Rocci Fisch

March 3, 2005

KEEP POPE ALIVE

. . . That's what I say about Pope John Paul in a Jesse Jackson kind of way. The man hangs in there and he keeps on waving.
A couple weeks ago Good Morning America had on a liger - a cross between a lion and a tiger. Weighed 900 pounds. And The Enquirer ran a picture of the 3-year-old last week with the caption, "We need more catnip." I'd say. They said it was 1,000 pounds and that it would grow to 12 feet over the next four years, "making it the largest cat on the planet." ROAR.
. . . The tiger stripes are less bold on the liger and their color is lighter. The beast is staying at The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species in Miami, Fla., if you want to go visit.
BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE. Yes, I went to see it. Nice little movie but it's definitely for kids. The New York Times and The Washington Post both gave the film excellent reviews. Rocker Dave Matthews is in it, takes care of a pet shop and does a little singing. He's okay. And Eva Marie Saint's in it too. Remember her? God, she's aged.
Marg Helgenberger (CSI's Catherine Willows) is so made up on the cover of TV Guide this week you can barely recognize her. The article inside says they're gonna sex up the show.
"THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD" That sounds like an Oprah Winfrey title. Oprah Winfrey Presents the ABC-TV movie on Sunday, March 6, at 9. Stars Halle Berry. The cut line: "Every Woman Must Choose For Herself."
Is it President's Day, Presidents' Day or Presidents Day? Ford Motor Company used the ‘s, my home calendar used s' and I've seen it without any ‘ So which is it? That's okay, you don't have to tell me until next year.
They got that B2K, er - I mean BTK killer. (I keep getting his name confused with the teen R&B group.) In one of those photos, killer Dennis Rader looks a little bit like Burt Reynolds. Oh, and BTK stands for Bind, Torture, Kill. Nice man.
ONLY TWO PIPS LEFT. Edward Patton, 66, died Feb. 18, of a stroke in a Detroit hospital. He was one of the cousins of Gladys Knight - the other is William Guest - in the great soul group which was known not only for its many hit songs but also for their smooth choreography that Patton helped create and that Gladys tried to keep up with. To me, their version - and the first version - of I Heard It Through the Grapevine was better than Marvin Gaye's. Theirs rocked.
THE GRADUATE. Not the movie, the play. Starring Morgan Fairchild as Mrs. Robinson. It's 1963 again and you hear the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel. The play's done minimally, set -wise, with a series of white louvered wooden doors with brass door knobs that people go into and come out of. Morgan flouts herself to Benjamin (Nathan Corddry) and there's this production's famous flash scene - Morgan Fairchild standing toward the back of the stage in Ben's bedroom in dimmed light totally naked. Fairchild told washingtonpost.com last week that that was what the producer wanted - no body suit, the real thing, and that's what she must do because the part called for it. So she exposed herself..
. . . Uh, she's taken care of herself very well over the years.
. . . The show was okay, amusing. But not all that great.
Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson shot himself while he was on the phone with his wife, reports an Aspen newspaper. "I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it," said wife Anita. Thoughtful.
BACKSTAGE AT THE OSCARS. I didn't care about it.
Jamie Foxx is NOT Ray Charles. Acting like him outside of the movie, playing piano and his songs, acting and singing like him on the Grammys. Enough. Go find someone else to impersonate.
"We have three weeks before they're gonna kill Terri [Schiavo]," said her father, Bob Schindler. His brain-damaged daughter has lived for 15 years in a vegetative state and now the parents are asking a judge to let her divorce her husband, accusing him of adultery and not acting in his wife's best interests. So the next tube removal date is now March 18.
Dr. Sanjay Gobbledygook, er ... Gupta, was on CNN a lot last week talking about the Pope's condition and explaining about the tracheotomy with one of those plastic anatomical human body parts model-type thingies.
Third season American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino needs to stop wailing all the time. She's gonna ruin her voice. She didn't do that when she was on the show. Now she's gotta over-the-top every song she sings.
CNN's Paula Zahn got former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to cry during an interview last week when the anchorwoman asked him about his daughter's breast cancer. Get ‘em to break down. Anchors do that. It makes good television.
