Category Archives: celebs

Feb23

Ray and Jamie

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Now if you haven’t seen Ray, run out now before the Oscars and rent the DVD. Jamie Foxx is so good, you’ll forget it’s him and think it’s the real Ray Charles throughout the movie. People magazine is predicting a Best Actor win for Jamie. What’s interesting too about Ray Charles is that he and my mom Jeanne were born on the exact day (sorry for divulging age mom)-September 23, 1930. And my mom has a trained soprano voice, so two musical babies were born that day. So as Ray’s mom pushed down in Georgia, my grandmom Ruthie was busy up in Roslyn, PA welcoming her only daughter.
Sean went to Wally World (Walmart) over the past weekend and I asked him to either get the new Kenny Loggins cd or the Ray Charles cd (see sidebar) for me. No Kenny, so he got Ray. I’ve never bought a Ray Charles record in my life. I love his classics, but leaned toward folk rockers. There are lots of ‘duets’ with Ray that I like, especially James Taylor. Incidently both Ray and James fought heroin addictions in their lives. Ray sings with Norah Jones, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt and Michael McDonald- I like them too, with a few others like Diana Krall, Willy Nelson and Johnny Mathis. Sean sat and listened to the entire CD. You can hear Ray’s age a bit (or the effects of illness), but for a 73 yr old, he was still doing it.

Update:
Got my van ‘Winnie’ back tonight (Windstar-stop laughing) and she sounds better! Ken worked his butt off fixing her and trying to figure out what’s going on with the diffferent noises. We are taking her back in a few weeks for inspection and hopefully we will be able to drive her more.
More freakin’ snow is coming tomorrow morning! We may get up to 8 inches. Lord have mercy.

Jan30

Old tv stars unite

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I’m feeling old, really old. Now Happy Days is having their 30th reunion. I swear that show was on when I was in 9th grade, so actually it’s more like the 31 year reunion-did they forget last year? We all loved this show in junior high. I remember we started having sock hop dances. My brother and I dressed up for one. There’s a photo of us together somewhere, one of my favorite photos of the two of us. Don had his hair greased and parted on the side. I think he had on a sweater vest over his dress shirt with rolled up jeans. I had on a pretty pink dress (one of my mom’s) with a pink sweater. My long hair was in a pony tail with a scarf accent.
The other night Brian was flipping channels (as usual) and landed on the TV Land awards show, which turned out to be a year old. (Isabelle Sanford aka Weezie from The Jeffersons made an appearance but died last summer).There was Bob Denver aka as Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island, with snow white hair. Dawn Wells aka as Mary Ann looked great, did she age at all ?She has a company called Wishing Wells that help people who have trouble with clothing fasteners like zippers etc. She helped design easy to wear clothes. But all the people from the shows I loved when I was a kid, even Ron Howard aka as Richie Cunningham are getting up there, his red locks gone on the top. Goes to show that even tv stars age like the rest of us, but maybe not Barbara Eden! (Di-trivia-I saw Ms. Eden in a summer stock rendition of The Sound of Music at the Valley Forge Music Fair when I was a kid).

~Update-according to the most recent issue of TV Guide, yes indeed Happy Days premiered in January of 1974! So that’s 31 yrs ago. I was right.
~Footnote-2-3-05-watched the Happy Days reunion show (and missed The Apprentice but saw who got the boot in the last few minutes). I was pleasantly surprised by it. They all seem like nice people. Joanie didn’t love Chachi as they sat on opposite sides of the room and didn’t appear to talk or touch.

Jan30

Still pondering Paul

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So I watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition tonight and there was my old classmate Paul. Not remembering him is driving me batty. I wonder if he lived in Media his entire life? Was he inspired by the wacky shop teacher in junior high to decide on a career in carpentry? Who taught him guitar? Did he have any of the same teachers that I had that drove me crazy? At least I know he has the same red ‘leather’ bound diploma and he wore a black cap and gown when he graduated.
Sorry, I’m a detail person and I like to know things.When I find out, I will post. We do have a gap tooth in the front in common though.

Forgot to tell you that my mom looked in the local phonebook and a DiMeo was living on Revere Road in Drexel Hill, PA. That is the same address we had has newlyweds! We lived in the apartments over there for 2.5 yrs.

Jan28

Paul from Penncrest!

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Well this is totally freaky and without tribe, I wouldn’t have found out about Paul DiMeo coming from my hometown of Media, PA.

