| February 11, 2005 |
PRODUCTION CREDITS FOR THE SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW
- . . . That's what they put at the end of Paul McCartney's concert. Produced by Don Mischer Productions as part of the NFL organization. They're claiming responsibility now like they weren't last year when Janet Jackson happened.
- The weather's been mild lately. A Quote of the Day in The Washington Post had someone by the name of Indrit Bregasi saying this about it while enjoying the day in Lady Bird Johnson Park: "This is the best weather ever, ever, ever! This weather makes me too emotional; I'm getting tears." Good God girl, get a life.
- THE WEDDING DATE. Sort of embarrassed to say it, but I went. Romantic comedy starring Will & Grace's Debra Messing (Kat) and actor hunk Dermot Mulroney (Nick). Even though it takes place mostly in England it's a typical Hollywood movie. Kat rents Nick as a male escort to go to the wedding so she can save face because her ex-fiance is the best man in her half-sister's wedding. Got that? Things happen; stuff is revealed. Kat is wacky and Nick is a man of calm. It's a cute movie but not altogether too schmaltzy. It's sort of OK.
- . . . Messing's half-sister Amy, played by Amy Adams, looks a lot like Tonya Harding when her hair's pulled back. And the mother is played by Holland Taylor who plays the mother of Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer on TV's Two and A Half Men.
- THE CUBS ARE OUT. That would be the four cheetah cubs (two male, two female) at the National Zoo in Washington. Mama Tumai is keeping close tabs on them. The cubbies are frolicking around.
- Accused murderer of actress Lana Clarkson and record producer Phil Spector's 1963 hit, Be My Baby by The Ronettes, is being used in a Cialis commercial for erectile dysfunction. It played in the Super Bowl. The product is obviously for marathons - the drug lasts for 36 hours.
- Once again, the Bush administration took over the Sunday talk shows last weekend by making Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld available. He likes to talk a lot anyway. Just watch him at those Pentagon briefings. (The weekend before it was Condoleezza Rice.) Rummy appeared on four out of five shows: This Week, Meet the Press, Face the Nation and Late Edition. Oh, and Fox News Sunday had an "all-star interview" with Vice President Dick Cheney. He always does Fox.
- . . . Do the networks ever say NO to the White House? One side feeds the other. Nobody wants to get beat out so the viewer gets one talking head four times over.
- POOR CHOICE. Of host, for the Happy Days 30th Anniversary Reunion show. Garry Marshall, who produced the series, was on-camera with everybody, introducing clips and interviewing the cast. His hair was all askew and Dick Clark, he wasn't. People like Marshall should stay behind the camera.
- So Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony will perform together for the first time on the Grammys, Sunday, Feb. 13. USA Today speculates that they'll do Escapemonos, their duet off his Grammy-nominated album, Amar Sin Mentiras (Love Without Lies) . I hope they dance together too, like she did with Richard Gere in Shall We Dance? In that movie she was teaching Gere how to tango or something and instructed him to "... hold her [his partner] like you're gonna have your way with her right here on the dance floor." As Nicole Richie would say, "That's hot."
- Paula Abdul, American Idol judge, wants to pick up where she left off in her own music career. She needs her creativity back. Good for her. So why not let her be judged the next time she makes a record? Let the kids rate her and she how she likes the taste of her own medicine. And Paula, while you're at it, you better go out and get a new voice.
- Is the proper way to say rapper 50 Cent's name, Fitty Cen?
- MORE BOOKS. Former NBC Nightly News anchorman Tom Brokaw has signed a contract with Random House to write two more books for the publishing house. He's had a lot of success with his Greatest Generation books. Good. That'll give him something to do.
- IF YOU ASK ME . . . Tom Brokaw, like Walter Cronkite, retired too soon. He needs things to do.
- ON THE WAY TO COURT. On the first day, Michael Jackson walked with his arms bowed out, like a body builder whose torso is so built up that he can't hold them near his torso. Either that or his white suit jacket was too tight up in the armpit area.
- . . . It's a wonder he didn't set off the alarm when he passed through the metal detector. He had all those charm things dangling down off his belt. How'd he make it through without having to strip down?
- . . . Geraldo Rivera's gonna shave off his mustache if Jackson is convicted. I guess that'll turn into another television special. As a lawyer himself, Rivera told Access Hollywood that he's looked at the case and said he was "absolutely convinced that he (Jackson) is being framed."
- WHAT'S THIS MUMBO JUMBO? "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it." It's credited to Roger Ebert, "Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and co-host of Ebert & Roeper. It's printed on Starbucks to-go coffee cups. Is that how you win a Pulitzer?
- Ted Kennedy says cahn't and rahther for can't and rather. He was on Meet the Press Sunday and was all riled up about the Iraq war and President Bush ... again. He's that way a lot lately. He better calm down.
- Michael Jackson has "rhinocerous skin," he told Geraldo Rivera, referring to how tough he is amidst all the criticism and charges against him. So is that what's wrong with his skin?
- THE GORTON'S FISHERMAN IS BACK. But this time he's a real man in the flesh. They got rid of the animated one. They sure got him from Central Casting.
- Does Condoleezza Rice travel with a stylist? She sure looked pretty well put together on her overseas trip. Hair, clothes. Dressed for success, she was.
- FREE DNA KITS. They're giving them away at CVS/pharmacy stores and were made in conjunction with Channel 4 in Washington. The Child Safety ID Kit includes a cotton swab for taking a sample inside the kid's cheek, just like on CSI, and an ink strip to make fingerprints. It all comes in a convenient Ziploc-type bag.
- A friend of mine had this to say about all the awards shows: "The Oscars/Emmys/Grammys/Wammies/namby-pambys and the Tonys/malonies. Enough already!" Agreed.
- According to Advertising Age magazine Johnny Carson earned $100,000 in 1962 for doing The Tonight Show and ended up making "about $20 million a year" by 1991. What did he do with all that money?
- Mr. Big Stuff would like to see the translator when American TV journalists interview foreign guests. Christiane Amanpour interviewed Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko on 60 Minutes a couple weeks ago and "you never saw the third person in the room," he complained. "It doesn't happen like magic," he stated. "There is somebody else there. Why don't they show him/her once in a while and stop acting like the journalist speaks the language?" Amen.
- "Wolf leads the pack," says a promo for CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Please.
- I keep getting a pop-up on my computer at work for a Valentine's Striptease. An animated guy and girl dance to music and you can choose which one you want a message from, but I'm not clicking on it. It might be disguised porno and I might get fired.
- Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, has a new female friend. Molly is a Prince Charles, one of those purebred English toy spaniels. They get along well. Also, COMING NEXT WEEK, details on Hanalie being a psychic dog.
- There was a mud-wrestling party at Camp Bucca in Iraq led by a female soldier who lifted her shirt and several photos showed women wrestling in bras and underwear in front of male enlistees. The party occurred on Oct. 30, just before Halloween. Were they drinking Bud-Lite?
- UH . . . Blurry - Puddle of Mudd on Interscope. Album cut, 2002.
