Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
A resident of Woodstock, Conn., Caroll Spinney also spends time on the Upper West Side of New York when he films “Sesame Street.” Since 1969, he has been the puppeteer inside the Big Bird costume. Spinney, 81, said it has been fun playing such a famous character without being recognized himself.
Of the first overseas trip he made with the Ramones in 1976, Marky Ramone says, “We were with Richard Hell and toured with the Clash. It was great. London was everything that I had thought it would be. It was like what we had seen on TV, postcards and the movies.”
“For me growing up, the night sky was at the local planetarium,” says astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who resides in New York. “There’s no other way I would’ve been able to see it.” Laughing, he adds, “I want to write a novel one day where the plot will include a group of amateur astronomers. During a blackout that always seems to happen in big cities, people will go outside and be forced to look up to really see the night sky for the first time.”
Actress Brooke Burns says her ideal vacation would be to head to “Africa for a month. I’ve been for about 10 days and it wasn’t enough time. Being out on safari takes you to another time. I would love to do that and marry the trip with some significant time on the islands east of Africa. Mauritius. Seychelles.”
In each episode of “Breaking Borders,” journalist Mariana van Zeller and celebrity chef Michael Voltaggio travels to a different country and reports on the differences — and similarities — of various cultures.
My mother doesn’t like overly sweet desserts. So, for her birthday, I made this delicious Matcha (Green Tea) cake. It tastes like the ones I used to buy from the Japanese bakeries. Honestly? I may even like my version a little better.
“There is nothing I love more than to travel,” says actress Bellamy Young, who portrays the first lady of the United States of America, Melody Grant, on the ABC drama “Scandal.” “I want to see everything before my hips stop working. If I had two months off, I would work my way right around the world. That’s what I would do. I always have a spinning kind of globe in my house and have been really lucky to have visited a lot of places around the world. But there’s still so much more out there that I want to see.”
Salvador Paskowitz is the screenwriter for new film “The Age of Adaline,” which stars Blake Lively and Harrison Ford. If he were to script his own past, he couldn’t have made up his fascinating family background, he says. Raised by bohemian parents, Salvador and his siblings were raised in a camper on a beach in Southern California. His father — the late Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz — had given up his career as a physician to become a surfer.
“When I was young we didn’t have a lot of money, so we didn’t take fancy vacations,” says “American Pie” and “Scorpion” actor Eddie Kaye Thomas. “But we made little local trips that were so much fun. We used to drive to Philadelphia. I have fond memories of being a little kid who loved revolutionary history and getting to see battlefields and all that stuff. It was a really easy, inexpensive trip for our family and I remember it as being really, really fun!”
I like to pretend that I’m a semi-adventurous eater,” says “Wonder Years” actor Jason Hervey. “But then I get abroad and when it comes right down to it, I’m absolutely most content eating American-style food.”
James Wilder may best be known for his acting skills (“Melrose Place,” “Murder One,” “Equal Justice”), but he’s also an architect and designer whose work was featured on HGTV. Wilder designs leather jackets. And he can still juggle things on fire, like he used to when he was a teenage street performer. Wilder, 46, costars in the upcoming indie thriller “3 Holes and a Smoking Gun.”
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Page Kennedy is based out of Los Angeles these days, though he has spent a good chunk of time filming in Canada. “I really like Canada,” says Kennedy, 38. “I was most recently in Vancouver in the summer filming ‘Backstrom.’ There’s so much to do. They had the Shakespeare Festival, which was a lot of fun. The water was beautiful and the architecture was really pretty. You don’t see buildings like that in Los Angeles.”
“There’s one scene that explains it best,” says “Dig” actor Ori Pfeffer. “The walk to the apartment was shot in Jerusalem, inside the apartment was shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and exiting the apartment was then shot in Dubrovnik, Croatia. I believe it’s hard to beat a scene that was shot in three different continents! It’s pretty crazy and fun at the same time.”
• At 4, I wondered what a chink bitch was.
• At 5, I came home from kindergarten singing, “Chink-a-chink-a Chinaman, sitting on a fence.”
• At 6, I watched in horror as a blond boy called my father a motherfucking gook.
“When I was 11, I went to Puerto Rico for a month to stay with my grandmother,” says Andrea Navedo of “Jane the Virgin.” “To see the way people lived there and experience my own culture was wonderful. It helped give me insight into my own cultural identity. I remember that the food and coffee there was amazing.”
“I always travel with one book,” says “Suits” star Patrick J. Adams. “I’ll read it and then leave it for someone else, and take another book. I bring a notebook or a journal and my computer, so that I can go through my photos. And a couple of cameras. That’s it.”
“We started traveling almost immediately with our kids and we’re aware that sometime we’re ‘that family’ and you feel bad for the other passengers,” says “Better Call Saul” actor Patrick Fabian. “When we traveled to Fiji, my youngest was beside herself! It was an 11-hour flight that started at 11 at night. By 1 a.m., she was having a meltdown. There’s nothing you can do. I was lucky we were with family and we took turns holding her and trying to console here. But there are not enough lollipops and iPads to help at that point.”
“When I played football in school, I took academics very seriously,” says former NFL running back Thomas Q. Jones, who’s now an actor. “If I didn’t get A’s and B’s, I couldn’t play sports. I was an honor roll student and graduated from university in three years. My parents didn’t push sports. They wanted us to do well in school.”
“The only thing I have been longer in my life than a ‘Brady’ is a surfer,” says Barry Williams, who played Greg on “The Brady Bunch.” “So, when visiting the Hawaiian islands, my activities are, surf, beach, rest, sleep and eat.”
“Wild Card” actress Dominik Garcia-Lorido remembers spending time in Italy while her father, Andy Garcia, filmed “The Godfather: Part III”: “I still remember the school I went to and what the hallway looked like, what our house was like and all that. I went to an American school, so I didn’t learn to speak Italian, which is a shame. But, Italy is still my favorite place to go.”