Eye on the Island
Nets’ Island Roots
Hours after the New York Islanders announced in October that they’d be moving to Brooklyn in 2015, the New York Knicks played a pre-season basketball game against the Brooklyn Nets at the Nassau Coliseum.
The Islanders wasted little time capitalizing on the big news, with Islanders personnel handing out fliers that night to just about everyone who walked through the Coliseum’s doors, urging them to consider the purchase of 2015-2016 Islanders season ticket plans at their new home, Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. I remember this vividly because I was at the Knicks-Nets game that evening with our two older sons and reminded them that there once was a time when both the Islanders and the Nets played at the Nassau Coliseum. They knew this already, and politely declined to remind me that I was instrumental in them becoming fans of the Nets, Islanders, Mets, and Jets.
Amtrak’s Silence
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) famously asked “what fresh hell is this?” yet she was not posing the question to Amtrak, which owns the East River tunnels used by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), because Amtrak materialized in its current form in 1970.
It is a moot point anyway because, if Ms. Parker’s ghost, or the typical LIRR commuter, asked Amtrak questions about how badly Sandy damaged its East River tunnels, or how long it would take to fix them, Amtrak wouldn’t answer anyway. It takes a member of the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate to get their attention, given that Amtrak receives billions of dollars annually in federal taxpayer monies.
Francis’ Diary
The commencement speaker in one of Woody Allen’s films said that, “mankind is at a crossroads. One path leads to utter despair and hopelessness. The other, to total extinction.”
Too many child television stars have encountered these crossroads after the shows they’ve appeared in were canceled. But Melissa Francis, host of Money with Melissa Francis, a one-hour program broadcast live each weekday at 5 p.m. on the Fox Business Network (FBN), is a notable exception. Francis has arguably found more success as a journalist than she did as a school-age actress in Hollywood, a chapter of her life which peaked when she was cast as Cassandra Cooper Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie. The show was a staple of NBC’s prime time line-up until the early 1980s.
NYS Senate’s Makeup
The composition of the New York state Senate was up in the air as of Thanksgiving Eve, with absentee ballots still being counted in upstate’s 46th Senatorial District (SD).
State Assemblyman George Amedore (R-Rotterdam) held a slight edge in the 46th SD’s balloting on that day over his Democratic opponent, Duanesburg, NY school board member Cecilia Tkaczyk. Should Assemblyman Amedore become Senator Amedore, the Republicans will have won 31 of the 63 state Senate seats on Tuesday, Nov. 6.
DeMille’s Latest is #1
Garden City novelist Nelson DeMille’s The Panther (Grand Central Publishing) was number one on The New York Times’ fiction bestseller list only weeks after its debut, according to the paper’s Sunday, Nov. 4 edition. This was no small accomplishment, given that J.K. Rowling recently held the top spot.
The next stop on his current book tour in support of The Panther is a local one, to be held on Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m., at Old Westbury Gardens, in Old Westbury. Tickets are $35 per person for members of The Friends of Old Westbury Gardens, and $45 for non-members. DeMille will speak, answer questions, and sign copies of his latest book on that evening. More details are at www.oldwestburygardens.org.
MTA’s Cash Grab
Election campaigns conclude but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) search for additional revenues never ends.
I truly believe Spinal Tap’s Gimme Some Money should be played at the start of the MTA’s Wednesday, Nov. 7, 5 p.m. public hearing at Farmingdale State College, Roosevelt Hall-Little Theatre, 2350 Broadhollow Road, in Farmingdale. The MTA is billing the gathering as an opportunity to discuss 2013’s Fare, Toll & Service Changes. Spoiler alert: the MTA’s fares are going up; it is just a question of how much.
Gold Coast Festival
The 2nd Annual Gold Coast International Film Festival (GCIFF) began earlier this week but Nassau movie fans have a few more days to catch the latest films from some of Hollywood’s biggest names.
Edward Burns, who grew up in Valley Stream, will be at Port Washington’s Clearview Cinema on Thursday evening, Oct. 25, to participate in an audience question and answer session, following that night’s 6:30 p.m. screening of his latest movie, The Fitzgerald Family Christmas. Burns wrote, directed and starred in this story about “an expansive Irish clan’s fraught yuletide when their long absent patriarch declares his intention to come home for the holiday.”
Consequential Races
The presidential campaign swept through Hofstra University on Tuesday, Oct. 16, with President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney meeting for the second of their three debates on the institution’s Hempstead campus.
Since New York State has not voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1984, and you have to go back to 1988 to find a GOP presidential candidate who carried Nassau, neither the president nor Governor Romney are likely to be in New York again before Tuesday, Nov. 6.
Quiet Coliseum
The New York Islanders’ lease at the Nassau Coliseum ends in 2015, and Long Island’s only major league sports franchise will almost certainly play its home games elsewhere after that.
But the current National Hockey League (NHL) labor dispute may last a few months, if not the entire 2012-2013 season, giving Nassau residents in 2012 a preview of what the Coliseum will look like without its anchor tenant.
Sutton’s Legacy
J.R. Moehringer’s stock as an author has risen so high that his publisher is sending him this week on a national book tour which concludes in November. It will include a stop on Tuesday, Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m., at the North Hempstead Country Club in Port Washington, where he’ll be the featured speaker at a $50 per person ticketed fundraiser for Friends of the Manhasset Public Library.
Moehringer, who won a Pulitzer Prize while at the Los Angeles Times, spent part of his youth in Manhasset. He is promoting these days the just-published Sutton (Hyperion), his first novel. The book is based in part on the life of Willie Sutton (1901-1980), an infamous New York City bank robber.
Page 3 of 20
<< 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
