Archive for Entertainment
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Ben Affleck has been disappointing.
I look at Affleck, who has a new film coming out soon—a movie that he directed, wrote, and stars in—and I can’t help but think that he could have been so much more.
It’s been 13 years, believe it or not, since the 38-year-old Affleck burst onto the scene in Good Will Hunting, a film he co-wrote and co-starred in with Matt Damon about a math wiz who needs guidance.
The movie introduced us to Affleck, a nice-looking, well-spoken young man who looked to be the next big box office male lead. Co-star Damon seemed a tad too nerdy looking to assume that mantle.
But something happened on the way to stardom for Affleck. He made a lot of so-so movies; some were downright awful.
He could have been so much more.
There were some decent flicks: Armageddon, Shakespeare in Love, Boiler Room. But they weren’t blockbusters, and they weren’t yesterday. We’re talking about a decade ago.
Instead, there’s been Changing Lanes, Gigli, Jersey Girl, Surviving Christmas, and it hasn’t been so much what Affleck has done, it’s been what he hasn’t — which has become the matinee idol that so many of us thought he was destined to be.
He’s done “Saturday Night Live” many times and he’s poked fun at his failed relationship with Jennifer Lopez and he’s not had a bad career—just not one that reached its potential. My opinion.
So here comes The Town, slated for a September 17 release, in which Affleck plays a career bank robber who starts to grow a conscience, while at the same time trying to elude the FBI.
Affleck is the biggest name in the cast, though fellow players like Jeremy Renner and Jon Hamm are probably recognizable by face.
A movie star’s career—and it’s often different than an actor’s, because there can be a distinct difference between actor and star—is at the mercy of variables outside the control of the player.
Script selection, though, is where the player has to be accountable. No one held a gun to Affleck’s head and ordered him to do Surviving Christmas.
But Affleck is only 38. He can still turn things around. Maybe The Town is the vehicle that will help him to do that. We’ll see.
I look at Ben Affleck and I don’t see failure. I just don’t see what I thought I’d be seeing, when he arrived on the scene in the late-1990s.
It’s been an uneven career, where I thought he was destined for Burt Reynolds or Chevy Chase or George Clooney-like box office power.
But he’s only 38. It’s far from over.
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Thirty-six years ago, the worst song of all time reached #1 on the Billboard charts.
That sounds like opinion, but it’s almost morphed into fact.
The poll was conducted by CNN in 2006. The winner (loser?) was Paul Anka’s ode to his expectant wife, “(You’re) Having My Baby,” which found itself on the top of the charts on this day in 1974.
Anka, whose songwriting prowess cannot be denied, penned a stinker when he wrote “YHMB,” which was written in celebration of the impending birth of Anka and his wife’s fifth child. Anka wrote the song while appearing at Lake Tahoe.
At the suggestion of United Artists recording executive Bob Skaff, Anka was asked to change the song from a solo effort to a duet with virtually unknown vocalist Odia Coates, who made the mistake of being present in the studio when the song was about to be recorded.
Anka took a lot of abuse from women’s rights activists, who saw the lyrics and the spirit of the “YHMB” to be highly chauvinistic, egotistical, and basically obnoxious.
Among other issues, the song was criticized for declaring the child was the man’s, rather than the couple’s. Anka would later replace the line “you’re having my baby” with “you’re having our baby” while performing in concert.
The song was so vilified that Anka would often simply omit it when he sang a batch of his old hits in concerts.
Then there’s the 2006 CNN poll, which placed “YHMB” at the top of the heap when it comes to all-time bad songs.
Paul Anka
The National Organization for Women gave Anka the satiric “Keep Her in Her Place” award during “its annual putdown of male chauvinism” in the media on Women’s Equality Day. Ms. Magazine “awarded” Anka their “Male Chauvinistic Pig of the Year” award.
All that, yet the song achieved great commercial success.
One of the lines from the song that took some heat stated that while the woman could have “swept it from [her] life” (abortion), she hadn’t because it was “a wonderful way of showing how much she loves him” In response to feminists, Anka said the song was “a love song”.
