Word: chameleons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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PEOPLE WHO started out thinking of Stephen Sondheim as just a clever lyricist have long ago given him his due as an artist--and a chameleon. As soon as he started writing the music to go behind his own words. Sondheim began varying the roles he could play--sliding a melody off key or twisiting a double-entendre into mid-line, he was the vitriolic social critic in Sweenes Todd, the light satirist in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, the gentle troubadour in A Little Night Music; he was blandly anthologized as cultural phenomenon...
...opera poof masquerades of its lead singer, Boy George. Consider: three Top Ten singles from Culture Club's first album, Kissing to Be Clever, which sold more than a million copies; a fourth, fresh single, Church of the Poison Mind, already snug at No. 11, with another, Karma Chameleon, ready to take off; and a new album, Colour by Numbers, storming the LP charts...
...incident was indicative of the heated rivalry between Flynn and Finnegan, who clashed verbally on live television Thursday night after Flynn, a city councilor, accused Finnegan of calling him a "racist" and a "chameleon...
...late 20s, the "Chameleon Man," as the media called him, the country; America was, after all, one big prosperous, happy-go-lucky speakeasy nation constantly seeking diversions, Zelig--like Lindbergh or the Lindbergh trial--helped satiate their leach-like needs. He toured on freak shows. He spurred a dance craze: the Chameleon rivalled the Charleston in popularity. He triggered a host of songs (Cole Porter once wrote "You're the tops, you're Leonard Zelig--except he couldn't find anything to rhyme with Zelig). Zelig paraphenalia--ashtrays, jewelry, and general knick-knacks--cropped up and sold briskly...
Cole Porter was not alone. In his time, the '20s and '30s, the whole world was bewitched by the strange case of a human chameleon so eager to be liked that he developed the capacity literally to change accent, shape and even color in order to ingratiate himself with whomever he happened to be with. One day Scott Fitzgeraid noticed him at a Gatsby-like Long Island party; the next, he was sitting in with a black jazz band at a Chicago speakeasy. Soon enough, Presidents and prizefighters, pundits and publishers were seeking him out. And where they...