George Strait Mourns the Passing of Iconic Country Music Singer, 73
George certainly doesn't think so. On Monday, George paid tribute to his fellow country legend, who died last week at the age of 73. In his sweet message, the 'King of Country Music' thanked Johnny for paving the way.
'Norma [Straight, his wife] and I are so sad about Johnny's passing,' wrote George on a May 12 Instagram Story. 'He was an inspiration to me from the beginning.'
'Being from South Texas myself, it gave me so much hope knowing that he had become such a huge success,' continued George, 'that maybe there was a hope for a guy like me.'
Juan Raoul Davis "Johnny" Rodriguez died on May 9. Growing up in Sabinal, Texas, Johnny helped bring the Tejano sound to the masses, infusing country music with Latin sounds. He hit it big in the 1970s and '80s with songs like 'Pass Me By (If You're Only Passing Through),' 'I Just Can't Get Her Out of My Mind,' and 'Love Put a Song In My Heart."
George, who hails from Pearsall, Texas, remembered Johnny as 'a great talent,' before adding, 'God bless his family, friends and fans. You'll be missed, amigo.'
Johnny died in San Antonio from health complications. His daughter shared a message on social media, saying her father was 'not only a legendary musician whose artistry touched millions around the world, but also a deeply loved husband, father, uncle, and brother whose warmth, humor, and compassion shaped the lives of all who knew him.
Recently, the 'All My Exes Live In Texas' singer caused some concern among his fans. George recently kicked off his tour with Chris Stapleton, and a clip of his performance—where he sat down and barely played the guitar in his lap—had fans talking.
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When magazines ruled the world
Media People in entertainmentFacebookTweetLink Follow EDITOR'S NOTE: The CNN Original Series 'American Prince: JFK Jr.' airs at 9 p.m, ET/PT on Saturday nights. John F. Kennedy Jr. launched his magazine 'George' 30 years ago, when it felt like publications in New York City were the most powerful and glamorous thing imaginable. Gossiped-about editors prowled the city in black cars and flew above the world on the Concorde, gleefully busting their enormous budgets as they canceled and created careers. And then there was John. He liked to ride his bike around town. 'They called him a himbo. The New York Post used to tease him all the time,' said longtime magazine writer Nancy Jo Sales, who covered Kennedy for People magazine. She remembers him as being kind, dog-loving and always gracious. 'He was no dummy. I mean, look who his parents were. His mother was one of the most cultured people like ever in American social history. His father was — hello? He was a very smart guy. And I think what he really, really loved was journalism. He wanted to make a great magazine. And why would a guy like John Kennedy make a magazine like George? Because that was the coolest thing to do at that time — be in magazines. It was the most exciting thing to do, and it was the thing that mattered.' After years of scheming, George arrived in September 1995. It was intended to merge politics and celebrity in a way that felt new — complete with Cindy Crawford in George Washington costume on the debut cover. 'Magazines still were fat and rich enough to be ambitious,' said the writer Sasha Issenberg, who was a teenage intern at George. 'John came to this with a big animating idea, not only about what the magazine could look like, but about a bigger shift that was underway in American politics and culture.' This was, after all, 1995: the year Selena was killed, the year the federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City. O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of killing his former wife, and a doomsday cult killed 14 people in a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway. All the political ingredients of our current chaotic moment were already visible for those who knew to look. And so, a Kennedy joined the ranks of the leaders of Vogue, People and Time, starting George with the company Hachette Filipacchi, home of Elle and Woman's Day. 'If you wanted to know what was cool in the '90s, you looked at a magazine. Now you probably look at social media. But back then, editors at magazines were the ultimate tastemakers,' said Amy Odell, fashion journalist and author of the 2022's 'Anna: The Biography.' When George was conceived, Anna Wintour was beginning to become more famous than the supermodels she put on her covers. The film 'The Devil Wears Prada' — which turns 20 next year, if you want to feel old — cemented her status as character and caricature. But she wasn't alone. There was Graydon Carter, the Canadian rail worker who became editor of Vanity Fair, and Tina Brown who came from London and became famous as an editor because no one could tell if she was just brilliant or just outrageous — and Jane Pratt, whose Sassy magazine was so influential that her next magazine had to be named just Jane. Unlike George, which was not named John. 'He was a famous person looking for a niche to slot himself into as a famous person,' said Matt Haber, longtime print and digital editor, and editor of Gazetteer SF. 