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Laura Regan can be seen on the small screen in NBC's Constantine premiering October 24 and the film Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?, in theaters now. Laura's Twitter: @TheLauraRegan . Photo by Russell Baer.

Laura Regan is a face you'll recognize from episodes of Mad Men, Castle, The Closer, Bones and more. The Canadian-born mom has been quite busy this year!

Laura lays it right on the line. Ask her a question, you get an answer.

What was your audition like for your latest movie, Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?

The director and producer were there along with the casting directors. I must have been nervous because upon entering the room I knocked a couple things over -- I think I tripped over a long curtain and sent a light stand flying. The only way to keep going was to make a joke about it, and luckily they laughed it off. Then I was able to focus on the character, who is much more composed and graceful than me! As we got into the material I could tell that they liked my take on Dagny and that empowered me to go further with it. The energy in the room is always so important.

Tell us about your role in the film.

I play Dagny Taggart, Ayn Rand's most famous heroine. She is the C.O.O. of Taggart Transcontinental, the railroad her family built. Dagny is a smart, decisive, strong-willed businesswoman. She knows her own mind and is secure in her moral and ethical beliefs, though they differ from the majority. In this film she meets and falls in love with John Galt, who is also very principled but whose philosophy makes him her enemy. They have to reconcile their differences before they can be together.

You were born in Canada but studied and met your manager in NY. Where do you consider your main residence?

I live in LA now, though I miss New York a lot and I still feel strongly Canadian. Traveling for work is one of the great perks of my job. I've shot all over North America: Miami, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, Vancouver, Toronto, even Nova Scotia, where I'm from. Living in a city as a working resident, getting to know local people and places -- it's the best way to experience a place, whether it's for two weeks for a TV episode or two months for a film.

You're in several Mad Men episodes. What were your initial thoughts when you found out you booked the job?

I was SO excited. The show was just beginning its second season and it was just becoming a big hit. I loved my character -- she was described to me as Lady MacBeth. Ambitious and striving and Machiavellian. The dialogue was so great.

How annoying is it watching one of your films in a theater where people are talking and checking their cell phones?

I made this remark when They came out because I was actually shocked that the audience was so noisy. But now I realize that interaction is part of going to see a scary movie -- the audience is looking for that shared experience of cowering, laughing, and yes, yelling at the screen when the characters are doing something stupid!

What was your worst audition ever?

I was living in New York and I auditioned for a Woody Allen film. I got a callback to meet the man himself. Before I went, everybody warned me not to try to touch him because, they tell me, he is apparently famously germaphobic. He doesn't shake hands. So I practiced a friendly wave in the mirror. No problem. Everyone was so nervous about this one thing that my agent even called me from LA right before my audition to remind me not to touch Woody. What is the big deal?!

So, at the call back, I'm waiting, nervous, running the scenes in my head, and then they call me in. It's a big room but I immediately spot Woody because he is crossing the room toward me with his right hand extended! My right hand is locked in a preemptive little friendly wave. "Hello, Mr. Allen, I'm Laura." But he keeps coming right at me with his outstretched hand. He stops. He waits. I'm in a total panic. They told me not to but I have no choice. So I go for it, I reach out my hand, just as he starts to retract his! Now mine is there, his isn't, and I'm asking for the handshake. He tentatively puts his back and we shake, limply, probably sweatily, just perfect for freaking out a germaphobe. We read the scenes, but I'm so overwrought I can't remember the words or keep my pages straight.

I didn't get the part.

What strategy did you use to learn your lines for Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?

I repeated them over and over on the way to set every morning, then Kris Polaha and I would run lines a lot, starting in the makeup trailer.

Tell us what projects you are currently working on?

I'm appearing in the new NBC show Constantine. I'm excited about it because not only does it have a fantastic cast (Matt Ryan, Harold Perrineau, Charles Halford) but I hear that it's also generating the most buzz on social media of all the new fall shows.

Anything else you'd like to say?

I'm working on an initiative to encourage people to save water. The drought in the Southwest is severe but it's difficult for people to change their behavior. With a fun and catchy way to remind people, they'll start to implement these simple things they can do every day.

Also, I'm a big fan of Heal the Bay and I'm on the host committee of the WestEdge Design Fair's Opening Night Party to benefit Heal the Bay.

I've decided that if I were to pick one person who embodies the ersatz character of contemporary American culture, that person would be Oprah Winfrey.

Let me explain.

Over the course of her long career, Oprah has stood for much of the best of American public life. In her daytime talk-show heyday, Oprah created space for people to reflect on their inner selves, to connect to big ideas, and to find a point of entry into a shared community of people who were committed to living better, fuller, more community-centered and empathetic lives. It's for this reason that she has become so beloved, justly, by millions of Americans - and the scale of her success has felt all the more resonant because of the way she rose from humble origins to become a truly global phenomenon. She is Horatio Alger incarnate, or as close as we've ever come.

When I see Oprah these days, however, I see someone whose work increasingly reflects a dangerous conflation of America's equally revered, slightly oppositional founding principles: capitalistic consumption; spiritual self-fulfillment; and democratic community-building. And the yield of that vacuous mixture is best embodied by her current "The Life You Want Weekend" tour.

As the New York Times reported this weekend, the vibe at these events is akin to a Great Awakening of the modern era - except whereas the previous Great Awakenings were purely religious revivals, Oprah's events are more like what happens when you combine a deeply felt spiritual yearning with a deeply embedded profit motive. At the event in Auburn Hills, Michigan, reporter Jennifer Conlin chronicles a steady line of opportunities for people to pay at the altar of self-improvement - from a tiered $199 magazine/fan club subscription, to a $999 VIP upgrade, to a smaller set of items like t-shirts, hoodies, books and phone covers. By the end of the weekend, after Oprah's appearance on stage triggered the audience's wristbands to glow orange (like the sun), and attendees wrote vision statements for the future and took notes during self-help seminars, Oprah's parting words seemed unintentionally revealing. "Thank you for your money," she told everyone. "I know how hard you all work."

Now, don't get me wrong - events like these must cover costs, and there's nothing wrong with ending up in the black. For lack of a better way to put it, doing 'good' and doing 'well' are equally valued aspirations of the American identity, and since our dual allegiance to capitalism and democracy isn't going anywhere anytime soon, our ongoing challenge is to strike the happy medium between, in this case, profit motive and personal fulfillment.

The problem is when we assume that one's conscience is heightened based on the products one consumes. That, in a word, is gibberish, and yet that is what Oprah has come to personify - whether it's a giveaway of free cars, a magazine that highlights her favorite stuff (and only features her on the cover), or a highly monetized national tour of self-actualization. As one frustrated attendee put it, "I came here to be spiritual, not commercial."

A capitalist economy depends on our insatiable desire for things. A spiritual life demands that we be free from the suffering of desire. And a democratic society demands that we unite in service to a shared society that allows our best selves to emerge.

How do we reconcile these three components of our aspirational civic order?

The first step is to start acknowledging the inherent tensions that exist between our democratic, our spiritual, and our capitalistic selves - and to stop trying to tend to them all at once. Oprah has become a larger-than-life guru because we asked her to be. I can't imagine what it's like to be at the nexus of the spiritual and the corporate worlds, as she is, and the ways in which that must distort one's sense of reality. (Though this video paints a pretty vivid picture.) So to be clear, I'm not blaming her - I'm blaming us for what we've asked her to become, and what our neediness says about who we are, and who we think we aspire to be. It's telling, for example, that the first words Oprah uttered at her Auburn Hills tour event were, "You came! You're here! Why are you here?"

Why indeed. And here's the thing - the path toward "turning up the volume on our lives" does not lead through a Toyota Prius dealership, a magazine subscription, or a suite of Oil of Olay bath products. The things Oprah once gave us - the sense of community, the relevant national conversations and lines of inquiry, and the iconic model of intelligent self-reflection - have been cheapened by her attempt to align them with things. We cheapen her legacy, and ourselves, by pretending that they can be.

What we need is a room of one's own, not merely something to OWN. And the reality is we can't really have them both; at some point, despite what Oprah is telling you, we need to choose.

Abraham Maslow the famous motivational psychologist once said that, "Until you take care of your lower needs, you will never be able to fulfill your higher needs." The reason most people never fulfill their dreams or goals is because their basic human needs are never met. These 10 needs listed below supersede any dream or goal that you might have. They are NOT optional; your body and mind is constantly trying to fulfill them consciously or subconsciously.

THE 10 HUMAN NEEDS
1: Food And Water.
Your body is always in survival mode, constantly monitoring and thinking about food and water; where and when to get it. If you didn't know when you'd have your next meal, then that would become your primary goal. You would spend all your time in search of these things and you would not be able to focus any time on anything else.

2: Clothing And Shelter.
What if you didn't know where you were sleeping tonight? Could you really concentrate on reading this? One of the reasons that you feel calm enough to read this is, that you know where you are spending the night and you have clothes. Without clothes you couldn't even leave your house. You will need to make money in order to acquire these things.

3: Sleep.
You can't live without sleep. You may think that sleep is a waste of time. But your body needs it. If you don't get enough rest your system won't regenerate and won't function at an optimum level. Eventually your body and brain will just shut down without sleep and you could even die.

4: To Love And Be Loved.
We all need love, it is not a choice. You don't love because you want to. You love because have to. Your body and mind are constantly trying to connect to others through love. You must be able to both give and receive love to be fulfilled.

5: To be Held And To Be Touched.
This is a need that starts from the day you are born. The first thing a doctor does when a baby is born is put the baby in the mother's arms because it needs to be held. If you had a baby and gave it food, attention and clothing, but never touched it in the first year of its life, it could develop severe mental and physical problems. In some cases the baby could die. Touch is a sense a child cannot live without, because being held and touched is crucial to survival. Studies have shown that the more children are held, the smarter and the more secure and confident they will be. Science suggests that we need at least 5 hugs a day. Are you getting yours?

