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Links Book and Music Page, johnrpierce.com Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope Quel Blog, the blog of John Pierce
NEWSPAPERS
E-mail:
johnrpierce @ hotmail.com
Old North Church, Boston, October 29, 2003 |
August 30, 2004 fshk.net has photos of the recent protest march in New York. One of the photos shows the building at the corner of 21st Street and 7th Avenue where I used to live. August 26, 2004
Donald Trump has applied for a trademark
for "Trump University," to teach business and real estate on line,
reports
thesmokinggun.com.
According to 20 Questions to a Better Relationship, I am a Hellcat.
Newyorkish reports that Jai Rodriguez has his own
site, but the main
page at
jai-rodriguez.com lists personal appearances in February 2004!
August 25, 2004 This fall the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont will exhibit the late Jon Gould's collection of works of Andy Warhol, reports Joseph P. Kahn in the Boston Globe. "The show, titled 'Andy Warhol: Intimate & Unseen,' opens Sept. 18 and runs through Feb. 6. Spread over 5,000 square feet of exhibition space, it consists of 45 paintings and drawings, 20 prints, and 50 black-and-white photographs taken by Warhol, many of Jon Gould. The bulk is devoted to works from the 1980s, the period during which Gould, then a high-flying movie executive, began acquiring his collection under Warhol's tutelage."
Will Bush handlers "continue in their
commitment for fund-raisers with entertainer Kid Rock?," asks Liz Smith
in her column at
newsday.com.
Here are the lyrics to Kid Rock's "Pimp of the Nation." Stupid and disgusting stuff. "South African police arrested former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's son Mark [today] on suspicion of involvement in a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea," reports China View. August 24, 2004 Caron Carlson wrote an interesting article in the August 23 issue of eWeek, "No spying, please," that says that the ACLU is asking consumers to write to stores, banks, airlines, and car rental agencies to ask that the companies not hand over customers' personal data to the government unless required by law. According to the article, Enterprise Rent-A-Car However, "Cendant Corp., the parent company of Avis Rent A Car System Inc. and Budget Rent A Car System Inc., provides law enforcement with the data it asks for, whether legally required to or not, said Susan McGowan, director of public relations at Cendant, in Parsippany, N.J."
August 23, 2004
Arriving at my office this morning, I saw that somebody had been in the corridor outside the door and had tried to force the door open but had given up before doing so. The attempt must have been made some time after six o'clock in the afternoon yesterday. Whoever the people were, they did break into an office down the hall from me. That suite had a window about a foot wide next to the door. They removed the window to gain access. I hear a few laptops and monitors were stolen. I have never liked internal windows. I think that they are tacky and unsafe, but others do not share my opinion. I have occasionally noticed that there are people in the building who are involved in some sort of political campaign who place a piece of cardboard in the front door to keep it open on Sunday evenings because they have people coming into the building for some sort of party. The front door is supposed to be locked all day on Sunday. If this were a residential building, I would have gone ballistic, putting up signs and sending a certified letter to the landlord threatening litigation. But since this is an office building where I come only in the daytime, I do not feel that there is such danger as there would be in an apartment building where I might be sleeping if an intruder broke in. I don't want to be picking fights every day, although I certainly could easily find cause to do so in this world. Now that there has been crime in the building, I will not tolerate any further nonsense with the front door being left unlocked on Saturday or Sunday.
August 22, 2004 Graham Norton will be returning to England later this year to "helm a new family game show on the BBC. It's a plum Saturday prime-time gig that will undoubtedly make England's biggest dandy an even bigger celebrity," reports the Boston Globe. August 20, 2004
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, by
Harvard professor Steven Greenblatt, is scheduled for publication
on September 30, 2004.
In Harvard Magazine of September-October 2004, Jonathan Shaw writes: "Will in the World doesn't directly address the subject of an alternative authorship. But the process of writing the book, says Greenblatt, 'has made me respect that preposterous fantasy--if I may so--rather more than when I began . . . because I have now taken several years of hard work and 40 years of serious academic training to grapple with the difficulty of making the connections meaningful and compelling between the life of this writer and the works that he produced.' * * * "Greenblatt traces throughout the playwright's life the impact of his father's financial ruin, the role of recusant Catholicism, and the implications of a marriage at 18 to a pregnant 26-year-old." The Summer 2004 issue of Boston College Magazine reports: On June 29, 2004, Boston College "completed its acquisition of 43 acres and five buildings [in Brighton] from the Archdiocese of Boston for $99.4 million. . . . BC will not make any plans for use of the new campus until it completes a major study of the property and the ways [in] which it can be integrated with the Chestnut Hill Campus. This review will begin shortly and could take a year to complete." Cardinal O'Connell's tomb is currently located on those 43 acres. "His remains are to be moved to another site," says the magazine.
According to
gawker.com, Monica Lewinsky was seen in a "muumuu-esque
get-up," talking with Alan Cumming in the
XES gay bar in the
Chelsea section of New York.
Bad Gas explains a new craze, "doing a Lynndie." August 18, 2004 Last night in New York "on East 57th Street in a four-story penthouse owned by David Copperfield, . . . Cornelia Guest, Mr. Copperfield, Chris Heinz and Dan Peres were hosting a party to launch Fête Accompli! The Ultimate Guide to Creative Entertaining (Clarkson Potter), a new book 'written and lived by' Lara Shriftman and Elizabeth Harrison and Karen Robinovitz," reports New York Social Diary. I
find the title slightly annoying, since "fête" is feminine, not
masculine. "Accompli" should end in an "e" when modifying a feminine
noun. August 17, 2004 I don't know how or why, but "bisexual couples" is a search string that shows up twice in my site statistics. I don't think that I have ever addressed the topic. I don't even remember using the word "bisexual" at this site.