'George was meant to be that. If he was around today, it would be a multimedia company, right? He would have a podcast anchoring it, and there'd be a show on Netflix, like 'JFK Presents.' He would be like, 'Call Her Daddy' or Joe Rogan, like he'd have a whole constellation of content around him. But back then, magazines were still the center of the culture — and if you wanted to make a statement, that's the way you did it.' What did a magazine even do? For one, magazines fed Hollywood — even more than you might think. A huge business funneled content from magazines, creating movies from articles: 'Boogie Nights,' 'Hustlers,' even 'Shattered Glass,' from a magazine article about a magazine scandal. The Fast and the Furious and Top Gun franchises were based on magazine articles. Magazines invented and distributed the photo shoot, created literary stars like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Malcolm Gladwell and David Foster Wallace. They fed television — in the 1990s, Time built a TV studio in the office so their reporters could more easily go on CNN. Their franchises became universal references: the September issue, the Swimsuit Issue, the person of the year, the Playboy centerfold, the New Yorker cartoon. They changed people too, for good and for worse. The rash of lad mags, crowded with bikini babes and bad advice for dudes, actively influenced the lads to be more sexist; studies showed that exposure to fashion magazines in the 1990s seemed to make girls hate themselves. This all made quite a bit of money. 'I was an intern at Entertainment Weekly in 1998 and we got paid a salary,' said Haber. 'We got paid overtime if we stayed past six o'clock. We got a dinner voucher if we stayed past like 6:30' — plus car service home. 'On Thursday and Friday nights, they'd have a bar,' said Kurt Andersen, co-founder of Spy and former editor of New York magazine, about his years as an architecture and design critic at Time. 'They served dinner, if you wanted their sh*tty dinners there. It was old school, in a way that now seems, like, 19th century to me.' 'I would say, 'Oh, I want to go write about the World's Fair in Seville, Spain. ' 'Okay, sure. Go.' I was never, ever turned down.' The executives and stars enjoyed an even better class of perks. For the very top editors, Condé Nast secured mortgages for editors and top staffers or gave them cash to buy Manhattan apartments and townhouses. Some of their contracts had a wardrobe allowance, easily $40,000 a year, plus weekly flower deliveries and daily drivers. Writers like Dominick Dunne could earn half a million dollars a year while staying at no cost in an endless array of expensive hotels. 'The excess was legendary. For years, there simply were no budgets,' wrote Michael Grynbaum in 'Empire of the Elite,' his recent history of Condé Nast. In 1989, he wrote, Tina Brown, as the editor of Vanity Fair, flew the photographer Annie Leibovitz 41,000 miles in first class to photograph subjects for a portfolio. The writer Ann Patchett, tired of having houseguests, once pitched a story to Gourmet about staying alone in an expensive hotel for a week just so she could get a break. (The Hotel Bel-Air was apparently lovely.) For Lisa DePaulo's first story at Vanity Fair, she said, 'I had to interview someone in Delray Beach, and I said, 'There's a great Marriott right near here, and it'd be a great place for me to stay.' And the travel department was like, 'You're with Vanity Fair. You can't stay at the Marriott.'' People magazine 'was, at the time, the most profitable magazine in America, and there was nothing that seemed off limits or extravagant,' said Janice Min, longtime magazine editor and current honcho of The Ankler. 'When I worked at InStyle, the whole staff went on an off-site to Antigua.' Fortune magazine once spent $5 million taking its staff to Hawaii. George was not quite situated at the center of imperial luxury. 'At Condé Nast, you had Vogue and Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in the offices next to you. At George, we had Road & Track and Car Stereo Review,' said Issenberg. But there were upsides to having a Kennedy as a boss, beyond his looks and good temper, obviously. He took the entire staff to a Yankees playoff game, his friend and George editor Gary Ginsberg said. Kennedy always had great front row seats to the Knicks, and distributed the piles of designer clothes and ties that were sent to the office. The office did have a distinct flavor of Kennedy mayhem. 'It was a constant circus of people coming in and out. You never know who you'd run into on any given day: Demi Moore, Barbara Walters, Katie Couric,' said Ginsberg. And his very existence brought the publication the most important commodity a magazine could have: buzz. Though it came with baggage. 'For true American royalty, you had JFK Jr., and the Kennedys at the time, and so it never felt like it was going to necessarily land or hit, because it had that sort of sheen of a vanity project,' said Min. 