I joined The Ty Pennington tribe there and was going through their Ty links and went to the Extreme Makeover Home Edition show one. I had just told the gals there that my second favorite person on the above show was, you guessed it Paul! So I went to his bio page and lo and behold, the second paragraph said he was from Media! Now this is driving me crazy because I don’t remember him and I liked a lot of people in his class. I saw his name in the Penncrest alumni book and he graduated in ’76, the year before I did. Now I am hoping that the kid with glasses who touched the merchandise without asking in the stairwell at the old Media Jr high was not Paul! I told my son this and he got a good laugh. When and if I find the ’76 yearbook, I am scanning his photo and sharing!
A little update: Paul probably has a sister Dianne! Now this is getting bazaar!! I happen to be looking at a Penncrest Alumni page and saw a Dianne DiMeo B-something.

Jan26

Dead or Alive?

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This sounds a little morbid, but in fact this is a very interesting website. Not only does it answer its own question, you get to see who has a birthday today, who shares your birthday, who croaked on your birthday, who died young etc. For instance, I believe it was the late Sharon Tate’s birthday a few days ago. I only knew this because I was looking at the above site. And by coincidence, Brian was watching ‘Valley of the Dolls’ which she was in and was she really gorgeous too.
Speaking about celebrities, I’ve always enjoyed following them because of my mom. She use to play with celebrity paperdolls when she was little in the 1930-40s. (She said she had them for years until they got ruined in a flood or something). Now mom collects the Tom Tierney Dover Publications paperdolls. So through her, I knew all the old time movie stars and all the dirt surrounding them. I had a major crush on Rhett Butler aka Clark Gable. Sounds weird since he died when I was a baby, but he was a dashing gent. And I just read that he died 3 days before my first birthday. And I loved his one wife Carole Lombard.
If you really want to explore dead celebs or famous people look here.

Oct30

Blah Saturday

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Well my mom was suppose to come out and I was running around tidying up, hanging some new sheer gold curtains in the family room and trying to look nice in general. I had just had my hair done for cripes sake! Then I was playing the waiting game. She mainly wanted to come out to give Sean his belated birthday gifts. At 2 she called and said she had just left Kohls in her area! I told her I wasn’t crazy about her driving in the dark and she was only giving herself a few hours to visit. She decided she’d wait to see us tomorrow when we would come down to see the kids in their Halloween outfits. She called again and this time she was in Dennys eating. Anytime she eats I thank God as she is still so thin. Mom’s sciatica is kicking in again and I feel it’s from her driving again. She didn’t drive for almost 5 months, so she didn’t use her legs in that pedal pushing way. She could do things to help ease up the ache-rub, stretching, herbal pills, but she relies on the pain pills and lies in bed. I guess when I am 74 I will be damn lucky if I don’t hurt like she does as I have had major achiness this fall.
Sean went to the movies in my van and his dad is cutting up the leaves with the mower. I have been uploading my photos to my yahoo albums. Last night I printed out about 35 photos as I haven’t done that for 6 months. I had to put in a new cyan cartridge and it wouldn’t work right away and I ruined some good glossy paper. Brian and I have a pink haze to us in the beach photo I tried to print out as a 5″ x 7″!
Last year we went to Fort Washington to a Tech Expo so Sean could mainly have a book signed by the author who happens to be the chief weatherman for NBC 10 here in Philly. His name is Glenn ‘Hurricane’ Schwartz and he wrote a book about Philly weather through the years. He was nice enough to sign it for Sean and he named a few colleges that specialized in meteorology, Sean’s proposed major. The anchors who were there were all nice and so tan. I look so pale next to consumer reporter Tracy Davidson in the photo we took. I loved posing (again looking ghostly) with the new guy on the block last year, cutie Vince DiMentri. He is married to QVC hostess Pat James DiMentri. I asked him about a ring he was wearing and he took it off so I could get a better look (like I was looking at the ring) and told me it was a gift from the city of New York for his work there. Seems he was a news reporter up there too. We met some Passion soap opera people and I had no idea who they were. Not into the soaps. An interesting event.

Oct26

JT at the World Series

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JamI’m a big James Taylor fan. I bought my first JT lp when I was 13 or 14 and have followed his career through his personal struggles and three wives and 4 children! I am not a fanatic, but I have seen JT 3xs over the yrs-’79, ’82 and ’97. I have even seen his daughter Sally perform in a free outdoor concert a few years ago. So I heard that JT sang the national anthem on Sunday night and I missed it! Thank goodness for the internet because Brian found the website and there was JT!