The song is typical 1970s shlock—a syrupy melody and an arrangement that screams lounge singer.
But it topped the charts, 36 years ago today.
Perhaps no Paul Anka quote is more appropriate for this discussion than the following.
“I believe in criticism,” he once said.
And he’s gotten a ton of it, for a song he probably innocently wrote over three decades ago.
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Mark David Chapman killed the wrong man.
If it wasn’t for the profile and status of his victim, Chapman might have a good shot at parole next month. Though we’ll never know.
Chapman, of course, is the convicted killer of ex-Beatle John Lennon, who Chapman gunned down on December 8, 1980 in New York City.
Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder, and he has served 29 years of that sentence. He was last up for parole in 2008. He’s been denied five times (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008).
Chapman is 55 and is incarcerated at the Attica Maximum Security facility.
But taking Lennon out of the equation for a moment, Chapman appears to be a pretty good prisoner, one who might be parole material.
He hasn’t had an infraction since 1994, said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the Department of Corrections in New York.
“He goes about his business, doing his prison job and without any fanfare,” Kriss said.
For the past 20 years, Chapman has been allowed conjugal visits with his wife, Gloria, as part of a state program called “Family Reunion,” which enables eligible prisoners to spend up to 44 hours at a time with their family members in a special, controlled setting.
According to the New York State Division of Parole, four letters have been submitted this year arguing against Chapman’s parole, while two letters have been received in support.
Chapman circa 2008
Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, has submitted letters in prior years arguing against Chapman’s parole. It’s uncertain whether she’s done so this year.
Unfortunately for Chapman, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be granted parole, considering who he killed. The public outcry, even nearly 30 years after Lennon’s murder, would be too great.
When Chapman was denied parole in 2008, the State Division of Parole released a statement that said the decision was “due to concern for the public safety and welfare.”
I find it hard to believe that Chapman would harm anyone if he was released. But I could be wrong. Perhaps he’d latch onto another celebrity and begin stalking that person—who knows?
The bottom line is that if Chapman had killed Joe Citizen and was given the same sentence, his prison record and time served might make his parole realistic.
But Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon, beloved the world over.
Because of that, I don’t think Chapman will ever see the world outside the walls of prison.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time, right?
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Who keeps recording Mel Gibson?
Or, why does Gibson keep saying things that you wouldn’t want recorded?
Once again, the embattled actor Gibson is in hot water, this time for scathing words directed at Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his 8-month old daughter.
Gibson has previously been in trouble for spewing ethnic slurs, also caught on tape.
In the latest diatribe, posted by Radaronline, Gibson sounds alternately homicidal, bitter, angry, and just plum crazy.
“You’re a f*cking mentally deprived idiot,” Mel screams at one point in the phone call to Grigorieva. “You’re a f*cking using whore…I own you,” he rages. ”You don’t count.”
Gibson also refers to a worker helping Grigorieva with the baby as a “wetback.”
On July 9, Radaronline released audio of Mel telling Oksana that she was dressed too provocatively and would be “raped by a pack of n*ggers.”
All this plus that famous drunken driving arrest, during which Gibson let loose with a bunch of anti-Semitic slop.
Mel Gibson: spinning out of control
But it’s more than just some angry words; Radaronline says it has posted two separate clips of audio in which Gibson basically threatens to kill Grigorieva.
Gibson is currently under investigation by the L.A. County Sherriff’s Department on domestic violence charges.
Mel Gibson has done a lot for American and Australian cinema, as both an actor and as a director. He should be considered, in my mind, one of the 50 most influential people in movies since World War II.
But the guy has some major issues, clearly. This isn’t something to snicker at and roll your eyes about anymore.
It’s more than that, and could get really ugly if it isn’t somehow checked.
Look no further than the sad case of comedian Phil Hartman to find out what can happen when “domestic disturbances” get taken to the next level.
