Thanks to all of you for your New Years best wishes. Let’s hope 007 is a James Bond worthy year for all of us.Didn’t it seem like James Brown’s funeral got more play than former President Gerald Ford’s? Interestingly, the same was true when President Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles died the same week.
I love how James Brown was in two different suits for his two memorial services. The man had class even after the end. Although I did half expect him to pop out of the coffin. The Famous Flames would settle him down, drape the robe over his shoulders, he’d sing out “Please, Please!,” the crowd would go wild. OWWW! That would have been great.
I saw James Brown perform at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1967. There was me and maybe ten other white kids. But damn it was worth it. The man was UNBELIEVABLE.
For a great concert performance of James Brown, get the TAMI Show DVD. That was a closed circuit concert taped in 1965 that also featured, among others, Chuck Berry, and a very young Mick Jagger. And neither comes CLOSE to the Godfather of Soul. Very little of Gerald Ford’s concert material still exists.
For great recollections of James Brown, check out Lloyd Thaxton’s blog. Lloyd was a local TV dance show host who was one of the first to book Brown on his show. I remember those shows. All the clean cut white kids in their suits and dresses were terrified. I think at one point James yelled “POPCORN!” and three guys wet themselves.
Now that he’s gone, does that officially make Ryan Seacrest the “Hardest Working Man in Show Business”?
Who looked worse on those New Year’s Eve Ball Dropping shows Sunday night – Dick Clark or Carson Daly? Is Carson Daly anorexic? I haven’t seen his show in a long time. (My policy: if I’m not in a rewrite I don’t have to be up that late.) But I was shocked. I think Calista Flockhart would be shocked. Or is it just, that’s what happens to you when you go to NBC?
I have to honestly say, I applaud Dick Clark’s courage but it was too painful to watch him.
On NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecast, Brett Favre was asked by sideline reporter (I believe it was Andrea Kremer) if he was coming back next year. Favre literally broke down and cried. Her next question was “Can you tell us your emotions?” GUESS!!
It was another glorious sunny day for the Rose Parade this year. I imagine half the population of Denver has now decided to move out here. And when they dig out of this blizzard in May they’ll pack up and come.
As for the parade itself, I found it amusing that they followed their big theme production number celebrating the “Nature of Man” with a stealth bomber fly-over.
And just how classless was Bob Eubanks? Bad enough they fire Stephanie Edwards, but fifteen minutes into the broadcast, while discussing some old horses that will be replaced next year he says “yeah, and that’s what happens to old commentators.” Nice. That’s what happens to old game show hosts, too, Bob.
I hope the Ohio State marching band plays their official state rock song during halftime of the championship bowl game next week. The official Ohio rock song is "Hang on Sloopy". My compliments to the 116th Ohio General Assembly for its taste.
My New Year’s Resolution: Get mentioned in Defamer.com more.
NOTE TO HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS: I am adopting a writer friend’s policy. I will vote for ANY movie that sends me a screener DVD. Oh wait, they sent me WORLD TRADE CENTER. Never mind.
Indeed they were fabulous, but if I recall James Brown's band was known as the "Famous" Flames.
ReplyDeleteThe band was well known for arrangements using staccato horn hits that were as tight as a Maria Carey dress. (Sorry -- I've been carrying that around for a few days and had to use it somewhere.)
Saw James Brown and the "Five Flames" or "Hollywood Flames", at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. in the very early 50s. They put on a show I'll never forget. Never saw anything like it before, or since. Made the Jackie Wilson moves in "Dream Girls" (still pretty good and well played by Eddie Murphy) look like a slow dance.
ReplyDeleteDid you catch during the KTLA coverage Bob Eubanks calling Michaela Pereira "Stephanie?" I think it was during one the equestrian entries. By the way, he talks way too much about the horses. I'd watch the HGTV except their possition this year was way too far up Orange Grove Blvd. and they don't broadcast in HDTV. Although, I really didn't need to see James Garner in HDTV.
ReplyDeleteEven with everything, I'd still prefer to watch KTLA (via Discovery HD Theater) than the nets coverage of the parade. At least Eubanks knows the area and Pereira decorated some of the floats. If HGTV was in HDTV I'd watch them simply to hear them talk endlessly about the different flowers on the floats. It's better than Eubanks talking about the horses.
And did you not see the ending where Bob mentioned that his contract had not been renewed and he wanted to thank everyone for the privilege of broadcasting the parade every year cause he didn't know whether or not he would be back.....classless buffoon.
