March 27, 2006

I PRODUCE CHILDREN, I STAY YOUNG

1. . . . Thus said Donald Trump, commenting over the phone to MSNBC’s Don Imus a couple Monday mornings ago about the birth of his fifth child whose mother Melania Knauss Trump is the third wife.
   
2. . . . So I guess The Donald is real fertile or something.
   
3. . . . And the kid’s name is -- get this -- Barron William Trump.  God knows what kind of childhood that kid’s gonna have.
   
4. Katie Couric and David Gregory, substitute host on Today all last week, looked like Mutt & Jeff standing together out on the plaza.  The stage manager should’ve found a box for her to stand on so she didn’t have to look so long a distance up at her co-host.
   
5. . . . And Mr. Big Stuff was wondering that if Gregory was hosting the Today show, who was minding the store at his regular news beat, the White House?  The pres (ident) had a busy   schedule last week and traveled a lot.  That’s hard news.  Shouldn’t Gregory have been doing that?
   
6. Local News4 Washington anchor Joe Krebs was doing a “tell” story about new-size baby pigs one morning last week, with video showing the cute little things nursing and they were snorting and squealing.  Sitting-in anchor for Barbara Harrison, who was on deserved vacation after losing The Last 10 Pounds, was Shannon Bream, who came out of the voice/over of the little piggies and said, “Do we have to pay extra for the sound effects?”  Funny -- at least it was then.  I know, you had to be there.
   
7. Hollywood movie producer Brian Grazer (Da Vinci Code, Inside Man) was on one of the morning talk shows last week.  He’s the one with that sticking up, spikey high hair.  It’s his signature style, I guess.  Well, it was really super sticking up and looked really thick and uh ... it looked like it was stocked with product, as they say these days.  He was talking about the controversy over Da Vinci and said that no matter what happened at the trial that was going on in London about it, his movie was going to be released on the planned May 19 date.  So there.
   
8. CNN is spreading newly arrived CBS correspondent John Roberts around more and more over the cable news network’s video landscape.  He subbed for Miles O’Brien last week, just like David Gregory did at the Today show for Matt Lauer, on American Morning.  Good to see Roberts on TV more.
   
9. Jess Cagle, People magazine senior editor and a film critic contributor to CBS, had on the largest blue bow tie I’ve ever seen.  HUGE.  Is that the fashion now?  He looked like he belonged in the circus, for crissakes.  I expected it to start spinning.
   
10. V FOR VENDETTA.  The Natalie Portman movie where she gets her head shaved and cries while they’re doing it.  She’s been a bad girl.
    
11. . . . Movie’s a futuristic (In the Year 2020 -- not 2525) thriller about a totalitarian government in Great Britain and a freedom fighter (V) who she hooks up with.  He wears an animated-looking mask that has no movement in it and is the same throughout the entire movie.  I think it’s porcelain or something.  A little weird but it works … I think.  Anyway, that’s actor Hugo Weaving, the man who played Agent Smith in those Matrix movies.  Stephen Rea (good actor) from Crying Game (remember that?) plays a detective and perennial actor John Hurt plays the bad guy who appears on a big Jumbotron and gets mad a lot and spouts off and wants V captured.  Overall, the movie’s pretty good.  It’s about time something came out that’s worth seeing.  Amen.
    
12. Kenny Rogers (or a facsimile of him) has his hair different now and it looks pretty good.  Shorter style and less pouffed, more contemporary.  Combed down in the middle.  BUT, there’s a little bit of weirdness going on in the face and it’s gotta be plastic surgery.  It’s some of the Joan Rivers syndrome approaching.  He’s been pulled up and you can see a hint of it in the eyes which look like they’re slightly squinty and have been adjusted.
    
13. . . . Water & Bridges, his new LP (CD), as we used to say.  It was advertised on TV right out of his Good Morning America appearance one day last week.  Some sales rep was smart to do that. And, of course, it’s available at Wal-Mart.
    
14. RISE UP.  They say low-rise jeans -- at least for girls/women -- are on the way out.  They’re   creeping back up.  The “fashionistas” say they don’t wear well and women complained all the time about having to constantly pull them up and often showing “plumber’s behind.”  Good God.
    
