Issue Date: November 4, 2001
You noted in your birthday list recently that Jonathan Taylor Thomas was turning 20. Please fill us in on what's become of him since "Home Improvement". Also, is there any truth to the rumor that he's gay?
Stefan Martin, Oakland, Calif.
A few movie roles seem to have fueled that idea. Taylor, now a sophomore at Harvard, confronted it directly in "The Advocate", a national magazine whose target audience is gay, saying: "It was just a blatant lie put on the Internet, and then it was just like a feeding frenzy. And I'm sure it was validated by my recent roles." The movies he's talking about included a Showtime trilogy, "Common Ground", about small-town gay life, and the 1999 drama "Speedway Junky", a limited-release film in which J.T.T., as his teenage admirers like to call him, played a bisexual hustler. Although he left the wholesome "Home Improvement" a year before its final season so he could prepare for college, Taylor obviously has acted a good bit. No new movies are in the works, however.
Janet Dailey is my favorite author, but if she has put out any new books in recent years, I missed them. What's next, and when?
Ginny Ruffenach, Elk River, Minn.
She's as prolific as ever, Ginny. You must have missed "Calder Pride" in 1999. And just last month "A Capital Holiday", the first book in a four-book deal with Kensington Publishing, hit stores, quickly rising high on best-seller lists. As if that weren't enough, come January a three-story anthology with fellow authors Sandra Steffen and Kylie Adams, "The Only Thing Better Than Chocolate", will be published, and another in the Calder saga is due next July. Still, you're right that Dailey, 57, doesn't write as much as when she began in 1976. "She's been concentrating on the bigger books," says publicist Joan Schulhafer. Besides, after more than 90 books in 25 years, Dailey can stand to relax a little at the Branson, Mo., home she shares with her husband/manager, Bill Dailey.
I read that actress Leelee Sobieski is going to college, but she's had three movies out recently. Is she working or studying?
Jennifer Tillman, Denver
Studying. Sobieski, 19, is adjusting to freshman life at Brown University. "It's a lot of work," she tells us, but she's focused and expects to major in "something to do with fine arts." Her recent movies, "Joy Ride", "The Glass House" and "My First Mister", were finished before she headed to school, as was "Uprising", an NBC miniseries airing Sunday and Monday. She plays a Jewish resistance fighter in World War II. When it was filmed last year, no one could have anticipated parallels between WWII and today's fight against terrorism, but among the questions it raises is how moral people can make moral choices in an immoral world. "I don't know," Sobieski says. "It's difficult to describe in a human language any inhumane circumstance."
What ever happened to Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by police led to the deadly 1992 Los Angeles riots?
M.K. Walsh, Los Angeles
"He just wants to live a normal, quiet life," one of King's lawyers has said about her client. Yet he can't seem to stay out of court. Since that 1991 beating and his civil lawsuit against the LAPD, in which he won $3.8 million, King, 36, has been arrested on a string of charges involving alcohol, drugs and domestic violence. At press time, the latest was Oct. 14, when he was arrested in Pomona, Calif., east of L.A., for being under the influence of a controlled substance. He failed a sobriety test, then was taken to a hospital for treatment before he was booked. It was the third time in six weeks police picked up King. On both Sept. 29 and Aug. 28 he was arrested for being under the influence of PCP. He pleaded not guilty in the August incident and is due in court this week on the September charges, which also included indecent exposure.
Tell me more about Esai Morales, who entered the "NYPD Blue" station house last season. Has he been on other shows?
Cameron Brooks, Chicago
The new Blue boss also can be seen on Showtime's "Resurrection Blvd". Some remember him best from the 1987 movie "La Bamba", in which he played the brother of Ritchie Valens (Lou Diamond Phillips). A Brooklyn native of Puerto Rican descent, Morales, 39, who is single, is a founding member of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts; he actively seeks a higher profile for Hispanics in entertainment. Watch for his major star turn when "Blue" returns Tuesday at its new time, 9 p.m. ET.
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Alex Shakar, whose first novel, "The Savage Girl", is now in stores, may be a voice for the post-Gen X generation. In his look at the dark side of consumerism and following trends, Shakar, 33, invents "paradessence" -- the paradoxical essence of a product that makes it hot. Coffee, for instance, is a stimulant that we use to relax. "For me, consumerism is funny and terrifying, in equal parts," says Shakar, whose fictional trend spotters -- part philosophers, part marketeers -- were developed from real-life experience. "A couple came up to me in a coffee shop one day and asked what stores I shopped at and what my worldview was. Then they said they liked my shoes." Little did they know Shakar sees a schizophrenic culture, one that "gives us glamour and squalor," a world "so beautiful and so horrific" one can't envision both at the same time. But then, somehow, he manages to do just that.
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BIRTHDAYS
November 4: Sean Combs, 32; Matthew McConaughey, 32; Walter Cronkite, 85
November 5: Bryan Adams, 42; Sam Shepard, 58
November 6: Thandie Newton, 29; Ethan Hawke, 31; Maria Shriver, 46; Sally Field, 55
November 7: Jason London, 29; Jeremy London, 29; Billy Graham, 83
November 8: Jason Williams, 26; Parker Posey, 33; Alfre Woodard, 48; Bonnie Raitt, 52
November 9: Sisqo, 26
November 10: Sinbad, 45
 Ask Lorrie Lynch a question about a celeb!
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