February 2007 Archives
This may come as news to those who thought John McCain was already in the 2008 Presidential race, but he'll announce his candidacy officially tonight on "Late Show with David Letterman" (11:35 p.m., CBS Channel 2).
From CBS's press release: Letterman later asked Sen. McCain if he would consider “the possibility President/Vice President, that kind of a thing, you divide that sort of deal up. You’re not interested in splitting that?” Sen. McCain said, “Well, you may remember that in the last election there was some conversation about me being Vice President of the Untied States, it wasn’t clear which party,” which garnered laughter from Letterman and the audience. “And I was on one of the shows and the guy said, ‘Well, what’s this about you being Vice President of the United States?’ I said, ‘You know, I spent all those years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, kept in the dark, fed scraps – why the heck would I want to do that all over again?’”
So it’s come to this: A news organization has made news for making the bold decision not to cover news that isn’t news at all, which is to say: anything concerning Paris Hilton.
The Associated Press does plan, however, to report a story in the future on “the repercussions of our blackout for AP both editorially and business-wise, and most importantly the forces that cause the world to be fixated on this person who, despite her shallow frivolity, represents an epochal development in our culture.”
Lest you fear you’ll be utterly deprived of future editions of the Paris Review, exceptions will be made in case of “major, major news.” So Hilton’s going to have to step up her game and start prepping for an overdose STAT.
That, or you can still follow her antics via the thousands of other media outlets who just can’t help themselves.
They need to set up a triage unit over at “Grey’s Anatomy;” that, or just get a high-pressure water hose to blast the attitude off cast members.
Where to begin? Well, for starters, everyone’s in a snit over the fact that Kate Walsh got the “GA” spin-off series and they didn’t. "The rest of the cast seemed instantly resentful of [Walsh]. … now they're giving Kate the cold shoulder," a tabloid quotes a blind source. Even Ellen Pompeo, who plays the title character on the show and therefore couldn’t be spun off of her own show, is miffed she wasn’t consulted on the decision.
Are these people that vain and that stupid? There’s no guarantee Walsh’s show will be a success, so she could wind up unemployed next season, and all these poor, sad actors have are jobs on one of the top-rated shows on TV.
And it doesn’t end there. Katherine Heigl, T.R. Knight’s knight in shining armor, has dropped out of contract negotiations with the show, upset that she’s not making as much as the more veteran actors Sandra Oh and Isaiah Washington. Though she may have a point: She starred in the movie “Zyzzyx Road,” a film that earned a whopping 30 bucks in its theatrical release, so she’s clearly a bankable starlet.
* UPDATE: ABC is saying the Heigl story isn't true. (But then, networks aren't exactly known to be paragons of honesty.)
With all that going on, it only makes sense that Washington’d be the one drawing the least negative headlines: The noted homophobe has hired a publicist, and an openly gay one, at that. Took long enough, but well-played, anyway.
Soon, “GA” will be the first series in production where all cast members will have to pass through a metal detector to get on the set. One wonders how bitter and back-biting they’d all be if the show only got so-so ratings.
If you think the uproar over and/or premise of the Discovery Channel’s upcoming documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” is bizarre, try getting an advance screener.
“The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” of course, suggests that archaeologists discovered back in 1980 a tomb in Jerusalem that some people now think contained the remains of Jesus and his family, including his wife, Mary Magdalene, and a son, Judah (certainly not a shout out to Judas Iscariot). This, of course, would run counter to Biblical accounts which neglected to mention Jesus’ big wedding-day bash (he converted water into wine at someone else’s wedding) and suggested that since He ascended to heaven, there wouldn’t’ve had been any remains, as Tim LaHaye might have it, left behind.
First, a little “inside baseball” that’ll give you “deep cover” in order to sneak into the “secret mechanisms” of the “entertainment-industrial complex:” Traditionally, networks and cable channels will send critics DVD or (if they’re hopelessly passé) VHS screeners of shows they’d like said critics to write about. Barring that, they’ll at least send out a press release about a program, with the name, number and email address of a publicist one can contact if you want a screener. Pretty standard stuff, really.
However, in the case of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” Discovery sent out a press release for the show Monday (the same day as the New York press conference) that read a little like the conspiracy-fueled fever dream of someone who keeps the government from controlling his mind by wearing tin foil on his head. No publicist was name-checked; no phone number was included; the Email address from which the missive was sent had been created specifically for this event (and if I don’t hear back from these clowns soon, I’ll share it so you can clog up their system).
Your Mayor, a conscientious servant determined to supply his constituency with the most current trends in transgressive historical revisionism, replied Monday requesting a copy of the documentary. An email appeared Tuesday informing me my email had been “received.” Not “read,” mind you, and certainly not “acted upon,” just “received.” The email also helpfully provided a link to the Discovery Channel’s online store, where I could buy all manner of – well, I don’t know, since the link didn’t actually work.
Dogged in my pursuit of this bombshell story, I phoned a publicist at Discovery, who gave me a number to call; when I asked her who I should ask for, she said she didn’t know. And, indeed, she didn’t, because it was a phone-mail box taking “media requests” for the show. Again, no names of whom one should contact to expedite service; no promise that anyone would ever contact you about this in this lifetime.
This seems a particularly arcane and even slightly sinister approach to television publicity, particularly for a show about Jesus. Discovery Channel publicity seems to have cribbed a page from Opus Dei, that unnervingly secretive group demonized in “The Da Vinci Code,” only working to utterly contradictory ends. But, wait: If Discovery Channel really wanted critics to write about this, they’d make it easy to get screeners; if Opus Dei wanted to squelch this, of course they’d create an utterly obfuscating publicity campaign. So apparently Discovery Channel was duped into outsourcing publicity services on “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” to Opus Dei, who operates under the same shroud of secrecy as Yale University’s Skull and Bones. Which is precisely what was found in those Jerusalem ossuaries – mere coincidence? I think not.
Anyway, a lot of critics are grousing that it seems quite a stretch to make the claims the documentary posits, and yes, having not seen the documentary but having heard various experts weigh in, there doesn’t seem to be enough persuasive evidence to tilt two millennia of spiritual faith in their direction. Were the film right, however, what, really, is the big deal? It seems to me that following Christ’s teachings because they’re inordinately humane and square with one’s own moral beliefs is a lot more noble and true than adhering to them because if you don’t, you’re afraid you’ll go to hell.
* UPDATE: A screener of "Jesus" has ascended to my hilltop duplex.
Bill O’Reilly likes to call viewers of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” stoners and slackers. Here’s another name he can give them: Readers (or, at least, patrons) of serious current-events literature.
The New York Times reports that both shows actually help sales of books written by the historians and political analysts who sit and chat with Stewart or spar with Colbert.
