Kerry loses the burger vote
Forget plummeting poll numbers, John Kerry's got a much bigger PR problem. The junior senator's been dropped from the menu at Bartley's Burger Cottage in Harvard Square. Bill Bartley, son of the famed burger joint's founder, Joe Bartley, says he wants a menu with more sizzle, and that means Barack Obama is in and Kerry is out. "How long has he been my senator, and what's he ever done except embarrass me?" Bartley said yesterday. Also banished from Bartley's big board of mouth-watering burgers is former Harvard president Larry Summers, who's all-beef patty topped with Swiss cheese and honey mustard was not popular with patrons. "When was the last time you heard the guy's name," said Bartley. "You gotta bring something to the table to get on the menu, and Larry's stealing from the table. . . . You see his severance deal?" (The only Harvard holdover on the menu is professor Skip Gates.) Bartley's, which opened 46 years ago, has been naming burgers for bigshots since the '70s. Aside from Obama, the menu's other fresh meat includes the Rosie O'Donnell -- "a turkey burger, of course," says Bartley -- the Deval Patrick, the Nancy Pelosi, and the Daisuke Matsuzaka, whose garlic teriyaki burger comes with cole slaw.
Weiland begs Weis: stay with the Irish
Football and arena rockers sure make strange bedfellows. Weirder than the relationship between automaton Bill Belichick and Jon Bon Jovi is Scott Weiland's devotion to Charlie Weis. The skinny former Stone Temple Pilots frontman issued an "open letter" yesterday in which he pleaded with the corpulent Notre Dame coach not to abandon the Irish for the New York Giants. (Weis, who was Belichick's offensive coordinator before heading to South Bend, hasn't said he's interested in the Giants job, but he hasn't said he isn't.) "Leaving Notre Dame without having achieved really anything of monolithic proportions like you've promised us is absurd and unfair," wrote Weiland, the voice of Velvet Revolver now. "I will get on my knees and beg. Don't do it, coach. Don't do it! Stay and do what you promised; your team, your school, the fans, the legacy deserves to be taken to the promised land."Falling in love in Rhode Island
What's in the water in Rhode Island? First, Fred Durst gets engaged to local lass Krista Salvatore while making a movie in the Ocean State, and now Claire Danes has a high-profile frolic while shooting a movie in Newport. The New York Daily News reported yesterday that Danes and boyfriend Billy Crudup have called it quits in part because the "My So-Called Life" sweetheart spent some, uh, quality time with British actor Hugh Dancy while filming "Evening." . . . Pregnant with twins, "Desperate Housewives" star Marcia Cross has been put on bed rest until her April due date, the actress's spokeswoman told the Associated Press yesterday. Producers of the ABC show will move production to the actress's LA home for two days this week. Cross, a Marlborough native, married stockbroker Tom Mahoney in June .'RKO hires Finneran to host a.m. show
Tom Finneran wasn't out of work long. The former House Speaker, who this week lost his lucrative job with the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council after pleading guilty to obstructing justice, is expected to announce this morning that he's signed a deal to host a morning show on WRKO. . . .Boston's film and TV community came together Tuesday to honor a few of the folks who managed to get projects made. Rule Broadcasting Systems CEO John Rule, state Representative Brian Wallace, Local Sightings founder David Kleiler, actress Christy Scott Cashman, who also heads up Boston-based Saint Aire Productions, and Steven Feinberg of Rhode Island's successful film & TV office were all honored by Imagine Magazine, which tracks the region's film and TV industry. Others at the celluloid soiree at the Regattabar included music impresario Fred Taylor; actor/filmmaker John Fiore of "The Sopranos " ; Joan Quinn Eastman of the defunct Mass Media Alliance; and filmmaker Todd H. Davis, whose short "In the Tradition of My Family" has played in more than 40 film fests. . . . Celtics captain Paul Pierce, developer John Hynes III, and Dr. Katie Wakeley, chief of Tufts-NEMC's Division of Gynecologic Oncology, will be honored next month at a gala benefiting the Tufts-New England Medical Center. . . .
Jazz pianist Lisa Hilton wowed them at the Perkins School for the Blind yesterday, where Paris Hilton's aunt met with music students. . . . Bluesman James Montgomery jammed with chanteuse Jeanie Flynn at the Foundation Lounge the other night.
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