Betty Deuce -- Big Pimpin'... Again

Her Majesty, Betty Deuce, wore this hideous purple pimp hat once again at the opening of a clinic today in London (last seen on the royal noggin on November 26, 2008).

I wish Demi Moore would tweet to the Queen about her pimp culture mongering.

Camilla -- There But for the Grace of God...

No, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall did not stop by my desk to thank me for publishing all those lovely pictures of her (I know the mug may have confused you... er, the ceramic one, not hers).

The duchess was visiting the Julian House Night Shelter and Day Centre in Bath, where, as you can see by her expression, she adored greeting the homeless.

Gareth Cattermole/WPA Pool/Getty Images

Chexy's Sports Roundup

That's Ivica Olic celebrating a goal during a game in the something or other in Munich. Click the pic for clarification.

This has been Chexy's Sports Roundup -- Only Eight Weeks Until Memorial Day edition.

Oliver Lang/AFP/Getty Images

The Leonafication of Ryan

A blurry promotional picture of Ryan Seacrest, and a blurry pic of Leona Helmsley.

So alike, and yet only one no longer has any expression because she is dead.

Goodbye, June Havoc

Gypsy Rose Lee's sister, actress June Havoc, died Sunday at age 97. Here she is singing "The Man with the Big Sombrero."

Soon-Yi Haul

Soon-Yi Previn and former stepfather husband Woody Allen arrived in Barcelona today, where Soon-Yi carried the latest designer bag... from Trader Joe's.


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Princess Grace's Granddaughter

The exquisite Charlotte Casiraghi, 23, daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco and Stefano Casiraghi (killed in a boating accident in 1990), and granddaughter of American movie star Grace Kelly (killed in a car crash in 1982), as she appeared this weekend at the Monte Carlo Rose Ball.

Charlotte is the publisher of the Ever Manifesto, which discloses the fashion industry's harmful impact on the global environment and promotes sustainability in fashion.

On her fifth birthday, her paternal grandparents gave her an island off Sardinia, worth approximately $9 million.


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Camilla -- Kiss Me

It's the stuff my dreams are made of. Getting air-kissed by HRH Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall -- seen here with son-in-law Harry Lopes at a memorial service for Camilla's ex-husband's second wife, Rosemary Bowles.

Also in attendance, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who will be 90 on Wednesday, looking exactly as a dowager duchess should.


Indigo/Getty Images

Happy Passover

President Barack Obama, praying at the Western Wall.

Happy Passover

6.2. Speech by Rabbi Herschel Schacter
Rabbi Herschel Schacter was a U.S. Army chaplain who participated in the liberation
of Buchenwald and aided in the resettlement of Displaced Persons after the
Holocaust. This reading is an excerpt from a speech given at a conference convened
by the United States Holocaust Memorial Council at which eyewitnesses to the
liberation shared their memories. In the excerpt Schacter refers to some of the other
speakers, including Elie Wiesel.

Source: Brewster Chamberlin and Marcia Feldman, eds., The Liberation of the Nazi
Concentration Camps 1945—Eyewitness Accounts of the Liberators (U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Council, 1987), pp. 35–37.

Dear friends, so very very much has been spoken. All of us here, I know, have seen so
much, have read so much, and yet I am convinced that we can't begin to fathom the
enormity of the cataclysm, of the tragedy that struck our people and so many other
peoples of the world.
During the Second World War, I served as a young Army chaplain, perhaps not as young
as Leon Bass or Alan Rose, but not much older than they at that time. I worked my way
across with front-line combat troops through Europe. I was attached to the VIII Corps
Headquarters of the Third Army.
The most unforgettable day of my life is April 11, 1945. I learned from some of the
officers in my unit that early that morning our forward tanks had entered the notorious
concentration camp called Buchenwald, outside of Weimar. I had heard the name before.
My mind's eye conjured up all sorts of images. I quickly ascertained the directions and
drove at high speed to Weimar and then to the camp.
As I drove up to the main gate, I was struck by the large German inscription over the
gate: Arbeit Macht Frei—what a tragic travesty. I drove through the gate into the open
Appellplatz [inspection or roll call area] and there I was in Buchenwald. This was about
4:00 in the afternoon, just hours after the first columns of American tanks drove through
and liberated that dungeon on the face of this earth.
I did not know where to go first. Happily, a young American Army lieutenant recognized
my Jewish chaplain's insignia, and he approached me almost reverently. He urged that I
follow him to see first the crematoria. We've heard descriptions. As I said, we've read,
and we've seen pictures. As long as I shall live, I will never, never forget that gruesome
scene that is indelibly engraved upon my heart and my mind. There simply are no words
in the human vocabulary. Yes, our Polish friend this morning told us how difficult it was
for him to find the words in any language.