In recent weeks, Stewart has hosted Nobel Prize-winning economics guru Muhammad Yunus, Ishmael Beah, whose book “A Long Way Gone” details life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, who was peddling his memoir “In the Line of Fire:” Great targets for high comedy, all.
In the Times story, Martha Levin of Free Press calls the programs “the television equivalent of NPR. You have a very savvy, interested audience who are book buyers, people who do go into bookstores, people who are actually interested in books.”
Another publicist in the story says, “If I had my choice between Charlie Rose and Jon Stewart, I’d pick Jon Stewart, no question.”
Now that serious discourse on television is allowed only on a couple of comedy shows, perhaps the Fox News Channel will take a tip from Keith Olbermann and add a laugh track to all of its shows, not just “The 1/2 Hour News Hour.”
That is, if last night’s ratings for “The Black Donnellys” are any indication.
Despite tons of hype – there were about a half-dozen promos for it during “Heroes” just before it alone – the show managed to average a mere 8.4 million viewers in its premiere, which is what “Studio 60” averaged in its entire run. Worse, it suffered from a spectacular fall-off in viewers as the episode progressed: It began with an average of nearly 10 million viewers in its first half-hour – a number that was inflated, no doubt, by the fact that “Heroes” ran long, not signing off until 10:03 p.m. – and slunk to a lowly 6.9 million in its second half. So it didn’t lure many people to begin with and those who did watch weren’t overly impressed. Hence, we’ll no doubt be seeing Matthew Perry’s Matt returning to dithering over Sarah Paulson’s Harriet come April, if not sooner.
ABC News was not able to get a screener of “To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports” out in time to writers outside of New York, but they did send a copy of its script, and it’s powerful, absorbing and disturbing stuff. Woodruff retraces his steps and rehabilitation after his injury in Iraq in January 2007 when he absorbed the force of a bomb in his face and chest, and then explores the stories of soldiers similarly injured in the war.
Fragments were embedded in his skull, a portion of which caved in (and has been replaced). Woodruff was in a medically induced coma for 36 days. He still remembers nothing of what happened.
Selected quotes from the film, airing tonight at 10 on ABC:
SECRETARY JAMES NICHOLSON
You know, there's no, not enough money in the world really that you can give people to make up for the loss that these people are suffering, physically, uh, mentally, and emotionally.
*
PAUL REICKHOFF
Those of us who've served in Iraq face kind of a second fight coming home. The VA is coming apart at the seams. And everybody sees it who deals with the VA on a daily basis and the people within the VA are, are working hard, and they're doing a great job, and we've got a lot of people who are really devoted and, and, and working hard for veterans. But we need to give them all the tools at this country's disposal to be able to be able to take care of our veterans.
*
PAUL SULLIVAN
What you have are two sets of books. The Department Of Defense saying that there's 23,000 wounded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Department Of Veteran's Affairs is actually treating 205,000 veterans from these two wars.
*
DR. STEVEN SCOTT
I, I can’t give you an absolute number. But I think the 10 percent is a good, is a good estimate. But it could be higher based on the fact that the more times and the longer you are over there, the higher frequency, higher percentage that they will have these.
BOB WOODRUFF
THAT COULD MEAN THAT OF THE 1.5 MILLION WHO HAVE SERVED OR ARE NOW SERVING IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN – MORE THAN 150,000 PEOPLE -- COULD HAVE A BRAIN INJURY THAT MAY BE UNDIAGNOSED -- AND UNRECOGNIZED BY THE CASUALTY NUMBERS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
*
BOB WOODRUFF
Why is it not being told, generally, officially by the government?
PAUL SULLIVAN
Sadly, Bob, what you have is the Department of Defense issuing gag orders.
BOB WOODRUFF
Gag orders?
You think as a nation we're ready to take care of all of our veterans that have come back?
PAUL REICKHOFF
No. Not even close. I don’t even think it’s on most people’s radar. I think that the willingness is there. I think inside the hearts of America's population we want to do the right thing. But they don't even know this is on their radar.
*
This dovetails neatly but sadly into last week’s story of abject conditions in sections of Walter Reed Hospital, where soldiers are being treated for injuries sustained in Iraq, which prompted this extraordinary exchange during a session with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow:
Q The White House doesn't want to be on record with a more emphatic expression of amazement and upset about this?
MR. SNOW: No.
Q Do you think the President is going to say something about this later?
MR. SNOW: No.
Here’s ABC’s online coverage of Woodruff’s remarkable story:
Woodruff’s wife Lee’s perspective
Cameraman Doug Vogt’s perspective
- “To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports:” 10 tonight, ABC Channel 7
Excellent episode of "Heroes" tonight - Horn-Rimmed Glasses' (Jack Coleman) surprisingly resonant backstory (though still no explanation of what it is exactly that he's up to); lots of action, inspired use of Eric Roberts' grizzled mug, grisly makeup effects and Hayden Panettiere spitting blood. Just one question:
How was Parkman (Greg Grunberg) captured and sedated after sort of, for once in his life, having the upper hand? Particularly given that the cops and neighbors were all around when the house exploded? (The one set I really hung out at when I visited the "Heroes" set, and now it's ashes. Does that make me a jinx?) How was all this explained to the police and neighbors, anyway? Why did it take the cops so long to respond to a call in a small Texas town? (Last time I had to call cops in a small Texas town - yes, it sounds unlikely, but true story - they were there within a minute.)
OK, so that's four questions. But questions, quite likely, that the show's creators hope we overlook and/or forget pretty quickly because, quite frankly, I'm not sure they have any good answers.
Ah, well, I'm sure that over on "24" tonight they had twice as many and even bigger plot holes.
ABC announced it's bringing "Six Degrees" back. Imagine my excitement. Set your TiVo's for March 23.
The network also announced a new show, "October Road," will debut March 15. Odd, because the network not only didn't feature a press conference for this series during Press Tour last month (and they had more than plenty of time; they had to pad to almost fill the day), they didn't even mention its existence. (Well, almost; its title appeared buried on the page listing the publicists and the shows they handle.) This can't really be construed as a huge vote of confidence for the show and, to be fair, the show's synopsis doesn't suggest it deserves much:
"'October Road' centers on the young, popular author, Nick Garrett, who is at a crossroads in his life. To get over his writer’s block, he goes back to his hometown and must now face the family and friends he has avoided for the past ten years. Once back home on October Road, he quickly discovers that the circle of friends whose teenaged lives he wrote about have trouble forgiving him for leaving them behind, and that his ex-girlfriend, Hannah Daniels, may have had his child."
So where did you drop out on that description? Most, I'm guessing, bailed after the phrase "at a crossroads in his life;" some may have gotten as far as "writer's block." But the real b.s.-detecting aesthete choked on his or her bile right at "young, popular author." This show fairly screams omphaloskepsis. (Look it up.)
