Entertainment Weekly (November 30, 2007, Issue 966/967)

If you happen to catch a look at this week's Entertainment Weekly, be sure to check out pages 54-55. On a US map detailing the Most Entertaining Places of the Year, spot number 14 is:

14. Welcome to Scranton, Penn.

Pennsylvania Native: Hollywood Star To Be Presented Sunday, December 2nd (UPDATED 11-28-07)

Albright Memorial Library presents:

Pennsylvania Native: Hollywood Star

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

2:30 PM - 4:00 PM

Albright Memorial Library - Director's Office

500 Vine Street

Scranton, PA 18509

(This program is handicapped accessible)

Dr. Moylan C. Mills will lead a discussion of Pennsylvania stars, their lives and careers, including M. Night Shyamalan, James Stewart, Richard Gere, and Grace Kelly among others.

Presented by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council

Please call to register at (570) 348-3000 ext. 3043

UPDATE 11-28-07

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

The Woods by Harlan Coben (2007)

A few months ago, during the Reference Internships our department conducts every year for other librarians in our district, one of the attendees (and if you're reading this, PLEASE email me with your name so I can give credit where credit is due) told me about a recent bestseller, The Woods by Harlan Coben, that she read which references the city of Wilkes-Barre.

In The Woods, county prosecutor Paul Copeland of Essex, New Jersey is inadvertently tied to a murder investigation that he believes may be related to his sister's case--which has remained unsolved for over twenty years.

The reference occurs on page 373 of the novel, which relates the biography and career of Dr. Tara O'Neill, a pathologist:

"But during her years in Philadelphia, O'Neill had returned home every weekend. She eventually ran for coroner and made extra money working for a pathologist in Wilkes-Barre."

To place a hold on The Woods, click here.

For more information on The Woods (including video clips of author Harlan Coben discussing the novel), click here.

Again, I completely forget the name of the person who gave me this reference, but I know it was one of the following: Mary Jablonowski, Denise McManus, Justine Yeager, Meg Galenas, Mary Wickizer, Terri Collins, or Julie Pacheco. So THANK YOU!

F***: A Documentary (2005)

While on vacation this past week, I finally got a chance to watch a documentary I purchased on DVD some months ago. I was intrigued by the title of the film---of which only one letter of the four-letter title can appear in my blog. The film is titled F***: A Documentary, and even more shocking than the number of times the f-word appears in the film (the word is said or printed over 800 times) was the fact that the city of Wilkes-Barre, PA made an appearance on an intertitle card.

Originally released to much critical acclaim at various film festivals in 2005, Steve Anderson's F***: A Documentary details the history of the use of the f-word in our culture--from music and films to politics and t-shirts. The documentary features an impressive roster of interviewees---including Sam Donaldson, Kevin Smith, Alanis Morissette, Drew Carey, Ron Jeremy, Miss Manners, and the late Hunter S. Thompson. The film also features animated sequences by Oscar-nominee Bill Plympton.

In a section of the film about cable television, the following title card appears:

HBO was launched in 1972 to 365 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

Today, HBO has over 38 million.

Back in September, blog fan Peter Metrinko also emailed me this fact; Peter also wrote that HBO (a unit of Time Warner) had primarily a sports focus when it first premiered.

For more information on the history of HBO and its commection to Wilkes-Barre, visit www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7981

The DVD for F***: A Documentary is not available to borrow from the Lackawanna County Library System--and I doubt it will be in the immediate future. But it's definitely worth a look.

For more information on the documentary itself, visit www.fourletterfilm.com/ ; WARNING: Please note, however, that the site does use the entire uncensored title of the film.

Also, a big Thank You to Peter Metrinko for the information and the link about HBO.

Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties Ghosts, Legends & Lore (2007)

Just because Halloween is over doesn't mean you can't curl up in front of the fire with a nice, scary book---particularly if the ghosts in the true stories inhabit places in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and other familiar places in Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties.

In the 25 books he wrote over a 35-year period, Charles J. Adams III has been researching and documenting ghosts and other paranormal events throughout the state of Pennsylvania (as well as Cape May, NJ and the Greenwich Village section of New York City). Adams has also made appearances as a ghost expert on television shows ranging from The History Channel's Haunted America to shows on The Travel Channel and MTV.

His recently published collection, Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties Ghosts, Legends, & Lore decribes both well- and little-known true stories of ghosts and other paranormal occurences in the local area. The Ghost tales inculded in the book detail hauntings in Scranton (The Everhart Museum; The Lackawanna County Courthouse; Car No. 46 at The Electric City Trolley Museum; Marywood University; Lake Winola), Wilkes-Barre (Kirby Hall at Wilkes University), Forty Fort (cemetery on Wyoming Avenue; Nathan Denison House) Hazleton (Key Theatre, now the Cinema & Drafthouse; Penn State Hazleton Campus) and much more. The Legends section includes information on Francis Slocum, The Witch of Black Creek Township, Blood Rock in Wyoming, and banshees in Archbald. Lore, the final section of the book, chronicles the the Carbondale UFO incident of 1974 and the Pyramid of Light in Olyphant.

A copy of Charles J. Adams III's Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties Ghosts, Legends & Lore is available to borrow from Valley Community Library. Also, a copy of the book will soon be available to browse in the Local History Collection of Albright Memorial Library.

To purchase a copy of the book from Exeter House Books, click here.