Rocci Fisch

July 23, 2012

THEY UNLEASHED THE POWER WITHIN

. . . That’s what followers (6,000) of motivational speaker Tony Robbins thought they were doing in San Jose while attending one of his “seminars” last Thursday, but they got burned.
. . . Twenty-one people (zombies?) who walked on hot coals, part of the “Firewalk Experience” that Robbins promotes to his followers, were treated for burn injuries.
. . . (“Working in the Coal Mine . . .” Lee Dorsey, 1966 on Amy Records)
. . . Their soles (souls?) were scorched.
. . . The temperature of the cinders is usually between 1,200 and 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
. . . Oprah did it last November while being cheered on by Robbins himself. She tweeted a picture of herself “crossing the Nile.”
. . . It’s “an experience in personal power and a metaphor for possibilities, an opportunity for people to produce results previously thought impossible” Robbins claims.
. . . Twelve lanes of hot coals each 10 feet long were set up in the park.
. . . Eyewitnesses said they heard “wails of pain and screams of agony,” as reported by San Jose’s “Mercury News.”
. . . Some scurried and dunked their blistered footsies in the park fountain.
. . . One firewalker who didn’t get hurt said the procedure was “life-changing.”
. . . Another said he felt powerful, chanting his mantra, “cool moss,” while journeying over the coals.
. . . Chant this.
GROSS SOUND. Of an airport worker in the Aleve commercial gulping down two pain killers three times throughout the day for his back pain when just two Aleves can take care of it.
. . . Each time he swallows the competing product (Tylenol) with a jug of water you can hear the sound of it going down his gullet.
. . . We don’t need that much realism.
OUCH. A Delta Air Line passenger found a needle (Needle in a Haystack – The Velvelettes, on V.I.P. Records, 1964) in his turkey sandwich on a flight from Amsterdam to the U.S.
. . . Jim Tonjes of Plymouth, Minn., felt a sharp poke in the roof (“Tear the Roof of the Sucker” - Parliament, on Casablanca Records, 1976) of his mouth.
. . . “I figured it might be a toothpick,” he said.
. . . “It looked like a sewing needle but without an eye (“Eye of the Tiger” – Survivor, on Scotti Brothers Records, 1982) . . . I was in shock.”
. . . After the needles were found the flight crew served pizza. (Papa John’s?)
. . . I’ll take mine with extra pepperoni.
BRAZEN AND DISRESPECTFUL? Meghan McCain, the Republican columnist, blogger and MSNBC contributor (who isn’t?), has written a book about her travels on a cross-country road trip with comedian Michael Ian Black, trading barbs with each other and people they meet about politics.
. . . The name of the book is “America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom.”
. . . She talked about it in D.C. last week on a promo tour and said of the title, “. . . It still makes me laugh when serious people say it. ‘America, You Sexy . . . You Sexy . . . ’ Can we say this?” she asked.
. . . She never thought the publisher would go for it but John McCain’s daughter cited the popular book, “Skinny Bitch” (by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, a vegan diet book) which, continued Ms. McCain, “paved the way for this book.”
. . . Boy, doesn’t she “push the envelope,” take things to the next level, thinks outside the box?
Kitty Wells, the great country singer whose biggest hit was “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Women,” the first #1 hit by a female singer on the country music charts, died July 16 at her home in Madison, Tenn., after a stroke at the age of 92.
. . . The song, written by a man, “cited male neglect and adultery as the reason behind a wife’s infidelity,” as Terence McArdle pointed out in an obituary in The Washington Post.
. . . It became a trailblazing anthem.
. . . She brought a woman’s perspective to the male-dominated country music scene.
. . . But she said the songs really didn’t pertain to her life.
. . . “’Honky Tonk Angels’ was “just a way for the womenfolk to get back at the men,” she said.
. . . According to McArdle, Kitty had three children, eight grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren. Wow.
The National Geographic Channel - also known as “NatGeo” for the hipsters - has another reality TV show on called “American Gypsies,” which spotlights the Romani family in New York who argue, fuss and fight amid the vices of the city and family life while operating their expanding psychic healing shop empire.
. . . On National Geographic? Whatever happened to nature programming?
. . . The tag line on their website says “Inspiring people to care about the planet since 1888” (I guess they mean the magazine; TV hasn’t been around that long, has it?)
FACT. One presidential candidate is as guilty as the other presidential candidate in running negative campaign ads.
. . . There are far too many of them and God knows how many more will flood the airwaves.
. . . The experts say they don’t mean a hill’a beans to the average American and are not effective.
. . . In fact, if you ask me, they’re a turn-off and people should backlash about it.
