I was having lunch today with my two girlfriends- Tory and Jennifer- in the patio of The Belmont.  We were actually pretty deep into conversation until... in walks this really beautiful, very pale, tall and skinny girl with a really really shaggy short hair cut that was uber sexy and messy- sorta almost shaved.  She had these enormous impressive tattoos on every single area of her body including engravings going along the upside of the back of her neck, crawling their way up onto the back of her head.  Nice!

Idina Menzel, with the nickname "Dee", is known for her performance on Broadway's WICKED. The 5' 4" star won Broadway's 2004 Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical for her role as "Elphaba", the Wicked Witch of the West in the critically-acclaimed musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman that was based upon the popular 1995 Gregory Maguire novel.

Menzel (her last name was originally spelled "Mentzel" but she decided to take the T out because everyone pronounced it incorrectly) was born on May 30, 1971, in Long Island New York and was named after her grandmother Ida. Her name Idina in Hebrew means "gentle", but gentle doesn't quite describe the dynamics of her vocals. Menzel holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. I watched a previous televised interview of her and decided that I wanted to interview with her myself. She was such a spark to watch. I enjoyed the way she spoke of her father being a pajama salesman and how he'd always joke that KMart and Target paid her way through college.

She has such an amazingly powerful and distinctive voice that is extremely hard to miss. Whenever she performs, she becomes the main focus on or off the stage, and people are drawn to her dynamically. Her key to a successful voice, she says, is that she continuously takes vocal lessons and work hard. She also made sure to mention that she has to constantly stay on her toes about her voice, "the older
you get, the harder it is for you to sing like that." She let me in on her secret for a wonderful stage worthy voice, "During WICKED, I'd sit in the shower in my dressing room for a half hour and sing. You know, singing in the shower. That's how I warmed up before getting on stage."

A friend of mine, about a year ago, broke up with her fiancé the morning of their wedding because he had done naughty things at his bachelor party the night before. You would have never in a million years guessed that these two would have ever ended because they seemed to have been a match made in heaven. The warmth in the way they looked at each other was enough to melt the coldest of hearts! Their love was simply amazing. She was so happy.

How this could have happened, I don't know. But it was a tragedy- for the both of them. Anyway, she ran out in tears, ripping her train and all, and without returning her ring. Well, it took her until this year to decide that she would never return it.

But she isn't the only one carrying around a rock in her Dooney & Bourke Clutch. After their Bachelor breakups, these ladies refused to return their rocks...

This morning I was racing from the bathroom with the shower going and my radio blasting and absentmindedly forgot that I'd left a box of old CD's on the table in the hallway.  So, as I whipped past the table, and trying to avoid it, I accidentally rammed my foot against the door, tripped and went crashing smack dead hip first into the table sending my box of discs flying everywhere.  What's worse is that most of the CD's took flight out of their cases along their way to the floor.  Grumbling (and muttering a few unpleasantries the whole time), I bent over to retrieve them and guess which CD pops out?  Yep, you guessed right, "DIRRTY ".  I cannot believe I STILL have this album from like a decade (well, seems like it!) ago.

Anyway, stumbling across this album reminded me of my dirty days, and especially reminded me of that interview with Christina Aguilera, posing nude (and very-pregnant) in a former issue of Marie Claire.