Weird Wednesday: September 21, 2005
September 21st, 2005 by Laurie Barak
Call them odd. Eccentric. Strange. Freaky. Yes, celebrities are often just plain weird. So today on Weird Wednesday we’ll take a look at some crazy celebrity stuff with the help of a CNN article called “The Art of Celebrity Weirdness”.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley started as a clean-cut singer with happy feet. He then descended into a bloated, sequin-clad state, in love with drugs, guns and police badges and prone to shooting out the TV screen if he didn’t like the program.
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando has been considered a little off ever since 1973, when he sent an American Indian activist to reject his best-actor Oscar for The Godfather. Years later, Brando didn’t win any normal points for tormenting, then mouth-kissing, talk show host Larry King during a 1994 interview.
Marlon Brando Signed Photo from The Godfather
Prince, or the Artist Formerly Known As
Pop star Prince wore pants with no buttocks and changed his name to an unpronounceable, androgynous symbol in 1993, but the identity change turned out to be a tactic to escape his Warner Brothers record contract — thus mitigating its weirdness.
Prince’s “Graffiti Bridge” Movie Soundtrack
It was really difficult to find something of just Prince himself, so here’s a CD from one of his films, Graffiti Bridge.
Roseanne Barr
Barr claims to have a 16-character multiple-personality disorder that kicks in without warning to terrorize friends and family with fury. And since the personalities don’t communicate with each other, she has to be told the same things over and over again to make sure the real Roseanne hears the information.
Shirley MacLaine
A more benign sort of weirdness belongs to MacLaine, the movie star and mystic who has written about reincarnation and has a fascination with ghosts, UFOs and astrology. MacLaine is outspoken about her paranormal beliefs, but has endeared herself to fans by poking fun at her new-age notoriety: At the Oscars, she once emerged from a set built like a flying saucer. “I believe in the saying: ‘He who laughs at himself never ceases to be amused,’ ” she told The Associated Press in 2001.
Dance While You Can by Shirley MacLaine
Publisher’s note: The most intimate and revealing memoir yet from the extraordinary woman whose energy, drive, and talent are legendary. In her astonishingly frank, often funny, and always fascinating way, MacLaine writes of the powerful familial forces that propelled her to stardom, her sometimes difficult relationship with her daughter Sachi, and her friendships with Debbie Reynolds, Grace Kelly, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor, and other Hollywood greats.
I’ll leave out perhaps the weirdest celebrity of all, Michael Jackson, because I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about Mr. Neverland from TV and the news already.
You can read the entire CNN article about weird celebrities here. http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/11/25/michael.jackson.weird.ap
And that’s your Weird Wednesday for September 21, 2005.
