Show Time

I've been on the theater beat lately. Sort of.

First it was off to Radio City Music Hall to meet Melanie Mendez, a former cheerleader from Ronkonkoma who plays Dora the Explorer in the national tour of "Go, Diego, Go!" Backstage I ran into Rosie O'Donnell and her lucky brood, who like me, got to schmooze with the cast face-to-face.

The other night I did a whirlwind tour of Broadway, five shows in one evening! How is that possible? Stay tuned for another upcoming NYT adventure.

Meanwhile, Here's Dora's story:

April 29, 2007

Entertainer

Have Backpack, Will Travel (as Dora)

By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER

SWINGING from a vine, Melanie Mendez made a grand entrance onstage at Radio City Music Hall. “Hola,” she called out to the uproarious cheers of hundreds of children greeting her appearance as Dora the Explorer, the feisty bilingual cartoon character in “Go, Diego, Go Live! The Great Jaguar Rescue.”

Ms. Mendez, 21, a former cheerleader from Ronkonkoma, jumped into a pretend raft, grabbed a paddle and went singing down the Silly River. Dora was helping her cousin Diego, played by Richie Portela, retrieve Baby Jaguar’s growl from the magic bottle so the animal carnival could start.

This was the second time Ms. Mendez was playing Dora onstage; she first tried out for the part last summer, seeking some auditioning experience before entering her senior year as a musical theater major at Five Towns College in Dix Hills.

To her surprise, she landed the understudy role for four characters, including Dora, in a four-month United Kingdom “Dora the Explorer Live!” tour, a spinoff of the popular interactive television series for preschoolers. Senior year was postponed indefinitely.

To read the rest of the story, click on this link:

Have Backpack, Will Travel (as Dora) - New York Times

Grey's Anatomy

Yeah, it's one of my favorite shows. But it also made great fodder for a recent Sunday Styles story about buying the same clothes as Meredith, Izzie, McDreamy or McSteamy. It even made the opening screen on AOL!!!

Did you know that, just like me, Gabrielle on "Desperate Housewives" is partial to Stuart Weitzman shoes? Bree collects Tupperware but keep me out of the kitchen. The last time I wrote a Tupperware story I was, like, maybe 22. Wanna have a party? Pole dancing is more my speed.

February 25, 2007

'Grey's Anatomy' and Closet

By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER

AFTER watching an episode of ''Grey's Anatomy,'' Sarah Grace McCandless, 32, a novelist from Washington, went shopping. The $160 Citizens for Humanity jeans that she bought online had a special appeal that wasn't about the label.

''I bought jeans that Meredith was wearing,'' said Ms. McCandless, a self-described pop culture addict, referring to the character Meredith Grey. ''I don't have Meredith's body, but you can order them in different sizes.''

Ms. McCandless also has a pair of the True Religion jeans that Izzie wore, along with brown boots like the pair from Frye worn by Cristina, also characters on ''Grey's Anatomy.''

Ms. Candless shops on SeenON.com (also known as SeenON!), one of a cluster of TV- and movie-themed Web sites offering breathless behind-the-scenes chatter, as well as instant gratification for those with a taste for celebrity style. Fans are now just clicks away from owning not only the clothes and accessories worn by characters on more than 100 television shows and movies, but also the sofas they sit on and the martini glasses they drink from.

Screens big and small are already full of recognizable brands like Coke and Cheerios placed in strategic view, a practice known as explicit product placement. But, until recently, viewers had to work at identifying the shoes or earrings characters wore.

Because of the Internet, the selling of more than 20,000 products that are not easily recognizable or never identified in a script, called shopping-enabled entertainment, is taking off, driven by consumerism and celebrity worship.

To read the rest, click on this link:

'Grey's Anatomy' and Closet - New York Times

Fabled Tales and Fabulous Images

A few years ago I wrote a book about Great Neck, the town where I was then living.

It's full of stories about the celebrities who also once inhabited the Gold Coast peninsula, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author, who found inspiration for "The Great Gatsby", while living there and the kings of comedy, Groucho Marx, W.C. Fields, Alan King and Andy Kaufman. The composer George M. Cohan, wrote "Yankee Doodle Dandy" while living in Kings Point.

Thanks to my son, Danny, who did all the research, and then some.

