December 23, 2005

KING KONG RULES

1. . . . Great movie, movie.  The way they should be.  Director Peter Jackson knows how to put one together, if you ask me.  Total adventure and non-stop.   Slow start but the necessary set-up for the action to follow once the crew gets to Skull Island where the natives get stirred by the new visitors and the visitors meet up with the land that time forgot:  a place full of huge things, including a big ape, dinosaurs and huge hungry bugs and spiders.   
2. . . . I was jumping out of my seat when the crew was chased by the dino stampede and when Kong was stomping along carrying blond Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) in his hand through the jungle.  The special effects were amazing.
3. . . . Watts doesn’t scream as much as Fay Wray did in the 1933 original.  A love story develops between this new Kong and Darrow and it’s depicted pretty well.  But I missed hearing the screaming.
4. Jamie Foxx was singing the title cut off his new Unpredictable album.  It was predictable:  typical male R&B whiny voice.  Used a sample (but of course) riff from What You Won’t Do For Love by Bobby Caldwell (Sin-Drome, 1978).  Slow jam.  And the rest of the CD features the actor/comedian and now singer doing songs about sex and booty and bedroom hijinks.  What more is there to say?
5. . . . Another actor who’s also a singer.  ADVICE:  Stick to one, you’ll be better off.  When they’re acting they want to be singers and when they’re singers they’re also actors.  Stop the multitasking.  Thank you.
6. . . . Memories of Eddie Murphy’s recording career.
7. Mr. Big Stuff keeps calling the new movie, Memoirs of a Geisha, Memories of a Geisha.  When I corrected him he said, “Isn’t memories the same as memoirs?”  They’re close. He’s got a point.
8. TOTALLY LAUGHABLE:  Il Divo.  That four-man pop opera group right out of GQ and “discovered” and exposed by American Idol’s crafty Simon Cowell.  They were singing Silent Night on a rooftop on Good Morning America earlier in the week. 
9. THEY ALL SKIP OVER TO FOX.  The latest skipper is syndicated columnist Bob Novak, the one who outed CIA spy Valerie Plame and who dropped off the face of the earth since the revelation.  Was with CNN, now Fox.  And former Court TV anchor/reporter and legal consultant for various networks, Kimberly Guilfoyle, is skipping there too, to anchor The Lineup, another crime case show.  (She and former hubby, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, used to be the picture perfect TV couple but are now splitsville.  Careers got in the way, I guess.  They were all over the tube, very photogenic 
10. Anita Baker was on the Today show Tuesday and sang I’ll Be Home for Christmas (for Al … Roker, that is) and was great.  She sounds like the late, great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan.  Smooth alto voice.  I’m going out tonight and buying her Christmas album.    
11. . . . At the same time, Toni Braxton was singing a Christmas song on Good Morning America.  She’s always has to sex up everything she sings.  Inappropriate.  And when she sings you can hardly hear her, her voice is so low and deep.  She was drowned out by the band.  And she had jeans on.  She could’ve dressed up a bit more for that.  It’s Christmas.
12. “CALL BATHFITTERS.  THEY’RE THE PERFECT FIT.” (1-800-256-4551)  That commercial for redoing the tub features a woman soaking and relaxing in it with the soap suds up high to cover, uh … to cover  her top.  I hope when they were shooting that ad that the bubble bath suds stayed there.  I wonder if the crew turned their heads while she climbed in for the shoot.  But she does seem very content in the new surroundings.
13. Elton John and David Furnish are now legally “married.”  They were joined together in a civil partnership in Windsor, England on Wednesday.  They’ll have the same social security, tax, pension and inheritance rights as married couples do. 
14. . . .  They gave each other 31 carat rings.  But in the picture I saw of the two of them outside Guildhall, only Elton had his on.  David wasn’t wearing his. 
15. . . . And I might be late on this but it looks like Elton has a new hairpiece which is a better style for him.  Younger looking.  I’m not sure, though, if he ordered it special for the wedding.
16. Liz Taylor (with very big and high white hair) showed up on Barbara Walters’ Heaven special Tuesday night on ABC.  It was an interview done years ago in which she said she wasn’t afraid of dying.  Seeing her reminded me of the relationship she used to have with Michael Jackson.  They used to be so close and she came to sit in the audience for his last  “reunion” TV special with his brothers.  But Liz and Michael are not such good friends anymore.  I wish they were still close.  The world would be a better place.
17. ROUGH REALIZATION.  If I heard it right, ABC’s John Donvan – not Donovan -- reported on Tuesday’s Nightline that only two out of ten New Orleans residents have moved back since Hurricane Katrina.  Will the city make it back or have people given up on it?  Only time will tell.
18. DICK CHENEY SHOULD WEAR FATIGUES WHEN HE’S IN IRAQ.  The VP was there earlier this week and met with the troops but he had on dress slacks, a shirt with no tie and a dark jacket with ARMY logo-ed on it with a star.  It was a dress-down for him but he should’ve been in khaki to be more like the guys and gals over there.  He stuck out like a sore thumb, which is maybe what he wanted to do.
19. Is Intelligent Design a furniture store?
20. FYI:  The refrain that Ricky Martin keeps singing on his latest release, Drop It On Me, that sounds like he’s saying ‘Where is the hudo” is actually something like “muevete duro,” which translates to “move yourself hard” or “move hard.”  This crucial information courtesy of Spanish-speaking washingtonpost.com videographer/reporter Nina Pino-Marina.  Thanks.
