January 19, 2005

      MY MOTHER CAN'T STOP EATING SEE'S PEANUT BRITTLE

1. . . . Yes, got her a box of it for Christmas and she went nuts. Shared it with the whole family and now they're all addicted. It is pretty good.
2. New York Times reporter Virginia Heffernan wrote that Joan Rivers was "off her game" on the red carpet with daughter Melissa at the Golden Globes. "Whatever she's done surgically to her jaw seems now to impede her speech ... ," said Heffernan.
3. I'll be darned if I'd take a flight in that Airbus they built over in France. The A380 double-decker airliner that can hold 555 passengers and cost $13 billion to develop got its unveiling Tuesday. Too big for me. A disaster waiting to happen. Reminds me of the Hindenburg.
4. Animal keeper Jack Hanna had a small owl on Good Morning America last week and said it could rotate its neck 270 degrees and when it flies you can't hear its wings flap.
5. THE FACE OF JESUS ON AN OYSTER SHELL. That's the follow-up to the woman who said the Virgin Mary's face was on a piece of toast. Bar manager Matteo Brandi of Switzerland said that the oyster stuck to his hands as if God was calling him. It's now sitting on top of the stereo in the bar. Brandi's decided to sell it over the Internet. After all, the toast sold for $28,000 on eBay. Suckers everywhere.
6. A friend of mine who watches a lot of cable news said all the blond women anchors look like they were under the same hair dryer. "Invasion of the Trojan Horse Heads," he called them. Ha Ha Ha.
7. Fergie (Sarah Ferguson) was in Washington last week pitching something and stopped by local Channel 4 for an interview with new anchor person Shannon Bream. They talked and after what seemed like just a little while, Bream prefaced her final question by saying, "We just have a little time left ..." For crissakes, she's the Duchess of York, an international figure. She's taking time out to be interviewed on a local TV station. She did you a favor. Who are you to be cutting her off early?
8. . . . Fergie looks different to me. Like she had something done to her lower face. I think it's the lips. They look fuller, Angelina Jolie-ish.
9. As soon as I heard Diana Ross was going to be on the tsunami relief concert, I wondered what song she was going to cry-sing. It wasn't hard to guess. Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand) , I presumed, and it was right. Overused selection. And she got the last musical performance shot on the show. It sounded okay to me but her voice is harsher now and she has to belt it more. But she still gets by. It's all she needs to get by.
10. I wanna see Racing Stripes. I like the way they sing EbonEE and IvorEE. It's funny.
11. That 25-foot boulder that fell down the mountain and into a road in Malibu, Calif., looked like something out of Indiana Jones.
12. THAT DAME'S GOT MONEY. Meredith Vieira must be working overtime. She does the Bayer aspirin ads; she's talking about carbon monoxide for Kidde, a technology firm "that saves lives"; and now she's got a white mustache in those got milk? ads for the American Heart Association. Plus her regular jobs are the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and The View. Them that got.
13. Entertainment Tonight had video of Star Jones Reynolds's wedding. Her eyelashes stood out a foot long and her eyebrows arched up almost into her hairline. She looked too open-eyed.
14. ABC7 News sent anchorman Leon Harris and reporter Suzanne Kennedy to Thailand a couple weeks ago for post-tsunami coverage. The station promos for the assignment showed location video of devastation all around and in the center of it all was a picture of Harris – not there yet -- looking dapper in a sport jacket and mock turtle neck like he was taking a stroll on the streets of Washington. He could've at least had a bush jacket on or something.
15. ABC's Robin Roberts finished her newscast on Good Morning America one day last week by telling the story of a truck filled with maple syrup that crashed and spilled the sticky stuff all over the road somewhere. When Roberts was done and they went back to Diane Sawyer, she said, "I'd be out there lickin' that asphalt." Guess she likes sweets.
16. . . . Are those Fruit Pocket Pancakes at IHOP any good? They look awful syrupy.
17. Tina Turner, 65, said this to the London Sunday Express about her legs: "They're still in good shape, but I'm not flashing them anymore. I'm an old lady. I leave all the flesh to the kids." Don't tell us that, Tina.
18. THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW. The B in Bollywood stands for Bombay, where most of the films in India are made. Chris Bury pointed that out in his intro to Nightline's show Friday on the film industry there.
19. Excuse the crudeness, but I saw some spit fly out of the right side of Annie Lennox's mouth while she was singing her song, Why, on the NBC Universal TV special, Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope.. Nobody was nearby.
20. . . . On that show, Jay Leno came off as a big, brash, insensitive loudmouth whose hair looked like he just blasted in from a wild ride down an LA freeway in a convertible. He was no good at ad libbing and he didn't say the third w in the Internet address for donations. He almost seemed like he just woke up from a drunken stupor.
21. . . . Goldie Hawn looked Botox-ish, as she always does.
22. . . . There were many shots of the stars on the phone. They didn't spend too much money on that part of the show though. You saw the same people all the time. Poorly lit. Like one camera, it seemed. Tom Selleck in every shot.
23. .. . . Matt Damon and Ben Affleck came out and looked like Mutt ‘n Jeff.
24. . . . Madonna's hair looked freshly ironed straight; Elton John had on the best wig I've ever seen him in - short and natural-looking; and Nicole Kidman's hair looked unkempt and too flyaway, which is totally not like her. It was disappointing.
25. Robin Williams should be given the hook the minute he walks on stage at any awards show. His acceptance of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for outstanding career achievement went on and on. He acted like he was doing his standup act and had all night to do it. WRONG. Throw the bum out the next time.
26. The TV ads for The Phantom of the Opera quote Larry King as saying, "It's one of the greatest movies I've ever seen." Who paid him to say that?
27. MY LIFE. MY CARD. Those Robert DeNiro TV ads for the American Express card and how much he loves New York City have got to go. So serious, so meaningful, so fulla crap. Laughable.
28. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, doesn't like this cold we're having. Owner Sally says it makes it difficult for her to go to the bathroom while on her walks.
29. MILLION DOLLAR BABY. Really good movie. Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank. She plays wannabe boxer Maggie Fitzgerald; Clint plays Frankie Dunn, a trainer who owns a gym; Freeman (Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris) works there and narrates the film. Maggie wants a very reluctant Frankie to train her. Another role of a lifetime for Swank. (Her first one was Boys Don't Cry for which she won an Academy Award in 1999.) The last part of the movie is a little drawn out but it's really worth seeing. The fight scenes in the ring are believable and Swank, in winning a Golden Globe Sunday night, thanked the girls in the film she knocked out.
30. EASY LIFE. A friend of mine who works for the government said that all federal workers who work downtown are allowed to leave at 2 p.m. Wednesday and are off on Thursday, day of the inauguration. And she said most people will probably take Friday off too to get a long weekend. Good God.
31. Army Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. , the former Abu Graib prison guard, was convicted last Friday on five counts of assault, maltreatment and conspiracy for beating and humiliating Iraqi detainees. His father Charles offered this advice to parents: "Mothers, don't let your kids grow up to be soldiers." That was a takeoff on Waylon Jenning's country hit, Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys from 1978 on RCA.
32. When asked if Mr. Big Stuff liked the song Mr. Big Stuff by Jean Knight (1971, Stax) he had this to say: "It was alright back then. I've moved on."
33. Oprah's face looks too big on the cover of her latest O magazine. I thought she lost a lot of weight. Did she gain it back? (I think it's the camera angle. Fire somebody.)
34. Mr. Highfalutin got knocked down a few notches when he was corrected for calling the tsunami a tosumi.
35. BAD EDUCATION. Really good and interesting foreign film about repression and sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school and how the characters' lives turn out. Gael Garcia Bernal plays multiple roles in this Spanish film by director Pedro Almodovar. (Bernal was also in The Motorcycle Diaries.) The movie depicts sexual role reversals, deceit, humor and lies. Good acting. The critics like it but so will regular foreign filmgoers.
36. UH . . . I Want To Know What Love Is - Foreigner, on Atlantic. 1984. Wynonna Judd sang it on Good Morning America one day last week as part of the show's tribute to the tosumi, er ... tsunami victims.