Rocci Fisch

August 16, 2006

UP IN THE AIR . . .

. . . It’s a bird. It’s a plane …
. . . It’s a terrorist.
. . . Can you imagine if 10 planes blew up over the Atlantic? Unbelievable.
. . . It’ll be hard for me to travel now because I can’t carry on my hair gel. I need it in emergencies, like if a strong wind blew up.
Ann Curry’s (Today show) hair’s slightly lighter now. It wasn’t when she was over in the Middle East war zone. Maybe it’s a treat she gave herself upon arriving home. People on TV do need to have lighter hair, that’s a proven fact. But she’s got that beautiful black hair naturally so I wonder what her mother thinks.
ABC’s overnight and early morning anchor (World News Now and World News This Morning) for the past two years, Ron Corning, is leaving. Going to anchor Channel 5’s Good Day New York morning show. He partners up with goofy Jodi Applegate – remember her (MSNBC, Today show)?
. . . He’s breaking the mold. Usually the anchors of the overnight at ABC go the reporter/correspondent route but Corning says being a host on the popular New York show is more suited to his personality.
Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend was on all three network morning shows on Friday at the same time. She clones easily. (I still say she looks almost exactly like Susan McGinnis of the CBS Morning News.)
WHO’S STUDLIER? NBC’s Richard Engel or Fox News’ Bill Hemmer? They’re both in the Middle East. Richard walks around a lot in his reports and wears helmets and Bill … he likes to really look daringly deep into the camera, never losing eye contact with the viewer; he’s determined and on a mission or something.
. . . Remember the Scud Stud back in the Persian Gulf War days? Arthur Kent is based in London now, has his own TV production company and does two shows for The History Channel (History Undercover and History’s Mysteries).
. . . So what will the future hold for Engel and Hemmer? How about a news reality show?
FINE “JOURNALISM.” “Finding puppy love at the dog park.” That’s what the announcer said to promo reporter/anchor Eun Yang of News4 Washington’s story featured on one or more of the station’s many newscasts. So they’re going to the dogs up there.
“. . . And they called it … Puppy Love ove ove ove.” Paul Anka first (1959), then Donny Osmond (1972).
GOOD GOD. Tucker Carlson (Tucker with Tucker Carlson, MSNBC) will be one of the celebrities on the new season of Dancing with the Stars (ABC). Everybody’s talking about the bow-tied pundit doing such an unusual thing. Well, he ain’t been bow-tied in quite a while. That look’s been ditched and he’s been seen daily on his new show with an open-collared shirt with no tie and overall, pretty preppy casual-looking. A looser-looking Tucker, I’d say.
. . . Where will his credibility go when he starts dancing -- if there was any in the first place?
Mr. Big Stuff said this: “Summer’s over, it’s getting darker and before you know it, it’ll be September.” I told him to shut up and quit rushing life away.
Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll reportedly begged her captors to shoot her instead of going the beheading route. “I don’t want the knife,” she supposedly said.
The new movie Accepted, about a high school burnout who can’t get accepted to any college and decides to create one, is not out yet. It opens this Friday, but newspaper ads are running for it, already calling it “One of the Surprise Hits of the Summer.” Whoa Nelly! How about waiting a few minutes, huh?
Poor Boy George. He’s sweeping the streets of New York City now. Community service after pleading guilty in March to false reporting of an incident. He’s been hounded by the press and yelling back at ‘em. Good for him. He’s just trying to do his job … and get humble.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Funny road trip movie. Good cast: Greg Kinnear (dad), Toni Collette (mom), Steve Carrell (uncle), Alan Arkin (crusty grampaw), Paul Dano (non-speaking son) and Abigail Breslin (little sis Olive) who find themselves in all kinds of hilarious situations along the way to a beauty contest for Olive. Nice little movie.
. . . Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, gives it Three Barks (A new movie ratings system suggested by owner Sally).
SNAKES ON A PLANE. It’s coming. This Friday (Aug. 18). Samuel L. Jackson stars as an FBI agent escorting a witness who’s to testify in a case and during the flight between Hawaii and California a time-release crate of 500 snakes breaks loose in hopes of killing the witness, creating havoc in the skies. Big Internet buzz has followed the film and it’ll probably open real BIG.
. . . Supposedly has funny, soon-to-be-famous one-liners from Jackson about the snakes.
First the American Idols tour. Now it’s the So You Think You Can Dance Tour. Begins Sept. 12 in Seattle, visits 25 cities and ends Oct. 15.
. . . They’ll tour anything these days.
