THE FINAL CURTAIN CALL

1. That’s what Michael Jackson said, referring to a series of concerts (10) in London scheduled for this summer (July) at The O2 concert arena, which he announced last Thursday in a “press conference” in the former Millennium Dome exhibit hall.
2. Think he’ll show up? Hmmm.
3. “I just want to say that these will be my final performances in London. This is it. When I say this I really mean this is it,” he insisted.
4. Okay, okay. Stop being so threatening. Stop crying wolf.
5. Jackson sounded deeper-voiced and more natural instead of speaking in that high-pitched, wispy kind of way we’re used to hearing from the King of Pop.
6. “I love you, I really do. You have to know that. I love you so much, really, from the bottom of my heart. This is it and see you in July.”
7. So I guess the tour will be called This Is It - at least that’s what was printed under his name and title and Web site address on the front of the red podium he stood at.
8. I’ll believe all this it when I see it. Enough of garbage, on to other things.
9. YANNI HAS CLEANED UP HIS ACT. The Greek multi-instrumentalist/composer got all that long draping hair cut off. Shorter now, no mustache. Clean-cut and no longer New Agey guru-looking. My, how we all change. At least that’s the way he’s looked last week on PBS as part of a pledge drive, plugging his Yanni Voices CD.
10. His old girlfriend, Linda Evans , used to follow him all over the place while he was touring and sit in the audience to hear her loved one. I saw her do it at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. once. That was before she destroyed her face and got all Botoxed and plastic surgeried-up. Now she’s unrecognizable.
11. Me, I think I like the old Yanni better. Now he looks a bit seedy.
12. ANOTHER MUNCHKIN DIED. Clarence Swensen, 91, who played one of the soldiers in Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, died Feb. 25 in Pflugerville, Tex. He had been in poor health since 2005. Prior to joining the cast he had been with the Stanley R. Graham All Midget Circus troupe which toured fairgrounds in and around Texas. That led to his being cast for a role in Oz at a reported salary of $700 (the movie came out in 1939).
13. So is he the last one? Everytime one dies they say it’s the last. How many are left now, for crissakes?
14. Someone took a picture of William Shakespeare and it’s pretty good. Show’s the Bard as much “a far more alluring figure than the solemn-faced, balding image that has been conveyed” up til now, says The New York Times.
15. They had good cameras back then, didn’t they?
16. You idiot! That’s a portrait they found. They didn’t have cameras back then. What a moron.
17. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, still barks up a storm when you visit and pay some attention to fellow homesteaders Emma and Buddy, the cats. She’s very jealous and scares ‘em off so she’s the only one available to pet, selfish.
18. Have you seen Tony Danza lately? Totally gray, hair cut short, no more flop-top. He’s aged.
19. How sick are we of hearing Etta James’s - not Beyonce’s - version of At Last (Argo Records, 1961) used in those - of all things -- Hoover Platinum Collection vacuum cleaner TV ads? That long violin intro grates on me - too much of it. You only hear her sing toward the end of the commercial.
20. I hope Jamesetta gets paid for that. Her real name: Jamesetta Hawkins.
21. Why does Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) always kiss men by putting both his hands on their face and then smacking ‘em right on the kisser? (Echoes of The Godfather?) I got a little tired of seeing it time after time on the Golden Globes and the Oscars and every other award show he was on. Who’s he, the Pope or something? (Highly doubtful)
22. A photographer friend of mine saw Brad Pitt last week when he was up on Capitol Hill, meeting with Nancy Pelosi about New Orleans business. She said he was really hot in person and taller than you think he would be.
23. R&B/soul/funk singer Charlie Wilson, leader of The Gap Band (You Dropped a Bomb on Me) and many other funk essentials) is back on the charts with Uncle Charlie. It’s currently resting at #2 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Good to hear the soul veteran is competing with the young’uns.
24. I just ate my first - and last - Odwalla (energy?) bar which is labeled Super Food and that it contains 500 mg of Spirulina, whatever that is. It looked like clotted grass from a lawn mower and the flavor was something similar. Never again.
25. All those energy bars brag about how good they are for you and it’s just not true. They’re full of carbs and calories. It’s a farce. And they’re so dense, why that? Not fun to eat.
26. Somebody make one that tastes just like a Snickers bar or a salty PayDay, then I’ll eat it. Figure out how to make it non-fattening and good fer me, then I’ll bite.
27. Someone said in an online chat that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi got up and down too much during President Obama’s Address to Congress about the economy (she and Vice President Biden sat behind the president). And they mercilessly had this to say too: “Tell her to lay off the plastic surgery and/or Botox injections. Her face looks like a doll.”
28. Someone else said it that it was distracting to see Pelosi and the VP behind the president during the speech, she making eye contact with others in the House chamber, smiling, wetting her lips, etc. “Puhlease ... quit the theatrics,” the person said.
29. And another thing about that speech: the entrance. How about doing away with all those glad-handers and Klingons who have to reach for the POS (President of the United States) to show their importance? It slows down the proceedings. Just let the man walk down the aisle unpawed. Put Jersey barriers up so the wannabes stay out of the shot and stop clambering. That’ll show ‘em.
30. DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME. Just because the day is longer now and it’s lighter longer doesn’t mean I’m working longer. So there.
31. Why, pray tell, was actor George Clooney, who was a guest on Larry King Live, standing on the White House north lawn (where network news and other reporters do their standuppers) while he was being interviewed for a guest segment on King’s show? Reporters work years in the trenches for that honor and here comes Clooney, all suited up and appearing to be reporting from the White House. It’s deceiving and undeserved. But someone had to okay it. It was probably a King show request that the White House honored.
32. The actor met with Obama and Biden earlier in the day to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region.
33. Next time ... keep your reporting to walking in matching safari jackets with Ann Curry over in the dustbowl, the picture’s more real. Stop usurping someone else’s turf.
34. They let that guy get away with anything.
35. One of the young upstarts where I work had this response when I asked him, “Can I ask you a stupid question?” He looked up, pulled out his earbuds and said to me, “Another one?” Thanks.
36. Mr. Highfalutin went to see Tom Jones in Washington, D.C. at the 9:30 Club a week or so ago and thought the Welsh singer’s voice was “amazingly strong” and that he could still hit the notes. (The guy’s 68 years old.) He was in good physical shape, sang his old hits and some new stuff off his new CD, 24 Hours, which is “nothing to be ashamed of,” was limber, danced around a lot and yes, some girls and women threw him their undergarments.
37. Actor Matt Damon and brother Kyle were photographed in South Africa over the weekend. They were on a bicycle built for two - Awwwwwww - biking their way through the 2009 Argus Cycle Tour in Cape Town.
38. Tuesday (March 10) was Day 50 of Obama’s administration. Really? Seems like 100 already to me.
39. TREND. Now some of the Sunday talk shows (This Week, Meet the Press) are continuing their roundtable discussions in their respective green rooms (VIP quarters) online, on Facebook and now on Twitter, the latest popular thing now, which is a social network and micro-blogging service.
40. Mr. Big Stuff asked this: Are the people who twitter called twits?
41. I don’t know but what they twitter is called tweets.
42. DO AWAY WITH . . . The fourth judge on American Idol. Slows the show down. Kara DioGuardi ... throw the bum out. She and Paula are redundant.
43. UH . . . Go Away Little Girl - Steve Lawrence, on Columbia Records, 1963, and later covered by Donny Osmond in 1971.

rocci@roccifisch.com

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