‘Dead Celebrity’ chef and author Frank DeCaro says his series’s latest incarnation is about spreading the love for deceased entertainers through their favorite foods — with a holiday twist.  

The Protagonist does not shy away from dark and morbid content, which is why my ears perked when I heard about comedic entertainer Frank DeCaro’s Dead Celebrity Cookbook series.

DeCaro emphasizes, however, the series is more about promoting great performers than capitalizing on their deaths, a shock-value title or even the very recipes themselves.

DeCaro said he’s regularly frustrated at the younger generation’s lack of awareness about some of entertainment’s greatest deceased stars. He sees his project as a “spoonful of sugar” in making sure certain important names are remembered well after their time.

“I wanted to be able to pass along some pop culture history and so that was part of it,” he said, of the series’s origin. “You need to know who these people are — if Lady Gaga can know who Liberace is, so can you.”

“If a show meant a lot to me, I’d slip in a recipe,” he explained. “Even if it only had one deceased star.”

I asked DeCaro if including a recently deceased performer ever struck him as taboo or if his books garnered any negative reactions for their grimness.

“Once they go, I want to get them in the book,” he added, emphasizing it’s never “too soon,” especially since his series is all about paying tribute. The reactions from readers have been overwhelmingly positive as well. “Joey Arias was so happy I included Klaus Nomi,” he said. “Everyone in the book is someone I admire.”

Following the success of the original Dead Celebrity Cookbook, DeCaro is releasing The Dead Celebrity Cookbook Presents Christmas in Tinseltown: Celebrity Recipes from Six Feet Under the Mistletoe just in time for the holidays.

The holiday edition will feature recipes from stars who have passed, like Dick Clark, Robert Mitchum and several recipes from Miracle on 34th Street actors. DeCaro said the film was a jackpot in terms of celebrity recipes.

As evidence this book is largely about paying homage to entertainment greats and little else, DeCaro concedes some of the recipes are actually downright disastrous. A few of the recipes’ names are even a giveaway to this end, such as Lucille Ball’s “Chinese-y thing.” (Just because you’re a great entertainer, doesn’t mean you’re a great cook or culinary innovator.)

“The recipe I always make fun of is Isabel Sanford’s Boston Chicken,” said DeCaro. The recipe’s sauce calls for Russian dressing, onion soup mix, pineapple and apricot jam.

“We call it Chicken a la Barf,” said DeCaro. He assured me it didn’t change his love for Isabel Sanford.

If anything, hopefully DeCaro’s book can humanize these stars a bit for readers too.

“There’s a recipe in the new book that’s just downright creepy,” added DeCaro, describing something like jelly consomme flakes in avocado. He made a retching noise over the phone as he described the recipe, and I was right there with him.

“But I love me some Bea Arthur,” he continued. “Even if you don’t try that recipe, you certainly need to watch the bootleg Star Wars holiday special.”

Of course the series also has its major culinary successes. One consistent favorite is Katharine Hepburn’s brownies from the original book.

“You don’t really want to eat Elvis’s peanut-butter-bacon-whatever,” DeCaro pointed out, “but people always say ‘make those [brownies] again.’”

Check out Frank DeCaro’s books for yourself: www.deadcelebritycookbook.com

Tricia Donegan coaxes inspired poses and generosity out of her local yoga enthusiasts

By Sophia Rosenbaum

Yoga studios in New York are as common as pizza joints, but there’s a reason Lady Gaga chose Tricia Donegan to be her yoga instructor.

Donegan, 42, is a burst of energy with a toned physique adorned with tattoos and a mess of curly, multi-colored hair. She’s the owner of Bikram Yoga Lower East Side—a walk-up studio with cases of water bottles lining the stairwell, pops of pink paint from the floor to the ceiling and people dripping in sweat from the 107-degree yoga room.

With a team of 15 other instructors, Bikram Yoga LES offers six classes a day, seven days a week. Monty Stilson, 54, has been taking classes at Bikram Yoga LES for more than a year and said the only negative part is all the laundry.

