Rocci Fisch

August 4, 2005

THIS HEAT IS A KILLER

. . . My mother says she feels like a worn-out dish rag in this weather.
In a report on Good Morning America last week about bacteria in beach water a resort resident said this: "The tourists can't recreate." As in recreation. I didn't know it could be used as a verb and mean that.
. . . It reminds me of when some people say that they conversate. (Have a conversation) Now that is NOT a word.
NBC/MSNBC has a correspondent, Michelle Kosinski, in Aruba filing reports about the Natalee Holloway case and she looks just like that actress Scarlet Johansson. Let's see more of her.
FYI: Matt Lauer's father was a hugger. "He really used to hug me," recalled Matt during a Today show segment on people greetings and gestures and what they mean. ALSO THIS: Matt doesn't like a long hug. They should be short and manly. If they're longer they get creepy.
Actor Owen Wilson is referred to on the Internet as the Butterscotch Stallion for "the color of his hair and his presumed wild, wild ways," says Rolling Stone magazine. According to him, though, he's not so wild, and in referring to a New York Post item that said he picked up a girl at a wedding and later, when they got more familiar, she asked him if he had a condom, he said, "'I don't want to have sex with you, but I do want to do something else' - and he proceeded to lick her buttocks for 'over two hours…'"
. . . In response to that he then said to Rolling Stone reporter Erik Hedegaarad, "OK, so I may not be the greatest lover in the world. Well, let's make that angle work. There's lots of different paths to the waterfall."
. . . And on to other things.
WEDDING CRASHERS. It's a funny movie, perfect for the summer. Wilson and Vince Vaughn are good together as con men and the situations and characters work. And boy can Vaughn talk fast.
It's odd that last week during the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong's girlfriend Sheryl Crow showed up in a TV commercial for Dell computers. She's singing in it and wandering around all kinds of electronic gear. Well timed, I'd say. And not so incidental.
NO LIFEGUARDS ANYMORE. It seems it. Try to find one. Signs up at every pool you go to nowadays: No Lifeguard on Duty. And at the beach too. TV news programs are doing pieces about it. In many communities there isn't any money to pay for them, says NBC. This never used to be. They used to be all over the place, sitting up there high on a perch.
Carly Simon looks hideous in that black and white commercial for her new album of standards, Moonlight Serenade, which they're hawking on TV like a cable commercial. And do you think that, for once, she could get that hair out of her face? Good God.
The Affinity series from York, the people who make outdoor heat pumps, offers their product in jet black. The colors pretty up the outdoors, I guess.
HE'S A SHE. I'm convinced that the Six Flags America old man who dances all around in those commercials is a young woman dressed to look old. I say he's not old and that he's a she disguised up. Something in the body language. What you say? You suspicious?
Tucker Carlson's TV producer, the guy he talks to in a segment at the end of his show (The Situation with …), referred to a Speedo that the U.S. Swim Team gave to President Bush when they visited the White House as a "banana hammock." By the way, Tucker's show will move out of its 9 p.m. prime time spot to 11 p.m. and new MSNBC arrival Rita Cosby takes the 9 o'clock hour with Live & Direct. Boy, he didn't last long.
BRAD PITT'S HAIR'S BLACK NOW. So said a waitress who works in a restaurant that he and Angelina Jolie came into earlier this week. He didn't stay blonde long. I guess he doesn't wanna be who he is.
BOO BOO #1. In a promo for Joe Scarborough's Scarborough Country MSNBC cable show about upcoming coverage of the Holloway investigation, the spelling of Caribbean had only one b in it: Caribean Confession, it said on the screen. And they left it up for quite a while.
. . . BOO BOO #2. Last Friday, in a report about the bombings in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik, CNN's Headline News showed a map and EGYPT was spelled this way: EGYPY. And it stayed up a long time too. But over on regular CNN it was spelled correctly. So I guess the on-air graphics are made by different workers even though they're both part of the same company.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's losing a lot of money by not being able to collect his pot for lending his name to performance enhancing pills advertised in fitness magazines. He got a lot of money for that. Of course he wanted to hold on to those contracts. The governorship of even California can't possibly pay him what he's been used to making in the movies and as a bodybuilder. He needs to keep up his lifestyle. Is he borrowing off Maria (Shriver) now?
. . . Seems like every time you hear about him he's having to give up some lucrative contract. That's politics buddy. No pulling the wool. You gotta come clean.
