Honestly, if you like TV/radio and comedy and baseball all mixed together and don’t read Ken Levine’s blog, you’re really missing out. CHEERS. MASH, WINGS, THE SIMPSONS, BECKER. Just to name a few. It’s great to call him an MOT. Talent is, IMO, part nature, part nurture and part “getting it.” He seems to get it.
(He capitalizes TV show names so I did. Unsure why, though.)
Actions and words have consequences. Good to remember that:
Just one week after Mel Gibson’s longtime agent Ed Limato passed away, his agency William Morris Endeavor has confirmed that the controversial actor is no longer a client.
Interesting you-can’t-say-that-on-television (or maybe you can) moment: News orgs still write, “the n-word,” referring to, well, the “n-word” but have no trouble printing that one word Gibson slung at the mother of his latest child was “cunt.” And they spelled it out.
There’s been much discussion as to whether or not Fox ‘news’ is news. One measure: according to candidates, it’s a fund-raising platform:
Sharron Angle: [About appearing on other-than-Fox-news programs] Well, in that audience will they let me say I need $25 dollars from a million people go to Sharron Angle.com send money? Will they let me say that?
No, they and other stations won’t let you do that, Sharron, because it’s against the law. They’re NEWS channels. (Most of them.)
First they coined “pro-life” when it meant “anti-choice.” Then they decided anyone who questioned President W was “unpatriotic” but call President O a “nazi.” How long will it take for this absurdity to catch on in the media (who really is the group that mints the coinage)?
Hannity wasted no time distorting, for the sake of demonizing, protesters who are against Arizona’s new immigration law. He said, “Pro Illegal Immigration rallies have consumed the streets of Phoenix in recent days.”
Reviews are in: Sarah Palin may be headed to TV news but this show (Real American Stories) isn’t helping her. 
Meanwhile, Palin apparently owns Alaska (working title: “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”) for the Discovery Channel, which we have suddenly stopped watching because, as President Reagan advised, we let our feet be our vote.
Davey Crockett (actor Fess Parker) passed away at age 85. I bet he was eaten by a ‘bar cause he’s King of the Wild Frontier. (If you know the song, then I know how old you are. As old as I am.)
Update: My info appears to be accurate. And I get a nod from JR. Do I expect that the award will be reduced? Sure. That others are astounded we have alienation of affection suits in NC? Of course. But hey! I had it first! (am not a journalist or reporter; this was a first).
Update 2: I know both Allan Shackelford and Cindy Shackelford – they are acquaintances from many years ago. I don’t think I’ve spoken to either of them in about 20 years. My interest in this was the amount of the award and the type of suit. I am sad for pain this has caused the family and feel like hugging my kids very tightly right now.
Unconfirmed. I hear that the largest alienation of affection lawsuit ever was concluded today in Greensboro. Rumor is that it’s in the $9M range. Remember, this is unconfirmed and this post is subject to editing where applicable as more facts come to light. I understand that, if true, the award could be reduced and lots of other legal stuff. My big-city attorneys are surprised a case like this could ever happen (anymore). Almost an anachronism. Or antique. Or something. But it’s still a lot of money.
John Robinson tweeted of a decision reached to use the word “masturbating” in a printed and online story in the N&R; a valuable discussion about the meaning of words versus the charged meaning (sometimes called denotation and connotation). Glad he had the discussion. Glad he made the right decision. Use the word when it has the right meaning.
Jerry Seinfeld took it a step further. Continuing to promote “The Marriage Ref” by simply being Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian joined Seth Meyers last night for the segment “Really!?! With Seth And Jerry.” Seinfeld took on the role originated by Amy Poehler as he and Meyers laid into Eric Massa. Asked Seinfeld: “Why do I have the feeling that Massa massages were followed by Massa-bations?”
CNN’s breaking news alerts (see image) are quasi ridiculous. Why is there no link to read the story?
Outrageous comments of 2009. Some of my favorites:
And good will toward men everywhere.
Frank Rich, as always, hits the nail:
If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).
Garrison Keillor in the Baltimore Sun. I guess it’s not peace on earth and good will to men if they’re Jewish songwriters. I haven’t (till now) met anyone angry with “White Christmas.” I bet he hates “God Bless America,” too. Someone buy Keillor a ticket back to the lake, please.
Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t. Christmas is a Christian holiday – if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. [..] but don’t mess with the Messiah.
Personally, I find it amusing that he uses a great Yiddish word to trash Jewish song writers of American Christmas traditional and much loved songs.
Makes you really respect ‘journalists‘ especially at the Enquirer.
Mr. Woods had cut an unusual deal with American Media Inc., the owner of both Men’s Fitness magazine and the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper. Mr. Woods agreed to the cover shot and photo spread in Men’s Fitness, whose circulation of about 700,000 per issue is less than half of Golf Digest’s nearly 1.7 million, in return for the National Enquirer squelching a story and photographs purportedly showing Mr. Woods in a liaison with a woman who wasn’t his wife, according to people directly involved in the arrangement.
Raise your hand if you did not have sex with Tiger.
This video shows the winner of “Ukraine’s Got Talent”, Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.
The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000.
She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated. It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears. She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.
This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.
In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.
The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.
