, "San Francisco, how ya feeling?"
>
> Oozing down a lavish spiral staircase in her mile-high Christian
> Louboutin stilettos, all jutting hips, tossed curls and purring vocals,
> Carey effortlessly slid into "It's Like That," the first single from
> her Grammy-winning 2005 album "The Emancipation of Mimi," opening her
> show with a mighty leonine roar. It was more Victoria's Secret TV spot
> than pop music show, and in the first of five costume changes, Carey
> looked resplendent -- albeit a little more zaftig than in recent years
> -- in a black peignoir set that revealed more than it concealed. "It
> takes a lot of guts to dress like that with that body," one reveler
> gushed to a friend.
>
> While not a trained dancer by anyone's stretch of the imagination,
> Carey sensuously moved in half-time down the frighteningly steep
> staircase once again, stumbling on the fourth step, all the while
> caressing her prodigious curves and running long, manicured fingers
> through her imposing hair in time to "Heartbreaker's" disco beat. But
> the stumble, like the extra weight, humanizes her even more to fans,
> eliciting a small gasp among the faithful.
>
> A wounded sex kitten, Carey coos, pouts, then goes for broke, emitting
> sounds that you'd think only dolphins could utter at the close of
> "Dreamlover," one of the 17 No. 1 hits that allowed her to become one
> of the wealthiest stars of the 1990s.
>
> "What do you want, Frisco?" she demanded as she plunged into "My All,"
> before someone in her cadre undoubtedly gave her a geography lesson.
>
> "I know we're in Oakland," she said a little defensively, flashing only
> a little of her diva ire. "Some of my friends are here from San
> Francisco, so I can say that, you know. I love me some Oakland.
>
> "Anyway, this is one of the first places that played my first single
> when I was little," cooed the 36-year old singer in appeasement, before
> asking permission to take a small sip of her ever-present Fiji water, a
> far from her halcyon days swilling Cristal Champagne.
>
> The newly emancipated Carey is all business, down to the strategically
> placed cutouts in her Barbie doll gowns, to the mirrored "Mimi" that
> descended from the ceiling before "Shake It Off," a clever kiss-off
> with the perfect intersection of high concept and low culture: "I gotta
> shake it off/ Just like the Calgon commercial." All the better when you
> know that nothing less than Chanel really touches her golden skin.
>
> During the tune, Carey put on a pair of expensive hit-man sunglasses.
> Why? Because of the high-wattage sign or because her future really is
> so bright again she does needs shades? "The Emancipation of Mimi" has
> already racked up 5 million in sales, she's taking guitar lessons, and
> it looks as if there's another movie on the horizon.
>
> Some of that momentum was lost during the chanteuse's five costume
> changes. Sometimes the breaks were so long that it allowed the DJ to
> romp through decades of rap and R&B tunes, such as Bell Biv DeVoe's
> "Poison" and the Digital Underground's "The Humpty Dance."
>
> In the meanwhile, longtime backup singer Trey Lorenz stepped out into
> the stoplight to sing the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There," with Carey, then
> to finish up alone with a rather weak and dispirited three-song medley,
> culminating in an anemic version of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." The only
> thing crazy was Carey allowing this singer so much face time.
>
> All of that was forgiven when the singer came back for the second half
> of the set, slowing the pace just a bit with "Fantasy," a song that
> pairs her pop vocals with a hip-hop beat, a winning formula that the
> singer has been employing since she left the controlling clutches of
> her record-exec husband. She performed the song as a duet with the
> disembodied video of the late rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard, which was as
> disconcerting as it was affecting.
>
> But that sentiment colored the entire night. At times, as cameras
> flashed over the audience, fans could be seen with tears in their eyes,
> wrapping their arms around themselves as they sang along to hits like
> "Always Be My Baby" or the feisty heart-tugger "We Belong Together,"
> only equaled by Carey herself, whose immaculate made-up eyes welled up
> with tears during the latter song.
>
> But that is the true gift of this singer. While Jennifer Lopez may
> claim to be Jenny From the Block, Carey shows that she still lives
> there, even if she gets there in a chauffeur-driven roller coaster.
>
> Page E - 1
> URL:
>
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/04/DDGH8LH4BG1.DTL
