Rocci Fisch

February 28, 2012

BARRY WHITE’S NO DEMON

. . . The bass-voiced bedroom singer/writer/producer’s name, along with Australian singer Olivia Newton-John’s, was invoked by a Georgia GE engineer, Hemy Neuman, 48, ,who said he was “visited” by the voices of the pop singers which “told” him to kill a co-worker’s (Andrea Sneiderman) husband (Rusty Sneiderman, 36) to protect her children because he thought they were his.
. . . He shot and killed Sneiderman in a school parking lot.
. . . Neuman and Sneiderman were allegedly having an affair.
. . . There were text messages.
. . . When aren’t there?
. . . Neuman’s defense attorney, Doug Peters, said, “Hemy fell for Andrea. If you want to call it infatuation, love, whatever, he fell.”
. . . I guess he couldn’t get enough of her love, babe. (Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe-Barry White, on 20th Century Records, 1974)
. . . I guess she was the one that he wanted. (You’re the One That I Want-Olivia Newton-John, on RSO Records, 1978 (from the “Grease” soundtrack).
“I can’t wait to see what she’s wearing,” said Bianna Golodryga, ABC News correspondent and GMA weekend anchor, of GMA weekday anchor Robin Roberts, who was in L.A. covering the Academy Awards and part of the “pre-show,” the (overly long) kickoff to a self-aggrandizing, interminable event
. . . She later went on to wonder who might be “wearing who,” as they say in the current vernacular, for God’s sake.
. . . And she’s a “news anchor,” saying such ridiculous things?
. . . Convince me.
WRONG THING TO SAY. Mitt Romney’s wife Ann “drives a couple’a Cadillacs, actually,” said the presidential candidate to an audience at the Detroit Economic Club last week.
. . . He said it while extolling his love for the motor city and Detroit-made cars.
. . . A couple’a Cadillacs? Must be nice.
. . . Does she sit in the back and have a chauffeur too, like Driving Miss Daisy?
. . . He drives a Mustang and a Chevy truck.
. . . More modest tastes.
. . . Wonder what Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are driving.
. . . I don’t know but they’re driving me mad.
. . .“(Baby you can) Drive My Car”-The Beatles, on Capitol Records, 1965. (album cut off “Yesterday and Today.”)
. . . Also, in the same speech Romney said he’s been extraordinarily successful and seemed to be proud of it and not ashamed.
. . . I guess that’s why he can afford all those cars.
. . . REGURGITATE. Rick Santorum said on ABC’s This Week that he almost “threw up” when he was reading a speech that JFK made back in 1960 about the separation of church and state and that religion should not get into government and politics.
. . . Santorum doesn’t believe that, cited the First Amendment and said that “it means the free exercise of religion and that means bringing people and their faith into the public square.”
. . . So he begged to differ.
. . . Before that he called Obama “a snob” on Saturday in Michigan, addressing Tea Party activists, because the president “wants everybody in America to go to college.
. . . “I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image,” Santy said.
. . . That sounds like something God would do.
. . . “HYPERBOLIC RHETORIC.” That’s how political analyst Mark Halperin, who talks a lot, characterized Santorum’s remarks on Andrea Mitchell’s show on MSNBC, and that he better watch what he’s saying.
. . . So the man was wound up over the weekend.
SOMETHING’S MISSING. “For all of us at CBS News around the world, goodnight,” said Evening News anchor Scott Pelley Friday night in his sign-off, and that was it.
. . . He usually also says, “I’ll see you Sunday on 60 Minutes.”
. . . So maybe he gave himself a day off for once in his life.
. . . Or maybe it’s because ABC had a lockup on the night with the Academy Awards and that knowing the ratings for the magazine show might be down CBS felt it a good idea not to waste their main news anchor on a show that not that many people were going to see. (Just speculating here.)
JUST ASKING. How many times do we have to hear the anchors (all three of them: Charlie Rose, Erica Hill, Gayle King) say, “You’re watching CBS This Morning”?
. . . I mean, do we constantly need “station identification”? (A broadcasting term seldom used today but which was a procedure used by radio and TV stations and networks to identify themselves at the halfway mark and at the top of the hour of programs, required by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).
. . . “We pause now for ten seconds for station identification. This is the NBC Television Network,” an off-camera announcer used to say, accompanied by those famous trademark three-note chimes.
. . . To this day it’s why they say this: “...but first, this is Today on NBC.” It signals local stations to do their cut-ins and run their commercials while the network takes a break.
SOUL 2. Seal’s latest album of covers (first one was Soul in 2008). He stays true to the original R&B/soul classics but his versions are much more than just copies.