ReplyDeleteHowever thin Carson Daly may look, he is oh so much thinner in the "talent" department. It is criminal that this guy is still taking up the valuable airwaves & preventing worthier individuals from stepping into his shoes. The crime is, he has no idea how untalented he is. And of all names, "Carson Daly," on the once proud network of the one and only Carson, daily. Rename yourself Thicke Daly or Sajak Daly. On second thought, don't. That would be insulting to Thicke and Sajak.
ReplyDelete...Speaking of that parade, did anybody else find it remarkably awkward when the Star Wars 501st paraded by to have the bubbly talking head announcer state cheerily: "There's nothing quite like the sight of two hundred stormtroopers marching down your street." My Innervoice™ that everybody votes to keep quiet automatically responded, "Yes, especially if you're Jewish."
ReplyDeleteHey, don't look at me like that, I'M not the one who thinks stormtroopers on your street is something about which to be chirpy.
Other high point: Darth Vader ambling by waving with an "IMPEACH" banner in view posted along the sidelines. That particualr tableau made it look like The Rebel Alliance lost a whole lot of funding and the Imperium lost a whole lotta stones. Anybody got a screencap?
-Troy Z
For a great concert performance of James Brown, get the TAMI Show DVD. That was a closed circuit concert taped in 1965 that also featured, among others, Chuck Berry, and a very young Mick Jagger. And neither comes CLOSE to the Godfather of Soul.
ReplyDeleteI believe one of the dancers at the TAMI show was a young Teri Garr, who apparently was all over Los Angeles in the mid-sixties.
Boise State Broncos was a good sports story. First Miami comes to the Bowl game in Boise on New year's eve, then the Broncos beat the Oklahoma Sooners in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year's Day. That's more excitement in 2 evenings in Boise Idaho than there had been in the last 20 years.
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking to my blog on the James Brown (Mr. Brown to me) mention. Are you sure there are no Gerald Ford concert tapes around?
ReplyDeleteWatching Dick Clark was also painful for me. I was thankful he was up and game to try. However, I just couldn't stay with it. Especially with Ryan Seacrest bouncing in and out of the frame like some little kid.
Maybe next year.
Interesting that the "Word Verification" for my comment is "uteABC." Must be a sign.
Lloyd
Didn’t it seem like James Brown’s funeral got more play than former President Gerald Ford’s? Interestingly, the same was true when President Ronald Reagan and Ray Charles died the same week.
ReplyDeleteAs Jimmy Carter gets older B.B. King is getting nervous.
As soon as I read Eubanks' remark, I flashed on "Roger & Me".
ReplyDeleteBob Eubanks. Last of the radio pukers. That's a legacy.
I applaud Dick Clark’s courage but...
ReplyDeleteI think it would be more courageous if Mr. Clark just admitted he's not a teenager anymore and should really just retire. There's no shame in admitting that you're just not up to the task and you recognize that it's time to do other things. Athletes do it all the time.
I'm guessing that "My City was Gone" didn't make the first cut in the Ohio legislature.
ReplyDeleteI followed the link to Lloyd Thaxton's blog entry, where there's a picture of James Brown dancing with Richard Nixon. I vaguely recall some people giving him crap about that, but nothing that stuck; compare that with Gerald Ford, a basically decent guy who was one of the supreme examples of a Peter Principle-type overpromotion, and spent his abbreviated presidency trying to convince people that he was a real president and dodging the quid pro quo question. And so Ford gets the state funeral, while Brown gets one of the very few funerals that most people would really want to attend.
ReplyDeleteI skipped TV coverage of NYE, but I did see a picture of Carson Daly, and thought that he looked remarkably lifelike. Seriously; thoughts of the Uncanny Valley came to mind.
Very little of Gerald Ford’s concert material still exists.????
ReplyDeleteI easily found a bootleg copy of "Gerald Ford: Live from the Samoan Trip-Hop Jazz Fest" (1982) on ebay two years ago. His band? The Miami Sound Machine.
You see, back then it was always about the music.
I should hope James Brown got more coverage than Gerald Ford. Ford was never even elected president. All he was known for was pardoning Richard Nixon.
ReplyDeleteOMG! Kudos for pointing out the classless Bob Nothanks comments from the Rose Parade. I told my wife the same exact thing when he said that. Poor Stephanie Edwards, almost as humiliating as making her stand out in the rain last year.
ReplyDeleteTwo more things. For the record, I'm a WGA member who has adopted the same policy of voting for those who send screeners... nothing like an early start in politics...
And finally, you Ken, still are, next to Vin Scully, the second best baseball announcer I've ever heard. In the words of Fred Willard... "Wha Happen..?"
