STORY:
Matt's Millennium Stew

Today's Millennium Stew --------
Streisand, Manilow and Millennium Quibblers

by Matt Markovich
Everything2000 Stewmaster

She's getting $13 million and there's no pay-per-view. Handlers for Barbra Streisand's tell the USA Today that there's no realistic prospect of live pay-per-view for her Las Vegas New Year's Eve concert. The 13,000 ticketholders at the MGM Grand are the only ones who'll see it, and the reason, admits her longtime manager, Marty Ehrlichman, is that this artist is a perfectionist. She wants to connect with her fans, but it's gotta be right. "It simply hasn't been demonstrated that pay-per-view can meet the standards (for sound and visuals) that Barbra would demand of a show before she would put it before a paying public," says Ehrlichman.

Despite the big paychecks big name performers will be earning this New Year's Eve, Barry Manilow says he would rather stay home. "All of us performers want to stay at home on New Year's Eve and not deal with the insanity," says Manilow. "But these dates kept dangling in front of all of us, and the hoopla became more and more exciting." Maybe Manilow wants to stay home because he's committed to playing for an invitation-only crowd at the Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Conn. It's a long ways away from the MGM where he used to do his Copa-copacabana.

And here's great one for the millennium quibblers who say "the millennium doesn't begin in the Year 2000..blah, blah, blah". Well Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the word "millennium" as "any period of 1,000 years." Thus, from the years 1000 to 1999 are a millennium, and even the arbitrary years from 493 to 1492 constitute a millennium which makes Columbus the explorer of the new millennium. It is perfectly legitimate and mathematically sound to celebrate the beginning of the new millennium on January 1 in the year 2000. That is indeed the beginning of a brand new millennium.

DATE: 9/07/99

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