I think the networks and TV stations should play Billy Jean every time they show video of Michael Jackson walking from his limo into that courthouse in Santa Maria, Calif., for his trial. Or maybe they could play it over the speakers out there. He likes to dance. It would be fun.
Martha Stewart gets out of prison in West Virginny this Sunday or sooner. Think she might do one of the Sunday talk shows? You know they want her.
Janel Maloney of The West Wing will play Amber Frey, Scott Peterson's former girlfriend, in a TV movie, Witness: The Amber Frey Story, for CBS, that will air during the May sweeps. Looks-wise, some people say she's a dead ringer for Frey. That's close to true. Amber's book, Witness: For the Prosecution of Scott Peterson, has been on The New York Times Best Seller list for weeks. Does that make her high class now?
Court TV lawyer and reporter Nancy Grace now has her own talk show called Nancy Grace as part of the redesign of CNN's Headline News. She's got attitude, is full of opinion, acts dramatic, is argumentative and was so upset on a show last week that she put her head down like she couldn't take it anymore and even one of her guests commented on it. She's far from neutral and very pro-victim. And those piercing, knowing, glaring eyes. She looks like she's always ready to lash out.
Mr. Highfalutin took a lady friend to New York last week to see The Gates [of Hell]. It had just snowed and he said with the snow and the gray skies and the black trees that The Gates looked like orange dragons racing in all directions through Central park. How poetically expressed.
Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, is psychic. If owner Sally is thinking about getting up to go downstairs, Hanalie senses it and gets up first. If Sally is thinking about getting up to go to her new flat-screen TV, Hanalie walks toward it before she does. So I guess they're on the same wavelength. Pretty soon they'll start looking alike.
Looks like Sandra Oh from Sideways got a TV series. She's seen in the promos for ABC's Grey's Anatomy, a hospital dramedy-type thing coming up.
On Barbara Walters's 25 Moments/25 Stars special on 20/20 last Friday, she asked Will Smith if she was Gettin' Jiggy Wit It and he told her she exuded jiggy-essence.
NYPD Blue is now over. They ended the series Tuesday night in a low-key way. A life goes on sort of thing. I think these last episodes of the ABC show have been good despite the fact that many have said the thing's stayed too long at the fair. Disagree with that.
. . . Medavoy stopped by the 15th Precinct to say hi to the squad and walked into a lot of activity. (He retired and is now in real estate.) Everybody was busy and hardly had time to say hi to him - his former co-workers coming and going He wandered around a bit and then said, "Boy, when you're gone, you're gone." This was true.
Lollipop by The Chordettes (1958, Cadence) sounds good and crisp on those kid Kmart commercials. The 45 rpm never sounded that good, for those of us who remember.
"HE LOST HIS SIGHT. NOT HIS VISION." That's what the poster promos say for Blind Justice, coming to ABC on March 8. That goes into the NYPD Blue timeslot.
THANK YOU. To ABC7 News's Rebecca Cooper for starting off her report for the 11:00 news on the Pope's condition last week by saying, "It's 5 a.m. in Rome now ..." I like that. So Rome's +6 hours ahead of us on the East Coast and it's another day. I like time zones.
Now they have Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. Think they have enough flavors in there?
That magazine ad for Lever 2000 soap that shows a closeup of a husband kissing the bare belly of his pregnant wife just above her belly button is a bit much. That tummy looks like it could be another part of her anatomy.
How tight is that hair flip on the back of Condoleezza Rice's head? If you touch it, will it go B-O-I-N-N-G-G-G?
Mr. Big Stuff was wondering why, in the Hamburger Helper ad with the animated helping hand, does the hand just have three fingers and a thumb. He wonders where the fourth finger is.
COMPLETE NEW LOOK. Marcia Clark of O.J. fame, now has short straight platinum-looking colored hair. She was interviewed on Entertainment Tonight by Jann Carl. You have to look twice to recognize her. She also wears a lot of rings on her left hand and a silver one half-way up on her thumb. Maybe she's a California hippy now or something.
IT'S A CONDITION CALLED COPROPHAGIA. Or stool-eating. Some dogs do it and the Animal Doctor addressed it in his column last week. Boredom or the "desire to not be in close proximity to their feces" may lead to this condition. Tabasco, brewer's yeast or raw liver seem to sometimes help the problem. SIDE NOTE: The little puppy dog that John Stamos holds close to him in the promo for his new show, Jake in progress, supposedly does it. The little girl tells Stamos that he "eats his poop."
UH . . . Problems, by The Everly Brothers, on Cadence, 1958.