She first danced with Ballet Russes as Celia Siderova

Instead of writing a too-long post about the amazing Cyd Charisse, I'll defer to Ain't it Cool News (yes, Ain't it Cool News). They have an extensive tribute ("Cyd Charisse has slipped back to Brigadoon...") with video footage from several of her movies.

If you don't know her work, put The Band Wagon in your queue (now, before everyone else does!). Or just watch Singin' in the Rain again (I know you've seen that one!). She's the leggy gal in the green and black.

A strange tribute to Sydney Pollack, from my junior high diary

A bit late... I had to dig it out of the storage unit. It looks like an early rant about the great injustices of the Academy Awards. But, as it turns out, it's even weirder.

In this diary, whenever I missed days, I went back and filled in the blanks with some random joke, or valley-girl-ese (gag me with a spoon), or commercial jingle (wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?)--trying to create a time capsule of 80s hilarity, I'm guessing. So, I found out tonight that the Oscars didn't happen until April 11 that year--so, unless I was attuned to early Oscar buzz (did they have early Oscar buzz back then?), this is just a bizarro relic that I went back and added, probably a couple of months later. The mispelled Gandhi adds some bonus stupidity points.

On March 11, I actually did go "cruisin," which I apparently did every third day, according to this diary.