VIPs dine at the site of the new ICA
As anyone knows who's been to the Fan Pier recently, the new Institute of Contemporary Art is nowhere near done. The $51 million project, due to open next fall, is a stainless-steel shell, just another job site on the Boston waterfront. So it's remarkable that Donna Wingate and Mary Ellen Carroll were able to prepare a five-course meal there yesterday. Purveyors of something called ''itinerant gastronomy," Wingate and Carroll cooked on makeshift stoves for a VIP crowd including choreographer Ann Carlson,actor John Malkovich, photographer Abelardo Morell, cultural theoretician and Harvard prof Homi Bhabha, ICA director Jill Medvedow, and the building's fancy architects. Following a tour of the place that included a prosecco toast overlooking the harbor, the dinner party made its way past all the blue tarpaulin to a table on the second floor. Once seated, Carroll asked the assembled if they knew why they were there, and Malkovich replied: ''Existentially or metaphysically?" With that, we decided to leave.
An open source of controversy
In May, you'll recall, Christopher Lydon wandered out of the wilderness with a new show, ''Open Source," a joint production of the nonprofit Open Source Media Inc. and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. (The show airs at 7 p.m. on 'GBH.) Imagine Lydon's surprise when he read last week about a website called OSM -- short for Open Source Media -- founded by mystery writer Roger L. Simon and his blogger buddy Charles Johnson. In a post at www.osm.org, Simon explained the name thusly: ''A gentleman named Christopher Lydon has an excellent website called Open Source. . . . He graciously agreed to relinquish the domain name opensourcemedia.net." Not so, says Lydon, posting at www.radioopensource.org. ''We didn't graciously agree to give them anything. We've never talked to them." Simon corrected himself: ''[Lydon] gave up the use of that URL entirely of his own volition and after no discussion with us." Wrong again. Lydon registered www.opensourcemedia.net, and while he doesn't use it, he definitely still controls it. See for yourself.
Ben and Jen wonder when
No, Jennifer Garner hasn't given birth yet to the next of Ben. The babe was due more than a week ago, but Ben Affleck's peeps tell us there's nothing to report. (By the time we left yesterday, that is.) . . . Sox manager Terry Francona, Pats VP Scott Pioli, Everett High football coach John DiBiaso, and Jim Marcellino, who did it all for the Holy Cross football team, were inducted into the state's Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame and celebrated afterward with a banquet at Venezia in Dorchester. Others in the crowd included Sox pitchman Charles Steinberg.
Performing the national anthem before yesterday's Pats-Saints game, Platters singer Herb Reed showed he's still got pipes. . . . Sib Hashian and Barry Goudreau of Boston played at Felt the other night, and Hashian's daughter, Lauren, handled vocals.
Around town
It's with regret that Jim Smith and Rob Clifford, owners of Clifford-Smith Gallery, closed their South End exhibition space Saturday. In an e-mail, Smith and Clifford cited the struggle of dealing art that is conceptually off the beaten path. . . . Theo Epstein (above) helped Hizzoner Tom Menino pull the switch at Saturday's tree-lighting ceremony, then accepted a $5,000 check for his Foundation to Be Named Later from Faneuil Hall merchant Carol Troxell. . . . Nada Surf has been added to the bill of Hot Stove, Cool Music, but you can forget about getting tickets -- the event sold out in 48 hours. . . . Pats cheerleaders Melinda McGrath (below), Amber van Eeghen, Cara Orazietti, and Kristen O'Neil hit the road yesterday, bound for Air Force bases and military hospitals in Germany, Turkey, Iceland, and Southeast Asia. They'll be joined by John Popper of Blues Traveler.
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