We don’t want Grigorieva to be the next Hartman. In a way, the Internet age can be a good thing. It raises more people’s antennas. That may not have been enough to save Hartman, who was murdered in 1998 by his drug-using wife, long before the Web became the behemoth of information and gossip that it is today.
But maybe the more eyeballs and ears looking out for the Hartmans, maybe the less chance of something violent occurring. Who knows.
What isn’t uncertain is this: Mel Gibson has issues. He has shown no hesitation to hurl sinister threats, slurs, and hate. He’s bragged that he’s capable of violent acts.
Just because it’s on a gossip website doesn’t mean it’s funny.
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Betty White’s been around show business so long it’s tempting to ask her if she was an understudy at Ford’s Theater the night Abe Lincoln got shot.
Or if she ever shared a stage with Sarah Bernhardt.
White is 88 but if you’re only as old as you feel or behave, then she’s not old enough to remember the Reagan Administration.
Betty White is refreshing. She uses her real name, for one—and for someone of her generation, that’s an anomaly. She really is plain old Betty White. Not Ruth Dingelbratter or Helen McDuffie.
Betty Marion White.
She was born on January 17, 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois—probably when there were no Oak trees and there wasn’t a park built yet.
Her family was among the many who headed West in the hopes of something better, during the Great Depression. The Whites ended up in Los Angeles, and Betty graduated from Beverly Hills High School—in 1939.
The woman was a high school senior during just the second of FDR’s four terms.
I wonder when the dimples set in.
Betty White, 88 years young
White is working on, by my count, her fifth screen career, big and small.
The first was in the 1950s, when she starred in “Life with Elizabeth” from 1952-55— a sitcom that she also co-produced. Forget Lucille Ball—Betty White was the true pioneer when it came to being a woman who had control both in front of and behind the camera.
White won her first Emmy Award for “Life with Elizabeth.”
Betty’s second career occurred in the 1960s, when she was a regular on the old “Password” game shows hosted by her eventual husband, Allen Ludden.
The third came as incomparable Sue Ann Nivens, the “Happy Homemaker,” on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the 1970s—quite possibly both the creepiest yet most enthralling female character in TV history.
Legend has it that in a production meeting, Moore suggested that the Sue Ann Nivens character be played by “Someone who can play sickeningly sweet. Like Betty White.”
The show’s producers did one better, and got White herself.
Career number four occurred in the 1990s, when White teamed with Rue McClanahan (who we just lost), Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty on “The Golden Girls.” Only White remains with us today.
Betty White’s fifth career is happening right now, all around us.
It’s Betty’s world and we’re all just living in it.
There was the marvelous turn as Gammy in 2009’s “The Proposal,” followed by very public and very feisty support of co-star Sandy Bullock in the wake of the ghastly behavior of Bullock’s hubby Jesse James.
She’s appeared in commercials and recently hosted “Saturday Night Live.”
Now she’s set to wow us in TV Land’s new original series, “Hot in Cleveland,” which debuts this Wednesday night at 10:00 p.m.
White joins the highly underrated Wendie Malick, still cute-as-a-button Valerie Bertinelli, and equally underrated Jane Leeves in the new series.
TV Land’s promos have just about featured White, relegating her young whippersnapper co-stars to background players.
And why not?
Betty White is enjoying a career rebirth like none I’ve ever seen of an actor in their late-80s.
I think it’s because White is America’s grandmother. All of us can pretty much relate someone in our family to some portion of a character that Betty White has played lo these past 60 years or so.
And don’t forget the humanistic Betty White who, as herself, did all those commercials and PSAs for animals’ rights and dog food and meds.
In between all the aforementioned highlights have been countless guest shots on various TV shows and cameos in movies and other game show appearances.
Ludden, her third husband, died from stomach cancer in June, 1981 and White has remained single ever since. She has no children of her own, though she inherited four from Ludden’s previous marriage.
If you go to Betty’s IMDb page and scroll down to her Filmography, it reads like an encyclopedia of television history. It’s all there—sitcoms and game shows; talk shows and dramas; comedies and variety shows.