15. . . . And let this trend continue itself to men’s jeans too, thank you very much.  I’ve never seen such ridiculousness.  Men don’t wear their pants on their hips and the ones that do are too much slaves to fashion and they shouldn’t count.  We don’t care about the runways.  Levis, Gap, Seven, Lucky Brand, Diesel, get back to making blue jeans like they were originally intended.  Forget about Brokeback and “Stick ‘em up!” as they used to say in the old westerns.
    
16. “And thanks to our total dysfunctional family,” said American Idol host Ryan Seacrest one night last week to judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell at the end of one of the shows.  They do seem dysfunctional.
    
17. DOG EATS PIZZA.  That’s what they show you in that Valpak “neighborhood” coupons TV commercial.  Fido is devouring a pizza in a box on the floor and mommy lets him do it.  He’s chomping and slurping it all up.  That can’t be good for canines.  Let’s get PETA after the SOB’s.
    
18. TERI HATCHER.  There she is, a victim of childhood sexual abuse, telling her story for the first time and she’s on the cover of Vanity Fair in a sexily posed picture, clutching/wrapping a Polo sweater around the top of her body while exposing a skimpy, white Chanel bikini down below.  A suggestive pose, a serious story =  conflicting signals, when you think about the editorial content of the article and what supposedly happened to her.  She should’ve been dressed in a private school girl’s uniform.
    
19. BUTT STICKS OUT.  Antonio Banderas’s does.  In the movie poster for his new flick, Take the Lead, he’s shown in one of those take-charge/lock-step poses with his dance partner and his backside sticks out and up a bit from those tight, high-waisted gaucho-type pants he’s got on.  They’re doing the rhumba or samba or something.
    
20. . . . In the movie, he plays a former professional dancer who’s brought in to teach tough public school kids the right moves a la ballroom dancing.  Haven’t we been there before with these types of movies? 
    
21. . . . Actually, the movie looks good and so does Banderas and the kids.  So it might be an okay flick, despite the gaucho pants.
    
22. The new roofs they’re building over some Metro entrances in Washington look like the back of a giant locust or something.  They’re installing them to keep the bad weather away from the escalators and they feel that’s what’s been causing so many breakdowns. But I feel like I’m entering the world of science fiction every time I go down the steps. 
    
23. . . . Actually, the awnings have received praise from some Metro users and of course, architects.
    
24. If I hear the street musician in my neighborhood play Over the Rainbow, Somewhere My Love or She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain one more time I’ll ...
    
25. . . . Well, I’ll go crazy and the next time I pass by him I’ll stuff a tomato down the hole of his saxophone.
    
26. Tom Cruise always dresses like a cat burglar.  I think he’s taking his Mission Impossible role too seriously.  Seems whenever you see him he’s got on the tight jeans and turtleneck and a knit cap. He needs to expand his wardrobe and dress more like people do in real-life situations.
    
27. “As I approach my 88th birthday, it’s become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other    appurtenances, aren’t quite what they used to be,” said TV’s Mike Wallace about his upcoming retirement.
    
28. . . . Appurtenance:  accessory object, apparatus.  Read into it what you want.
    
29. Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s Daily Show is going to host this year’s Peabody Awards which honor distinguished achievement in broadcast journalism on TV, cable and now, the Internet.  So why put a comedian on as host?  Aren’t there some distinguished newsmen/women out there in the legitimate world of journalism who would be more respectful and representative of the profession?  I’m just sayin’. 
    
30. . . . And this:  Do we have to have Jon Stewart host everything?
    
31. I hope I don’t raid the refrigerator tonight when I do my Ambien Sleepwalk.  I need to lose some weight.
    
32. Mr. Highfalutin and the Blonde Bombshell have changed their cocktail preference on the nightclub circuit.  Sidecars are in now and they’re indulging. 
    
33. IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA.  Fidelity Investments is using the 1968 Iron Butterfly (ATCO) hit to sell retirement programs to baby boomers.  And yes, we all remember it.  The guy in the commerical asks, ‘Need a little flower power?”
    
