AUTUMN LEAVES

1. . . . In August already. Been so hot it looks like fall. Trees are all dried up. Leaves dropping like flies.
2. ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND. They say Dawn dish detergent “has helped save wildlife for over 20 years" and show oil being washed off birds with it in a commercial. Then I guess it’s good enough to wash off that greasy grime all stacked up in my sink at home.
3. So Michael Jackson supposedly has a third child—a son—who has the same name as his first— Prince Michael, only this one is II and the first one is I. He’s just like George Forman who named all his sons George. Isn’t that confusing?
4. I like CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield doing her own news and not co-anchoring with The Mole’s Anderson Cooper. He’s also been doing American Mourning—I mean American Morning— with Paula Zahn and Jack Cafferty. How’s he get so many jobs?
5. Mr. Big Stuff says all American Idol’s Justin Guarini has to do is dye his curly mop top hair red and he’d look just like Bozo the Clown.
6. Larry King has a crop circle.
7. FREQUENT URINATION: “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now. Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go." That’s what they sing in that commercial for Detrol LA when people gotta go to the bathroom. Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go.
8. XXX’s Vin Diesel’s real name is Mark Vincent.
9. . . . And his costar, Italian actress Asia (pronounced AH-SEE-AH) Argento, has a LARGE winged angel tattooed on her body just below her belly button. You can see it sprouting up out of her low-rise jeans. She bears it on the cover of Rolling Stone.
10. BETTER WAYS TO GO. The Associated Press had a video report August 12 of a woman who was killed after jumping into a pool of crocodiles in front of horrified tourists in a wildlife park near Bangkok. But it didn’t look like she was all chewed up because they retrieved the body and it was carried off in a stretcher.
11. Former ABC News science editor Michael Gillen was spotted on CNN delivering a report and was identified as Contributing Correspondent. He’s good. (Everybody shows up on CNN.)
12. QUESTION. Does the White House make up those poster backgrounds that seem to appear now behind George Bush when he delivers a speech somewhere? He had one last week at an economic forum at Baylor University that said President’s Economic Forum. They look like what you’d see on TV behind some anchorman or reporter. What’s behind that?
13. LISTENING TO . . . A Cellarful of Motown. Forty never before released cuts—minus one— culled from the record label’s vault. They didn’t pass muster back in the day but many are really good and some are collector’s items. Fans will relish.
14. They transported patients from the old George Washington University Hospital to the new one across the street Friday night in Washington, D.C. through a climate-controlled tent. Looked like a scene from ET.
15. Does singer/songwriter Paul Simon feel like an also-ran now that he’s taking Paul McCartney’s place in this year’s Kennedy Center Honors?
16. CBS Saturday Morning’s Chef on a Shoestring used to feature meals that cost under $20. Now it’s $30. I hope they give the tech crew some of that grub. The anchors always eat it.
17. SEX PLAYS: Now there’s a play in New York called Amy’s Orgasm. Before that there was The Vagina Monologues. There’s also Menopause The Musical and there’s another one called Puppetry of the Penis. What’s in the air up there?
18. . . . Hairspray looks like it’s a hoot.
19. Gwyneth Paltrow adopts a British accent in Possession. Does Madonna have one in Swept Away? She sounds slightly British now when she talks in real life. People think she’s faking.
20. GOOD READ. Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, by Michele Kort. A detailed bio of the pioneering singer/songwriter who died of ovarian cancer in 1997. Her music was recorded by The Fifth Dimension, Three Dog Night, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Barbra Streisand and many others. The Washington Post’s Richard Harrington says, “Lots of people were later compared to Laura Nyro. Nyro herself was never compared to anyone."
21. Are Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley gonna last? (Does she sing? Wasn’t former husband Michael Jackson supposed to record her?)
22. Rosie O’Donnell and her magazine publisher are fighting. She wants creative and editorial control and it sounds like she means business. Since leaving her talk show she’s said she’s tired of being nice all the time. This time she means business.
23. . . . She just got her hair cut real short.
24. Did CNN have to show that dog being gassed?
25. Comic Ben Stein offered talk show advice to Bill Clinton in Saturday’s New York Times should the former prez go into TV. Article’s funny.
26. NOISY. Girls/women in those backless shoes so popular this summer. When they go down the Metro escalators all you hear is clop clop all the way down with echo added to it. I can’t concentrate. Sounds like we’re in Denmark at a clogging festival.
27. EXCELLENT. The Kid Stays in the Picture. The documentary-type story of Hollywood producer Robert Evans, narrated by himself. Visually creative and imaginatively done.
28. Jennifer Aniston is really good in The Good Girl and is nothing like Rachel in Friends.
29. Ozzy Osbourne really did bite into a dead bat that somebody threw up on the stage to him in 1981, says Rolling Stone. Said Ozzy, “I guarantee that if was to die tonight, tomorrow it would be, ‘Ozzy Osbourne, the man who bit the head off a bat, died in his hotel room ...’" This is probably true.
30. The Stephen Sondheim series at the Kennedy Center has been terrific and so are the reviews. The performances are as good as any on Broadway. Excellent casts, staging and singing.
31. Why don’t they go ahead and let Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles get hitched? They’ve been together forever. (Is his new “country clothing line" gonna be any good? The Prince himself is pretty dapper.)
32. Former Washingtonian Derek McGinty anchored ABC’s World News Tonight Saturday this week. It was good to see him during normal hours unlike when you normally see him overnight on the network. (He anchors World News Now and World News This Morning.) But he hasn’t been on Channel 7’s Capital Sunday lately. Is that show all Kathleen Matthews’s now?
33. IN RIGHT NOW: Rimless sunglasses. They’re all the rage. (Gimme a Break!)
34. The Al Pacino movie Simone looks like it may be good. (As long as he doesn’t yell too much.)
35. UH . . . Too Much-- Elvis Presley on RCA Victor, from 1957. Can’t wait for the Elvis 30 #1 Hits to come out. It’s due September 24.

rocci@roccifisch.com

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