Rocci Fisch

October 5, 2006

TWO BOBS

. . . It’s easier for me to say Bob Woodruff than Bob Woodward. (Maybe something about the two ‘w’s” in Woodward. )
. . . So, in circles, when I talk about Bob Woodward’s new scandal book about the Bush administration and Iraq (State of Denial), I mistakenly say Woodruff, as in the former ABC World News Tonight anchor who was injured in Iraq, and I’m corrected by know-it-alls.
. . . So I come off as ill-informed and people are surprised and taken aback because I work in the news business.
Meredith Vieira is definitely different from Katie Couric. She’s generally more serious. But Katie’s gotten more serious now that she’s anchor of The CBS Evening News. Somehow, for me, it doesn’t fit. I’d rather see her being looser on the Today show.
. . . Also, a friend of mine questions the reasonability of Couric leaning against the anchor desk out in front of it rather than remaining sitting down, for the last segment of the program. “CBS pays her so much they can’t afford a chair?” asks a concerned friend of mine out in the hinterlands.
. . . And would a good senior producer please tell Ms. Couric that each time she introduces a news piece in the show, she doesn’t have to look (somewhat abruptly) down in front of her at the monitor -- if there’s one there. That’s old school. Anchors don’t have to do that anymore. Just look gently to the side or keep looking straight ahead at the camera. That’s all ya gotta do now.
THE BLACK DAHLIA. Director Brian DePalma’s look at the famous 1947 unsolved murder of a young Hollywood wannabe starlet (Elizabeth Short). Based on James Ellroy’s novel about two LA cops, played by Josh Hartnett (simply eye candy and low acting ability) and Aaron Eckhart who investigate. Scarlett Johansson plays a love interest and there’s a little triangle thing going on between her and the aforementioned guys. And Hilary Swank’s in it. She plays a swanky rich girl look-alike of the murder victim. Everybody smokes cigarettes like chimneys in the movie and Scarlett always puts hers in a holder (very affected). The whole movie’s much too convoluted and goes on and on. It’s a period piece done in a ‘40s style movie-making way but the whole thing looks like it was done on the backlot of Universal Studios. Unrealistic. So there.
The new Bachelor (ABC) is a real life prince. Prince Lorenzo Borghese. The Bachelor Rome – not in Rome – has already been taped and his eminence appeared on GMA on Monday to plug. He seemed pretty slick.
. . . Actually the Prince was born in Milan and lived in Rome and outside Paris before moving to the states when he was five. So he sounds privileged.
. . . When the 25 girls arrive by limousine, one-by-one, they step out of the car and walk up to greet the awaiting prince and all you hear is crunch, crunch, crunch on the driveway cobblestones as each wannabe steps up to the bat. It was distracting. It almost sounded like someone was eating cereal before the milk makes everything soggy. Or they were stepping on maracas or something.
. . . That shoulda been rethought. Fire somebody.
Robin Williams is on the cover of AARP Magazine, (Guess I’m showing my age) He’s sitting on a child’s tricycle with his sports gear on, smiling. Isn’t he funny.
IS ‘IM’ CASE SENSITIVE? That is, is the AOL Instant Messenger service that was used by Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to send messages “with references to sexual acts and body parts” to a young Capitol Hill page … does it matter whether letters of the alphabet are in lower or upper case?
. . . I ask because The Washington Post listed his IM “screen name” as Maf54 but The New York Times listed it as MAF54. Just asking.
People are still wearing flip-flops and it’s just not right. It’s fall going into winter. Feet should be covered now.
They say the Mona Lisa was pregnant. Newsweek reports that infrared photography leads scholars to think that Leonardo da Vinci painted the masterpiece with a “gauzy garment over the Mona Lisa dress” and that that was the fashion for expectant mothers in 16th century Italy. Hmmm.
From a side shot photo I saw of him it looks like British Prime Minister Tony Blair has nice, straight choppers (could be whiter) with just the slightest hint of an overbite on the top.
. . . Good thing it’s not on the bottom like it is on some of those bulldogs.