34. . . . SIDE NOTE:  It’s been reported for years that Iron Butterfly vocalist Doug Ingle meant to sing  “In the Garden of Evil” instead of the nonsense syllables but he was too stoned to pronounce it and his tongue was numb.  So is this an urban myth?
    
35. FOR THE RECORD.  Barbara Harrison of News4 Washington did manage to reach her goal of losing 10 pounds which she daily reported for over two weeks in her Losing the Last 10 Pounds morning feature.  She took a week off to go somewhere where the sun shines and packed two pairs of white jeans:  one for the new weight and one for the old weight, in case she falls off the wagon.
    
36. A dog wore a blue Spandex body suit on TV last week as an example of what people who have allergies can do to avoid pet dander, or something.  How stupid did that look?  I felt sorry for the dog.
    
37. WEARING O’ THE GREEN.  On St. Patrick’s Day, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams started off the show’s lead story about the economy with Wall Street icon symbols on a green background.  They remembered the holiday.  It was nice and thoughtful.
    
38. JUST ASKING.  Is male anorexia really called manorexia by the medical community?
    
39. New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams’s two dogs, Jazzy and Juicy, have a nanny.  Mommy revealed this to Katie Couric last week.  And she’s written a book about her Yorkies too, called Living a Dog’s Life:  Jazzy, Juicy, and Me.  The cuteness factor is making me sick.
    
40. Stevie Wonder didn’t sound so good when he sang on American Idol two weeks ago.  There he was, seated at his big computer piano singing a cut from his latest album, A Time To Love, and he just didn’t project well.  His voice wasn’t strong.  I wanted him to stand up because he sounded all scrunched or something. 
    
41. ANAL OBSERVER.  I’m glad that Good Night, and Good Luck is now on DVD.  Why?  So I   don’t have to look at it up on every movie marquee without the comma after Good Night in the title.  I really bothered me.  Now I’m free.
    
42. THE OTHER BOSS.  For the record, Diana Ross was called The Boss too, along with Bruce Springsteen.  She was called that for obvious reasons but also because she had a song out called that (1979).  Now there’s news that an album’s worth of blues songs that were recorded when she did her Lady Sings the Blues album (from the movie of the same name about Billie Holiday and for which Ross got an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress).  They were recorded back in 1971/’72  and discovered in the Motown vaults. 
    
43. . . . It’s out now.  Called Blue.  Will be interested in hearing it. 
    
44. NBC’s Campbell Brown gets married this coming weekend.  One woman outside in the crowd on the plaza on the weekend Today show wished “our little Cammy” all the best.  Aww.
    
45. Didn’t realize this:  Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order: SVU is the daughter of Jayne Mansfield, the platinum blonde actress/sex symbol of the ‘50s who died in a car accident when Mariska was a baby.  This pointed out by New York Post columnist Liz Smith.  Mansfield was a star in her own right although many compared her to Marilyn Monroe.  (Word about the crash was that Mansfield was decapitated.)  And her father, Mickey Hargitay, who was seen in many, many tabloid-style pictures with his Hollywood star wife, was Mr. Universe in 1955 and is still living. 
    
46. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, was erroneously called Sarah Lee by a friend of owner Sally’s.  She needs to get more acquainted.
    
47. INSIDE MAN.  One of director Spike Lee’s “joints.”  Movie is about a heist at a New York City bank downtown in the Wall Street area.  The heister is Clive Owen.  Denzel Washington is the detective on the case.  Jodie Foster plays some kind of high level negotiator/lawyer.  Got good reviews.  It’s Lee’s most mainstream film but it still retains some of his personal style, such as realistic dialogue and characters, close-ups of certain things no one else would think of, creative use of the camera somewhat akin to Alfred Hitchcock and musical score flourishes in certain sections.
    
48. . . . I thought it was okay but not great.  The movie looked like it was shot on a Hollywood lot   and didn’t have the excitement of a real location.  Pacing was slow and it just wasn’t hyper   enough for me.
    
49. UH . . . Chaiyya Chaiyya Bollywood Joint by Sukhwinder Singh, Sapna Awasthi Featuring Panjabi MC on Varese Sarabande Records.  2006.  Ain’t that a mouthful?  It opens and closes the movie.  Indian bhangra-type sound.