RIP @elllizibeth

I just got my Josh Groban Stages DVD. It’s damaged. At least the first song doesn’t play properly.  

I also just learned that Elizabeth Hershoff died.  https://www.gofundme.com/elizabethhershoff  Somehow the timing of these two events seems significant to me.

I met Lizzie on twitter, if I recall correctly. We were both fans of Josh Groban. 

At that time, twitter was very new and Josh on twitter was very new.  Josh was in California.  He tended to get on twitter and tweet at about midnight California time.  A bunch of us would sit around by our computers waiting for him to tweet, even tho we were in other time zones and it was very late for us.  We were tweeting about him.

After a while, I think it occurred to us that he was actually reading what we were saying.  I_balls, who was later Violet, started this thing of asking him to tweet.  Curiously, he seemed to tweet just when she asked him to, as if he had been waiting for us to ask.

Then sometimes he would interact with us.  We liked to be on when he started tweeting, because we figured that, if we could respond to his tweet within a few minutes, he would be likely to see it — and even possibly answer.  We tried to get good at making speedy, witty comments on his tweets, because he seemed to enjoy that.

Lizzie was particularly good at this. She also wrote a very funny blog that Josh seemed to like.  He tweeted her over 30 times.  At one point, she was the fan he had tweeted to most of anyone.

Lizzie had interesting opinions.  

She was a public school teacher. Her district in Boulder Colorado had, if I recall correctly, eliminated grading students.  Their students tended to do exceptionally well on national standardized tests.  She cited that as evidence that how students do in school has little to do with pedagogy or grading or any of the standard things that are attempted — and everything to do with their families.  The families in her area were economically comfortable, and well-educated, so their kids would always do well in school, no matter what the school did.

She was an atheist.  She was inspired by Josh’s friend, Cara Santa Maria, to become more publicly atheist. Cara Santa Maria is a very in-your-face atheist — and very smart.  

She also was not a big fan of capitalism. I remember her telling me about a book she read that had as its thesis that our economic system rewards sociopaths — certainly a thought-provoking topic.

Her writing was excellent and biting.  I finally met her in person on Jul 2, 2013 at a Josh concert at the Hollywood Bowl.  In person she sounded quite different from the way she sounded in her writing.  She  was humble and spoke in a small, high voice.  I think she was not aware how different her writing was from how she was in person.

Lizzie was very smart.  She started a thread on FOJG for intellectual discussions.  I used to participate on that thread.  

The thread got deleted at one point. We think it got deleted because I was complaining about how much I missed Lucia in Josh’s concerts.  That was a hint that perhaps someone — probably Josh himself — was sensitive to that topic.

Lizzie was very upset about the deletion.

Other fans became jealous of the attention Josh paid to her.  They started criticizing her. Also, I think some of them did not get her sense of humor, while Josh did.  No one should ever mistake Josh for just a singer or just a musician.  He's a very sharp cookie and voracious speed reader.

It turned out that Lizzie was very sensitive and could not tolerate to be criticized publicly on the Internet.  She asked people to stop, but they only criticized her more and sent especially cruel DMs to her on Josh’s website.  

She began accusing them of bullying.  Then they would assert that they were only arguing or trying to  convince her that she was wrong.  

One of the mods, Backwards1, wrote her privately and told her that her posts were fine and that nastiness between fans had always been a problem on the website — and encouraged her to keep posting.  Some fans suspected that this particular mod was Josh himself.

Lizzie particularly did not like being discussed on other blogs — some of which were very nasty to her indeed.

From my perspective, the idea that you could talk someone out of being very sensitive by mass public criticism over the Internet was utterly absurd.  It also seems to me that, if someone tells you that they can’t tolerate such criticism and you keep doing it after being requested to stop, then you are a bully, even if you think that the person shouldn’t be so sensitive or you think you should be able to talk them out of it.

Jspot was particularly vicious. Several of us complained to Wordpress, but they wouldn’t do anything, which still infuriates me.  Also, Josh, who was probably the only person with enough clout to do anything about that blog, apparently chose to ignore it, rather than try to protect friends and fans who were being attacked.

Louise Miller was also often nasty to her. Louise will deny this, because she deletes this stuff, but it was definitely so.

There were twitter accounts that were registered just for the purpose of attacking Lizzie.  I think I still have some screen images of that somewhere on my computer.  Bullies go after blood.  When they knew she was sensitive and that they could get a rise out of her, they just got worse.

Eventually, she disabled comments on her blog.  Curiously, probably because she was being criticized on widely read websites, her blog was very popular and she typically got at least 500 hits on each post.

She never could get used to being criticized on the Internet.  

Stress damages the immune system. I wonder to what extent the stress she felt over this could have contributed to her getting cancer.

Earlier this year, rumors started flying on various social media about Josh’s personal life. There had always been rumors, but these got nastier than usual, especially from disgruntled ex girlfriends.

Lizzie got obsessed with those rumors and began behaving in a way that was distressing even to those who liked her -- even encouraging one of these ex girlfriends to expose Josh.  Now it appears that her behavior may have been due to the brain cancer that was diagnosed towards the end of the summer.

I do wonder, too, whether the stress of seeing these salacious rumors about Josh, who she loved so very much, could have damaged her health.

When she realized she was dying, she deleted all her social media accounts.  I feel very sad about that, because her blog had some funny/brilliant posts.  

She sent me some messages not to tell anyone she was dying.  She was concerned about all the people who were hostile towards her — and she did not want them to know.

