Having parted ways with a major record label, John "Cougar" Mellencamp says he's not trying to sell anything anymore, reports Edna Gundersen in USA Today (8/17/10). "If people can discover my songs without having them shoved down their throats, it makes me feel good," says John, who has sold 40 million albums and scored 22 top 40 hits over his 35-year career. His latest record, called No Better Than This, features "13 rustic Americana originals" recorded on vintage, reel-to-reel machines, usually in one take.

"We played music as opposed to piecemealing a record in a studio," says John, who recorded the album at various historic locations, such as Sun Studio and the Sheraton Gunter Hotel, where Robert Johnson recorded. John is going on tour to promote the new record, but he's avoiding "the TV promotional circuit" and is unconcerned about getting radio airplay. "With every album," he says, "the question was, 'How many hits do you have on this record?' It's not a very fun road to travel." Sounds like fun to me, but John insists rock 'n' roll has had its day.

"The music is now fifth or sixth generation, and the farther you get away from the original, the worse it gets," he says. "Let's face it, the best records were made a long time ago. Those first five Rolling Stones records ... Dylan's Highway 61 is the best record ever ... Who's going to make a better pop record than the Beatles? I hear the radio today and it sounds like Saturday morning cartoons to me." And he thinks that within a couple of generations, nobody will remember anything about rock 'n' roll except "the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, maybe Jimi Hendrix." That realization, says John, "was really freeing."

Just one NBA team was interested in Ryan Reid of Florida State, and that was plenty good enough for him, reports David Biderman in the Wall Street Journal (7/14/10). The one team was the Oklahoma City Thunder, which plucked Ryan from obscurity "in the final round of last month's NBA Draft. None of the other 29 teams scouted him, analysts hadn't heard of him and local columnists ignored him."

Even Ryan, himself, was surprised: "It was just a little strange because that was the only team that showed interest," he said. But few are questioning Ryan's selection because Sam Presti made it. Sam is the Thunder's general manager, who, in just one year, turned a team that finished last in its division into one that "reached the postseason as the youngest playoff team in NBA history."

It seems Sam simply loves Ryan's aggressive style and his "tough side -- sometimes arguing with opponents" and even throwing a punch once. "He just fits our system," explains Sam. The Thunder favors "physical players who put an emphasis on defense" and so it was easy to picture Ryan "in a Thunder uniform." Ryan still has a long way to go before succeeding in the NBA, and says he doesn't mind that he's there only because one guy -- Sam Presti -- likes him. "That's fine with me," says Ryan. "All it takes is one team."

The 2003 concept album that Neil Young turned into a film is now also a graphic novel, reports George Gene Gustines in the New York Times (6/16/10). The album, Greendale, centers on a make-believe town where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average. No, wait -- it's "a story about personal responsibility, war and the environment." Published by Vertigo, a division of DC Comics, the novel features Sun Green, the great-granddaughter of Greendale founder, Jay Green.

It's called "Neil Young's Greendale," and Joshua Dysart, who collaborated with Neil Young on the storyline, describes it as "an American fable with strong supernatural elements." Neil personally recruited Cliff Chiang as the novel's illustrator after being told the artist was too busy with other projects. "I found his website, and I sent him an email telling him I was going to wait until hell froze over," says Neil, who likes Cliff's "open, clean style." Neil waited about a year and a half until Cliff was on board.

Joshua Dysart meanwhile took care to include plenty of insider references for Neil Young fans, such as "a somber funeral procession scene that features a giant Buick Roadmaster hearse," Neil's first car, which he nicknamed "Mort" and immortalized in his song, "Long May You Run." The novel may well be the first of many. "There are all kinds of things that we talked about doing that aren't in this book, that have to do with (Sun's) next episode and her story," says Neil. "These characters have been designed to last a long time."