6: Acknowledging Your Pain.
Pain is a messenger that demands your attention. If you feel sad, angry, empty or lost, you are not acknowledging your pain. You are trying to do what most people do and just pretend that it doesn't exist. As much as you are trying to forget the pain, pain doesn't seem to ever want to forget you. Your body stores all the pain and traumatic experiences you have had in your entire life. Without acknowledging and releasing those feelings you cannot move on. You will be stuck in this need until you resolve it. You might need a mentor or teacher to help you with this need.
Are you dealing with your pain?

7: Being Needed.
That is really what a family or community is about. A family structure is having the feeling that you are wanted and needed, and that you are stronger together than you are individually. If you don't feel that anyone needs you or anyone wants you, then there isn't really a reason to get up in the morning. There is nothing you can accomplish alone, but in the right group you can achieve anything.
John Lennon once said: "A dream you dream alone is only a dream, but a dream you dream together becomes reality."

8: Creating A Life Of Meaning.
There is a wonderful book entitled "Man's Search For Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. It describes a man who is trying to survive his brutal experience in a World War II concentration camp, because he wanted his life to have meaning. When you have meaning and purpose in your life, you get up in the morning with an energy that is unstoppable. If you don't know your purpose, then you are just aimlessly wandering around without any direction. You are constantly asking, "Why am I here?" We all want to know that our lives have meaning. The more meaningful your life is, the happier you will become. There are 2 days that are the most important moments in your life. "The day you were born, and the day you know why you were born."

9: Optimism.
We are all born wanting to be happy. An optimist sees possibilities and finds hope in the most difficult of times. You can't live without hope, it is what keeps you going. Hope makes you believe that things are possible. We are naturally attracted to positive, hopeful and optimistic people because that is our true nature. Having a dream is not special, what is special, is the person who sees the beauty and importance of their dreams.

10: Love And Trust Yourself.
When you love and trust yourself, you connect to your instincts and follow the messages of your heart. Remember, your heart will not lead you astray and your instincts will help you fulfill your bliss. You must learn to love yourself and appreciate everything you have to offer. You are working on yourself through love. By loving and trusting yourself you connect with your personal powers, which you will need to succeed in life. "Only when you learn to trust yourself, you will know how to live."

The Dream:
Realize that these 10 human needs are constantly working to fulfill themselves. Only when you satisfy these 10 needs can you focus your energy and power toward your dream.
www.bernardhiller.com Author of "Stop Acting - Start Living"

Get out the tissues. Nicholas Sparks' new movie, The Best Of Me, comes out Friday, and it's a signature story about first love and second chances.

Amanda and Dawson are high school sweethearts who are reunited, after being apart for 20 years. Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden play the older couple, with Liana Liberato and Luke Bracey portraying them as teens.

Photo Credit: Gemma LaMana

I got to catch up with the young 'uns last week, and here's what they had to say about their experience.

Was it weird playing the younger version of someone?

Luke Bracey: I think we were actually quite lucky because Liana and I filmed a lot of our scenes before James and Michelle did.

Liana Liberato: Yeah, so they had to base their performances off ours.

LB: James and I did sit down and talk about where Dawson goes during that 20 years that they're apart. I mean, he's a very different person then.

LL: Michelle and I talked about little mannerisms that we wanted to incorporate into the character. There are things you carry with you as you grow up, and we definitely wanted those. Originally, I was going to play with my ear but that didn't work out. I ended up playing with my necklace the entire movie. We were always texting, so I could give her information on how Amanda was evolving throughout filming.

When we talked at the set visit, you were excited about your kiss on the roof in the rain. You said it was a signature Nicholas Sparks scene. Did it turn out the way you were hoping?

LB: Yes but before we had finished the scene, a real thunderstorm rolled in and we had to get off the roof kind of quick. We were sitting on the roof and they said, "Okay, rain on." And the rain started coming out of the sprinklers. Then I saw a huge crack of lightning and I asked, "Hey, is there lightning in this scene?" And they said, "No." Well, uh, boom, thunder! A big storm was coming through, and it actually got pretty heavy after that. So we ended up finishing the scene on the last day of shooting which, for us, was a great luxury since sometimes your last scene is you getting out of a car - which is not a real rewarding way to end something.

LL: We finished with an epic kiss.

LB: Yes, epic kiss in the rain. You like to really put the full stop on filming a Nicholas Sparks movie. It was a really nice place to finish.

Photo Credit: Lois Alter Mark

The young Dawson and Amanda set up the whole story. How does it feel to be the represention of first love for millions of moviegoers?

LL: That's a responsibility we kept in mind throughout filming. We knew that if our storyline didn't work, no one would care what would happen to our characters when they got older. So our goal was to make sure audiences fall in love with our love. We wanted to put as much passion and electricity and fun into the scenes we had.

LB: Innocence, as well, you know. That's what first love is. It's so untainted. There's nothing else besides that person in front of you. You can have your parents, your family, your friends telling you that person is no good for you but you won't listen at all. It's such a pure and honest and beautiful thing, first love.

LL: It was a huge privilege, too. I've watched those Nicholas Sparks movies and was like, "Gosh, I want to be that girl." And I am!

LB: There's also that kind of hyper-reality involved in this kind of romance. I mean, that's one of the fun things about making these movies. You don't really get to rap on a window in the pouring rain and profess you love in a thunderstorm, you know.

LL: You could ...

LB: Yes, you could. That's the thing. Maybe people walk home from the cinema with their love and maybe it does start raining and they have a kiss in the rain.

Your scenes take place in 1992 before technology took over. If the story took place today, how do you think it would be different?

LL: There's no way in this day and age that Dawson would go to the window. He'd be like, "Babe, it's really cold out and .."

LB: "I just got my iPhone 6 and there's no way I'm getting it wet."

Photo Credit: Lois Alter Mark

Amanda and Dawson's song is the Cowboy Junkies' "Sweet Jane," a song which came out before you were born, Liana! What song would you pick today?

LL: The song I'm really into now is actually kind of a sad song but I think it's really beautiful. It's "True Love" by Coldplay.

LB: There's been one album I've been listening to all year - the Arctic Monkeys. The last song on the album is "I Want to Be Yours." It's a really nice song.

This seems like an exceptionally down to earth cast and you all seem to get along so well.

LB: You can make movies and not particularly get along with the people you're working with but, when they say "Action," your job is to make it look like you're in love. It's such a pleasure when you can go to work and say, "Good morning, doll," and have a laugh.

LL: You have to be comfortable with that person and understand that sometimes the stuff isn't graceful. You're going to almost fall off the slippery roof and bang teeth and elbow each other in the face.

LB: You definitely need to be able to laugh about it together.

This seems to be the season for movies in the 140-150 minute range, length apparently meant to convey importance.

David Ayer's Fury is one of the few that warrants its length (or most of it). Brutal, punishing and exciting -- in that order -- Fury gives you an approximation of what it would be like to spend a few action-packed days trapped inside an under-equipped American tank toward the end of WWII. You get everything but the smell. And you can imagine that.

While there's not a lot of plot, there is a big story at work in Ayer's script. The plot focuses on the events of a few days with a tank crew, as they head toward a showdown with the Nazis. But the story examines the effects of war on the human soul, in this microcosm of the population.

The tank features a crude redneck (Jon Bernthal) and a devout one (Shia LeBeouf). There's a Mexican-American (Michael Pena) and a raw recruit (Logan Lerman), plucked out of basic training and put on the front line a month before Hitler calls it quits.

Their leader is a steely pragmatist played by Brad Pitt. He's promised his crew he would get them through the war alive. And he's kept his word for three years, until just now.

But as the movie starts, he's lost a man -- and his replacement is a green assistant driver with no combat experience.

This review continues on my website.

Hackers are big news! On October 2, a New York Times headline trumpeted: "JP Morgan Chase Hacking Affects 76 Million Households." Recently retailers like Home Depot and Target were hit as well -- data banks reportedly hacked, personal information potentially compromised. And who can forget Julian Assange and the infamous WikiLeaks? On a more personal level, how many of us have had our e-mails or Facebook accounts hacked? But are hackers always the bad guys?

Not according to a fascinating new documentary, The Hacker Wars (THW) by Vivien Lesnik Weisman, a critically-acclaimed filmmaker.

THW will have its New York premiere (Oct. 17) just a week after Citizenfour, the documentary about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, by Oscar-nominated director Laura Poitras, played at the New York Film Festival. Of the two, THW is clearly and undeniably a youth-driven doc -- fast-paced, hip, loud and unrelenting. For the painfully un-hip, like me, THW serves as an enlightening exploration of jailed, formerly jailed or about to-be jailed "hacktivists." It forces us to challenge our assumptions. It makes us question what appears to be on the surface little more than criminal mischief. Could we be wrong?

First of all, we are told, there's a big difference between a garden-variety hacker and a "hacktivist." The film defines a hacktivist as a person who uses technology to effect social change. And in THW we are introduced to a rogues's gallery of them. They include Andrew Auernheimer ('weev"), Barrett Brown, and Jeremy Hammond, number one on the FBI's cyber-criminal list. There are also cameos by less-known hactivists' friends and girlfriends of hactivists journalists who cover them and even attorneys who defend them. And thrown in for good measure, NSA whistleblowers like Thomas Drake -- in many ways the original Edward Snowden. Employing guerilla-style camera work, vivid graphics, quick edits and even "dubstep" electronic dance music, the The Hacker Wars is a mind-bending thriller.

THW illuminates the private demimonde of these so-called "freedom fighters." And why do they do what they do? Under the U.S. Patriot Act (especially in the wake of 9/11) the government was given wide latitude to conduct surveillance and gather intelligence.

THW argues that the privacy of ordinary, lawful citizens is being compromised too. So the hactvists, THW maintains, have been forced to become warriors. These cyber-soldiers expose the flaws in government and corporate security systems. Their weapons are their laptops. THW tells us "Big Brother" is on the attack -- against us! So hactivists fight back. As the film's tagline proclaims: "The War Has Already Begun!"

