WHO IS ELAINE PAIGE?

First, on the entertainment front, the favorites did well at the Screen Actors Guild Awards last night.

You did not miss it, for to watch, you had to stream Netflix. Here, view the results. Yes, the whole thing, beginning with that Red Carpet walk. Meaning, 8 hours and 21 minutes.
Not being on network television, a lot of F words, and some winners came up drunk.
The favorites all won, especially Oppenheimer.
Barbra Streisand won the Life Achievement award. Just this, less than 10 minutes.

As I don't feel particularly spiritual today, will skip on to something I recently saw on Music Choice, Elaine Paige. Was the original Grizabella who sang Memories from Cats. It was 1981 in the West End. In 1998 she played that role in the movie. Mind you, Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave it an embarrassing 20% rating. On the other hand, the audience bestowed 80%, and I follow them more than reviewers.

There was a second Cats, in 2019. Again, Rotten Tomatoes reviewers hated it, gave the film a 19 score. Even the audience cringed, with a 53. Anyone remember who played Bombalurina in that film? Taylor Swift. Steven Spielberg was Executive Producer.

All that brings me back to the first audition of Susan Boyle in Britain's Got Talent in 2009. If you click on that video, she says her idol is Elaine Paige. Well, Boyle did pretty well. Here they sing together.

But, really, who is Elaine Paige?

Was born in 1948 in England, grew to a height of 5 feet, and remains so at 75.
Debut in the 1968 production of Hair in the West End.
Was selected to play Eva Perón in the first production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. West End in 1978. There is no existing video from that cast, but this is an audio of Don't Cry for Me Argentina. Sings this song again much later in the 25th Anniversary of Royal Albert Hall.

Three years later, Paige, Grizabella, Memories and Cats. She joined the cast because Judi Dench had to withdraw from a torn Achilles tendon. Interestingly enough, Dench returned to appear in the 2019 Cats film, playing Deuteronomy.
1985, show Chess, with Barbara Dickson on I Know Him So Well.
1991, revival, West End, Anything Goes, which she also co-produced. This Cole Porter musical first played on Broadway in 1934 with Ethel Merman.

In 1993 sang 15 songs in Piaf, some in French.
From 2000 to 2001 starred as Anna Leonowen in the revival of The King and I at the London Palladium, strengthening her title as the First Lady of British Musical Theatre.
No children, never married, but had an 11-year relationship with lyricist Tim Rice throughout the 1980's. Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber put on Evita.
Eight gold albums and four multi-platinums.

Four minutes of Donald Trump's strangest moments as President of the United States, by the Evening Standard, founded in 1827, London's most iconic news brand and the UK's largest quality daily.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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