Springsteen Remembers Madam Marie
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that Bruce Springsteen fans are in mourning.
Boardwalk fixture and Springsteen song legend Madam Marie, the seaside clairvoyant immortalized in “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” died last Friday at age 93, great-granddaughter Sally Castello told the Asbury Park Press.
The medium, whose real name was Marie Castello, was an iconic presence along the Asbury Park boardwalk, performing her palm reading next door to Springsteen’s old Jersey Shore haunt, the Stone Pony.
“Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin’ fortunes better than they do?” Springsteen sang in the track off his 1973 sophomore release, The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.
He was so fond of Castello that he always dropped by her small stand to say hello whenever he was in town.
“I’d sit across from her on the metal guard rail bordering the beach, and watched as she led the day-trippers into the small back room where she would unlock a few of the mysteries of their future,” Springsteen writes in tribute on his website. “She always told me mine looked pretty goodshe was right.
“Over here on E Street, we will miss her.”
Missing Lost? Read a book!
ABC wants Lost fans to spend the show’s long hiatus curled up with a good book. The network has created the Lost Book Club, a resource for viewers who want to know more about the drama’s numerous literary references. The book club website contains a list of the books seen or referred to on Lost. You can peruse the list according to season or based on a number of categories (background, dialogue, and show theme).
In a brief letter to fans, executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse mentioned that the club is informal and that the books should be used to enhance the Lost experience, not provide answers to the show’s mysteries.
Each book description includes a reminder of where and when the book appeared on Lost and provides a short synopsis of the work. Another fun feature of the book club site is a message board that fans can use to discuss the relevance of books like Through the Looking Glass and A Brief History of Time. With over fifty books listed, the club should keep any die-hard fan busy for quite a while.
I’m not sure if I’ll get around to reading Bonjour, Babar, but some of the most frequently mentioned books are worth a closer look.
[via Pop Candy]
Ted Allen to host new show for Food Network
It sounds like the Food Network has finally come up with a show that will compliment Alton Brown’s Peabody-award winner Good Eats. The foodiest member of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Ted Allen, has signed to host Food Detectives, a new Food Network series. Starting Tuesday, July 29th at 9 o’clock ET, the half-hour show will begin illuminating the world about the stuff we eat. They will be “pulling back the curtain and revealing the answers to some of the most puzzling food mysteries.”
Actually, the concept is kind of like a Mythbusters for food. Ted will host the show and folks from Popular Science Magazine will provide the expertise. For instance, does an apple a day keep the doctor away? What about baked beans, do they really give you gas? If not, what’s Beano going to do with all those commercials and product?
I know, some of this seems similar to Good Eats, especially the science part, but Alton has always been about making the food and eating the food, not just dissecting it to the molecular level.
For Food Network, landing Ted Allen is a coup of sorts. Ted’s been aligned with Bravo thanks to Queer Eye as well as his involvement with Top Chef. However, he’s also been a judge on Iron Chef America, so there has been a previous connection. “We’ve wanted to work with Ted for years on a series of his own and we’ve found a great fit,” said Food Network’s Bob Tuschman. (He’s the grey-haired guy on The Next Food Network Star.)
Ted’s response was just as positive: “I’m so excited to be working with Food Network on this new series. …I know that viewers are going to be totally engaged with the information we are discovering on Food Detectives.”
Food Detectives will aim to be interactive as well as instructive, urging viewers to send in their questions about the food mysteries that have them perplexed.
[via Futon Critic]
Sarah Jessica Parker Talks Tom, Sex, Sexless Scents
The mysteries of Tom Cruise! Really cold feet! And…perfume you can share with your b-f? Sarah Jessica Parker dished on so many things over the weekendduring the action-packed press day for Sex and the Citythat we're not sure where to begin.
OK, the stinky stuff.
With two fragrances already on the market, SJP revealed to News that another is on the way. "I have a genderless one that I've been working on for about six months," she said, "and wore it a lot when I was shooting the movie."
Genderless? But what if Matthew Broderick uses it all? Anyway, fragrance, as you might imagine, is important to her. More important, she says, than clothes.
"If I walk out without wearing fragrance, it's my version of being completely nude," she said. "Which, as you know, I never am."
Perhaps the screaming audience during the Sex cast's visit with Oprah last week caught a whiff. That very intense show, packed with hand-picked fans, taught Parker a little about Carrie Bradshaw's devoteesand also Cruise.
See, the famous couch-jumping incident totally makes senseif you've been in that amped-up Oprah spotlight. "Yeah," she said, "because it's the environment that allows for that."
Beyond that, she wants you to know she put a lot into this movie. So you better like it, people.
"I would rather be cold and look good," she told us. "I would rather wear heels and run down the block for 14 hours, and in six months see it on screen and think, 'Yeah, I should have been in heels running down the street after that cab.' You have to be a thoroughbred about it if you care."
All that, and smelling good, too.