Luise Rainer
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
A pessimist such as I might look at the bad news that this posting will eventually get around to revealing: that I did not get to meet, nor did I get an autograph of Luise Rainer. But as I now reflect on the experience of just seeing her in person, I deemed that this event merited a posting of its own. It was on Sunday, April 25, 2010, that Bob and I attended a screening of The Good Earth at the Egyptian Theatre in Burbank. Actually, we didn’t even attend the screening itself. We just stopped in to see Louise Rainer. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve all loved David Spade in his deliciously snide roles in Saturday Night Live and Just Shoot Me. We’ve laughed with him for his wry, pessimistic, and wonderfully sarcastic roles opposite Chris Farley in the classic Tommy Boy and Black Sheep. But what do you suppose Mr. Spade would be like in real life? Surely the snippiness is all just an act, right? Well, I think I can answer that question based on the ten seconds I had with him on Saturday, April 4, 2010. 
I hadn’t planned to take the side trip excursion to Paris, France during my weeklong visit to England, mostly because I had already been there before. This may sound silly, but if I had intended to go, the number one reason would be to visit the Hard Rock Cafe. So I nearly almost passed up the trip even when circumstances (namely a couple who had signed up for the trip never made it to England) allowed me to go for free, because I knew there wouldn’t be an opportunity to get to the Hard Rock during our brief guided tour of the city. But there was one specific thing that I had not accomplished the 
When I first watched the classic teen beach romp film Beach Blanket Bingo, there was one thing I couldn’t get out of my head: the red hot Donna Loren crooning It Only Hurts When I Cry. I even downloaded it from LimeWire and put it on my iPod. That’s it. That’s my story. Donna Loren’s story continued though with another slew of beach films. Among them Muscle Beach Party, Bikini Beach, and Pajama Party. 
For some strange reason, I had thought that Martin Landau was dead. In fact, when I met his daughter