. . . People aren’t persuaded or convinced by such overly simplified, overblown hype, they’re smarter.
. . . Smarter than the candidates.
. . . If I hear Obama’s negative one with Romney singing “America the Beautiful” one more time I’ll . . .
. . . And if I’m asked “Where did the Obama stimulus money go?” one more time I’ll . . .
. . . I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll . . .
. . . Ah fuhgeddaboutit.
This is what was under the headline, “What the Stars are Tweeting,” in the Buzz column of the Washington Examiner: “iusedtothinkispokeprettyfastthenistartedwatchingTHENEWSROOMandrealizediamaslowtalker.”
. . . How can anybody read that? Don’t they use capital letters and spaces in that social media medium?
. . . Nobody does anymore. Everything is shortened and language is short-changed, turned into blips and blurbs posted about insignificant observances of people with time on their hands, so there.
. . . Anyway, it was attributed to @itsJulieBowen (a “username,” which is an identification used by a person to get access to a computer network), one of the stars of ABC’s “Modern Family,” who was tweeting about the “pace” of HBO’s “The Newsroom,” a show that “chronicles” the goings-on at the fictional “Atlantis Cable News (ACN)” channel.
. . . I guess she thinks the dialogue used in the show has a daunting rapidity.
UNCEREMONIOUS. The statue of Joe Paterno, the famous Penn State football coach, was taken down – a blue tarp thrown over it – and carried off by a work crew to be stored in an “unnamed secure location.”
. . . Maureen Dowd of The New York Times likened it to the yanking down of Saddam Hussein’s statue back in 2003, remember that?
. . . They threw a noose around his neck
. . . This all due to a scathing report by former FBI director Louis Freeh that found “JoePa” had concealed allegations of child sexual abuse made against Jerry Sandusky.
. . . After all those years of being a legend, what a way to go.
. . . I guess you’re only as good as your last performance.
Tonight MSNBC.com goes away and becomes NBCNEWS.com.
. . . This due to NBC buying out the Microsoft-shared website and going for its own identity.
. . . Already, if you type MSNBC into your computer “browser,” it automatically converts to NBCNEWS.com.
. . . MSNBC.com will eventually be born again in some new Web address yet to be named and will basically become the home of MSNBC TV and their P.O.V. (point of view) programs on the cable network.
. . . The idea is to “separate the news content from the commentary of the MSNBC TV channel,” reports streamingmedia.com, an industry news source.
. . . Good. We don’t want biased news. We want the separation of church and state.
. . . LAST QUESTION. So will there still be an MSN.com? (What’s that for?)
. . . Good God, how many “platforms” does the “peacock network” own?
UN-ATTACH PLEASE. Would estranged parents Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise stop carrying daughter Suri like she’s an infant? For God’s sake, the kid’s six years old.
. . . Always cradling her as if she’s in swaddling clothes laying in a manger as mom and dad cart her from one location to another.
. . . She can walk on her own, right?
. . . She seems to be clinging on for dear life as she’s transported around.
. . . And Cruise and Holmes have their hands all over her, never letting go and making goo-goo eyes at her.
. . . Is that part of the Scientology how-to book on raising clones?
. . . I hate to think what she’ll grow up to be like what with all the smothering attention she’s been getting as a child.
. . . Give the kid some breathing room, for crissakes.
. . . And JUST ASKING. Is Suri related to Siri, that “intelligent” personal iPhone4s assistant that talks back to you and answers your questions?
. . . And what kind of a name is Suri? Is she named after the Disney “Dinosaur” character in the movie (2000)?
. . . The name sounds Scientology/Sc-Fi-ish to me. Don’t they believe in that past life stuff?
MOVIE: Woody Allen’s “To Rome With Love.” It’s a good one; Woody acts in it, playing the quirky, irreverent neurotic that he always does. And the rest of the cast is good too: Judy Davis (“Life with Judy Garland,” plays his wife), Roberto Begnini (“Life is Beautiful” – very funny), Jesse Eisenberg (“The Social Network,” young and in love), Penelope Cruz (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” a call girl), Ellen Page (“Juno,” insecure actress) and many other amusing local characters.
. . . Allen relates the funny stories of insecure Americans and regular people in the Eternal City falling in and out of love, finding themselves in farcical situations, having adventures and getting out of predicaments.
. . . Alec Baldwin plays a well-known American architect on vacation who meets a younger version of himself (Eisenberg) and acts like a tour guide and a sort of sidebar commentator offering cynical advice. He’s good a it.
. . . Allen again does a good job of depicting the problems of the lovelorn.
. . . UH . . . “Problems” – The Everly Brothers, on Cadence Records, 1958.

rocci.fisch@gmail.com

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