Not to beat a dead horse, but each time I hear "Shallow" I am more convinced the verse is Warren Zevon's "She's Too Good For Me" and the chorus is Roy Oberson's "Pretty Woman." Listen for yourself. 

Warren Zevon-She's too Good for Me

Roy Orbison - Oh, Pretty Woman (from Black & White Night)

Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper - Shallow (A Star Is Born)

Kylie Jenner is launching her own line of wine.

Kylie Jenner thinks a Bordeaux is a brothel. Just kidding. Kylie has no idea what a brothel is.








Andrew “Dice” Clay and Roseanne Barr are launching a comedy tour. Believe it is billed as, 

“The Holy Crap Am I Not Going to See Those A-holes” tour.







Since you asked:

You want a great example of how incestuous and productive was the Laurel Canyon music scene in the late Sixties, early Seventies?

Graham Nash had recorded and released “Our House,” the sweet and sappy love song to Joni Mitchell and their A-frame house just as Joni was writing “River” about breaking up with Graham Nash.

“So you want to be a rock and roll star? 
Then listen now to what I say 
Just get an electric guitar 
Then take some time and learn how to play”


While there was some truth to The Byrds' lyrics, you had to have talent and luck to make it in music in LA in the early and mid-Seventies.

Not like acting where people with virtually no talent, like Pauly Shore and Tom Arnold, can hit it big. If you did not have talent and luck in music, you were out of luck.

For a good example, take Timothy B. Schmit. Talented as hell. Had Randy Meisner not gotten fed up with Glenn Frey’s coked-up egomania and quit the Eagles, Timothy would still have been playing bass with Poco for $200 a week until they quit. Now he is worth about $15 million. About $5 million more than Jackson Browne. 

(No, it is not all about the money, but that is a convenient measuring stick. It is hard to measure talent, popularity and fame)

You needed, A, the talent to play,  perform, sing and write plus the luck of finding a manager and record company who, B, did not rip you off, and C, would actively market and promote your music. 

Not many were lucky enough to get all three. The list of richly talented musicians and song writers who did not make it is as long as it is sad considering how young they died: Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Lowell George, David Blue just to name a few. 


Yes, cocaine and booze contributed to their early demise, but so did failure and bad luck.

Before a soccer tournament, my-then 10-year-old daughter, Ann Caroline, and I watched "Dare to Dream," the documentary on the 1999 World Cup winning team. In it the principle players, Joy Fawcett, Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, say, ad nauseum, how they are there for the kids.

The next day, at UC Irvine, another team dad and I ran into Joy Fawcett. We asked nicely, but Joy refused to simply say hello to our daughters. 

A woman who gave a soccer lesson to A.C. who had practiced against that '99 team had the same disappointing experience with Mia Hamm.*

Something tells me this World Cup winning team will be far less hypocritical.

*My daughter and I could not have had a more positive experience with '99 team member Shannon McMillian.