| Rolling the dice on Connolly | | Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 10:50:07 AM by Blog57 Team | | Buffalo Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisano last month pledged more than $1 million for an anti-gambling campaign and announced the team would refuse to accept future sponsorship revenue from the New York State Lottery. Yet scant blocks away from a downtown casino construction site, Golisano is rolling the dice under his own roof. The billionaire businessman over the summer placed a substantial wager he hopes will pay off for the Sabres in the second half of this season. The Sabres committed $8.7 million over three years to puck-dealing maverick Tim Connolly. The contract was commensurate with a breathtaking young player coming off a breakout season and scheduled for unrestricted free agency next summer. But the deal involved far more speculation than usual. Connolly, on long-term injured reserve, is trying to overcome another concussion some fear could wipe out most, if not all, of the season.... | |
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| | | Good grief! | | Posted Monday, October 30, 2006 2:49:41 PM by Blog57 Team | | You'd think that selling "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" to CBS back in 1966 would have been as easy as selling ... well, pumpkins on Halloween. Or Charlie Brown at any time.Not so, animator Bill Melendez recalls. "We didn't know whether the network would buy it," Melendez says. "I'd always have to do a sales pitch. And I can really do a pitch. They used to say: 'Come on, Bill, do a dance for The Man."'And this was after "A Charlie Brown Christmas" had been a huge, Peabody- and Emmy-winning hit in 1965, and after the "Peanuts" comic strip mania was well under way.Friday will mark the 40th anniversary of the TV special, which has now become for some as much of a Halloween tradition as candy corn and soaped windows.It will be shown at 7 p.m. tonight on ABC, in tandem with "You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown," a later "Peanuts" special with a "Great Pumpkin" subplot."We translated the Christmas idea to the pumpkin patch," says Melendez, who had little idea he was creating a small but much-loved new piece of Americana with his yarn of the eternally optimistic Linus, who forgoes trick or treating to spend his night in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arise and bring toys to all the good little children of the world.Never mind that the other kids laugh at him.... | |
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| | | Lucky Thirteen | | Posted Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:47:25 PM by Blog57 Team | | Two hundred, maybe 300 copies of the world beater of a bestseller The Thirteenth Tale awaited the author's signature in an office of Random House Canada in Toronto. With a permanent smile, Diane Setterfield, 42, looked at the stacks. What must it feel like to go from first-time author to international bestseller in a matter of weeks? It couldn't be any less strange than being feted a few weeks ago by a conference of Barnes & Noble store managers at Walt Disney World in Florida. All the better to ensure that the book would get a prominent place in the stores. And so, there she was in the Random House office, her smile widening as she glances at the stacks. She could probably have been coaxed into signing 10 times as many copies (and she probably has over the course of her book tour), for it's every author's dream, isn't it? she asks.... | |
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| | | lookListen 10/17 | | Posted Saturday, October 21, 2006 6:47:48 AM by Blog57 Team | | Before he became chief executive officer of Walt Disney Co. last year, Robert Iger personally responded to concerns about selling kids junk food voiced by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Iger, 55, might start with his own U.S. amusement parks, visited by an estimated 63.3 million people a year. A nutritional analysis by a Bloomberg News- hired lab found Disney's Magic Kingdom near Orlando, Fla., serves food with more fat, salt and calories than McDonald's Corp., the usual target for criticism about making kids fat. A smoked turkey leg at Disney, for example, has almost a day's worth of fat and 1,092.5 calories. "It's just disgusting," said Orlando nutritionist Tara Gidus, a licensed dietician and member of the American Dietetic Association who has advised Disney. Bloomberg Mr.... | |
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| | | Ohio family wins grand prize -- an empty Magic Kingdom | | Posted Thursday, October 12, 2006 2:48:00 AM by Blog57 Team | | The highly choreographed scene offered the kind of moment for which Disney is famous. The only visitors in the entire Magic Kingdom, the Spangler family of Randolph, Ohio, entered on red carpet under a flawless blue Florida sky as trumpets blared fanfare. Then Mickey Mouse and more than 1,000 other Walt Disney World characters and employees swarmed around them. Raymond and Tammy Spangler, both 38, and their children Derick, 13, and Ashley, 11 -- all big Disney fans -- felt like the luckiest people on Earth. They won Disney's "Keys to the Magic Kingdom" grand prize in a drawing and got the Magic Kingdom to themselves for 90 minutes, an unprecedented experience that highlighted their free, four-day, VIP Disney vacation. And though Disney officials would not say so, they had to feel pretty lucky, too.... | |
