COLDSTONE CREAMERY

1. . . . One opened up in my neighborhood and you can't get in there. The line's out to the street and it moves extremely slow. That's because the customers take forever to decide what flavors they want and what to mix in. That's their deal. They hand-mix the stuff together on some slab or something. But that's what's wrong with life these days: Too many choices.
2. Good Morning America has a male announcer now that does the opens at the 7 and 8:00 hours. Must've dumped the woman. (She sounded forced.) I don't know who he is but he's used on other ABC News programs - 20/20 for one.
3. UP, UP AND AWAY. Metro bus, rail and parking fares/fees in Washington went up again. Boy, it didn't take very long for that to happen. They were just talking about doing it a couple weeks ago and BOOM, it's effective immediately. Some things move fast when they want ‘em to.
4. . . . And they're supposed to use some of the money for a better PA system. My ears thank God for that. The one they've had is absolutely ear-splittingly painful to listen to. Pool sound quality. Too trebley Why don't they talk to someone from Koss or Sony about sound quality?
5. NO PARKING SPACES LEFT. At Reagan National Airport last week. It lasted a couple days. Heavy travel, they said. What a nice inconvenience that is. Get it fixed. Build more.
6. President Bush was seen in an undershirt through a window while he was in Ireland last week. He was looking out and pushing the curtains aside. Is that the first time we've seen a president partially robed? It looked like it might have been wearing a Jockey brand V-neck. I wear them sometimes. Good for him. Makes him more human.
7. Tom Aspell of NBC and Christiane Amanpour sort of sound alike with that accent and sort of look alike too.
8. NY Exec went to Madonna's show last week at Madison Square Garden and said it was good. She sang well and looked in great shape. "She clearly works at it," he said. I wondered if he was telling me straight since he paid over $300 a ticket (bought 2) and felt obligated to say the show was great to justify how much he spent. Parking cost him $40 and then there was dinner and drinks. And sitting behind him was Sarah Jessica Parker without Matthew Broderick.
9. Some of those baby carrots they sell are getting smaller and smaller. Do they really grow them or do they cut them down from the regular size? There's a brand out called Carroteenies. Aw.
10. Mr. Big Stuff doesn't like it when he's not in this column. He asked me this last week: "Is a male ladybug still called a ladybug?"
11. All that Clinton book hype in the media . . . Half the people commenting about it and asking questions about it had NOT read it. They just read clips. It was hard finding someone who actually had read it. And the same goes for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 movie. Most of the people who were on TV last week had NOT seen it, yet they were talking heading about it as if they had.
12. NOT ENOUGH BUGLE PLAYERS. The Associated Press reports that due to the thousands of military funerals these there aren't enough soldiers that can play taps. So instead of a real-life musician they have a computerized chip that's implanted in the horn that plays the song and the "player" just sort of lip synchs it. I'd feel funny doing that.
13. CURRENT OVERUSED WORD: Legacy. Lega This! If I hear it one more time I'll . . . We heard it during Reagan's funeral and now we're hearing it with Bill Clinton and his My Life book.
14. The Q&A in last Sunday's New York Times featured Ron Reagan, the son. Some things I didn't know: He's an atheist; sometimes he visits his wife's sangha (monastic order) and does lean toward Buddhism; he and his wife Doria have three cats who are like children to them; he's a correspondent for MSNBC for election coverage; Nancy does not help him out financially; she has glaucoma. And on Air Force One they put towels with his father's monogram on them in the bathroom.
15. THOUGHTFUL. A co-worker of mine was in the kitchen area cutting the circles of those plastic things that hold six-packs of sodas together so they don't get wrapped around sea dwellers. I thought that was nice.
16. Clinton did the Monica thing because he could. "I was really upset when I heard it," she said in interviews with London's Daily Mail and Britain's ITV News. "If I was something he used ‘because he could,' why call me? Why fake all the emotions and the looks and the tenderness," she asked.
17. . . . It takes two to tango.
18. . . . When Martina Navratilova was asked why she wanted to play one more Wimbledon last week, she responded, "Because I could. "
19. . . . Yes they can can.
20. SOMETHING'S GOTTA BE WRONG HERE. William Hung, the American Idol flunkee who sings off-key and dances funny but has a lot of ambition, rated #96 out of Forbes Magazine's Celebrity 100 most powerful list. (Mel Gibson, Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey are the top three.) I mean, I don't get it. How can he be on there?
21. Robert Christgau has an excellent article in Rolling Stone on Ray Charles' discography. He says 1997's Rhino's 5-CD, 102-track Genius and Soul: The 50th Anniversary Collection, is the best.
22. It's hard to say Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Jordanian militant group leader). Ask David Ensor of CNN. He flubbed it a couple times before finally getting it out last Friday. I had to laugh. He's an excellent correspondent too. But between Zarqawi and Iyad Allawi (Iraqi prime minister), it's a lot to get right. And add to those Ghazi Yawar (Iraqi president) and Ibrahim Jaffari (Iraqi VP). You try it.
23. FINALLY. Anita Baker's got a new album coming out, My Everything, in September. She's been on a ten-year hiatus, raising her kids. The CD's only got eight cuts and it's like everything else she's done. But that's okay with her fans who feel there's only one Anita.
24. Actor Tom Sizemore really does look like baseball player/Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. He plays him in the ESPN movie, Hustle, due in September. Sizemore plays Rose in his mid- to-late 80's period when he was banned from baseball for gambling. Peter Bogdanovich directs.
25. NBC4's Wally Bruckner stood in for sports anchor Jill Sorenson last weekend. She left the D.C. station for Fox 5 News to be a general assignment reporter. She wanted to do it there at 4 but they just wanted her to do sports. So she bolted.
26. INTERSTITIALS. How corporate does that term sound? It's like REPURPOSING. Discovery does a lot of that for all of its networks. Anyway, they're interstitialing Washington public TV's weekly half-hour talk show on the local arts scene, Around Town, into two and a half-minute segments. They'll run during early evening and prime time in the fall. Sounds sort of like an arts brief. to me.
27. Willow Bay has resurfaced on MSNBC. Who doesn't? Or has she been there? I lost track. She was anchoring a segment on an oil-for-food probe.
28. UPSKIRT CAMERA. That was in the news again last week. It shoots up the dresses of unsuspecting women in department stores. Do they do that for those Girls Gone Wild videos?
29. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, was well-behaved at owner Sally's housewarming party over the weekend. Only begged for food a little bit. But she insisted on being the center of attention and dragged housemate Emma the cat and chased Buddy the other cat out of the living room and away from the house guests.
30. When ABC7 News anchors Leon Harris and Maureen Bunyan announced the Top Ten AFI Songs From Movies, sports anchor Tim Brant asked, "Where's Rocky? Eye of the Tiger? " And they all laughed. Then later in the show Harris came back and said Rocky was actually #58 on the list. And then Brant started singing, Gonna Fly Now. Boy they have fun on that broadcast.
31. UH . . . Gonna Fly Now - Bill Conti on United Artists, 1977. This was the theme from the first Rocky. Then there was Eye of the Tiger by Survivor which was from Rocky III in 1982. So there.

rocci@roccifisch.com

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