May 25, 2005

      SADDAM LOOKED A LITTLE BIT SAGGY

1. . . . Yeah, those underwear looked like they've been through mama's washing machine a few times too much. Worn thin. But at least there were no holes showing.
2. They were giving away discount (25%) postcard-sized coupons for a Force FX Lightsaber (sells for $100) over the weekend outside the Uptown theater in D.C.,where the new Star Wars movie is playing. There was a guy who had one and it's pretty nicely made. Sturdy with that bright glowing blade and it gives off "power-up and idle hum" sounds too. Looks authentic.
3. Robin Roberts is now officially a co-anchor of Good Morning America. At the top of the show the announcer now says "with Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts." So she's on equal footing. She still does the news but now it looks like she does it from the same desk that all three anchors sit at in the opening. She's not over at the news desk.
4. . . . Now GMA and CBS's The Early Show have multiple anchors. Should the Today show get another one? Would it be Ann Curry? Probably not. She just became Stone Phillips's co-anchor over at Dateline. But it's logical that it should be Ann. Or how about Al Roker? Or maybe Natalie Morales or Amy Robach? What's a show to do?
5. BOUGHT STORY. It was reported that Entertainment Tonight and The Insider (Paramount TV shows) paid over $800,000 for exclusive taping rights to the Mary Kay Letourneau/Vili Fualaau wedding over the weekend. They've been shamelessly profiling the couple for over two weeks.
6. . . . My mother was disgusted by TV showing the wedding. "It's a disgrace. What is this country coming to," she exclaimed.
7. . . . Mary Kay looked like Princess Leia from Star Wars with her hair in those two knots either side of her head. Good God, what was she thinking. She looked like the Swiss Miss.
8. Relatively new NBC4 (Washington) reporter Jeff Napshin sort of looked like Ben Affleck the other day, especially with his leather jacket on.
9. I've had it with that Blue Man Group. Now they're dangling in the air in ads for Intel, Centrino or something. They don't talk; they have blue faces; they're mime-ish. And they've been doing it for 20 years. I look the other way.
10. Channel 7 is using the Desperate Housewives theme to promote its sweeps report on women in their 30s and 40s dealing with weight loss problems. The copy reads, "What Desperate women are doing to get the Wisteria Waistline."
11. Isn't country singer Gretchen Wilson sick of singing Redneck Woman by now? I know I'm sick of hearing it.
12. I wonder why ABC aired The Muppets Wizard of Oz last Friday night. Seemed to me like a natural for a Sunday night. But now Sunday nights are so hot for ABC with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy that the night is all locked up, I guess. In the old days it was family time, Disney and all that stuff. It just seemed a waste to burn off the Muppets on a normally low viewer audience night like Fridays. (I saw it and it wasn't that good.)
13. A friend of mine was upset about those Saddam underwear pictures that ran in the news and questioned why news organizations would air that kind of private thing. He said this: "No wonder people hate the media." I guess he's got a point.
14. "SEND ME AN E-MAIL." That's what people tell people to do now. They don't want you to call them on the telephone anymore. They get e-mail and text messages faster.
15. Would somebody tell Matt Lauer to ditch those light brown shoes? He and Katie and Al were standing out in the rain the other morning and those shoes stuck out like a sore thumb. Just buy black and be done with it. Or dark brown.
16. ME-TV. "Tom Cruise like I've never seen him before," said Oprah in a promo for her Monday interview with him. "Like I've never seen him." Couldn't she have said, "Like you've never seen him" ? That would be more community-minded and less selfish-sounding. Cruise kept saying, "I'm in love," referring to new girlfriend Katie Holmes. And then he dragged her out from backstage so they both could appear jointly on the show. He's only making himself available because War of the Worlds is coming out and she's in Batman Begins.
17. Mr. Big Stuff complains that he's sick of (especially) morning anchor people getting involved in the stories they tell. "They always want to be part of the story. It's all about them. It's never about the story itself. How about just reporting it and let normal people tell the story."
18. . . . Can I get an Amen!
19. DOES HE RUN AROUND THE BEDROOM A LOT? Lloyd Grove, the former voice of The Washington Post's Reliable Source column and who now does the Lowdown for the New York Daily News, recently reported that Ashton Kutcher is a "sprinter in the sack." What does that mean? (That's what fashion designer Cynthia Rowley said she discussed with Demi Moore.)
20. SHOWING MY AGE. Everytime I hear the word filibuster I think of troublemaker Phineas T. Bluster on the old Howdy Doody Show.
21. Richard Engel hasn't been combing his hair lately for his live standuppers and the 2-ways he does from Baghdad when he talks with various anchor people on various NBC News programs back home. I guess he's busy over there - It is a war zone -- and barely gets time to spruce up for the camera. It used to be he always looked camera-ready. But I guess it's all okay because it's more real.
22. The handwriting on those signs held up by demonstrators in Bombay, India last week protesting against the alleged desecration of the Koran at the detention center in Guantanamo looked like they were written by an American hand. Newsweek Deserves To Be Banned and Bush Should Apologise For Desecration Of Quran. Supposedly the Raza Academy, a Muslim organization, made them up but I'm suspicious of the handwriting. They looked too perfect to me.
23. "WHEN YOU'RE HERE YOU'RE FAMILY". Does the Olive Garden really have a cooking school in Italy? I doubt it.
24. The TV promo for Trump Unauthorized segued from For the Love of Money by The Ojays (the Philly Sound) which is used on his reality show The Apprentice, to Money (That's What I Want) by Barrett Strong (the Motown Sound).
25. . . . And a current Coors beer commercial uses The Ojays's 1973 hit Love Train for a new ad campaign designed to "deliver beer to drinkers with more refined tastes" and not college boozers in the mosh pit, reports Apryl Duncan of Advertising magazine.
26. TREND. Female TV anchors and reporters wearing all kinds of clunky necklaces.
27. What is it with Brad Pitt and the buzz cut all the time? Is he afraid to grow his hair long now? Maybe his role in Troy turned him off the long stuff.
28. . . . By the way, the word is that there's definitely on-screen chemistry between Pitt and Angelina Jolie in their new movie, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. "It's scorching," said B.J. Sigesmund, a movie editor at Entertainment Weekly. He also told New York Post reporter Russell Scott Smith that "Angelina is so exotic, she makes Jennifer Aniston look plain and boring by comparison.
29. Alfre Woodard has moved into Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives. Her character's name is - get this -- Betty Applewhite. She's got a son. Edie (real estate agent) stopped by to walk through the house to make sure everything was all right but Betty didn't want her to. Acted suspicious. So what does she have to hide? And it looked to me like Edie was putting eyes on her son. Hmm.
30. The preview for Spielberg's War of the Worlds looks pretty good but they don't show any invaders, just the spaceships flashing down rays of light.
31. CAN'T WAIT FOR . . . Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution on CBS tonight. Janel Moloney of The West Wing plays the girlfriend of convicted murderer Scott Peterson, based on the real Amber Frey's best-selling book, Witness for the Prosecution of Scott Peterson. She looks just like Amber and the guy who plays Scott is pretty close too and he's a dead ringer for Peterson in that black and white preview clip of him driving the car. Creepy.
32. . . . UH. . . . Can I Get a Witness - Marvin Gaye, on Tamla. 1963.