HOME, HOME ON THE RANGE

1. . . . Where the deer and the antelope prey, er ... play ...
2. Hey Tom Selleck. Ain’t it about time you retired the mustache? Although it did go well with his cowboy role in Friday night’s TNT movie, Monte Walsh. (Monte Walsh? What kind of a cowboy name is that?)
3. Why does acoustic soul singer India.Aire spell her name with a period in the middle? Is it part of her e-mail address or something?
4. That preview clip of actress Kathy Bates touching Jack Nicholson’s leg in the hot tub in About Schmidt is funny. Jack’s reaction is hilarious.
5. They really slapped Queen Latifah in her DUI arrest. She pleaded no contest to reckless driving in LA in November and got sentenced to three years’ probation , fined $300 and was ordered to attend an alcohol education program.
6. Fox News Sunday can’t even spell out with in its logo title. They use w/. Seems cheap to me, not serious enough for a Sunday talk show.
7. . . . And speaking of the with, David Brinkley was the first one to use that on the Sunday morning talkers back in 1981. Then came NBC’s Meet the Press with Tim Russert and next was CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. And CNN brings you Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.
8. Washington’s Arena Stage has a really well-done revival of South Pacific at its Fichlander theater- in-the-round (actually square) stage. Plenty of memorable Rodgers and Hammerstein songs (Some Enchanted Evening, Younger Than Springtime, Bali H’ai) and a good, move-around-the-stage cast.
9. The Washington Post’s TV Column (Lisa de Moraes) reports that NBC News will do a one-hour special Dateline during the February sweeps called Michael Jackson Unmasked and will feature one of Jackson’s former plastic surgeons. That’ll probably be a harsh reality show.
10. So when is Time Warner gonna drop the AOL before the company’s name?
11. Mariah Carey always wears dresses that make her look like a mermaid. She was on last week’s American Music Awards and did another one of those wrenching ballads about rain or something. She could barely move.
12. . . . During his acceptance speech at the podium, one of the AMA winners was on his cell phone, for crissakes.
13. One promo for Joe Millionaire says this: "The stakes get higher and the claws come out." I’m sure the producers will make that happen. They like cat fights.
14. NEW. Dunkin’ Donuts now features Dunkacccino (sp?).
15. Spike Lee keeps calling his movies joints. (A Spike Lee Joint) Seems forced. But his 25th Hour, starring Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson and Brian Cox, is filled with good performances. And the film has many Spike Lee directorial mannerisms and a pervasive musical score.
16. Robert Blake wants to be interviewed by Barbara Walters. (And you can believe she wants to interview him.) He said this week, "If I’m gonna go in that box, I wanna talk before I go."
17. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stumbled and said "smoky gun" before he corrected himself and said "smoking gun" on Fox News Sunday w/ Tony Snow.
18. FAST WORK. Derek Luke who plays Antwone Fisher is already in another movie - Biker Boyz. It’s about guys who race big motorcycles.
19. "She wore an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polkadot bikini." That’s the new ad for Yoplait low-fat yogurt. That song was originally done by Brian Hyland way back in 1960 and was a huge novelty hit of the summer. (For those of us who remember.)
20. Someone said Daniel Day-Lewis looks like The Cat in the Hat in Gangs of New York.
21. Chelsea Clinton interviews actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, The Good Girl, Moonlight Mile) in February’s Interview magazine. It’s a one-page Q&A. They’re apparently friends who met on Martha’s Vineyard at her father’s 51st birthday.
22. Is Britney over? Is the new thing people like Avril Lavigne?
23. . . . And it is Avril - not April - Lavigne. She’s from Canada and her music is much rawer than Britney.
24. There’s a hamburger that costs $41 in New York (at the Old Homestead restaurant on Ninth Avenue). It’s made with "beer-fed Kobe beef" and New York Times writer Ed Levine described it as "... genuinely lousy, a mushy, gray thing of loose consistency and little flavor." So there.
25. GONE NOW. Sergeant Preston of the Yukon (Richard W. Simmons, 89) died last week in Oceanside, California. His CBS-TV series ran from 1955-1958 and he played a Mountie who solved crimes with the aid of his black horse Rex and his faithful Malamute Alaskan dog, Yukon King. That show was created by the same people who brought us The Lone Ranger and Simmons and the real-life Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore) were friends in real life.
26. Said a co-worker of mine, "I try to limit my reality TV intake." Ha Ha Ha.
27. Mr. Big Stuff saw Elton John on TV commenting on rocker Pete Townshend and thought he looked like Janet Reno.
28. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, in the news last week about releasing death row prisoners, looks like an older Bob Schieffer.
29. Joe Lieberman’s Web site address is a friendly-sounding www.joe2004.com.
30. The popcorn at the new Loews complex in Georgetown is much too salty. It’s been that way twice for me.
31. GOING BATTY. Vampire bat saliva might some day be a potent treatment for stroke victims. This reported in the latest issue of the medical journal Stroke. An Australian scientist said, "When the vampire bat bites its victim, it secretes this powerful clot-dissolving substance so that the victim’s blood will keep flowing, allowing the bat to feed." Yuck. That same substance could possibly be given to stroke victims to dissolve clots and limit brain damage.
32. . . . The play, Dance of the Vampires, just closed on Broadway.
33. GO AHEAD, MAKE FUN OF ME. Disco Ball on ABC last week was actually pretty decent. The two-hour special was done as a live show in a big, open-looking set much like Soul Train used to be with dancers and performers on platforms with railings around them. Good to see vets the Village People, the Trammps, Thelma Houston, Irene Cara, the Pointer Sisters, Martha Wash (It’s Raining Men) and Disco Queen Gloria Gaynor. It was all music and its presentation was straight-on and didn’t make fun of a genre of music that has been mercilessly ridiculed. So how’s that for its defense?
34. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, is jealous if the cats she co-habitates with - Buddy and Emma - get attention. They all get along but when you want to say hello to the cats, Hanalie rushes up to them, barks and shoos them away with her nose.
35. Someone said Kelsey Grammer, who played George Washington in A&E’s Benedict Arnold, looked like Bob Hope in a comedy sketch.
36. Is talk show talking head Margaret Carlson Tucker Carlson’s mother?
37. HILARIOUS. The Fruitcake Lady on The Tonight Show. She’s really funny and has been seen teaching celebrities to cook and offering advice to people in the street. She’s in her 80s or 90s, has a laid-back southern accent and has a tell it like it is attitude about things.
38. People keep calling the movie Adaptation, Adaption. Maybe the word’s too long.
39. A friend of mine saw Kate and Leopold on TV and said, "Meg Ryan is going nowhere. She’s a one-note."
40. Mr. High Falutin calls Renee Zellweger, Renee Chipmunk Zellweger.
41. UH . . . The Chipmunk Song - David Seville & The Chipmunks (Theodore, Simon and Alvin), on Liberty, 1958.
    
    

    rocci@roccifisch.com

    
    

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