Cornelia Guest, the socialite and actress, hopes to roll out a line of vegan cookies, reports Marshall Heyman in the Wall Street Journal (4/27/10). A vegan herself -- meaning "she doesn't eat or cook any animal products" -- Cornelia says she wasn't able to find a decent vegan cookie and so she devised her own recipe, starting with chocolate chip and continuing with oatmeal raisin. She says some of her early iterations were "rocks" but she thinks she now has a recipe that rocks.

Cornelia actually is following in the footsteps of her late mother, socialite and gardener C.Z. Guest, who "created a gardening line as well as a fragrant insect repellent." Cornelia says she has no training as a baker and did not attend business school, but she says, "I have a serious sweet tooth." She says she has no idea how many calories her vegan cookies have and only the vaguest idea of potential sales. "Millions, I hope," she says.

She does have some promotional ideas, though: "I really want my cookies to be on planes," she says. "People should be able to have a healthy snack in the air." And she has some ideas on distribution, hoping "to eventually sell to local bakeries, national retailers and health-food chains." She has a slogan, too, which is featured on the packaging: "No animals were hurt while making these cookies ... I just have a few bruises!" For now, Cornelia's cookies can be ordered online at CorneliaGuestCookies dot-com.

"Spirituality is a style, and the 'rock star' yoga teachers are the style gurus," says Mark Singleton, author of Yoga Body, in a New York Times piece by Mary Billard (4/25/10). Indeed, even though the total number of people doing yoga declined by nearly a million in the four years between 2004 and 2008, "actual spending on yoga classes and products has almost doubled in that same period, from $2.95 billion to $5.7 billion."

Yoga also certainly has its "rock star" instructors -- Rodney Yee, Baron Baptiste, David Life, Sharon Gannon and Bikram Choudhury. However, the biggest star of all may turn out to be Greg Gumucio, who ironically is rapidly growing Yoga to the People, a network of yoga studios, by eliminating the aura of big money and big stars. At Greg's studios, students typically donate what they can pay and they may not select their instructor.

Greg's essential insight -- which actually came to him courtesy of Bikram Choudhury -- is that, in yoga, students are more important than teachers and are responsible for their own experience (manifesto here). Greg estimates he gets as many as 900 students a day, packing them in, mat-to-mat, in classes of 60. "Being able to do yoga with a foot in your face, that really is a powerful practice," says Greg, who has studios in New York, San Francisco and Berkeley and may be expanding into Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The baseball commissioner thought Jim Bouton's book was "detrimental to baseball," but 40 years later Jim still thinks he simply humanized the game, reports Allen Barra in the Wall Street Journal (4/7/10). "Really, what I felt I did was capture lightning in a bottle," says Jim, whose book, Ball Four, was based on notes he wrote on scraps of paper while pitching for the Seattle Pilots in 1969. Jim had been a hot star with the Yankees, winning a total of 39 games in '63 and '64, plus two World Series victories in '64.

But then he hurt his arm and struggled through four seasons in New York before attempting his comeback with the Pilots (now the Milwaukee Brewers). His book "exposed the everyday behavior" of baseball's players, the "frustrations, depressions, infidelities, alcoholism and drug use ... with honesty and humor." He mostly wrote about marginal players, but he did include reports of Mickey Mantle's "drinking and carousing," which Jim says were "things everyone in baseball knew about but that were never discussed in public."

When the book came out, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn asked Jim "to sign a letter stating that 'Ball Four' was fiction," but Jim refused. "The funny thing is that Bowie was living in such a dream world that I think he thought most of it was fiction," says Jim, now 71. A few years later, Mickey told Jim there were no hard feelings, but 40 years on, the book remains "one of the best-selling and most influential sports books ever written," as well as one of the most controversial. Jim isn't planning any more comebacks, but he remains in demand on the speaking circuit, and "is currently putting the finishing touches on 'Ball Four: The Musical.'"

