August 07, 2006

THOSE LAZY-HAZY-CRAZY DAYS OF SUMMER

1. . . .  That Nat 'King' Cole song (1963, Capitol) says it all this year, don't it?
2. . . . The Washington Redskins have the right idea.  Some of the players beat the heat one day last week at training camp by sitting in huge tubs of ice water.  Sounds good to me.
3. . . . It looked like cornerback John Eubanks didn't even take his socks off, so I guess he was in a hurry.
4. Wendy's now has a vanilla Frosty.  Perfect for the weather.  I'm so there.
5. Mel Gibson takes a pretty good mug shot.  He's not frowning like most people are when they get in trouble with the law.  So he looks like he was having a pretty good time until …
6. . . .  So, The Passion of the Christ director is being crucified.
7. A real life werewolf came to ABC on Primetime last Wednesday as part of the show's Medical Mysteries series.  Hair all over his face, a rare actual condition caused, a doctor says, by a single gene that traces back to the evolution of man.  Hmm, very interesting.
8. . . . Wolf Man has a girlfriend and he and she like it the way he is, wouldn't change a thing.
9. . . . MY OBSERVANCE.  He resembles Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man more than what Michael Landon looked like in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.
10. The It's a New Day Today promos for Meredith Vieira are running now.  It's fast approaching Sept. 13, her premiere date on the morning show.
11. . . . The promos show Vieira, Matt Lauer, Al Roker and Ann Curry all smiling and laughing and leaning on one another and touching.  They're having so much fun.  It's the puke factor.
12. Pamela Anderson's Daisy Duke-type blue jean shorts are so short that the front pockets hang down longer than the shorts.  Those things are cut-up-to-here on her.  I guess that's the sloppy style now - not that it's all that new.
13. FEEDBACK.  A reader, responding to my Toe Ring comments last week when I was wondering things about them, said that they're often adjustable so they won't easily fall off and that lots of women are sporting them with flip-flops -- young professionals exerting their individuality through their feet.
14. . . . I don't know whether I'd call them professionals if they wear 'em to work.  But then again, I don't wanna be too critical.
15. A co-worker of mine said that that repeating HeadOn commercial ("HeadOn.  Apply Directly to the Forehead" said three times straight) gives him a headache.  Ha Ha Ha.
16. . . . Okay, can some medical expert weigh in and tell us straight up whether a topical medicine like HeadOn can actually cure a headache?  And now there's ActivOn (a topical analgesic). Can you just rub that on and be rid of arthritis, backache and joint and muscle aches too?
17. MIAMI VICE. Pretty good movie.  Not anything like the TV show the idea's taken from.  No pastel colors or trendy T-shirts.  Really just a crime drama about drug smuggling, trafficking.  Colin Farrell (miscast - looks little boyish -- but does an admirable job) plays the Don Johnson part (Sonny Crockett) and Jamie Foxx is Ricardo 'Rico' Tubbs.  The standout star, though, is Gong Li who plays Isabella, a Chinese-Cuban banker for the bad guys.  (She and Sonny get hooked up.)  She's great.
18. . . . Movie does have a pretty good soundtrack and the incidental music is good also -well integrated.
19. . . . So director Michael Mann changed it all up but overall, decent.  Not earth-shaking but better than I thought it would be.
20. JUST WONDERING.  Why do neo-soul singer India.Aire and pop-rock hip-hoppers will.i.am (William Adams) and Apl.de.ap (Allen Pineda) of the Black Eyed Peas spell their names like a dot-com address?
21. I get made fun of when I call a refrigerator an ice box.  Show's you how old I am.  My peers at work do not relate.
22. JUST ASKING.  Fidel and Raul Castro are brothers but don't look anything alike to me.  Do they have different mothers?
23. I'm late on this but … How does Tucker Carlson feel now that the word situation has been taken away from him, out of his MSNBC show title?  It's now called Tucker with Tucker Carlson (cute?) and it's on in the daytime (4 and 6 p.m.) now instead of later in the evening.  Was it because of CNN's The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer or just a total show revamp re-think?
24. . . . I wish somebody would look into the situation.
25. POLLING QUESTION.  Should Condoleezza Rice close up that gap in her teeth?  Madonna does, occasionally.  A bridge or something.  The Secretary of State could wear it for special occasions and foreign trips and then, in her off hours when she, for example, goes to the gym to work out with Barbara Harrison (News4 Washington), she can take it out.
