Unless the locals covered you in meatballs and sang “Nessun Dorma” upon arrival, this vacation could hardly be more Italian. For this is a “Vespa vacation” — a two-wheeled tour of the nooks and crannies, the winding back roads and the off-the-beaten-track hidden gems of breathtaking Umbria, a beautiful region located in Central Italy.For many job-hopping careerists, smuggling a resignation letter in their bag like a guilty secret, there are few workplace rituals so hard as saying so long.Though Lilith Fair returned from an 11-year hiatus to a very different musical landscape, it is one that Sarah McLachlan and Co. helped lay the blueprints for more than a decade ago.
Susan Sparks first tried comedy on a training course she took as a trial lawyer and wound up on CNN. “CNN said they wanted to film the class, which I thought was a joke. I thought my stand-up was lame, but that item ran on CNN all day.”
The
comedian started doing stand-up gigs in her spare time and eventually
saved enough to pay off her student loans and quit her day job, where
she felt she had to check most of her personality at the door. Instead,
she got regular work at New York’s comedy clubs.
Her time as a lawyer gave her plenty of material, but she wanted to add something else to the mix.
She
considered seminary school. “I found that humor was sacred in most of
the world’s religious traditions, so I thought, ‘I’m going to a drag
comedy into the Christian church’.”
Back in New York, she
went to seminary school and heard that Madison Avenue Baptist Church
needed a new pastor. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a minister, but I
showed up at the church one morning and never left. Any church that
welcomes a woman and a stand-up comedian into their pulpit is pretty
cool.”
She’s now sole pastor at the church and her stand-up
comedy takes her on tour with Rabbi Bob Alper and Muslim comic Azhar
Usman.
It’s a new year and a new decade, so the experts are pumping out investment predictions like crazy.
Bob Doll, vice chairman of asset management firm BlackRock, made his top 10 predictions for 2010 last week and said that stocks will outperform cash and treasuries, with the S&P 500 rallying another 12 percent, and that health care, telecoms and IT will all outperform. He also predicted that emerging markets will do well this year, that inflation will stay under control and that the price of oil and gold will go up. Why should we care? Well, all but one of his predictions for 2009 were actually right.
Still, even Bob Doll may have not foreseen the most unusual investment record set in the first week of January. Last week, a single bluefin tuna was sold in Tokyo for $175,000, the highest price recorded in nine years.
– Kathryn Tully is a freelance journalist who has contributed to the Financial Times, Euromoney magazine and The Guardian newspaper
Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages. Opposing viewpoints are welcome. Send 400-word submissions to letters@metro.us.
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In the July MMMpod, Young Veins talk about breaking away from Panic! at the Disco, Keith Lockhart talks about Buckwheat Zydeco throwing the Boston Pops for a loop, Zooey Deschanel talks about how Roy Orbison inspired a She & Him song, Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells talks about how awesome Funkadelic is, and we talk about how awesome Jimmy Cliff is, who in turn talks about Sam Cooke and divine intervention. An explosive show for July! Oh yeah, and we also test your knowledge of America songs in the MMMPod medley.
