This was quite the buzz a few years ago in Texas and on the internet…
I truly hope it’s not true. I don’t want him in my Club….
From The Huffington Post:
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s camp is prepared to tackle unfounded rumors dating back to as early as 2004 about the Lone Star State Republican’s personal life should he run for president and the allegations resurface, according to Politico.
Roughly seven years ago, Perry himself addressed the unsubstantiated buzz that he and his wife planned to divorce and that he was gay. He denied the rumors and told the Austin American-Statesman at the time that he was the victim of a “smear campaign” being conducted by his political enemies. The AP reported in March of 2004:
Perry said the rumors “are not correct in any shape, form or fashion. These are irresponsible. They’re salacious. They’re hurtful to my family.”
…
“I don’t think a rumor can just get to critical mass by itself,” Perry said. “I think you have to have a well thought-out, organized effort to disseminate that kind of information and keep it going day after day after day after day.”
According to Politico:
The crusted-over rumors were in the ether among some attendees at a dinner hosted last week by the Manhattan County GOP, where Perry gave the keynote speech.
…
But Team Perry, asked about how it’s prepared to handle them when they emerge if he runs, said it remains “false and misleading.”
It remains to be seen whether Perry will jump into the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. After previously denying he had any intention of entering the primary election contest, the Texas Governor recently signaled interest in pursuing a campaign for the White House.
1. She never finishes anything she starts. She reminds me of my Mother….
2. She has no interest in doing anything unless someone is paying attention to her and will do anything to get people to pay attention to her. Also, just like my Mother…
Oh…My….God….
It’s all coming together now….
From Salon.com:
Sarah Palin quit her cross-country bus tour (or PAC-funded family vacation) about one region into the country. Everyone is so used to her quitting things that no one really noticed. Life went on. Jon Huntsman ran for president. Rick Perry preemptively denied gay rumors.
But Scott Conroy at RealClearPolitics wondered what happened to the tour that was supposed to be heading through the Midwest and Southwest at some point in this rapidly ending month. It seems like Sarah Palin just went home to Alaska, to eat salmon or something.
“As Palin enjoys her sojourn to the 49th state, she has not reconnected with key early-state figures like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and she may have jeopardized whatever political momentum she gained from her recent reemergence in the 2012 discussion. Her political action committee’s website still greets visitors with a stale banner, announcing the nationwide bus tour beginning “[t]his Sunday, May 29th.”
Just give it another month, and she’ll come up with some other scheme to briefly convince everyone that she’s running for president again. She feeds on the attention! (And the PAC donations.) That documentary about how she used to not be so awful before she got famous is going to show in Iowa soon. That’ll definitely mean something.
Palin is probably just putting off the decision to run for president until it’s too late for her to run for president, because, like so many of us, she is undisciplined and lazy. There’s no grand plan, here: just indecision and procrastination
Looks like the show Steve and I saw in a Church Gym last Friday is heading for the Big Time- Broadway!
We both saw “Spring Awakening” when it was being done off-Broadway in a converted Church then again on Broadway. I saw “Grey Gardens” off-Broadway and again once it transferred to The Great White Way. Steve saw “Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson” at the Public before Broadway. It’s so cool to see these great off-Broadway shows transfer.
“Lysistrata Jones” is really, really good. I hope it makes it on Broadway.
From the NY Post:
That “new translation” is, of course, his new musical, “Lysistrata Jones,” a modern twist on Aristophanes’ comedy about Greek wives who force their husbands to negotiate peace during the Peloponnesian war by withholding sex.
It was a big hit in 411 B.C., packing them in for years at the Theater Dionysus, a Nederlanderious house, and winning the Tonyiod that year for Best Play.
Beane’s version, running at the Judson Memorial Church until Friday, is a hit as well. The Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli called it “a terrific splash of summer fun,” while the Times’ Ben Brantley said it was “effervescent and tasty.”
(Sounds like Ben was hitting the retsina again.)
And now comes word that the show will move to Broadway in the fall.
Alan Wasser, a general manager who oversees such long-running hits as “The Phantom of the Opera,” has quietly been hunting around for theaters. He’s got his eye, I’m told, on the Broadhurst or the Walter Kerr.
The budget is said to be between $6 million and $7 million.
Set in Athens, Ga., Beane’s “Lysistrata Jones” is about a group of high school cheerleaders who refuse to sleep with the members of the basketball team until they start winning games. The musical has no stars, which could be a drawback on Broadway. However, the bright young cast is winning, and Liz Mikel, as a saucy goddess, is likely to find herself in a good seat at next year’s Tonys.
