My Favorite Chimp -- Oliver the Humanzee

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Bad Song Choices Buried the Girls!

How is it possible that with all the great songs that came out of the 70's, there were so few being showcased tonight? Really, the most awful night of song choices I can recall for any American Idol episode. Each one was more dull than the next. Only Brooke White managed to find a decent tune to sing (Carly Simon's "You're So Vain"), but she didn't do anything special with it.

Not one of the girls deserved more than 2.5 stars tonight. I'm putting Alexandrea, Ramiele and Carly Smithson at the top, not for their songs or performances, but because they are all incredible vocalists and will most certainly stay in the competition.

No bottom picks for tonight, because they rest all fall into a sort of lackluster heap.
Jeez, who picks these songs anyway? You'd think the producers would try to squeeze a few good ones in there. I hate Heart, and Celine Dion and the Bee Gees. All were sung poorly tonight.

Sorry ladies, this week goes to the American Idol guys. Next time have your moms and dads help with the song picks if you're too young to remember what was good in the decades before you were born!

Imagine This

Round two of the guy's night for American Idol, and the results were very different from last week. The theme was 70's music and the contestants had to reveal "something we don't know" about them in their intro. That did not help last week's Aussie eye candy Michael Johns, who's tennis hobby was enjoyable to watch but song tanked when he was first out of the gate. Following is the format for the remainder of the American Idol season on the Nose. My top picks, followed by my bottom picks and then special mentions, where they are applicable.

Top For the Night:

• David A., (The Kid), was the final act of the night and he gets 4 stars from this blogger. One of the few song choices that really showcased a top artist from the 70's (John Lennon, for God's sake), his rendition of Imagine was stunning and pitch perfect. It is hard to believe he is only 17. Note to FOX- If you keep saving the best for last week after week, viewers will learn not to tune in at the beginning of the show.
  
• David Cook (The Rocker), came out of the gate with the 70's classic "All Right Now" and I thought he hit it out of the park. I love his voice, he is the only true rocker in the bunch and (NOTE TO Simon) he is the smartest and wittiest of all the contestants so far. Much as I hate to depart from my lockstep agreement with Simon, tonight he was dead wrong. Cross word playing, word loving guys are sexy as hell. I'm going to have to assume that Simon's comments tonight were scripted, I can't believe he would come up with that blatant faux pas on his own. Go look that up online Simon (not that you're reading the Nose). I love this performer and think he is bound for glory. He could use a little help with his hair though.
• Chikezie (The South Bay Wonder): OK, full disclosure...I am rooting for this guy as a fellow South Bay Los Angeles resident. Chikezie is a local singer from Inglewood CA, and I loved him from the start. He was unfairly dissed by Simon last week for his suit, which in retrospect was the perfect outfit for 60's retro-soul. This week he came back and really won the crowd over with a fantastic performance. He is immensely warm and likable, and his voice is tremendous. We love you and your Nigerian name, C! Let's hope that Simon figures out how to pronounce it before the season ends. PS-Your mom is cool too!

Bottom for the Night:

• Luke: Please don't ever let someone do a Queen song again or the ghost of Eddie Mercury will come back and haunt this show forever
• Robbie: Sang the song "Hot Blooded" with all the warmth of a gecko. A real gecko, not the Geico gecko, who is funny and adorable.
  

On The Fence:

• I think Michael Johns had an off night and want to see him in his tennis shorts again
• Ditto with Jason Castro, the dreadlocks dude. He has real talent and the bad song choice spiraled him tonight. He will do better with 80's and 90's alternative songs. Rock on guitar guy.
  
• Special mention for Danny Norriega. I still think he might be this year's Sanjaya, and he tore many holes in a classic Carpenter's song tonight..but he is still so different and entertaining. I hope he sticks around. Also, he wins best outfit of the night...love the checkered Van's sweater and emo pants, dude.

OK American Idol ladies, it's show time! Let's see if you can hit a few notes out of the park and into the Kodak balcony tomorrow night.

Oscar After Thought

In retrospect, would also like to say that even though this year's Academy Award ceremony was excitement-challenged, I absolutely loved all 32 consecutive years of the previous telecasts. Yes, that's how long I've been watching it (sigh). So thanks for the memories ABC and we will start the countdown for next year hoping that the great groove for the Big O will return.

