IT’S GROWING AND MOVING LIKE THE BLOB

1. . . . The oil from that BP spill in the Gulf. It’s still spreading and the oil keeps gushing as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded on April 20. It’s been a month now.
2. . . . Offshore drilling, eruption under the sea. Greed.
3. . . . They can tap it but they can’t cap it.
4. . . . It’s like the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dike.
5. . . . They’re counting tar balls on the beach in Key West.
6. . . . It’s like the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dike.
7. . . . What does Charlie Tuna think?
8. . . . Maybe SpongeBob SquarePants can help.
9. . . . Next time use a wind farm.
10. Meet the Press has a new set. (The last time they changed the set was in 1996.) Different areas for different things: an interview table for guests, a “roundtable” area (they stole that name from ABC’s This Week With David Brinkley, who called it that years ago) and space for host David Gregory to walk around, admire historic photos and browse books on shelves. (Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.)
11. . . . Very plexiglass-ish, multi video-screened and chrome-y looking.
12. . . . ADVISORY: Gregory looks like he’s sitting in a wheelchair on the over-the-shoulder shot of him (not that there’s anything wrong with that). That’s what those chairs make the people sitting in them look like from the back. Just sayin’.
13. . . . The redesign is similar to CNN’s set revamp, which looks very spacious and slick with everything – including the floor – looking like it’s lighting up.
14. . . . The modern look is prevailing now (space ship-ish?). Gone are the days of clunky wooden sets that looked like airline terminal check-in desks.
15. MOVIE: The Break-up. A ridiculous romantic comedy (rom-com as they say now, hate that term) starring Jennifer Lopez as – are you ready for this? – Zoe, who’s too old for the part but still acts like a shy, silly, inexperienced teenager. Embarrassingly written and acted (she can’t). “Making music videos and acting are two different things, J.Lo.” Would somebody tell her that?
16. . . . PLOT: In New York City. She’s single, has had a lot of relationships, is disinterested in men at this point in her life and wants to have a baby on her own. She goes to a fertility clinic and is artificially inseminated,
17. . . . Then she finds out it took and she’s pregnant.
18. . . . It’s the happiest day of her life. It’s raining, she catches a cab.
19. . . . She gets in curb-side and a guy (Stan, played by Alex O’Laughlin, largely a TV actor who, incidentally, will be in the upcoming Hawaii Five-0 when it returns to the TV schedule) gets in on the other side. They fight over whose cab it is.
20. . . . They get acquainted.
21. . . . It’s push ‘n’ pull after that. He wants her; she’s not sure what to do. They date. How will she tell him about her pregnancy? Will it make a difference? It goes on and on and on after that.
22. . . . She has a pet store in the city; he has a farm and sells cheese at a market in town (ridiculous).
23. . . . She drives up country to visit the hard-working dude and while she’s heading down his dirt road driveway she sees him in the field on a plow with his shirt off, displaying his buff, beefcakey body. She’s so overcome that she crashes her SUV into a tree.
24. . . . It’s not funny.
25. . . . I Love Lucy she is NOT.
26. . . . Stan gets up off tractor. Zoe’s all flustered, He’s got the pecs and his jeans are ultra low-rise, pulled way down on him -- practically down to his knees -- just like Michael Phelps wears his bathing suits.
27. . . . Linda Lavin plays Zoe’s grandmother who has been dating a man, Tom Bosley (remember him from Happy Days?), for 22 years and is now 93 years old. Both stars have really aged, especially Bosley. I was shocked.
28. . . . A really dumb movie that I was conned into seeing. I almost walked out several times. Every scene is contrived and totally not believable, just like Lopez’s acting. She oughta be laughed off the planet.
29. When do you think singer Rihanna might tone it down a little? Every time you see her she’s sporting some overly revealing outfit, recently dressed in a “sexy lace number,” to quote the New York Post, that she wore while shooting a music video for her new single, “Te Amo,” at a castle outside Paris.
30. . . . She trots off the set still in costume, not covering up, and just walks down the street, hoping someone will snap her picture and they do.
31. . . . She’s always posing for the camera and constantly throwing herself at you, very sexually suggestive all the time.
32. . . . Hasn’t she had her share of 15 minutes of fame ?
