When snow covers the ground and the days get shorter, you know it’s time to celebrate the winter holidays and spread cheer and good will. Even celebrities can’t resist the action, lending their talent and likeness to all manners of Christmas merriment. Popular personalities of stage, screen and song deliver messages of joy in the form of holiday specials (dramatic retellings of Dicken’s A Christmas...

Electrify your Christmas music mix with some Hammond organ sounds! Jimmy Smith originally was a pianist and later became an organist in the early 50’s. Smith signed on with Verve Records in the 60’s and had the opportunity to collaborate with the great Lalo Schifrin and Wes Montgomery. Don’t be mistaken; Jimmy Smith’s style is not your typical funeral or church organ music. His jazz...

What do a dude ranch, a hidden treasure, and an Elvis-battling ninja have in common? Tickle Me! Elvis Presley’s 18th studio film takes us to a dude ranch in the American Southwest where Elvis is helping out. Like many men his age, he wants to earn enough dough so that he can join the rodeo circuit. However, his plans are quickly forgotten when he meets...

The origins of “Googie” design can be traced back to the actual coffee shop designed by architect John Lautner and by the works of his contemporaries. Appearing first in commercial buildings and used primarily in designing restaurants, coffee shops, motels, gas stations and bowling alleys, as well as schools, churches, shopping centers and airline terminals, this style of design was directed at the masses for...

Romance, comedy and suspense are what you experience when watching the movie Charade (1963). Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn take you through a cat and mouse chase, running through the streets of Paris, as they try to find out where stolen money is located. The soundtrack to Charade was created by Henry Mancini and complements the movie quite nicely. Mancini does a brillant job following...

Karminsky Experience Inc. is best known for creating middle eastern influenced Electronica music. But his more recent album, Snapshot (2007), has a radical retro lounge theme. While listening to Snapshot, a mixture of library, beach, and jazz music transforms into wonderful melodies. The album begins with Summer Song, which is happy and inviting – it creates images of beach summer fun! Into The Blue has...

My introduction to Dudley Moore was with the 1978 film “Foul Play”. The film starred Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn in a well-written homage to Hitchcock and featured a dwarf, an albino, a kung-fu fighting Burgess Meredith (The Penguin in Batman), and a papal assassination. But the hero of the film, at least to this pubescent boy, was Dudley Moore as Stanley Tibbets. Stanley is...