R&B legend Fats Domino and his family spent two days with Louisiana State University’s quarterback after being rescued from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, then moved on. “I’m not sure where they are headed, but I just feel better knowing that they are OK,” quarterback Ja Marcus Russell was quoted as saying.
The 77-year-old singer and his family are friends with the family of Russell’s girlfriend, sports information director Michael Bonnette said. Domino apparently was rescued by boat in New Orleans on Monday, then brought to the Superdome, where he eventually was put on a bus to an evacuee triage center in LSU’s basketball arena.
August Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who is dying of liver cancer, will soon have a Broadway theater named after him. Next month, Jujamcyn Theaters, which owns five Broadway venues, will change the name of the Virginia Theater on 52nd Street to the August Wilson Theater, president Rocco Landesman said.
Wilson, 60, who won Pulitzers for “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson,” will become the first African-American to have a Broadway theater named in his honor. “I have a robust imagination, but I never imagined anything like this,” he told The New York Times. “I think it is an extraordinary honor, and it is truly a capstone of my career.”
Chelsea Clinton and her longtime boyfriend, Ian Klaus, are kaput, according to People magazine. The two, who met at Oxford University in 2002, have spent several months apart. She’s in London working on a public-health care project. He’s in Iraq and Afghanistan chronicling the actions of U.S. troops.
A friend of Clinton’s told the magazine, “They just grew apart,” adding, “I used to ask how Ian was, and Chelsea would say, ‘He’s doing good.’ Then it became just a shoulder-shrug kind of answer.”
John Leguizamo will shake up County General this season on NBC’s long-running hospital drama “ER.” Leguizamo will play Dr. Ernesto Clemente, described by the network as “a dynamic supervising physician who shakes up the ER with unconventional ideas and cutting-edge technology.” He will appear in 12 episodes, with the first scheduled to air Oct. 20.
Also stopping by “ER” will be Kristen Johnston, who played an alien on the sitcom “3rd Rock From the Sun.” She’ll have a recurring role as a nurse manager.
Second career at the tables
Jennifer Tilly has won her second major poker tournament and confidence in her playing ability.
“I felt like I was suffering from the ‘impostor syndrome,”‘ said the actress, who jumped from the table after her win at the World Poker Tour Ladies Night III. “I had these niggling self doubts. But now I know I can really play. These women were extremely tough pros with blood lust at the poker table.”
Tilly’s victory at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles last week makes her the first woman to win both that title and the World Series’ Ladies World Poker Championship held in June.