These celebrities aren't pretending and this is not make believe. This is 10 laps of 1.97 miles each at 100-mile-per-hour plus speeds. It's fast, and things can go wrong.

"Many of you may be wondering what a brain-damaged ear-biting fool like me is doing up here doing a one man show... hell, I wonder that myself every time I come out here..." It's a great ice-breaker.

Okay, I didn't want to like the recent Broadway-bound production of Jekyll & Hyde as much as I did at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles (Feb. 12-March 3). But the fact is, I loved it. The reason?

The weight of being Madonna is never greater on you than when you record an album. After all, you inspired a generation, including the GaGa, brought William Orbit to world wide mainstream attention, you brought us Junior Vasquez and Shep Pettibone and countless others.

Vesta Williams was one of the greatest singers in R&B and music, period. And I was lucky enough to call her a friend. Her voice is now silenced but her drive and passion live on forever in her music and videos.

It's easy to forget about Katrina and New Orleans, since it was almost six years ago. But actor/comic/filmmaker Harry Shearer has not forgotten. As a part-time resident of New Orleans he's lived it from the beginning.

The BMI Pop Music Awards, while star studded, may not be handing out awards to household names unless you're one of the people that hit the "Get Info" button on the track or are an aspiring singer/songwriter.

For 37 years residents of Long Beach have started many an April day with the sound of roaring race car engines, helicopters and planes overhead and tens of thousands of people descending on the city for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Perhaps the new era doesn't need a new musical to explain the frustrations, the fears, the hopes of the youth of today; perhaps it already has it in Hair.

I first found Teena in 1981, when I was a year out of high school. She was a little white girl from Venice Beach making all kinds of R&B, the first little red headed white girl to be signed by Motown Records in 1976 -- the woman that would become the Ivory Queen of Soul.