April 4, 2005


      DEATH WATCH

  1. . . . That's what's been going on lately. Terri Schiavo, Pope John Paul. The ravenous press in Florida and Rome counted down the hours until the death knell sounded. TV brought us Death LIVE, if that makes sense.
  2. . . . Very intrusive.
  3. Art Garfunkel's son James looks like a baby-faced version of his father. He's even got that super curly full head of hair pop had once upon a time. He's on the cover of Rolling Stone along with 14 other sons and daughters of for the mag's Children of Rock cover story. The 3-page fold-out shows offspring of Marvin Gaye (Nona), Stephen Stills (Chris), Paul Simon (Harper), Keith Richards (Alexandra), Stevie Wonder (Aisha Morris), and others. Good photo spread and interesting to look at, for those of us who know their parents.
  4. Bruce Willis has hair in his new hit movie, Sin City. It contrasts sharply with his current bald or shaved pate on the cover of People magazine. By the way, Mr. Highfalutin saw the film last weekend and said the audience went "mad for the movie" which, he contends, makes Pulp Fiction look like a day in kindergarten. "A stylish but hyperviolent story," is what he called it.
  5. I guess those 50 Most Loved Hymns folks are taking advantage of the news of the Pope dying. That forever long two-minute TV spot is showing up not only on the cable channels but on network news too, i.e., ABC's World News Tonight last Sunday. For $21.95 plus $4.95 for S&H you get choirs singing How Great Thou Art, Old Rugged Cross, Rock of Ages, Amazing Grace and more. (1-800-655-5700)
  6. CBS used a clip from Lesley Stahl's 60 Minutes inteview with Jane Fonda in a promo last week in which the respected TV newswoman asked Fonda about her menage a trois. Lesley, you've stooped.
  7. . . . Stahl's beginning to look like Carol Channing with all that hair hanging in her face.
  8. JUST ASKING. Will Ellen DeGeneres end up on ABC latenight? The New York Times's Bill Carter speculated about that last Friday.
  9. Former D.C. mayor Marion Barry gave Pope John Paul II the key to Washington, D.C. when his Holiness the Popemeister passed through the nation's capital back in 1979.
  10. MSNBC is now using the slogan, Fair & Accurate in its TV promos. It's printed out on the screen. This seems to have happened after Fox News Channel mistakenly reported that the Pope was dead when he wasn't.
  11. DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. It's getting impossible to watch because of the number of commercials that break it up. It seems they've added more. The scenes are shorter now and most of them just seem like vignettes. They show a couple, do a quick fade to black and then BAM ... there's a commercial. And then there's another one and then … . It's annoying.
  12. MIXED SIGNALS. The Tropicana orange juice folks must not be aware of Washington's Metro system's policy of not eating or drinking on the trains. In a current TV ad a woman opens up a bottle of it on a subway train to calm down a bit after being disturbed by a wiggly kid who wants to get off. She drinks it down while sitting in her seat -- not even hiding the bottle. We can't do that in D.C. And I've seen huge Tropicana banners draping over walls down at Metro Center. Something doesn't make sense.
  13. This Easter Moses got booted by Ty . . . Pennington, that is, of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. ABC had that on instead of The Ten Commandments this year. Easter didn't seem the same.
  14. . . . Would somebody tell Ty to stop yelling all the time? Thanks.
  15. How disgusting is Jerry O'Connell's brother Charlie, the new Bachelor? He's 29. He grew up in the "city." He used to go to Montauk in the summers. He acts like he's been around the block a few times. And he's too slick. Not believable.
  16. Terri Schiavo's brother Bobby looks like he belongs in the movies. He reminds me of a young Al Pacino or somebody.
  17. The current A Current Affair looks like it's done on the cheap. The show logo is the same and so is that sound effect they use; the set is bare minimum; and the anchorman could use a haircut.
  18. ANOTHER K.C. & THE SUNSHINE BAND SONG TO NEVER HEAR AGAIN: Keep It Comin' Love (1977), now being used in a Blockbuster commercial. Stop the Insanity!
  19. MELINDA AND MELINDA. Another Woody Allen film about neurotic people. But Will Farrell is funny in it. The rest ... been there.
  20. A friend of mine said, upon hearing about the Chinese woman (Dai Yueqin) whose hair is 15 feet long because she hasn't cut it in 26 years, that he hoped that she didn't work in a restaurant. (Remember hair nets?)
