R.I.P. Don Adams

Hi all. I hope that folks in the New England area can make this, because it's Lea's (Thessaly's) last show hosting the series.

PAUL CURRERI & DOC BROWN'S TRAVELING POETRY SHOW RAISE MONEY FOR WORCESTER ARTIST GROUP:

When: Thursday, September 29th, 2005, 8PM (doors open at 7:30PM) Who: Paul Curreri (music) & Doc Brown's Traveling Road Show (poetry & theater) Where: 16 Greenwood St., Worcester, MA 01605 (QVCC) $15.00 minimum donation $10.00 with Student ID or donation to QVCC Food Pantry All profits benefit Worcester Artist Group

September 29, 2005, the series will feature music by Virginia guitarist/songwriter Paul Curreri and performance poetry by Doc Brown's Traveling Poetry Show. All profits benefit the Worcester Artist Group. Directions are available on our web site : www.whereyourmouthis.com.

PERFORMER BIOS:

Paul Curreri Raised in Richmond, Virginia, Paul now makes his home in Charlottesville. He grew up playing music but ended up enrolling at Rhode Island School of Design to pursue painting and film. While Curreri credits his experiences at art school with developing his ability to observe and record the visual world, soon his true passion soon began to rise to the surface. By the time Paul graduated from RISD, he'd composed over 200 songs on guitar and piano. Turning down a job at MTV, he set to work carving out a life as a musician.

His third album, The Spirit Of The Staircase was released in December 2004 on City Salvage Records.

More information about Paul Curreri can be found on his web site at www.paulcurreri.com.

Doc Brown's Traveling Poetry Show Following the success of Def Poetry Jam on HBO and Broadway, fourteen successful years of slams and shows in Boston, eight months of shows at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater, and a continuing upsurge in the life of poetry on stage, Doctor Brown's Traveling Poetry Show brings together an ensemble about as various as poets can be. Different poets perform each show, including occasional out-of-towners.

Directed by professor and poet Michael Brown, the troupe includes individual and collaborative poems by chemistry specialist Mala Radhakrishnan, madman Ryk McIntyre, reading advocate Valerie Lawson, the elusive Jeff Taylor, wry raconteur Simone Beaubien, musician and salesman Alex Charalambides, lyrical Laura Yan, teacher Douglas Bishop, and, as they say, more.

This is a fast-paced, 90-minute stage show with no dead air, no dead ideas, and no dead poets.

Worcester Artist Group (www.worcesterartistgroup.org) A longstanding member of the Worcester arts community, WAG is dedicated to promoting visual and performing arts in the greater Worcester area, and the non-profit sponsor of the "Where Your Mouth Is" series.

NEW YORK PEOPLES!

My band, Secret Crush Society (sorry but I think the music comes on automatically), is making our New York debut! We are very, very excited about it and would love it if you all came!!!

When?

Friday, Sept. 30th 9 pm (we go on first--don't miss us!)

Where?

169 Bar

169 E. Broadway -- Chinatown

with

Black Tie Revue

The Nightrats

and (our new best friends) HOY!

Door is $7

Hope to see you there!

Due to a new office layout, I really shouldn't indulge in much web-surfing. So, I'm not going to be around much. If you need to get in touch w/ me, use the profile addy.

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Recent estimates have placed the death toll in the thousands. More than 1 million people and over a thousand pets were displaced when Katrina devastated much of the Gulf Coast.

Here's how you can help.

Starting October 1, 2005 for 10 days, a 10 or 15 minute (determined by the celebrity) phone call will be auctioned off to raise money for the Red Cross & American Kennel Club Canine Support. If yours is the winning bid, at the end of the auction you will be contacted by us to schedule the phone call. The actual call will be scheduled between October 28 - November 4, 2005. We will contact you with 3 dates and times given to us by the celebrity and you can choose one of those. However, if they do not work with your schedule we will try to schedule a time within those dates that would work best for both sides. We will need the phone number where you will be able to be reached, once the date and time is set. We will forward this information to the celebrity. As an added way to donate to the families left displaced by Katrina, the celebrity will be making the call via a pre-paid phone card and after the call is complete, the remaining time on the card will be donated to the Red Cross to be given to displaced families so they can call their family and friends and keep in touch.