'It obviously got a really disproportionate amount of coverage, probably with a strong hint of schadenfreude from other media that didn't necessarily love the idea. Even though they might have loved him, they didn't love the idea of, basically, an OG nepo baby coming in to try to stake a claim in the industry.' Despite those doubts, George came in hot — for staffers in the first year, it was a struggle to write and edit enough stories to fill all the necessary pages, because the magazine kept growing as the ad sales team kept selling. 'It just seemed like if you had a good idea for a magazine, you could touch gold, with advertisers and with readers,' said Elinore Carmody, the founding publisher of George. The ambition was sky-high, if sometimes wobbly. The magazine paid Gore Vidal 'like $25,000 or whatever' for a story about George Washington in the first issue, former George editor Hugo Lindgren told the Hollywood Reporter. Vidal delivered a piece about how terrible George Washington was — and Kennedy chose not to publish it. In the leadup to the 1996 national political conventions, the mag secured Norman Mailer, the legendary chronicler of the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention, to cover them. The writer named his price and Kennedy agreed, said Issenberg. 'It ended up being an astronomical number — I wouldn't say that nobody blinked, because we knew it was an astronomical number — but somewhere in the bowels of the accounting department, they figured out how to pay.' But Kennedy was not, staffers said, a walking checkbook or a dissociated nepo baby. 'John was a great editor, and I'm gonna tell you why,' said DePaulo. 'He wasn't a line editor, like the kind of guy who took your copy and made marks all over it. He was a visionary editor, which is much more important for a good writer.' 'Often we'd be in a meeting with six or eight editors who had come from some great magazines,' Issenberg said, 'and John would crystallize a story before anybody else did. That was all from instinct, curiosity, being a smart person and a sharp reader — not the result of any formal training or coaching.' The pantheon of magazine editors were themselves accustomed to a version of the scrutiny that Kennedy had faced his whole life. They were covered both as business figures by a then-aggressive industry press and as characters in the gossip columns. 'Condé Nast editors were the original influencers, their lives a top-to-bottom marketing campaign for the company that hired them,' wrote Grynbaum in his history of the company. 'We were selling a fantasy, a lifestyle, and that crossed over into the real world and our appearances. We were expected to be walking billboards for the fantasy we were selling,' wrote Dana Brown, a magazine editor who started as the assistant to Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter, in his memoir 'Dilettante.' 'When I was the editor of Us Weekly, I was written about all the time, for better or worse, in Page Six, and I was not alone,' said Min. 'It was the comings and goings of magazine editors who were sort of viewed as like a royal class in New York City.' The scrutiny could feel like it was coming from everywhere all the time. 'Every publication had someone who was obsessing over the magazine industry,' said Min, who generally had the best reputation of any magazine editor. 'There was someone named Keith Kelly, who worked at the New York Post, whose Media Inc. column was feared. There was Gabriel Sherman and Gabriel Snyder too, people who worked at the New York Observer. There was Jacob Bernstein at Women's Wear Daily. And so you would come back to your office and you would see a message from one of them, and you'd be like, 'Oh, crap, now what?' It could be anything, like your newsstand sales were down, that maybe they're talking to someone else for your job, that we're hearing that SI Newhouse' — the owner of Condé Nast — 'exiled someone to the wrong table at the holiday party, which means they're on the outs.' As in all industries in the hysterics of extravagance, the funds were distributed unequally. 'I'm not sure it was that lucrative a time unless you were in the 0.5% of the industry,' said Stephen Rodrick, a longtime magazine writer. He got his start making $200 a week as an intern at The New Republic in Washington, DC. He did, however, get paid $10,000 in expenses once for a story for George magazine. 'George went out of business before I could do my expenses and I remember having $2,000 left over. It became my severance package.' 'Look up what journalist salaries were in the 1990s. They were not huge salaries, except for a very small number of people, maybe at a place like Vanity Fair. But I wasn't at Vanity Fair in the '90s. I was at New York magazine. We were paid very middle-class kind of salaries,' said Sales. 'The story that I lived and that I knew was not about money or excess. It was more like, just cool people who had a lot of talent or just were interesting, and they were just gathering in these nightclubs and having fun and dancing.' It was this vibe, not the messy open vein of constantly flowing money, that made magazine life so captivating. 'It could be a nice middle-class living with the tradeoff that you weren't chained to your desk and got to go to interesting places and meet interesting people,' Rodrick said. 'I might write about the making of a Fiona Apple record at Abbey Road one month and then do a true crime saga and then profile a boxer.' 