“Tricia truly has a gift to deliver the perfect balance of wit and wisdom, all the while coaxing the body into never-realized positions and undreamed feats of strength,” Stilson said.

Donegan’s yoga business is just one of her many ventures. She is also a Lower East Side community activist and a mother of a 5-year-old daughter, Lula.

“I’m here to change the world,” she said. “I build communities wherever I go.”

Donegan was born in Michigan and moved to New York City in 2001. Prior to her career as a yoga instructor, she worked as a restaurant owner in Atlanta. Although she loved the restaurant business and being a community activist in Atlanta, she feels much more at home in her yoga space at 172 Allen St.

“Everyone who comes to the yoga studio is trying to empower themselves or better themselves in some way,” she said. “This is a true well-being destination for people, so it becomes this safe haven for people to come and let go of themselves.”

For more than a decade, Donegan has been teaching Bikram yoga, or hot yoga, which is a series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises in high-heat, high-humidity rooms. While Bikram originated in the early 1970s, it has became popular in the United States in the past decade.
Donegan said the heat forces students to focus on their bodies and push themselves more than a regular exercise class.

“It’s sort of like spaghetti,” she said. “If you try to bend cold spaghetti, it breaks. But when you put it in the water, you can do whatever you want with it.”

Tamara Pollack, Donegan’s life partner, said part of what makes Donegan talented are her interpersonal skills and her deep understanding of yoga.

“She won’t tell you to blindly push into a locked knee, she won’t just coach you into a deeper backbend,” she said. “Instead she will empower you in your weakness and lead you toward your strengths. She wants to see you try, and once you enter her hot room, that’s all you want to do.”
Four years ago, Donegan created a class that combined her love of yoga with her passion for community engagement. Nite Sweats is a donation-based class that’s offered the first Friday of every month.

The proceeds go to the Lower East Side Girls Club, which counts Donegan among its board members. The Club serves girls and young women from ages 8 to 23, teaching them the importance of education, healthy eating and equality.

“We’re not just babysitting girls from the projects,” Donegan said. “We’re giving them power.”
Donegan said Nite Sweats rakes in about $1,000 a month for the Girls Club.

“Tricia Donegan’s luminous and infectious presence enriches our community in boundless ways,” said Lyn Pentecost, the visionary behind the Girls Club. “She lives, works and runs her unique business on the Lower East Side and sends her daughter to school on the Lower East Side. One can’t get more ‘community’ than that.”

And while Donegan rarely leaves the neighborhood, she frequently goes on tour with Lady Gaga as her fitness instructor. She said she’s proud of her accomplishments in life thus far, but attributes most of her success to yoga.

“I have so many ideas, I have so much energy and it wasn’t until I slowed my head down with yoga that I realized why I am here,” she said. “Once you get real precise, then your dreams come and chase you.”

A new queen has been crowned. After two rounds of semifinals and a final round on the evening of Nov. 13, the judges of Our Town’s Karaoke Idol event picked a winner.

All three events took place at the dinner clubs Lips. As the clock approached contest start time at 9:30, the crowd grew and the judges convened: Lee Evans, an award-winning producer; Carol Henning, a performer from Tandava Arts; and Paula Liscio, an opera singer and vocal coach.
Nicole Ortiz launched the competition with a soulful rendition of “I’m Every Woman,” but it was her second number, “I Will Always Love You,” that gave goosebumps to everyone and earned her a standing ovation.

Host Blackie O put it well, saying, “I feel as though Whitney Houston rose from the grave, put clothes on and performed for us tonight.”

Claudio Lake looked stunning and festive in his finale outfit, complete with matching blue hair and pants, but the judges felt that his song choices weren’t the best.

Our BBBBBD (Big Beautiful Black Broadway Bound Diva) Natalie Randall thrilled the house with her first number, “I Love You I Do,” but her second performance was marred by a technical glitch that prevented her from seeing the lyrics. She was comforted by the judges’ comments that she handled the mishap like a pro.

