Autographs ...

Donna Douglas ...


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Percy Sledge ...






Little Richard ...

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Creative Outlet

BR native finds success in New York as burlesque costume designer

By EMILY KERN HEBERT Advocate staff writer Published: Oct 27, 2010 - Page: 1D

Jo 'Boobs' Weldon, headmistress of the New York School of Burlesque, performs in a costume by Maddog Swing.
MONTY LEMAN/Provided

Baton Rouge native Amanda Madden [niece of J. R. Madden] admits that she wasn’t cut out for working in a cubicle.

Her new career gives her plenty of freedom and allows her to work with fun materials — sequins, crystals and, of course, plenty of ostrich feathers.

Today, Madden is a costume maker and fashion designer under the label Maddog Swing Costume, Couture & Corsetry. Her clients include New York City’s top burlesque performers.

Madden grew up in the Shenandoah area of Baton Rouge. She graduated from Woodlawn High School in 1991.

She taught herself to sew by reading books and by taking apart clothes and putting them back together.

“I had a very individual idea of style and wasn’t impressed with what was in stores,” she said.

After a period of “drifting about,” Madden said, she moved to New Orleans, where she got a job making costumes for the theater troupe Running With Scissors.

Her work on the production of “Camille” won a Big Easy Award in 2002.

She was also making costumes for other individuals and had a successful business doing alterations — until Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

After Katrina, Madden said, “people weren’t really thinking about costumes or new clothes.”

Her rent was steadily increasing and she wasn’t making enough money to pay her bills. Madden said she also was in a bad relationship.

“I just got fed up one day,” Madden said.

Eleven months after Katrina, Madden left Louisiana.

When she was younger, Madden said, she pictured herself living in one of two places — New Orleans or New York City.

“I was obsessed from the time I was 5,” Madden said of New York.

“I can’t even remember how it started,” she said. “The rush. The possibilities that were there. Everything you saw on television, it just looked glamorous.”

She bought a one-way plane ticket to New York City. An acquaintance let her sleep on her couch for a few days.

Luckily, she got a job through a temp agency moving boxes in the buyer’s office of Saks Fifth Avenue.

“I found out I was not cut out to being in a cubicle,” Madden said. “The cliques, the politics, it was very constricting all over again.”

While living in New Orleans, Madden had friends who performed with the New Orleans burlesque troupe the Shim Shamettes.

In New York, she found a creative outlet in the burlesque world — performing and making her own costumes.

No one at her office job knew her stage name — Fleur De Lys.

“It was very freeing,” Madden said. “It really built up a lot of my self-esteem.”

The scene was different than what she expected, Madden said. Women of all shapes and sizes were viewed as confident, beautiful and funny.

“To see it go from classic to slapstick, I just felt like I had a home there,” Madden said.

This past weekend, Madden unveiled 20 of her latest designs at a fashion show in a well-known venue in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

She started planning The Maddog Swing Burlesque Fashion Spectacular in January — sending out e-mails to some of the most talented people she knew in the burlesque industry.

All of the performers agreed to model in exchange for a custom-designed outfit, Madden said.

A lot of work goes into planning each outfit, Madden said. She takes into consideration each performer’s style when designing, and watches videos to get a better idea of past routines.

Her costumes include tons of sequins, crystals and feathers.

“You want to go over the top,” she said. “You want to make sure the person in the back of the room sees how glamorous that costume is.”

As for Sunday’s show, Madden said it was a success.

“I woke up this morning (Monday) and my Facebook page was going crazy,” she said.

Madden said the best part was walking through the model lineup before the start of the show.

“I saw all of these people I adore wearing my clothes, my pieces,” she said. “My heart just exploded.”

Besides burlesque costumes, Madden’s designs include vintage-inspired dresses and nontraditional wedding gowns.

In New Orleans, she created wedding attire for a voodoo wedding.

“I like to stick with people who cannot walk into David’s Bridal and find what they’re looking for,” she said.

Madden has relatives in Prairieville, Hammond and Port Vincent.

“I don’t think they’ve ever seen a burlesque show so it’s still pretty out there,” Madden said. “I don’t know that they really understand it, but they’re proud of me.”

--30--

7 Immigration Myths ...

TO ENLARGE THE IMAGE: Double-Click and then Single-Click.

Want Ad: required? Computer Illiteracy!

Yup, they apparently wanted a person who would be a "flexible hands on manager w/ computer illiteracy ..."