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| | | A Disney World tour | | Posted Monday, October 02, 2006 10:47:52 PM by Blog57 Team | | HONG KONG -- The rain was pouring, the skies were a murky gray and Mickey's magic wasn't working on the visitors cursing and scampering for cover at Hong Kong Disneyland. But Keith Simpson and his six friends from Sydney -- all Disney fanatics sporting matching polo shirts that show Mickey ears over Australia's map -- couldn't have been happier. The group was in Hong Kong on the second leg of their Disney-themed round-the-world tour, realizing months of planning for a 32-day trip that takes them to every Disney park in the world -- from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Paris, to the U.S. flagships, Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., and Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. It was a dream come true for the ''Down Under Disneyana'' fan club members, who have all been to one or more Disney parks before but have never done them all at one go.... | |
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| | | European art inspired Walt Disney | | Posted Saturday, September 23, 2006 2:47:39 PM by Blog57 Team | | Rarely do popular and highbrow culture collide, but exploring their links is the aim of a new Paris exhibition -- starring Mickey Mouse, Snow White and other Walt Disney favourites. Original Disney studio drawings feature side-by-side with the mostly European art works, from the gothic Middle Ages to surrealism and even German expressionist cinema, that helped to inspire them. "It's extremely visual, regardless of the type of source, because there is cinema, there is painting, there is sculpture, there is photography, there is literature also," organiser Bruno Girveau said. About 500 items are on display until mid-January at the prestigious Grand Palais gallery, which has previously displayed the works of masters such as Paul Gauguin and Claude Monet.... | |
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| | | ABC talks tough | | Posted Thursday, September 14, 2006 2:48:30 AM by Blog57 Team | | ABC's top executive hyped the network's upcoming fall TV schedule at a media industry conference on Wednesday. Speaking at the second day of Merrill Lynch's influential Media and Entertainment Conference in Pasadena, Anne Sweeney, co-chairman of Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC Television Group, said she was confident that ABC's new shows will be big hits. .... | |
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| | | Book smarts: Agency creates children’s library | | Posted Sunday, September 10, 2006 4:52:26 AM by Blog57 Team | | A year later, she realized her ambition with the opening of a children's library at the Community Action of Southern Indiana along Eight Street in Jeffersonville. Book smarts: Agency creates children's library CASI home to nearly 2,000 books for kids By JOSEPH LORD newsroom@newsandtribune.com Rebecca Martin, laying in bed late one night, decided she'd follow through with a long-standing ambition. A year later, she realized her ambition with the opening of a children's library at the Community Action of Southern Indiana along Eight Street in Jeffersonville. The tiny tomes-haven will serve as an introduction to libraries for Head Start students ages 3 through 5, said Martin, literacy coordinator for CASI Head Start. "Children need the foundation of reading books," Martin said after the library's opening.... | |
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| | | In the mix: TV, books and news to use | | Posted Tuesday, August 29, 2006 8:48:47 PM by Blog57 Team | | ''Celebrity Duets'' will address this pressing issue: Can Cheech Marin, Lucy Lawless and other stars not known for being songbirds manage to carry a tune when they're paired up with the likes of Clint Black, Michael Bolton and Macy Gray? Fox's new singing competition has a special two-hour premiere today before it settles into its regular Thursday and Friday slots the following week, where it will warble through September. Created by ''American Idol'' meanie Simon Cowell, ''Celebrity Duets'' will partner its eight contestants with a slate of recording stars (who also include Peter Frampton, James Ingram, Wynonna Judd and others). After each Thursday edition, viewers will vote for their favorite celebrity performers, with the outcome announced live on the Friday show. The winning celebrity wins a $100,000 cash prize he or she will present to charity.... | |
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