Unabashed John F. Kennedy fan though she is, Helen Thomas is less than thrilled with the current incarnation of Camelot.

Interviewed on the Judy Joy Jones Show, the Godmother of White House correspondents - who has covered every Oval Office occupant since JFK - doesn’t hesitate to opine on America’s commanders-in-chief.

"Why should we go there and kill and die?" Helen (above) says regarding Obama's new military strategy in Afghanistan.

When host Judy Joy Jones comments to Helen, “I’m sure that you don’t have a favorite president. I guess you have to be pretty detached in that regard,” the former UPI bureau chief says:

“No, no, I had a favorite: Kennedy. I thought he was brilliant. I thought he had great ideas.

“He created the Peace Corps. He signed the first nuclear-test-ban treaty. And he said, ‘We’re going to land men on the moon.’”

Shortly after that, she offers her take on our nation’s 44^th president.

“He’s disappointing me. He has a conscience, but he doesn’t have the courage to do the things that he should have - which is single-payer, on medicine,” Helen says of Barack Obama. “Nobody in this country should lack for medical care. We have 47 million people who don’t have any insurance and medicine. And that’s shocking.”

(Single-payer health care is an approach to health-care financing with only one source of money for paying health-care providers. On Wednesday, President Obama rejected the single-payer model, citing instead one that would preserve private insurance companies, while offering a government-run option.)

Helen also slams the president’’s foreign policy.

Helen covering her No. 1 presidential pick.

“He’s going into Afghanistan, and he’s broadened the war. He has not learned the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq,” says the veteran journalist, who currently writes a column for the Hearst Newspapers syndicate, and whose new book, Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do, will be published in the fall.

“We should not be there. To put U.N. peacekeeper forces there would be fine. But to get involved in another no-win war?

“Afghans know every cave, they know every stream, they know every mountain. It’s their country.”

To hear Helen’s full interview, click here.

Interviewed on Fresh Touch Communications, the Ohio Players drummer-vocalist bemoans the current state of hip-hip lyrics.

Players, not playas: Diamond (far left) with his fellow funk masters in 1975.

“I’m very proud of the fact that we never dropped the line of our artistic and creative ability. We said things very cleverly,” he tells host Darryl Williams.

“Sweet Sticky Things is about sex. Funky Worm is about sex. All our music was about women. All our music was about love.

“But the way we expressed it was of a level where you had to use your own imagination… You had to fill in the blanks. There were still some blanks to be filled in,” Diamond continues.

“With the expression of music that’s going on today, you got young kids in this business talkin’ about ‘Let me lick you up and down. Let me lick you from your neck to the floor. Let me throw you on the table’ or whatever.

Imagine that: The band's vintage covers.

“Today, I can play Love Rollercoaster and Fire and all of the tracks that I wrote, to my grandsons, and feel proud of the fact that they can listen to it, and not be embarrassed by anything that they’re gonna hear.

“These kids - they’re 18, 19, 20 writin’ these songs right now - when they get to be my age, they gonna have some embarrassment about some of the things they were singing on these records.”

To hear Diamond’s full interview, click here.

Debbie: Rah-rah-siss-boom-pop!

Forget the Red Bull. It’s Will Ferrell who gets Debby Ryan pumped enough to lay down peppy tracks.

Interviewed on WZAP Radio, the Disney Channel star, who plays Bailey Pickett on The Suite Life on Deck, reveals her secret for a successful recording session.

A lot of times I kind of sound like I’m takin’ a nap while I’m singing, because I’ve got a deep voice,” the budding pop diva tells host Zachary Sang.

“I do raspy blues stuff, which is great. But when the tempo’s, like, one million, then you gotta do a few jumping jacks.

“Actually, this is kind of really a dorky secret, but I’m gonna fill you in,” Debby, 16, continues.

“When I’m in the studio, and I need to get my energy up, I do a cheer.

Will with fellow Spartan Cheri Oteri.

“It was a skit that I did at mascot camp. If you’ve ever seen Saturday Night Live, it’s a Will Ferrell skit - the Chess Club Cheerleaders.

“So, I have it memorized, and I go in the studio and I do it. And it picks my energy right up.

“And, literally, a couple of takes later, the producer has actually turned to me and said:

‘Hey, do your Spartan Cheerleader thing one more time, do a couple of jumping jacks. And then go and try it again.’”

To hear Debby’s full interview, click here.

To sample Debby’s music, click here.