Betty White is 88 years old and her career is taking off—again. She’s the American Airlines of show business.
One of my all-time favorite lines in television occurred on the final episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Murray the writer is lamenting the staff being canned by WJM-TV’s new owners.
“Being fired,” Murray sighs, “is like being violated.”
To which sex-starved Sue Ann Nivens says brightly, “Leave it to Murray to look on the bright side!”
I’ll be watching TV Land Wednesday night at 10:00. Can’t wait to see what Betty Marion White has cooked up this time.
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From the inception of television news in the late-1940s, the rockets of information being sent out were blasted from either New York or Washington. Those were the headquarters.
It was like that for over 30 years, until Ted Turner got his mitts on things.
Turner, sports owner and cable mogul, cooked up the idea for a news “super station” that would house itself not in NY or DC, but in—gulp—Atlanta!
From Atlanta a signal would be beamed that could be grabbed, via satellite, and delivered into living rooms, huts and castles across the world.
Turner called it the Cable News Network. Made sense.
CNN, as it came to be known, turns 30 years old today.
Barely five years after its birth, CNN began calling itself “The World’s Most Important Network,” usually via the rich baritone voice of actor James Earl Jones during station IDs.
I worked in television production at the time, and I remember one of my colleagues sniffing, “More like ‘World’s Most Conceited Network’!”
That may be so, but there’s no questioning CNN’s role in reinventing TV news.
From the moment it was founded, CNN gave viewers 24/7 access to the news of the day—both around the nation and around the world. That had never been attempted before.
This was long before the Internet pervaded our lives, so CNN had a virtual monopoly on TV news, because of its all-day, everyday format.
Ted Turner, launching CNN on June 1, 1980
Sure, stories were repeated back then. Also, the network would buy pre-packaged stories from independent journalists. Filling a 24-hour programming schedule wasn’t easy. You ever hear of the term “slow news day”?
That was a CNN programmer’s nightmare, because a slow news day really WAS a slow…news…DAY. All day.
CNN still commands a big audience, though the TV viewer pie has been sliced razor thin over the years. Its website, CNN.com, is easy to type and just a few keystrokes away.
And, I’m not ashamed to admit, CNN.com is a site of choice when I try to decide what to write about on this little blog.
CNN was less than a year old when it had its first big, breaking story: the shooting of former Beatles star John Lennon on December 8, 1980.
A little over three months later, CNN was among the first to report the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.
Turner, never known to be a hands-off kind of guy (he once tried to manage his Atlanta Braves but was halted after one game), wisely stayed out of the way, for the most part, while CNN learned to crawl then walk.
CNN is 30. The way we get our news has never been the same since the network’s birth.
So how will the network continue to evolve?
Stay tuned.
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She’s Miss USA and she’s from Michigan. Hooray!
Oh, she’s gorgeous, as you would expect—but this time Miss USA looks a little different.
That’s because she’s Arab American.
Rima Fakih of Dearborn wears the crown today, chosen over 50 other contestants at yesterday’s pageant in Las Vegas.
She’s 24, of Lebanese descent, and a graduate from the University of Michigan-Dearborn with a bachelor’s degree in economics and business management.
And did I say gorgeous?
Fakih works in marketing at the Detroit Medical Center, and she’s got the Arab American community atwitter.
“This is unbelievable,” gushed Rami Haddad of Livonia. “It’s a dream come true. I can’t express my feelings.”
“This is the real face of Arab Americans,” said Zouheir Alawieh of Dearborn. “Not the the stereotypes you hear about. We have culture. We have beauty. We have history, and today we made history. She (Fakih) believed in our dreams.”
I had no idea the Arab American community would be so agog about one of theirs winning Miss USA, but I must say—I’m proud of them.
Rima Fakih
Good for them, because they haven’t exactly had the best of images around these parts in the past, oh, eight years, eight months, and six days—if you get me.
I’m proud of them because they wanted this not to give us all the bird, but to feel more like they belong. What better way to do that than to hold up one of your brethren as Miss USA, for goodness sakes?