I saw the Favre interview. I don't know what Andrea Kramer's credentials are, but it was an embarrassingly awkward interview. She did not have to ask more than one or two questions and she kept rambling on. I think she better served in a different capacity.
ReplyDeleteThere was one other thing Ford was known for besides pardoning Nixon: he wrote a widely-summarized novel titled "The Warren Commission Report", a work of fiction based on the assassination of JFK, but coming to a fictional conclusion with an invented villain, like one of those episodes of DOCTOR WHO where the Doctor visits an historical event and finds that the real villains were the Daleks or the Cybermen or Lee Harvey Oswald the Rabbit.
ReplyDeleteI feel like puking everytime I hear someone on the news today saying Ford HEALED the nation. Nixon's pardon only drove home the message that the fix was in. Sending Nixon to prison where he belonged would have been far more healing. As with the Warren Commission Report (about which Ford later ADMITTED he altered the facts to hide the truth.), helping criminals evade justice isn't "healing the nation." Remember how he LOST when he finally ran for president as a non-elected incumbent? That's how grateful we were to him at the time.
I taped the Rose Parade to watch later. WHO the hell can get up that early on New Years? One ALWAYS parties til after midnight the night before. Besides, then I can fast-forward through the bands and equestirian units (BORING! Though Bob loves the equestrian units.) I haven't watched it yet. Thanks for all the spoilers. Now I know how it all ends.
Poor Steph. I shared a dressing room with her for a TV broadcast we did together way the hell back in 1971. The character I was doing on the show (Cincinatti Armory for any old Whittington fans) had to blisteringly review the show itself, including taking shots at her. I apologised to her in advance, saying they were just in-character jokes. She said, "I know. We all understood what we in for in advance. No offense taken." Nice lady. (Then nice young lady.) She's been screwed, and it sucks.
Happy National Day of Mourning.
Oh, and one more thing Ford can be remembered for, establishing the precident of appointing presidents rather than electing them. Ford was appointed by Nixon. (Why didn't they let Saddam appoint his own successor? Then, instead of swinging, he could be in San Clemente, fat and sassy with a pardon and a book deal. Judith Regan's gotta eat too.) In 2000 the Supremem Court jumped on that precident and appointed Bush president, rather than do all that tiresome counting of the votes. If The People were comipetant to elect a President, they'd be on the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteCompetent. Precedent. God I wish they had spell check on the Leave your comment page.
ReplyDeleteCompetent. Precedent. God I wish they had spell check on the Leave your comment page.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a blogger account, you can delete and start over.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I actually thought Bob was slamming the network, not Steph, with his "old commentators" comment.
ReplyDeleteI was happy to hear Bob Eubanks say what he said. He and Stephanie were a great team for the Rose Parade and it's obvious ageism. Or is that agism? Maybe Douglas can tell me.
ReplyDeleteYes, Carson D is WAY too skinny. Especally when you factor in the "camera adds XX pounds" equation.
ReplyDeleteIn other news...
Can't the parade commentators shut up and let us listen to the bands once and awhile?
I would have loved to have ACTUALLY heard Grambling's marching band and not heard Bob E describe how good they were.
And yes, he is WAY too into horses.
I was snowed in Albuquerque for three days and caught the NY's TV shows. I guess I'm not in the Carson Daly demo, and I guess the kids identify with him, but I don't get his talent. And yes, the dude needs to put on some pounds. He also needs to break out of his monotone delivery. At least Seacrest has energy to keep me interested. Daly sounds like he's broadcasting outside of a morgue room.
ReplyDeleteI dig uncle Dick, but he's done it all in showbiz and it's time to fade to black from on-air performing. I will always love him though.
As for that crack that Eubanks made on the T-of-R Parade, my mother in-law was told my Ms. Stephanie that this was Mr. B's last year of MCing the parade. Perhaps his wisecrack was also meant about him too.
Thanks for letting me vent.
--Bob S.
I have to add my two cents that Carson Daly was truly scary and has been sporting the "manorexic" look since this past summer. A couple really frightening shots did the rounds at the time. Fellow no-talent Jimmy Kimmel told Star magazine he's gotten slim from jogging and if he stops, he'll get fat. Maybe, the thing he needs to stop is doing blow and start eating and he won't scare little children on the street. He's sure come a long way from caddying/being a friend of OJ Simpson to the likely replacement for Conan O'Brien. Wasn't there a time when network TV would quickly cancel snoozers like Kimmel and Daly? They're really no better than Alan Thicke or Pat Sajak and shouldn't have lasted any longer than their shows did.
ReplyDelete