To check out Debby’s official YouTube channel, click here.

"A hot-chick stalker probably would be better," Joe (above) tells us of his male-perp problem.

Interviewed on Stardish Radio, the 32-year-old hunk, who also plays Owen Morello on One Tree Hill, reveals the craziest thing a fan ever did to get his attention.

“I had to file two stalking reports with the police - and they were guys,” Joe tells host Joann Kubasek.

“I was at the police station filing this report and the police officer’s trying to figure out who these guys are and I kind of looked at him and shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘It’s never a hot chick.’ And he just kind of stared at me.

“So, yea, I’ve had two crazy stalkers that, ah, one would call and leave these really weird poems on my phone.

“Another one would send these creepy pictures to my house.

“So I filed reports with the police and police action was taken.”

To hear Joe’s full interview, click here.

"I go to set every day feeling incredibly blessed to see him," Shondrella (above) tells us of Forest.

And now the funnylandy’s gone and done it, as she reveals this week on Rodney Perry Live.

“I’m in a position to be workin’ on a film with a star that I have loved ever since I was a child - my role model,” she tells host Rodney Perry. “It’s Forest Whitaker,” she says of the man who won an Oscar for 2006’s The Last King of Scotland.

“It’s the ‘Untitled Family Wedding Project.’ It’s a Fox Searchlight movie, starring Forest and America Ferrera, from Ugly Betty. Lance Gross is in it, from Tyler Perry’s TV show [House of Payne].

“It’s a love story between America and Lance. Forest plays the father to Lance. I play Forrest’s sister-in-law and my husband is Warren Sapp,” continues the six-foot Shondrella, who had a feature role in the 2004 sleeper hit Napoleon Dynamite, and starred in the UPN series One On One.

Forest (above): Father of the groom.

“That worked out, because he’s like six-foot-three,” she says of Warren - a former defensive tackle for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders.

“He showed up and was like, ‘Bam! You tall.’

“And I was like, ‘Bam! You big. Let’s do it, boo.’”

To hear Shondrella’s full interview, click here.

Are you cut out to be a business owner?  If so, what sort of business might you conduct from the comfort of your living room - clad only in, say, tube socks and a thong? And while we’re at it, how much should customers pony up for your services?

If such questions have ever scurried through your mind, you won’t want to miss tonight’s edition of Blurb!

Where there's a Will (above) to work from home, there's a way (below).

Because, as their Blurb! Book of the Week, hosts Sally Shields and Dr. Kent have picked Will Limkemann’s The Successful Home Business Guide.

This 224-page work “offers complete and practical advice, along with step-by-step instructions” on getting started on the road to domestic entrepreneurship.

And that’s a subject its author should know. In addition to serving as an advisor to scores of home-business owners throughout his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, Will runs three of his own businesses from home.

“With growing unemployment, and retirees needing to supplement diminishing pensions, more people than ever are contemplating starting businesses in their homes,” he says of the $300 billion home-business sector of our nation’s economy.

Every Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET, Sally and Dr. Kent review not books themselves but prerecorded pitches from five writers whose literary works are hot off the presses.

And each scribe gets a mere three minutes to convince the hosts that theirs is the book worth cracking. But if they succeed, they capture the coveted Book of the Week title.

That means Sally and Dr. Kent post it prominently on the Blurb! website, just as they did with Will’s book.

To top it all off, the winning author gets a guest spot on the show, during which to pitch his or her book live to listeners worldwide, just as will Will appear on tonight’s show.

To tune into Blurb!, click here.

To hear Will’s winning blurbs and learn more about Blurb! - including how to submit your pitch for an upcoming show - click here.

To read more about The Successful Home Business Guide, click here.

To check out Will’s blog, click here.

To see all our Blurb! Book of the Week winners to date, click here.

]]> http://blog.blogtalkradio.com/authors/blurb-books-week-limkemanns-the-successful-home-business-guide/feed/ http://blog.blogtalkradio.com/celebrities/soundbits-alan-roger-currie-singles-scene/ http://blog.blogtalkradio.com/celebrities/soundbits-alan-roger-currie-singles-scene/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:22:06 +0000 Philip Recchia http://blog.blogtalkradio.com/?p=13251 Not many BlogTalkRadio hosts (or any, far as we know) can lay claim to having appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. But that’s precisely what Alan Roger Currie’s work in the area of effective communication with the fair sex led him to while promoting his book on the topic, Mode One: Let the Women Know What You’re REALLY Thinking, back in 2006. Since then - in April of this year - the Upfront & Straightforward host, who hails from Gary, Ind., has published a sequel to his tome, titled Upfront and Straightforward: Let the Manipulative Game Players Know What You’re REALLY Thinking. As for what we’re really thinking, here’s a hint: It’s show time, folks.