In THW we see first hand how these nerdy sleuths champion political ends -- namely free speech, human rights and information ethics. And the camera is never still. Lesnik Weisman manages to avoid using even a single shot of a "troll" hunched over a flickering computer screen. We get action instead. THW shows us behind-the-scenes, fly-on-the wall unguarded moments. These hackers antagonize big corporations and especially the government, leading to crackdowns. "Anybody who has that moral independence to defy the state is a target," explains former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges. "Any information that challenges the official narrative can put them in prison," he says. Auernheimer found out the hard way. If anyone is the protagonist of THW, it's 28-year-old weev. A New Jersey court sentenced Auernheimer to 41 months in federal prison for exposing a security flaw on an AT&T website. Auernheimer handed over 100,000 iPad email addresses to the website Gawker -- in the process embarrassing AT&T. His conviction and three year prison sentence were overturned in 2014. "We are taking back the freedoms our forefathers assured us through technology," says Auernhiemer. "We can't allow these freedoms to be taken away. "I will put my body on the altar of liberty again and again and again."

Throughout the movie we see Auernheimer in the days and hours leading up to his sentencing. He hangs out with friends, drinks beers and makes fun of his impending jail time. "No, I'm not scared to be going to prison. I'll be making life-long future friends, future business partners really," he jokes. The lightning-paced film picks up even more momentum as the hours to his sentencing turns to minutes. We see weev and his pals sing Freddie Mercury's "Bohemian Rhapsody," the lyrics fitting weev's fate perfectly: "Goodbye everybody, I've got to go, Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth." As we see him the morning of the sentencing, there are hugs and good-byes. "I'm going to prison for arithmetic," he screams. It's one of THW most emotional and satisfying moments.

Besides weev, we meet Barrett Brown, journalist and propagandist for the "hactivist" collective known as "Anonymous."

We also get to see sound-distorted videos from the group showing shadowy figures in creepy masks calling for defiance against the government. We see how Anonymous has figured in the noted "Occupy" protests. We learn more about Jeremy Hammond ("Anarchaos"). And THW tells us about the uber-hacker-turned-FBI informant who ran the FBI's own cyber unit for many years. THW also raises questions regarding the U.S. government's practice of outsourcing intelligence work. "I want to take you into a subculture few people have access to," explains director Weisman. "The Department of Justice is coming down on them (hacktivists) because they expose the inner workings of the state."

THW is an exhilarating tumble down the Alice-in-Cyberland rabbit hole. The younger generation knows the cyber-world like the back of their hand. To them, THW will impart a valuable lesson and prove highly entertaining as well. To everyone else, the documentary should be an eye-opener. THW shows us how these front-line warriors are transforming conventional acts of defiance into a different kind of warfare that is both visionary and unyieldingly compelling. Hactivists are redefining civil disobedience in their own uncompromising way.

THW will premiere October 17th at the Village East Theater in NYC and run for a week. For tickets click here or visit the thehackerwars.com

Follow the director and film on twitter: @vivienweisman @thehackerwars

There's a way that things used to work in the television animation universe. First a new show would go on the air. Then viewers would sample a few episodes and decide if they actually liked a program. If that were the case, then the fan base for this new animated series would slowly build over time.

Well, things move a lot faster these days. Take -- for example -- Disney XD's Star vs. The Forces of Evil. The new animated series doesn't actually go on the air 'til January of next year. But thanks to a canny bit of promotion at Comic-Con this past July, the Mouse finds that it may already have a hit on its hands.

"Disney ran the title sequence for Star vs. The Forces of Evil ahead of each of the television animation panels it presented at Comic-Con this year. And a bunch of people taped that title sequence. Which is how that footage wound up on YouTube. And ever since then, we've been getting tons of fan art," said Daron Nefcy, the creator and executive producer of this new Disney XD series. "I mean, there's fan fiction already. There's people doing costumes. And some folks are already figuring things out about the show just from listening to the Star theme song. It's super-cool. I'm totally blown away by how dedicated the fan base is already. Especially since they really haven't see our show yet."

Well, I've seen the first episode of Disney XD's Star vs. The Forces of Evil. And those who fell in love with this new animated series just off of what they saw of its title sequence were wise to do so. For Star puts a wildly original -- not to mention uproariously funny spin -- on the whole female empowerment genre.

According to the official Disney XD press release:

Star vs. The Forces of Evil is an animated comedy adventure that follows fun-loving magical teen princess, Star Butterfly. Who -- after a few bold skirmishes with other-worldly monsters -- is sent by her Royal Parents to live with the Diaz family on Earth, bringing along her own unique inter-dimensional style to her new planet. With the Diaz's teenage son Marco by her side, this foreign exchange student from another dimension embarks on new adventures battling evil villains throughout the multiverse and in high school, all in an effort to protect her powerful magic wand which she is still figuring out how to use.

Which -- you have to admit -- sounds pretty cool. But according to Ms. Nefcy, Star is more than just some animated series. It's an actual passion project. Something that Daron has been getting ready to do since she was just 9 years old.

"This is a goal that I've had since I was a fourth grader. Back in the fourth grade, I was kind of telling everybody that I wanted to do an animated show," Nefcy recalled. "And I was always making comics. Writing. And then in high school, a friend and I wrote this whole series of scripts for a cartoon show that we were pretending to make. So I feel like this TV show is something that I've been working toward for years."

Which isn't to say that Star vs. The Forces of Evil was a slam dunk straight out of the box. It took Daron quite a while to fine tune the overall concept of this new animated series.

"This show's really had a long road. I actually started pitching Star when I was still a junior in college. Mind you, the character of Star was always the same. But the show kept evolving and evolving," Nefcy explained. "So by the time I got to Disney, I wound up making her a bit of an older character. And then the whole different dimensions thing took place. I think the world of Star vs. The Forces of Evil would up being so complicated because this show has been on my mind for -- oh, I don't know -- maybe six years or something? So it's really evolved in that way."

So what ultimately helped Daron shape Star? Again, it all circles back to the sort of stuff that Nefcy loved back when she was in the fourth grade.

"Back then, I was definitely a Sailor Moon fan, an anime fan. But as I grew older, I became a big fan of a lot of indie comics. Scott Pilgrim, I loved a lot. The Dungeon series was a lot of fun too," Daron enthused. "What's really cool about this show is that I get to mix a lot of influences that I really like together. To kind of do the show that I always wanted to see on TV. Then -- of course -- there's my great production team, who've put a lot of themselves into 'Star' as well."

Nefcy is quick to praise the folks at Mercury Filmworks in Ottawa, Canada. They're the ones who actually animate Star vs. The Forces of Evil while all of the storyboarding and design work for this new Disney Television Animation produced series is done down in LA.

"Mercury's fantastic. They're doing a lot of Disney shows these days. Wander Over Yonder. Plus those new Mickey Mouse shorts," Daron continued. "But then again, the storyboards that we send them are super-detailed. I really lucked out here. I've got a great team of people here in LA who are super-excited about this show, who have just been boarding the heck out of these episodes. So I think that Mercury's got a really great map and they're excellent animators. So they're really taking the ball and running with it."

Which brings us back to all of those Star vs. The Forces of Evil fans who have spent the past three months trying to teach themselves how to properly draw Star Butterfly by pausing those grainy videos that some kind Comic-Con fan posted on YouTube. For fans who just can't wait any longer, here's an official tutorial on how to draw Star from Nefcy herself.

And while Daron is pleased that all of those super-passionate animation fans will now know how to properly draw Star Butterfly, it still bugs her that these people will still have to wait 'til January to hear how great Eden Sher (aka Sue Heck from ABC's hit sitcom The Middle) is as the voice of this character.

"Eden is fantastic. We had a lot of really excellent actresses come in and read for this part. But none of them felt right. And Eden was one of the very last people that Disney brought in for me to see. And she just nailed it. She was totally perfect for this character," Nefcy remembered. "And then it was fun, because when we brought her back in, I knew that I had made the right choice hiring Eden because she came in all bouncy. And she was talking a mile-a-minute, 'Oh my God! I'm so excited! You know, I tried out. And then I didn't hear anything. And then I got the call that I got the part! And now I'm here!' So I was like 'That was perfect. You're so Star. I should have recorded that for the show.' "

Well, if you can wait 'til January, you can then see (and hear) how the character that Daron drew and the one that Eden voices are a perfect match when Star vs. The Forces of Evil debuts on Disney XD.

Dear 5 Seconds of Summer,

I have nothing against you. I think your accents are pretty rad, your passion for music admirable and your creativity coveted. However, as a female teenage girl, I am deeply offended by your "Good Girls" music video.

I'm 17 years old, a senior from a nameless small town. Despite humble beginnings, a fire has been lighted in my heart that one day that I'd be able to rise above my circumstances and make a name for myself. I unashamedly work hard for my goals. I take five AP classes, have a 4.6 grade point average, hold six internships and received an 1800 on my SAT. To me, the dark circles under my eyes and my need for caffeine represents my chance at achieving success, following my dreams, and pursuing my purpose. As I struggle against the societal pressure to settle down, get married and bear children instead of pursuing my dream as a lawyer and journalist. I know that one day my efforts will bear results.

I represent not only myself, but the millions of girls oppressed by the media depiction of females. There are smart girls all around the world who tirelessly work towards their goals, while balancing social and personal responsibilities. Yet, when you view us only as "bad girls waiting to be caught," our entire efforts to defeat the prevalent stereotypes are put to waste.

It's understandable that we females have explaining to do as well. Just as often as girls are objectified as sex objects, so are men in music videos. We sing lyrics like "she mighta let you hold your hand in school but I'mma show you how to graduate" or "I can do it like a dude," which does not help our case. However, I firmly believe that you have the influence and ability to create positive messages to teens. When both genders work together to improve equal opportunities, rights and representation, the world can be dramatically revolutionized for a cause greater than ourselves.

Your self-titled album sold as No. 1 in 11 different countries. Millions of teenagers from throughout the world have memorized your lyrics, stalked your Twitter and eagerly waited for your next releases. Now, I'm no celebrity or anything close to that, but I believe it is a moral responsibility to use your influence to make a difference for your listener's lives. I understand that my opinion is very different than the majority of your fans. Don't get me wrong, I love the beat behind your song. It's catchy, and evidently many people worked to make the music video successful.

