Posts Tagged ‘Jay Z’

What does Grammy award-winning singer, Beyonce, and a Harvard educated, Boston-based event planner have in common? Turns out, both of them wanted to name their business “Blue Ivy” and only one of them was successful.

Veronica Alexandra started her event planning business in 2009, and took six months to come up with a name that she felt suited her purposes. That name, was Blue Ivy, and she has been running her rather successful company under that title since that time. Earlier this year, when Beyonce and Jay-Z had their first child together, a daughter, and named her Blue Ivy, they also filed for a trademark for the name about 10 days after the baby’s birth, which put them in conflict with Alexandra, who had already beaten them to the punch. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Carter wanted to launch their own line of baby products under the same name.

Earlier this week, in true David and Goliath fashion, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Alexandra the right to use the name “Blue Ivy” for event planning.

Needless to say, the whole debacle has been a boon for Alexandra’s business, and while the savvy businesswoman has admitted that her interactions with Beyonce’s lawyers have been more than cordial to the point of even being helpful, there has been no word on what this means for hip hop’s foremost power couple’s future in baby clothes.

★ Matt Damon announces he and his wife are expecting their 4th child.

★ British star, Rachel Weisz, to play American Jackie Kennedy in upcoming biopic.

★ Connecticut collector owns a plethora of historically noteworthy and pop culturally relevant items, including things from Jim Henson, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley.

★ “Saved by the Bell” star “Mr. Belding” comes to McFadden’s in Boston on April 29.

★ Partly filmed in Cambridge Facebook movie could be allegorical about modern social interactions and relationships, and features the story of how the creator getting dumped.

★ New Hampshire film honored with 2010 Emmy nomination from the Boston/New England chapter of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

★ New York Magazine lists 7 things Conan O’Brien will be able to do on cable that he couldn’t do on network television. While Conan confirms that he will in fact not be returning to the NYC.

★ Fashion designer to the stars Marc Jacobs attends his business partner’s swanky wedding on the Cape.

After being off TV for over 3 months, Jay Leno returned to the NBC airwaves Monday for the much-anticipated premiere of his hour-long variety show at an earlier time. The new 10 PM EST time slot will be the new nightly home of the Emerson graduate, though Boston-area residents were nearly not going to be able to get to see it.

The Andover-born comic got off to a running start, relying on a very similar format and set, down to the very color scheme of his backdrop. After an opening monologue which touched on current events in news and pop culture, he kept true to his promise and highlighted a newly discovered comic, by allowing him to have an entire segment on the program.

He also featured his popular, “Headlines” segment, and his first official guest was Jerry Seinfeld, who appeared in a tux. “I’m the first guest on your ‘I Guess I didn’t get fired again by NBC’ program,” quipped the comedian. “In the 90s, when we quit a show, we left.” After confessing that Oprah, not Seinfeld, was, in fact, who Leno had originally desired to have as his first guest, the talk-show queen appeared on a flat panel TV that was lowered from above, and had a brief exchange with Seinfeld.

”I have to go, I’m on that new Jay Leno talk show.” said Seinfeld.

”Really, what time is that on?” Oprah said to laughs.

Leno with longer hair, that seemed more white and nearly without his trademark skunk stripe in front, then introduced one of the most-talked celebrities of the weekend, Kanye West. The ornery rapper appeared less than 24 hours after his much talked about incident at the MTV VMAs, where he rushed the stage to interrupt the acceptance speech of Best Female Video winner, Taylor Swift.

“This wasn’t planned, Kanye wanted to talk” Leno said as he introduced the Grammy winner. “Thank you for honoring this commitment…what do you think your mom would have said?” Leno asked the somewhat pensive West. “Would she have been disappointed, would she have given you a lecture?”

After an extended pause, West finally answered “…yeah” and went on to offer public apology as well as an offer to apologize in person to the 19 year-old starlet.

The show was concluded by a performance featuring West, Rhianna, and Jaz Z.