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9:59 pm - Mon 6.30.2008 Mon 6/30/08 Has this happened to you? There�s a business in your neighborhood - a store, a restaurant, a movie theater, what-have-you - and it�s kind of interesting and funky (maybe it�s an independent, �Mom & Pop�-type operation), and you like that it�s there, even if, for whatever reason, you rarely if ever actually patronize it? Then one day, as you drive past, you see a �For Sale� sign on the door? I�ve had that happen a number of times, and I always feel a pang of guilt when it does, as if I�d personally caused the business in question to fail. Is that weird...? Watched Silk Stockings on TCM recently; as a tribute to the late Cyd Charisse, the station changed its previously-planned programming this past Friday night, showing Singing In The Rain, The Band Wagon, and the aforementioned Silk Stockings instead (Quite a night for movie-musical fans, to say the least). (I own copies of Singing In The Rain and The Band Wagon, so I didn�t need to see those. But I�d never seen Silk Stockings in it�s entirety before, so I DVR�d it, to watch at my leisure.) There was nothing in Silk Stockings as transcendent as the �Dancing In The Dark� number from The Band Wagon, but it was still pure pleasure watching Cyd Charisse dance (especially with Astaire); my knowledge of movie musicals is by no means encyclopedic, but I personally have never seen a more beautiful dancer on film, before or since. Afterwards, I found myself thinking of something I�d written on my MySpace blog, something to the effect that �when certain people die� - certain writers or performance artists - �I feel like a piece of my past has died with them�. I was referring specifically to the recent passing of George Carlin. But watching Cyd Charisse dance, as young and beautiful - and sexy - as ever, it suddenly seemed wrong to say, when an artist I admire dies, that �a piece of my past has died with them�. On the contrary - while the people in my life have come and gone by the score, and many places where I've worked and played and laughed and loved are gone, the movies I�ve seen, the novels I�ve read, and the music I�ve listened to, for the most part, are still there for me to revisit whenever I want to. It�s actually the one part of my past that, in a way, will never die.
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