. . . He often shifts keys/registers in the songs and takes his voice from the low notes through the scale and up to falsetto portions effortlessly (it seems).
. . . He also shifts from singing the lead to singing a background part and at times it seems like another person is singing on the track along with him.
. . . Producers Trevor Horn and David Foster complement Seal’s distinctive voice with what sounds like really good, full-sounding orchestration.
. . . Carefully selected tracks (and covers of which are rarely done) are Rose Royce’s “Wishing on a Star” and “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore,” the Spinners’s “I’ll Be Around,” Teddy Pendergrass’s “Love TKO,” Major Harris’s “Love Won’t Let Me Wait “ and many other soul era favorites.
. . . He knows his soul music.
JUST ASKING AGAIN. Why is Charlie Gibson, former World News Tonight anchor (2006-2009), doing the opening announcing for ABC’s This Week (another voice announces the internal part of the program)?
. . . What was the thought process behind that?
. . . Nobody would know it (he’s not identified) but those who would recognize it would think it a bit odd, I think.
. . . Why is a former network anchorman doing this? Don’t they go on to more glory than this?
. . . Did they get the idea for it from NBC, which uses actor Michael Douglas (for no apparent reason), to do the honors on Nightly News? Why that? (Word is that Brian Williams made that happen.)
BARELY THERE. Kate Upton’s bikini-top and bottom. She’s the cover girl for the famed Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
. . . She was also recently seen on the streets of West Hollywood showing “some of her well-celebrated assets in a low-plunging black top,” (New York Post).
. . . Seems she likes to strut her stuff, which is substantial.
TOOK HEAT. Former prosecutor and HLN anchor Nancy Grace did, for comments and speculation in the death of Whitney Houston that she made to daytime anchor Brooke Baldwin on CNN a couple of weeks ago, insinuating that someone might be responsible for the singer’s death.
. . . Accusatory.
. . . Grace: ”Who let her slip or pushed her underneath that water? Apparently no signs of force or trauma to the body. Who let Whitney Houston go under the water?”
. . . Later she was called on the carpet by Dan Abrams (and others), ABC’s legal analyst on Good Morning America, and with whom she is often paired to discuss different sides of current legal cases. Robin Roberts moderated the hotly-argued debate.
. . . “At the end of the segment Grace said, “I understand that some people may consider that jarring or harsh, but there is nothing delicate or nice about a murder, a death, an unexpected death, or an autopsy.”
. . . She’s always dramatically speculating and sounding the alarm, saying things that are sensational and not proven.
. . . After all, she’s a cable TV host.
. . . And Dr. Drew (Pinsky). Several nights as a guest on Anderson Cooper 360 he got very mad and showed it, in discussing Houston’s death and drugs (at that time not officially known).
. . . He couldn’t be stopped and Cooper had a hard time reigning him in.
. . . It was jarring.
. . . “It (death by drugs and alcohol) happens all the time [to celebrities] ...,” he insisted, visibly tired of making the argument time and time again as one celebrity after another dies in similar circumstances.
. . . His anger fumed and he glared through his beady eyes.
. . . NEXT TIME: Be more objective. Take the emotion out of everything you say and stop stomping your feet on television.
. . . Be objective, you’re a “doctor.”
. . . Or do you just play one on TV?
REQUEST. Can somebody tell that Bachelor guy (Ben Flajnik) to get rid of that floppy, constantly-in-his-face hairstyle?
. . . He could look better if someone would hack away that dense mess.
. . . If you ask me he’s been cast against type on that show. Usually the guys are hunkier-looking.
. . . Maybe the producers are shooting for another demographic.
WHAT’S IT MEAN? Adele explained to Rolling Stone magazine that the title of her hit, “Rolling in the Deep,” comes from an adaptation of a kind of slang, a “slur phrase” called “roll deep,” used in the U.K. It means always having someone at your back, never having to be alone, someone who will always watch over you.
. . . Reportedly it’s a kiss-off to a former boyfriend for a “rubbish” relationship, as she has called it in interviews and also at the Grammies, when she accepted one of her many awards.
. . . It’s not only the theme of that one cut but also of the whole album.
. . . Adele wanted to call the song “Rolling” instead of the hook line, “We could’ve had it all ...,” because that title would have sounded too much like a Whitney Houston song (Didn’t We Almost Have It All?).
. . . “We could have had it all ...Rolling in the Deep ...You had my heart inside your hand ...And you played it to the beat ...“
. . . SENTIMENT. A friend of mine says he’s sick of Adele.
. . .UH . . .Sick and Tired - Fats Domino, on Imperial Records, 1958.

rocci.fisch@gmail.com

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