Let us rise to our greatness. Good girls are something to be proud of, instead of believed to have other motives. We do not need to be "soothed," "remain silent" or "obey" like your music video humbly suggests. Rather, it is time for our voices to be heard, validated and taken into consideration.

With great respect,
Julia Schemmer

I was at the pop up "Central Perk" last week in SoHo with my niece. That's right, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Friends, Warner Bros. and Eight O'Clock coffee (which I'm told makes a tolerable decaf) has combined to open a mock coffee shop that Jennifer Aniston and her buddies used to hang out in on the television show, Friends. As great or ridiculous as it may sound, depending on your age and television preference, it's a smash hit. The line was around three blocks. Was it worth waiting in line for two hours? My 15-year-old niece says yes, so... I guess there's your answer. Friends, Seinfeld and ER were the final holdouts to an almost 20-year run of NBC dominance. Now, NBC wonders every day why they should bother "signing on". Yes, "signing on", an old school television term from before there was 24-hour television. Is NBC better off playing an old fashioned test pattern?

For seven years NBC tried to tell everyone that 30 Rock was a hit. It was not. Critics enjoyed it but no one was rabidly watching it like Modern Family. The Blacklist is the ONLY holdover for new shows from last season and that is only good because James Spader is truly "the man". The rest of the cast is horrid. Some of the worst acting ever put on television and that's saying something. The Blacklist is a fun show and it is a success but it is a testament to the great James Spader and how at this point he could be in anything and it would work. It's not as "must see" as say, ABC's Scandal.

On Sunday night, NBC has Football for half of the season. That brings in a wad of revenue. Mondays they have The Voice. That also does extremely well. Tuesdays The Voice again. So, their sports or reality shows do very well, but perhaps that's where NBC should stay. Robert Greenblatt, the Head of Entertainment continues to try and put out subpar content compared to the other Networks.

NBC has five new shows this season. So far, every one is a dud. On Tuesday nights there will be a new show called Marry Me. The promotions look really bad. Marry Me will open for About a Boy based on the book by Nick Hornby and the movie with Hugh Grant. About a Boy does just enough in the ratings that NBC gave it a go for a second season. My prediction is that Marry Me will be a disaster and About a Boy will suffer. Unless NBC does what they've been doing for so long and just give their Tuesday nights the green light like Parks and Rec and Community. Shows that are just, "o.k." because they have nothing else. Back in the '70's, The Odd Couple, which is now a classic was known as a five-year bomb. That's what every NBC comedy has been for the past 15 years. They are all just OK.

On Wednesday nights, NBC has promoted the heck out of The Mysteries of Laura with Debra Messing. This is a bad show. I have written about this show previous to this article. As of last week and the 3rd airing of TMOL, NBC has ordered four more scripts. Ordering four more scripts for something instead of giving it a full green light is basically saying, "we have nothing and this show isn't the worst thing we've ever put on".

On Thursday Nights, NBC's old glory night, the new Bad Judge with Kate Walsh airs before a new show called A to Z. Bad Judge is a "comedy" version of The Mysteries of Laura. The premise is quite similar. The lead characters are both over 40 (very pretty) women and doing what are usually considered male roles. They both look horrible during the day, but at night they dress hot. They are both sarcastic and badass but have civil jobs with the city and most importantly, they don't play by the rules. Yeah. Bad Judge is not a good show. It's not a bad show either. I've seen it twice now and, like all of NBC's shows, it's just ok. But that's it and it should not be renewed. I just cannot see a time where I'm going to purchase the first season of Bad Judge on DVD or Netflix. Now, A to Z is quite interesting. That is not a bad show at all and on another network might thrive. The pilot is one of the best pilots I've ever seen. I mean, every now and again, I'm a sucker for a romantic comedy. This one was good and worked for me. I didn't think it would hold up in the second episode and for a while it did not, but the end of the episode worked itself out and it got me again. Funny thing though, the ratings for A to Z are absolutely horrible. Maybe the worst ever. Bad Judge is no help. And, I guess when it goes up against ABC's Scandal and CBS's Thursday Night Football, it's an uphill battle to assured cancellation.

The only thing NBC has done completely right this season is airing old Saturday Night Live episodes at 10:00 p.m. on Saturdays to celebrate SNL's 40th anniversary. Those have been a blast to watch each week.

CBS has a serious new ratings hit with Madam Secretary and Scorpion, let alone the Big Bang Theory, CSI and NCIS. ABC has a serious new ratings hit with How to Get Away with Murder and the CW even has The Flash. As reported Monday, Saturday Night Live hit a season low this past Saturday with the great Bill Hader as the host. That would seem tough to do. Everything is going wrong for NBC. If I were Robert Greenblatt I would give James Spader some serious Big Bang Theory money right now or your network will have nothing left but to "sign off".

Listen to my podcast every week here.

Jeff and son Spencer Tweedy join me on The Interview Show to talk about their new album, Sukierae, as well as about autographing Dominick's receipts, a band called Sexfist and much more. Plus, they perform "You Are Not Alone," a song Jeff wrote for Mavis Staples.

Filmed at The Abbey Pub Sept. 12, 2014. Thanks to Ben Chandler and Adam Peindl. Next Interview Show is Nov. 7 at The Hideout. www.theinterviewshowchicago.com.

All Images Copyright Brad Puet

Recently I had the honor of meeting, photographing, and interviewing J Boog of Wash House Music. He was on the last leg of his "On The Run" Tour with The Hot Rain Band and was performing in Tacoma's Jazzbones venue.

J Boog is a well known Hawaiian/ Island reggae artist. He has an amazing fan base that stretches past the islands and California (where he's from). He's on heavy rotation in my household. Matter of fact he's on heavy rotation in a lot of households.

If you're new to Hawaiian reggae, you're in for a good one. J Boog's music is in the "must own" status.

Let's have fun!

BP: First of all, big thanks bro for meeting up and doing this interview. I know you've been on the road for over two months. Thank you for taking the time. Can you tell us about your cultural and ethnic background and how this plays into the type of artist and musician you are?

JBoog: I'm Samoan. I was born in Long Beach, California and raised in Compton, California. You know, my parents were really strict in the house and growing up in Compton, it wasn't really easy for them to let us just go outdoors and just go cruise around. They made sure that we knew who we were and what we really about. They weren't hearing about us getting in trouble and letting any bad outside influence into the house. It worked out you know. I think my siblings and I carry that everywhere in life. This helps in like being humble in everything, to know where we came from, see where it's taking us, and making sure we don't step out of bounds. Yeah, we're just grateful for everything we have and we have my parents to thank for. We just making sure we keep that in our heads all the time.

I think seeing my dad from when I was a little kid, you know. He tried to do everything he could to put food on the table or put gas in the car; from collecting palettes from industrial areas or collecting card board boxes and recycling them, I just seen him work hard every day whether he was employed or unemployed you know what I mean?! You know, I do carry that in my music as well. I try to keep it moving all the time whether we trying to bang it out in the studio or touring the country, we just don't waste the time. I learned from my dad to go get it and keep it going, you know. It's 24/7 on the road, its 24/7 in the studio, its work hard. And it's showing most definitely.

BP: Were your parents musically creative also?

JBoog: No they weren't but they LOVE music. Reggae was like the only music that we could listen to that was a non-swearing genre that we could play in the house and turn up, you know (laughs). They couldn't understand it that well with all the Jamaican patois and everything but it was something that they learned to love. My parents were really big into old school Samoan songs and those tie into country music too. They really love country too.

BP: How many siblings do you have?

JBoog: I have seven brothers and one sister. I'm the youngest of them all. Yeah bro, I had a lot of hand me downs growing up (laughs). A lot of hand me downs and a lot of slaps on the head growing up you know (laughs). It's all G man, I love my family, man.

BP: Were they creative also?

JBoog: I think all of this really started with my sister. My sister played piano for the church. When she practiced, she'd play like old classical music and those were the notes she'd have to study and take back home. There were songs she'd have to do all the time just to do it right. It was a lot to do with timing and everything, and I'd sit next to her and the piano, and I'd try to mimic key. Yeah it was pretty irritating for her I'm sure but she had to live with it because I was her little brother (laughs). Then one day she brought out a Bob Marley one sheet home and we already listened to reggae all the time, so to hear it from the piano with her playing it, kinda tripped me out. I think ever since then something never really turned off inside me, you know?!?

BP: What's the name of the track?

JBoog: It was "Jammin." Still to this day that's my favorite song.

BP: Can you explain to folks the difference between Jamaican and Hawaiian reggae?

JBoog: I think as far as the message goes, we are all talking about the same thing. I guess one of the main differences is, that one the Hawaiian side, it's more melodic. I'm not saying that Jamaican reggae is not melodic but the Hawaiian side has a lot of singers that come from the backyard jammin' in the Hawaiian style. I don't know. Let's ask Les (drummer for The Hot Rain Band).

Les, what do you think is the difference between Jamaican and Hawaiian reggae?

Les: Hawaiian reggae uses a lot of acoustic guitar and a lot more string instruments. It is a lot more string driven than the Jamaican style.

BP: In the Jamaican category, who is your biggest influence/mentor?

JBoog: I think it have to be Beres Hammond. You know what I really love is the Lovers Rock. I'm all about the love music and what he does, it just hits it on the head you know. Like every time you listen to a Beres song, you know it's him. It's about that feeling his songs gives off. It all changes you know. It can go from Beres to Busy Signal and you know it can go back and forth. I love dancehall as well. But at the end of the day, as far as Jamaican reggae goes, it is Beres Hammond. But there's so many; Tarrus Riley, Richie Spice, Morgan Heritage, there's just a whole lot of people.

BP: How about on the Hawaiian side?