Socialitelife.com comments on the marriage of Nicky Hilton and Todd
Meister: "The rumors of Todd's wealth or lack of wealth are hard
to confirm at the moment."
Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, Alan Keyes, has spoken in favor of reparations for black Americans because of slavery, reports the Chicago Tribune. Such an argument seems to ignore the fact that black Americans are on average one third European by ancestry. There are likely to be many slave owners as well as slaves among their ancestors. Thomas Jefferson, as a famous example, has black descendants today. Whoever you are, you are descended from all of your ancestors, not just from the ones that you happen to approve of. On the other hand, Americans whose ancestors came to America from Europe or Asia or Canada in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, probably had no connection with slavery whatsoever. Why should they be involved in any scheme to pay reparations to some other group? Irish people in Ireland probably had a lower standard of living at the time of the potato famine in the nineteenth century than did black slaves in the United States. Catholics were not allowed to own land in Ireland in the eighteenth century, but have not received reparations for the land that was taken from them. Irish immigrants have managed to do well without reparations. Jews have been killed and mistreated throughout European history. Armenians and Greeks were killed and mistreated in Turkey. And the list goes on and on. Whatever problems may exist in certain bad neighborhoods in the United States today are not going to be solved by any kind of "reparations." August 16, 2004 20-year-old Nicky Hilton married New York money manager Todd Andrew Meister at the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel early Sunday morning, in the presence of her sister Paris and actress Bijou Phillips, according to various news reports. "Well, you know that's not going to last very long," said an unnamed friend, as quoted by the New York Social Diary. The Las Vegas Wedding Chapel doesn't sound very socially desirable to me. August 15, 2004
I saw some Olympic volleyball on
television while I was at the gym this afternoon. I noticed that
far more than 50% of the seats in the stands were empty.
Margaret Cho--Revolution is being released on DVD on August 17. According to amazon.com the DVD is "Dubbed in English"! Jim McGreevey appears to me to be a sleazy character who is trying to cloak himself in some sort of sacred mantle of gay victimhood. Whatever was going on between him and Cipel, whatever he was doing improperly to get Cipel an undeserved job on the public payroll, society is not to blame. August 10, 2004 The New York Post Page Six says: We hear "THAT the GOP is reaching out to Kelsey Grammer, Lee Ann Womack, Kid Rock, Dennis Miller, Britney Spears and country stars Brooks & Dunn in hopes that they'll lend some star power to the Republican National Convention ." Of course I know who Kelsey Grammer is, and I'm vaguely aware of who Britney Spears is, but I really don't know who the others are. I'm surprised to hear that they are stars. August 9, 2004 Wednesday August 11 is National Underwear Day, according to an article at fredericksburg.com. The article provides various statistics about underwear, including the following: "10 percent of men prefer to wear no underwear at all. So do 7 percent of women. "31 percent of women prefer to wear thongs, 5 percent of men."
August 8, 2004 "Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's going to be a second season" says Graham Norton about his Comedy Central show The Graham Norton Effect, as quoted at tv.zap2it.com.
August 7, 2004 The first three seasons of Seinfeld are coming to DVD on November 23, reports Marla Matzer Rose of the Hollywood Reporter in an article in the Boston Globe.
August 6, 2004
When people asking for spare change in the
street mention that they are homeless, I often wonder why they wouldn't
have extra money if they are homeless. They don't have to contend
with rent, mortgage payments, or condo fees, or utility bills.
Shouldn't they be standing in the street offering to give money away?
David Sedaris's most recent book of essays, Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy, isn't worth buying, in my opinion. He seems to have run out of material for humorous autobiographical essays. Maybe he should try writing fiction. Some of his earlier books were hilarious, but the latest provided me with only a few chuckles. If you are a fan of his, you might want to borrow this one from a library to skim through it quickly.
August 5, 2004 "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we," President Bush said today to a roomful of Pentagon brass, according to a Reuters report. I don't doubt that he was unwittingly speaking truthfully about himself and his closest advisers. August 4, 2004 "A King County Superior Court judge in Seattle ruled [today] that gay couples can marry, saying that denying their right to do so would be a violation of their constitutional rights. * * * "The decision is stayed until the state Supreme Court reviews the case, said Jennifer Pizer, lead counsel for Lambda Legal Defense in the case. The stay means no marriage licenses can be issued until the high court's decision."--from an article by Melanthia Mitchell, Associated Press writer, for Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Take the quiz: "Which 'Queer Eye' Guy Are You?" August 3, 2004 Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced "Sunday that the government had recently obtained information that Al Qaeda operatives were surveilling [sic] financial buildings [in New York, Newark, and Washington] for an attack. "But much of the information the Bush administration relied on to elevate the terror threat to 'high' in the three cities is three or four years old, and intelligence officials did not have any information that surveillance of the buildings was still underway, The New York Times and Washington Post reported today."--from an article by Charlie Savage and Jessica E. Vascellaro in the Boston Globe.
August 2, 2004
"Companies representing
marketing aspects of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting
career say they've settled their lawsuit against an Ohio company which
sold bobblehead dolls that looked by the actor's 'Terminator' movie
character -- with a kinder, gentler Schwarzenegger bobblehead emerging,"
reports
losangeles.bizjournals.com.
The terror threat story dominates the front page of today's Boston Globe, with a story about John Kerry below the fold. Is pushing Kerry out of the spotlight the reason for Ridge to publicize the threat?
Kerry Edwards items at ebay.com
To entries for Feb.,
March, & Apr. 2004
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