  21. Is Beauty Shop just a gal movie or are guys going to it? And is it okay for a guy to say he went to see it?
  22. Mr. Big Stuff said this upon departing from his job one day: "I'm out. I'm leaving. I'm done. I quit." I'd say the man knew what he wanted.
  23. Every time you turn around President Bush is meeting with Vicente Fox of Mexico. What is it with those guys?
  24. FYI: Jerry Springer: The Opera, now playing in London's West End, is a satire of Springer's "confessional" TV show and features Jesus, Mary and God as guests. The BBC was flooded with complaints after broadcasting it in January. I think the show's coming here.
  25. So Courtney Love is going to play Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace in an upcoming biopic. That'll be a nice item on the resume.
  26. Prince Charles shouldn't wear those double-vented suits. Methinks his rump's too big and it always looks like his backside's flapping in the breeze.
  27. . . . And The Washington Post headlined fashion editor Robin Givhan's piece on Camilla Parker Bowles thusly: Dowdy Partner.
  28. Michael Jackson told Jesse Jackson on his radio show last week that "Elizabeth Taylor used to feed me, hand-feed me at times because I do have a problem with eating." Oh no. That too?
  29. Matt Lauer had on hip sunglasses at the beginning of a special edition of the Today show Sunday from Vatican City. But the next time you saw him he had taken them off. And then for another show segment he had them on again. I guess the sun shifts a lot over there in Rome.
  30. Now there's a Charles Neal doing News4 Washington weekend sports. What happened to Andrea Brody? She gone already. She's the second female to go from that position. Neal is good. You can tell he's a pro.
  31. Richard Reeve of ABC7 News and Newschannel 8 was doing a report from outside the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception over the weekend and signed off by saying, "Richard Reeve, Newschan ... ABC7 News." He forgot who he was reporting for. I bet it's confusing for the reporters out there covering stories simultaneously for the sister stations. They probably do back-to-back live shots all the time and the poor reporters probably can't keep track of what station they're doing them for.
  32. Carl Bernstein was on MSNBC talking about the Pope. (He wrote a book about him: His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time). They matted him (lower 1/3 of the screen identifier) as MSNBC Executive Analyst. What's that? Now they have levels of analysts?
  33. Campbell Brown looked terrific outside the Vatican for Friday's NBC Nightly News. She's good delivering the news.
  34. Is The Interpreter, that new Nicole Kidman movie, gonna be any good? She's in it with Sean Penn and she looks a little silly. Her acting seems fake in the preview I saw and I hate to say that about Nicole because I like her. But this seems a little forced.
  35. NOW THIS. They've got bicycle bombs over in Baghdad. A report says a bomb hidden in the basket of a bike exploded last Monday, killing seven people on a road crowded with Shiite pilgrims.
  36. I like Digger, the Dermatophyte in those Lamisil commercials. He's the little yellow devil-type animated character that hops in under somebody's big toenail and has a party spreading fungal infection inside until the medicine kicks in and zaps him and his multiplied doubles. They have a grand old time under those "thick, discolored, flaky infected nails." Eww.
  37. THOSE TEETH . . . On that guy (Daniel Roebuck) who played TV producer Garry Marshall in the ABC movie Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy. They were too much. Obviously fakes covering up his real choppers. Looked like he had a hard time bringing his lips over to cover them up. He could barely close his mouth, for crissakes.
  38. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, gets jealous when Gidget, the bare-eyed cockatoo, gets all the attention. She's a sensitive soul and sometimes hides under the table, thinking owner Sally likes the bird more than her.
  39. I was having a conversation with my mother about how all those cable news anchors talk, talk, talk all the time. I don't know how they do it. My mother says her mouth gets tired when she talks a lot.
  40. WENDY'S CHILI. I'd like to get some but I'm afraid now that I might bite into someone's finger or that the whole batch has slow-cooked with human appendages in it.
  41. UH . . . Fingertips-Pt 2 - "Little" Stevie Wonder, on Tamla. 1963. His first hit.


rocci@roccifisch.com

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