'This is the kind of glamour I'm talking about, when New York was just full of interesting, stylish, talented, beautiful people, and nothing was staged, and everything was real, and you just were covering it for a magazine. It had nothing to do with money or salaries or expense accounts,' said Sales. 'The glamour was just being in the game. It was just being in the game and having those little business cards that said New York magazine or whatever.' Sales did finally go to Vanity Fair in 2000, where Graydon Carter 'hired me when I was eight months pregnant, and I had the baby, and five days after I had that baby – five days after I had that baby! – I was in a car going out to the Hamptons to do my first story for Vanity Fair on a girl nobody had ever heard of named Paris Hilton. With my baby beside me in a little basket!' Kennedy died in July 1999. George outlived him for a while, losing 'close to' $10 million in 2000, and finally shuttering in March 2001. 'When he died, I kind of knew in my gut that without him, there's no magazine,' said DePaulo. 'But I wished it had gotten to the point that he wanted it to be, which was that it would live without him.' 'The magazine could have this — John liked to say — post-partisan worldview, and could generally treat politicians as noble people trying to do a good job and have fun with sometimes silly things,' Issenberg said. 'I don't think that would have survived 9/11 — which was only eight months after the magazine folded — let alone the financial crisis, or the Trump years or backlash to Obama. It would just be very hard to write about current politics with that sense of amusement and detachment, because the stakes have gotten so high.' 'We were launching a quote 'post-partisan' magazine at the very time that the country was fracturing,' said Ginsberg. 'John was ahead of his time,' said DePaulo. 'George was ahead of its time. Now, the intersection of politics and pop culture is in every publication.' 'It was, as it turned out, the moment before the end,' said Andersen. 'But, boy, what a moment before the end. The end being the internet, obviously.' Because it wasn't long before the rest of the industry met similar roadblocks. Condé began to get a dose of reality when it launched a magazine called Portfolio, envisioned as a high-flying business title, in 2007. After the company spent a year and a fortune preparing to launch it it, it lived for two years. 'All I did for a year was go to extremely expensive restaurants and woo people to write for us,' editor Jim Impoco told Grynbaum. He gained 25 pounds. 'I don't think the company could ever recover from the recession in 2008. And it was just a slow decline from there,' said Odell. Writers also got an even shorter short end of the stick. Steady jobs turned into gig work, paid by the piece. 'We stopped getting salaries at Vanity Fair a long time ago, I think it was maybe 2009, after the financial crash. I don't know about the other Condé Nast magazines, but we stopped getting a monthly check,' said Sales. A whole host of magazines shuttered, went digital, stuttered, burned out. 'I'm sorry to say magazines mean nothing today,' said Jann Wenner, former owner of Rolling Stone and Us Weekly, in 2023. Some of what once was marches fabulously on, adjusted to a newer world. Vanity Fair still throws its big Oscars party; Bon Appetit flourished as a food video company for some time; the New Yorker actually makes money; Vogue operates successful digital video franchises; Teen Vogue ran to the ramparts of the youthful revolution; The Atlantic is now the last publication that has decided to vigorously spend its way into a future of importance. Only time, and the vast pockets of the magazine's backer Laurene Powell Jobs, will tell how that story ends. The same magazines that could once make or break a designer or an author, announce a new star, or dictate what we'd all be wearing a few months later today have a fraction of that influence. This week Vanity Fair fired its chief film critic and two writers who covered Hollywood and shut down its blog — which was run by the same editor who first wrote about Condé's elaborate mortgage gifts for editors nearly 20 years ago. Vogue, at least, stayed in power by leveraging the smarts and fame of Wintour. That fame has more to do now with the benefit she hosts and dominates each year, even as speculation about her departure from the magazine swirls almost monthly. The influence of the magazine has floated away from and above the monthly bundle of printed paper. 'Now it's less about the Vogue cover and what that's saying about fashion or culture and now more about the Met Gala and how that can provide a temperature read on culture –– that's kind of Anna's way of showing these days who's in and who's out, what's in and what's out,' said Odell. 'Social media, which has all its ails, of course, and some could argue, has had an incredibly detrimental effect on society, also did something great, which is that it democratized information — and the role of the gatekeeper has completely diminished,' said Min. 