CMYK
etc.
Entertainment
Travel
Culture
SECTION F
timesleader.com
THE TIMES LEADER
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2012
No idle moments for Scotty By JON BREAM Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Down memory lane with a legendary figure from our comic history By MARY THERESE BIEBEL mbiebel@timesleader.com
Fisher
IF YOU GO
See CARTOONIST, Page 4F
AMANDA HRYCYNA/FOR THE TIMES LEADER
What: “The Life and Work of Ham Fisher” dinner and talk When: 6 p.m. Wednesday Where: Westmoreland Club, 59 S. Franklin St., WilkesBarre Tickets: $75 More info: 823-6244
Look up “palooka” in Webster’s dictionary and you’ll see it means “a clumsy or oafish fellow, especially an inept athlete.” Listen to Marlon Brando’s character in the iconic movie “On the Waterfront” as he complains about his “one-way ticket to Palookaville,” and you know he considers himself a loser. But if you think about the heavyweight champion who starred for more than 50 years in a comic strip created by Wilkes-Barre native Hammond Edward “Ham” Fisher, you’ll realize he’s a nobler, heroic kind of Palooka, one who also was a sort of everyday Joe. The legendary Palooka, and his creator, will be commemorated during a “Stars of the Valley” dinner and talk on “The Life and Work of Ham Fisher,” set for 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Westmoreland Club in Wilkes-Barre. The event is sponsored by the Luzerne
MINNEAPOLIS — Scotty McCreery had just come home from school with an assignment: write essays for college applications. Wait a minute. Isn’t he the reigning American Idol? Isn’t he about to go on tour with Brad Paisley? The high-school senior plans to be on campus in the fall. Last month, he was putting the finishing touches on applications for four or five schools. He’s committed to his career but determined to go to college part time, too. “College is important to me. Education is important to me. You never know how far “One of my your job can sayings from take you,” said McCreery, my baseball who plans to days is ‘Go big study marketing or commuor go home.’” nications — — Scotty McCreery something that will help in his profession. “Being aggressive is something that needs to happen,” McCreery said from his family home in Garner, N.C., just south of Raleigh. “Even when I was on the show, I remember talking to the producers saying that I want my album to come out quickly because I don’t want the people forgetting about me. I’m going to work my tail off. “One of my sayings from my baseball days is ‘Go big or go home.’ We want to go big. Right now, we’re just trying to get out there and make sure people know we’re still around.” The people have certainly responded. McCreery’s album, “Clear as Day,” established two records: the first country newcomer and the youngest male to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. “That was something different,” McCreery said in his typically modest, aw-shucks way. “I was extremely humbled by it, but we were ecstatic. When I heard the news, I was running all around the house.” Neither of McCreery’s singles — “I Love You This Big” and “The Trouble With Girls” — has set country radio on fire, but he’s selling albums like a big-name star. In fact, he’s outselling the latest by “Idol” hitmakers Kelly Clarkson and Chris Daughtry. Of course, not everybody has warmed to the languid Southern crooner with the strikingly deep voice, Mad-magazine face and goofy eyebrow-raising gestures. Entertainment Weekly magazine named “Clear as Day” one of the five worst albums of 2011. “Is that so?” McCreery said the day after the magazine came out. “There you go. You can’t win ’em all. Maybe they’re R&B fans or something. You can’t please everybody.” He let the high-profile cheap shot roll off him like NFL quarterback Drew Brees dodging would-be sackers. He’s heard the cracks about looking like Mad mascot Alfred E. Neuman since he was a kid. It’s See SCOTTY, Page 4F
Pick a hot date off the shelves at the Pittston Library By SARA POKORNY spokorny@timesleader.com
Any date would be so much easier without any nervousness or awkward silences. Without the waiting afterward for a phone call or the fretting over what to wear for a dinner out. The Pittston Memorial Library knows this and is trying to make the process easier still, offering the opportunity for a date in which any and all judgments are passed by you and in which you (and only you) determine wheth-
er or not love might be in the air. The library, you might have guessed, is inviting readers to have “A Blind Date with a Book.” “We want people to explore new authors and subjects,” Patricia Joyce of children’s services at the library said. “Some people say, ‘Oh, I only read fiction,’ yet they never gave a non-fiction book a chance.” Library staffers have filled a basket, kept at the front desk, with several books wrapped in newspaper and available for
checkout. All you have to do is take a chance. Will your mystery date charm you? Intrigue you? Maybe even make you cry? The books are selected at random from library shelves and cover fiction, non-fiction and youngadult genres, so anything is possible. “We had a woman that was waiting here for her bus decide to randomly pick one up and check it out,” Joyce said. “Well, she started reading it
while she was here and fell in love with it. She grabbed a coffee and sat down and just kept reading.” Patrons can try for a “love connection” until April 10, which is in National Library Week. Each selection can be taken out for up to three weeks. Upon return, the reader can fill out the “Rate Your Date” slip, which not only allows them to say what they will about it (on a scale from “Train Wreck” to “Time of Your Life”) but to enter a drawing for a Barnes & Noble
IF YOU GO
What: Pittston Memorial Library Where: 47 Broad St., Pittston Call: 570-654-9565
gift certificate, which will be awarded during National Library Week. The idea stemmed from something Joyce saw on social-networking site Pinterest. If this go-round is a success, she said, the library hopes to do other similar events in the future and get children involved as well.
AIMEE DILGER/THE TIMES LEADER
Winnie Williams and Patricia Joyce of the Pittston Memorial Library show off the ‘blind dates’ patron can take home.