A big old queen has just been named the CEO of the leading innovator of all things technologically cool, Apple. That’s right, if you haven’t seen it documented already, Tim Cook, Apple’s now former COO, is the new top dog, following Steve Jobs’ sudden resignation as CEO on Wednesday. Throw away your iPads and iPhones! Take away your children’s iPods!

I want nothing more than for President Obama to succeed. I voted for him and I was there in Grant Park in Chicago on the night he won. It was an exhilarating moment, for all of us there, and the millions across the country who were riding the wave of Obama’s brand of “Hope”. I would have put my money on seeing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney get gay-married over seeing my home state of Indiana go blue and vote for a Democrat for President, but it happened.

I fell in love with West Side Story at an early age. My mother, who has been planning to wear a replica of Anita’s purple dress to my wedding one day (that is, if I don’t wear it) first introduced me to it. It’s not just the nostalgia I feel toward the film and music, but it’s a damn good musical. For me, West Side Story and Gypsy are the two best musicals to have come from Broadway. Of course, they both have the god of musical theater Stephen Sondheim and great stage and screen scribe Arthur Laurents in common, still in the early beginnings of their illustrious careers.

I’m about to pass out here. It is so damn hot I don’t even know what else to do. I love the summer, truly I do, but this is just too much. We’re closing in on 100 degrees here in Chicago, I don’t know how you people in the South and Southwest live with this all summer. I at least know this will pass soon enough. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not praying for the winter again, just something a bit more temperate. I know, complain, complain, complain, you’ve heard enough.

Midnight in Paris, is the prolific Woody Allen’s 41st film, and simply one of the loveliest films he has made. It is funny, sweet and sentimental (in a good way), while still maintaining those punctuations that are hallmarks of a Woody Allen film, particularly in the writing. It deals with a past that existed, but shows how waxing nostalgic for such times and places may only be creations of a past reality that exist in our own minds.

On April 14 of this year, my entertainment viewing life changed forever when ABC delivered the devastating news that they canceled All My Children and One Life to Live, with their last episodes airing September 23, 2011 and January 23, 2012 respectively.

I have a query for you…
So let’s say you love your 9-5 job (which I do), and you really like all the people you work with (like I do) — not a bad apple on the team — but you find at times that your job is making you stressed beyond words. How do you handle?

You’ve heard of Kickstarter.com by now? It’s a wonderful fundraising tool for creative projects. If you don’t know about it, check it out. The basis of it is this: a project is posted and has a certain amount of time to reach its funding goal or it gets none of the money. That way it protects the investors by helping to insure that the project that they’re putting money into actually comes to fruition. Not to mention, of course, it gives those making creative projects the ability to gain exposure for their project and increase its chances of receiving funding.

This April, the New York Philharmonic staged a concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s great 1970 musical Company that was recorded and is currently being shown in movie theaters across the country. Next week there are two final screenings, on June 19 and 21. If you’ve never seen Company now is your chance.

Two of my favorite things in the summer:

1. A book on the beach on a sunny day.

2. A movie at home on a rainy day.