'Magazine editors were celebrities, which seems almost comical today, but you were really running through the information and the kinds of information that we're getting to the public through a pretty tight funnel. And that funnel' — which she described as 'overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male' — 'was pretty much reflective of wealthy people who live in Manhattan with a view of what the world wants to read and consume, and setting an agenda that definitely was not one-size-fits-all.' Kennedy's human curiosity took him beyond that frame. He wanted to appeal to people who didn't fit the typical demographics for political magazines — women, young people, Americans in the middle of the country — and he delighted in stories that embodied the best of what politics could be, DePaulo said. She recalls that he asked her to write about her small-town hometown mayor who fixed potholes and chased skunks out of residents' yards. Instead of a post-political magazine, the world got post-magazine politics. Kennedy's instincts about politics and culture converging proved to be spot on: Donald Trump, who was on the cover of George's March 2000 issue, understood this acutely and catapulted his celebrity and influence to two presidential terms. Trump still puts himself on fake magazine covers for validation, but some version of his celebrity and influence — and the attendant and unnerving public scrutiny — is now available to anyone who wants it. 'Everybody's a reporter now, and I'm not saying that in a totally disparaging way,' said Sales. 'It's not necessarily a bad thing, completely. It's interesting to see what people come up with, and they go around and record life as it's happening and put it on social media. Whatever. It's just where we are now.'
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Destination: Oddsville. Here are five kid-friendly summer destinations you never thought of
The beach, the pool, the theme park, the water park, the campground. You can count the classic summer family activities on one hand. But what about the other hand? Where can you take the kids that they haven't been a million times? What activities don't involve swim trunks, wristbands, tick inspection, and the Garden State Parkway at 5 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon? Here are five less ordinary places to visit in New Jersey. Odd places. Interesting places. Places that, in some cases, are even a tiny bit sinister. A word that derives from the Latin term for left-handed. These are the places you can count on the other hand. Take them haunting Ghosts are like any other kind of tenant. There are good ones and bad ones. "Everything we have here is good," said Rebecca Gruber, tour manager of the Paranormal Museum in Asbury Park. "At most, there is mischievous energy. Nothing evil." So there's nothing for your children to be scared of. Nothing at all. True, Jerry Mahoney, the ventriloquist's dummy that occupies a niche in the upstairs rooms, has a habit of moving on his own. "We've found him on the floor," Gruber said. "The building is old, and it is kind of slanted. We're skeptics. Could he have just fallen off? Of course. But he gives people the creeps." And then there's the sofa, created in the 19th century by Thomas Day — a free man of color from North Carolina, who taught enslaved people the furniture trade, and then sent them out into the world as free, skilled craftsmen. It sings. "He would hear it singing when he laid down in it, and he took it as a sign of God telling him to keep doing what he was doing," Gruber said. "To this day, people hear singing." This, like most of the other 130 artifacts in the upstairs rooms (the downstairs houses the affiliated Paranomral Books & Curiosities bookstore), was donated. People, for some reason, seem more than willing to part with their haunted artifacts. You'll see demonic dolls, creepy-looking skulls, and death masks of Abraham Lincoln — along with a genuine lock of the 16th president's hair. "We talk about Lincoln's relationship to the paranormal, and how he and his wife practiced spritualism," Gruber said. "She would transate his dreams. They don't teach you that part in school." There is no individual admission to the museum: guided tours for up to 6 people are $120. But for a family of six, that comes out to $20 apiece — a whole lot cheaper than Six Flags. "I would say he museum itself is an ongoing investigation," Gruber said. "And everybody who comes upstairs becomes part of that investigation." A range of guided tours, geared to different interests, can be arranged through the museum: "Ghosts of the Boardwalk," "Spirits of Asbury Park," and so on. Advanced booking is recommended. 