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.

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta -- that's Lady Gaga, to you -- was predicted by Andy Warhol, who died a year after she was born, reports Guy Trebay in the New York Times (12/27/09). What Andy predicted, in "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol," was "new categories of people" created from "parts" of other people. This would liberate fans from idolizing a "whole person," instead just picking and choosing the parts they like. That's what Lady Gaga does as she "subjects herself to a real-time version of Photoshop."

As Guy writes: "Lady Gaga is rigged for that stardom: her persona is an amalgam of surfaces, faceted, though not truly 3-D, addictive in the way videogames are ... Like an emissary from a parallel world familiar to Second Life types, she is a real-life avatar." She "makes no bones about assimilating the lessons of celebrities who built careers by tapping into the talents of other and even larger talents ... But her singular innovation on the sincerest form of flattery has been to barge right past imitation to outright larceny."

Her "inspirations" are said to include Leigh Bowery, Grace Jones and David Bowie, among others. "She imagines the clothes she will wear to perform her songs as she is writing them." The bottom line is, Billboard listed her as the number-three top artist of the year, and "her name is among those most often searched on the web. But the voice without the package would equal a novelty act in a Singapore hotel lounge ... and lest anyone fail to see that the package is the message, she makes it a point to go out now and then with her hair styled in a gigantic blonde bow (image)."

The first thing James Brown said was, "This smells like a music store," reports Ralph Blumenthal in the New York Times (10/13/09). Richard Turk, whose father founded the Colony Record and Radio Center in the Brill Building, still isn't absolutely sure what James meant. "I guess he meant you could feel the history, the presence of great musicians of the past." Richard has a half-century's worth of such memories.

When he was just eight, he remembers seeing Miles Davis playing trumpet outside the store. He'd see Irving Berlin, standing across the street, with a cup of coffee and a cigar. He remembers Jimi Hendrix coming into the store, needing rent money, and cashing out his turntable for $30. "I still remember it," says Richard. "KLH." Back in the 70s he's open the store exclusively on Sundays for Elton John. "He walked around with Mr. Universe as his bodyguard," says Richard. Michael Jackson "loved hanging out, buying tchotchkes."

Richard says his top sellers are "vinyl and sheet music" and that he sells "more sheet music than records." He doesn't have a big staff, but when he hires he looks "for personality, then knowledge." One employee is 40 years old, knows everything about Sinatra, and lives with his mother. "That's the guy I want," says Richard. His biggest complaint is that "megastores put the character stores out of business ... You ask for Billie Holiday," says Richard, "and they show you the male vocal section."

Oh, not Mary Travers now, too. And Henry Gibson! Actually, even though 2009 may be remembered for its Summer of Death, there were no more celebrity passings than usual, reports Sarah Kershaw in the New York Times (9/17/09). It's probably just that the season started off with a bang, and just kept whimpering. I mean, Bob Bogle for crying out loud. But it's also because so many baby boomer icons bit the dust over the summer -- really more a matter of who died than how many.

"Many of them are people I looked up to, like one does with authorities or parents," says Michael Bader, a psychologist. "But that means my generation -- me -- is next. We're up at the plate, not on deck. That's unnerving. It's like they blocked our view of the edge of the cliff and with them gone, it's all too clear." But it's not just the boomers gently weeping. "It's the ebbing of figures who have a wide enough span of appreciation and admiration so they appeal to significant numbers of people, like incarnations of virtue," says Todd Gitlin, author of "The Sixties."

Lou Ferrera of the Associated Press agrees that they just don't make celebrities like they used to. For example, the late Adam Goldstein (aka DJ AM) was celebrity mainly because he was "a D.J. who hung around certain people, dated certain people, became a celebrity. We probably didn't have that 10 years ago or even five years ago." Marc Freedman, author of Prime Time, meanwhile sees an upside here, suggesting that the sense of mortality may create a surge in do-gooderism, especially among boomers concerned about their legacies. Time is short: "Going by actuarial tables, the boomers, now age 45 to 63, can expect to live to age 83."

By the time Jimi Hendrix got to Woodstock, the half a million there were down to about 30,000 and only two overheated cameras were still working, reports Michael Ventre on msnbc.com (8/10/09). "You can leave if you want to," Jimi told the muddy faithful. "We're just jammin', that's all." It was 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, and Jimi was supposed to have closed the festival at midnight the night before. But he wanted to wait and watch the other acts, including Sha Na Na, who went on just before him.

He opened with some favorites, like "Red House," "Foxy Lady" and Voodoo Child. And then, after a free-form interlude, Jimi, a veteran of the 101st Airborne, "launched into his now-famous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner (video). "The jarring, uplifting, haunting, energizing anthem was done at times in straight single notes, but the entire song is spiced with trademark Hendrix innovations, especially the use of amplifier feedback, sometimes to convey the sounds of war -- bombs falling, jets overhead, perhaps even the cries of human anguish."