I slowly approached the site of the huge ovens from which the smoke was still curling
upward. I could smell the stench of the charred remnants of human flesh. There were
literally hundreds of dead bodies strewn about. Dr. Kelling, you were right, but many of
these bodies were not stacked neatly like cordwood. They were just scattered, waiting to
be shoveled into the furnaces, which were still hot.
I stood riveted to this scene for what seemed like an eternity, tormented within with
searing agony, until I finally tore myself away, my eyes burning from the smoke and,
even more so, from my inner rage. I walked back from the crematoria toward the endless
rows of barracks still dazed by what I had just seen.
I asked the young lieutenant who was there at my side, and who seemed to know his way
around, whether he knew if there were any Jews still alive in this camp. He led me to an
area called the Kleine Lager—the little camp within the larger camp. I hurriedly walked
into one of the dilapidated, filthy, foul-smelling barracks, and there again I was smitten
by an indescribable scene. There on a series of shelves—and again, you've seen the
pictures of the series of shelves—were just raw planks of hardwood. From floor to ceiling
were hundreds upon hundreds of men and very few boys who were strewn over scraggly
straw sacks looking down at me, looking down at me out of dazed eyes. Last night Elie
Wiesel so graphically and movingly described how he perceived our eyes. I remember
their eyes, looking down, looking out of big, big eyes—that's all I saw were eyes—
haunted, crippled, paralyzed with fear. They were emaciated skin and bones, half-crazed,
more dead than alive.
And there I stood and shouted in Yiddish, "Sholem Aleychem, Yiden, yir zent frey!"
"You are free." The more brave among them slowly began to approach me, as was just
described, to touch my Army uniform, to examine the Jewish chaplain's insignia,
incredulously asking me again and again, "Is it true? Is it over?"
Indeed, as Elie Wiesel said, I felt that love, that gratitude, that admiration. I ran from
barracks to barracks throughout the whole area, repeating again and again the declaration,
the scene, the experience. As I moved about, bands of Jews were now following me,
pouring out tales of woe, asking me over and over, "Does the world know what happened
to us? What will now happen? Where will we go from here?"
I stood among them. As I saw these men—brothers, flesh of my flesh, and blood of my
blood—I could not help but think of the old cliché, "There but for the grace of God go I."
Alan [Rose] was so right. If my own father had not caught the boat on time, I would have
been there.
Thus started a period of about two months during which I spent every day in
Buchenwald. I must confess that I paid little attention to the needs of American
servicemen who really, at that time, did not need many of my services. I devoted
myself—what little energies, what little ingenuity, what bit of initiative a young man
could muster—to my new-found flock.
While I could never develop any accurate statistics, my estimate was that there were
approximately 20,000 inmates, from every country in Europe, in Buchenwald at the time
of the liberation, of whom only about 5,000 were Jews.
We know that Buchenwald was primarily built and maintained for the incarceration of
political prisoners and was, therefore, less, less savagely brutal and torturous than the
extermination camps in Poland. There were no gas chambers in Buchenwald, only
crematoria. And the inmates who were then becoming my friends related to me in
harrowing detail how every morning dead bodies were collected in the barracks and in
the work stations and were carried off on wheelbarrows to the crematoria. And this was
the less brutal? How much more gruesome could the other death camps have been?


pbs.org

Chexy's Sunday Funnies

A really disturbing clip from 1977's variety show, "The Brady Bunch Hour." Yes, that's Robert Reed in a dress, but I prefer what Florence Henderson is wearing.

Chexy's Saturday Matinee -- In Technicolor!

From 1934's "Kid Millions," here's one of the earliest Technicolor sequences, starring Ethel Merman and Eddie Cantor. "Get me 16 pigtailed milkmaids!"



Here's some more early color process, Dufaycolor. From "Radio Parade of 1935" -- here's American blues singer Alberta Hunter. This really gets good when the drum sequence starts!



More Technicolor fun, from 1950, a film by Chevy. "Miamah!"




Arrrrgh! Pirates! Can't get enough Technicolor! From MGM in 1935, the Fanchonettes.

What the Pluck?!

Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, resident reality TV douche, and 1930's era superstar Marlene Dietrich.



The eyebrows are a situation.

Japan and Shirley

Someone must have told Candice Bergen that she was auditioning for the part of Yum-Yum in The Mikado. This is how she looked at the "Come Fly Away" premiere last night.

Made for Walkin'

Nancy Sinatra, who will be 70 in June, as she appeared last night at the Broadway opening of "Come Fly Away," featuring the music of her father, Frank Sinatra.

No, she is not startled. (click pic for a better look)



Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Real Gone Places: Jack Dempsey's

Fighter Jack Dempsey owned a number of restaurants in Manhattan. Here's another great shot of Dempsey's during a strike of some kind.



There was an earlier incarnation of the restaurant seen below, near the old Madison Square Garden.

Happy Birthday, Aretha Franklin

Go on, make two wishes. Aretha is 68 today.

Headline of the Month

Teenage hairdresser dies in explosion after cigarette ignites hair bleach left in her car

A teenage hairdresser was killed after her cigarette ignited fumes from a leaking bottle of hydrogen peroxide on the passenger side footwell. I hate when that happens.