PS-Loved the Coen brothers win
PPS-Please bring back Ellen DeGeneres as host for next year!

The Most Boring O-Cast Ever! :(

This won't take long, as I don't really care to go on and on if I don't have anything nice to say. But it's time to state the shameful truth; this year's 80th Academy Award ceremony was the worst ever. It was slow. It was dull. It was boring. Jon Stewart was not a funny host, in spite of occasional chuckles from the crowd. Nobody wore a swan dress or a peacock hat, no streakers strutted their stuff in the buff , and no off the wall comments from anybody. It was polite, sedate and the TV equivalent of taking a Tylenol PM.

To ABC's credit, they really had a tough road to travel to this year's Oscars. The writer's strike made everything last minute. They only had 11 days to put the show together. The nominated films were almost uniformly dark, dreary and not box office winners. But put all that together, and it was still unforgivable to have not one...but three, count 'em, three magical Disney musical numbers for the movie Enchanted. All of them were outstanding opportunities for bathroom or telephone breaks. I mean really, didn't anybody learn anything since Snow White danced with Rob Lowe? They even spoofed it in this year's O's and then went and did the weird ball room dance number thing all over again.

You know the show was dull when the top topics for the evening for fellow bloggers, friends and sisters consisted of a) Is Javier Bardem short? and b) Does Josh Brolin have an inordinantly big head? and c) If Martin Scorcese's eyebrows were removed from his head would they be able to exist on their own?

For me, the Academy Award ceremony is the most important television show of the year. But this year it just became a colorful HD background while I flipped through the Sunday Times. It will be weeks before I recover from the disappointment!

Lisa had it right in her blog. The best thing about this year's Oscar ceremony was the thrilling animated open. After that, it went downhill fast. It is not any wonder that the ratings were the lowest ever recordered.

"Dexter" on CBS No Killer in the Ratings, but...

Did you watch the expurgated Dexter on CBS Sunday night? If you didn't know the original, I'm not sure you would have missed the earthier dialogue or shots. It cleaned up well, but the one thing I found that set it apart (and obviously so) was Dexter's structure. It wasn't meant to be chopped into multi-segments and doesn't have that familiar TV rhythm that sets you up for the commercial breaks, but that's not a fatal flaw. It just feels different...good, actually.

Most importantly, to Dexter's credit, it lacks all the fake melodrama that permeates most of network TV drama. It's a breath of fresh air -- well, as fresh as the breath of a serial killer, anyway.

In terms of ratings, NBC's new version of Knight Rider (god help us) won the 10pm hour, with Dexter coming in close behind ABC's Brothers and Sisters. Not a smash for Dexter, but not bad. Not bad at all. I'm sure one of our ratings experts here will be able to tell what the numbers meant in sheer audience figures, which will be fascinating to compare in light of Showtime's limited cable reach vs. CBS's broadcast ubiquity.

An Authentic Experience -- "Semper Fi: One Marine's Journey"

You know how you just happen onto something and you wonder "How the hell did I miss this?" Well, it's happened to me again, with a documentary that I caught on Showtime Extreme movie channel.

Semper Fi: One Marine's Journey is the story of Jeff Key, a man from religious Alabama, who became a Marine, served in Iraq and was proud to do so, became disillusioned and saddened there, and ultimately came out as gay man and left the service. He's also a playwright and monologuist.

This sounds like a movie with a mission, big-time, but despite the high expectations of being beaten around the head by ideology with which some may not agree, I found Semper Fi to be thoughtful, intelligent, and a must-see. Even the most rah-rah citizens must agree that the mission in Iraq hasn't been all that it was cracked up to be, and seeing it throught the eyes of an eloquent participant is indeed enlightening and sobering.

The doc premiered on Showtime back in the middle of last year -- where was I? -- but it's showing again this month on Showtime Extreme and I recommend you catch it.

Visit the official movie site of Semper Fi: One Marine's Journey for background information. You might also like to read this review from The Hollywood Reporter.

Even Vulcans Need Love!

