Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Phoning from her tour bus en route to Phoenix, India.Arie is funny, candid and polite. She’s also hungry. “My cook just asked if I wanted a fruit salad,” says the 26-year-old singer-songwriter. “She picked up some ripe mangoes when we were in New Orleans and also has some grapes–two of my favorite fruits–and is going to make it with lemon and tahini dressing.”
You hear of rock stars turned actors. But musicians parlaying a second gig as a renovator? That’s a little more unusual. But Dave Pirner makes it all sound like the norm when he phones from a place he’s working on in New Orleans.
March Madness nears its close this weekend with the matchups of the Final Four men’s college basketball teams, with only one emerging Monday night as the NCAA titleholder. Hoop dreams don’t have to end, though. Thanks to hardworking video game programmers, another season is as nearby as your video game system.
Joe Meredith is the type of guy who’ll sit through the Oscars to find out who won all the fringe awards. This year, Meredith, 30, will have to set his VCR. And, if he’s very lucky, he’ll come home to a tape showing him running from the back of the venue to accept an Oscar for best animated short film for his charming “Stubble Trouble.”
Oprah Winfrey had better start taking some tips from Suze Orman, the financial whiz who writes for Winfrey’s magazine. Seems our billionairess is so cautious about investing her own money in the stock market that she once hoarded $50 million in cash, calling it her personal “bag-lady fund.”
Jamie Kennedy is nowhere to be found. At first, you wonder whether he’s wandering around in disguise as a bellhop, waiting to fool you as he does on his TV series, “JKX: The Jamie Kennedy Experiment,” which airs at 7 p.m. Sundays on WGN-Channel 9. On this twisted homage to “Candid Camera,” Kennedy dresses up as different characters and fools people into thinking he’s some funky Valley Boy taking their daughter out on a blind date or an insensitive boss who makes his temp fire the entire staff.
At Brian Eccles’ Final Four party this year, he’ll offer his guests pizza and beer. But don’t look for a platter of crudites anywhere near the buffet table.
Chicago may have been dubbed the second-fattest city in the nation, but we’re moving on down–the scale, that is–thanks to all of you who’ve joined our Chicago Sheds a Ton campaign.
Here’s what separates the weekend biking enthusiast from Chris Naunheimer, founder of the northwest suburbs’ cycling club the Arlington Flyers. Every year just about this time, we may dust off our Schwinns and go for leisurely rides that usually end with a frothy drink or a scoop of ice cream. When it rains (or we get tired), we quickly pedal back to the comfort of our homes.
Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe are doing it. So are Tonya Harding and Barry Williams. And come to think of it, Danny Bonaduce and Long Island Lolita Amy Fisher are doing it, too. Hey now, get your minds out of the gutter. We’re talking about that other contact sport– boxing.
Alejandro Escovedo refuses to be pegged. He is a rock ‘n’ roll veteran who began his career in the San Francisco punk band the Nuns, which opened for the Sex Pistols during their last concert in America. Escovedo went on to play lead guitar with the 80s cowpunk group Rank and File before fronting his own roots rock band, the True Believers.
If you’ve always wondered why men ask for your phone number then never call, check out Cosmopolitan and Maxim magazines, which have negotiated a cease-fire in this battle of the sexes. In a tongue-in-cheek effort to unite us, the sexy magazines have hammered out a treaty that outlines all the little things we should know about one another.
“I’ve said this for years–Chicago is the best city in America,” says Brian Dennehy. “Chicagoans are very lucky to live here.”
The Winter Olympics come to a close on Sunday. But the competition can live on in a slew of games for Playstation 2, GameCube and XBox. Our distinguished panel of international judges (OK, there are only two of us–but we’re of Irish and Korean descent) evaluated the games and awarded them with gold, silver and bronze honors. In one heated tie, there were two winners for the gold. But then, that precedent already has been set.
“I didn’t always make the smartest choices, but I also wasn’t afraid to fail,” says Cher, phoning from her Los Angeles home. “If you make a mistake, you pick yourself up and move ahead. If I didn’t do that, I’d be crawled up in a ball on my sofa for the rest of my life.”
Even Vonda Shepard is sick of rehearsing the theme to “Ally McBeal.” “I’ve sung it and heard it so many times on the radio that I can’t believe anyone still wants to hear it,” the singer says, phoning from the Los Angeles set of the Fox series. “But once we start playing the opening chords and I see how excited the audience gets hearing it, then I start to get excited, too. It’s the song that put my name out there, so I’ll perform it as long as people want to hear it.”
Jinkies! The Scooby gang is up to it again in this delightful theatrical production of “Scooby-Doo! in Stagefright–Live on Stage.” Presented as a long-lost episode of the late 1960s cartoon series, the production no doubt was concocted to drum up interest in the film version of the series, which will premiere in June. A trailer for the movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. was shown during intermission.
Aaron Carter is 14 years old, looks like a carbon copy of his big brother Nick of the Backstreet Boys and works the crowd with the savvy and finesse of a Vegas showman. That’s a dangerous combination when you’ve got an arena full of young girls who are hopped up on sugar and adrenaline. But guess what? This kid delivers. Give him a couple more years to pick better songs that cater to his rock ‘n’ roll sensibilities and there’s the potential for a career beyond the kid-pop phase.
By Jae-Ha Kim Chicago Sun-Times February 11, 2002 Chad Harper was just another model-about-town when a casting agent for “Fear Factor” asked him to audition for the daredevil/gross-out reality show. Harper made the cut and […]
The opening sequence of “Shiri” is so frenetic and violent that some filmgoers may wince at the unrelenting brutality. But if you can make it through the first few minutes, there’s cinematic eye candy waiting to enthrall you. One of the fiercest soldiers on an elite North Korean force is Hee, a young female sniper who shoots to kill and never misses. When enemy soldiers are hunted, she shows no feeling as she decapitates her prey. When she retires, she is given a solemn, heroic sendoff.