Mum's the word for Calista

It was Calista Flockhart's first Mother's Day as a mom-and the "Ally McBeal" star celebrated by going on a Beverly Hills shopping spore with her adopted son Liam and boyfriend Gary Shandling. Hollywood's oddest family unit spent several hours in the Tony department store Banneys. Then they walked out onto the sun-dappled Wilshire Boulevard with Gary toting several shopping bags-just like any henpecked husband.

Safe suntanning?

A tan does offer some protection from further sun damage, but at the same time its presence indicates that there has been some degree of damage. 

Years later this damage is manifested in the form of wrinkles, leathery texture, blotches, sagging tissue, and possibly skin cancer.

It's obviously impossible to always stay out of the sun, but when you must be outdoors, you should protect your skin. 

While protection is most important during extensive sun exposure-for example, when you are at the beach or playing tennis or golf-you should also have protection when you stroll during your lunch hour, go out in the sun to shop, or water the lawn. 

Therefore, whenever you are going to be outdoors, you should wear a sun-block, protective clothing, and a hat.

The defining symbol of an era

Bob Dylan turned 60 at the end of last month. Known in this country primarily for his protest songs, such as Blowin' In The Wind and The Times They Are A-Changin', he in fact can be described as popular music's single genius; the songwriter of the 20th century who transformed the lyric by infusing it with an intellectualism and literary quality and pushed popular music closer to the realms of art than any other artiste, The Beatles included.

Dylan was born Robert Allan Zimmermann in 1941 in Hibbing, Minnesota to middle-class Jewish parents. Initially drawn to the rock n' roll of such pioneering figures as Little Richard, he soon caught on to the music of folk musician Woody Guthrie, who deeply influenced his early style. 

His first, eponymous album was moderately received, but it was his second, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, that caught everybody's attention. Containing such anthems as Blowin' In The Wind, Masters Of War and A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, as well as authentic love songs (Don't Think Twice, It's All Right), it showcased both Dylan's quirky, original vocals and his amazing songwriting ability, which was to develop with amazing speed. 

He followed this up with another album of protest songs, The Times They Are A-Changin', but became increasingly disillusioned with the folk-based protest movement, feeling that it was limiting his creativity. 

Liberation came at the hands of rock n' roll. Impressed by the success of The Beatles, Dylan turned to rock music, with astonishing effect. His creative motor pushed into overdrive, he produced, in rapid succession during 1965-6, a devastating sequence of three albums- Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde-which contains some of rock's most intelligent and artistically complete music. 

The brilliance of songs such as Like A Rolling Stone and Visions Of Johanna, and the visionary beauty of others, such as Desolation Row have yet to be matched.

Dylan was at the zenith of his popularity at this point, and in a series of live shows during 1966 unleashed red-hot rock n' roll at folk-oriented audiences that had no idea what hit them. 

However, he was living at a pace that he could not sustain, and a motorcycle accident in early 1967 gave him an excuse to retreat from the public eye into a period of rest and recuperation. 

The music he recorded during this 'inactive' period- widely bootlegged and later released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes- was both astonishingly inventive and infused with the traditions of age-old American music. He returned the next year with the stripped-down, spiritual John Wesley Harding and followed up with the country-rock Nashville Skyline (1969). 

His next period of greatness came in 1974, when he released Blood on the Tracks, an album inspired in part by the breakup of his marriage. Without a doubt the best album of the 1970s, this was a masterpiece, with songs such as Tangled Up In Blue, Idiot Wind and Shelter From The Storm. 

The sheer intensity of the work, coupled with the songwriter's emotional maturity, are reasons that many critics cite when ranking this as Dylan's most accomplished work. This was followed by his inspired Rolling Thunder Revue tour, on which Dylan attempted to discover and draw together the many strands of traditional American culture. 

He then briefly chose to become a born-again Christian, a move which lost him many fans, but which resulted in the majestic, God-bothering Slow Train Coming (1979), on which Mark Knopfler and Pick Withers of Dire Straits backed him. However, the 1980s were an uncertain period for Dylan; he ruined both a potentially wonderful album (Infidels-1983) through shoddy song selection -leaving out several brilliant tracks- and the 1985 Live Aid concert with an atrocious, mumbling performance. 

He then produced a series of forgettable albums, before finally finding his step with the polished, sensually produced Oh Mercy (1989).

Daniel Lanois, the U2 producer who had helmed the Oh Mercy sessions, also produced Time Out Of Mind (1997), which won the Grammy award for Album of the Year and was judged Dylan's best since Blood On The Tracks. 

A dark, blues-based work, it shows that Dylan's muse is far from dead, a point further proved by the song Things Have Changed, which won an Oscar award this year. He still treks on, playing hundreds of concerts every year, the quality of which veers madly between wonderfully intense and perfunctory. 

Dylan is probably the last survivor of the colossuses who shaped popular music during the last century, Sinatra, Elvis and Lennon having all passed on. He remains a major contemporary figure, as well as the defining symbol of an era.

Gladys Knight's dream wedding

Mom from hell - claimed daughter

But there's heartbreak behind the glitter.

She was accused of turning her first daughter into a "basket case" and all those painful memories came flooding back when she gave birth to Bowie's daughter Alexandria last August.