You know, I'm pretty sure The WB did a show pretty much exactly like this, and that it flopped. (Research update: Yep, I'm right; It was called, with some most egregious miscalculation, "Glory Days," and aired in 2002; not even imdb.com knows or seems to care how few episodes got on the air.) Just spit-balling here, but if an idea failed on The WB, what are the chances it's going to lure a crowd big enough to satisfy ABC?
I wrote about this in my voluminous Oscar coverage - and I'm just one of the people writing about the ceremony tonight, so you can imagine how stuffed with obsessive details the Daily News will be when it lands on your driveway tomorrow (I'm assuming, of course, that it will land in your driveway tomorrow) - but it's the sort of passing detail that can easily get excised from copy to make room for, say, very justifiable photographs of Reese Witherspoon and Beyonce.
Al Gore finally received his coronation tonight, about six years too late, but still. And everyone has discussed his comic moment where he was mock-cut-off during his mock-announcement that he'd be running for President again.
But, for me, the best moment during his exchange with Leonardo DiCaprio was more subtle. After Gore thanked DiCaprio, one of the first stars to drive a hybrid car, for his work on environmental issues, the director cut to a bored-looking Jerry Seinfeld - who owns a full fleet of gas-guzzling Porsches.
After sitting through the bloated four-hour leviathan that is the Oscar ceremony tomorrow evening, you’ll no doubt be starved for entertainment, so “Family Guy’s” MySpace site will happily appease you with a new short flash-animated talk show that will double as a bald promotion for Seth MacFarlane’s latest production, “The Winner.”
In “Up Late,” Stewie and Brian will interview Rob Corddry, who stars in the new sitcom (created by Ricky Blitt) as a socially inept doofus who starts to turn his life around. No idea if it will be an animated Rob Corddry or a Rob Corddry brought alongside Stewie and Brian via the magic of greenscreen, but they’ll banter and do everything in their power to ensure that you watch “The Winner” next Sunday.
Don’t go there now – if you do, you’ll have to sit through a commercial for the “Family Guy” Stewie DVD. They’re throwing it up sometime Sunday evening, so it might be a good idea to check in somewhere between the honorary award to Sheri Lansing and the montage of dead people.
We’ve discussed the upcoming Paley Television Festival already, but The Museum of Television and Radio has a slew of other events in the coming weeks and months, concerning a number of topics as you will see as I regurgitate the contents of their press release.
The “Media as Mirror” series will feature the premiere of the Canadian series “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” about a Muslim family living in Saskatchewan, on April 4. No word whether the show’s a comedy or drama, but I’m guessing comedy, because you can’t really put the words “drama” and “Saskatchewan” in the same sentence.
“Media/Mirror” also will feature “Political Satire in the Digital Age: Salih Memecan and JibJab” on April 5. Memecan, a Turkish cartoonist, and the founders of the comedy site JibJab will discuss, uh, political satire in the digital age. I’m guessing they mean “now” more than the “digital age,” because current events dictate political satire more than the medium, but putting "digital age" in the title of any panel discussion makes it sound more cutting-edge.
Finally, “Arab and Muslim Characters on Prime-Time TV: The View from Hollywood,” on May 22, will feature a panel of producers from the shows “24,” “Lost,” “Sleeper Cell” and “Law & Order,” who will no doubt implore the Arab and Muslim worlds to assume new character tics they can stereotype.
But the Museum also realizes that media can provide entertainment, as well, and so, as part of its “Media as Entertainment” series, it will feature panels of shows that apparently weren’t quite prestigious enough to rate the Paley Festival: “Friday Night Lights” (April 13), “The New Adventures of Old Christine” (April 16) and a “Cagney and Lacey” reunion (April 30).
Mitzi Gaynor will chatter on April 10, the Turner Movie Classics documentary “Brando” will be screened and, afterwards, dissected by, of all people, Penelope Ann Miller on April 24 (OK, there’ll be other folks there, too). “Oswald’s Ghost,” an upcoming PBS documentary about the JFK assassination, will be presented and discussed June 12, and Morgan Spurlock will recall doing prison time and other antics enacted for his FX series “30 Days” on June 19.
And apparently, the Museum believes that someone out there is interested in “the role of the writer in the creation of video games,” because, verily, a panel discussion entitled “Video Games: The Writers Speak” is scheduled for May 9.
And former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will reminisce about her appearance on an episode of “Blossom” on a June date to be determined. Well, no, she won’t talk about “Blossom,” I gather; she’s part of this series because, um, well, she has been on TV.
The event Your Mayor is most interested in occurs on April 23, when epic documentarian Ken Burns will offer a sneak peak of his upcoming “The War” (that war in question being WWII). His film won’t air until September, so you’ll be able to say you were the first on your block to see at least some of it, and find out if he and PBS and those Draconian rascals at the FCC have determined whether or not he can allow members of the Greatest Generation drop some scatological epithets during the miniseries without the FCC fining PBS affiliates out of existence.
Tickets for events go on sale March 1 and range between $15-$25, less for members of the museum; ticket packages are also available. Call the Museum, which is at North Beverly Drive and Little Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, at 310-786-1000. Not necessarily for more information; just give them a call. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
“Countdown with Keith Olbermann” did a stellar job this week with its Judge Larry coverage – oh, wait, the story was supposed to be about the fate of Anna Nicole Smith’s remains. But someone forgot to tell Judge Larry about it.
So “Countdown” edited the footage down to the good jurist’s most inanely self-aggrandizing moments, and it’s good, old-fashioned knee-slapping fun. At the expense, of course, of a dead woman.
The above link takes you to last night’s coverage, but you can root around to find earlier, similar and similarly hilarious coverage. If not, this should help, as well as this.
All for one and one for all! But wasn’t that the Three Musketeers’ motto, not the Knights of the Round Table?
Never let it be said that Your Mayor does not read nor respond to mail from his constituency. Today, I received three Emails from “Gilmore Girls” fans anxious to see their favorite show onto an eighth season and perhaps beyond. This follows an earlier note from a fan expressing the same wishes and wondering, realistically, what the chances are for the series continuing after this season’s end.
One, a fan in Australia, wrote, “I believe we need more time. More time to see Luke and Lorelai back together, but not in a rushed blur. More time to experience Rory’s first steps in the world after college, but not have it handed to her just to wrap up the season neatly. More time to see Lane and Zach experience the trials and tribulations that come with parenthood. Just more time!” She then proceeded to butter me up: “A quality article (about renewing the show), from you, a respected industry journalist, would indeed speak volumes.”
(To be fair, she does live in Australia, so her confusion as to my being “a respected industry journalist” is understandable.)
