Bridgeport, California, is on 395 South towards Yosemite National Park and Mono Lake.
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Instead of kicking off, 80-year-old Tempest Storm is still taking it off:
She was Annie Blanche Banks then. The 22-year-old sharecropper's daughter had fled sexual abuse, two loveless marriages and poverty in small-town Georgia, she said.
She was working as a cocktail waitress but wanted to be a showgirl. First, she needed her teeth fixed.
"Do you think my bust is too big for this business?" she asked Hunt at her audition.
Hunt put her in the chorus line, told her not to gain a pound and called a dentist.
In Storm's telling, she didn't stay long in the background. She got a new name. ("I really don't feel like a Sunny Day.") She took to the spotlight quickly. Then and now, she blossomed to the chorus of hoots and cheers.
The trick is having a warm presence, an inviting smile, she said.
When she takes the stage, she lets her mind float back to "Georgie." She imagines herself as a little girl, in her best dress, running down the road to meet her daddy coming home from work.
Obviously she isn't as fast as she used to be.
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I can't wait to get my copy of the next New Yorker.
The article, by Ryan Lizza, is about Obama's early years in Chicago politics before anybody paid a bit of attention to him. It's not at all flattering.
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