There are plenty of photos, too. See if you can figure out which one is of the house I lived in. Here's a link to buy the book:

Amazon Online Reader : TM Design's Ultimate Book of Great Neck

Happy reading!

wedding crasher

i'm a professional wedding crasher. and a sucker for a good love story.
fortunately i get paid to find them....
here's the Vows column that appeared in the NYT today:

April 22, 2007

Vows

Bonnie Byalick and Neil Levine

By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER

WITH the keen eye honed during a 35-year career selling textiles, Neil Levine was flipping through online dating profiles like fabric swatches in 2005, when he noticed a familiar-looking blonde in an off-the-shoulder sweater.

Mr. Levine, 60, a dapper dresser with a passion for Brioni suits, e-mailed Bonnie Anne Byalick, asking if she worked in the garment center.

Ms. Byalick, a personal shopper with her own sense of style, replied that she once owned a clothing boutique in Great Neck, N.Y.

Had she ever lived in Lakeside Towers in Bayside, Queens, Mr. Levine queried back.

Twenty-nine years earlier, Ms. Byalick lived on the 11th floor with her second husband.

“The puzzle was put together,” Mr. Levine said. In those days he lived on the first floor with his first wife and two of his sons, Jed and Todd. He vividly remembered Ms. Byalick, who in the 1970s and ’80s wore flamboyant outfits accessorized with lace gloves, hats and dazzling rhinestones.

“Back in the day, she looked like Madonna, and she dressed like Madonna, and she drove a vintage Rolls-Royce,” said Mr. Levine, who concedes that he is celebrity-obsessed. “Who wouldn’t notice a girl like that?”

To read the rest of this story, click on this link:

Vows-weddings-marriage - New York Times

chocolate for breakfast

some of the best stories i've written for The New York Times reflect my own passions.
like chocolate. deep, dark, luscious chocolate....

November 10, 2002

Comfort Me With Chocolates

By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER

THE love affair began just after my 17th birthday. Ensconced in a resort town on the North Sea in Belgium, romance beckoned. Not with the man I met that vacation, though years later he became my husband. With chocolate.

Breakfast there was never cornflakes. Staying at a Belgian cousin's home, I dined on slabs of seductively rich dark chocolate laid across cursty French rolls slathered in creamy butter, accompanied by melt-in-your-mouth chocolate croissants. I was enchanted. Midafternoon at a seaside cafe, I lusted for sumptuous seashells, a confection or a candy of luscious swirls of white, milk and dark chocolate, served with every cup of coffee. At supper I sampled the cheese, then savored thick layers of chocolate sprinkles heaped onto baguettes. I was supposed to be studying French. I learned to adore European chocolate and Belgian cuisine.

Flash forward to Long Island, nearly three decades later, My French is rusty. My passion for chocolate remains strong. But the husband, who for years brought home bars and boxes of fresh Belgian chocolate from frequent business trips abroad, now steadfastly refuses, issuing no-so-cryptic warnings about hips and thighs. Never mind. Long Island has enough chocolatiers for serious chocolate lovers to find sinfully rich, sweet-tooth bliss right in their own backyards.

To read the whole story, click here:

Comfort Me With Chocolates - New York Times

A Bad Hair Life

Curly or straight?

To know me is to know my hair.

This is what I had to say about it in the Styles section of The New York Times:

January 18, 2007

SKIN DEEP; Taming Frizz And Setting Curls Free

By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER

GROWING up, I yearned to have lustrous straight hair that I could wear parted in the middle and let swing down my back, like Marcia Brady of ''The Brady Bunch'' or Laurie Partridge of ''The Partridge Family.''

Instead, amid a sea of long, silky-haired classmates, my zigzagging kinky curls were the target of childhood taunts. (It didn't help that my middle name, Claire, rhymed with hair.) Hairdressers hacked away at my unruly mop, unsure how to tame it.

Even after juice cans, hot rollers, hot combs, oversize brushes, irons, baby oil, gels and chemical relaxers, my hair would fight back, bouncing up time and again into Roseanne Roseannadanna frizz.

In recent years, at my pleading, stylists have blown my hair into stick-straight submission, and when I'm unable to get to a salon, I dip into a cupboard full of frizz-taming products that help uncoil my curls and keep me from looking like my cocker spaniel.

Some people have bad-hair days. Until recently I was resigned to a bad-hair life.

Click on the link to read the full story...

SKIN DEEP; Taming Frizz And Setting Curls Free - New York Times