Another correspondent was even more deft at buttering me up, addressing me as “The Distinguished Mayor of Television” (emphasis mine, naturally). She echoed her Aussie counterpart’s concern: “I also unfortunately realize that if there is any truth that the series could be ending soon, that there couldn’t possibly be enough time left this season for the much beloved town folk of Stars Hollow, not to mention the key characters, to bring their delightful stories full circle. I truly believe that the captivating characters and imaginative storylines deserve at least one more season to do them justice.”
Both directed me to a fan site determined to help the show continue behind an initiative called The Great8Mandate. It includes the names and addresses of CW executives and Warner Bros. TV production executives, cast members (through the production studio), even some journalists.
In the nascent stages of their crusade, these folks are more mobilized than the fans of “Deadwood” trying to resurrect their favorite show. Of course, they had to scramble when HBO unexpectedly and rather surprisingly announced the show was cancelled before its third season even premiered. “GG” fans are benefiting, if that’s the word, of media speculation that the show wouldn’t be returning and are able to make a pre-emptive strike, something denied “Deadwood” die-hards (or “Everwood” fans, for that matter).
Herewith, reasons for said fans to both take heart and/or prepare for the worst:
REASONS “GILMORE GIRLS” MIGHT NOT RETURN
* There’s been a distinct sense – even among hardcore “GG” fans – that the show has lost the spin off its fastball since series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino departed after a contract dispute last season, and ratings have declined fairly steeply from its halcyon days. An eighth season wouldn’t likely get much better, and shows of that age rarely increase their viewership. A season eight could limp to an ignominious conclusion that might leave a bad taste in fans’ heads.
* There’s not a lot of financial incentive to continue. Luring cast members back could prove costly – too costly for a mini-network like The CW to afford. And the show has more than enough episodes to play in syndication forever, so all involved have plenty of royalties coming their way, so there’s not a lot of incentive for anyone to continue.
* It seems highly unlikely that Alexis Bledell would be interested in continuing in the show. At her appearance at TV Press Tour last July, she seemed to be extremely disinterested; she was a no-show at a magazine photo shoot and, in general, just seems to want to get on with her career.
REASONS “GILMORE GIRLS” MIGHT RETURN
* Lauren Graham was recently given a producer’s credit, which clearly is a step towards luring her back for another year.
* The CW needs it more than it needs The CW. Even with its lower ratings, only a handful of other shows on the network have a higher viewership. “Reba’s” gone, “Veronica Mars,” “Seventh Heaven” and “One Tree Hill” are on life support, and its Monday sitcom lineup is hurting. That’s a lot of prime-time real estate for a network with a modest development budget to renovate, so The CW might be willing to pony up to keep a solid audience and critical favorite on the schedule. Even a diminished "GG" is better than most CW programming.
* My correspondents are correct – rushing Luke and Lorelai’s rekindling of their romance would kind of stink.
So what do you think? Would you like to hear Lorelai’s motormouth banter for one more season, or would you tell her, “Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?”
They’re probably the most self-defeating, watery and pathetically useless words in a personal publicist’s arsenal: “We ask that the media respect [our client’s] privacy as well as those of [our client’s] family and friends at this time.”
Particularly if you’re Britney Spears’ professional handler – well, “handler” is clearly the wrong word because no one’s handling anything when it comes to the new Mrs. Clean, who is obviously anything but clean at this point.
Of course, Britney has reportedly bolted detox again, adding to the loopily torturous nature of this saga, as a benumbed nation watches this slow-motion train wreck somewhat reticently, yet unable to turn away.
Until a more graphics-heavy website begins providing this service 24/7, I’ll hereby helpfully attempt to keep you posted with Ms. Spears’ current rehab situation with a low-tech emoticon:
IN REHAB: ☺
OUT OF REHAB: ☹
I pondered which emoticon was appropriate – the smiley face does seem a little Schadenfreude-esque, but it really means we should be happy she’s trying to help herself. And the sad face – well, that’s because she’s running around untethered, which at this point is obviously not a good thing.
So:
BRITNEY SPEARS’ CURRENT STATUS
☺
Bookmark this entry and check back often for updates! I’ll probably have to hire a round-the-clock staff to keep this appropriately updated, but it’ll be worth it to keep an on-edge nation’s state of mind somewhat more at peace.
* UPDATE: Apparently, we're getting closer to this sort of technology than I would've imagined: A website does offer celebrity-stalker capabilities. Soon, we'll just have our celebrities tagged and micro-chipped.
Unfortunately for this new game from gsn.com, that fun-time astronaut love triangle has ebbed too quickly into the recesses of our minds, supplanted by Anna Nicole Smith’s death and Britney Spears’ impending spectacular splat should she bolt yet again from rehab.
Still, it's a way to kill those dark hours of the soul. In the game "Astronaut Moonstalker," you the astronaut collect hearts, diapers and pepper spray and fight off evil aliens, to boot. Keep an eye on the Diaper Meter. I never managed to fill the diaper, so I don’t know exactly what happens there, but then again, I don’t think I really want to know.
Herewith, a wonderful confluence of corporate sponsorship, actors who probably burble about their characters’ “journey” and abject humiliation.
In order to promote Fox’s upcoming series “The Wedding Bells,” about three sisters – no doubt one too hot, one too cold and one just right – who run a wedding-planning company, the cast will judge a contest in which prospective bridezillas-to-be negotiate an obstacle course before tearing into wedding cakes in search of rings (one three-karat rock; three one-karat consolation prizes).
Talk about conflict diamonds.
Teri Polo, KaDee Strickland and Sarah Jones portray the sisters on the show; other cast members attending include the rather cute-but-also-ickily monikered Missi Pyle (the first name, so perky and feminine, yet mispronounce it in full just a smidgen and the result sounds like you’ve been tromping through a poorly managed dog park).
This “obstacle course” culminating in the savage pulping of perfectly innocent wedding cakes recalls the Monty Python sketch about the “Upper Class Twit of the Year” competition in which posh boors circled a track engaging in all manner of rude behavior. Yet instead of waking the neighbors with car doors and wrenching bras off mannequins, contestants here will rummage through clothing racks in search of the ugliest bridesmaid dress imaginable and scream at their mothers until they reduce them to tears.
Because, after all, the race to the altar is nothing if not strewn with obstacles and few things shout enduring love more than shedding one’s dignity for some bling.
If such spectacle appeals to you, and you have too much free time on your hands, the festivities begin Friday, March 2 at 11 a.m. at The Grove.
So it's come to this: A media analyst is criticizing former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber for not being glib and superficial at a press conference introducing him as "Today's" new correspondent.
