A month ago, a petition began making headway on the website change.org, asking for the media to please stop interviewing Will and Jada Pinkett Smith about their sex life. To date, the site has gathered input from over 23,000 digital signatories, who expressed their collective frustration at the celebrity couple’s tendency to disclose intimate details […]
Elon Musk: Martian mogul
Nature abhors a vacuum, Aristotle is alleged to have said. So, when I realized that one of the world’s wealthiest men did not have a known birth time, I felt compelled to address this void. The multi-billionaire in question is Elon Musk, for whom Astrodienst (astro.com) provides only birth date and place. I won’t burden […]
Leonardo da Vinci: polymath for the ages
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance, a highly-skilled architect, draughtsman, engineer, painter, scientist, sculptor, and theorist. Although he initially acquired fame as a painter, he later became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a wide range of topics, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and […]
Randy Andy and the Dungeon of Crumpet
Although he later became a helicopter pilot, Prince Andrew in his youth was never able to fly below the radar of the British tabloids because he was such an obvious target. Before getting married, he was relentlessly tracked by the paparazzi for the sheer number and diversity of his dates – college girls, actresses, models, […]
Jackie Collins: wild child does Hollywood
Although her sister Joan achieved fame first, Jackie Collins found her own path and ultimately worked her niche as romance novelist to achieve blockbuster status. Along the way, many of her highly popular novels, eg, The Stud, The Bitch, Hollywood Wives, and many more, were made into movies and TV series, for most of which […]
Halston: the birth of urban chic
When the biopic series on American fashion designer Roy Halston appeared on Netflix, it presented the ideal binge-watching experience – urbane, provocative, and poignant but over all too soon – like a wild weekend whose escapades linger on in the memory. Halston was an interesting subject for such a series, being one of the major […]
Phil Spector: unhinged melody maker
Many famous people employ a bodyguard to protect them from the public. But in the case of legendary “Wall of Sound” music producer Phil Spector, the bodyguard was usually there to protect the public from Phil. Spector was licensed to carry a handgun, and often had one on hand. During the mid-70s, while recording John […]
Kanye & Kim: last train to Splitsville
“I still think I am the greatest,” Kanye West once said. In this respect, at least, his ego shared the same heights as Donald Trump’s. But as events this month have revealed, we see how the myth of Icarus can play out in different ways for different people. For Trump, it was hubris that got […]
Grandmasters of Chess
Given the recent popularity of The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, people in the Covid era may soon be searching their closets for that chess set they haven’t touched since university years. After all, who isn’t piqued by a 1500-year-old game whose basic rules are easy to learn, yet whose complexity is such that it took […]
Sean Connery: From Scotland With Love
When Sean Connery first appeared in the role of James Bond, Agent 007 of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, women around the world found themselves in a martini state of mind, at least stirred if not shaken. From his first appearance in the movie Dr. No, female fans sighed breathlessly, yes, please, we’d like to see […]