60 MINUTES II

1. . . . Well, it finally got on. And the post-reviews were good. But hey, most of the new cast weren't in the show: Bob Simon, Vickey Mabrey, or Charlie Rose. Where were they?
2. . . . You can barely see that Roman numeral II symbol up in the corner of the 60 Minutes logo. The show's so much like the original you can hardly tell the difference. I guess that's what cloning does.
3. We hear Delta is gonna start charging more ($2.00) if you don't buy your airline tickets online. That's really forcing computers down your throat. And how will they get away with that?
4. THROAT-SINGING. What? A man named Ondar from the Asian country of Tuva does it. (He's just been signed by Warner Bros. Records and his album's called Back Tuva Future.) The sound does come from down in the throat and he's able to vocalize two, three or four notes at a time. The style is "a tradition of Tuva that is very old." Interesting.
5. DOES HE OR DOESN' HE? Dan Quayle's hair looks darker – not as blonde, but you can still see some gray around the temples. He was on C-Span the other day, speaking to the Heritage Foundation.
6. E.T.'s BACK ... Saying "Buckle Up." He's seen and heard in a Progressive Auto Insurance TV ad.
7. . . . Come to think of it, E.T. sounds like throat-singing does.
8. INSTANT TIME ZONE CONVERSION. "It's 10:23 a.m. where you're calling." That's what I heard the other day when I called somebody in LA from Washington, D.C. at l:23. And they do it for other zones too.
9. Channel 9 just used Monica Lewinsky's first name in a promo for their 11 o'clock news the other night. "Monica's lawyers ...," they said. I guess she's so well-known now. Just another Cher, Madonna, Sting, Janet, Brandy, single-name moniker person.
10. . . . Now it looks like Reba McEntire's wanting to be known as just Reba. Her latest single, Wrong Night, sports that single name byline.
11. Now even 7 Eleven's got those cardboard cup rings that're supposed to protect you from the hot coffee. I thought that was just a designer coffee thing.
12. . . . I can do without designer anything.
13. Mel Gibson's new movie, Payback, uses James Brown, The Godfather of Soul's 1974 hit The Payback in the previews. That song was tough and mean.
14. HARD TO WATCH: Interviewers interviewing interviewers. Enough already! Charlie Rose had on Larry King last night. They talked all over each other. Both think they know too much.
15. . . . Of course, King was hawking his new book on people who made a difference or something. And when Rose asked him about a particular person in the book and what he said, King couldn't remember and had to ask Charlie for the book to look it up.
16. Designing Women's Annie Potts is hawking One-A-Day memory pills. Yeah, they're really gonna work. False hope.
17. Those big colorful ads for Shakespeare In Love look good. They're spending some bucks, and the movie's a hit. It sort of bigfooted Elizabeth though, the other movie of sort of the same period.
18. . . . And Joseph Fiennes, who plays Shakespeare, looks more like Prince than his brother Ralph.
19. The Taco Bell chihuahua's singing now, serenading a young lady in a window, crooning Chances Are across the cityscape.
20. The Nanny: Kaput.
21. TERRIBLE INCIDENT: One of those horse and buggy horses in New York City was electrocuted, no less, by stepping on a "live" transformer cover at 59th Street and Madison Avenue. No humans got hurt, just the animal. Let's sic the PETA people on 'em.
22. GOOD PROMOS ... For the current Good Morning America team of Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer. They start this coming Monday, January 18.
23. The presidency of the United States is not an entry-level position.
24. Is that Jim Carrey movie about comedian Andy Kaufman – Man On The Moon – gonna be big? I've got a weird, not-so-good feeling about it.
25. . . . I never thought Andy Kaufman was that funny. Too simple-acting for me, with that little peepery voice.
26. Was Clinton "mis-remembering?"
27. Now ABC's on line with the new Go Network and CBS is with AOL. Both use their logos at the end of their news shows.
28. The Entertainment Tonight theme has been changed again. New version, but still the basic DA DA DA DA DA DA thing.
29. Is somebody gonna get some dirt on Larry Flynt? (His daughter seems to not like him much and speaks out on TV against him.)
30. Is that Trent Lott's hair?
31. David Brinkley sold his house in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Gone, but not forgotten, from the Washington area.
32. FUNNY COMMERCIALS . . . Where the husband catches his wife eating spicey food out at a restaurant and isn't suffering anymore because she takes Pepcid AC. She's partying down and piggy out.
33. NERD ROLE ... For Greg Kinnear, in You've Got Mail. Next time, find a character that's more real.
34. NEW SHOW. Later Today. Jodi Applegate's doing it for NBC, airing after the Today show. Their network-owned TV stations will carry it, and the hope is that the affiliates will too – but that's yet to be known.
35. . . . Now NBC has Today, Later Today, and Tonight (The Tonight Show). They used to have Tomorrow too.
36. UH . . . Tomorrow, by Strawberry Alarm Clock, on Uni, from 1968. It was their follow-up to Incense And Peppermints. Remember those days?

rocci@roccifisch.com

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