JBoog: Bro, all of them. I mean you got The Green crackin' off, and you got Anuhea, Rebel Souljahz, the Hot Rain Band, Innavisions that's touring with us right now, Steppaz...I mean really, it's everyone from Hawaii. Everyone is doing their thing. When we're at home, we kick back and hang out. When we are all on tour we try to meet up just like home but in a different city, you know.

BP: Did you always perform reggae?

JBoog: You know back in the day, I thought I could rap (laughs) but I think the first song I sang or wrote is "Hear Me Roar" and I think ever since then I knew I wanted to do this. It was because the buzz I got from the people who really liked my music. I mean it's what I wanted to do anyways you know. It helps when people like my music.

BP: So when did you "know" know, you know?

JBoog: It was on my first trip to Hawaii. I was still working at the time and then I had a chance to meet George "Fiji" Veikoso. Fiji is real huge for us, you know. I mean just to see him perform much less meet him in person is amazing. At the time our mixtapes got out there and he wanted to check us out. So I heard Fiji wanted to meet, and I left my job and took the chance. We went to Hawaii and met him and the whole company. They surrounded me in the barber shop, you know, and I was nervous as shit (laughs). We took it to the parking lot, and then I just sang. I just sang bro. Ever since then, he took me under his wing and in a week, we recorded my first album, "Hear Me Roar."

I got to see Fiji really work his magic in the studio and I took it all in. He showed me that first time in the studio what doing this music thing is really all about. Studio time is studio time, you know. You got to stay focused. Sometimes you don't sleep. Just shoot for perfection, you know. He's a beast in the studio and man, I really look up to him a whole lot.

I really have the best teacher in Fiji. He's opened the door, you know what I mean. I try to do what I can to make him proud, make all of the people in Hawaii proud. We're trying to make sure we don't let no one back home down. I think we're doing all right.

BP: Where do you feel your music is going now?

JBoog: I really don't know bro. I think we're just going to stick to the same formula you know. Give the people what they want. As long as it feels good to us, it should transfer to the people.

BP: All right bro, for closing out the interview, what would you like to tell the new and the established fans from day one?

JBoog: Thank you, thank you, thank you! So much! For all the continued support throughout the years. I mean without all of you right now, spreading the love, we'd be nothing right now. From the bottom of my heart, with all of my heart, thank you.

BP: OK bro, I lie I still have one more question for you. For those who don't know, what does "Chee Hu" mean?

JBoog: Chee Hu? Its Faaumu. Its a celebration. I mean...he wants to know what Faaumu means (he turns to Anuwatu's mother-in-law - Fiaapia Lautoa).

Fiaapia: The Chee Hu? You know when you hear the "Chee Hu" thats the Faaumu! (We all laugh.)

*Big thanks to Anuwatu for getting this opportunity to get the interview. For clarification, Anu is one of the hardest managers I've met (and I've met quite a few).

"Sunshine Girl" J Boog ft. Peetah

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Brad Puet is a street and documentary photographer based in Seattle, WA.
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"WE MAY not know why we need Nicholas Cage, but plainly we do. The hyperactive one-man train wreck is the dude we all want to spend our last 24-hours with before a nuclear war. Because retaining dignity sure won't be much of an issue then."

That's GQ magazine's Tom Carson writing about the often strange career and inexorably quirky personality of actor Cage. This is one of those fun pieces with diagrams, capsule reviews, illustrations, photos and comments from other actors on Cage -- working with him, their favorite among his wacky films.

I do kind of love him in everything, no matter what. I will probably even enjoy his Rapture movie, Left Behind. I mean, Nick Cage is in it, so just forget the religious stuff and get aboard with his weirdness.

But for real "soul," over-acted to the nth degree, I have to go with Cage in Moonstruck and Peggy Sue Got Married. Say what you will about his accents, he managed to provoke (and that's probably the most appropriate word) the best out of Cher and Kathleen Turner. Cher, indeed took an Oscar. Miss Turner did not, which I have always felt was a crime. She was never better than in this movie, which like Moonstruck, has the tremulous quality of keeping its audience between laughter and tears.

•RECENTLY, the multiple feature films The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby showcased a disintegrated relationship from both the perspective of Him and Her. I thought it confounding and over-long if well-acted.

Now we have something else, similarly themed. The new Showtime series The Affair, which debuted on Sunday. This tells of an extramarital affair between a restless man and a woman still suffering the loss of a child. Both are married. (He has a lovely wife and four hideous children.) The He Said/She Said in this one is fascinating, and more cohesive. The small details stand out --how he remembers the way she looked (sexy) How she recalls her attitude (depressed and messy.) Dominic West and Ruth Wilson are the adulterers. Maura Tierney and Joshua Jackson are the non-adulterers. Everyone is excellent. Even the child actors, who are so viscerally obnoxious.

There is a mystery involved -- the pair are relating their stories to what appears to be a police detective. I don't see how The Affair can last more than a season, but it might be quite a fulfilling season.

•THE DIVINE and divinely unorthodox actress Tilda Swinton will receive the Actor Tribute at the 24th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards, on December 1st. Also being honored, Oscar-winning director Bennett Miller of Capote and Moneyball fame. He will receive the Director Tribute. (Miller's latest, Foxcatcher, garnered him Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.)

Calvin Klein and The New York Times sponsor this event, which includes a $25,000 cash grant for an alumnus of IFP's Independent Filmmaker Labs. This focuses on encouraging female directors. The industry has a scarcity of those. Go to http://gotham.ifp.org

•ULTRA BUSY NIGHT at the famed East Side eatery Primola about a week ago. In and out that evening -- Linda Fairstein and Michael Goldberg...Las Vegas comic legend Pat Cooper...music's Clive Davis and a party of six...Kenneth Langone, founder of Home depot...Ada Zambetti, whose late husband's grandparents founded the Stella D'Oro Biscuit company...Carlos Colonna, who was an engraver for Tiffanys for many years and then went to the White House to work for LBJ...tennis great Jimmy Connors...Stanley London of night club fame...Gene Pressman of Barney's...real estate billionaires Phyllis and William Mack. It went on and on. "People were waiting at the bar until 10:30 for a table!" But...nobody left to go someplace else.

•ENDQUOTE: "The one aspect of this character that I can identify with is finding oneself thrust into a media narrative that's totally unrecognizable. You might go, 'Who is that person. This bears no relationship to me!'" That's Ben Affleck talking to Details magazine about his current big hit, the marital thriller, Gone Girl. In looking at his GG character, Ben says: "He's like 'I'm not going to pretend to grieve. I'm going to be honest. That's who I am.' And he gets obliterated."

The actor recalled times when he decided to "be myself" and ended up "obliterated." (I mean, come on, was it really so wrong of him to appear in his girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez's music video?)

One other interesting thing. Recently much was made of Ben being "escorted" out of a casino for "counting cards" during blackjack. It sounded terribly sleazy and illegal. In fact, it's not. If you can correctly count the cards, you are a whiz at blackjack and the casinos don't want such winners. Affleck says he wishes it had been so spectacular as his being tossed out. "They just came up and said, 'We can't let you play blackjack. But we have other table games. We have Chinese poker!'"

Bille Woodruff likes to have fun, but the party for Addicted the night before was a little too much. He had possibly three vodka-laced house drinks foisted upon him, and a long shower was needed this Thursday morning to get his mojo up to par. But, truthfully, he looked no worse for wear, and much, much younger than someone who's been directing music videos (e.g. Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, Britney Spears, and Luther Vandross) for almost a quarter of a century ought to.

Admittedly, this director of the films Beauty Shop with Queen Latifah and Honey with Jessica Alba was a bit anxious. His latest effort, Addicted, was opening on the next day nationwide. A faithful adaptation of erotica queen Zane's million copy bestseller, the romancer showcases the posteriors of William Levy, Tyson Beckford, and Boris Kodjoe as they try to satisfy Sharon Leal's Zoe, who's suffering from a hardy case of sex addiction that's destroying both her marriage and career.

"It is nerve-wracking," Woodruff shared, "because you work so hard on a movie, and you put your heart and soul into it, but because of the way the business works now, everything is a quick headline. A quick blurb. All your work boils down to one weekend really no matter how good the movie is."

"But I'm really happy with the film," he added, "and I think people will really like it. I wasn't like this a couple of weekends ago, but somehow this week I feel really happy that people will get to see it. So regardless of the numbers, I'm actually feeling calmer than I ever had when I had a movie opening. I think it's one of the best things I've ever done."

Woodruff needn't have worried. Addicted had the highest gross per theatre over the weekend of any wide release. According to Variety, its audience's makeup was 72% African-American, 15% Latino, and 82% female. Why? Because before Woodruff, very few filmmakers were willing to explore a black woman's sexuality on her own terms.

Even The New York Times, which proffered a mixed reaction to the film, noted there was a "propulsive energy" to the lust scenes and "if there were an award for best-looking cast," Addicted would be the winner.

Besides bumping up the heat in malls across the country, Woodruff, whose dream projects are biopics of James Baldwin and Langston Hughes, wants to showcase black men as they really are and not as stereotypes. He had already accomplished this in his many videos, especially those with the Tony Rich Project and Joe.

"I believe in the diversity of all the different colors and shades of human beings," Woodruff insisted. "So for me, I love when you see a black person being a villain because to me there's power in that. Because I think that there's a kind of power being taken away if the black characters always have to be perfect or kind of asexual, like the character that's the police chief or whatever who doesn't really get angry or curse. There's empowerment in using positive images, but in reality, if you want to have people realize how much we are really all the same, you have show the diversity of the human condition. I'm interested in showing black men in all their different shades the same way everyone else is shown."

Watching the recent news concerning Ferguson and all that followed across the country has caused Woodruff to want emulate one of his early heroes, Spike Lee, even more than he has in the past. "I thought race relations would be getting better by now," he noted. "I remember being in high school, and I'm from Richmond, Virginia. I had a white girlfriend, and we just automatically knew like when we were out and she was in the passenger seat that if we saw a police car, she would duck down. You knew maybe they would think I did something or that I had abducted her"

Then there was the incident in Washington, DC, when Woodruff was attending the University of Maryland, College Park. "I think I weighed a buck fifty, and I was not threatening to anyone. I was leaving a nightclub with two of my friends, and I won't bore you with the whole long story, but I ended up having 5 police cars stop me and a police motorcycle that my car ran over because they yanked me out before I could turn on the brakes. They beat me, and rammed my head repeatedly into the windshield. It was horrible, and I hadn't done anything."

