THE HUMIDITY'S SO THICK YOU COULD CUT IT WITH A KNIFE

1. . . . Rainy, thick, disgusting. You need to get into that AC.
2. GET READY: "I'm ready, ready'as anybody can be ... Well I'm ready for you, I hope you're ready for me." Those Viagra ads with the guy getting ready for "we don't know what" are sure doing saturation advertising. Hope the man finds somebody.
3. Shrek and the Donkey are doing commercials now. They're funny. Unbelievable that Shrek's bypassed Pearl Harbor, ain't it?
4. . . . By the way, Jon Voight plays a really good FDR in Harbor. And he's also in daughter Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider movie, playing her father. Also, Jolie is her middle name. Real last name is, naturally, Voight.
5. . . . Think he likes her tattoos? And how about those pix of her in the current RollingStone? She and Billy Bob are reclining, kissing and both topless.
6. Mr. Big Stuff is confused. Is that congressman's name Condit, Conduit or Condom?
7. "Animal crackers in my soup ..."
8. Ross has changed its theme song. Now everybody's "Shop Shopping at Ross" instead of singing "I Got It At Ross."
9. "It's 88 and it feels like a 100," said ABC7's Doug Hill this week. Well, what temperature is it for crissakes?
10. A woman's bra (gel-filled) saved her life.
11. New movie Atlantis looks like old animation. Especially after you've seen Shrek and the Toy Stories.
12. SOMEONE BROUGHT THIS UP: Is the term valet parking not P.C. now? All I know is that they're running all around my neighborhood looking for spots to park the cars in. The street parking neighbors are mad. Get a lot.
13. I used my free handout of Lever 200 Moisturing Wipes when I got off the Metro the other day. They were giving them out. Keeps germs away you know. The stuff smells good.
14. Beheading going on now?
15. GOOD EXCUSE: The dog ate my homework.
16. Maria Shriver co-hosted Today this past week. Her lion's mane has been trimmed a bit, but the potential's still there.
17. . . . Al Roker had knee surgery. And so did Willard Scott years ago.
18. REALLY SMART: Sharon Stone's husband going into a cage with a 5 foot Komodo dragon. Got bit on the toe. Severed tendons. Those are hard to heal. He's a newspaper editor. I thought he was a smart man.
19. . . . Don't they have those tongues that are split on the end?
20. SIGN ON LOCAL SUBWAY SANDWICH COUNTER: Please Do Not Lean or Touch On the Sneezeguard. (Glass). Everybody does it. They wanna make sure they're putting the right things on their sandwiches.
21. MSNBC referred to Bush's trip to Europe as his "European Tour." Sounded like a rock star.
22. CNN's theme music during their coverage of the McVeigh execution sounded Exorcist or Charlie Brown-ish. Tinkling, lonely piano.
23. That Laura Nyro musical in New York, Eli's Comin', has won 5 Obie Awards.
24. Janet Reno called Timothy McVeigh a "miserable little coward" on Good Morning America.
25. . . . What happened to Katie Couric's blond hair? She was out on the McVeigh story and had it all pulled back and it looked brown. Guess her stylist wasn't around. (Budget cutbacks?)
26. GOOD CHOICE: Mint chocolate chip ice cream. That's what Timothy McVeigh ordered for his last meal. Not quite a last supper. Wonder what brand ... or maybe they have the inmates churn their own out there at the penitentiary.
27. . . . "That's the sound of the men, working on the Chain Gang ..."
28. AFLAC DUCK UPDATE: He took a rollercoaster ride and got off a bit wobbly.
29. A couple weeks ago, the CBS Saturday Morning show's Chef on a Shoestring spent $39.88. I thought it was always supposed to be just $20. They made southern fried chicken. Looked good.
30. . . . Their audience recipe requests are mailed out of 15th Street in Washington, D.C. Why don't they handle that in New York?
31. Mr. Big Stuff again: "The pandas are interesting but didn't do much when I went to see them. They just laid around and ate bamboo." Easy life.
32. MTV's gonna start a show called The Virgin Chronicles. Produced by John Stamos of Full House fame. It'll interview rock stars about their first sexual encounter and will include a separate interview with the other person to see whether the stories gel.
33. OLD-FASIONED? Washington's Archbishop George Stallings had this to say about his new Japanese bride: "She's a woman of few words. If she stays that way through the marriage, I'll be a happy man."
34. Country star Tim McGraw looks very different without that cowboy hat. He didn't wear it to court in Buffalo. (He was recently found innocent on charges he assaulted a police officer during a scuffle over a police horse last summer.)
35. . . . Celebrities dress differently for court. Not their usual garb. They have to look serious and respectful of the law. Look at Puff Daddy, er ... uh ... P. Diddy. No, I guess I mean Sean Combs.
36. NEW ON DVD: Episodes of The Rifleman. The classic TV series (1958-1963) starred Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain, a widower who guides his son Mark (Johnny Crawford) through the hardships of maintaining a ranch in New Mexico in the late 1880s. From MPI Home Video.
37. . . . Johnny Crawford was a teen idol and a former Mousketeer. He had a few chart hits too in 1962: Cindy's Birthday and Your Nose Is Gonna Grow.
38. CLASSY DAME: Arlene Francis. Actress and television personality. She died May 31 at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco. She was 92. Best known as a regular questioner on CBS's What's My Line? (1950--1967) where she and fellow panelists Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf and Henry Morgan had to guess contestants' occupations. She always wore a heart-shaped diamond necklace and it triggered a fad back then.
39. If I hear Survivor one more time by Destiny's Child ... It's got a repeating instrumental part with strings that sounds just like the one in Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio featuring L.V.
40. Diana Ross has put on weight.
41. UH . . . Upside Down-Diana Ross on Motown, from 1980. Produced by Chic's Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers. (Le Freak, say Chic.)

rocci@roccifisch.com

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