He and his band were so loud that Michael Wadley, who was filming, "couldn't hear if the camera motor was working or not." As he recalls: "I looked out with one eye and saw people grabbing their heads, so ecstatic, so stunned and moved, a lot of people holding their breath, including me." The song naturally also stirred controversy, but when Dick Cavett asked him about that, Jimi said, "I don't know man. All I did was play it. I'm an American, so I played it ... I didn't think it was unorthodox ... I thought it was beautiful.

Woodstock's forgotten man is Bert Sommer, who sang 10 songs at the legendary festival but was cut from the movie and the album, reports Jim Fusilli in the Wall Street Journal (8/6/09). Bert's set, which Jim says was "the best of the festival's first day," included a cover of Paul Simon's "America" that got him a standing ovation. He performed "seated cross-legged on the stage wearing a placid expression and a green headband, "his frizzy shock of dark hair, blue eyes, wide smile and dimpled chin ... seemed an embodiment of the ideal hippie youth" (video).

"Everybody was absolutely, positively sure Bert was going to make it," says Victor Kahn, a friend of Bert's who saw his performance that day. After all, Richie Havens, Santana, Melanie and Ten Years After -- all relative unknowns at the time -- became famous after Woodstock. But for Bert, it was not to be. The story was that had gotten the gig through Artie Kornfeld, his champion at Capitol Records. Artie had since left Capitol, but put on the festival with a partner, Michael Lang.

The problem was that, after the festival, Artie and Michael sold the rights to their partners, who then sold them to Warner Brothers. When the album and movie came out, Bert was omitted. Artie says it was because Bert was signed to Capitol, a competitor. "He was devastated," says Artie. "Here was the most famous event in the world and he's not getting any credit for it." Bert bumped around for years afterward, joining the cast of Hair, making records, and even performing on a children's TV show about a fictional band, "Kaptain Kool and the Kongs." He died of liver failure in 1990. You can hear his music online, at bertsommer.com.

David Beckham "longed to conquer mythic America in the way the Beatles had in the 1960s," but ultimately "brought a patronizing attitude to American soccer," writes Michael MacCambridge in a Wall Street Journal review of "The Beckham Experiment," by Grant Wahl. Two years ago, when Beckham signed a five-year contract with the Los Angeles galaxy, he and his wife, Posh Spice, "were greeted by hundreds of paparazzi and nearly as many A-list friends upon their arrival in Beverly Hills."

Some "700 media credentials were issued for his introductory press conference" and "his mere presence led to sell-out crowds throughout Major League Soccer." But the idea that David Beckham could "carry soccer to the center of the American sporting consciousness ... ran into problems almost instantly." First, he "was injured for much of the 2007 season, and ... Nielsen ratings for MLS matches returned to microscopic levels, losing out to softball games and Scrabble tournaments."

A "culture clash" within the club compounded problems. While Beckham was pulling down $50 million a year, his teammates were "making $30,000 or less." Then there was the ego clash with his fellow star on the team, "the high-revving, somewhat thin-skinned Landon Donovan," who questions Beckham's "leadership, professionalism and sincerity." Basically, Beckham's version of a British invasion "has been a cautionary tale of hubris and mismanagement, cultural miscommunication, and the ineluctable truth that, in true sports, there is no script."

"The challenge with Eddie is that you have to put his brand on the right tin can," says Hollywood consultant James Ulmer in a New York Times piece by Brooks Barnes (6/25/09). With any luck, it's a tin can in a fat suit. For whatever reason, Eddie Murphy remains one of Hollywood's most bankable stars, largely because of his overseas and DVD appeal, even though he flops spectacularly at the box office with eye-popping frequency. At the moment, he's riding on two big flops in a row, and appears headed for a third disaster.

As Rick Bentley of the Fresno Bee put it, "If Eddie Murphy's career were an injured horse, it would be shot and the carcass buried in the remotest part of the desert to ensure no one ever stumbled upon it." Perhaps his most memorable bomb was The Adventures of Pluto Nash, a 2002 film that "cost about $100 million to make but only sold about $7 million worldwide in tickets." And yet, he "is still considered Hollywood royalty," mainly because the studios know his potential for success is huge.

"He is explosive, given the right project, the right circumstances, the right concept, the right director," says Jeffrey Katzenberg. In other words, as James Ulmer, explains: "His audiences are very straightjacketed in their expectations of him, and by that I mostly mean fat suit, fat suit, fat suit." Hollywood types also know "that big-time comedy careers are often volatile," and " a few misses are considered normal." Next up for Eddie Murphy is A Thousand Words, a "comedic drama about a fast-talking agent who realizes he only has 1,000 words left to utter before he dies" and is then buried in the remotest part of the desert ...