33. JUST LEARNED. The Dr in Dr Pepper doesn’t have a period after the Dr because back in the 50s when the logo was redesigned (the soft drink has been around since 1885, believe it or not) the text in the logo was slanted and the period symbol came out looking like “Di:” -- so they removed it. Learn something new every day.
34. Molly Ringworm … er, Ringwald, has a book out called Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family and Finding the Perfect Lipstick (how cute). It’s a self-help book by the former teen star of many of the John Hughes-directed movies (Pretty in Pink, 16 Candles, The Breakfast Club) of the 80s.
35. . . . She’s grown up, she looks good, is 42 now and has a family. The years go by.
36. CAN I SAY ‘SHI * * Y’ NOW? Senators and bank execs do (Goldman Sachs). The word was used in e-mail documents that were read by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) during a 10-hour hearing on Capitol Hill a couple of weeks ago that put the global investment firm’s execs on the grill for profiting from the financial crisis.
37. . . . Levin repeated the term 12 times, I guess, for effect.
38. . . . And remember when Vice President Joe Biden said “Big fu * * ing deal” in President Obama’s ear when he introduced the chief executive after the passage of the health-care bill and it was picked up on a microphone a little while back?
39. . . . Words to live by. Good examples for our youth.
40. COMPLAINT. HD is all well and good but I think it squeezes and stretches the picture on a regular TV so if all your TVs aren’t Hi-Def then things look distorted. I’m sorry but I don’t have Hi-Def in every room. Does someone want to buy it for me?
41. . . . And while I’m at it, I think 3-D TV is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What, am I gonna put on those dumb glasses every time I watch a TV show? People do more than one thing while watching the tube now so if they get 3-D TV they’ll have to put on and take off the glasses every other minute.
42. . . . Somebody tell Samsung or Sony or whoever to hire some more nerds and figure out another way to do it.
43. . . . Or dump the concept entirely, sounds idiotic anyway.
44. . . . They’re doing 3-D now just for the hell of it and just to charge people more for it at the movies. Every flick that comes out doesn’t have to be in 3-D.
45. JUST ASKING. The commercials say Campbell’s Tomato Soup has less salt and instead has sea salt in it. So is sea salt less salty? Explain that one to me.
46. ABS. As if a 6-pack wasn’t hard enough to get, those infomercial fitness gurus are now talking about 8-pack abs. How much work do I have to do to get them?
47. . . . Can I get ‘em with one of those Contour Ab Workout belts while I’m sitting down watching TV on the couch?
48. . . . All those people in those TV ads claim they got theirs by just lounging around and doing no work, letting the belt do it all. I want that.
49. SURPRISED . . . At Winona Ryder in the Hallmark Hall of Fame’s When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story that was on a while back. She played the role (of the suffering wife) well in the period-piece movie about the wife of the man (Bill Wilson, played by Barry Pepper) who started Alcoholics Anonymous. She, in turn, started Al-Anon, the support organization for spouses and friends of alcoholics.
50. . . . She was so good I didn’t think once about her real-life shoplifting days.
51. . . . Ryder and Pepper played it believably and the story was crafted without too much melodrama.
52. Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M., ) has facial hair again, the last time I looked. It’s a mustache and beard coming around the mouth (Van dyke-ish looking) and down the chinny, chin chin and branching up to his sideburns.
53. . . . I can’t keep up with his personas. One minute he’s clean-shaven and the next he looks like a bum who can’t afford a razor.
54. Hanalie, dog in the neighborhood, was excited about the Preakness. (She loves horses and likes to chase ‘em around down in horse country in Virginny.) Owner Sally went to the race – minus the dog -- took a bus up to Baltimore and enjoyed all the excitement, including tossing back a few too many Black-Eyed Susans.
55. OBSERVED. In Washington, D.C., a driver at a traffic light noticed a woman picking up after her dog went to the bathroom (#2) and then wiping its fanny with a paper towel. The observer wrote into Washington Post Metro columnist John Kelly’s online chat that it was “perhaps one of the more disturbing things I’ve seen in in this town.”
56. . . . It was a bit anal, I’d say. Ha Ha Ha.
57. I’VE HAD IT WITH . . . Having to stand up on the Metro when I get off work. When the train pulls into the station it’s rush hour and you can never get a seat, that’s natural. But what gets me is that nobody ever seems to get off in the city; they ride it out in their seats all the way to suburbia; they never get up.
58. . . . They look smug in their seats.
