| November 16, 2005 |
CONDOLEEZZA WORE A BULLET-PROOF VEST
- . . . Under her clothes, said reports. On her Middle East tour. That must've cramped her style. But you couldn't tell in the video. Maybe they custom-made a slimmer version for Condi. She was in Iraq-Mosul-over the weekend on an unannounced trip to encourage the Sunnis to vote next month. (I thought they already had elections over there. How many votes does it take? Then she went to Bahrain.
- . . . Bahrain? That's where Michael Jackson lives now. Wonder if she visited him or maybe brought him a housewarming gift.
- THEY TOOK THE GUN RIGHT OUT OF HIS HAND. Yep, that's what they did to Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's movie poster for his film, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. People protested to Paramount that the rapper carrying a gun in the picture promoted violence. In the poster, Fiddy has his back to the camera with a gun in his left hand and a mike (microphone) in his right. Now he's just got the mike in his right and the left hand is hanging down-empty.
- . . . And the movie has been pulled from a multiplex in Homestead, Pa., where a 30-year-old man was killed in a fight. It won't be showing there until an investigation is over. The suspicion is that the movie about the rapper may have incited things.
- UPDATE. I saw some other footage from the upcoming (December) King Kong movie and it looked pretty good and the huge poster that sits inside the movie lobbies looks great. So I hope things come out fine in the end.
- RITA COSBY WENT TO A WHOREHOUSE. Well, she did. She visited Nevada's Moonlite Bunny Ranch for her MSNBC show Live & Direct last Thursday for a behind-the-scenes look at the establishment's "working girls." What these show won't do for ratings.
- . . . Nice credential for the resume reel.
- Anderson Cooper and the CNN logo appear on a Samsung video phone in an ad for their entertainment-on-demand campaign. He's everywhere. He's hot. He even replaced Regis on Regis and Kathy Lee one day last week.
- Ira Joe Fisher, the weatherman on CBS's Saturday Early Show, wrote NOVEMBERRR to emphasize the chilling temperatures on his plexiglass map which he writes backwards on because he's behind it. He's been doing that for ages and he makes it seem effortless. Sometimes he draws funny pictures too.
- FATS IS BACK. It's great to hear Fats Domino in that Kohl's Christmas ad. They use his Whole Lotta Loving (1958, Imperial) in it while everybody's tossing wrapped Christmas boxes around.
- Is that MSNBC's Chris Jansing in CBS's Close to Home legal drama? Lots of resemblance to Jennifer Finnigan's Annabeth Chase character. Both intense personalities, it seems.
- FINAL WORDS: "You rot in hell, you son of a b_ _ _ _h," said Gary Sinise's Detective Mac Taylor character to a serial killer at the end of a two-part CSI: Miami and NY episode. He was mad.
- Matt Lauer was in Innsbruck, Austria one day last week for part of his Where in the World Is Today show segment. He had sunglasses on, that's no surprise. Anyway, he was outside and had all these people lined up in a foreign country with him with signs and stuff and asking them questions. Most of them were Americans, handpicked, I'm sure. He practically duplicated what one sees on the show outside the New York studios on Rockefeller Plaza everyday. So I guess the show likes to replicate itself everywhere it goes.
- Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton's former press secretary, has lost a lot of weight. He looks pretty good. He's back on TV, talking heading.
- FYI. The pulp-fiction-style book cover illustration for New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's book was done by artist Owen Smith. This mentioned by author Kathryn Harrison in her review of the Dowd book, "Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide. " (It's not a good one.) His work looks film nourish and often depicts urban landscapes. He's designed for magazines, the New York subway system and the San Francisco Opera.
- ZIP CAR/FLEXCAR TAKE PARKING SPACES. What's that all about? Everywhere you look, in D.C. and Virginia and maybe other places, the rent-by-the-day or hour companies have garnered valuable parking spaces-usually two, at least-in busy areas to park their vehicles, with authoritative signs on tall orange polls denoting that the spaces are for car sharing, the new thing. So I guess they're helping solve a problem, caring about traffic congestion or something. What they're doing is taking away parking spaces from the people who need them. How much money is changing hands for this? We wanna know!
- CLEAN UP ACT. The stench emanating from the men's room at a fast food restaurant that I go to every morning for coffee is enough to knock you over. It's absolutely breathtaking. Who died in there?
- CJ, a new Random Thoughts character who will make periodic stops here, gave us an update on her TV Guide rant about the newly revamped publication: "I didn't renew my subscription and they offered me a free eight-week trial of their new format. I threw the offer away. Don't want it no way, no how." Thank you.