Rima Fakih is beautiful and smart and has a bright future and she’s Miss USA. The fact that she’s of Lebanese descent is secondary.
Some will disagree with me. They’ll look past her beauty and see the dark hair and the olive skin and the name and they’ll sneer.
She’s Arab!! She’s not one of us!!
Fine. You’ll not change those minds, no matter how hard you try.
And there’s this.
When asked how she felt about winning Miss USA, Fakih said—and I’m not making this up—”Ask me after I’ve had a pizza.”
Now THAT’S an American girl!
At La Pita Restaurant in Dearborn, they had a viewing party—not knowing who would win, of course. Well, apparently the place went bonkers when Fakih came out on top.
Some of her supporters wore t-shirts that bore this quote, from Rima Fakih herself.
“It’s beauty that captures your attention, personality which captures your heart.”
Red, white and blue decorations dotted the La Pita banquet hall.
They read, simply, “USA.”
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The Lady and Her Music may be gone, but they’ll be far from forgotten.
That was the title of Lena Horne’s one-woman Broadway show, but that was far from all she was.
She was much more than a lady and her music.
Horne died yesterday, 92 years young. And I mean that sincerely.
Horne, even near the end, had skin like porcelain and Fred Astaire eyes—they danced.
Folks used to make fun of Dick Clark for never showing his age. Lena Horne had Clark beat in a route.
Horne entertained for about 60 years and some change. She was a dynamic performer—one of those precious few whose mere presence in the room created a buzz. If you knew Lena Horne was backstage about to perform, you didn’t settle back to watch—you strapped yourself in and made sure your tray was in the upright position.
Alas, Horne was another performer whose political views (read: left of center) got her blacklisted during the Red Scare. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington in 1963 and was quite the Civil Rights activist, in her own inimitable way.
Her ethnicity was a spicy blend of African-American, European, and Native American.
The Lady
Horne started belting them out at the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem, way back in 1933. Her career path would eventually lead her to Hollywood, but she would grow disenchanted in Tinsel Town and focus primarily on her nightclub act.
In a comeback of sorts, Horne won a special Tony Award for Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music in 1981. The show gave her a record she still holds today: longest-running solo performance in Broadway history.
But this was also a woman who worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to help pass anti-lynching laws in the 1940s, and who would refuse to perform with the USO for segregated audiences.
Last but not least, there was the voice. If you listened closely, Lena Horne’s voice would wink at you. I swear it.
“As much as I try,” Horne used to say, “when I open my mouth, Lena comes out, And I get so mad.”
She was a little hard on herself, don’t you think?
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I used to have a crush on Lynn Redgrave.
I’ve always had a thing for redheads, though I’m married to a gorgeous Italian woman with dark hair.
In the 1980s and ’90s, I was the only member of my own little Lynn Redgrave Fan Club. I found the actress’s British accent and her red hair and her class to be very attractive.
She wasn’t a classic beauty by any stretch, and there may be others of the male persuasion who’d argue vehemently that Redgrave wasn’t even good looking, period.
But I always thought she was.
I remember in the early-1990s she was appearing at a local celebrity golf outing and the TV station I was working for sent a camera crew there to get some show IDs from as many celebs as they could.
You know—”When I’m in Detroit I watch ‘The Sports Guys’ with Greg Eno.”
Stuff like that.
They got ice skater/analyst Scott Hamilton and a couple others to pump our local shows, including my sports gab fest.
When the crew came back, someone mentioned that Lynn Redgrave was there.
WHAT????!!
I filleted them for not getting Redgrave to do a Greg Eno show ID.
Bob Zahari, one of my colleagues, looked at me cross-eyed.
“Lynn….REDGRAVE?”
He made a funny face.
I shrugged.
“What can I say? I like to look at her”
Redgrave, 67, passed away yesterday after a seven-year battle with breast cancer.
She, of course, comes from a long lineage of actors. And it was just last year when Lynn’s niece, Natasha Richardson, died after a tragic skiing mishap.