"So, yes, in life, I've experienced racism, but I also experienced the opposite as well. I think it's what you gravitate to, and I do feel that the world is getting better, but I have to say these recent things, they really are sad to me because I thought that we were moving further ahead."

At least, Woodruff's career is leaping forward. He's directed the much awaited sequel to Drumline, which will air on VH1 on October 27th, and he can rest assured that Addicted has more than a few more money-making weeks at the box office before it hits stores as a DVD and becomes a Netflix sensation. There's also chatter of another Zane adaptation, which wouldn't surprise his friends.

"I'll tell you, Toni Braxton told me when she heard I was directing Addicted, "Oh, God! I'm so glad you finally got to make a film like this to get it out of your system. Now you can stop trying to get me naked."

A few years ago, TIME.com designated K-pop "South Korea's greatest export." While the folks at Hyundai, Samsung and a few other Korean corporations might have something to say about that assertion, there's little doubt that over the past few decades, the treacly, hook-infused musical style has made itself felt, in one way or another, all over the globe.

But few fans of the genre are aware that, more than 50 years ago, three young Korean women formed a kind of proto-K-pop group--an ensemble unlike any that American audiences, at least, had ever seen.

[See rare photos of the Kim Sisters -- onstage and off -- at LIFE.com]

Here is how LIFE magazine introduced the trio to its readers in February 1960:

Just one year after leaving Seoul the Kim Sisters [Min Ja, Ai Ja and Sook Ja] are an all-out nightclub hit in the U.S.

The act began 10 years ago when the girls were taught "Ole Buttermilk Sky" and "Candy and Cake" by U.S.troops in Korea. Min Ja sang off-key and Ai Ja chewed gum while she sang, but to the GIs they were the Orient's answer to the Andrews Sisters. Last year an ex-GI named Bob McMackin, who had heard them in Seoul, brought the Kims over [to the States]. The girls learn their songs by rote since they know little English.

In fact, Min-ja, or Mia, was a first cousin to Sook-ja and Ai-ja (the preferred Anglicized spelling of their names), but "Two Kims and Their Cousin" hardly had the ring of the eventual band name. So, in a time-honored entertainment ploy, when they began performing in Seoul in the 1950s, the three took a bit of license and, lo and behold, the Kim Sisters song-and-dance act was born.

In their heyday, the women played venues all over America and around the world. They were huge hits in Vegas. They appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show more than 20 times. In short, for a number of years in the early to mid-1960s, the Kim Sisters were, without a doubt, the most famous Korean entertainers on the planet.

By the late Sixties, though, all that changed. As Mia Kim told the Korea Times a few years back:

In 1967, all three of us got married. I married a Hungarian musician, Tommy Vig, Sook-ja and Ai-ja married two Italian men. My aunt was a very wise lady because she always told us, "Don't get involved with a man, because if that happens, your career will be over." She was right, you know, the priority was instantly changed and after I gave birth to my son, I wanted to be a full-time mother. Also, as we had husbands in our lives, we began to have disagreements and conflicts, so I moved to Los Angeles with my husband in 1970.

After that, the band played on, but without Mia. The real Kim sisters--and eventually, their brothers--played Vegas for years after the original trio broke up. Ai-ja died in the late 1980s of lung cancer, and the remaining "sisters," Mia and Sook-ja, lost touch with one another.

Still, for a while there, the three beautiful, accomplished young singers and musicians who left the hard times of postwar Korea to seek their fortune in the West had, in fact, found receptive audiences, and more than a little fame, far from their native Seoul.

[See more of the Kim Sisters at LIFE.com]

The Kim Sisters, Chicago, 1960. (Robert W. Kelley--The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

"I don't want to be labeled as gay ... [and] I'm not African-American. I'm American."

The moment those words blared out of the TV, my Twitter timeline and Facebook newsfeed flooded with angry comments from my fellow black lesbians condemning 28-year-old former Cosby kid and Disney star Raven-Symoné. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Raven laid out her post-racial belief system, claiming that she doesn't want to be labeled "gay" or even "African-American" but "a human who loves humans." If Raven believes for a moment that her relationship with the beautiful, gender-bending model AzMarie Livingston or her history on the show that represented and redefined the black American family in the 20th century do not loudly communicate who she is, then she is mistaken and a bit confused.

I definitely shook my head in disbelief at what Raven said, but it didn't spark immediate anger in me. Raven missed the mark, and despite what she told Winfrey, she couldn't effectively articulate her position, but I never expected "baby Raven," as Melissa Harris-Perry called her, to possess the acumen to formulate any profound statement about race, identity, or sexuality in America. In fact, when news broke that Raven was dating a woman, I silently prayed that she wouldn't be thrust to the forefront of any feminist, lesbian, or black movements. It's funny how that happens sometimes: Pretty, famous, rich woman of color starts proclaiming lesbianism (or feminism), and all of a sudden she's the official spokeswoman for an entire generation of woman warriors who've been doing this work for years. I'm not here for that. Therefore, unlike some of my black lesbian sisters, I wasn't disappointed in the fact that Raven hadn't risen to the occasion and utilized this very public interview to position herself as the image of black lesbianism in America. Quite frankly, I don't trust her with our movement. After all, this is the woman whose response to the advancement of marriage equality was to tweet "Yay government."

Apparently, Raven thinks that denouncing labels that she believes don't serve her purposes will, in some magical way, free her from racism and homophobia. She has it backwards. Rather than being harmful, owning her race and identifying as a lesbian could make things easier for her. As Dr. Beverly Tatum, the author of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and Other Conversations About Race, noted in a 1992 article that "students of color who have had the opportunity to examine the ways in which racism may have affected their own lives are able to give voice to their own experience, and to validate it rather than be demoralized by it." Raven is sadly unaware that by claiming both of those identities, she becomes part of a blooming, strong, passionate, resilient, powerful, sensual, educated group. Black lesbians rock!

Refusing a label or claiming humanism does not excuse Raven from the responsibility she bears as a participant in communities where people are fighting and dying to exist. Nor does it help deconstruct the racist, homophobic systems prevalent in America. Her first steps into post-racial rhetoric were as wobbly as a toddler's, but I was more embarrassed for her than I was angry. Instead, I wished Raven had known of sister Audre Lorde's famous words from the 1982 address "Learning From the '60s."

Either I denied or chose between various aspects of my identity, or my work and my Blackness would be unacceptable. As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody's comfortable prejudices of who I should be. That is how I learned that if I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I think Raven needs Lorde's wisdom as she charts a path for herself. Denying any part of oneself is equally as harmful as accepting those unwanted labels from society, and perhaps worse. As a black woman in a same-sex relationship, Raven seems to want it both ways, but she can't prance through life reaping the benefits of the various communities that she refuses to stake a claim in. If we, the participants in black lesbianism and womanhood, fail to proclaim, through various postures, who we are, if we neglect to define and label ourselves for ourselves, then we run the risk of further invisibilizing ourselves, our communities, our struggle, our history, and, inevitably, our future.

The following post is excerpted from Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll (by Peter Bebergal, with permission from Tarcher/Penguin Random House, Peter Bebergal, 2014). The book is the author's "love letter to popular music by way of the mystery at the heart of rock; a spirit that imbued the music with its own mythology replete with stories of gods, spirits, devils, and magic."

***

Sitting at a party strumming his guitar, the Scottish troubadour Donovan came upon a riff that seemed to hypnotize him. He played it over and over again and was told later he worked on it for seven hours. This riff was to become "Season of the Witch," a dark and prophetic song suggesting the new age dawning brings with it darkness. Something about it stuck. (Since then, the song has been covered by dozens of artists, including Robert Plant and Joan Jett.) "Season of the Witch" was a departure from the other songs on Donovan's 1966 album Sunshine Superman, whose titular opener begins, "Sunshine came softly a-through my a-window today." But "Season of the Witch" was oracular in another way. Something dark was coming for Donovan. The same year, Donovan was arrested for possession of cannabis, and while he wasn't much of a drug user, the British press used him as the poster child to further exploit the middle-class fear that the counterculture was rife with amoral drug fiends.

In interviews with the press, Donovan was nothing like the rock stars who were his peers. He continually pushed back against making any political statements, scandal couldn't stick to him, and he preferred to talk about keeping a neighborly fox away from his chickens. "The fox is a friend, too, but I'll have to have a chat with him," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1968. Like they did with many rock musicians, the fans and the media were looking to him to say something about the world, about the future of things. By this time, audiences were looking for wisdom, and it seemed rock musicians, by virtue of being incarnations of Bacchic energy, must also have spiritual wisdom. There was obvious power in their music, the way it shaped culture, the way the youth had followed it liked a pied piper toward drugs, sex, and other excessive rebellions. But Donovan wasn't having any of it. Donovan grew up among Gaelic mythology and legend, and his music drew from other influences ranging from Bob Dylan to Eastern ragas with which he crafted whimsical and psychedelic pop. Sunshine Superman is a walk through a fantastical landscape of wizards, Arthurian legend, jewels and gemstones, and princesses. But "Season of the Witch" became an anthem, and in an interview decades later, Donovan described the song as "ritualistic." Donovan eagerly jumped into the portal the 1960s had opened into Wonderland. There he had permission to explore musically the idea that divinity was not predisposed to exist only in heaven, but was part of the very fabric of the world. It expressed itself through myth as well as nature. This is pantheism, where God can be found in every tree and flower, every note of every song, every stoned romp in the bed of a lover. It is also pagan, where the world is animated by spirits, where nature is a book that tells the secret story of the world. Of his iconic song, Donovan said, "Maybe it is the first kind of Celtic-rock thing I was doing, a rediscovery of our roots in Britain, which of course became the British sound."