- Is it okay to see Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall's dark roots? Should her bleach job be better, considering who she is?
- Rock 'n' Roller Huey Lewis is now on Broadway in Chicago. He did a number, All I Care About, from the play on CBS's Early Show a week or so ago and he was good, dressed in a tuxedo with all the lovely dancing girls waving feathers around him. That guy knows how to live. So he's doing alright, I guess.
- "WOLF, YOU'RE SUCH AN ANIMAL," said Becky Allen, a guest, talking to CNN's Kyra Phillips on Live From the other day about New Orleans's people and customs when Phillips told her that coming up next would be Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room. Phillips asked her to say hello to the serious anchorman and when she said the animal thing, Wolf just politely smiled and did not take part in any two-way talk with the colorful local. He stayed away from it, maintained his professional demeanor. He didn't stoop. (Unfriendly?)
- DIFFERENT MODEL. Mr. Big Stuff was eating some Junior Mints-but they didn't look like the regular ones. The ones he had were white on the outside and dark inside. They're a limited edition of the popular candy a lot of people buy at the movies. Inside Outs is what they're called but Stuff calls them Reverses.
- JUST ASKING. When bosses or for that matter, regular worker bees, plan to be out of the office for whatever reason (vacation, etc.) they often nowadays leave an e-mail message that states that they're out. Some say in the message that they plan to check e-mail and give reachable numbers and others say they won't be checking e-mail and leave no numbers. So who is the more important person? Do you get extra credit for checking e-mail and being reachable on your own time?
- JARHEAD. Decent movie about the first gulf war, based on ex-Marine Anthony Swofford's book and experiences. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Swoff. Jamie Foxx is in it as a rock-hard sargeant who puts his crew through training hell. Peter Sarsgaard plays Swoff's buddy Troy and he is really miscast. This is a major mistake with the film. He just is not believable being a Marine. It takes away from the film. Big thing in this war movie is that all the guys are ready to roll but all they do is play war and are never really in it. Swoff's disappointed because he never gets to fire his gun. So they all just go through the motions but there's no there there for them.
- DERAILED. Disposable, says Mr. Highfalutin. I believe him on that one.
- . . . Jennifer Aniston, who's in Derailed, poses for GQ in its annual Man of the Year issue as the magazine's first Woman of the Year. There she is, in one of the photos, squatted down on a bed with cutoff jean shorts and nothing else on, posing sideways for the camera with hair blowing and her arms covering her chest. Where did the you-know-whats go?
- . . . Boy, she's doing a lot for her career lately.
- Should I buy an Ionic Breeze silent air filter for Christmas for someone I care about? They say they emit some chemical.
- Sue Johanson signed off on her Oxygen cable TV show Talk Sex the other night by giving condom advice that a Jenny from Ohio sent in: "Dress up the bone or you'll be all alone."
- THE LATEST: Eyelash extensions. They're doing it in salons and boutiques. According to a Los Angeles Times article, about two dozen individual fake eyelashes are glued onto each eyelid, one by one. They last four to six weeks. And yes, it's expensive ($45-250).
- A USELESS OVERHEAR. Some guy with headphones on and a BlackBerry in his hand got in the elevator the other day and announced that they just invented a soundproof microphone. "What the H is that for?" I asked. "It's for karaoke," he said. I said, calling on my many years of radio and TV production, "It's very directional then." And he said, "Yeah, so you don't get the background noise of where you're at."
- Looks like Sen. Bill Frist (R. Tenn.) has lightened his hair and sports a shorter haircut for a younger look. He was on the Today show with that ham-ham-hammering going on behind him that Habitat For Humanity was doing, building homes for the Katrina victims. He had on a crew-neck sweater with a sports shirt on underneath and he just looked like a young, vital lawmaker.
- GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! That's what NBC4 anchor Jim Vance practically hollered when reporter Wendy Rieger finished her story about the quarter life crisis we've been hearing about that young people get in their mid-20s. They feel angst about life choices or something like that. Anyway he said if a kid complained about that to him he'd tell him, "Get out of my house. He kept repeating the rant and it even spilled over when he intro-ed weatherman Bob Ryan. It was a bit much. Wendy and Maureen Gentzler (co-anchor) and Bob just let him go on. They just had to put up with it.
- UH . . . Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car-Billy Ocean, on Jive, 1988. Whatever happened to him. That guy made some good records.
