Eye on the Island
Quinn’s Quest: Suburbia To Gracie Mansion
Lawrence Quinn, a former Glen Cove resident and the father of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, is an Irish-American man of a certain age. So I can only imagine the look on his face when playwright Eve Ensler read aloud graphic passages of her best-known work, The Vagina Monologues, at his daughter’s 1999 City Council swearing-in ceremony.
When Ensler was finished, Mr. Quinn, who was sitting onstage during Ensler’s performance, looked at his daughter and said, “You couldn’t just have had the Pledge of Allegiance?”
Belmont Stakes 2013: A Sure Bet
Garden City and Floral Park are holding their annual Belmont Stakes Festivals on the day before, and the day after, the Saturday, June 8, running of the Belmont Stakes in Elmont.
Garden City’s Seventh Street will closed to traffic, and jammed with pedestrians, on Friday, June 7, between 6 and 10 p.m., for the Garden City Belmont Festival, an evening of live music, food, and family-friendly activities.
Cuomo 2014: As Seen On TV
Citizen Action of New York and Working Families Organization sent a direct-mail piece this month to registered Democrats in state Senator Jack Martins’ (R-Mineola) district, asking them to call his office and “tell him to clean up Albany by passing public funding of elections.”
But why should anyone bother? Publicly funded state electioneering is taking place today, something that is self-evident to any New Yorker who has watched television this spring.
Moving Pictures
The seven Nassau theaters in the Cablevision-owned Clearview Cinemas chain are being sold to Bow Tie Cinemas, a privately held Connecticut company, in a transaction which is expected to close in the coming months.
The deal, which includes 34 other Clearview Cinema locales in the metropolitan area, will impact Cablevision’s Optimum Rewards cardholders starting next week.
Quietly Vindicated
There is no quicker way for a county legislator to generate a headline than to accuse the county executive or the county comptroller of not doing his or her job. But what happens when the governmental official who comes under legislative fire is vindicated?
If the accused party is a Republican who is up for re-election this year, such as Comptroller George Maragos, county legislators move on to another target and hope their next round of allegations have merit. After all, if a county governmental agency is doing its job, that’s not news, right?
Authors On The Menu
President Harry Truman said the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.
I thought about that observation while reading David Nasaw’s The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, an amazing and meticulously researched book on President John F. Kennedy’s father. It was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and Dr. Nasaw, a Roslyn High School graduate, will return to Nassau next week.
Mike Tyson: Coming To A Stage Near You
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson has successfully introduced to the world the kinder and gentler sides of his personality in films such as The Hangover and Scary Movie 5.
But Comedy Central’s celebrity roast joke writers have longer memories, with one comedian observing that the tattoo on Tyson’s face offered future dates a target to shoot with their pepper spray.
Female Friendship
Comedian Chris Rock, in an HBO special which aired after 1999’s Columbine High School massacre, observed that the two murderers were supposedly depressed because they had only six friends. “I didn’t have six friends in high school,” Rock said. “I don’t have six friends now.”
Novelist Kristin Hannah has made a name for herself in the world of contemporary women’s fiction by exploring female friendship, with 2009’s Firefly Lane focusing on the lifelong bond between Kate Ryan and Tully Hart. Firefly Lane is the street where they grew up.
Political Grease
The federal government’s complaint against six politically connected New Yorkers last week could only have been derived from real life. No Hollywood screenwriter is imaginative enough to conjure up a plausible scenario whereby State Senator Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) is elected mayor of New York City.
Yet Senator Smith’s delusional 2013 mayoral ambitions are at the heart of the federal government’s 28-page complaint, and it boggles the mind to see how many people allegedly risked their reputations and careers to advance Smith’s City Hall dreams.
MTA: Money, Money And More Money
Days after spending $242 for a monthly LIRR ticket into Penn Station, $107 more than I paid for the same trip in 2003, I saw an MTA public service announcement (PSA) on television. The message: don’t stand too close to the platform, a train might come and hit you.
What’s next; a PSA telling people to come in from the rain? I expressed my opinion of the PSA that same day to the MTA’s press office, and they explained in response to my queries that TV stations were not charging the MTA for airing the PSA, and the PSAs had been produced in-house. Still, it pained me to see money wasted on a reiteration of the obvious.
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<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>Mike Barry, a corporate communications consultant, has worked in government and journalism. Email: MFBARRY@optonline.net