When Will The Music Stop?

  LISA:   I met Anton about 19 years ago. He and Don were working at Backyard together. He came out to the lobby to meet me before we left on our date. He was sweet, but I was intimidated – Anton in producer mode is impressive and a bit scary. Little did I know that within a couple of years, I would marry Don, and Anton would become family too.          Anton wrote about his family a few weeks ago and included a picture of the Sopranos to illustrate. We're both Italian, so we’re from the same tribe. My dad, youngest of eleven, had a brother who looked like Uncle Junior. My Uncle Lou and Anton would’ve gotten on well. They shared a love of Vegas, Tom Jones and Italian food. Uncle Lou loved to drink too, though he never made it into the beverage program. My dad always said being stubborn was in my blood. His mom, my Nona, was a loving but indomitable force in all our lives. An immigrant with eleven kids, she had to be tough. Dad said ...

Ursa Beach - Sintra, Portugal Not only are we depleted of bananas, but the whole store is closed for the week.  Q: What is worse than having ALS? A: Having ALS and a nasty case of pneumonia. Q: What's worse than having ALS and a nasty case of pneumonia? A: Having ALS, nasty case of pneumonia and being constipated for 7 days. Q: What's worse than ALS, pneumonia and constipation? A: Having ALS, pneumonia, constipation, and averaging 4 hours sleep because you're coughing. So, I'll be back next week and I'll tell you about our successful Capitol Hill meetings with CA Senators and CA House members. Please, no get well advice unless you're a doctor with a degree on your wall and letters after your name. I have Mari, Maira, doctors and a heck of a lot of friends pitching in. I am having good and great days because of Mari and the above entourage of folks. To be surrounded by so much love makes me a grateful and one lucky bloke and impossible not to have good or great o...

Team Piper/Maillie on location in Leadville, Colorado - 2009 The Prologue It's May 21, 2007. I'm sitting in a conference room anxiously awaiting the start of a pre-production meeting. The project is a 4-day Lincoln Mercury shoot and it was one major challenge; We need to shut down sections of the Las Vegas strip so we can film cars running under the casino lights. Now, this would be a nearly impossible task under normal circumstances, but what made it even more difficult was we had to shoot over the Memorial Day weekend. But as the spots were going to get a lot of media play, the production company, Backyard, agreed to take on the project, under one condition; Anton Maillie had to produce it.  Now before that job I had never met Anton, but I had heard plenty of chatter in production corridors about this guy with an uncanny ability to solve tough production problems. And so I agreed to meet this dark horse Winston Wolfe character. My first impression of Anton was that he h...