"Barber looked inelegant when he criticized his former football coach at NBC's welcoming press conference," groused MarketWatch's Jon Friedman. "Barber should've stuck to the platitudes that Matt Lauer was a role model and that he always wanted to be on the "Today" show and left it at that."
So essentially, what Friedman is saying is that Barber - who's aspiring to raise the bar on the typical ex-jock's career by doing something more substantive than offer color commentary on his previous job's current employees - shouldn't be honest when it comes to addressing questions posed by the media. That, if Barber wants to establish credibility as a journalist, he should lie or obfuscate, right out of the box.
When a media analyst like Friedman automatically expects someone in the spotlight to be shallow and unforthcoming and even chides them when they're not, you know we've stepped through the looking glass in the infotainment world. Perhaps those kind of expectations are what accounts for the generally watery nature of TV news in the first place.
Comic Paul Mooney hosts BET’s “Top 25 Events that (Mis)Shaped Black America,” which takes the glib style and shape of VH1’s “I Love the [Insert Recent Decade Here]” and “Best Week Ever” to forge an oddly cheekily grim production by Black History Month standards. Honest, this one doesn't even mention George Washington Carver.
The events “changed the course of our race for the worst,” Mooney explains, and while the list offers some wry commentary from “critics, comics and celebrities” – Jheri Curls and soul food are on the list, alongside Hurricane Katrina, drugs, AIDS and slavery – the intent is as serious as a stroke. Only the hyperkinetic editing, an overall even-handed tone and the occasional crisp one-liner (Elvis was “the original Puff Daddy,” critic/author Toure explains, because “he took what was hot in the culture and remixed it” – of course, the joke is that Chuck Berry and Little Richard were the original Elvis) prevent the show from becoming mired in anger or despair.
Sometimes, the editing is too hyperventilating, reducing a few soundbites to pabulum and making it look like the interviewees’ words are being taken out of context (though they’re likely just removing pauses – darn those slow, thoughtful speakers). But the brisk pace also forces the producers to just dip their toes into some subjects that deserve a little more nuance.
Other items on the list: The N-word, bling, Hollywood, the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., segregation, the Ku Klux Klan and “black people who are proud to be dumb.”
- "Top 25 Events that (Mis)Shaped Black America:" 10 tonight, BET.
Tom Arnold is Ted Haggard!
And the winner of the “Law & Order” spin-off competition to mold the sordid Ted Haggard saga of a homophobic evangelist in the feverish grip of the manlove that dare not speak its name into a half-baked drama goes to – drum roll, please – and we have an upset! The winner is “Law & Order: Criminal Intent!”
(My money was on “Special Victims Unit.”)
This week, Vincent D’Onofrio wrests himself from the rarefied demons that keep him from maintaining the same ruthless schedule that every other actor in prime-time television manages to elude, in order to investigate the murder of a homophobic evangelist who turns out to be not entirely homophoblic – spiritually, maybe, but not in body. Tom Arnold guest-stars as the quite literally monikered Calvin Riggins (Calvinist? rigorous?), whose wife turns up dead after a melee at a debate between him and a scientist arguing against God’s existence.
Seems Cal’s “rent boy” – the show’s term – handed Cal’s wife an incriminating DVD minutes before the tragedy, adding of Cal, “He likes crystal meth” – in case anyone not be able to pick up on who the “fictional” episode is about – “and, in particular, ‘booty bumps.’” Alas, thanks to FCC constraints, a character gets this reference, denying us the “rent boy's” full explication on broadcast television.
Confronted with this evidence, Arnold’s Cal concedes he knows of such a man, “but it’s always so dark in those (massage parlor) rooms” that he can’t ID him. Having had massages that didn’t end in a booty bump – and, having entered that thought into evidence, I must further add, “having no massages that in fact did end in a booty bump” – I must call b.s. on that explanation, as do the detectives. Arnold’s actually far better than Chevy Chase was as Mel Gibson’s doppelganger in a “Law & Order” episode earlier this season; he crumples quite convincingly when badgered under interrogation. Of course, having been married to Roseanne, he’s no doubt had plenty of experience.
In the end, though the episode manages to get in a few shots at fundamentalist Christianity’s elements of close-mindedness, it absolves it of the worst of sins. Then allows us all to rail: Damn you, secular progressives!
- “Law & Order: Criminal Intent:” 9 p.m. Tuesday, NBC (Channel 4).
The theme of the blog this weekend has turned out to be train wrecks. Today’s subject: Andrew Dice Clay.
Dice was an incredibly and inexplicably popular comic in the late ’80s and early ’90s, celebrated and denigrated in equal measure for his puerile and simplistic material. His basic take was: Women are stupid and good for one thing only. He conveyed this penetrating insight via nursery rhymes in which he inserted dirty words, which some people found hilarious. No, honest.
As his career ran aground, however, and he tried to reinvent himself, fans would nonetheless demand he return to reciting his nursery rhymes. On a later CD, he responded to his fans’ request thusly: "You don't know how much I hate those f@$&ing poems, you have no idea how I hate those f@$&ing poems, I wish I'd never thought of those f@$&ing poems." So he and I at least have one thing in common.
Dice miscalculated once again in 1995, when he tried to star in a CBS family sitcom. Well, CBS miscalculated, as well; it was quickly cancelled.
Even when his career was essentially over, he refused to be chastened. Take this exchange (via Wikipedia) of a CNN interview, when Dice feels insulted by a question:
Clay: Jesus f@$&ing Christ... with these guys. I come on the news for two seconds... an - and you want to say... every time I do an interview a guy wants to open his f@$&ing mouth. Can't even do a little f@$&ing routine here.
Host: All right Andrew, thank you very much; we thought that you could hold back.
Clay: (removing microphone) You know? Go f@$& yourself. You know what? F@$& the whole f@$&ing network. (leaves) … (off camera) F@$&ing jerk-off, @$$hole guy. Half dead.
Pure comic gold. The guy’s still got it.
And now, VH1, who clearly has too many hours in its broadcasting day if it has time for this sort of thing, returns to its gruesome D-List celeb-reality well once again (following such wince-inducing romps with Danny Bonaduce, Tom Sizemore and Flavor Flav) with “Dice Undisputed.”
You know those nursery rhymes Dice hated? Here’s how VH1’s selling the show:
“Hickory, Dickory Dock/Dice Clay Is Back On The Clock/You Thought He Was Through/But We Got A Clue/And Put Him On Our Celebrity Block.” I hope someone wasn’t paid to come up with that.
Again, it’s little more than home movies of the once-rich and staggeringly uninteresting – Dice, hairline receding and Elvis sideburns gone white, spends most of the first five minutes of the first episode making sure we understand he’s set up a bunch of cameras to shoot himself, so we can be edified by footage of him talking to his kids, b.s.ing with his buddies and frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean.
