DECAPITATOR FLIES

1. . . . What? They're coming in the spring. REASON: To kill off South American fire ants which have been ravaging southern states. The imports-phorrid flies-come from the fire ants' native home. HOW DONE? They hover over their victim and shoot a torpedo-shaped egg into the bugaboo's body. Then the egg hatches and the larvae travel through to the ant's neck and release an enzyme that dissolves the joints, making the head fall off. Ick.
2. Uh, let's get on with some more pleasant things.
3. HEARD/READ . . . On Marty Gallagher's "Strength, Health and Fitness" dot com show: "Descendo ergo sum!!" (I squat, therefore I am!!) (www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline)
4. Do dogs know when their owners are coming home? There's a book about it by Rupert Sheldrake saying that they do. "The anticipatory reactions of dogs ... suggests that telepathic communicaton can occur over great distances."
5. . . . My cat Boots knows when I'm coming home. He knows it's time to eat.
6. Enya's got a new album out called "A Day Without Rain." It's called that because in her native Ireland it rains all the time and one day it didn't. So she focused on that.
7. MAKES ME THINK ... Two artists that can stay away and then come back and nothing's too much changed with their music and their fan bases haven't deserted them are Enya and Sade. And they both are back with new albums now.
8. "Smooth Operator ..."
9. NEW WORD: Stent. Again, due to politics. The last one was chad. A stent is what Cheney got. It's a small expandable tube used for inserting in a blocked vessel or other part.
10. CHRISTMAS GIFT: "Never miss a show again" with the new VCR Co-Pilot. Three easy steps. Available at CVS--what isn't?--Ames, Drug Emporium. They'll hawk those things 'til there's just one left.
11. NOTICED: Ricky Martin still wearing sandals when he's performing outside. He was on Today this week out on the Plaza. It's been freezing. He doesn't wanna get those toes frostbit or he might not be able to dance around so much and shake his bon bon.
12. Melanie Griffith didn't stay too long in rehab. She was in; she was out.
13. David Bowie looks ridiculous with that medium long hair. There was a shot of him standing with wife Iman at the Guggenheim in New York. She looks twice his size.
14. . . . Ch Ch Changes. Thank God that Novell ad that used his 1972 song is no longer running. You'd hear that one about fifteen million times a day on cable.
15. RATHERISM: "One of the nation's travel choke points, referring to Chicago's O'Hare Airport.
16. . . . Trains and Boats and Planes ... Except CBS said "Trains and planes and automobiles."
17. CHRISTMAS ALBUM: A Very Ally Christmas, as in Ally McBeal.   Robert Downey Jr. has a song on it.
18. "Reports from New York to London" say Madonna and Guy Ritchie are engaged, as reported by Entertainment Tonight. Who's talking about it in between the two cities, the little fishies in the Atlantic Ocean? Iceland? Greenland?
19. That girl in those Haggar Micromattique ads for men ad seems to have a pant fetish. She sexily watches a guy come walking into a room and soon she's down on the floor touching/stroking his pant leg.
20. Toll House is selling their "Break and Bake" cookies to the tune of "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty.   KC and The Sunshine Band have had a long life with that one (1976). Good for them.
21. The Meg Ryan/Russell Crowe movie, Proof of Life, has former NYPD Blue's David Caruso in it. Been awhile since we've seen him.
22. So David Blaine's gonna freeze himself. Actually, he's going to be standing among pillars of ice, right? And he'll have a catheter in for when he has to go to the bathroom. Ouch.
23. SOME SESSION: "Let's make love all night 'til all our strength is gone." Faith Hill and Tim McGraw sang those words to each other on Faith's Thanksgiving night CBS Special.
24. FEEL SORRY FOR . . . Michael Richards and his show. He's still funny, but not dressed up like a straight man. He still needs the kookie-wear.
25. TYPE "A" ANGRY. Sounds like that was what Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith was. He was trying to get a parking space that a woman reporter was holding for a friend down in contested Florida. When she wouldn't move, Smith ran into her and she got bruises on her legs. "Aggravated battery" was the charge.
26. . . . Anything to get the story I guess. Maybe he was needing to go LIVE and she wasn't.
27. UP AND COMER AT MSNBC: Lester Holt. He's pretty damn good.
28. Do we really need to see Survivor Richard Hatch naked in Vanity Fair?
29. Robin Morgan, author of Saturday's Child, says she's not a nostalgiac. That's a new one on me. She's a former child radio and TV star-played Dagmar on Mama (I'll Remember Mama some say)-and later became and is a writer, editor, award-winning poet and active feminist. She's marched on in her life from one thing to the next. Doesn't look back.
30. . . . Of her book she said this: "I tella helluva lot." Sounds good.
31. On Thanksgiving Day Metro trains were to return to automatic train control. Hmm.
32. I'm glad Drew Barrymore left boyfriend Tom Green waiting at the alter, er ... stage, last week on Saturday Night Live. She kept her dignity and didn't reduce the marriage to a stent-I mean stunt.
33. That wedding mugshot of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones was a nice one. She's a beauty but some say he looked a little bit pulled back on the skin-a-roo.
34. UH . . . The Switch-A-Roo-Hank Ballard & The Midnighters on King, from 1961.

rocci@roccifisch.com

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