21. . . . But I don’t like that bow-legged dance/stance/squat routine he assumes when he’s performing that cut.  Looks stupid. 
22. The heavyweight network anchors came out for President Bush’s press conference Monday.  But the only one that had the season’s festive atmosphere exemplified by red poinsettias behind him was Bob Schieffer of CBS News.  Brian Williams of NBC and Elizabeth Vargas of ABC were in their respective news shots/newsrooms without any hint of the holidays.  So I think Schieffer’s wrap-up of the event was warmer.
23. I think I might go out wassailing tonight.  (Wassail:  to drink to the health of).
24. You know it’s a cheap deli when you have to put together your own coffee cup sleeve—those things that keep your hands from burning while carrying a hot cup of java.  Mostly they’re just folded and you squeeze ‘em and they go around the cup but a place I sometimes frequent just has them in long strips with slits at either end and you have to “assemble” them, for crissakes.  Good God., spend some money and make it less work.
25. I saw some little boy in video from Iraq during the elections and his finger was purple.  Did he get to vote?
26. . . . 70% of the people voted over there.  Too bad they can’t get that kind of turnout in this country. 
27. JUST ASKING.  Would you give your dog or any dog mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?  A firefighter did last week in Salem, Mass., to a pooch caught in a fire and he saved the life of Pixie, a 12-pound terrier mutt.  A captain on the force said it reinforced an ethical guideline in the profession:  “Save lives first and property second.  It’s always life first and that means every life.”  Amen.  
28. MANHATTAN TRANSFER.  Yes, the group’s still together after all these years.  I went to see their Christmas show at the new Strathmore Music Hall in Rockville, Md., one night last week and they were terrific.  Four-party harmony in popular song that you don’t hear much anymore.  The original four (Cheryl Bentyne, Tim Hauser, Alan Paul and Janis Segal) still together and the crowd loved ‘em.  For me, they were perfect to hear during the Christmas season.
29. . . . A co-worker asked me, when I told her that I went to see the veteran group, “Who are you gonna go see next, Mannheim Steamroller?”  So I guess I’m square.
30. I’M CONFUSED ABOUT INFUSED.  What in the H is infused olive oil?  Is that when they put sprigs or some similar crap in the bottle?
31. Those ads for Steven Spielberg’s next flick Munich, about the 11 Israeli athletes that were murdered at the ’72 Olympics, are pretty serious.  Wonder what that box office is gonna be like.  Nice happy subject for this time of year.
32. PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY GETS SEXY.  They’re playing loveman Barry White’s I’m Gonna Love You a Little More Baby (20th Century Fox, 1972)in the current TV ads for the popular baking products company.  And cute little doughboy moves a little seductively to the music of Mr. Maestro.  I couldn’t believe it when I saw it
33. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, is currently at grandfather’s place in San Francisco.  She traveled on the plane under the seat with owner Sally.  While there she is having her portrait done and Sally reports that she’s having fun chasing the wild turkeys on the property.
34. DISRESPECTFUL.  Somebody added a goatee and a mustache to a movie poster picture of Jennifer Aniston on the side of a New York City bus for her latest film, “Rumor Has It.”  Lately she’s been a little too overexposed, just like those pictures she had taken for GQ magazine last month. 
35. Saddam Hussein is back in court this week in Baghdad for his trail and he got riled up again, claiming that he and his co-defendants have been beaten  by American captors.  But he did look crisper and fresher, sort of.  So I guess this time he got new underwear and a clean shirt.  He complained about that last time. 
36. . . . He should unbutton that top button in his white shirt.  He’d look more fashionable and appear more comfortable.
37. Victoria’s Secret wants you to “give her everything she wants and nothing she needs.”  Okay, whatever that means.
38. THE PRODUCERS.  The play, not the movie.  Caught it in New York and it was really good and entertaining, even without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.  The subs did them justice.  It’s the perfect play to see when you’re in the mood to just see something good and typical of Broadway.  It’s long-running and is still packing them in.
39. JUST ASKING AGAIN:  So the marriage of Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney has been annulled.  Does that mean they didn’t have, uh … relations? 
40. I hope they find that three-month-old South African Jackass penguin named Toga over in England that some low-life stole from the Amazon World Zoo Park.  They say those bird chicks have to be fed by their parents and don’t take food from strangers.  (The parents regurgitate the food for them.  We learned all that from March of the Penguins.)  
41. NATIONAL ZOO HAPPENING:  Baby panda Tai Shan fall off log and go boom. 
42. A farewell to Sen. William Proxmire.  The liberal Democrat was a fixture in the news back in the day.  He died this week but reached the age of 90.  I used to see him jogging down Connecticut Ave. on the way to Capitol Hill everyday.  The man stayed fit.  And he was the watchdog on government waste before it became fashionable and created his Golden Fleece awards in 1975 to point the finger at lawmakers’ frivolous  use of taxpayer money.  He was a frequent Sunday talk show guest and appeared many, many times on Meet the Press, Face the Nation and Issues and Answers, which predated This Week With David Brinkley. 
43. UH . . . Where Do We Go From Here—The Trammps, on Golden Fleece Records, 1974.  Terrific Philly Soul group with a rough R&B edge.  Loved that group.