Thinking out of the pop-and-rock box, Maggie De Silva sang Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and a country ballad from Faith Hill, “Like We Never Loved at All.” When complimented by the judges on how glamorous she looked, Maggie replied she was trying to keep up with Blackie O. Later, Blackie O pointed out to her that it was no competition because what we were seeing in her own case was a result of tons of make-up and having to shave all over. To which Maggie (an RG, or real girl, in drag-queen parlance) wittily replied, “I do the same thing, too.” That brought raucous laughter from the audience.

Despite the dramatic ending to his second song “So Amazing” by Luther Vandross, the judges lamented that the Mike Vocalz that wowed them in the first preliminary just wasn’t there that night.
Lauren Abrami brought sexy to the contest with her almost X-rated performance of “Bad Romance,” with the mic stand sometimes doubling as a stripper pole. It was her rendition of Pink’s “Nobody Knows” that was most impressive, as she tackled the wide octave range of the song with ease.

The judges took a long time to deliberate, explaining that “blood is at stake.” Ultimately, Nicole Ortiz won the title of Karaoke Idol and $1,000. A very close second was runner-up Lauren Abrami, who won $500. Both get recording studio time as well.

With the winners & the other finalists still onstage, flanked by all of the Lips performers, Blackie O concluded Karaoke Idol 2012. So much fun, excitement and enjoyment was had by everyone, nobody was ready to leave.

Kristine Keller & Marisa Polansky

Downtown doesn’t really need a designated day devoted to dressing like Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga or Danny Zuko, but just because we don’t need it doesn’t mean we won’t embrace it. It’s human nature to dream of being someone else entirely. The popularity of Halloween isn’t the candy, the creepy or even the costumes. It’s the freedom we acquire from shedding the old and becoming the new.

One night, tired of looking at our white walls and inspired by Penélope Cruz’s infectiously bold performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, we interpreted Jackson Pollock through wide and talentless fingers and threw paint at our walls. The next morning, we wordlessly and collectively decided the only thing worth keeping from the night before was our memories.

At Home Depot, in the midst of choosing between eggshell and sand, a plucky associate checked our paint-stained hands and said, “Painters huh? Let me show you where we keep our good brushes.” We purchased an entire set. We knew, of course, that one painting does not a painter make, but something about having this stranger believe it made us believe it. If only for a moment. Halloween is like that moment 1,440 times in a row.

As many a good parent would say, the only thing that matters is what you think about you. However, as many a person living in the real world would say, what other people think about you matters a whole hell of a lot. Just ask the participants of the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment. The study made a roar in the ’70s when social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo selected 24 psychologically healthy males and randomly assigned half to play the role of “prisoner” and the other half to play the role of “guard” in a simulated prison.

Though there were no discernible differences between the two groups of participants before the study, once they were administered labels and costumes and placed in a prison context, their fictitious entities soon became a frightening reality. The guards took their position to the extreme and showed a flagrant disregard for the rights of the prisoners with verbal assaults, public humiliation and a total lack of scruples. In concordance, the prisoners succumbed to their new roles as well. Each prisoner was stripped of their birth name and only given an ID number to be used throughout the study—prisoners became emotionally drained and riots ensued. The study was terminated after only six days.

Though the experiment raised eyebrows and ethical concerns everywhere, it brought forth a powerful notion: the theory of deindividuation. This theory is usually used to describe the feeling of anonymity and loss of self-identity that individuals take on when given a certain label or name in the context of a sizable group. When placed in a group setting, individuals are less accountable for their actions and have the opportunity to relish behaviors that they would not have ordinarily been able to commit.

