2014 was a very good year for Stargayzing, both in terms of growing its readership—it doubled—but also (I hope), in terms of the quality of its writing. In addition to regular pop culture commentary here, I also…
Year: 2014
Blog posts
Stargayzing Songwriter’s Forum: 20 Questions With…Peter Zizzo
Peter Zizzo is an Emmy winning producer/songwriter whose songs have been recorded over the years by artists like Celine Dion, Jennifer Lopez, Howie Day, Donna Summer and many others. One of his more recent productions…
Tilda Swinton’s 8 Favorite Unsung Movies, Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly
In March 2014, Tilda Swinton, who won the 2007 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her stunning performance in Michael Clayton, shared 8 of her favorite underrated films with Entertainment Weekly. The resulting list provided…
“After the Glitter Fades”: Remembering Laurel Canyon Vintage in Words and Images
The shop was located at 63 Thompson Street in New York’s Soho neighborhood where Elisa had operated a different vintage boutique called Chelsea Girl for twenty years. In 2012 she expanded that shop and moved around the corner. This allowed me to take the Laurel Canyon concept and move it from my mental queue to prime real estate directly across from the Thompson Hotel. In a fever of enthusiasm, I set about transforming a hundred-year-old storefront in what was once a part of New York’s Little Italy into a California Craftsman fantasy on Lookout Mountain Road circa 1972.
The Tom Thumb Show: or, How “What? I’m Just Grazin’!” Became a Viral YouTube Meme
“As I stared at the picture, both funny and so sad, it occurred to me that in some ways The Tom Thumb Show would have a better chance of success today than in 1975, but for all of the wrong reasons. So I let my imagination wander a bit and here is what I came up with.”
Bad Songs I Love: Sammy Davis, Jr.’s “The People Tree” (1972)
There are few things that put me in as great a mood as dependably as the peerless showmanship and soaring voice of Sammy Davis Jr., especially on performances’s like his criminally underrated 1972 recording of “The…
Eating With the Stars: Lauren Bacall’s Watercress Soup (Potage Cressonière)
Lauren Bacall’s Watercress Soup (Potage Cressonière) Show business legend Lauren Bacall wrote one of the very best celebrity memoirs with her 1978 autobiography By Myself, which she updated in 2006. In her candid book (which…
Bing Crosby’s 10 Favorite Performers of All Time
Bing Crosby was, perhaps, the first multi-media superstar: radio, recordings, live performances, and film. Crosby was an Oscar-winning actor and the top-selling recording artist of the first half of the 20th-century. Despite all these…
Quote of the Day: Sophia Loren
“Every time I have wanted something badly, I have had to wait. But eventually it came. I’ve been lucky of course, but I worked hard to change from an ignorant unattractive peasant into a…
The Worst Music Video of All-Time: Lime’s “Babe, We’re Gonna Love Tonight”
I was an MTV baby. I watched the nascent network incessantly, from the day I moved in to Weinstein Dorm at N.Y.U. in the summer of 1983, until it ceased being an outlet for music sometime…
On My 50th Birthday, a Letter to Myself at 17
“I see the reason for your sadness: 12 years of institutionalized bullying—pervasive, relentless. I am touched by the exquisite coping skills you cultivated, the exaggerated belief in your own exceptionalism that you use like armor to guard against painful things, made to measure to compensate for what is being denied you or taken away.”
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