Happy Valentine's Day from The Flaming Nose

Roy Scheider-The Curtain Closes

We would like to spend a moment to mark the demise of the great actor Roy Scheider, who died Sunday at the age of 75. For those who care about little details, Mr. Scheider was born in New Jersey on November 10, 1932. Probably best known (and loved by this Nose blogger) as Chief Brody in the now legendary movie "Jaws", Scheider had a rich, colorful and enormously accomplished list of memorable parts, many of which led to lines which have entered the American fabric of speech. His role as the manic stage producer in Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" rendered an Academy Award nomination, and spawned the line, "It's Showtime!". His absolutely unforgettable line in "Jaws", is still used in every day speech when people need a way to describe a terrible underestimation of size. I'm going to have to use that line now to say goodbye to a great American actor, and I hope he'll forgive me. We're "going to need a bigger boat" to fit the sorrow that we feel at your passing, Roy Scheider. Farewell to one of the giants.

Liking -- Mostly -- "The New Adventures of Old Christine"

Does anybody else like Julia Louis-Dreyfus in her recently-returned-for-a-third-season comedy The New Adventures of Old Christine? For one thing, it's good to have a Seinfeld alumnus with a hit, so props to Ms. Dreyfus for pulling that off, and for getting the Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy at the 2006 ceremony.

There have been a lot of things to like about the show since it began, especially Andy Richter's appearances a while back as a sad sack boyfriend, the acerbic and intensely likeable Wanda Sykes as JL-D's colleague, and the loopy and lovable Hamish Linklater (pictured with JL-D) as her brother Matthew (my favorite character). Back this season as Christine's handsome boyfriend is the charming and talented Blair Underwood, and her qualms about dating a man so impossibly gorgeous are at the heart of a lot of great material on TNAoOC. The entire cast is crisp and competent and frequently funny, from Richard Gregg as Christine's ex-husband, to the trio of ladies -- Emily Rutherfurd, Alex Kapp Horner, and Tricia O'Kelly -- who play, respectively, Christine's husband's new girlfriend also named Christine, and the two "mean mommies" who bedevil old Christine whenever she visits her son's school.

Though The New Adventures of Old Christine is consistently funny, I occasionally feel a little bit of an "ick" factor with some of the humor, always related to a sexual joke. I am, as friends will attest, one of the least prudish people in terms of what I think is funny, but I wonder if it's the presence of a kid on the show that bugs me in terms of the sexual content? (I feel the same way about Two and a Half Men, which I think goes beyond ick into smarmy.) This is definitely adult comedy. Even with the occasional fleeting off moment (for me, anyway), the show always delivers smart and often delightfully absurd comedy, thanks particularly to Julia and her great gift for dialogue along with her considerable ease with physical comedy. As a woman of a certain age (she just turned 47 about a month ago), Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Christine has a whole menu of insecurities to explore, and while the occasional pointed barb is accurately flung, more often than not it's pure comedy that makes this one click.

You have to give kudos to the cast and creative crew behind this one, and to CBS for bringing it back. Along with the popular How I Met Your Mother and my favorite The Big Bang Theory (which is on hiatus right now and boy do I hope it's gonna make the cut for a second season!), Monday nights on CBS are a haven for sophisticated comedy on a par with NBC's Thursday night. How bad can things be when you've got Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tina Fey representing TV comedy? Lucy and Ethel would be proud.

Check out the website for The New Adventures of Old Christine at CBS. The show airs Monday nights at 9:30pm. And here's a nice article about TNAoOC co-creator Kari Lizer! Enjoy!

Six Degrees of National Geographic

Is it just me, or is it hot in here? Fans of real life doomsday scenarios -- and there are plenty of us out there -- will be enticed and enlightened by the new two-hour special premiering tomorrow night on National Geographic Channel called Six Degrees Could Change the World (properly written as in the above title art).

Based on the book of the same name by Marc Lynas, it's a sobering (as if any of us are still whoopee tipsy at the prospect of our global future) look at what's in store, theoretically, if the Earth's temperature rises by any number of degrees. Each degree rise brings its own set of horrors, as you'll find out when watch the special.

Six Degrees Could Change the World airs tomorrow night, Sunday, Feb. 10th, at 8pm, and encores at 10p and 12m, with other airdates also schedules. For a wonderful preview of the special plus extra features and background info, check out Nat Geo's wonderful website for the special and plan on spending some time exploring. This is the kind of TV that's not only good for you, but is good TV, exciting, riveting and absolutely essential viewing. Don't miss it!