59. . . . Those of us who live in the city can never sit down and I’m sick of it. That Metro was made for city people who don’t drive cars to work.
60. . . . They oughta make a law that says suburban people who catch the train have to stand up until the city folk get off, then they can take a seat.
61. . . . That’s what I have to say about it, so there.
62. Susan Boyle, the British woman with the great voice who won the Britain’s Got Talent TV contest last year (“I Dreamed a Dream”) is writing a book to be called “The Woman I Was Born to Be.”, Coming out in England this fall.
63. . . . She said in a statement to the BBC that she was writing it to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover. “When I strutted onto the stage for that audition, I was a scared wee lassie, still grieving for my mother , not caring how I looked. I think I’ve grown up a lot in the last year, become more of a lady, and I’m not so frightened anymore.”
64. . . . Good, now shut up and just sing. We’re not interested in your personal life.
65. Tiger Woods talks like an automaton., no emotion. That’s how he sounded to me a couple weeks ago when he was talking about a “bulging disk” in his neck that was bothering him and caused him to withdraw from the Players Championship in Florida.
66. . . . Some have speculated that he might have gotten the injury in that car accident he was in when his wife was chasing him out of the house.
67. . . . But a doctor quoted in the story I read (orthopedic surgeon Michael Schafer ) said it’s pretty common in golf and the constant swinging action could lead to such an injury.
68. . . . Maybe he got it from craning his neck to see if there were any hot babes on the green.
69. Sally Field has a new Boniva commercial. Yes, she’s walked off the pier she’s been on (dangerously throwing her dog a Frisbee) and now she’s inside the house making salad for two women friends in the kitchen (much like she does as Nora Walker on Brothers & Sisters).
70. . . . “I’ve got this one body and this one life so I wanted to stop my bone loss but I did more than that. I reversed it with Boniva.”
71. . . . Is she believable in those commercials? I think she is but others can’t stand her.
72. . . . Maybe they can’t stand her sweetness level. It is pretty high.
73. N.Y. Exec reports that at the White House Correspondents Association dinner in early May the hunger for rubbing elbows with the big Hollywood names seemed to overwhelm the journalists so much that it caused multiple traffic jams all over the International Ballroom and waiters were seen pushing people out of the way so they could get through and carry the trays to the tables.
74. . . . The whole affair has gotten out of control, has become a total lovefest and has nothing to do with reporting or journalism anymore, it seems.
75. . . . It’s pathetic to see newsmen and women gussy up to the likes of Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber.
76. Last week when President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met at the White House and talked about the war and the Taliban, all I could think of was the lyrics to a (modified) version of The Banana Boat Song because when Obama said the word Taliban – he pronounces it like ”tal – EE – bahn” -- it caused me to sing, “Come Mr. Taliban, tally me banana …
77. . . . “Daylight come and me wan’ go home.”
78. MOVIE: Robin Hood. Most all of the critics didn’t seem to like it. I saw it and I did like it. It’s two and a half hours long and that initially turned me off but the movie didn’t drag for me: there’s constant action and it’s filmed well by director Ridley Scott.
79. . . . Russell Crowe is Hood (actually Robin Longstride) and Cate Blanchett plays Marion Loxley. The reviewers said they had no chemistry. I disagree. I thought they were a bit sexy together.
80. . . . There’s a big cast of others, huge battle scenes, magnificent scenery, villages pillaged, conflagrations, the whole nine yards.
81. . . . This movie is not like the other Robin Hoods that have been made; it’s actually what they call a prequel, so if you want to see Robin Hood and his Merry Men stealing from the rich and giving to the poor and frolicking around Sherwood Forest in green tights, you’ll have to wait for the next installment.
82. . . . “Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men. Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.”
83. Mr Big Stuff said that Laura Bush was out in McLean, Va., one day last week signing books (her new one, Spoken From the Heart) at Books-A-Million, which seemed to him “a bit down market” for the former first lady.
84. . . . It is known as an online and discount book store. But she’s made up for it by making the Today show and Larry King. Today’s Amy Robach even had Mrs. Bush read a passage from it, how quaint.
85. . . . That show’s in bed with everybody.
86. UH . . . Breakfast in Bed – Dusty Springfield, on Atlantic, 1969, from her classic Dusty in Memphis album.

rocci@roccifisch.com

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