"The majesty of the act was offensive to him," says A.E. Hotchner, explaining why Paul Newman never signed autographs in a USA Today piece by Bob Minzesheimer (3/23/10). A.E. -- or Hotch as his friends call him -- is out with a new book called Paul and Me, that Hotch began writing as "notes to himself after Newman's death" in September 2008. The story goes that the two men became friends before either was famous, and both were struggling. "Paul and I were in the same boat," says Hotch. "I was trying to go beyond freelance magazine writing and Paul didn't know if he could make it as an actor."

Their connection was through Ernest Hemingway, whom Hotch met in Cuba in 1948. Hotch ended up adapting a Hemingway short story, The Battler, into a TV play. Paul originally was cast in a supporting role, but got the lead after James Dean died in a car crash. Years later, Hotch and Paul coincidentally both bought homes in Westport, Connecticut, where they famously "began a line of food products that grew from a prank by two friends with no business experience into a charity that has given away $300 million since 1982" (link).

Paul came up with "Salad King" as the brand name, but thought the better of it after fellow Westporter Martha Stewart pointed out that "kings have always put their names in their titles, like King Paul the First." To which Paul replied, "This dressing is not for royalty, it's for commoners. How about Newman's Own?" The name was left over from a restaurant idea he and Hotch had conceived, but never hatched. "I'd tend bar and you'd be the ingratiating greeter," was how Paul described the concept to Hotch. (Paul eventually did open a restaurant, the Dressing Room, which remains alive and well in Westport).

Luxury brands can make us look (and feel) good. By Cable Daniel-Dreyfus. (more)

He says he's had people question whether he's a real person, but skateboarder Tony Hawk denies that he's just a videogame character in a New York Times profile by Patricia R. Olsen (2/7/10). He also says there's "a lot of pressure associated with the title of professional skateboarder. No matter where I go," says Tony, "people expect amazing feats. If I go to a public skate park, kids will sit down and expect me to entertain them." But he says he has no regrets, even though his career path did not include going to college.

"I experienced so many things that I otherwise wouldn't have, and I was exposed to so much culture," he explains, adding: "I'm not saying everyone should skip college, but I learned so much that I feel I'm educated. When my high school classmates were trying to figure out what they were going to study, I already had a career and a house." He says he was drawn to skateboarding because he didn't "have to listen to a coach or rely on a team." Unlike baseball or basketball, he says he got better every time he skated.

Today, he has a company, Tony Hawk, Inc., with "five divisions: merchandising, endorsements, events, film and digital media." And he takes issue with "the attitude that skating professionally is a bad influence on kids or not a viable career option. I do my best to prove the naysayers wrong," he says, adding: "Several years ago I started a foundation to build free skate parks in low income areas. Kids use them from sunup to sundown. Our endorsements can help cut through the red tape in communities. So far we've had a hand in creating 450 parks."

As he seeks Olympic Gold, skater Johnny Weir is testing "the conflict inherent" in reconciling "performance and competition," reports Jere Longman in the New York Times (1/19/10). On the performance side, Johnny pretty much has a lock on things, with a style said to be "more burlesque than Bolshoi." At a recent performance, he skated "with a head-bopping playfulness" in a costume featuring a "pink shoulder tassel and Lycra corset." His skating, however, apparently was a bit less impressive.

"Not long ago, there was a balance in the contrast between the compelling, understated elegance of Weir's skating and the too-too costumes he prefers," wrote Philip Hersh in the Chicago Tribune. "That balance has tipped toward shtick," he added. But Johnny sees it differently: "My obligation has always been to bring the artistic side of my sport out. Jumps are jumps, and everybody can do those jumps. But not everybody can show something wonderful and special and unique and different."

Former Olympic skating champ Scott Hamilton agrees: "What he might be suffering from is one of my favorite things about figure skating -- shameless self-promotion ... I did it for 30 years. It depends on how you do it. It can rub some people the wrong way." However, as another former champ, Brian Boitano notes, "You have to be a champion to be a star." And Johnny's performances reportedly can be "curiously remote and lacking in energy and speed." While this might concern the judges, Johnny doesn't seem worried. "My costume looked pretty," he said.