Now they’ve got Men’s Rogaine Foam (no drip, aerosol) that they’ve advertising on TV. The guy in the commercial doesn’t look like he’s got any hair loss. They show him putting it on at the crown of his head but there seems to be plenty of hair there. What's he got to worry about? I wanna see a real bald spot and someone in those commercials that really needs the product. So misleading.
RACY PIX. That’s what Scarlett Johansson did a series of as Esquire magazine’s Sexiest Woman Alive for its November edition. It’s a bra and panty photo spread. Nice for the career, I guess.
. . . And last weekend news woman Campbell Brown of the Today show did segments on bras and picked out the best types for audience members who willingly participated.
. . . So bras are out in the open, coming out of the closet, so to speak.
A report in the New York Post’s Page Six gossip section says that Star Jones – remember her? – and her husband, Al Reynolds, are down in Miami to “escape from the pressure of New York.” She’s supposedly flying back and forth to LA for potential TV deals and he’s working on his autobiography. Autobiography? Him? What’s he got to write about?
They oughta show that movie Witness (about a young Amish boy who is the sole witness to a murder, starring Kelly McGillis and Harrison Ford, 1985) on TV now. It would be a ratings grabber, what with the recent news about the shootings in Pennsylvania.
. . . Sorry to be so crass and commercial.
Even though it’s called World News with Charles Gibson the anchorman calls himself Charlie when he says goodnight at the end of the show.
I MISS . . . The way they used to do the TV listings on Saturday for Saturday and Sunday in The Washington Post. I pay attention to who’s on all the different shows, especially the Sunday talk shows, and they used to have all the guests listed and it was nice to see who was coming up. So now I have to go elsewhere for it.
. . . Always changing something.
WATCH OUT! Dateline NBC’s bringing back To Catch a Predator. It’s “All New,” meaning, I guess, that they’ve caught a fresh batch of pedophiles. That’s Chris Hansen’s claim to fame: Bushwhack TV.
GOOD IDEA. The other night on The CBS Evening News’s freeSpeech segment they had on a former page talking about how much he valued the program and that he’d do it again in spite of the Mark Foley incident. So I guess the purpose was to give hope and inspiration to the future generation of gofers.
Joan Rivers thinks Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s baby Suri looks Asian. Someone else thought it looked like a Marie Osmond doll and someone else thought it looked like she had a wig on that was slightly askew.
A co-worker of mine thought Natalie Morales was Maria Shriver on the Today show the other day. They do resemble each other and Maria did used to sub on the show before she gave up her TV career for Mr. Schwarzenegger. Natalie looks like a young Maria. (We all get old.)
SINGING A SONG WITH THE WIRES CROSSED: “Crosby, Stills, rosemary and thyme …”
OLD NEWS/FYI: Back in August, in a Sunday New York Times Q&A with Whoopi Goldberg the comedian revealed how she got her first name, telling interviewer Deborah Solomon that when “performing on stage you never really have time to go into the bathroom and close the door. So if you get a little gassy, you’ve got to let it go. So people used to say to me, ‘You are like a whoopee cushion.’ And that’s where the name came from.”
. . . So think about that everytime you see her.
. . . And speaking of The New York Times, when does that paper shrink? They’re planning to reduce the size to save printing costs.
. . . Then will it be thicker? Will they reduce the size of the print so that it’s indecipherable?
From the CURMUDGEON’S CORNER. A fellow “mudge” had this to say about that Gieco commercial featuring Cuhi Cuhi Charo: “For crissakes, hasn’t she made enough money off that TV commercial yet so I don’t have to see her for another 20 years!”
I think I heard Anderson Cooper pronounce New Orleans, N’awlins (in a serious way) on the air some weeks back. That’s how the locals say it down there. He’s from up north; they don’t pronounce it like that up here.
. . . North to Alaska – Johnny Horton, on Columbia, 1960. He’s the man who also did The Battle of New Orleans (1959)