Information wants to be ... what?

Chemical & Engineering News
April 19, 2010 Volume 88, Number 16 p. 3

Rudy Baum, Editor-in-chief

I have stated in this space before that I think the notion that “information wants to be free” is one of the most pernicious ideas perpetrated in the age of the Internet (C&EN, Nov. 5, 2007, page 3).

First of all, the phrase, attributed to author Stewart Brand, is completely out of context. What Brand said in 1984 was, “On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”

More important, I think, is the silliness of attributing motive to something—information—that is inanimate and, absent humans to process it, perhaps nonexistent.

...

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/88/i16/html/8816editor.html

SMILEY ANDERS FOR JUNE 16, 2010

By SMILEY ANDERS
Advocate staff writer
Published: Jun 16, 2010

Elementary physics

J.R. Madden, our senior science contributor, says the Kenilworth neighborhood newsletter reports that the daughter of a resident will study this summer at a nuclear power plant in France.

She will work with more than 100 physicists from eight countries studying the oscillations of nutrinos.

For those unfamiliar with the term, J.R. explains that nutrinos are “sub-atomic particles which result when one or more nutria collide at high speed.”

Write Smiley at P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge, LA 70821, fax to (225)388-0351 or e-mail Smiley@theadvocate.com.

Letter to Michelle Singletary, Personal Finance Columnist

From: JRMadDog@aol.com
Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 15:51:04 EDT
Subject: One would think ...
To: singletarym@washpost.com

Ms. Singletary,

Your column Book shares tips on how to prepare for a job interview, Sunday, May 2, 2010 appeared in our local paper The Advocate, Baton Rouge, LA on Friday, 07 May 2010 under the Title Job-Seeker Interview Tip: Show Up.

I wish to address one paragraph: "One would think that after several years in college, people would have been taught how to prepare a résumé and cover letter, what to do for an interview (like show up), what not to do during an interview, what to wear, what to say or not say."

While some engineering and business schools may help their soon-to-be-graduates with guidance in the area of job-hunting and even provide space for corporate recruiters to visit and interview candidates, there are no courses to my knowledge at any schools such as you seem to think would exist. The colleges and universities in general do not have workshops about job-hunting, resumes, interviews, networking, and so on.

Most institutions of higher learning are preparing their undergraduates to become graduate students, their graduate students to become doctoral candidates, and their PhD graduates to become professors in institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities are not in the business of preparing students for the workforce.

A number of progressive high school have realized the need for the skills you cite and have developed programs to help their students acquire them. But, to my knowledge, that is not the case at the college and university level.

Regards,
J. R. Madden

7515 Sheringham Ave
Baton Rouge, LA 70808
225.769.0361 office-at-home
225.266.6196 mobile

Working with the US Census Bureau ...

I attended training for the position of Census Enumerator 27-30 May 2010. On the first day, I was sworn in and therefore can not discuss any Confidential Information as covered by Title 13 of the US Code which deals with the Census.

During training, I was offered a 'promotion' to Crew Leader Assistant (CLA) and accepted. A CLA assists the Crew Leader (CL) in administrative tasks and may also perform Enumerations.

And just what, you may ask, is the authority under which we operate? Well, ...

Constitution of the United States Article 1. Section 2. "... The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. ..."

One of the many definitions of "enumeration" is "list of people, eg in a census." A simple count is not an enumeration.

"Pharmaceutical Market Access Act"

From: JRMadDog@aol.com
To: David_Vitter@vitter.senate.gov
Sent: 03/26/2010 13:23:51 Central Standard Time
Subj: "Pharmaceutical Market Access Act"

Dear Senator Vitter,

Regarding the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act which would allow U.S. citizens to buy safe, FDA-approved drugs from Canada where medications are sold cheaper than they are in the U.S, I would like you to consider the following:

"... if you want Canadian pharmaceutical prices in the US, the steps you must follow are clear. You must cut your standard of living by 20-30%. You must reform your ludicrous product liability laws. And you must squeeze pharmaceutical industry profits through price controls and dominant purchaser policies, thus causing lower levels of pharmaceutical investment and innovation, getting cheaper prices for medicines already discovered at the cost of prolonged pain and suffering for victims of diseases we cannot yet cure or control. And you must restrict patient access to the latest and best medicines in order to keep costs low.

