This time, Cher's leaving for sure

After a three-year wind-down, the diva's final concert looms.
By MELISSA DRIBBEN
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Cherish those wigs, sequins and Barbie dolls -- less than two months remain until Cher performs for the very last time on tour.
Really.
The very, very, very last time.
There are cynics who will say this is just a publicity stunt and that, after a farewell tour that has lasted three years and more than 300 performances, Cher is probably only taking a sabbatical. But among the millions who idolize, fetishize, rhapsodize and otherwise believe in Cher's supreme sequined wonderfulness, it's not worth taking the chance. They're buying the tickets. They're lemming it to Hollywood and East Rutherford, N.J., and points in between. If the end is near, they need to bear witness.
It took Stephanie Floyd, a 34-year-old dental equipment supplier from Horsham, Pa., a whole year to save up $750 for a ticket to Cher's New Jersey concert.
But can a 58-year-old icon who has spent her whole life before fans really say goodbye?
We have consulted an expert: Cher Scholar, author of the marginally well-known but completely authentic online Cher-centric advice column www.cherscholar.com.
A real farewell
Cher Scholar, aka Mary Ladd, tells us that the high priestess of kitsch is really saying ta-ta. And that it's high time she did.
"I'm ready for the concert tour to end," says Ladd. "And I would think she'd be bored with it too, doing the same set over and over."
Ladd, a 35-year-old writer in Los Angeles, has been a Cher fan since 1977, when she was 7. She went to Sarah Lawrence College in New York and majored in English, and, given the intellectual standards on the campus, she had to hide her love of all things Cher.
From "Bang-Bang (My Baby Shot Me Dead)" to "Believe," Cher -- born Cherilyn Sarkisian -- has been unrivaled in the art of personal reinvention. Go-go dancer, hippie, outcast, sitcom star, serious Academy-Award-winning actress and ultra Vegas glam queen with plumage, she shed stylistic skins like a python and inhabited new ones that invariably fit tightly. Without doubt, Sonny's other (and ultimately more commercially successful) half holds the celebrity record for most-ripped abs and navel exposure over four decades.
"Many of her fans feel they are misfits," said Ladd. "Cher made good even though she didn't look like the typical buxom blonde. People admire her ability to survive the hard knocks of business and the critics, who have always been harsh."
Floyd, a Cher fan for more than 25 years, says that she has been stunned by the lengths some people are willing to go in their worship of Cher.
"I love Cher but don't eat, sleep and live Cher," says Floyd. "I have a life. I have a job and a boyfriend."
True, she says, the April 13 concert in East Rutherford will be her fourth time seeing Cher on the Farewell Tour. "But she's changed some of her costumes and will be performing some different songs."
Sharing in Cher
Floyd's $750 ticket is a record for her, and she'll be attending with an equally Cher-besotted friend. "That's the most I've ever paid and the closest I've ever been to the stage. Tenth row. On some Web sites, second-row tickets are going for $1,200 each."
Others are equally enraptured and even have impersonated Cher.
"I have seen the Farewell Tour six times," Jeffrey Clagett wrote in an e-mail, which contained a photograph of him in Cher drag at an AIDS benefit. Clagett, 38, a full-time student from Baltimore, owns Cher's complete oeuvre and a Smithsonian-worthy collection of Cher dolls. He was drawn to Cher because he had an extremely difficult childhood and admired her irreverence.