"She often told me I was as fat as a whale," first daughter Zulekha, now 23, said in 1993. "She turned me into a basket case. Iman acts likes she cares about all those starving children in Somalia, whereas she doesn't even care about her own child."

Now sources close to the family hope those troubles are behind Iman. 

"Being Iman is a full time job," says an insider. "We hope her concern with her own image doesn't make her forget job one-being a mom.

"Iman's past her prime as a model, but you'd never know it. She still conducts herself as if she was the same hot young thing and still longs for the glamorous life.

She's a strange and volatile person. She also brags about spending hours each day in front of a mirror before feeling good enough about herself to go anywhere or meet anyone."

Zulekha, Iman's child by basketball star Spencer Haywood, claimed the model was a horrible mother who made her life a living hell.

Iman starved her of affection, she charged, so she gorged herself on food to hide her pain. Zulekha also claimed that Iman left her home alone without food while she went partying, and even went on a ski trip to Aspen and forgot about her. 

Haywood said his marriage to Iman was wrecked when she began "bumping and grinding" with singer Grace Jones at a Paris disco.

"I was so disgusted I stormed off," he said. "The next morning Iman came back to the hotel and I told her we'd be husband and wife in name only."

In his shocking autobiography The Rise, The Fall, The Recovery, Haywood says that for the last two years of their nine-year marriage they didn't make love.

He also accused Iman of turning him into a cocaine junkie and an alcoholic, destroying his sporting career.

"She introduced me to all the right people, who were all the wrong people. Everywhere we went drugs were passed around like candies."

Haywood even said Iman trapped him into marriage by getting pregnant "so she could stay in America."

"She said she was having an abortion, and I did the right thing," says Haywood, who played with the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers. Iman, who has been married to superstar Bowie since 1992, said: "I tried, and indeed, continue to try to be a good mother."

"Like any human being, I am not always perfect."

-The National Enquirer

Maria to play Terminator

Furious Maria Shriver has con- fronted husband Arnold Schwarzenegger in a brutal showdown in which she demanded he confess to all his affairs - or their 15-year marriage is over!

Enraged and humiliated, Maria has put her philandering mate on a short leash after finding out that Arnie hid from her scores of infidelities, including a seven-year-long affair with sexy, former child actress Gigi Goyette. She's gone ballistic over a list of all his lovers that she wants him to give her. She's demanding he come clean about every one of his flings.

"Maria's told Arnold in no uncertain terms that one more embarrassing scandal means he's out!" an insider said. "She's making Arnold toe the line like never before. She wants positive proof that he's serious about their marriage. If he steps out of line, she'll send him packing!"

The dramatic confrontation was the latest in a series of crises that have battered the marriage of NBC news superstar Maria and "Terminator" star Arnie over the past few months as revelations about Arnold's extramarital escapade have rocked her.

At first Maria, who has four children with Schwarzenegger, tried to hide her anguish in public and work behind the scenes to save her marriage.

But when Arnold's affair with Gigi Goyette was revealed on May 1, it was the last straw.

"The details about the affair hit her very hard," a source close to the star revealed. "It's embarrassing. She's an anchor on 'Dateline'." If she denies an affair that's true, then she looks like a fool.

"If she admits it she looks like a weak, betrayed wife, Arnold's put her in a lose-lose position and she's furious at him for that."

Tired of being blind-sided each week by yet another skeleton from Arnold's vast closet of marital indiscretions, Maria has laid down the law to her husband, sources say.

"She's demanded a list of the women Arnold cheated with", said the insider.

"She wants to be fully prepared if any more of Arnold's flings surface".

Not only does Maria want to know what her playboy husband has done in the past, she wants to know what he's doing in the present - so she's demanding that he report to her by telephone whenever he's not by her side!

"Whereas Arnold used to have free rein, he now must report to Maria of his every move," the insider said.

"He must report in to Maria by cell phone several times a day -telling her where he is and who he's with."

Incredibly, sources say Arnold - who wants to save the marriage as much as Maria does - is appeasing his angry wife by agreeing to her demands.

But even as Arnold attempts to rein in his sexual shenanigans, the tension between the two embattled spouses remains high.

The couple are often seen going their separate ways in public now, even going to church separately.

"Even though Arnold feels truly sorry and regrets hurting her, and is trying to make up for it, Maria doesn't want to be seen being too chummy with Arnie in public until she knows she can fully trust him again," a friend of Maria's family said. "She wants Arnie to grovel, and she wants no more surprises. That's what she wants before she commits to staying with him".

If Arnie slips again, the marriage could well be over, even if it never winds up in the divorce courts, sources say. Like all the Kennedy women, Maria is a devout Catholic and Roman Catholics consider divorce to be a sin, believing marriages must be preserved at all cost.

But Maria and Arnold could conform to the Church's teachings and still stop living together.

"The grounds of Arnold and Maria's Pacific Palisades estate have three separate residential units they use for offices and entertaining," the insider said.

"So it's completely possible they could continue to live on the property for the sake of the kids, yet physically separate and maintain separate residences. They could keep the marriage intact while leading separate lives with only the children in common."

- The National Enquirer
 

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