RSVP

Let’s dance! In the party pics conga line with Shannon Cogan, and a saucy Aussie

Champagne smallerBig smiles, big personalities and big business networking — yes, it’s everyone’s favorite feature in the society shiny sheets: party photos! Boulevard picks through the pics, choosing our favorite coverage.

With NFocus Louisville’s sudden demise, Boulevard is more dependent than ever on The Voice-Tribune for our window on the ladies who lunch and the men who punch.

Shannon Cogan
Cogan

Tangoing straight to the chase, here’s today’s party pics pick: Let’s Dance Louisville, where Cathedral of the Assumption hosted a “Dancing with the Stars”-esque fundraiser last Saturday, featuring local “celebrities” (to use the editor’s choice of punctuation).

Of the 73 (!) photos by workhouse paparazzo Tim Valentino, our favorite is No. 19: WAVE news anchor and silver-sequin pailletted Shannon Cogan, sandwiched between weatherman Brian Goode and Robert Curran, the Louisville Ballet’s Australian executive director.

TTFN!

Photo, top: That’s Nyle DiMarco and his partner Peta Murgatroyd, crowned Season 22 champions of “Dancing with the Stars” on May 24.

Diversions

Sip to this next weekend: Brown-Forman officially launches its first new bourbon brand in 20 years

It’s Cooper’s Craft, which Brown-Forman first announced in April. The new brand reflects the value the Louisville-based spirits giant places on building its own barrels, and the flavor good wood adds to the final mix.

Coopers Craft smallerBF and Louisville Magazine are hosting the launch party Friday, July 8, from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Pointe, 1205 E. Washington St. in Butchertown. Tickets are $20, which includes three drinks, live music by the Whiskey Bent Valley Boys, plus a barrel-raising demonstration. Details here.

Brown-Forman established its own cooperage in 1945 and to this day, is the only major distiller to build barrels at its own in-house cooperage, as this video explains:

Media and Marketing

Heartbroken in Louisville! The last direct link to the greatest advice columnist ever has been severed

Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, who for 14 years wrote the syndicated “Annie’s Mailbox” column for The Courier-Journal and hundreds of other outlets, called it quits today. They started as the long-time editors of the original “Ann Landers” column, written for nearly 50 years by the late, great and ever-stylish Esther Pauline “Eppie” Lederer. (That’s her, top, with her trademark hair.)

“We’ve urged you to live your lives to the fullest,” Mitchell and Sugar told readers this morning. “Now it’s our turn.”

Annie's Mailbox smallerStarting tomorrow, Mitchell and Sugar are being replaced by the conveniently named “Annie Lane,” who will be writing a column called “Dear Annie.” Lane, who grew up in California, is a certified yoga instructor who also worked in sales at an Internet advertising startup; a law firm, and, before that, a federal magistrate. She’s written extensively for Creators Syndicate’s special sections.

The original Landers column was started in 1943 by Chicago Sun-Times writer Ruth Crowley. Lederer took it over in 1955, but declined to have a different writer continue the column after her death in 2002. (At the time, she lived in a $4.4 million, 16-room Lake Shore Drive co-op in Chicago with three — three! — maid’s rooms.)

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Diversions

Sound the cannon! Ring those bells! Sunday brings Abrams, the orchestra — and the ‘1812’ Overture to Waterfront Park

Music Director Teddy Abrams will lead the full Louisville Orchestra at Waterfront Park Sunday in the city’s annual July 4th celebration. All the cool fun starts at 5 p.m., with fireworks sponsored by the Louisville Bats. More details here.

Here’s the orchestra last year performing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, written in 1880 and now a staple for Fourth of July celebrations:

How did 1812 become the orchestral community’s answer to ballet’s Nutcracker? Credit Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops’ televised performance in 1974, replete with cannons, an expanded bell choir and fireworks, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

Jennifer LawrenceBoulevard reviews the latest media coverage of the Oscar-winning Louisville native in our exclusive Jennifer Lawrence Diary™. Today’s news, rated on a scale of 1-5 stars:

One starToo bad we can’t award zero stars! The real news here? She didn’t rank No. 1 — instead of a lowly No. 23 — in The Hollywood Reporter’s new list of Tinsel Town’s 100 most powerful players.

“At only 25,” the editors say, “she’s the highest-earning, most-sought-after actress in Hollywood, with four Oscar nominations and one win, for ‘Silver Linings Playbook.’ Her essay in Lena Dunham‘s newsletter in October put a megaphone to the gender pay inequity discussion (‘When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get angry,’ it begins).”