Give us a 15-second pitch for your show - why should listeners tune in?

Are you a single man or single woman? Does today’s dating scene confuse you and/or leave you feeling frustrated? Upfront & Straightforward features some of the best and brightest authors, dating coaches, relationship experts and seduction gurus.

Ladies’ night: Alan with pals Ashley Askew and Andrea Wilson in Hollywood.

Past guests have included former Saturday Night Live cast member Finesse Mitchell, actor and author Hill Harper, adult film legend Nina Hartley, and actor and activist Jimmy Jean-Louis.

Tell us two things listeners would be surprised to learn about you?

(1) I used to perform as a standup comedian, sharing the stage with such luminaries as Damon Wayans, Sheryl Underwood and the late Bernie Mac. In 1989, the Chicago Sun-Times called me “the top up-and-coming comedian in the Chicago Metropolitan area.”

(2) I’m a friend and former college classmate of well-known broadcast personality Tavis Smiley. He and I are fraternity brothers (Kappa Alpha Psi) - as is my fellow BlogTalkRadio personality Kevin Ross.

Who’s your broadcasting hero?

I have many, but if I had to pick just one, it would be Walt “Baby” Love, who’s considered by many to be the African-American equivalent to Casey Kasem. Walt hosts two nationally- syndicated radio shows: The Countdown and The Urban Countdown.

If you could book any person on earth as a guest on your show, who would it be and why?

The person who initially fell into this category for me, Hill Harper, ended up being a guest on my show in June 2008. Now? I’d have to say film star Will Smith. Will is so ambitious and driven; I’d just love to sit a chat with him. I’d also want to find out what makes him and his wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith, keep the passion in their marriage. I actually did talk to Will once, while I was working as an NBC page in Burbank, Calif.

As we speak, what are you wearing?

A navy-blue jogging/warm-up suit.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done while in the middle of hosting your show?

Once, while in the middle of my show, there were not one but two hornets flying near my computer. I had to remain calm on-air but, honestly, I was freaking out because I was scared that one of them was going to sting me. I had to wait until the end of my interview in order to spray - and kill - them.

To sample Upfront & Straightforward, click here.

To read all our SoundBits profiles, click here.

That, according to the King of Pop’s Captain EO collaborator, and friend of 25 years, Rusty Lemorande.

"He really wanted a film career," Rusty tells us of Michael (above).

In an exclusive interview with BlogTalkRadio, Rusty - who produced and co-wrote the 3-D, Francis Ford Coppola-directed Captain EO as a Disney theme park attraction in 1986 - recounts how Michael came to sign on for Angels and another feature during the early ’90s.

“Michael was pretty pleased with our relationship, and he had just set up his film company at Sony-Columbia. And the problem was, with all the development people, etc. - and it was a pretty thick company with people - he wasn’t committing to anything,” Rusty, whose other production credits include the 1983 Barbra Streisand star vehicle Yentil, tells Movie Geeks United! host Jamey DuVall of the pop star, who died June 25 after suffering cardiac arrest.

“I think people didn’t understand how to relate to him. I used to say to him, ‘You’re a little like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You can’t do any part. The part has to be tailored to you. He became a star because of Terminator.

“Well, Michael said, ‘You come up with some ideas.’ And I came up with two fairly quickly.

Jimmy (right) was the screen idol Michael (left) hoped to emulate in "Angels with Dirty Faces."

“One was to remake an old film called 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, which was a [1964] Tony Randall film that involved a child protagonist, and the other was to remake the film Angels with Dirty Faces, which is a James Cagney film. Michael was a huge James Cagney fan.

“Michael loved both projects. Part of it was the way I explained it to him, talked him through it. We had sketches done and creatures made - you really had to turn it into the toy version.

“On Dr. Lao, we had the set miniatures built of the circus and he committed to both, which was a major event at the time.

“One was set up at Warners. And the other was set up at Turner - who owned the remake rights. And everything was going great. Fantastic!

“And then the first scandal hit.”

The King of Pop with Francis during the production of "Captain EO."