CBS has two Chens: Joie and Julie. Joie does news and Julie does The Early Show and Big Brother and is married to the president of the network (Les Moonves).
People in Washington, D.C., are complaining about the new Metro cars they’re getting. The prototypes have seats along the walls of the individual cars and more overhead bars/poles to hang onto. The new design encourages people to move further into the train. But some people are already complaining about the already crowded cars and say the new plan will make things worse. “We are people, not cattle,” complained one regular rider to Express, The Washington Post’s free news daily.
DON’T LIKE. The new I Love New York-type song (remember how good that ad was?). Now they do a bluesy version of This Land Is Your Land by singing This Land Is My Land and it’s too downbeat and the ad’s too long. Good vocal but this version, which plugs tourism, should have been better thought out. It doesn’t rouse up excitement for the city.
. . . So fire somebody.
A friend of mine says Burt Bacharach looks like a ghoul in that Geico ad, sitting next to some bored-looking woman and playing a tune on the piano. Looks hangdog-ish.
Looks like Washington area Mastercraft Interiors is going out of business. Good. Thank God I don’t have to listen to their dumb local TV commercials anymore.
HYPE NEWS. That’s what Fox5’s new 11:00 newscast is. It’s called The Edge and features sole anchor Brian Bolter standing up and not sitting down at an anchor desk. He moves around the set. That’s the trend now, not to be confined. “We’re blowing out the old model of the newscast that viewers have become accustomed to,” says Bolter.
. . . Blow it out your …
. . . It comes right after the station’s Ten O’Clock News and the producers are hoping for a “seamless transition.”
. . . There’s a lot of news shows in the Washington market. Could there be any more?
Sometimes NBC calls Andrea Mitchell, Chief Foreign Affairs Editor. Did she get a promotion, more money?
I almost bit into and swallowed one of those little label stickers on my Royal Gala apple (New Zealand, #4174). Do they have to put that stuff on raw produce? Good God.
So when does The New York Times newspaper get smaller? (They’re saving money on newsprint and jobs.) Does that mean it’ll get thicker to hold all the content or will the type get smaller. I hope that doesn’t happen.
I like NBC’s Martin Fletcher’s accent. Seems genuine. Reporting from Israel. He’s got believability.
. . . Some would say gravitas, but that word seems snobby to me.
NOTICED. The bug (lower right, on-screen network identifier) ABC News uses has three rotating faces: abc, then it becomes abc news, then abcnews.com. Clever. And it keeps rotating and rotating and rotating …
. . . So everything’s on the Internet.
SEEING/BEING RED. Fidel Castro likes red. He’s been seen in a solid red shirt and a red and white striped Polo-type shirt in hospital pictures after his intestinal surgery
. . . Well, he is Communist.
That new show that’s gonna be on NBC, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip … Can they do me a favor and lose the “the” before Sunset. Nobody says the Sunset Strip; it’s just Sunset Strip. So somebody take care of that quick. And thank you.
. . . It’s a behind-the-scenes look at a fictional TV sketch/variety show (much like Saturday Night Live) and is produced by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame. Debuts Monday, Sept. 19 at 10.
. . . And then there’s another similar-sounding show (in concept) called 30 Rock on the same network that’s coming in the fall about a fictional comedy show writer (Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live) also about behind-the-scenes wrangling. Will air on Wednesdays, as of now.
. . . So why do that? It’s confusing. Who’s running NBC?
Kevin Costner, the actor, is also a singer (Kevin Costner and His Band). (Aren’t they all now?)
. . . He had guitar in hand at a free screening last Friday of his Field of Dreams movie in Dyersville, Iowa on the actual field where it was filmed. Part of the Netflix Rolling Roadshow, he sported a T-shirt, rolled-up sleeve jacket, ball cap and expanded mustache/goatee.
. . . So what’s more important to him? Acting or singing? Which is his true love?
Somebody said Katie Couric looks like Martha Stewart in those new CBS Evening News promos they’re running. The pearls and everything.
. . . I hope people don’t get confused when they think they’re seeing Martha Stewart read the news.
I need a lackey. Any interns around?
. . . INAPPROPRIATE REMARK. Yes, I know. It used to be you could ask interns to do things like run errands or other somewhat menial tasks but now … They’ve entered into another pantheon, for crissakes. They tell us now what they’re planning to do.
UH . . . The Way You Do The Things You Do – The Temptations, on Gordy, 1964.
Oh . . . And don’t let the bedbugs bite. They were back in the news this week.