Category: people

“Leonore Annenberg, 91, U.S. chief of protocol under President Reagan, widow of former publisher and U.S. Ambassador to Britain Walter H. Annenberg, and steward of the couple’s massive philanthropy, died today at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.”

The libertarian/quasi-liberal HBO host and the far-right-wing provocateuse did a three-city tour this week, debating before an audience as part of the 2009 Speakers Series run by MSG Entertainment. (That’s MSG as in Madison Square Garden.)

“‘It would be a good opera,’ he says. ‘It’s extremes of competition to see who can be the filthiest person in the world. It stars a fat lady. And, I’ve said it before, not only does she sing at the end, she does something else. If you think about it, it would work.'”

“The perennial search for a portrait of Shakespeare is really a search for an image that justifies our idea of Shakespeare, our idea of writing. We somehow want the young Shakespeare to look like Joseph Fiennes, fiery and slashing. But what if he looked like Ricky Gervais? Would the plays mean less to us?”

“On the podium and in preconcert talks and classroom lectures, he is an indefatigable advocate for the idea that anyone can appreciate classical music, and that appreciation can always be taken to a deeper level. His drive has extended into a busy side career giving leadership talks to corporations as well as a co-authored book, The Art of Possibility.”

Avers England’s most eminent modernist composer, “I don’t see it as my role to do humour. I don’t even know if it can be done in music. There may be a few musical jokes but I think Rossini did them all.”

Andrew Leonard: “I recently completed a comprehensive computer analysis of my father’s collected works and confirmed what I have long only suspected: 97.4 percent of everything that ever emanated from his typewriter, keyboard or mouth can be safely ignored. All that verbiage is utilitarian scaffolding, employed to hold up 10 critical words.”

“Anna Manahan, an actress renowned in Ireland who earned belated recognition in the United States for her Tony-winning portrayal of a physically feeble but monstrously manipulative old woman in Martin McDonagh’s play ‘The Beauty Queen of Leenane,’ died Sunday in Waterford, Ireland.”

“Robert Gallucci will be the new president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Chicago-based organization announced today, in tapping the veteran Washington envoy and educator to head one of the nation’s most prestigious philanthropies. Gallucci, 63, has been Georgetown University’s dean of the School of Foreign Service for 13 years….”

“It was the bourbon that did it, or so a newly available excuse note claims. A 1842 letter from Edgar Allan Poe to his publishers apologises for his drunken behaviour while in New York, blaming his friend, the poet and lawyer William Ross Wallace, for pouring too many juleps down his throat, and begs them to buy an article he has written as he is ‘desperately pushed for money’.”