Later, her friend in Boulder created the public gofundme page, so Grobies found out and contributed.  I hope, somehow, she realized before the end that not everyone in Grobania was really hostile towards her.

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Addendum: 11/19/15 

For those of you who may have joined us recently, Josh's style on twitter changed substantially recently, possibly as a result of the incidents with the rumors.  He's much more professional & less interactive than he used to be -- also less funny, alas.

Also, given that people can delete their social media accounts with no notice, if there's something you really like on there, despite copyright, it would be nice to make copies.

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Addendum: 12/5/15

Josh may have read this, because his tweets have suddenly gotten more fun recently.  

A lot of the cyber-bullying attacks against Lizzie were fans, rather self-righteously, "defending" Josh against perceived "attacks."  

This is what Josh himself has been saying on this topic recently

I should also add that I_balls, who was later Violet, left twitter, in part because she did not like the way she was treated by other fans, particularly when Josh tweeted her.

People attacked me, too, quite often, but I was fortunately able to get past it.

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Addendum 1/4/16 I was just trying to go back and find all of Josh's tweets to Lizzie.  It turns out that the option to find "all" tweets is gone.  They'll just do "top" tweets.  Still there are quite a few

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addendum 5/14/16

I saw this piece about a promising trial for treatment of glioblastoma.  It made me think of Lizzie.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/promising-duke-university-polio-brain-cancer-trial-given-breakthrough-status-60-minutes/

Too late for her, alas :'(  but interesting -- using polio virus.

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addendum 5/19/16

This article asserts that rates incidence of brain cancer have been flat over the last 20 years, and, therefore concludes, that cell phones do not cause brain cancer.

It's hard to believe that brain cancer rates have been flat, when one has a personal friend who died of brain cancer.

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Addendum 10/27/16

Reading articles about brain cancer research and thinking of Lizzie 

http://www.barrons.com/articles/PR-CO-20161026-909438

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Addendum 4/14/17

Another article about brain cancer, especially glioblastoma research

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2017/04/14/Brain-cancer-vaccine-appears-safe-in-small-trial/2231492176375/

Loretta Lynn concert 11/15/15

I went to see Loretta Lynn perform 11/15/15 -- so not everything on this blog is about Josh Groban

I never really was a country music fan, though I’ve started to like “Home Free,” but I did see the movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” so when I saw she was coming to my local music hall I figured I’d better find out what she was about.

I ended up being late to the concert, because I had another thing to do before, but I only missed the opening act, which was a relief.

They really had 2 opening acts.  They had her son sing for a while with her band as well, and then her daughter, before they brought her on, and even when she was on stage, they spelled her by interspersing singing by others — and she sang abbreviated versions of some of the songs. She was visibly out of breath after singing & sat most of the time when singing.  They had someone walk her on and off stage.

Still, for a woman in her 80’s she did very well.  Her voice was clear and strong.  Also there was something about her timing.  I think that’s one of the characteristics that distinguish great musicians — very precise timing, so that they’re not just performing, they seem to be part of the music, like the music is including them rather than being forced out of them.

It was interesting comparing the singing styles between her, her daughter, and her grand daughter.  She had a much clearer sound, while the granddaughter was breathier — and the daughter was singing lower.  That’s an odd trend, recently, it seems like we want men to sing high and women to sing low — like a generation of people who aren’t satisfied with natural sounding voices.  Of the three, I thought Loretta was the best.

She’s apparently been touring all year, despite apparently being somewhat weak.  That’s pretty amazing — IMHO.

I've never thought of these women country singers, with their heavily styled hair and sparkles, as feminists, but I'm realizing, watching this video that they were.  

Still, though, when I saw Loretta Lynn play, the entire band was male.  That seems to be typical: a female singer with a male backup band.  I've talked about this on this blog before.  Celtic "Women"

comparing Stages and ATE/Illuminations

LIstening to the iheart radio concert

I know Stages is winning in the court of public opinion, but I sure liked this stuff from ATE -- especially I really thought Ruslan added a lot.  I find it ironic that because we liked Ruslan so much we funded him to do his own album, so he's not touring with Josh.  Groan. 

Ruslan's album that was funded by the kickstarter is now done.  I don't know if it's available to the public or just to those who funded the kickstarter as yet -- but it's a very fine thing, indeed.  Andre Manga and Mark Stevens came out with their own albums in the past, but I didn't like them as much.

I can't help but wonder, tho, whether Ruslan was particularly attracted to the music from ATE because it was innovative in character -- and whether he wasn't bored by the muzacky stuff on Stages.  He wouldn't tell us, I don't think.  He's said he can't talk about anything about Josh due to non-disclosure agreements.

Of course, I liked Lucia better than Christian as well, but it appears that there's no featured violinist on the current tour at all.  I wonder what that's about. I guess it's about just emphasizing Josh's singing.  

He's also moving around less on the stage than he did in past concerts.  I wonder what that's about as well.  Is he getting older and less energetic?  Has he been advised to stand more still because that will position him better for theater? In my acting classes, they often talk about the power of stillness and avoiding unnecessary gestures and pacing.  The Awake DVD that showed him running full out while singing was pretty impressive -- singing as an athletic activity; but that definitely wouldn't fly on Broadway.

For me, though, when they talk about Josh being classical/pop crossover, what always attracted me was that he was modern classical/pop crossover -- that his stuff was influenced by experimental music, like electronic music.  A piece like Voce Existe em Mim was musically interesting -- unlike anything else out there.  I miss that.

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addendum Oh, and remember how Josh used to play the piano at concerts?