Clinton is booked for Valentine's Day
Get your invite to Bill Clinton's book party for Boston TV's onetime leading lady Janet Langhart? The former Channel 5 personality and her husband, Bill Cohen, are celebrating the release of "Love in Black and White," and the former president's hosting a swish signing next week at the Russian Tea Room in New York. Hopeless romantics that they are, the power pair has picked Valentine's Day to release the book, which chronicles their lives and improbable, late-in-life love affair. (Langhart and Cohen wed on Valentine's Day 1996.) As you might expect, the guest list for the Clinton klatch includes a bevy of boldfaced names, including a few from Boston: WCVB's Karen Holmes Ward, Blue Cross/Blue Shield exec Peter Meade, and Goodwin Procter attorney Agnes Bundy Scanlan. But that's just for starters. Others who have RSVP'd include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York AG Andrew Cuomo, Henry and Nancy Kissinger, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, New York Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman, and attorney F. Lee Bailey. Cohen, a Republican senator from Maine for many years, was Clinton's secretary of defense.
From Godsmack to Smashing
Paul Geary is a busy guy these days. Forget for a minute that he manages the multi platinum band Godsmack. The Medford native, who moved to LA in '05 after music mogul Irving Azoff bought his Boston-based company, is now counseling Billy Corgan on the comeback of his chart-topping band Smashing Pumpkins. The Pumpkins -- Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, but not guitarist James Iha or bassist D'arcy Wretzky -- announced this week on their MySpace page that they'll release a record on July 7. "Zeitgeist " will be the first disc released under the Pumpkins name since 2000. We dropped Geary an e - mail yesterday, but he was out of the office.
Lending a hand by serving others
The recent deaths of six area fishermen have prompted some of the biggest names in Boston's restaurant scene to use one of their busiest nights to help the families of those lost at sea. Chefs Gordon Hamersley, Barbara Lynch, and Jasper White and Legal Sea Foods skipper Roger Berkowitz and his executive chef , Rich Vellante , are leading an effort to use a portion of their proceeds from Valentine's Day to "offer them some relief from the financial pressures [the fishermen's families] are enduring." In a letter to other restaurateurs, the chefs and owners wrote: "The stories we've read about these fishermen say that they died doing what they loved. We thought we could pay tribute to them by doing what we love, cooking on a day when people show their love for each other."
Oscar-winning actor Chris Cooper and director Billy Ray were at the Regal Cinema in the Fenway last night to introduce their new film "Breach," in which Cooper portrays real-life FBI agent turned Soviet spy Robert Hanssen. The appearance was part of The Boston Globe's Arts and Entertainment weekend series bringing journalists and artists together for a dialogue.
Chef Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame joined Mayor Tom Menino and Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg at the Four Seasons yesterday to kick off the 22d annual Anthony Spinazzola Foundation Gala, which goes down tonight at the Seaport World Trade Center. Hirshberg is the Spinazzola Foundation's Classic Citizen Award winner this year. We're told that while he was in town, Keller stopped by Ken Oringer's Clio Wednesday for a little nosh.
Documentarian Rory Kennedy and her brother, former congressman Joe Kennedy, caught up with Jeanne Shaheen, director of the Harvard Institute of Politics and former governor of New Hampshire, at a reception before the showing of "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib," an HBO documentary Rory Kennedy directed, at the John F. Kennedy Forum, which is named for her uncle.
Names can be reached at names@globe.com or at 617-929-8253. 