On All Hallow’s Eve, deindividuation occurs the moment you put on your Native American headdress and do a synchronized dance next to a construction worker and policeman. With the right costume and attitude, anyone has the opportunity to become who they’ve always wanted to be, whether it’s a painter, prisoner, princess or president. Not only do you get to dress like a fantasy, but your behaviors, actions and emotions are predicated on that new idea of yourself. This new identity gives the identifier the courage and ammunition to behave the way the costume necessitates. Moreover, the more we are treated like a naughty secretary, Michele Bachmann or a WWE wrestler, the more we will inhabit that persona.

In previous years, we’ve witnessed witches fly, cheerleaders shout affirmations and sailors open doors, but we can’t help but wonder if it’s not just the magic of Halloween but rather, the magic of New York City. After all, there is no place better suited for maintaining your anonymity than the 917. Freedom comes from reinvention and the notion of possibility is paved into the sidewalks of this city. There’s no one to tell you that you can’t be who you want to be. Don’t wait for someone to give you a label.

We say, why not take a cue from Oct. 31 and have the fortitude to be who you dream and let New York be your mask. Of course, our brushes have been long forgotten behind dust and dish detergent and we haven’t painted a thing since that fateful night, but we just may have thought of this year’s costume. Or better yet, a new career.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

What if you threw a payback party and nobody came?

Recently, much mention has been made of Lady Gaga’s return to her alma mater, Convent of the Sacred Heart, where she apparently felt dissed when she was enrolled. To settle the score, she made a spectacle of herself by upstaging her sister’s graduation.

Sacred Heart is probably wishing Stefani Gabriella Germanotta had gone to Spence.

This scenario brought to mind the story of when Janis Joplin, as Rolling Stone cover girl and rock diva, returned to her Texas hometown for her 10-year high school reunion. According to the article “Janis’ Texas Hurt” on pophistorydig.com, she was also going back, in part, to make a statement about her success and specifically to flaunt it before those who had treated her badly as a teenager.

“Dressed in the popular San Francisco hippie fashion of the day with feathers and beads and her trademark purple-tinted glasses, Joplin answered questions at a press conference, during which some of her more painful high school days came up again. All in all, it wasn’t a pleasant visit for Joplin. Generally, this visit home to Port Arthur for the reunion did not achieve what she had hoped, and once again she left town feeling rejected and unloved.”

This event was duplicated in the movie The Rose, in which Bette Midler plays a Joplin-esque character. She takes the stage at a local bar triumphantly, only to be brought down by hecklers who hurl the same insults from back in the day. It’s heart wrenching to watch her shake her head and mouth, “No,” as her reprisal fantasy, where they beg forgiveness and say they wish they’d been nicer to her, shatters.

In the case of Lady Gaga, my guess is that the only thing anyone associated with the school wishes is that their alum, formerly known as Stefani Gabriella Germanotta, had gone to Spence.

The retribution vibe also comes off New York’s Real Housewives. It’s like they’re hoping their questionable notoriety will get back at parents, ex-husbands, former employers, colleagues or friends. “Look, I’m on TV with a book, record, jewelry line. Love me now? Bet you wish you’d kept me around.” I bet no, basing this on personal experiences.

One in particular took place in the late ’80s. I ran into a former classmate who told me that a girl we knew growing up had become a hotshot music industry PR exec. It had been a decade since I’d heard the name of this person, who I remembered as being rather silly and immature, but my reaction was Good for her. She had clearly gotten her act together, risen above her Bronx roots and carved out a nice career for herself. And then, well, that’s about it.

Never once did it cross my mind that, “If only I had not let her off-the-wall behavior get on my nerves and drive me as far from her as possible, today I, as her guest, could be dancing on tables in nightclubs with sinewy lead singers.” Quite frankly, no hot spot or Grammy-winner access would be worth the draining experience I would have had to endure being her friend throughout high school.

Instead of finding peace in success and pride in the fact that the non-supporters did not keep them from their dreams—the best revenge being simply living well —some people need to rub it in the faces of those who didn’t care back then, and probably don’t care now. What a waste of time and it just shows how much you—Gaga & Co.—still care about them. 

—
Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel, Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com