(In 1993, Michael was accused of child abuse by the father of then 13-year-old Evan Chandler. Though he denied the allegations, the pop idol eventually settled the suit out of court for $22 million.)

“I remember it as vividly as I remember when I heard President Kennedy was shot. I was in my car driving to this studio where we were building these miniatures, where people were going to come and see them. And someone called me and said, ‘Did you see what’s on the news? Michael Jackson’s ranch has been raided,” continues Rusty.

“The truth of the matter is, very simply - and in fairness to Hollywood and the big studios - they have huge investment obligations to their shareholders. So they got very nervous. They didn’t know if the audience would still be there for Michael.

As the title character in "Captain EO."

“Suddenly, nobody wanted to touch him… It was quite sad that it never happened, because it was very important for Michael to be in movies.

“He used to talk about Elvis Presley’s career and say, ‘If Elvis hadn’t made all those films, he wouldn’t be as remembered as he was.’”

During the 30-minute interview, Rusty also reveals how he came to earn Michael’s trust while he and The Godfather director were working on Captain EO.

“The secret of working with Michael Jackson was to think, how would you, literally, deal with a 10-year-old boy?

“Francis got it. At one point, he was having trouble directing Michael. Michael didn’t seem to respond to the kind of word dialogue that a director largely uses.

His only other big-screen appearance: As Scarecrow in 1978's "The Wiz."

“So [Francis] sent out for some masks: happy masks - like clown masks - and scary masks. And when he wanted to elicit an emotion from Michael, he would put on those masks and it would be as if a child were reacting to a mask. And it was effective!

“Michael loved to go toy shopping. But the adult in him wanted to drive his car. And he drove like a maniac. I was always grippin’ my seat.

“He loved masks. He had masks in his glove compartment, which he would put on as he drove. His explanation was, ‘If I don’t put it on, people will see it’s me and they’ll chase me.’

“Then we’d go into a toy store. Then it was funny, because the mask he’d wear into the store would usually be like a woman’s harem mask kind of thing, with a veil across his face.”

To hear Rusty’s full interview, click here.

Cases in point:

-Legendary fiddler Charles Daniels trashes a growing segment of our population. “There are people out there fathering one illegitimate child after the other,” says The Devil Went Down to Georgia singer. “Quit givin’ money to people that absolutely refuse to work.”

"Put that SOB to work. Make him support those children," Charlie (above) tells us of America's deadbeat dads.

-Rather than having to “go a whole season with walking around with towels in front of me,” The Secret Life of the American Teenager star Molly Ringwald recounts how she worked with the show’s producers to weave her real-life pregnancy into the plotline.

-Jaleel White knocks his show-biz contemporaries for not supporting aging entertainers like the late Ed McMahon, telling us, “We have this new culture that says if you’re not the youngest, hottest, we don’t care about you.”

-Screen idol Bill Pullman explains why, regardless of its uncommercial nature, he has selected as his current acting project a revival of David Mamet’s 1992 play, Oleanna.

-Purely in the interest of generating a great sound bite, comedian Dave Coulier punks one of his Full House stars live on the air.

-Despite having the golden opportunity of starring in the Twilight series, Michael Welch tells us he’d never want to be a vampire - because they are “miserable, miserable people.”

Plus, a special let-it-all-out farewell to the great Michael Jackson.

So don’t miss The Mix, hosted by everyone’s favorite pod jockey, Shaun Daily, tonight - and every Monday - at 9 p.m. ET!

To tune in, click here.

"She's been on my mind more lately," Charles (above) told us of Farrah.

Ten weeks before Farrah Fawcett died tragically of cancer at age 62 last week, one of her silver-screen co-stars was singing the actress’ praises - and rightfully so.

Interviewed in April on Mr. Media, Charles Grodin reminisced about working with the beloved beauty in the 1979 comedy-thriller Sunburn.

“Farrah? Just as nice a person as I’ve ever met. Just couldn’t be nicer,” he told host Bob Andelman.

“I had love scenes [with her], but I never went out with her. She was a darling - and is a darling person,” he continued.

“I’ve never heard anyone say anything negative about her. And I know people who know her a lot better than I do.”

Also during the interview, Charles recalled how a bit player in the flick “accidentally” assaulted him while filming.

“I was supposed to be unconscious and he was supposed to punch me while I was lying there,” he said.

But after breaking Charles’ nose, the actor said to the leading man:

“You have all these love scenes with Farrah, and I have a big crush on her.”

To hear Charles’ full interview, click here.