"I leave you with this final thought: suppose the difference in prices between Canada and the US is, as I’ve suggested, primarily market driven. Suppose also that the US government allows reimportation of drugs from Canada, eliminating market separation. In that case, prices in Canada can be expected to rise to US levels, with the result that Canadian consumers lose out and US consumers are no better off. In addition, drug companies are worse off since any price discrimination which occurred was profit maximizing. And those in need of pharmaceutical innovation (i.e. the sick and potentially sick) are worse off because the stream of future innovations will be reduced.

"Basically, everybody loses, or at the very least nobody wins."

Source: Why are Drugs Cheaper in Canada? A Revised Version of a Talk by AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley To the MPPI Conference “Drug Re-importation: Unintended Consequences” Portland, Maine, September 16th, 2004 http://www.aims.ca/library/MPPI_pharma-revised_.pdf

Regards,
J. R. Madden

7515 Sheringham Ave
Baton Rouge, LA 70808-5762
225.769.0361 office-at-home
225.266.6196 mobile

John C. Andrews ...

Email from John Lorentz, Tue, 13 April 2010:

I know that you used to [get] together with John Andrews at many Worldcons over the years, and I didn't know if you had heard the news.

After a long illness, John passed away last Friday [09 April 2010]. He'd had a bad reaction to anaesthesia a few months ago, but in the end it was his muscular dystrophy that was the cause. He's going to be missed greatly by his friends here in Portland.

###

I consider John to be one of my dearest fannish friends as we met prior to the 1977 SunCon in Miami, Florida and stayed in touch especially at WorldCons until I stopped attending annually with MagiCon in 1992. We did see him at the Baltimore WorldCon in 1998.

We got a Christmas card from him every year with the ever-informative "John C. Andrews" signature added. That is, only his signature let us know he was alive as he wrote nothing else within the card.

I do know John will be missed in Portland and elsewhere as well.

Hello, my name is ...

Filk discovered by NPR ...

Science-Fiction Music: Monsters, Aliens In 'Filk'

Audio for this story from All Things Considered will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET, Tuesday, 09 February 2010

NASA recently announced that a significant amount of water has been found on the moon, leading to speculation that we might someday populate our orbiting friend. The idea sounds far-fetched, but it's the type of thing science-fiction fans have been dreaming of for many years. In music, stories of space travel and extraterrestrials date back further than listeners may think. ...

My father during World War II

Two (2) photographs of my father, Paul H. Madden, Jr. taken during his time in Europe during World War II (WWII). There are also his notes on the back of the photos which I transcribe. He was nineteen (19) years old at the time.

1. Saarlautern, Germany Jan. 1945 (Note gas mask and top button of jacket is buttoned. Two means of I.D. for American soldiers during Battle of the the Bulge.

[During the Battle of the Bulge, German infiltrators dressed in American uniforms were a problem. So, gas masks, which had not been needed, were issued to all U.S. soldiers in the area and their were instructed also to button the top button of their tunics/jackets. These two actions would help distinguish the true G.I.s from German imitators.

He is carrying an M-3 submachine gun AKA "grease gun"; it was not his issued weapon, M-1 Garand, but it looked cool.]

2. April 1945 (On Pass from "Reppel-Deppel")

["Reppel-Deppel" was shorthand for Replacement Depot or Repo Depot.]

Pay-For-Delay Phamaceutical Deals

From: jrmaddog@aol.com
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:12:48 EST
Subject: Pay-For-Delay
To: edit.cen@acs.org


C&EN Editor,

RE: Questioned Deals In Europe, C&ENews, 88(3), January 18, 2010, p6. &
FTC Seeks Ban On Pay-For-Delay Deals, C&ENews, 88(3), January 18, 2010, p22.

When an individual offers to not release information about another individual in exchange for money (e.g., the David Letterman incident), it is called extortion.

When a generic pharmaceutical maker agrees to not release its own, legal product in exchange for money from the original patent holder, it is called business.

What am I missing?

Regards,
J. R. Madden

My thought on The Book of Eli ...

Re: Irony with the Bible

by jrmaddog 4 days ago (Thu Jan 7 2010 13:56:51)

Personally, I think the book was chosen because of its dimensions. It has been hollowed out to hold the trans-dimensional, warp-induction, dislocation projector powered by a Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator which will result in a really big kaboom!

The fact that it was a Bible is just a red herring.

Message Board at IMDB.com