Jericho: The Return

For all those Jericho fans out there, and I am one of those, the wait is over. On February 12th at 10pm et/pt the eagerly awaited Season 2 of Jericho begins. Although only 7 episodes have been made (thankfully before the writer's strike), there would not be any if not for the efforts of the fans. The key word was NUTS, uttered by Jake in the last episode of Season 1, and that is what CBS got from the fans, tons and tons of nuts, or precisely, peanuts. A save Jericho movement started by Nuts for Jericho got enough fan support to send over 20 tons of peanuts to persuade the PTB to give us 7 more episodes. You can read a little more background about the cancellation and revival in this L.A. Times article.

For those who know nothing about Jericho and are intrigued by the fan fervor it developed, here are a few places to get you caught up with the rest of us. A good place to start is CBS where you can find everything from recaps from Season 1, promos of Season 2, fan blogs, photo galleries and most importantly full episodes of Season 1. You might also want to check out CBS' Official Fan Community . Jericho Season 1 is available on DVD and those of you with the Universal HD channel can watch the entire 22 episodes of Season 1 in full HD splendor starting Saturday 7 pm pt/10 pm et.

What initially interested me in Jericho was of course the nuclear bomb. I am a sucker for disasters of any kind; earthquakes, volcanoes, meteors, floods, you name it, I love them. But what kept me coming back were the characters and the complex plot lines. And the fact that one of the characters had a nuclear bomb buried in his basement kept the disaster theme firmly in place. Jericho is not like the usual post apocalyptic themed movie. There are no people running around in rags, no spike haired motorcycle mad men and no bomb worshiping mutants. What you will find are down to earth people trying to cope with the loss of electricity, food, communication with the outside world and basically everything they have taken for granted. This is a situation that you could conceivably find yourself in someday (hopefully not!), and that makes it something that you can relate to on a very basic level.

"Lost" + Me = Clueless

Though I love Lost, I am completely confused and already hopelessly hornswoggled only two episodes into the season...which is probably exactly the intention. Congratulations!

I will only advise others in my same predicament to take a look at ABC's extensive Lost web presence, and I'll also recommend The Lost Blog which dissects each episodes and attempts to divine the truth within. Of course there are countless outher Lost fansites out there, so those of not in the know have plenty of resources to help us crawl towards the light. And don't forget that ABC has all the previous episodes available for viewing online, too!

Others at The Flaming Nose have better kept up with the intricacies of the show than I, but through the web, there is hope for all of us! (I just thought it was time that I declare my ignorance and get on with it.)

Nose-talgia: A Roundabout Way of Celebrating Chinese New Year

In that convoluted way that surfing the internet often begets amazing serendipitous connections, I found a charming, wonderful clip on YouTube of little eight-year-old Angela Cartwright singing "I Enjoy Being a Girl" on the Oct. 30, 1960 episode of the Dinah Shore Chevy Show.

How does this relate to Chinese New Year, some of you might ask? Well, the song is from the Rodgers and Hammerstein San Francisco's Chinatown-set musical Flower Drum Song. You might remember it from the 1961 movie version or perhaps the more recent stage revival in NY or L.A..

At the time of the show, Angela was co-starring in Danny Thomas' sitcom Make Room for Daddy, and would go on to become TFN's favorite spacegirl on Lost in Space.

I'm not normally a fan of little kids doing tremendously cute things, but I have to admit, Angela is just adorable here. (Let's not even start on the whole way-dated feminine dynamic of the song, ok? It was a different time, and how!)

Enjoy! Oh, and Happy New Year!

Riding off into Sunset Blvd

Our Flaming Nose correspondent Lisa reported earlier today that the old Hollywood Warner Bros. lot, home of KTLA-TV for decades, has been sold. This has made me very sad, for I too am one of the Nose contributors who spent a few years in the hallowed halls of the first television station west of the Mississippi.

