Paisley makes this week even more 'American'
It may feel like Brad Paisley week, because the hot country singer is all over the place. His latest album, American Saturday Night, hit stores today and already it is the No. 2 album on iTunes (The Essential Michael Jackson is keeping him from the top spot). He'll kick off the holiday weekend Friday performing in Central Park on Good Morning America’s Summer Concert Series, and then on Live! With Regis and Kelly. Paisley and his patriotic album will most likely be invading radios across the nation this Fourth of July (plus he is featured in People, Nashville's Tennessean and the Los Angeles Times this week), so click on the video below to get a little taste of his title song.
Kris Kristofferson gets Icon status
It's just been announced that legendary singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson, 73, will get his due, to be honored as a BMI Icon at the U.S. music rights organization’s 57th annual Country Awards on Nov. 10. I'm totally with our Dennis McCafferty, who covers country music for the magazine, when he says it's about time. Says Dennis: "For the young folks today who mainly know him as 'the old guy in the Blade movies,' try Googling the life of the great Kris Kristofferson (that's Kris in May, with Ani DiFranco, right). He was a Rhodes Scholar. He taught at West Point. At one time during the 70s, he was the biggest combination of actor, singer and songwriter anywhere. As for the latter, he's written so many songs that have stood the test of time — Me and Bobby McGee, Lovin’ Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again), Help Me Make It Through the Night. My personal favorite is Sunday Morning Coming Down, with the great line, "The beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad/So I had one more for dessert."
Photo courtesy of USA TODAY
Kurt Warner visits Disney's Magic Kingdom
Senior writer Dennis McCafferty checks in from Orlando, where he spent the day Monday with Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner at Disney's Magic Kingdom for an upcoming cover story. That's the two of them hamming it up at below like the celebs who do the 'I'm going to Disney World!' commercials. Dennis reports:
"Kurt was having a great time, hosting a large group of kids and their families there from across the country with his also-somewhat-famous wife, Brenda. I asked Kurt if he used to go to Disney World as a kid. 'I did," he told me. 'But I don't remember there being so many other theme parks here in Orlando. I think there was mainly just the Magic Kingdom back then.' Not that he's protesting. He loves heading out to the quite-lively Downtown Disney and getting into the arcades. 'They have all kinds of wild simulators now,' he said. 'They can make you feel like you're on a roller-coaster, or on a pirate ship. But they still have plenty of the classic arcades, too, that I loved as a kid.' "
Photo by Preston Mack
Random news and notes
Over morning coffee I'm reading the stories following Michael Jackson's death. There are many, and some are of dubious accuracy, but I'm keeping up via TMZ.com, which broke the story last Thursday....
Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick show off their twins girls — Marion Loretta Elwell Broderick and Tabitha Hodge Broderick — in this People picture. They were born by surrogate last week. ...That was fast. The Bachelor dumpee Melissa Rycroft, who got Dancing With The Stars as a consolation prize, is now engaged. ...
Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni — that's them at left — signed their contracts for another season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit....
I'm confused about the fuss over Kendra Wilkinson's weekend wedding. Who cares?...
Our friend Kristin de Santos at E! reports that Drea de Matteo will join Desperate Housewives. So that's why they got rid of Nicollette Sheridan.
Celebrity Birthdays: Mike Tyson, Vincent D'Onofrio
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson celebrates his 43rd birthday today. He's had some ups and downs in his career (biting Evander Holyfield's ear would definitely be one of the latter), but "Iron Mike" has recently shown he's still got it. He was the subject of the James Toback documentary Tyson, and has a great cameo involving a tiger in the hit comedy The Hangover. Actor Vincent D’Onofrio, Detective Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, turns 50. He’s opposite Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer in his next flick, The Irishman. Former American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino is 25. She starred recently on Broadway in The Color People, and will reprise her role in the upcoming big-screen musical adaptation. Actress Lizzy Caplan, who appeared on True Blood last year and Party Down this year, is 27, superstar Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps is 24, and funnyman and recent Dancing With The Stars contestant David Alan Grier turns 54.
Photo by Frank Masi
June 29, 2009
Send me questions for Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal
Lucky me. I'm interviewing Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal tomorrow and I'd really like to have your questions. They are getting ready for a six-week, coast-to-coast tour — 30 dates in all — and it's the first tour for the two of them together. That's the poster for it over there on the left. So if you have questions for either of them, post them below. I'd love to know what you want to know.