“I’m gonna blow this thing up all over again,” he declares, deluded into thinking he’ll someday play Giants Stadium. Even his agent tells him, “I want you to have dreams but there’s a difference between dreams and fantasies.” Oops – make that ex-agent.
Not much of his actual act is seen – and even less is heard, thanks to copious bleeping. Of course, that means we rarely get to hear punchlines, but perhaps that’s a good thing, because none of the jokes seem too funny. (Again, via Wikipedia: A performance in November 2006 was roundly booed and heckled.)
Perhaps one could make the case that a young Brooklyn guy exuding idiot attitude is a plausible comic persona, but Dice is gonna be 50 this year, and that same sort of material coming from someone whose half-century on the planet should’ve taught him, well, something, well, that’s just – what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, right: pathetic.
And if a guy can’t even find his room at a motel, as Dice has trouble doing in episode two, then you have to think it’s going to be a long, confused trek from Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on VH1 to Giants Stadium.
The indisputably unwatchable “Dice Undisputed” premieres March 4.
Ladies and gentlemen, Anna Nicole Smith II.
Britney Spears, demonstrating the judgment of a demented woodchuck, allowed cameras to follow her as she entered a hair salon and proceeded to shave her scalp. Unable to think up any more radical ways to mutilate herself publicly, she opted to ratchet back and slipped into a nearby tattoo parlor and got a little tattoo on her wrist.
While this sorry spectacle might be good for the general public’s cynical bemusement, it’s rather apparent, particularly in the wake of Smith’s death, that there’s no one in the entertainment industry who’s not an enabler when it comes to overly pampered celebrities. Howard K. Stern, Smith’s – uh, whatever – arranged the deal that plastered her plastered façade across E!’s TV screens; a more reasonable caretaker who actually had his client/friend’s best interests in mind would’ve hidden her from sight and run her through as much therapy as it took. Similarly, whoever should be saying “No” to Spears and isn’t is just allowing this train to hurtle over the nearest cliff.
As your mother used to tell you, a joke’s not a joke if someone gets hurt, and the joke that has been Britney Spears for the past few years looks to be preparing for a very bleak turn, and, judging from those photos, sooner rather than later.
In the meantime: Someone should've mentioned to her they're not remaking "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." Or "Alien 3," for that matter.
Increasingly, and somewhat mysteriously, CBS’s lesser Bruckheimer crime procedural “Cold Case” has opted to incorporate songs by iconic artists into their mystery narratives (previous episodes included U2, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tim McGraw and the musical “Cabaret;” the show also uses songs from a specific genre – say, a certain jazz era or a particular new-wave-ish trend). Sometimes the fusion of music and mystery makes sense; other times, not so much.
On Sunday’s episode, Bob Dylan is “Cold Case’s” victim du jour. No, Dylan isn’t murdered in the episode, but his songs look to be exploited for no apparent reason.
CBS’s press release, expecting us to be extraordinarily dim, informs us: “Bob Dylan is one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed songwriters, musicians and performers, having sold nearly 100 million albums and performed literally thousands of shows around the world in a career spanning five decades.” Ah, OK, thanks for that -- so he's significant, you're saying?
And yet, while the press release lists the songs that will be incorporated in the episode, the screener itself is such a rough cut that we don’t know where the songs will go. (Actually, it’s pretty easy to guess where “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” will land in the episode – somewhere around the scene of the murder – and “Ballad of a Thin Man” will no doubt underscore a reference to a “Mr. Jones.”) Eight songs in total will be no doubt seamlessly woven into the episode but, based on the silences in the screener’s rough cut, for no more than 30 seconds at a time, suggesting that true Dylan fans will be better off spending the hour listening to old CD’s than watching this wan mystery.
The episode opens with a group of former hippie-pinko radicals who, in 1981, have all become comfortable Yuppies, watching a slideshow of their gloriously ignominious past. Later, the house where this nostalgic romp occurred explodes, killing two people.
One character in the episode is named Johanna. “Visions of Johanna” is not one of the songs in the episode. Another character is named Sara. Also not used: Dylan’s “Sara.” And given the episode’s theme of revolution, it’s also curious that “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” with its then-timely-though-still-nominally-oblique reference to anarchy, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” isn’t in the episode’s iPod shuffle.
Actually, the producers blew a brilliant opportunity: This episode is really a “Big Chill” redux with a body count. So Motown hits would’ve made just as much sense as Dylan’s back catalogue.
And, like a lot of episodes of this show, it’s a sort of simplistic ping-pong of witness/suspect memories that eventually leads to the not-so-shocking solution of the mystery.
One might be surprised that Dylan would agree to lend his songs to an enterprise as prosaic as this, but then, he also agreed to participate in a disastrous Broadway musical choreographed by Twyla Tharp (if you haven’t seen this clip, prepare to have your mind blown worse than any acid could manage, but if you’re a true Dylan fan, keep any razor blades in your domicile well out of reach for its duration). By contrast, this “Cold Case” episode is sorta like Dylan’s “Street Legal:” Loathed when released, but grudgingly admired in retrospect.
- “Cold Case:” 9 p.m. Sunday; CBS (Channel 2).
A couple of things that I couldn’t work into an upcoming feature on the HBO film “Longford,” starring Jim Broadbent as a British politician whose efforts on behalf of a woman in a salacious murder case torpedo his career.
Broadbent on Oscar’s impact on his career (he won for 2001’s “Iris”): “I don’t think it’s changed an awful lot, in terms of the ways that I thought it would. As in, if you’re an actor who wins an Oscar, you have to make mega movies and make millions of dollars a movie every time you get out of bed. But the jobs I enjoy doing don’t really fall into that category. But it has given me the freedom to choose what I want to do, not just the financial freedom, but I don’t have to think of a career arc in terms of a career, that I have to get to this stage and do this sort of work.
“The career’s all right (laughs), and I can choose jobs for their own merit, which is delightful.”
No action films, he says. But Stallone’s still doing them at age 60.
“He’s fitter than me,” Broadbent smiles. “He spends more time in the gym in one week than I have in a lifetime.”
*
Lindsay Duncan, who plays Longford’s wife Elizabeth, says another film could be made about their amazing relationship: “She’s a fascinating woman in her own right, but she’s in this (film) to fulfill a function.
“She converted him to socialism; he converted her to Catholicism. This happened in their marriage. He didn’t even tell her he had converted. There was something little-boyish about that. She was appalled by that. It makes for a great story. … It was a busy 70 years (of marriage). At many points, Elizabeth made decisions because her marriage and her family were of such importance to her that she made sure it worked. She could’ve been a politician, and she put her marriage and family before that. She gave up politics and became a very successful biographer. Just to read her diaries makes you feel like someone who hasn’t got out of bed for the last 50 years.”
