Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Love them or hate them. But the four musicians in the English rock band Bush don’t want to invoke indifference. “Most of the bands that I hear don’t generate anything in me,” Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale says. “It’s impossible for everyone to like everyone, so I don’t take any of this personally. There are plenty of people who are regarded as geniuses, and I don’t think they are at all.”
When Jerry Kleiner first set foot on American soil, the 7-year-old Russian immigrant thought his new homeland was throwing a party for him.
If it hadn’t been for a pair of dead Walkman batteries, Michelle and Peter Warman might never have gotten married.
For meat-eating parents, a child proclaiming his or her desire to convert to a vegetarian diet may indeed be a scary prospect. But it’s something more parents are facing on a daily basis. There are now more teenage vegetarians than ever before in the United States. According to a recent Roper poll, 11 percent of girls aged 13 to 17 said they eat no meat. And some 15 percent of the nation’s 15 million college students reported that they eat vegetarian meals at school.
“Fight Club” star Helena Bonham Carter graces the cover of Los Angeles’ November issue, looking much more glamorous than she does in the dark film.
The adventurous impresarios at the Annoyance Theater have put some crazy stuff on their Wrigleyville stage, but no one could have anticipated this week’s radical stunt: They’re bringing a septuagenarian comedian to town. Charlie Callas, 71, will perform Wednesday and Thursday in the room that each weekend fills with beer-swilling twentysomethings catching the raunchy, long-running musical “Coed Prison Sluts.”
There was no love lost early on in Tony and Michele Fitzpatrick’s relationship. He was an artist. She ran a gallery. He thought she was a know-it-all. She viewed him as a platonic buddy.
You know how people are always saying that pretty boys would make nice-looking women? Well, check out the current issue of Rolling Stone with Brad Pitt on the cover . . . in a dress. In fact, the prettiest of all male actors is featured in three more photos wearing dresses. And he doesn’t look good in them, either.
Linda and Jeff Van Kley had seen each other around the office. She worked in marketing communications at CNA Insurance. He was an actuary.
According to the Olympic creed, “the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part.” Try telling that to the managers and sports agents who are counting on the athletes to upgrade their medals into deals with the likes of Nike, Gatorade and McDonald’s. That’s a cynical view of the Olympics. The latest Omnimax film, “Olympic Glory,” presents a purer version of the Games.
Sure, its easy to make fun of the Backstreet Boys–especially if youre over the age of 17. But when things click just so–as they did Tuesday night at the Allstate Arena–the Backstreet Boys prove that they are the kings of the boy bands. At last year’s concert at the New World Music Theatre, the five-man group from Orlando, Fla., appeared dwarfed by the enormodome and was plagued by off-key harmonies.
Just when you think that Canadians really aren’t that different from Americans, there’s this little matter of ketchup chips. Len vocalist Sharon Costanzo is munching on a big bag of this treat when she phones from Toronto for an interview.
“I would like to think that it’s my glowing talent that got me cast in `Bluff,’ ” says John Cryer, laughing. “Did I get cast because I’m a `star’? If casting me can get people to come to the theater, that’s great. But I think that Chicagoans support theater regardless of who’s in the cast.”
Allison Ellis never imagined that she would be keeping house . . . on a boat. Then she met Gregg Collins at a Web development company in Seattle where they both worked.
You can’t go wrong with either cover of the October issue of Latina. In its annual tribute to Hispanic men, the magazine produced its first-ever split cover. Half of the 300,000 issues shipped nationwide feature Ricky Martin on the cover. The rest showcase a bare-chested Benjamin Bratt, formerly of “Law & Order” and currently Julia Roberts’ better half.
In her one-woman show “I’m the One That I Want,” Margaret Cho recalls how getting her own sitcom in the mid-1990s signified acceptance to her–for the first time in her life. What she didn’t realize then was that acceptance came with a price.
Perhaps the best way to present “Grease” from now on is on ice. Ever since Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta starred in the 1978 film version of the play, most productions of the musical have been overshadowed by memories of the movie. But when you’ve got skaters performing double loops and death spirals, you tend to forget about the film and lose yourself in the fun.
If you’re a 16-year-old boy and a pretty blond girl picks lint off of you, the first thing you might think is, “She likes me!”
If you were a Korean-American girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1970s, there weren’t too many Asian celebrity role models to pick from. So Margaret Cho chose pop star Olivia Newton-John: an Australian.
It was a dog on a motorcycle that caught Kathryn Chandler’s eyes. The guy with the dog was Kyle Chandler, star of CBS’ “Early Edition” (which is filmed in Chicago). But back in 1993, there was no “Early Edition.” And Kathryn hadn’t seen Kyle in any of his other roles. All she knew was that any man giving a big dog a ride on his motorcycle was a little eccentric.