Legendary film director Oliver Stone was in Normal, Illinois, this evening to promote his current Showtime series and companion book, The Untold History of the United States, at Illinois State University.

The Academy-award winning director stopped to sign his book, along with his co-author, Peter Kuznick, upon arrival in Bloomington-Normal. He was excited to see I had the book. While signing the book next to the Adlai Stevenson statue seat, he mentioned he was hungry after two flights today. I told him the folks at ISU would probably take care of him, to which he responded with his wide grin, "What are they going to feed me? Corn on the cob? Meat loaf?"

Here are the first two celebrity photos for 2013.


Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter Marc Cohn was in concert last evening at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts. Cohn stopped for the photo and some autographs upon his return to the venue following dinner. In addition to a couple of 8 x 10s, he signed a rare promo CD single of Silver Thunderbird, the follow-up single to his biggest hit, Walking in Memphis. Silver Thunderbird is one of my favorite tunes.


Here's last night's opener for Cohn, British actress-singer-songwriter Rebecca Pidgeon. Pidgeon, who has appeared in such films as The Spanish Prisoner, The Winslow Boy, State and Main, Heist, and Red, met fans in the lobby following the show. She signed her Grammy-nominated CD and some movie stills for the collection. Her husband is a pretty famous guy too. He's playwright-director-writer David Mamet.

Here's the last celebrity photo for 2012 taken on the year's last day.



CNN's John Zarrella was setting up for his first live shot on Duvall Street in Key West, Florida, when I walked by in search for an evening meal (I was in Key West for vacation). Zarrella has been CNN's correspondent in Key West for the past ten New Year's Eve celebrations. We exchanged small talk and he asked me to stick around for an upcoming live shot which turned out to be during "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer. He asked me where I was from and a little bit about the weather back home. I also included a "shout out" to Blitzer telling him what an honor it was to be in "The Situation Room." Zarella said Blitzer got a chuckle from my comment.