THE CHRISTMAS RUSH IS ON

1. . . . Attention Kmart shoppers! (They don't say that anymore, do they?)
2. Anybody have hog maws for Thanksgiving? (Maw: the mouth, throat or stomach of a voracious carnivore.)
3. They've really driven that AFLAC duck into the ground. Once it was funny-now, with so much repetition of the ads, it's cloying. Can't leave a good thing alone.
4. Is Ashleigh Banford of MSNBC an "infobabe?" Canadian Press calls her that. And they also report that those glasses she wears are "$400 Lafont titanium eyeglass frames." Hmm ...
5. Garth Brooks just had the second of three live concerts in a short span. This time he was on the USS Enterprise. Could he pack himself into a smaller pair of jeans? How does he breathe down there? And his waist is cinched in like Oprah's was when she lost all that weight back in the day. Looks unnatural.
6. Chickenshit's in the dictionary.
7. CORRECTION: Two columns ago I said that al Jazeera, the Afghan satellite television network, was in Afghanistan. WRONG: It's in Qatar. Does it make any difference?
8. UNBELIEVABLE. Bobby Kennedy, if he had lived, would have been 76 this year.
9. A friend of mine was having a tofurkey for Thanksgiving this year. He says they taste pretty good. I've heard everything now.
10. Everytime I see a bus I think of that supersized crocodile they found over in Africa which they said was that long (40 feet), plus he had a head six-feet long. How many handbags would he make?
11. Why is Kevin Spacey always singing now? First at Madison Square Garden last month for a combo New York/John Lennon concert and last Sunday in London at a benefit to raise money for victims of terrorist attacks. Is he any good?
12. "Hunting or killing Osama ..." was how one cable network referred to the man/killer. Sounds like a sport. And he is a cave dweller, like a rat.
13. MSNBC's Suzanne Malveaux looks like she's had a makeover. Much more presentable.
14. Good Morning America spells AMERICA now in bigger letters than Good Morning. Guess that makes a statement. Looks good.
15. Sheryl Crow sang Good Morning Heartache with Tony Bennett outside in the plaza on Today this week. She's everywhere. Every TV show, everybody's album, singing with everybody.
16. Britney Spears' assets are practically spilling off her on the cover of Rolling Stone.
17. . . . And Gwyneth Paltrow, of all people, is clutching her perfectly round ones on the cover of Talk magazine. Seems shameless.
18. "I am invincible," says an ad for the relatively new Oxygen cable network. That's from Helen Reddy's I Am Woman back in 1972.
19. Some man in the street (MOS) from Dallas told Peter Jennings, on his west/southwestern tour of the U.S. for ABC's World News Tonight, "Nobody likes you." They kept that in the piece. Brave.
20. Kid Rock's new album's called Cocky and in the ads for it-and maybe the CD cover-he or somebody's grabbing himself in a very prominently blatant pose, if you know what I mean. He's got red pants on, white T-shirt and a belt with what looks like an American flag buckle.
21. British bird experts are concerned about children who now want owls like Harry Potter has, according to USA TODAY. They're called snowy owls and are rare Arctic birds that cost between $200 and $300. Not suitable as house pets, say experts. So go find something else you want kid.
22. GOOD MOVIE/GOOD SOUNDTRACK: Amelie. A french film about an eccentric young woman who causes things to happen in peoples' lives. Not sorcery weird stuff though, but common everyday things. Directed brilliantly by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And the music is very typical French flavor with lots of accordion. Movie's got a buzz and is opening wider as a result.
23. Madonna's latest album, Greatest Hits Volume 2 (GHV2) is a good get and shows the singer's versatility. (The GHV2 title is in the center of a black and white series of lines radiating outward which resembles the old Epic Records label, for those of us who remember. )
24. Those Cool Mint Listerine PocketPaks are a little weird in that the oral care strips melt in your mouth and you wonder if you should've taken one. They look like thin bluish paper. Actually they're pretty good.
25. Brad Pitt's not afraid of showing off his chest down to below the belly button on the cover of Vanity Fair. That's the thing now with not just women but men too: The T-shirt not quite pulled down to meet the pants showing the navel and below, and exposed panty lines under wet white jeans or something. Very girl model-ish.
26. Shakira shakes her body a lot. She's like a modern belly dancer. (Twenty-four year-old pop star from Colombia. New album, Laundry Service, is her first English language release.)
27. Michael Jackson's TV special drew 26 million viewers and won its timeslot. There were reports from People magazine that he had darkened his skin somehow for the show. To me it looked pretty white as normal.
28. So Geraldo's war reporting over there in Afghanistan. Who cares?
29. DRUMMER DIED. David "Panama" Francis, 82, after a stroke. His career spanned 7 decades and his drum playing can be heard on Buddy Holly's Peggy Sue, The Four Season's Big Girls Don't Cry, The Platters' Great Pretender, Bobby Darin's Splish Splash, Neil Sedaka's Calendar Girl and many more. What a resume.
30. SPOTTED: Former Good Morning Washington/News7 anchorwoman Carol Costello ... on CNN's Headline News. She seemed the same, maybe with just a tad too much enthusiasm and emphasis, but good. So she's gone big time, if you want to call it that.
31. FYI. India has a time zone that's 45 minutes ahead of Eastern.
32. Mr. Big Stuff asks this: "Are afghan hounds back in vogue now?"
33. I get confused: Emeril Lagasse, Andre Agassi ...
34. Barry Manilow reminds me of Barbara Walters. Don't know why.
35. GUNG HO. They're showing 8 a.m. features of Harry Potter at theaters and people are going.
36. UH . . . People Get Ready-The Impressions on ABC-Paramount, from 1965. Curtis Mayfield wrote and produced it.

rocci@roccifisch.com

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