Jenny Mitchell's Mini Cooper was engulfed in flames after the explosion.

The Daily Mail

Goodbye, Robert Culp

Robert Culp, 79, fell and hit his head yesterday and died. Kind of a crummy way to die, but not uncommon.

In 1981, William Holden fell and hit his head on a nightstand and bled to death while in a vodka stupor. He was 63.

Real Gone Places: NBC Radio Studios

During the heyday of radio, the NBC Studios at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood was the center of the universe. Today, it's a Chase bank.


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Hit Parade of 1937

What's cooking?!

Dame Edna Meets Beyoncé

The hilarious Dame Edna performs her rendition of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" from her Broadway extravaganza with Michael Feinstein, "It's All About Me," which opened last night.



ty Andy

But They're Cousins

Patty Duke at the height of her popularity during "The Patty Duke Show," and yesterday at a promo for her new Social Security ads.


Patty is 63 and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982. She underwent a single bypass in 2004.

Kennedys in Attendance

Among the guests at today's historic Health Bill signing, JFK's daughter, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her son, John "Jack" Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, 17.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Queer Eye for Lookalikes

Style maven Carson Kressley at the "Jeffrey Fashion Cares" benefit last night in NYC, and Ann B. Davis as Alice the maid on "The Brady Bunch."

So alike, and yet only one has a twin sister named Harriet.

Amy Sussman/Getty Images

Chexy's Sports Roundup

Madson and Neymar during a training session for something in Brazil.

This has been Chexy's Sports Roundup, C'mon edition.


Douglas Aby Saber/FotoArena/LatinContent/Getty Images

Real Gone Places: Rexall at Hollywood and Vine

The Rexall pharmacy (which had a lunch counter) on a 92-degree day, at Hollywood Blvd. and Vine at the base of the Taft Bldg. It's now a bunch of retail stores.


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Happy Birthday, Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford was born on this day in 1905. She died in 1977 of a heart attack.


Here's Joan, apparently drunk, being interviewed at an airport in 1968.

Real Gone Places: The Lido

The Lido movie theatre, which once occupied the northwest corner of Pico and La Cienega Blvds. in Los Angeles... was razed when the owners sold it to B of A in the '80s.



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Zara in the Rain

That stylish blonde is Zara Phillips, 28, eldest granddaughter of Betty Deuce, seen on day four of the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival. Her mother is Princess Anne, the Princess Royal.

Zara is in a relationship with rugby player Mike Tindall, who was busted last January for drunk driving.

Zara, an equine physiotherapist, broke a collarbone in a fall from a horse in 2008. The horse broke its neck and had to be put down.

Photo by Indigo/Getty Images

Camilla -- Dog Hat Spring

Spring is here. And it's a Prague Spring for the royals.

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and Prince Chuck depart from a church in Prague, herself with a spring bouquet held in her delicately gloved grasp.

The duchess is trying another new lipstick shade, which complements her canine-like chapeau.


Does she keep getting lovelier, or is it just me? Don't answer too quickly. And now, here's Audra McDonald with Rodgers and Hart's "Spring is Here." Mush!



Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Camilla -- Good Lighting, Bad Saints

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, looking appropriate, visits the crypt of the Orthodox Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague.

This graven image should make it clear to everyone what Charles sees in her.

Cyril, btw, was a Jew-hater, and Methodius was a real pain. But they also created the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets.

This picture of Camilla makes a fine desktop wallpaper (tiled).

Chris Jackson-Pool/Getty Images

Chexy's Saturday Matinee

The brilliant Jonathan Winters in a Jack Paar "Tonight" show appearance.



The Delfonics -- La La La La La La La La La means I love you.






Lesley Gore -- with "You Don't Own Me," circa early '60s.




Let's go back to 1976 with Lou Rawls on the Midnight Special singing "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine." I'm not braggin' on myself, baby!

Real Gone Places: Leon & Eddie's

Leon & Eddie's nightclub in Palm Beach, Florida, one of the great hotspots of the late 1940's, and below as it appears today at 211 Poinciana Way, "Alec Lazo's Paramount Ballroom."


The inside, today:


This was the New York location of Leon & Eddie's:


The exterior:


And if my calculations are correct, here's what the NYC location exterior looks like today:

Camilla in Purple

Camilla's in Budapest, and busted out her purple duds for the Hungarians, and that's either some new lip liner or she's getting sloppy with her morning coffee again. And no, that's not some new Hungarian pastry... that's her hair.

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Goodbye, Fess Parker

The man who started the merchandising craze from TV shows by playing Davy Crockett for Disney -- is dead. Fess Parker hung up his coonskin cap today for the last time at age 85.

He was hot.

Renate the Hottie

This hotness is Euro millionairess Renate Hirsch Giacomuzzi, as she appeared at a gala last night in Berlin. You want to see more of her, you say?

Here she is at a ball in January with her young husband, Paul Liam.


Stay tuned for more on this beauty.