CNN's Miles O'Brien bought a $3.2 million duplex penthouse on Riverside Drive in New York City, according to the New York Post's Braden Keil in his Gimme Shelter column. O'Brien had to move from Atlanta due to him becoming morning co-anchor with Soledad O'Brien - not his sister -- of American Morning. So I guess they're paying him some big bucks.
. . . In a somewhat similar geographical vein, Bill Weir, of ABC's Good Morning America weekend edition, moved from California to New York to take his job too. He said one recent morning that he missed having a car and driving around. It's not like back home, he said. I felt sorry for him.
. . . That's the urban jungle, bud.
CADILLAC BIKES. That's a new thing, according to Associated Press reporter Steve Knight. The car company figures that if someone buys a bike that one day he/she will buy a car of the same brand. The new high-end branded bikes sell for between $500 and $1,900.
. . . So I guess people have money for this.
THE BRITS ARE FAST IN NABBING THE SUSPECTS. They told two suspects on an apartment balcony on the outskirts of Notting Hill to strip down to their underwear so the police could make sure they had no weapons or bombs on their bodies. They mean business over there. They're like CSI or something. They need to go find Osama. I bet they could.
. . . Actually, one witness said he heard the police tell them to strip down to their underclothes. That's more like it. The British say that. Underwear sounds too crude. They've got class over there.
In the preview for MUST LOVE DOGS, Diane Lane seems too old for John Cusack. It's just my opinion but he's got a young-ish look and she seems older, more sophisticated. He looks like her son or something. Let's age-cast better next time, movie people.
Robert DeNiro's commercial for American Express entitled My Life. My Card. is so overly serious that it's laughable. Please.
Soledad O'Brien looks like she's wearing a wig hat on her head with that new hairstyle. Every time I see her I think of Tommy Tucker's 1964 record Hi-Heel Sneakers in which he sings, "Put on your high-heel sneakers, wear your wig-hat on your head."
"THEY'RE PUSHING FOR THEIR AUGUST VACATION." That's what reporters are saying about our lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Wish I had a month off.
Many Hecht's, Filene's and other familiar name stores will become Macy's stores come this fall. Federated Department Stores Inc. said that some 330 stores will be converted. Another end of another era.
A friend of mine says he likes the new Starbucks green tea frappuccino. Says it's good. He would. He likes to eat eel sushi too.
During last week's heatwave., The Washington Post did an unscientific survey of the temperatures in selected Metro stations. Here are some of the results: Pentagon was 91.6; L'Enfant Plaza was 91.2; Metro Center was 87.8. The lowest recorded temp was 84.7 in Rosslyn. That's pretty hot down in the subway hole. So do something about it!
. . . I saw a homeless woman drinking bottled water at a Metro stop. Should that happen? Shouldn't she have been drinking her water out of a fountain somewhere instead?
INTERESTING. NBC News correspondent Jim Cummins, 60, has filed a lawsuit against his old Catholic church in Iowa, charging sexual abuse that happened almost 43 years ago, according to reports. The suit claims that Cummins was "hospitalized in 1965 for panic disorders and says the abuse scarred him psychologically ever since." Network newsman. It can happen to anyone.
Paris Hilton strolled along Nikki Beach in St. Tropez wearing an animal-colored print bikini, carrying her shoes in one hand and a shopping bag in the other and talking on her cell phone. She's so hot.
Mr. Highfalutin went to see Lady Windermere's Fan, the Oscar Wilde play, at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington last week. It's one of those high-brow comedies of manners. He likes that stuff, culture. Whatever. Dixie Carter (Designing Women) played the lead role and he said she was very good. But he kept calling her Pixie.
Leonardo DiCaprio has a cute black and white French bulldog that he plays ball with along the beach in Malibu. I saw a picture of the two in the paper. The dog has the ball in his mouth. They bite down hard.
NOW THERE ARE VLOGS. Yes, video blogs-as opposed to just text blogs or blogs with pictures. Well, I guess you can do just about anything with a blog.
Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, just got back from Lafayette, Calif., with owner Sally. She, the dog, was out there for her human grandfather's 85th birthday. She likes to visit and, if you remember from a previous mention quite some time back, she runs and frolics in the hills out there and chases the wild turkeys.
Should Sheryl Crow have been holding Lance Armstrong's kid at the finish line of the Tour de France? A writer-in to The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins's online discussion program last week said she felt sorry for Kristen, the mother of the children. "It pulled my heart [strings] to see their children being taken care of by Sheryl. I thought that Kristin and Lance were still friends."
. . . Well, should she have?
UH . . . A Mother For My Children-The Whispers, on Janus (1974). Great album (Bingo) cut of 70's Philly Soul.