621 Cookman Ave, Asbury Park. paranormalbooksnj. Drive them buggy A city infested with insects? That might not be your idea of a tourist destination. But as your kids will discover — to their delight — Insectropolis, a Toms River attraction, has all the trappings of a real metropolis. It has high rises: terrariums, stacked up four high, each with its own tarantula. "Hello, my name is William" reads the label on one friendly resident. It has fine dining. "Larvets" BBQ worm larvae snacks and "Hotlix" scorpion suckers are just some of the taste treats available at the gift shop. It even has a crime problem. "Mass murderers" reads the sign above the enormous models of mosquitos, houseflies and other disease-carrying pests, each behind bars in its own prison cell. Luckily, there is also police. Beneficial, pest-eating insects are labeled "TOP C.O.P.S." ("Carnivores Of Pest Species"). Here, in this 7,200 feet of exhibit area, kids will also find a tank full of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, a working beehive, and exhibits on the evolution of termite control. Not to mention giant models of insect mandibles, and many cheerful facts about crustaceans. ("Think you've never eaten a bug? THINK AGAIN!") In short, there are more bugs here than in the Russian embassy. "There's a ridiculous number of insects here," said program coordinator Diane Redzinak. Her family runs Ozane Pest Control; 20 years ago, owner Chris Koerner opened this attraction as a way to give back to the insect community. Or at least, improve their public relations. "There are so many cool things about bugs, and nobody talks about them," Redzinak said. Some of them, like the tarantulas, even make good pets. Though she admits they might not be the best snugglers. "I'm a cat person," she said. $14 per visitor; kids 2 and under are free. 1761 Route 9, Toms River. Go off the beaten track A trip to Northlandz, in Flemington, is not just a visit to the Guinness world record holder for world's largest model train layout. It's a journey into one man's unique mind. The model trains that zigzag through the fantastic 52,000 square foot panorama, stretching over 16 rooms at multiple levels, are just one of the things that will intrigue your kids. There are also model planes. Battleships. Antique autos. Military uniforms. Several gigantic pipe organs. Several miniature toy pianos. Dolls and dollhouses galore. Spaceships from "Star Wars," and action figures from "The Wizard of Oz." But most of all, there is mystery. What do all those things have in common? Who built this extravaganza, and what were they thinking? That enigma is at the heart of the place — though one learns, via the signage, that Northlandz was the creation of Bruce Williams Zaccagnino in 1996, that his model train set had outgrown his house, that he was an organist as well as a model railroad enthusiast, and that the dolls weren't his. "The dolls are actually his wife's," said Jerry Jewels, who services all the engines, boxcars, and tenders that run along Northlandz's eight miles of track. "The detail and the sheer size of the place is what really gets people," Jewels said. "At first you're like, OK, it's just one room, and then there's another room, and another," he said. "And then you walk out into the canyons and it just blows your mind. It's almost like you become part of it." What he's talking about is the vast spaces, three stories high, where bridges criss-cross over ravines, and model trains at various scales (mostly H-O and G gauge) trundle past miniature villages, amusement parks, cities, strip mines, and "the world's largest toothpick farm." That's the kind of detail that makes you wonder what the founder was thinking. Also, the mysterious "grandma" who seems to be a recurring character in the Northlandz display. "The story goes that they were doing a strip mine and grandma didn't want to sell her house, so they built the strip mine around grandma's house," Jewels said. Along with the indoor displays, Northlandz also has a narrow-gauge railroad on the ground that kids can ride. Kids are, of course, who electric trains were originally intended for — though model railroading, these days, is usually thought of as a senior-citizen hobby. That may be changing — not least because of attractions like Northlandz. Perhaps, Jewels said, electric trains simply skipped a generation. "I have a bunch of friends who are into it, who are my age and younger," said Jewels, who is 30. "It's thrilling to see younger people who are into it. The hobby isn't dying." Northlandz is at 495 Route 202, Flemington. $32.50 for kids, $40 for adults, group packages and senior discounts available. Take them to the wizard's tower Wizards have towers. This was clearly established in "The Lord of the Rings" — though even J.R.R. Tolkien himself could never say whether the two towers in "The Two Towers" were Orthanc, Barad-dûr, or Minas Morgul. What's true of Middle Earth is also true of Middle Jersey. Our Wizard — the Wizard of Menlo Park — also has a tower. It can be found at the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, located in — where else? — Edison. It's 131 feet high, and surmounted by a light bulb. Anyway, a representation of one. "Part of the tour is going to the base of the tower to see the eternal light," said Kathleen Carlucci, director of the center. "We try to keep it always lit. As long as we don't lose power." But the tower, dedicated in 1938, is not really the main attraction of the site (you can't climb it in any case). Though it is impressive. And it does commemorate the amazing work done on this spot from 1876 to 1887, when Thomas Alva Edison perfected the incandescent electric light, the phonograph, and dozens of other inventions that made his name. The real interest of this site is a small museum, only 800 square feet, that houses some of Edison's most marvelous gizmos. It's much smaller than the Thomas Edison