Inqlings: Ditching pom-poms for bikinis and sneaks
Eagles cheerleader Janipher Choi has made it to the Super Bowl of the swimsuit-modeling world: a spot in Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue, released last week with a party in New York.
Eagles cheerleader
Janipher Choi
has made it to the Super Bowl of the swimsuit-modeling world: a spot in Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue, released last week with a party in New York.
Choi, one of a dozen NFL cheerleaders in the mag, is getting well acquainted with New York. In December, the 2007 Rutgers grad took a merchandising job with Foot Locker. After commuting daily from the Blackwood home of her mother, Nancy - leaving her with four hours of sleep a night - Choi just moved to Jersey City, N.J.
This means she won't return for a fourth season with the Eagles.
Foot Locker's branded-merchandise department is packed with Giants fans, she says, adding that hers is the only desk festooned with Eagles stuff.
Valentine's surprise I
A day after his ailing cat, Puddy, was put to sleep, Q102 morning man
Chris Booker
has a new little guy. The fuzzy gray kitten was a Valentine's gift from girlfriend
Alycia Lane
, who adopted him through the Animal Sanctuary Society in Mount Laurel. On a video Booker posted online, the yet-to-be-named kitty gambols with Lane's teacup Yorkie, Kloe, and her Rhodesian ridgeback, Kenya. As Booker urges the kitten to chew up "Mommy's" Louboutin pumps, Lane can be heard mock-wailing, "No!"
Lane called into Booker's show Friday, first to jokingly quip: "Good evening. I'm Alycia Lane," but then to explain why she had gotten him a cat so soon. "I think I may know him better than he knows himself," she said, explaining how bereft he was. "He's a guy who needs a kitty cat."
Valentine's surprise II
Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz
was lured out of his lair in the NBC10 weather center Thursday, and a barbershop quartet serenaded him in the newsroom with weather-theme songs. Schwartz says it was a surprise from his girlfriend, Donna, whom he met recently on Match.com. (Both have pulled down their Internet profiles, he says.) Donna chose the gift of music because he likes to sing to her, and, Schwartz says, "she's not much of a singer."
Power of the press
A neat bit of Philly ephemera is up on eBay: a custom "press badge" and press pass that
Frank Rizzo
gave to
Walter Annenberg
, likely in the 1960s when the two existed symbiotically, Rizzo as police commish and Annenberg as publisher of The Inquirer and Daily News. Seller
David Fitzgerald
of Palmer Estate Liquidators in West Philly says his firm bought the brass badge and paper pass from the estate of
Helen First
, whose husband,
Joseph M. First
, was an Annenberg friend. It's Item No. 360023175753. High bid Friday was $90; the auction ends Tuesday night.
That's Doug K-k-kammerer-r-r
Meteorologist
Doug Kammerer
has been getting into the weather during his six-month noncompete period after his departure from NBC10. He'll debut tomorrow on CBS3 by tag-teaming with
Kathy Orr
on the 4 and 6 p.m. weekday news and forecasting weather on the Sunday night newscast. This week, he'll also turn up on CBS3's 11 p.m. shows with features, including his visit to the inhospitable top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, a "self-rescue" in an icy pond, an outing with the ski patrol at Big Boulder, and a polar-bear plunge in Sea Isle City, N.J.
Briefly noted
The Foo Fighters
have allocated premium tickets to their Wachovia Spectrum show Thursday to Philly's TreeBank (
» READ MORE: www.itreebank.org
), which supports urban forests. The tickets, for which trees no doubt have died, are being auctioned through Comcasttix.com..
West Chester's Christian Ramirez-Coll, a master's candidate at Villanova, appeared last week as the newest member of the CW57 Philly Crew. Ramirez-Coll's sideline is modeling; that's him on the cover of such potboilers as Taken by the Night, A Vampire Is Forever, The Undead Next Door and The Face of a Killer.
Last weekend, CBS3 exile Steve Bucci filled in Saturday on Comcast SportsNet. He's due back this week (tomorrow and Friday) on SportsNite at 6:30 and 10 p.m.
Electricians union head John Dougherty was announced Friday as a board member of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation's Philadelphia chapter.
Kevin Eubanks, the Philly-bred bandleader for The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, wrote, directed and starred in a new ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as part of a series of vegetarian testimonials. Dressed as a giant strawberry, Eubanks playfully asks: "Guess what I am? I'm America's sexiest vegetarian," a reference to his win last year in PETA's online contest. Eubanks ends the spot by going out with other fruits and vegetables.
Inqlings:
Q102's Chris Booker shows off his new kitten: http://go.philly.com/bookercat
Kevin Eubanks of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno makes like a giant strawberry: http://go.philly.com/eubanksEndText