SPRING IS SPRUNGING

1. . . . Wittle birdies are chirping, crocuses are poking out of the ground and the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom.
2. EVERYBODY’S MAKING OVER. I might be late on this but there’s a TV show called Ambush Makeover where they go up to someone on the street and do the redo. Anybody watch it?
3. Remember Gizelle Fernandez? She was an up-and-comer at NBC News and then went to entertainment (Access Hollyood -- before Pat O’Brien) and I just saw her in an infomercial for Winsor Pilates. She looked good. Hair shorter, plunging neckline top...but she always dressed that way -- even when she did the news.
4. John Kerry looks better in a flack jacket than George Bush does. Fits him better.
5. FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY. They’ve butchered that song in editing it for the open to The Apprentice, the Donald Trump TV reality show. But it’s good to hear The O’Jays’ 1974 hit in prime time. (Check out the original long version.)
6. That foot-high hair that Belo the clown has in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus ... is that all his? (He does balloon-animal tricks and is a seventh-generation member of a Swiss circus family.)
7. That 16-year-old Palestinian boy who wore the suicide bomb vest and was paid $22 to kill himself but was disarmed before he could do it ... Does he have to give the money back?
8. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed P. Diddy one day last week. It was a pre-taped thing. The "rapper-mogul’s" next project is "starring" on Broadway in a revival of A Raisin in the Sun but the name he uses for that is Sean Combs. And his clothing line is Sean Jean. And, of course, we remember him as Puff Daddy too.
9. . . . So many names, so little time.
10. "BE KING IN THE BEDROOM." That’s what my e-mail tells me over and over again. Sexual ads for everything, from Viagra on down. Filters at work don’t keep it from coming at me and my home box is full too. I don’t think I signed up for anything.
11. TV’s Star Jones introduced Hillary Clinton at a Democratic fundraiser last week at a nightclub in Washington, D.C. as "the greatest first lady in history." Isn’t that a bit overboard, Star? Al Sharpton introed Bill Clinton as "the last elected president of the United States." Clever. Clinton said he wished the primary season was longer because he liked listening to Shapton’s one-liners. He is good with those.
12. PRESS HERE TO SEE IT. That’s another soliciting piece of e-mail I got with typos included: "Hey, im amy and i just turned 18 and got my webcam setup :))." Watch her on cam for free, it says.
13. . . . Can I take a peek?
14. Jamie Gorelick of that 9/11 commission that was conducting hearings last week looked something like former Saturday Night Liver Nora Dunn with a bit of Elizabeth Drew thrown in there.
15. . . . And former Sen. Bob Kerrey is now combing his hair differently. Shorter, combed forward. Caesar-ish. He seems like he has a temper. Got riled up a couple times.
16. Does bin Laden have a wife? He’s away from home a lot. Just wondering.
17. I SPOKE TO INDIA AGAIN. Had trouble with my home AOL account and was "transferred to one of our consultants" who turned out to be a nice, polite, helpful woman in Bombay. She got my problem solved but in an outsourced kind of way.
18. Mr. Big Stuff asked what Dick Clark, the TV host, was doing at the 9/11 hearings up on Capitol Hill last week. What’s he in town for, he wondered.
19. I heard a snippet of Beyonce singing Donna Summer’s Love to Love You Baby but I don’t know if it’s her song or if she’s part of someone else’s. It was hip-hopped up and sounded much different than Summer’s 1975 hit (the original, 17 minutes long).
20. Jesus is on TV tonight. He’s everywhere lately and it’s not even Easter yet.
21. . . . This one on CBS was done in 2000. Since then things have gotten a lot more graphic. Jeremy Sisto is the lead; a younger Debra Messing plays Mary Magdalene; Jacqueline Bisset is Mary, but this version seems almost Disneyesque compared to Mel Gibson’s.
22. DON’T FORGET . . . That the Dells were part of this year’s troupe inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Jackson Browne, George Harrison, Prince, Bob Seger, Traffic and ZZ Top. The great R&B group didn’t get much press about it; it’s always the rock ‘n rollers who do.
23. . . . The Mighty Mighty Dells as they’ve been called, have been together for almost 50 years! Classic hits such as Oh, What a Night, Stay in My Corner, Always Together, There Is and many, many more are great examples of the Chicago-produced multi-lead vocal group.
24. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, is moving with owner Sally to a new home...a house in the neighborhood. As soon as she saw it she knew it was hers. She’ll now have her own backyard to poop in.
25. There’s gonna be another We Are the World-type thing. We Are the Future, another Quincy Jones-produced multi-act concert, is set for May 16 and will be televised worldwide combining entertainment (music, sports) and appeals to raise awareness and money for young victims of hostilities, to "empower children from war zones," says Jones. Two thousand 5-8-year-old children will be gathered in Rome at the Circus Maximus grounds near the Colosseum.
26. . . . So far, Michael Jackson’s not on the guest list. He might be busy with something else.
27. Madonna’s reinventing herself again. Her "re-Invention" tour of 14 cities starts May 24 in LA with bulging cleavage and hair up in a powdered wig or something. She’s down on all fours looking up at the camera. Woof, woof.
28. When Aretha Franklin got out of the hospital last week she said she couldn’t wait to get home to get something to eat. She likes home cookin’.
29. CAT BITES DAUGHTER ACCOUNT: "He leaped directly at her face, claws unsheathed and fangs bared in a vicious snarl. My daughter turned away quickly but he still bit her on the buttock." Very well-described by a writer-in the Animal Doctor syndicated column.
30. So Al Roker of the Today show is gonna have a colonoscopy done on TV. He doesn’t have much of one, does he, after that stomach bypass? I thought they take most of it out when you go through that. So maybe the operation won’t be too long.
31. It looks like former CNN news anchor Natalie Allen has surfaced at NBC News. She did a report for Sunday Today about cheerleaders and her sign-off was Orlando, Fla. Looked/sounded good.
32. Why does Brian Williams have a lockup as Tom Brokaw’s successor on NBC Nightly News? Who decided that?
33. So Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz are over. Their careers kept them apart, says his sister, now his publicist.
34. Mr. Highfalutin was accosted by a homeless person while in Starbucks over the weekend. "Mr. Alec Baldwin," the man asked, "can you spare a homeless person a dollar for a cup of coffee?" Falutin quickly dismissed him and said, "No thank you." Falutin doesn’t remotely resemble Alec Baldwin.
35. DAVY, DAVY CROCKETT, KING OF THE WILD FRONTIER. Actor Fess Parker, who played him on TV (ABC) and in a movie long, long ago, was in D.C. last week and donated a coonskin cap to the National Museum of American History as well as a buckskin jacket and accessories like he wore in his Daniel Boone TV series. USA Today reports that "at the height of the Crockett craze, 5,000 coonskin caps a day were sold, raising the cost of the fur from 25 cents a pound to $8.
36. UH . . . The Ballad of Davy Crockett...by Fess Parker on Columbia, "Tennessee" Ernie Ford on Capitol, Bill Hayes on Cadence and The Voices of Walter Schumann on RCA Victor...all in 1955!

rocci@roccifisch.com

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