Some of the people donating a bit of time to call you up and tell you you're the greatest fan ever: Joss Whedon, Tim Minear, David Fury, Stephanie Romanov.

[link]

For those who haven't been paying attention to the Firefly thread and all the links...

Time: The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth. >[link]

Just ask two of the ringleaders of this bloodless, prom-dateless coup: archgeek Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the science-fiction movie Serenity, which opens this Friday; and Neil Gaiman, creator of the classic comic book Sandman and author of the fantasy novel Anansi Boys, which comes out this month. Gaiman also has a movie opening this Friday, the Dark Crystal--flavored fantasy Mirrormask. "It will be national geek day!" he says.

May be spoilery. I'm not looking. But Hey, Time magazine. Geek chic.

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Hey there folks. If you are in the LA area on Oct. 15th, come on over for a big Halloween party. It's happening early so that it doesn't conflict with any other parties and since I'm working Halloween weekend. KristinT is co-hosting this thing, and it's happening at her new place.

Here's the evite [link]

My new website is edging closer and closer to being ready for public viewing! As part of it, there's now a Gothic Charm School Cafe Press store. Go and marvel at the designs Pete created for me! Maybe even buy a mousepad or a sticker! (T-shirts and mugs will be appearing in just a bit)

My MiL writes an article for my old hometown newspaper. (I'm sure many of you remember the Wedding Etiquette article debacle) However, I know there are Buffistas with high school or soon to be high school age children and I thought that it was prudent to pass this along. I thought myself to be pretty knowledgeable of the No Child Left Behind, what with being from a family of teachers and counting several teachers as friends, but I had NO IDEA about this.

“THOUGHTS AT LARGE” COLUMN – 9-29-05 – "NCLB goes too far" by Kathleen Conat

The situation is this: the Pentagon has admitted it has a database with personal information about children. Our children. It's been collecting that data for the past three years.

The No Child Left Behind Law has a little known requirement, Section 9528, that all high schools must turn over information on students or risk losing federal funding. The information includes names, addresses, e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, ethnicity, Social Security numbers and areas of study. That information is turned over to military recruiters.

The Pentagon's database now holds information on 30 million young men and women 16 to 25 years of age. The database is updated daily and distributed monthly to all branches of the armed services.

What is the worst part of this, in my view, is that school administrators were told they could not notify the parents that this was happening. Yes, you read that right. The federal government decided to bypass parents so they could contact kids -- underage, still living at home, teenagers – and recruit them into the military.

Rep. David Vitter, (R) Louisiana, is the one responsible for the insertion of Section 9528 into the No Child Left Behind Law. Evidently, no one really questioned it at the time. Maybe legislators were as unaware of it as the parents of America?

Section 9528 is a clear violation of the Privacy Act, which requires notification and public comment whenever new data is being compiled on individuals by any branch of the government. But, in 2002, the Pentagon contracted with a private marketing firm, BeNow, Inc., to begin "consolidating the data for greater efficiency." There is now speculation that Department of Defense leaders thought this would get them around the Privacy Act.

Certainly, it is clear Section 9528 was added to NCLB in order to circumvent parental controls. As parents and citizens learn more about this, I'm not the only one who is angry. A coalition of parent-activists has been started, called Leave My Child Alone, which shows parents how to "opt out." Its Internet site can be accessed at www.leavemychildalone.org.

I spoke with Ypsilanti High School Principal Eric Graves after learning about the information being handed over. He said that recently the law has been reinterpreted so parents can now notify the school not to send the information. As long as a letter is on file, he will not send the data to the Feds.

Graves will be sending out a letter to parents from the American Civil Liberties Union, explaining what is happening and how parents can "opt out" of both the schools' requirement to send the data and get their child's information off the Pentagon's main database. Because, you see, if your child is over the age of 16, that information was already sent last year – before you knew this section of the law existed.

Graves stressed that unless a parent signs a letter stating his or her child's information is to be withheld from the government, he has to send it along. But, that simple letter will allow him to keep your child's information private. There's even a way for a student over the age of majority to "opt out" on his own.

Graves said the school is contacted by the military every year. Military recruiters sit in the school's cafeteria with the same access to junior and senior students as the college and university recruiters have.

That's fine. That's out in the open. So, why do the Pentagon and, evidently, Congress feel the need to sneak around behind our (continued...)