The New Forest of southern England is a protected expanse of woods, once used as a source of lumber as early as the seventeenth century, and long before then, a sacred place to ancient people who left behind burial mounds, called barrows. It is here a supposed horned deity cult of pre-Christian worshippers passed down their rituals and practices since before Christianity came to dominate Western Europe.

In 1939, Gerald Gardner, a retired anthropologist with a personal interest in the occult, met and was initiated into a coven who gathered in the thick of the forest. The story of Gardner is fraught with rumor and controversy, but it is likely at some point around 1936, he did encounter a group of people claiming to be witches. Indeed Gardner was deeply influenced by Margaret Murray and her thesis that claimed before Christianity (and until the witch trials of the Middle Ages) there was a centralized witch cult that worshipped a horned god by way of various rites and observances. Gardner believed that aspects of this cult survived in modern-day England. Gardner wanted to go "public" with what had been for generations secreted away. Fearful of British intolerance, Gardner's first book was presented as a novel called High Magic's Aid. In 1951, the Witchcraft Act, which had been in effect since 1542, was repealed and Gardner wrote two nonfiction books, Witchcraft Today and the Meaning of Witchcraft. Gardner also perpetuated Murray's idea that had largely been debunked by other scholars. Pockets of pagan worship might have existed all over Western Europe, but the notion it was ever a centralized religion that transmitted esoteric wisdom through ciphers was not widely accepted. But Gardner had enough to build his own religion.

Using what fragments he could find from those who practiced some form of pagan worship, as well as a gloss from his friend Aleister Crowley, Gardner cemented the notion of witchcraft as a religion into the popular consciousness, while alerting a burgeoning counterculture that pre-Christian spirituality was alive and well.

Note: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 6, Episode 4 of CBS's The Good Wife, titled "Oppo Research."

What is Oppo Research, you ask? It's all the dirty, nasty things an opponent will dig up on you to sue against you in a campaign, as poor, saint Alicia finds out this week. This week there was no case, just Alicia deciding whether or not to run for State's Attorney and the fall out. How much did I love this? Let me count the ways:

1) Alicia loves wine. Like, really, really loves wine. I don't know how the parody of "Talking Dead" fit in ("what does it mean?") but watching her anxiety build, decide to pour a glass of vino and then decide against it, and then the way her face falls when Eli doesn't want any wine when he walks in was beautiful. It was so simple, but fed the tension of the whole episode.

2) The Florricks are bound by secrets, from the day we met them all those years ago. Instead of focusing on her and Cary and the firm, or her love affair with Will (sigh), we return early on in the season to the family. It's all about the family. Instead of taking an easy shot and using Grace's religion or sing-song parties, the oppositional research got real, really fast. Zack and his girl had an abortion and Alicia's rage looked a lot like what my mom's would've been. Cut him off! Peter might be sleeping with an intern, but he's not. Her brother is having an affair with a married man (did he walk out because he didn't know or just hates politics?). And her mother, always good for comic relief, is spanking random children in department stores. It could not be more perfect.

3) Now for the bad news. She has to drop Bishop. He refuses to go, until he realizes she's running a campaign. Trying to fool him into leaving the firm because of a conflict of interest didn't work. He's now running a Super PAC that's raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in 24-hours for the campaign. There was no scandal except her brother's love life and her son's teenage antics. Now there's real dirt Castro can dig up. And let's not think he won't. In line with the wine-loving opening scene, he sets her up to be pulled over by the police, who give themselves away immediately. Shouldn't Chicago cops be better at being corrupted? How can we document this?

Her new, reluctant campaign manager says she needs more reasons to run than just "the current administration is doing a bad job and is corrupt." But Castro's actions alone are nasty enough, I think. How does she get rid of Bishop and avoid falling into the same pay-to-play protocol? This show really gets the law and love, but more than anything, in my humble opinion, I think the portrayal of how politics really works -- within closed bubbles and cliques, with binders full of your faults, and favors -- is better than anything else on primetime.

What about you? Let me know @karenfratti.

The Good Wife airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.

I recall the late toddler years of my son when my wife would plan a play date with other kids at the park. She would share the news with him about where the clock hands would be so he could know when to prepare to leave the house. He would go about his business and frequently check to see if the hands were in the right spot so they could jump in the car and head to what he built up as the best day ever.

On one occasion I specifically remember plans had to change at the last minute, and trying to explain why the play date was no longer possible was gut wrenching parenting. How do you explain the reality that life just happens sometimes and you roll with it, to a five-year-old, only-child who depended on his friends for companionship? Sometimes the only answer is that is just didn't work out. In this situation, that was the easiest way to avoid a long, drawn-out, adult-level rationalization of her choosing to cancel the play date and attend to a more pressing matter. His reply echoes in our memories even today.

"This is the worst day ever!" he would stutter through tears streaming.

We remind him from time to time of his Oscar-worthy performance of disappointment at only five years old. He smiles and bolsters support that it truly was. We all laugh.

Dealing with disappointment in life is a rite-of-passage for all of us. How we process the situation and cope with moving ahead defines our character at times. In the music industry, this character definition is a regular routine.

Spencer turns 18 on October 26 this year. It hardly seems possible that the same little boy with crocodile tears is shaving and being mistaken as me on incoming phone calls. Pardon the nostalgic tangent. Even though his physical presence demands that he be respected as an adult male, his eyes speak volumes when he stares at my wife and I when disappointment hits. We still see him struggling to understand why things have to change. We still struggle with explaining "life-happens."

During a recent lull from touring and being constantly busy with his career, we have been able to resume a semi-normal home life with evening dinners and play dates for older teens. It's different now. His friends have lives of their own while he normally is absent from the community. He is a third wheel now when he's back in town. He reaches out to find teen companionship, and for the most part, the texts and phone messages go unanswered.

The choice to pursue the entertainment field has its price. Local community members either find it admirable or just odd. He's either seen as a boy-does-good local celebrity, or as an outsider who is a dreamer who thinks he's too good for accepting rural life in our farmland part of Indiana. It's a difficult reality to face at times. Being on the road is fast-paced and exciting while exhaustingly hard work. Being at home is slow-paced and leaves your adrenalized engine sputtering out of boredom. Add a dash of A.D.D. and antsy teen angst to the equation, and you have the formula for some interesting moments.

During his recent return home, his school varsity coaches inquired about his availability to play basketball and baseball for his senior year. Of course, the lifelong athlete in Spencer that left team sports in 2011 to pursue music found himself in a predicament. The appeal of playing one last year for the school that wanted him on the team was a powerful cocktail that he quickly gulped down. Having been in online school for a few years made his student status non-traditional for participating in team sports. There were hurdles to overcome with the state sports legislative body and his eligibility to participate. Beyond that was the reality that he's smack dab in the middle of a rising career in music that required him to travel and have late nights on occasion. Like the past, he was faced with making a choice because there's only so much time each week to do school and music, and possibly sports on top of it. Had Spencer not been a very skilled athlete in the past, this decision would have been easier. But the fact he was talented enough to play varsity as a freshman and letter in both basketball and baseball made the lure all the more difficult.

Like most careers that have any modicum of success, devotion and full-attention are required. Sacrifice is a major part of anything worth pursuing, and having watched him set aside a traditional student life as a teen in order to pursue a professional career at such a young age has been emotional for us as parents. We see him observe his community peers engaging in fun teen moments and activities and have watched him adjust his focus back to his career so as to not lament his path. He's been a remarkably mature young man when it comes to trusting the path he chose as the best for his future. But at moments like these when we see him gravitate toward "normalcy" for a teen life, we are pierced in our own heart with compassion for his fleeting youth. We know all too well the moments we've looked back and wished we had more calendar days to experience life without heavy demands and responsibilities.

After nearly six weeks of investigating the potential road-blocks to returning to a life of high school sports, the verdict was handed down that he would be considered ineligible to qualify for team sports because of his unique status as an online student at his high school. He had been participating in pre-season conditioning and scrimmages and when faced with the reality of the decision from the state organization, all I could see is that 5 year old face of disappointment (minus the tears, plus whiskers) struggling with understanding why things had to change from what he thought would happen.

Every turn of his music career thus far has seen similar results. Doors closing, opportunities changing, twists and turns in the journey that cause perceived motion sickness, and periods of no activity have all left him wondering, "Why?"

Early on in the process of building his music career, I sought advice from an industry veteran who is also a faith-based family man like I try to be. I asked him what I could do as a father and manager of my son to help him most. His advice was simply three words.

"Protect his heart."

It had nothing to do with business maneuvers or specific strategies to gain momentum in his career. It had everything to do with what he knew to be the truth in the music business. The road is extremely difficult and not for the weak. It is the path to destruction for so many who have given their heart to the wrong things. A young person is highly influenced by their environment and what is deemed as acceptable and normal in the music industry. But more than the lifestyle being an influence is the consistent disappointment that can lead a person to depression and misappropriated emotions or choices.

As a parent, we do our best to protect our children from harmful things. We are like hawks watching every maneuver around our child to make sure they aren't hurt or blindsided.

This is our role.

But we also know the value of experience teaching our children how to overcome disappointment. The balance is difficult at best. Protecting his heart goes well beyond the simple guardianship we esteem ourselves to have. It goes beyond human wisdom.

It goes to ensuring he finds his own personal relationship with his creator so he can rely on the ultimate guardian of his heart and soul. In that reality, as a parent, you can sleep at night when you see the fruit of that spiritual life blossoming in moments of struggle and disappointment.

Protecting your heart in the music business goes beyond behavioral adjustments. It goes to having a strong foundation of faith that will guide your steps when no one is around, all seems hopeless, and the eye sees nothing but dead ends before you.

I'm not talking religious rules and hypocritical judgmental people calling themselves holy. I recognize that not all musicians respect the faith view in things, but for us, in the most basic form of pure belief in God, it has made all the difference. It continues to prove to be the settling factor in helping the heart stay strong and emotions balanced while we sojourn into the unknown future.