Longford was a legendary slob. “She loved him, even with the stains on his tie. And she was immaculate; she was fragrant and lovely. It was amazing. She didn’t try to change this man even though he looked like a vagrant.
“Actually, they toned down the amount of stains on his clothes (in the film) because it would’ve been a joke for today’s audiences. Going around looking like that doesn’t help your credibility.
“Oh, there’s an amazing movie there. I wish we could make it. Of course we won’t.”
- “Longford:” 8 p.m. Saturday, HBO, with repeats through the month.
Keith Olbermann, who must be wondering why there aren't more crusading voices jumping in to fill the void of progressive voices on cable news, will happily maintain his position as the lone voice to hold Washington's feet to the fire: It was announced today that he will continue on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" for four more years, as well as contribute occasional pieces to "The NBC Nightly News" and host a handful of "Countdown" specials on NBC.
Not bad for a former local smart-alecky sports guy.
Olbermann's show has caught fire in the past year, with viewers up 89% - granted, it's MSNBC we're talking about, so there was plenty of room for improvement, but that's a significant jump by any measure. Olbermann initially made waves with his ongoing "feud" with Bill O'Reilly, but got serious as the year wore on and Election Day drew near. His series of incendiary "Special Comments" about the Bush Administration's execution of the war in Iraq and its using the spectre of terrorism to justify all manner of extra-Constitutional activity became mainstays on YouTube and crooksandliars.com and led to ever higher ratings. They also hacked off a lot of conservatives: At least one website is devoted solely to picking apart every episode of "Countdown."
Plus, when "Countdown's" not deadly serious, it's actually quite droll, even hilarious at times. Olbermann manages to operate at a perfect pitch that allows the sublime and the absurd to co-exist. NBC News president Steve Capus is not far off the mark when, at a hastily arranged phone press conference today, he called "Countdown" "as creative as a broadcast as there is going these days."
For his part, Olbermann played humble. "If you look at my career track record, I and all of my employers for the past 28 years have probably have awakened every day and wondered if I was staying where I was," he said.
"But I never had that sense that I was going anywhere else. (NBC) presented everything I could ask for in terms of opportunities, in terms of the symbolism of those opportunities, so there wasn’t a lot of deciding to do except what to wear to come over and do this today."
Yesterday, of course, al Qaeda uncorked another video with the latest state-of-their-hatred address; in it, professional nutjob Ayman al Zawahiri took some potshots at President Bush that he must’ve swiped off some kid on a playground. Among other things, he assailed Bush as "an alcoholic, liar and gambler with an addictive personality."
At today’s press conference, Bush showed remarkable restraint in not calling al Zawahiri a “Sunni who could really use a Baathist” or “a fondler of other men’s goats.” He didn’t even note that al Zawahiri is al Qaeda’s second-in-command, and therefore, “a kind of stinky Number Two.”
But I fear that this escalation of al Qaeda taunting (all I can picture is John Cleese as the French soldier in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) will get more personal with more Americans, as al Zawahiri figures such name-calling will hurt our feelings and weaken our resolve (our resolve to do what, I’m not sure). So, as a pre-emptive strike, I offer these future snaps from al Qaeda as a way of toughening our hides:
Al Zawahiri will next proclaim that “Peyton Manning throws like a girl” and “Your Jack Bauer is a wimp.”
Thinking himself on a roll, he’ll then declare that “Rosie O’Donnell is a slob” and that “Donald Trump is a blowhard with bad hair.” Those’ll fizzle, as everyone has heard those things already. His subsequent announcement that “Katie Couric’s skill set is ill-served in her position as anchor of ‘The CBS Evening News’” will likewise land as a dud; our national response will be, “Well, duh.”
He’ll deem Paula Abdul “the closest thing you Americans have to a sane person.” That’ll sting, but only momentarily, for al Zawahiri will then misstep by asserting, “Not only did Justin Timberlake not bring Sexy back, but he sent it scurrying like a wounded animal to a nearby cave,” when Americans will have expected him to take a shot at Mary J. Blige’s appearance on “Ghost Whisperer.”
Al Zawahiri’s pronouncement that “You Americans are more interested in the sordid death of that harlot Anna Nicole Smith than whether Douglas Feith cooked the intelligence on Iraq” will be greeted with a “Huh?,” and he’ll list towards irrelevance when his proclamation that “Your ‘Scooby Doo’ movies were cynical products bereft of craft – now, that ‘Smokin’ Aces,’ that was a movie” is issued. By the time of his pronouncement “Your so-called comic Carlos Mencia is not in the least bit funny – we have oxen with cleverer satirical material,” we’ll have lost interest entirely and gone on to check whether parishiltonexposed.com is back online.
Nah, I got nothing. Just wanted to see if the headline’d dupe people into clicking on the site.
What’s kind of amazing is that MSNBC is, still, running a nightly hourlong Anna Update at 7 p.m. As if their fervent coverage throughout the rest of the day is somehow lacking. I’d watch, but that’s around the time when food is being consumed and I don’t want it coming back up. It's almost enough to make you nostalgic for all those inside-yet-another-dangerous-prison shows they ran.
That stuff about her starving her baby so that it’d be “sexy” is pretty icky, though. It'd be nice to bring her back to life just long enough so someone could slap her a good one.
Mainly, though, the coverage and the criticism of the coverage is depressing because it's over Anna Nicole Smith. Who someone actually called "our Lady Diana." (Well, she married well, sort of, but unless there's some men's magazine pictorial I'm unaware of, I think it pretty much ends there.) Even if it weren't for the war in Iraq, the rest of the world would be thumbing their noses at us at this point. What'll happen when Paris Hilton finally OD's? They'll probably have to create whole new cable networks to handle all the coverage.
Given this past Monday's abysmal performance by "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" - the show, you'll recall, that was supposed to single-handedly "rescue" a flailing NBC; a show that managed a mere 6.5 million viewers on Monday, alienating most of the 14.6 million viewers bequeathed to it by "Heroes," the series that in fact did sort of single-handedly rescue the network - NBC announced today that it was moving the premiere of "The Black Donnellys," a New York brothers/gangs/blood-is-thicker-than-water-and-will-flow-and-flow drama from Oscar-winning executive producer Paul Haggis, up one week to Feb. 26.
Here is the entire press release trumpeting this change:
"Please be aware that the new series "The Black Donnellys" will now premiere on Monday, February 26 at 10:00 p.m. ET on NBC..."
Pretty sheepish, it seems. Now we'll never know if all those crazy kids ever found true love or if the show ever managed to cook up a really funny sketch.
