Dan Gross: Tom Lamaine nets 76ers' PA role
TOM LAMAINE, who served as a television broadcaster for the Sixers in the 1970s, will become the team's PA announcer this season, Sixers CEO Adam Aron confirmed yesterday afternoon.
TOM LAMAINE,
who served as a television broadcaster for the Sixers in the 1970s, will become the team's PA announcer this season, Sixers CEO
Adam Aron
confirmed yesterday afternoon.
We first reported the news on PhillyGossip.com.
Lamaine worked alongside Bill Campbell from 1970 to 1976, broadcasting Sixers games for WPHL-17. For the past several years the former CBS 3 meteorologist has been the unofficial back-up announcer for Matt Cord, though Cord, a 93.3 WMMR DJ, has never missed a Sixers game.
"I'm also back-up guy for Lou Nolan from the Flyers, but these two guys never miss," Lamaine said of the announcers.
Aron says that Cord is being promoted to senior correspondent for Sixers.com, for which he will provide video reports. Aron hopes that Cord will drive more traffic to Sixers.com, which he says had the "single highest improvement [in web traffic] in the league" since October 2010.
Aron, an Abington native, is very familiar with Lamaine and excited to have him on board. "He has a love for the Sixers and is a first-class individual in every respect," Aron said.
"I had the distinction of broadcasting the most losses of any team in any season," Lamaine says, referring to the 1972-73 Sixers, who were 9-73. He is predicting a far more impressive record for the Sixers this year and is glad to return. "My wife, Donna, says I'm going backwards, which is better than going nowhere," says Lamaine, a regular presence at home games for many years.
"So much for retirement," jokes Lamaine, who recently began hosting "Memory Lane" on the first Sunday evening of every month for South Jersey's Kool 98.3.
It's the same name as a show he broadcast decades ago on area stations.
OUT AND ABOUT * Actress Vivica A. Fox dined Thursday at DiNardo's Famous Crabs (312 Race) and Friday at Ruth's Chris Steak House (260 S. Broad) while in town shooting her new Vivica A. Fox Hair Collection catalog with photographer Dom Savini at Power Plant Studios (230 N. 2nd). On Saturday, Fox appeared at the Cambridge Discount Plaza (1500 Mount Ephraim), in Camden, and Hair Town, at the Cedarbrook Mall, in Wyncote. Our video interview with the "Kill Bill," "Independence Day" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" actress can be seen at PhillyGossip.com. * Tennis great Billie Jean King stopped to say hello to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, and also to comedienne Wanda Sykes, at Parc on Rittenhouse Square while lunching Wednesday with her Philadelphia Freedoms staffer Alison Grove. The next day Sykes lunched on the other side of Rittenhouse Square, at Smith & Wollensky.
Local latkes
Rachael Ray
teaches Plymouth Meeting's
Meredith Trotter,
of Pulse PR, how to cook latkes (potato pancakes) on today's "Dr. Oz" (4 p.m., Fox 29). An odd topic for Dr.
Mehmet Oz
, but today's show is about holiday cooking disasters.
Hacking history
Pine Bros. throat drops are coming back to Philadelphia. The lozenge brand, founded here in 1870 by German immigrant
J. Herman Pine,
has been relaunched by 3 Sisters Home Products, the new company from
Victoria Knight-McDowell
, the former teacher who created the Airborne products. Pine Bros. celebrates with a rockabilly party with
Rudy "Tutti" Grayzell
at noon Friday outside the Hard Rock Cafe (12th & Market), hosted by the Man with the Plan himself,
Jerry Blavat
. Grayzell, 78, used to perform with
Elvis Presley
and
Roy Orbison
, and claims that Presley turned him on to Pine Bros. drops and told him that he used the lozenges to keep his voice smooth.
Top sips
The Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. (112 S. 18th) and Southwark (701 S. 4th) were included on
Food & Wine
magazine's 50 Best Bars in America slideshow at FoodandWine.com.
It pays to advertise
South Jersey native
Kelly Ripa
told her "Live with Kelly" guest-host musician
Josh Groban
on Thursday that her kids have begged her to go to DelFrisco's since seeing the steakhouse's ad regularly in New York taxis.
Groban said that he had seen the ad, too, and ended up eating there.
The spot was created by local agency Neff Associates and shot by Shooters Inc., based in Center City.
Sneak previews *
Nearly 700 students from the Academy at Palumbo will be treated to a sneak preview of "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol," later this week at the United Artists Riverview theater. It's their prize for winning the Get Schooled Foundation's Fall 2011 Attendance Challenge.
The new Tom Cruise film opens nationally next week.
* Stephen Bruno, the Society Hill native and Weinstein Co. marketing director, arranged a special screening of "The Artist" for his mother, Karen Jacobson, and her friends the other night at the Ritz Five (2nd & Walnut).
The silent film, featuring John Goodman and set in 1920s Hollywood, opens on Christmas Day.