The Bible shares a passage where Jeremiah asks "Who can know the heart of a man?" I reflected on that before writing this blog entry. I journaled and watched my typing unfold a litany of faith and human experience in the words on the page. My conclusion.

I didn't make Spencer's heart. God did.

I have just been appointed for a season to watch over him until his maker becomes his primary voice of direction in his life. I'm proud of his learning how to rely on that relationship beyond the people around him. I tremble that I make a mistake in guiding him, but also know that God is more vested than me in helping Spencer fulfill his purpose, whatever path that involves.

The music business is a big challenge and affects the heart. God is bigger, and made the heart.

* Spencer Kane is a teen music artist and actor on the television sitcom iShine Knect (TBN Network).

It won't be noted in any of the trade papers, but Oct. 15 marks the 40th anniversary of my first public performance with my wife and musical partner Suzanne Smithline.

I left my hometown of Syracuse, NY in late August, 1974. I was to begin my studies at New York University, but my real goal was to be near Greenwich Village. I was determined to break into the folk music scene and become a successful singer/songwriter.

I got together with Suzanne quite by accident. I was living on the third floor of Joe Weinstein Residence Hall. My roommate was a pig of a fellow who smoked heavily and used the drawer beneath his bed as a cuspidor. The third floor RA was a friendly schlub named Sid. The fourth floor RA, by contrast, was an exotic woman named Tanya. When I stopped up to visit she was teaching the residents how to drink tequila from a properly salted glass. It seemed like a cooler place to hang out.

One day, I brought my brand-new Martin D-28 upstairs and found myself visiting two Great Neck South graduates named Debbie and Suzy. Suzy told me that she used to sing folk songs with a friend of hers in high school. I had tried singing with some young women I met through NYU's Choral Arts Society. Kathy Barr was a real Village native who lived in the apartment building on Fifth Avenue where both Carmine DeSapio and Buddy Holly had once lived. She had co-written a wicked John Denver parody I liked. I also tried singing with a sweet-voiced African-American girl I met In Choral Arts Society. But Suzy lived literally right upstairs, so we decided to form a musical partnership. In a burst of originality, we called ourselves "Suzy and Glenn."

What was the musical environment like in 1974? Only a few blocks from NYU, a small club on the Bowery called CBGBs was hosting unsigned bands playing original songs in an energetic, aggressive style. Eric Clapton released his cover of Bob Marley's I Shot The Sheriff, which brought new attention to the Jamaican musician and reggae music in general. Gloria Gaynor's Never Can Say Goodbye and the Hues Corporation's Rock The Boat featured a new dance beat that came to be called "disco." ABBA, Jimmy Buffet, Hall & Oates and Barry Manilow were breaking into the charts for the first time.

But all this was irrelevant to"Suzy and Glenn." The folkie singer/songwriters were the artists we covered and my first attempts at songwriting owed a heavy debt to people like Don McLean and Harry Chapin. I was a big fan of a New York duo called Aztec Two-Step who opened for Randy Newman when he played at Syracuse University. I was also in love with the Welsh singer Mary Hopkin. Suzy's voice had the same wistful quality.

Tuesday, October 15, 1974 was the regular "Hoot Night" at Gerde's Folk City, on West Third Street just east of Sixth Avenue.

Hosted by the irrepressible Rosie, anyone could sign up for a performance spot around 7 p.m. First come, first to perform. I had checked out this scene on my earlier visits to New York and quickly realized that you did not have to be particularly accomplished to get up on a stage in Greenwich Village. That night, I got a good spot at a reasonable hour.

I opened with a Jim Dawson medley called City Song/Simple Song whose lyrics mirrored my ambitions:

When I was a young man I came to the city
To sing for my living and live for my fun...
I was just a young man, I think I have told you
I really knew nothing of what I'd find there

Suzy joined me onstage to sing an Aztec Two-Step song "The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarty," based on the character in Jack Kerouac's book On The Road, which I hadn't yet read. Kathy Barr came up to help finish the set with the John Denver parody:

Almost heaven, up in Harlem
Lower East Side, the dirty Hudson River
Life is dangerous, you can't walk on the street
Always getting ripped off by everyone you meet
City Roads, take me home to the place I belong
West Side Highway, Midtown Tunnel
Take me home, city road

We got a good round of applause, enough to encourage us to continue working together. Suzanne acquired an autoharp and we generated a nice complex sound that complemented our harmonies.

I believe the first song we performed with the autoharp was the Lovin' Spoonful's Coconut Grove. We auditioned at Bleecker Street clubs like The Other End and the Back Fence. We regularly gigged at on-campus coffeehouses at NYU.

A Choral Arts Society member named Mike Soloway, who was actually signed by Columbia Records, invited us to share his gig at the Cowbay Café in Port Washington, Long Island. We even got some paying gigs, including a surprise engagement after our audition at the Basement Coffeehouse on East 22nd St.

At the end of our freshman year, we felt confident enough to record a demo tape at a professional studio recommended to us by the Choral Arts Society conductor E. Jon de Revere. The studio was on West 43rd Street and was normally used to record music to accompany music education books. I invited my buddy Paul Jerge, who played guitar with me back in Syracuse, to join in the session. We went live to two-track, with no edits and no overdubbing. The seven tunes reflected our musical universe: an obscure Everly Brothers single from 1969, two songs recorded by Mary Hopkin, one by Aztec Two-Step and another by a similar duo called Batdorf & Rodney, a weird Donovan song and one original song called "So Easy."

We left the sessions feeling exuberant. We made several reel-to-reel copies and dropped them off at the New York offices of the record labels where our musical heroes had contracts: Warner Brothers, Elektra, A & M, etc. We were as blindly confident as two 19-year olds could be.

But it didn't take long for reality to set in. Record companies are always looking for the next big thing, and singer/songwriters were on the way out by the mid 1970s.

Disco, reggae and punk were going to be the next big trends in music and fresh-faced folkies (absent strong original material, like Steve Forbert) were not getting signed. By September, the rejection form letters were coming in and we were both pissed off and amazed that the record companies did not appreciate our brilliant efforts.

But there was not much time to lick our wounds. On September 17, my guitar and I left for a semester of study in Paris. I promised my girlfriend Eina that I would be faithful and true. Suzanne and I made plans to resume our conquest of the music business when I returned.

Thirty-nine years later, the quest continues....

Faith Evans is on a high celebrating 20 years in R&B music. Yet, before executive producing the R&B Divas reality TV franchise or becoming a NY Times best-selling author, the soulful singer from Newark entered the music scene as the first female artist signed to Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs' Bad Boy label back in the early '90s. He signed her on the spot after her writing and arranging skills impressed the young hip-hop mogul. In 1995, Evans released her self-titled debut album that is often cited as her strongest body of work thanks to her angelic tone, lush harmonies and street vibe. The album produced the hit singles "You Used to Love Me," "Ain't Nobody" and "Soon As I Get Home" which helped make Faith Evans a '90s icon.

While recording her debut album she married the late rapper Notorious B.I.G and unfortunately became part of hip-hop tabloid drama that often involved other big names at the time such as Tupac and Lil' Kim. Nevertheless, Evans always proved in her music that she was much more than a media target. Like a true diva she turned negative energy into mesmerizing soul music that made audiences, as well as music peers from around the world relate to her story (especially if you saw her perform it live). Her albums are often mentioned by popular singers as inspiration. Think about it, until Faith Evans came around I don't think there were many singers layering their backing vocals quite like her. That crisp sound had everyone from Whitney Houston to DMX and Jay-Z wanting Faith Evans on their tracks.

Now, Faith Evans is busy promoting her new album rightfully titled, Incomparable due out on November 24. The lead single, "I Deserve It" features Sharaya J, the protégé of Missy Elliot who also makes a comeback in the track. While the single is certainly one for the nightclubs, it still maintains an R&B vibe that takes us millennials back to the days of listening to New York's Hot 97.1 after school. You know, back when top 40 R&B stations played songs with harmonies, strong vocals and arrangements.

In "I Deserve It" Evans gently samples "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," a song originally performed by Nina Simone and later covered by Aretha Franklin. The video directed by Derek Blanks shows the 41-year-old singer enjoying a fun night out alongside some of her famous friends. The high-energy scenes are reminiscent of her classic videos for the singles "Love Like This," "All Night Long" and "Burnin' Up."

Evans recently shared on her Instagram that she has shot the video for the next single; "Fragile" which some bloggers are saying will sample The Mamas & the Papas "California Dreaming." She has also proclaimed that "Incomparable" will be her best record. In a chat with Sway in the Morning she told the listeners that "Incomparable" is similar to her 2001 "Faithfully" release. Whatever it sounds like, we're just glad Faith Evans is still making the music we have always loved her for. Here's to another 20 years!

Let's take a look at a the collection of Faith Evans videos from over the years:

Actress Laura Regan from NBC's Constantine Talks About Her Worst Audition Ever

Oprah Winfrey Embodies What's Wrong With American Public Life

What's Stopping You From Achieving Your Dreams?

Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato on Young Love and Kissing in the Rain in "The Best Of Me"

Movie Review: Fury -- War Is Hell

The Hacker Wars Hits NYC

How Comic-Con Helped Create Fans for Disney XD's Star vs. The Forces of Evil Six Months Before Its First Episode Airs

An Open Letter to the 5 Seconds of Summer's 'Good Girls' Music Video

NBC Wonders Why Bother to Sign On

Jeff and Spencer Tweedy Talk and Perform on The Interview Show

J Boog: Hear Me Roar

The Sublime Weirdness of Nicolas Cage

Addicted's Bille Woodruff's 'Naked' Ambitions

K-Pop Pioneers: Rare Photos of the Fabulous Kim Sisters

On Raven-Symoné and Erasing Black Lesbian Identity

Season of the Witch

The Good Wife Recap: Wine, Women, and Church Songs in 'Oppo Research'

Protecting Your Heart in the Music Business

5178 Gigs: Our 40th Musical Anniversary

The Incomparable Faith Evans