When I was in my 20's I worked backstage on Night of 100 Stars and several other extravaganzas produced by Alexander Cohen. I met so many legendary stars....many very nice and a few NOT. Night of 100 Stars was held at Radio City Music Hall where I once worked and was familiar with the backstage areas because I had been a backstage tour guide. This was helpful to me when I talked myself into a parttime job with Mr. Cohen's office. I remember working Night of 100 Stars, a taping filled with legendary stars from all over. My head was swimming as I bopped around backstage, mixing with Grace Kelly, Beverly Sills, Jimmy Stewart, Lana Turner, Gregory Peck and SO MANY MORE....many more than "100." One of these blogs, I'll print my backstage dressing room list....dozens of stars lumped together in small "Rockette" dressing rooms because there was litterally NO PLACE to put them all. It was all for a good cause, to raise money for the Screen Actor's Guild r...

President's Day means more to me this year since I discovered I'm related to a BUNCH of Presidents including George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Theodore Roosevelt, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, both Bushes and even Obama (12th cousin on his Mother's side). Growing up, I knew my great-grandparents and grandparents and we always heard family stories and legends about famous people in the bloodline but other than scraps of paper from the Family Bible there was no proof. Awhile back my good friend and TV star Alison Arngrim (Little House on the Prairie's Nellie) was visiting from Los Angeles and we were up late chatting about various things. She'd just had her Family Tree done  by an "expert"...Mark Friedrich from Princeton, Illinois. Mark used www.ancestry.com and other sites to do Alison's Family Tree...she provided some names and birthdates and Mark began the research. He traced her family on both sides (her parents were Canadian) and...

My neighbor and friend and fellow cat-lover Louis Cardona passed away this morning after an extended cancer battle. He's finally pain-free and back with his lovely wife Toni, who he missed so much. His devoted daughters Deborah and Leslie took wonderful care of him until the end. F.Y.I.--Our neighborhood has many stray cats and Louis would go out every night with catfood and walk the streets to feed these unwanted animals. Sometimes I would stroll with him and help him and we would talk.  At one point, he had over 20 stray cats & kittens in his apartment! Exasperated, his wife Toni said "Louis, I've had it! Make your choice! It's either ME or these damn cats!" Louis said "Toni, baby you know I love you....but I can't get rid of my cats! They are my family too!" Louis lov ed his music and played vinyl on radio-station quality turntables. He had been a young genius and attended New York's prestigious Stuyvesant High School (smart kids). L...

Here in New York City, residential trash is picked up twice a week and recyclables on other days. There are almost NO alleys in Manhattan (the island isn't big enough) so everyone from Hell's Kitchen to Park Avenue must pile up their trash on the sidewalks at night in front of their apartment buildings for pickup.  Every time I walk by Radio City Apartments on Trash Day I remember that horrendous front page murder of several years ago. A young woman on the 9th floor murdered her boyfriend, chopped him up in the bathtub and hauled him out in hefty garbage bags on trash day, where the bags were piled high on the sidewalk. She almost escaped detection but it seems there were microscopic red dots of blood that had leaked onto the floors of the building as she dragged the bags outside. In most cases you couldn't see them unless you got down on the floor and looked closely, but dog walkers in the building noticed that their dogs went crazy sniffing and pawing at the same places...

So recently the NY Post gossip column Page Six reported the marriage of Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux was "doomed" because of Jennifer's "hatred of New York City." The actress tried moving back to Manhattan where she had lived as a teen after she fell for Theroux, 46, who owns an apt. in Greenwich Village but Aniston couldn't deal with the constant paparazzi and the nosey neighbors and retreated back to the walls of her sprawling Bel Air estate. "Jennifer is more comfortable in LA with her close-knit group of friends like Courtney Cox," said a source, adding "But Justin doesn't feel as at home in LA, nor with Jenn's friends. He loves New York and the edgier crowd." Putting further strain on their relationship, Theroux's career is booming with 3 movies coming out this year as he works on more. Jennifer is 49 and her career is slowing down.Men in their 40's and 50's work a LOT while women stars in their 40's ...

LADY GAGA?? KIM KARDASHIAN?? As a tourguide in New York these days, we are constantly changing our information especially concerning celebrity names and movie references. With the constant flow of reality shows, internet news and pop culture information spewing out PLUS younger tourists, celebrity names that used to mean something no longer spark interest from most groups. Gilda Radner (long dead) means nothing, Meg Ryan (career dead...means nothing), Madonna (has-been, gets mild interest), Tom Hanks (mildly interesting), Barbara Walters (might as well be dead), and many other names which I used to mention in my tour 5 years ago get very little eyebrows raised on the tour these days. Young, hip celebrity names are the answer! I recently did a tour where every young person on the bus dozed thru celebrity names like Tom Hanks, Kelly Ripa, Regis Philbin…even Madonna got a few yawns…they are yesterday’s headlines. As soon as I mentioned Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian.…the bus erupted…they...

Since New York is a city of celebrities EVERYwhere, it’s undeniable that celebs pop up on our tours. Sometimes as a passenger on the bus, sometimes as a “sight” on the tour, sometimes they become PART of the tour! I recently put out a request to guides on the Facebook site for guides and people came forward with personal stories. Marc Landman said that he saw both Katie Courie and Savannah Guthrie but years ago his most famous celebrity sighting was SPUDS MacKenzie, the bull terrier from the Bud Light commercials.  Guide Stan O’Connor contributed: “ I was in Midtown, standing in the stairwell of the double-decker bus, giving a tour. As we went past the Four Seasons Hotel, I told the people that I. M. Pei designed it.  Continuing, I went on to say that "he'd also designed the Javits  Convention Center, the big gold pyramid on the National Mall in Washington and a similar pyramid at the Louvre in Paris" and he..." I looked down to my right, where Pei happened to be...