Lots of good articles up at Alternet.com today and this is one of them…
This just isn’t right….
Another reason for me to keep up my 12+ year boycott of Wal-Mart….
The crowd in DC seems to have forgotten you can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy middle class. Try as they might, the Rich just can’t buy everything…
S. Robson “Rob” Walton, Walmart chairman, has a net worth of about $19.7 billion. And he’s only number 9 on the list of 2010’s top 20 richest Americans.
Walmart workers, meanwhile, make around $8.75 an hour—about $18,000 a year. They’d have to work over a million years to approach what the chairman of Walmart Stores is sitting on. Alice and Jim Walton each have about $20 billion, and Christy Walton has $24 billion.
Last year Jonathan Turley noted that the CEO of Walmart, Michael Duke, makes his average employee’s yearly salary every hour.
A new report by the Washington Post on “Breakaway Wealth” contains new research by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim, who analyzed tax returns from the top 0.1 percent of earners in the U.S. That top percentile takes home more than 20 percent of the personal income in the country, and their average income is $5.4 million. The average income of the bottom 90 percent, according to the Post, is just $31,244.
The headline pretty much sums it all up for how most of us feel here in North Carolina…
Great article from the Daily Beast about how Edwards is seen in Chapel Hill…
Here’s an excerpt and a link to the full article by Michelle Cottle:
The first, inescapable fact on the ground is that the folks around Raleigh and Chapel Hill are not yet in a forgiving mood. While legal experts debate the merits of the Justice Department’s case against Edwards, the hometown crowd has issued its own, more personal verdict: Depending on who you ask, the man is “a snake,” “a scumbag,” or, as Betty Henderson, receptionist at the Edwardses’ longtime church home in Raleigh, eloquently put it, “a narcissist so in love with himself that he can’t see past his own desires.”
Depending on who you ask, the man is “a snake,” “a scumbag,” or…“a narcissist so in love with himself that he can’t see past his own desires.”
Home may be the place where they always have to take you in—but that doesn’t mean they have to like it.
You can’t walk a block in these parts without running into someone who has a tale of John Edwards after the fall—often secondhand and overwhelmingly unflattering. In some instances, the anecdotes revolve around Edwards’ discomfort with his new infamy. A local ABC news cameraman, for instance, was yelled at by an irate Edwards this month when the guy took a picture of the senator at one of Jack’s little league games. “Edwards sits all by himself at the games,” observes the cameraman.
Even more common is the snickering over Edwards’ nightlife. Particularly during the period when Elizabeth kicked him out of the house and he was living in an apartment near the main drag where UNC students congregate, Edwards was a fixture at area watering holes. The hipsterish Bowbarr, right next door to the Rosemary Street highrise in which Edwards lived, was a favorite spot for him to unwind and chat up the (young, pretty) clientele. But there have been sightings of the senator exercising his legendary charm at plenty of other area bars as well. “He’s not shy,” chuckles Mike, a balding, bespectacled bartender at Crooks’ Corner, one of the Edwards clan’s favorite eateries in sunnier times.
It’s probably too late to talk any sense into the GOP Congress and the Democratic enablers, but this just might make a difference…
I’ve been saying all along, they are doing exactly the opposite of what needs to be done to drive an economic recovery. You have to spend to create jobs, which will increase purchasing power to drive demand for consumer goods and increase tax revenues.
You worry about deficits once the economy has recovered. And the deficit will be a much smaller problem as increased revenues from taxes-income and sales- will ease the burden on state, local and federal governments.
Then you repeal the Bush tax cuts, end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, remove the cap on Social Security withholding taxes and it’s all fixed.
Why don’t they just listen to me? And Paul Krugman. And now, Bill Gross…
From TalkingPointsMemo:
One of the most influential investors in the world of finance has a message for lawmakers — particularly conservative lawmakers — on Capitol Hill: rejoin the real world.
In a prospectus for clients, Bill Gross, a co-founder of investment management giant PIMCO, says members’ of Congress incessant focus on deficit — and in particular, the manner in which they obsess about deficits — is foolhardy, and a recipe for disaster. What the country needs, Gross said, is real stimulus now, and a measured return toward fiscal balance in the years ahead.
The Summer Solstice is coming up on Tuesday, June 21. I received a link to this amazing video from Celestial Elf in the UK a few weeks ago and promised to share it closer to the Solstice.