26. . . . So fill it in or go natural?  What's your pref?
27. So I guess Phil Spector's happy now that Be My Baby (The Ronettes, 1963, Philles) is being used to advertise Tide with Febreze.  He's still got the money rolling in from all those records he wrote and produced.
28. . . . This, while he awaits his trial (now January, 2007) for the murder of Hollywood actress  Lana Clarkson  who was found dead at the record producer's mansion in Alhambra, Calif., in 2003.
29. CBS's Russ Mitchell's hair's really getting salt 'n' peppery but he wears it well.
30. . . . Just don't go blond.
31. . . . And Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace's hair's different now.  I think it's because he's parting it differently, looks younger.  Good for the demographics, I guess.
32. Now they're saying (British researchers) that cell phones could be dirtier than your toilet seat - because they're often "stored in warm pockets or briefcases and bacteria can fester and cause everything from illnesses to acne."  So get out the Lysol.
33. STOOPING LOW.  "Inside the life of a prostitute, next Oprah," said the TV announcer for the next show.  Quality television, right?
34. A friend of mine thought Hezbollah was a country in the Middle East.  She obviously keeps up with the news.
35. . . . My mother has had it with all the Middle East news.  It's all the news channels have on, she complains.  "Isn't there anything else going on in the world?  That war's between two countries over there; we're not in it," she declared.
36. Now CNN's morning anchor (10 a.m. - noon) on Live Today, Daryn Kagan, is leaving to start up a good news Web site (www.darynkagan.com).  Will be reporting uplifting stories similar to her Your Spirit series on the cable network.  Her site launches Nov. 13 with the slogan:  One Woman.  One Radical Idea:  The World Is a Good Place.
37. . . . So another one bites the dust.
38. The New York Post, in its Page Six Sightings section "reported this":  "Usher - in town for his Broadway debut in Chicago later this month - buying condoms at Duane Reade on West 57^th."   Good God.  Do we have to know that?
39. CROWN OF THORNS … AGAIN.  Have we had it with Madonna doing the crucifixion thing?  I think so.  The latest is that Rome's Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders have condemned her decision to stage a mock crucifixion when her Confessions Tour plays there on Sunday.
40. . . . Father Manfredo Leone (Manfred Mann?) said, in a Reuters report, " Being raised on a cross with a crown of thorns like a modern Christ is absurd.  Doing it in the cradle of Christianity comes close to blasphemy."
41. . . . Does she not care if she is condemned to hell?
42. Looks like Rosie O'Donnell has longer hair now - not short and cropped off like she's worn it in the last few years.  Getting ready for The View, I guess.  Mark my word: she'll be more dressed up for that show, more mainstream-ish looking.  A softer look.   For the show's demographics.
43. . . . And we'll see how much they let her blabber on about everything she "believes in."
44. WHAT IS CLAY AIKEN THINKING?  His hair, like when he appeared on the season finale show of this year's American Idol, is dark brown and hanging on his head like a soft-styled, modern day mop top.  It looks dyed and forced. Bring back the spiky style he acquired when he was on Idol (second season).  That's the Clay we know and like.
45. . . . He looks like that on the cover of his new album, A Thousand Different Ways, which comes out Sept. 19.
46. Janet Jackson is too into posing.  She's doing it on her new album, 20 Y.O. which stands for Years Old which is symbolic because it's been 20 years since her groundbreaking album Control came out.  That album supposedly marked her breakaway from dad Joe and his management..  If the first single (Call On Me with Nelly) is any indication of what's on the rest of it, then it's a bore.
47. . . .  Any by the way, the LeToya, who's self-titled album (Capitol) opened #1 last week IS NOT Janet Jackson's sister La Toya whom we all miss very much.  LeToya's last name is Luckett.
48. . . . LeToya was an original early member of Destiny's Child.
49. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, was down in horse country again last weekend, running and romping, happy as a jay bird.  But along came Peanuts, an unneutered miniature Doberman Pinscher, who rapidly spoiled her bucolic splendor by jumping up behind her and sniffing a lot.  Hanalie got very angry, owner Sally says, and got into more than one fight with the eager visitor.
50. They're composing a new music theme for the CBS Evening News With Katie Couric.  It's by the same guy (James Horner) who did Titanic and wrote Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On.
51. . . . So I wonder if it will be romantic.
52. UH . . . Our Day Will Come - Ruby & The Romantics, on Kapp, 1963.