National Historic Park in West Orange — the site of his latter-day house and factory. But the Menlo Park site (a non-profit) packs a lot into a little space. There are electric batteries, telegraph equipment, electric pens, generators, and of course, some of the earliest lightbulbs. There are five working phonographs — from the first tinfoil-cylinder models, to more sophisticated disc players that Carlucci or others will be happy to demonstrate for you. "Everyone's Home Except My Wife," Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer," and "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream" are some top discs on the Edison hit parade. If you're very well-behaved, they might even show you the little toy "limberjack" man who dances a little jig when you attach him to the phonograph spindle. "Of course he does the same dance no matter what's playing," Carlucci said. When you tire of all this, you and the family can take a stroll around the grounds — there are 36 acres of nature trails — and contemplate Edison's genius. "People come away with a better understanding of the incredible work and brilliance of Thomas Edison," Carlucci said. "His brilliance is that he doesn't just create one thing at a time. He has many irons on the fire. This is the birthplace of research and development." Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, 37 Christie Street, Edison. Public hours Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. $5 for kids, $7 for adults. menlopark Have a picnic in the poles New Jersey — the Garden State — is famous for its crops. Tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries are to be found at any farmer's market. But have you seen where they grow telephone poles? Some 700 can be viewed, high as an elephant's eye, at Chester's Highland Ridge Park. They've been growing there since 1928, when AT&T set up the land as a testing ground. You might think there's nothing to being a telephone pole. Standing up straight is the full job description. But it is, as The Big Lebowski would say, an activity with a lot of ins and outs. The weather in the northeast is highly variable — freezing at times, broiling at others. Some kinds of wood, some kinds of chemical treatments, are more effective against the elements. AT&T was going to discover just which ones. By the 1980s, they'd had enough. They abandoned the site, which in 2004 it was incorporated into the town. You can visit them in their parkland setting and wonder. You can have a picnic in the poles. And when you're done, you can visit nearby Chester, a quaint old town full of stores with names like Comfortably Chic, Perfect Treasure, Better With Tyme, and Main Street Misfits Toys & Collectables. What better way to end a polar expedition? Highland Ridge Park, County Road 510, This article originally appeared on Have the summer doldrums? Here are five offbeat day trips. Solve the daily Crossword
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Karol G to headline Chiefs-Rams halftime show in Brazil
Karol G to headline Chiefs-Rams halftime show in Brazil originally appeared on The Sporting News Karol G is heading to Brazil! The Latin singer will be the halftime performer for the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Rams game on September 5, which will take place at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo. The league is celebrating the 'Sounds of Latin America through Gameday Entertainment' for YouTube's first exclusive NFL live broadcast. 'I'm so excited to be part of YouTube's first-ever NFL live broadcast, it's truly an honor and a moment I'm so proud to be part of,' the Colombian artist, who's making the rounds with her Billboard No. 1 album Tropicoqueta, said in a press statement. 'I've watched many NFL halftime shows over the years, and now having this opportunity to bring my music to this global stage means the world to me. I can't wait to celebrate with everyone in São Paulo and fans all around the world.' In addition to Karol G's performance, Brazilian artist Ana Castela will perform the country's national anthem, 'Hino Nacional Brasileiro.' As for the U.S. national anthem, it will be performed by saxophonist Kamasi Washington. 'This broadcast is a landmark moment in our partnership with the NFL, where the worlds of football, music and creators will powerfully collide,' said Angela Courtin, VP of Sports and Entertainment Marketing at YouTube. 'From the real-life manifestation of our creator community in São Paulo to a global icon like Karol G taking the stage at halftime, this partnership with the NFL is a testament to our shared vision. It's about more than just a game; it's a statement that the future of live sports and entertainment is global and connected.' YouTube and the NFL have a multi-year agreement, which began in 2023 that grants YouTubeTV and YouTube Prime Channels exclusive rights to Sunday Ticket. MORE LIFESTYLE NEWS Ciara reveals what Kylie Kelce and her share dislike for Azzi Fudd reveals when she and Paige Bueckers realized they had 'chemistry' Venus Williams gets Barbie treatment with important message Shaquille O'Neal gets honest about painkiller addiction Mike Tyson sued over Jay-Z, DMX, Ja Rule song in Jake Paul fight promotion