It features the words and narration of King Arthur Pendragon, the reigning Druid King of Great Britain, about the Solstice Celebration at Stonehenge.
We were lucky enough to be at Stonehenge on New Years Day a few years ago and it was amazing…
I started my second day in New York on Fifth Avenue. I had forgotten how much Fifth Avenue got on my nerves now…
Like most of Mid Town Manhattan, between 40th and 50th Streets, Fifth Avenue is now just like part of Branson, Missouri or Myrtle Beach South, Carolina. It is tourist hell.
New York has become entirely too safe. I really am starting to miss the days when the only time you saw teenagers in Times Square was if they were there to turn tricks or buy drugs. That would be vastly preferable to slack jawed idiots who stop cold on the side walk to gape at the tall buildings. Or families who leisurely stroll up the side walks four or six abreast. It’s really country come to town time….
Broadway really is starting to reflect this more and more each season. There’s just not a lot on Broadway that I want to see- or put up with the tourists to see.
Even though I loved “Catch Me If You Can”, I still had to put up with five or six cretinous teenage girls sitting behind us talking and periodically noisily unwrapping food through the whole show. That’s why they are putting on junk shows like “Spiderman”, “The Adams Family”, “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and “Sister Act”. It’s all for this crowd.
There is a big difference in both the quality of the shows and the quality of the audience once you go off-Broadway.
That’s one of the reasons I loved seeing “Lysistrata Jones” down in the East Village Friday night. It was in a Church Gym and had a real New York audience. Real New York audiences don’t applaud the scenery and they loved “Lysistrata Jones”. As did we. It is a modern re-telling of the Greek play “Lysistrata” where the women withheld sex to stop the war. In this version, cheerleaders withhold sex in order to get their slacker basketball player boyfriends to actually try to win a game. It was a musical. It was wonderful. It reminded us of a mix of “Glee”, “Xanadu” and a touch of “Spring Awakening”.
Saturday was a full day with three shows.
First up was “The Motherf@cker with the Hat”. This was nominated for multiple Tony Awards and deserved them all. It was a comedy about addiction. Addiction to drugs, addiction to sex, addiction to the past, addiction to people…Amazing performances.
Having not seen “Jerusalem”, I would have voted Bobby Cannavale the Best Actor Tony award. He was amazing. Chris Rock was very good. The set was amazing. The play was amazing. I’m so glad we saw it. It’s so rare to see a really good new play on Broadway…
We went from there to my partner Steve Willis’ play reading. It was an almost sold out house for his play “Diana Sands”. It was a new version of the play and it was very well received. It was a great time. Good people, good audience, good play. We’ll see where it goes from here…
We cabbed it uptown from there to see the off Broadway show “The Best is Yet to Come”, the new musical review of Cy Coleman’s songs. Great cast of Broadway veterans including Lillias White, Howard McGillin, Rachel York, David Burnham, Natascia Diaz and Billy Stritch. Great audience of New Yorkers and not tourists.
We had seen Lillias in her Tony Award winning performance in Cy Coleman’s “The Life” and it was great to see her recreate her show stopping number again. She’s an amazing performer. Rachel York was beautiful and delivered some great moments. The rest of the cast was delightful.
Howard McGillin has always been one of our favorites. We love his CD/Album and play it frequently. He’s spent most of the last 15 years going in and out of “Phantom of the Opera” where he’s played the lead more than any other actor. Something like 17 million performances….
He’s much more than that…It was great to see him up close and personal from the third row of a very small theatre. He is so good…and aging very well.
At the end of one song, he threw a rose into the audience. It landed in my lap. Several elderly New York women now hate me…
A rose from Howard McGillin is not a bad way to end a Saturday night in New York.
It’s even better ending the evening by going back to a comfortable hotel with Steve Willis and knowing there is more to do on Sunday, one of my favorite days in New York…
I won’t be posting much the next few days because I am vacationing in New York. We usually do at least 2 or 3 long weekends a year in the City and this is one of them…
I know you’re not supposed to tell people when you are out-of-town, but we have a house sitter and an alarm system, so I’m hoping the alarm will stop them, the pets will attach them and the house sitter will shoot them if anyone tries to break in…I’ll take the chance for some time in New York.
Let me start by saying, for once, the journey up on USAirways was relatively smooth- which is exceedingly rare nowadays. Of course, my expectations are lowered. As long as we get to the original destination within a couple of hours of the scheduled time, without crashing and with luggage, I accept that as the best-case scenario.
