Meagan Good to produce 'Video Girl'

Hollywood actress Meagan Good will take a turn behind the cameras, producing "Video Girl," a film about, well, video girls. The film will star such highly esteemed video stars (I'm using the words loosely here) as Esther Baxter, who's claim to fame is Petey Pablo's "Freak-A-Leek" and Hollywood socialite Claudia Jordan, the black Kardashian. The film sounds like a vanity project, but who knows? Could Meagan bring home an Oscar? Meyer? Weiner?


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Beyonce Channels Vanity 6

You'd think an urban singer in a camisole would be a new idea in 2009, what with goody-two-shoes out there like Jordan Sparks and Taylor Swift, even, India Irie. But your girl Beyonce went 1986 with it in Europe recently, tapping into the raw sensuality of Vanity 6 (where is Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams when you need them)? Bey's risque outfit comes on the heels of a big uproar over her music in Malaysia, where Islamic fundamentalists say her work is Satanic.
"I do not know who agreed to this sinful, unacceptable advertisement, or indeed who agreed to these blatant sex parties," a Malaysian lawmaker is quoted as saying, accusing the government of encouraging "sin and debauchery."
Beyonce cleane up at the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards, taking home three awards - Best Song, Best Video among them. And Kanye West apparently wasn't invited. Wonder why?

Finding Susan Moonsie

There are celebrities that fall off, then there are celebrities that fall off the planet.
Susan Moonsie, former Vanity 6 mate and Prince protegee and former girlfriend, is one of them.
TV shows and radio programs will frequently do a "Where Are They Now?" segment on people who were once famous. Given the popularity of Prince, his minions and the whole Minneapolos SoundThis text in the early 1980s, interests has understandably ebbed and flowed.
But Moonsie, and her present whereabouts, have apparently been untraceable.
Untraceable to CNN, Newsweek, Vibe, Time, New York Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, etc. Nothing. Nada.
Her sightings are the stuff of lore.
While much has been written about Brenda Bennett and Denise Matthews aka Vanity, nary a word has surfaced as to the whereabouts of Susan Moonsie.
Is oblivion treating her well?
Has she holed up in the house of another celebrity?
Inquiring minds simply be wanting to know.
Where is Susan Moonsie?

The Inspirational Susannah Melvoin

Few people know that they have Susannah Melvoin to thank for some of the greatest music in the United States in the past 20 years.
Such classics as, "Adore," "The Beautiful Ones," "Nothing Compares 2 U", "If I Was Your Girlfriend", and "Forever in My Life," all composed by Prince.
Did Melvoin have a hand in producing these hits?
Nope. She was Prince's girlfriend.
And he wrote all of the aforementioned jams about her.
Talk about inspiration.
Prince had a serious jones for Melvoin, whom he met when her harder-looking twin sister Wendy joined the band. Wendy was 19 years old in the early 1980s when she was installed in the band as a charmer and disarmer of the older Prince.
Her twin sister, who was much more musically inclined, immediately caught Prince's eye.

When Prince and crew flew to Nice, France to shoot "Under the Cherry Moon,"
Melvoin was sporting a huge rock-ring, evidence that Prince had proposed. But once they landed and went to the luxurious hotel, Prince ordered one of his henchmen to fly her all the way back to Minneapolis. He cheated on her numerous times, and they broke up. But the Melvoin-inspired music is here to stay.

Wherefore is Susan Moonsie?

She was the silent one of the trio.
The killer was, she always wore white.
Camisoles.
Her name was Susan Moonsie.
Possibly, the most reclusive musical celebrity (except for her former bandmates) that you can think of.
Remember, Susan? She was the "exotic"-looking one of the girl goup Vanity 6.
As a former Prince girlfriend, Susan holds the distinction of being not only the only African American member of Vanity 6 but the girl who "When Doves Cry" was written about.

Her relationship with His Purple Badness was filled with cheating, mistresses and, of course, drugs, sex and rock 'n roll.
She came off as quiet, demure.
And hot.
That can't be denied. She and Prince dated off and on after being introduced to Prince in high school in Minneapolis. Their relationship soured after Denise Matthews aka Vanity entered the click, but Susan was originally supposed to lead Vanity 6 but didn't want the lead role.
But where is she today? Has anybody seen her? She was rumored to be 16 when Vanity 6 came on the scene (although it was highly unlikely.) If she went to high school with Prince, then she is probably around 47, 48, but no public pictures exist, that I'm aware of. The Internet has more information on Big Foot than it does Susan Moonsie.
Susan may have fallen off some 20 years after she emerged onto the American music scene, but one only has to download or pick up the first and only Vanity 6 album to hear her vocals. By what she put out in the early 1980s, she was Kelly Rowland to Vanity's Beyonce (not too shabby, either). It was Susan's vocals that carried half the album, including the club hit "He's So Dull." Unlike pigeon-holed girlgroups today, Vanity 6 covered the musical landscape with pop, funk, new wave and R$B music in as little as half a dozen songs. Today, that would get you dropped from a label.
Like the destinies of Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, Susan (and her bandmate Brenda Bennett) was too overpowered by the lead charisma of Vanity. But memories are hard to erase. And Susan, who was widowed after husband David Garfield was killed in a car accident in 1988, will always be remembered.

Appolonia Kotero: Still Hot at 49

Blast from the past: Patricia Kotero (renamed Appolonia by the Purple One) is still smoking, almost 25 years after she purified the waters of Lake Minnetonka. BTW, "Purple Rain" is in my top 10 list of Best Films of All Time.