Her big win, according to the Reporter: adding $653 million to the “Hunger Games” haul with the final installment. And her big bet: that $20 million “Passengers” paycheck gobbling up around 20% of the film’s budget.

Who was No. 1 on the list? Disney CEO Bob Iger. Z-z-z . . .

Clearly, Lawrence would have landed on the list’s tippy-top if editors had factored in this summer’s de rigueur tonsorial treatment: her ice-blond hair. And here’s how to get it, courtesy of Glamour:

Latest Headlines

July 12! Amazon sets second 24-hour Prime Day; two Conn. groups push against Humana-Aetna; and the Internet gorges on story about ‘world’s angriest’ Taco Bell customer

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 10:04 a.m.

AMAZON said this year’s 24-hour Prime Day sale would include more than 100,000 specially discounted items. U.S. members can shop starting at 3 a.m. ET/midnight PT, with new deals as often as every five minutes (press release). Last year, in addition to a 266% increase in orders vs. the same day in 2014, Prime Day also spurred more people than ever to try the $99-a-year Prime service. It also drove more sales than any of the retailer’s previous events — even beating Amazon’s 2014 Black Friday (The Verge). Apparently responding to complaints last year that some items sold out too quickly, Amazon said this year it would “dramatically” boost inventory and make it easier to search for deals by sorting through categories (Cnet).

Amazon employs 6,000 workers in the Louisville area at mammoth distribution centers in Jeffersonville, and in Bullitt County’s Shepherdsville. Plus, another big Prime Day is good news for the retailer’s shipper, UPS; with 22,000 workers at its Louisville International Airport hub, it’s the city’s single-biggest private employer.

HUMANA: Two Connecticut activist groups and the state’s medical society have criticized regulatory reviews of the proposed $37 billion Humana-Aetna merger in a letter this week to the U.S. Justice Department; they’re asking the trust-busters “to protect people from the harm these mergers will cause.” Aetna is based in Hartford. The groups, which also criticized a similar planned merger between Anthem and Connecticut-based Cigna, were joined by 40 other state doctors’ associations and health-care charities nationwide (Hartford Courant). Humana employs 12,500 workers at its downtown Louisville headquarters and other sites across the city.

UPS and the 2,500-member Independent Pilots Association  today announced a tentative agreement on a new five-year labor contract, including improvements across all sections. Specific details of the agreement will not be disclosed before the IPA presents the proposed contract to all UPS pilots (press release).

Also, a looming pilot shortage will soar to 15,000 by 2026, according to a study by the University of North Dakota’s Aviation Department, as more captains reach mandatory retirement age of 65, and fewer young people choose aviation as a profession. “And that’s in an industry,” says the Dallas Morning News, “where captains on the biggest international jets average more than $200,000 a year — with some pushing $300,000” (Morning News).

FORD‘s decision to bypass an employee for a position based on his use of opioids was not enough to prove his disability discrimination claim, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has found (National Law Review). The automaker employs nearly 10,000 workers at its auto and truck factories in Louisville.

PIZZA HUT: In New Orleans, police arrested a man and woman early yesterday who allegedly carjacked a Pizza Hunt deliverer’s car at gunpoint Tuesday night, then led cops on a car chase before they were apprehended. The driver told officers he was making a delivery about 11:30 p.m. when a woman who said she placed the order — Simonne Walker, 19 — approached him. But instead of paying him, the woman’s companion — Kenneth Rainer, 20 — walked up, put a gun to the driver’s back, and demanded cash and his car keys. Walker and Rainer then got into the car and sped off, the cops say (Times-Picayune).

ChambordBROWN-FORMAN is promoting its Chambord black raspberry liqueur through a “Just Add Chambord” Royale cocktails campaign starting tomorrow. The campaign targeting hotel bars and lounges runs through Sept. 30. The Louisville spirits giant will supply participating establishments with Chambord-branded flute glasses, recipe and tent cards. Nidal Ramini, marketing chief for Bacardi Brown-Forman brands said (in a very odd quote): “We are confident the new platform will inspire the on-trade in particular, to transform and elevate serves, whilst helping them understand how Chambord can be the perfect way to elevate a simple glass of bubbles, and ultimately increase profit” (Harpers). Here’s the Royale recipe.

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