Given this, It didn’t faze me that before we left they told us the plane’s bathroom was broken, so if you had to go to the bathroom, go before you boarded. I’m just surprised they didn’t use this as an excuse to cancel the flight. But then, it was a full flight and they probably just wanted the money. If it hadn’t been full, I’m sure they would have canceled.
My biggest issue was that at least a third of my fellow passengers were wearing flip-flops. Those who read this blog know this is a pet peeve of mine- people who wear flip-flops on airplanes and in other inappropriate places. Not to mention on an airplane on a flight to New York City. Doesn’t get much more inappropriate than that- short of the White House.
Who in their right frigging mind would wear flip-flops in New York City? That’s like walking barefoot down Broadway. That’s just nasty, unsanitary and unsafe.
Don’t get me wrong, I love flip-flops, I own flip-flops, I wear flip-flops, but I know when and where to do so. It’s inappropriate use of flip-flops that make me crazy. If the plane crashed, do you want to try to escape through fire and hot metal wearing little pieces of rubber on your feet? If they didn’t fall off on impact? Talk about slack-jawed idiots.
And there are pages of articles on the web about how unsanitary and unsafe it is to wear flip-flops in New York. Just Google “Flip Flops in New York City.”
I’ll rest my case and I’ll try to move on…
After a pleasant cab ride into the City, I got to the hotel and made my first of three attempts to check in.
First, the room wasn’t ready, so I went to lunch. Since I was carrying my messenger bag crammed full of all my electronics: iPod, Bose Headphones, 2 cell phones, MacBook Air and Kindle, I didn’t want to go far. That was too much crap to schlepp all over town.
So, I had to break one of my rules and eat in Mid town. Tourist trap food. Over priced. Not very good. Mid town.
I ate at a trendy little place on 8th Avenue and ordered a Beet and Grilled Shrimp Salad. It was 4 shrimp, 3 cubes of beets and a couple of lettuce leaves for $14.95. Never eat in Mid town unless you know the place or it’s an old diner…..I paid for my sins.
Try two, I actually got my room, but no key cards. The machine was broken so the bellman had to let me in. This was after standing in line for 20 minutes just like the first time. Anyway, I got my room, unpacked and went off to get theatre tickets. I got great orchestra seats for us to “Catch Me If You Can” at the Neil Simon Theatre. Once I got back to the hotel, they had finally fixed the key machine and after a third 20 minute wait in line, I finally had both a room and keys to it.
I settled in to wait for my partner Steve to get here from the East Village where he is wrapping up a seminar at NYU and once he arrived, it was off to the theatre.
I had read mixed reviews of “Catch Me If You Can”, but had seen some scenes on YouTube and the Tony’s broadcast, so we decided to give it a shot. Especially since we had discount coupons.
Another rule: Never pay full price for theatre. Going to the theatre is like flying. On the plane, everyone paid a different price for their seats. Same in the theater. If you know where to look, you can get in for less than the posted price. It’s the only way we can see as many shows as we do. We do have to miss some until they cool off- there are no discounts for “Book of Mormon” right now and we aren’t about to pay $375 for two tickets to a show with no stars. Even we have limits…
Anyway, “Catch Me If you Can” was a delight. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a great homage to the spirit of hope and innocence of the early 1960’s. It had a kind of Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin Rat Pack feel. Great choreography. Excellent music and lyrics playing to the various early 1960’s sounds. And uniformly excellent performances- especially by Tony Award Winner Norbert Leo Butz, leading man Aaron Tveit, Tom Wopat and Kerry Butler.
Aaron Tveit should definitely been nominated for the Tony. He carries the show. Norbert Leo Butz, in what is really a supporting role, steals it. Kerry Butler, with the 11 o’clock number stops it and Tom Wopat proves again how far he’s come from the “Dukes of Hazard” to being one of the most consistently excellent actors on Broadway.
The problem was the book. It took a while to draw us in, but about a third of the way through the first act, it had us hooked. There is lot’s of glitz in the first act, but in the second act, it finds its heart and soul. That surprised me as so many shows fall apart in the second act. But in this one, that’s the stronger act.
I really recommend you see this show if you come to New York and are looking for one new musical to see. And if you miss it in New York, see it on tour. This is better than the Critics led us to believe. Just be prepared for a somewhat slow start, then hold on for a great ride in the theatre. You won’t regret it once it gets going…It’s thoroughly engaging…
Lost in the 21st Century 