NBC's other "SNL"-inspired show, "30 Rock," will be going away soon (March 15, to be precise), too, at least temporarily, to make room for "Andy Barker, P.I.," from executive producer Conan O'Brien and starring his former sidekick Andy Richter as a mild-mannered accountant who gets mistaken for a private detective and sorta likes it.
You can read highlights from my Email in-box so I don’t have to!
*
Reports suggest that Britney Spears got a little confused over the weekend and played the “24” drinking game watching this viral video, rather than an actual episode. (Kim Raver admitted to me a while back that Kiefer Sutherland, in an effort to keep the spirits industry and collegiate rehab centers flush, will occasionally infuse an episode with a flourish of epithets.)
*
Speaking of “24,” it and “Heroes” manage to draw equally strong audiences on Mondays, with the edge going to “Heroes.” Which is pretty impressive, because just about everyone expected one of those shows to lose a little steam, given that they’re both hyper-charged, apocalyptic action thrillers. Still, CBS’s sitcoms win the hour.
“24’s” success proceeds apace despite concerns that Jack Bauer’s sadistic interrogation methods are making the notion of torture more palatable to Americans, including some serving in the military who watch the show on DVD. It would seem the problem is more about anyone who would take cues on how to conduct their lives from over-the-top TV shows than Jack’s actual behavior, but what do you think? Does fictitious TV violence numb us to the effects of real-life violence?
And while I’m asking questions: If you’re a fan of both “Heroes” and “24,” which do you watch and which do you TiVo? And why?
“Studio 60,” by the way, squandered more than eight million viewers provided it by “Heroes,” dropping to abysmal “What About Brian”-style numbers. Enjoy it while it lasts, which won’t be long: “The Black Donnellys” debuts in its time slot March 5 and could hardly do worse.
*
ABC’s “World News,” anchored by Charlie Gibson, managed a rare win over NBC last week, edging Brian Williams by a slender 180,000 viewers (ABC averaged 9.7m viewers). But, while trumpeting this victory, ABC couldn’t help but stick the shiv in CBS’s Katie Couric, noting that not only did it surpass Couric by more than 1 million viewers (1.7m last week, in fact) for the 14th time in 16 weeks, but that ABC is also No. 1 in female viewers aged 25-54. Katie can’t even win in her own demographic.
*
Last night, after PBS aired a documentary on New Orleans, the city was again pulverized by a storm, this time thought to be a tornado. Given that track record and given tonight’s draw on PBS is the first in a multi-part report on the news media’s stormy relationship with the current Administration, don’t be surprised if your daily newspaper has a little “accident” on the way to your front porch tomorrow.
*
Matt Lauer’s reign as morning show hunk is officially over: Former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber is joining the staff of the “Today” show. A recent profile in The New Yorker suggested this isn’t just stunt casting: Barber watches BBC “World News” to get a global perspective on events; his brother calls him “Sir Barber.”
*
Donald Trump, clearly alarmed by the plunge in the ratings for “The Apprentice” despite his best efforts to maintain interest in the show by calling Rosie O’Donnell a “slob,” has apparently abandoned that upscale audience he once touted in favor of viewers with lugnuts for brains: He’ll be appearing on the TV-rasslin’ show “WWE Raw” Thursday night on the USA Channel. Ostensibly, he’ll battle Vince McMahon – in the ring. So if you’ve ever had a desire to see Trump get body-slammed, here’s your chance. I’ll bet even Rosie’ll be watching.
*
Two wrestling-affiliated items back to back? The Apocalypse is nigh.
Auditions for the Sci Fi Channel’s reality series “Who Wants to Be a Superhero” will be conducted Friday and Saturday from 1-3 p.m. at Universal Citywalk. (It’s co-sponsored by some rasslin’ outfit.) So if you have a burning itch to utterly humiliate yourself – or, you just like watching other people utterly humiliate themselves – you now know where you want to be and when.
This is why it’s best not to get too involved in those Super Bowl best-commercial competitions: It can break your heart when your favorite doesn’t win.
(I’m led to believe that the same thing can happen with cheering on Super Bowl teams, as well.)
GM is altering its little robot commercial – you know, the one where the car-assembly-line automaton loses his job, is forced to work in demeaning jobs, including serving as a fast-food restaurant’s drive-through squawk box (note that when Kevin Federline is depicted as working at a fast-food joint in a Super Bowl commercial, the National Restaurant Association is offended, but when a robot is shown doing the same – and it’s clearly implied the work is beneath its station in life – the group remains mute).
Eventually, the robot is so distraught that he jumps off a bridge. (Wouldn’t that just make him kinda rusty? Wouldn’t he, like, drink battery acid? Oh, wait, that wouldn’t work; that’s a little treat for him. Watch an “According to Jim” marathon? That’d do anything in.) Anyway, don’t worry, because he wakes up – and it was all a dream! Our hero is still a valued member of the GM work force!
Anyway, some group with a particularly touchy membership (and you know you don’t want to upset these folks, understanding what they’re capable of) found the whole idea of robot suicide upsetting beyond words – well, not beyond words, for in fact words were what they used to complain about the spot and GM agreed to change it.
Now, the robot will enter a post office and go on a shooting spree.
Surely I jest.
Anyway, here I was thinking this was a huge overreaction to the issue of robot suicide (I mean, after all, it’s not like any human watching the spot will think, “You know what? I’m going to going to pattern my life after that CGI-generated contraption!”), but then, you know what, I Google the words Robot Suicide (because, yes, that’s the kind of free time I have on my hands) and come upon this chilling story.
I’m not laughing anymore.
As for the candy-bar ad that got yanked, anyone who actually thought that’d help sell candy bars really needs to rethink his or her career choice.
This is shaping up as the strangest year ever.
Already, we’ve had an American city paralyzed by cartoon-character signs mistaken for terrorist bombs, an astronaut love triangle that may have exploded into a murder plot, the specter of the grim circus that the aftermath of Anna Nicole Smith’s death promises to be, an oil company baldly offering to pay scientists, any scientists (maybe just someone who took science in high school?), to debunk an unequivocal UN report on global warming and a White House that’s still vexingly fuzzy on the definition of “the will of the people” and “partisanship.”
And now we have a televangelist with homicide in his heart.
Pat Robertson, who once famously advocated assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, strode into a courtroom Wednesday and, according to a man suing him, strode up to said gentleman and declared, “I am going to kill you and your family.”
More fun comes from the fact that the guy is suing him for using his image without permission in those ads for Robertson’s snake-oil – er, weight-loss shakes that he touts on his TV show, and that the guy suing him used the shakes after ballooning up to 400 pounds.
So what’s next for Robertson? Declaring war on North Korea and Vatican City? Announcing that God told him to buy his own plutonium? Getting fitted with one of those Hannibal Lecter muzzles?