Celebrity Birthdays: Bret McKenzie, Nicole Scherzinger
Happy 33rd birthday to Bret McKenzie, the goateed half of the musical comedy group Flight of the Conchords. He appeared in the first and third of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, but the New Zealand actor and musician has found cult success alongside Jemaine Clement with Flight of the Conchords, which recently finished its second season on HBO (and premieres on DVD Aug. 4). Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls who also has a solo career, is 31. Comedian Richard Lewis, now a recurring guest on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, turns 62. NYPD Blue’s Sharon Lawrence, who guest-starred as Izzie’s mom on Grey’s Anatomy this past spring, is 48. And actor Gary Busey, recently seen on the VH1 reality series Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, celebrates turning 65 today.
Photo by Craig Blankenhorn
June 26, 2009
Bay makes way to 'Transformers' screening in his jet
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen director Michael Bay was in his element Thursday night. He was the main attraction at a special IMAX screening of his new movie at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia, and not just because he was there to show the film to museum and military folks who had worked on it. (Several scenes involving the new Transformers character Jetfire, based on the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird plane, were filmed at the museum.) Our T.J. Walter reports Bay also cruised to the venue (near Dulles International Airport) in his own jet, parking it — loudly — right outside the hangar where the press was waiting.
Transformer 2: Revenge of the Fallen may have gotten mixed reviews, but with the sequel pulling $60 million in box office on opening day Wednesday (and another $28 million and change yesterday), Bay could gloat. “Second biggest opening day of all time, I guess the critics didn’t know what they were talking about.”
Bay talked about the multiple opportunities (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon) that he has had to work the U.S. military. “I have met so many amazing soldiers over the years and I try to portray them in the most realistic way,” Bay said. Also: "In no other job would I ever get to the meet the guy that loads fuel into the space shuttle.”
Photo by Jaimie Trueblood
Tim Daly and Denis Leary in WEEKEND now
Don't tell my husband, but I have a thing for Tim Daly. Tim is handsome, and aging well; he's done some seriously good TV work — even if my most favorite, Eyes, only made it for a few episodes. He's loyal to family and friends; he's smart; and now he's stepped up to co-chair The Creative Coalition, an arts advocacy group. I've talked to Tim a couple of times but most recently for this weekend's Who's News column, so read up on him there.
This week, I also have in the magazine a story about another of my favorite men on TV, Denis Leary (seen at right with his wife, Ann Leary). I appreciated Leary's early work but I saw him only as a comedian. Not until FX's Rescue Me did I see him for the writer that he is: talented, informed and serious. Don't get me wrong, he's still funny. (The evening we talked, he had to run out to do Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.) But he's a fearless and relevant social commentator. Leary and I both come from big Irish Catholic families and went to Catholic schools in the '60s, so we had some common ground, though his tales of his close loving clan are far more hilarious than any I could ever tell on mine. He shares many of them in his best-selling book Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid.
While I was writing about Denis, I got in touch with his wife, also a writer (check out her blog Wicked Good Life), because they've been married for 20 years and he always talks lovingly about her. I didn't have room to fit all of her comments into the story, but I loved what she had to say about them so I want to share it here. "We have had to work hard at marriage, as all couples do, but I think now we have a sort of pride in the stamina of ours — at least I do. We're not getting any younger, and neither is our marriage so we have to work to keep it in good, working shape. It's taken a while for us to figure that out. That there's maintenance involved. Well, I love him, I guess that's all you need to know."
Cameron Diaz mothers her 'My Sister's Keeper' daughters
My Sister's Keeper, the movie based on Jodi Picoult's bestseller, opens today and seeing it is definitely on my weekend agenda. At the urging of other women friends, I read the book a few years ago, so I am eager to see how it is played on screen. Cameron Diaz plays the mother and reporters who saw her at an L.A. press conference for the movie got a taste of what her real-life mothering skills might someday be like. On a panel with two of her young co-stars, Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva, Diaz joked with the girls but also kept them in line. Our Nancy Mills was there to see how it all played out. Click on read more for Nancy's full report.
Photos by Sidney Baldwin
