Although she was born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, Raquel Welch was about as far from your average Jo as you can get. She died a peaceful death in LA yesterday at age 82. Raquel’s nickname in high school was Rocky. Her dad was Bolivian and an aeronautical engineer. Her parents met when they were students at the U. of Illinois. Her cousin was the first female President of Bolivia.
This write up in Wikipedia seems on target to me: “Welch helped transform America’s feminine ideal into its current state. Her beautiful looks and eroticism made her the definitive 1960s and 1970s sex icon, replacing the blonde bombshell of the late 1950s as typified by Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Welch became a star in the mid-1960s and was exotic, brunette, and smolderingly sexual.”
You’ve all seen the poster of her as the cave woman in the movie “One Million Years B.C.,” so you don’t need Owl Chatter to reproduce it. But look how young, beautiful, and sexy she is here. Could you plotz?
Describing her cave woman poster, the obit in The Times said she “grabbed the spotlight by the throat with her defiant, alert-to-everything, take-no-prisoners stance and her dancer’s body. She was 26.”
She posed for Playboy, but not nude, and she would not appear nude in her films. Hugh Hefner remarked that the photos showed she could be the sexiest woman in the world without taking her clothes off. Playboy named her third on their list of the “100 Sexiest Stars of the 20th Century,” behind Monroe and Mansfield. In an omission that can only be attributed to anti-Semitism, Golda Meir did not make the list.
Apparently originally taking the position “I’m going to keep doing it until I get it right,” Welch married four times, but finally swore off the institution when the last one tanked. Her first marriage was to her high school sweetheart, James Welch, and she kept his name her whole life. They separated after only three years, but she had her two children with him. Husband #3 was Jewish: Andre Weinfeld, a French filmmaker. No doubt he fell for that shayna punim. Despite his success in cinema and marriage to the sexiest woman alive, Weinfeld’s mother never got over the disappointment of his not becoming a doctor and she died complaining to her mah jong group.
Welch’s last marriage was to Richard Palmer, owner of the Mulberry Street Pizzeria. OMG, how great is that!! But they couldn’t agree on toppings, and split up after four years. Then she decided enough with the marriages already and stayed single the last twenty years of her life.
Raquel’s kids are also good-looking. Her son Damon is 63, and went into acting for a while, but left for the quieter life of a computer guy. Her daughter Tahnee, 61, is an actress/model who appeared on the cover of Playboy and had a nude pictorial in November, 1995. She also appeared in quite a few films, including Ron Howard’s Cocoon movies. Here’s Tahnee.
So long Rocky. Thanks for making our lives a little brighter with your glamour and grace — rest in peace.
From the sublime to the unbelievable. This next story goes beyond “you can’t make this stuff up” to “WTF?” I’m just going to reproduce the first few paragraphs from yesterday’s NYT verbatim.
“On Saturday night, Wiebke Hüster, a German dance critic, was taking a break from watching a ballet program at Hanover’s main opera house when the choreographer Marco Goecke appeared in front of her.
“That morning, Ms. Hüster, 57, had published a review of Mr. Goecke’s latest work, and it wasn’t positive. Watching his new dance, ‘In the Dutch Mountains,’ audiences would feel like they’re either ‘going insane’ or ‘being killed by boredom,’ she wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a major German newspaper.
“So it was perhaps unsurprising when Mr. Goecke, 50, the ballet director at the Hanover State Opera, confronted her, asking why she wrote so negatively about him.
“What was a surprise was that Mr. Goecke — who is known for his pet dachshund, Gustav, as well as for his work — then pulled a bag filled with dog excrement out of his pocket and rubbed the feces on Ms. Hüster’s face.”
Amirite? WTF Marco!
Hüster filed charges with the police, and Goecke, who has been a star in Europe for over a decade and has been called the most important ballet choreographer in Germany, was suspended by the Hanover State Opera.
Ms. Hüster stated she will attend a ballet performance again as soon as she can. “I’m a professional,” she said. “I will go back to my work.” But, she added, she would not see Mr. Goecke’s work again. Yup, that’s probably for the best.
Here he is, without Gustav (woof, woof), dancing his way down the Opera House stairs. The caption under the photo quotes him as saying “I’m still not free of this anger.” Apparently, he’s not feeling any morse, let alone remorse.
Have any of you heard of Avicii? I haven’t. He was an answer in the puzzle today, clued with “‘Levels’ D.J., 2011.” Pretty obscure for a Thursday, it seemed to me. Born Tim Bergling in Sweden, he was very big in electronic music internationally. Once he became successful, he was active philanthropically in anti-hunger campaigns. Sadly, he killed himself at the age of 28 in Oman.
The puzzle today was brilliant, and was a nod to Eagles’ fans since the theme was “Take an L,” as in loss. In five places in the grid L’s were formed by black squares and were cleverly used in the construction of answers. Even curmudgeon Rex was impressed. Kudos Kevin Patterson.
“Multihued bird” at 52A was MACAW. Here’s a cute couple. They remind me a little of our Welly and Wilma.
I checked An Exaltation of Larks to see what a group of macaws is called but there is no entry. For parrots, I found a “company” of parrots, and a “prattle” of parrots. How about a “variegation” of macaws?
There are nineteen species of macaws, the majority of which are endangered in the wild, and several of which are extinct. The greatest dangers they face are deforestation and illegal trapping. Get this — they are zygodactyl, i.e., of their four toes, the first and fourth point backwards. In North America they are native only to Mexico, although they sometimes appear in the U.S. in crossword puzzles.
Clue/answer of the day: “Ones who don’t want to hear that you’re laying down on the job?” ANS: GRAMMAR POLICE. (Get it?)
Second best: “Word that retains its meaning when its third letter is removed.” ANS: ROTUND.
For “Nonbasic characteristic, the answer was LOW PH. Joe Dipinto noted: “Halph a lowph is better than naan.” Ha!
I was today old when I learned that the French capitalize much less than we do. For example, they do not capitalize months or days of the week. They also do not capitalize religions. So in French “Two Jews and a Muslim walked into a bar on Monday, July 8th,” would be (in French) “Two jews and a muslim walked into a bar on monday, july 8th.”
How come I didn’t know this? When I was in high school, I took high school French for two years in high school.
If you can stand even more beauty, Owl Chatter’s favorite palindromic actress ANA de Armas was in the puzzle again yesterday. Nice to see you, Ms. A. Always welcome.
In a nod to Black History Month, yesterday’s puzzle honored several African-Americans, including U.S. Army Private GEORGE WATSON, to whom Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously on Jan. 13, 1997. It’s the nation’s highest military decoration for valor. On March 8, 1943, near Porlock Harbor, New Guinea, Watson gave his life rescuing fellow soldiers from drowning. He was two weeks shy of his 29th birthday. Watson was a graduate of Colorado State University, and was married with one daughter.
Watson’s ship was attacked by nine Japanese bombers. With fires raging, the order was given to abandon ship. Once he was in the water, instead of saving himself, Watson assisted soldiers who could not swim get into life rafts. Exhausted by his efforts, he was dragged down by the suction of the sinking ship. On June 13, 1943, he was awarded posthumously the Army’s second-highest medal for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism. He was the first Black American serviceman in World War II to receive this decoration.
By Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks
A cold wind out of the west all night.
Where our row of Norwegian pines
lines the road, there were lots of joined pairs
of needles this morning, blown over the grass
and onto the shoulder, every pair
an elongated V, coated with frost,
and each pointing east southeast,
where, sure enough, the sun was rising.
Thanks for dropping by — see you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 