Lynn Redgrave was a two-time Oscar nominee: for Best Actress in 1966’s “Georgy Girl,” and for Best Supporting Actress in 1998’s “Gods and Monsters.”
She was a remarkable actor, one of the more underrated of her time. Says me.
After her breast cancer diagnosis, she went on the stump, urging women to have regular mammograms whenever possible.
She had a delightful take on life.
“God,” she once said, “always has another custard pie up his sleeve.”
Rest in peace, Red.
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Last Week: 6-1
This Week: at Min (5/3-5); at Cle (5/7-9)
So what happened?
Lots of good stuff.
In no particular order, the Tigers got a strong-as-garlic outing from Justin Verlander; a solid start from Dontrelle Willis; a continued hitting orgy from rookie Austin Jackson; Johnny Damon’s first Tigers home run (a walk-off one to boot); a history-making night from their rookies; more clutch RBIs from Miguel Cabrera; a series win over the Twins; a sweep of the Angels; and Jim Leyland saying he’ll obey the new state smoking ban.
Whew!
Did I leave anything out?
Probably—that’s how grand of a week it was for the Bengals.
This week they’ll make history, too—-they’ll get a freaking day off!!
Remember those?
The Tigers will be off Thursday, which is their first non-playing day since April 15, and will be their last until May 24. That’s TWO days off in 40 days! Whatever scheduling rules the MLBPA has in place, the Tigers surely must be pushing those to the max.
But last week was terrific—6-1 and they shaved three games off the Twins’ lead in the division, which peaked at 3-1/2 games last Tuesday. The Tigers are now a measly half-game behind the Twinkies.
Hero of the Week
Oh yeah—make me pick just one!
I’m giving the nod to Verlander, who had his first Verlander-type start on Sunday, retiring 23 straight Angels at one point in going 8-1/3 innings, walking none.
JV is the Hero of the Week because the Tigers have been waiting for him to be the ace for almost a month. His gem gave the Tigers a sweep of a good Angels team, and it is likely the start of a string of strong outings.
Plus, I love his game day demeanor: nasty, cranky and all business—kind of Bob Gibson and Jack Morris-like.
The Honorable Mentions are too numerous to mention.
Oh hell, I’ll mention one: the Tigers rookies, as a whole.
What they did to the Angels Friday night was pretty much unprecedented.
Jackson went 5-for-5. Brennan Boesch hit his first big league homer (a grand salami). So did Scotty Sizemore—in the same inning.
It’s enough to make a grown Tigers fan weep with joy of what might be.
Goat of the Week
I’m sorry, but I just can’t abide Ryan Raburn’s defense, which is offensive.
It’s shocking that he’s not more developed in the outfield than what he’s showing every time he goes out there.
He doesn’t get good jumps, he takes bad routes, and he sometimes just has trouble catching the ball, period—like what happened last week, costing the Tigers a run.
I know he’s a part-timer, but his silliness with the glove is getting old.
Dishonorable mention: The Tigers’ defense as a whole, which is the Bad News Bears of the American League.
Upcoming: Twins and Indians
The Tigers might miss Twins C Joe Mauer, who is nursing a bruised heel. What a shame.
This will be the Tigers’ first look at Target Field.
Considering their horrors in the Metrodome, I think the Tigers would be happy to play the Twins on a rocky sandlot diamond at this point.
The Twins made like they were going to run away and hide from the Central Division pack last week, but the Tigers beat them 2-of-3, and the Indians bumped them off once over the weekend while the Tigers were sweeping the Halos. Net gain for the Tigers: three games, to pull within half-a-game back.
The Indians are a slapstick bunch right now, and may stay that way all season.
It’s shaping up to be a three-team race (don’t be fooled by the White Sox’ slow start), and the Indians won’t be one of those three.
This is a team in transition (read: rebuilding) with suspect pitching and pedestrian hitting.
But it’s never comfy cozy in their ballpark, so we’ll see.
That’s all for this week’s MMM. See you next Monday!