I landed an entry level job at KTLA, about 45 minutes after graduating from college. The first time the guards at the gate let me onto the lot, I felt like I was walking on air. Hollywood....television....ratings...news trucks! I was still young enough to believe that if you worked extra hard in show biz and had a sense of humor, anything could happen. Local broadcast television in the 80's was a carnival, the last days of Rome. There was no email, no competition from cable or the Internet, nobody worked more than 30 hours a week and every Friday the sales staff went to a liquid lunch at some posh Hollywood restaurant and never quite made it back to the office. Advertising money fell from the trees. All you needed was a big bucket to scoop it up.

As Lisa pointed out, we actually had time to take breaks in those days, and exploring the KTLA (Warner Bros) campus was our most adventurous lunch time excursion. I still want to know what's hidden in the big tunnel that runs all the way under the lot from KTLA to the KMPC radio station on Sunset. It was already bricked up when we worked there. I hope the new owners don't demolish it before finding out.

Farewell to our old stomping grounds and the memory of KTLA. It was a huge part of Hollywood history and a major part of this Flaming Nose blogger's early days in television. We will always remember Johnny Grant, Hal Fishman the news anchor and the best Rose Parade coverage in the nation. Maybe the ghost of Singing Cowboy Gene Autry (who used to own KTLA) will be crooning "The Last Round Up" as the wrecking ball falls.

The Old Stomping Grounds Are Sold!

Several Flaming Nose correspondents have roots at the KTLA studio lot, which had been up for sale by Tribune as a consequence of that company's recent sale to Sam Zell. The transaction was completed a few days ago, and you can read about it here. There's quite a bit of nostalgia in that square block, not only for Hollywood history in general but also for the folks here at TFN.

Back when we worked there (and we're talking circa 1980), there were still fascinating traces of its origins as the original Warner Brothers studio lot: historic glass-sided stages to capture the sunlight for filming, other stages with dressing rooms supposedly used by John Barrymore and his co-stars back in the silent days, one end of the building where classic WB cartoons had been crafted. We were also aware that the powers that be were always renovating, and that any of these amazing spaces could disappear at any moment (and eventually they did).

Always intrepid and interested in history, several of us used to regularly poke around the lot, venturing into closed-off spaces, exploring abandoned offices and mysterious bricked-up tunnels (intriguingly labeled "The Organ Blower"*See Below! -- our favorite find!). We also undertook a bold expedition to the grand former KMPC building across the lot. Formerly home to a bowling alley, on the walls we found extant scribbles and autographs from "pin boys" who worked there long ago. We had wonderful fun, and I just wish we had taken cameras along. Many a lunch hour was spent doing our studio spelunking. Those indeed were the days!

Even a place that drenched in history ultimately becomes mere real estate, but at least it stands now and for that we celebrate it and our fortunate connection to it!

*New info about the "Organ Blower" as follows: "In October 1983, the "Kearns" theatre organ was purchased, one of only three of its kind, and one of the top-of-the-line instruments manufactured by the WurliTzer Company. The organ was originally built for Warner Brothers Vitaphone Company and installed in its Sunset Boulevard Studio in 1929. From here, it was moved to Radio Station KMX, a CBS unit, where it was used daily to play the "Amos ‘n' Andy Show" theme song. In 1955, the late Hollywood actor Joseph Kearns (best known as Mr. Wilson on TV's "Dennis the Menace") bought it and actually built his entire home around it."

So it really was an "organ blower" which is part of the mechanism for a pipe organ! The tunnel was partially bricked up, making it even more creepy! This info comes from the website for the Mansfield Ohio Theatre which now hosts the magnificent organ!

LOST....In the Supermarket

I was pushing my cart through the aisles of Ralph's supermarket yesterday, searching frantically for paper plates. Somewhere between frozen food and hot dogs, I was distracted by a towering organic milk display. I reached out to grab a carton and tumbled through a space-time corridor. That roaring, airplane noise in my head made me realize before I even opened my eyes, that I was back. On the island. Nothing made any sense whatsoever and I didn't care a bit.

It doesn't matter that Hurley is now sometimes in a mental hospital. Whatever. We are not distressed that Charlie is a ghost. Lot's of excellent series have ghost characters these days. The dips, the dives, the about faces...the non-linear gorgeous mess that makes up the inexplicable plot line of Lost does not bother us in the slightest. The waves are lapping and new alliances are forming . Is John a bad guy or a good guy? Are all the bad guys good guys? Are some of the good guys, bad guys? And does it really matter after Hurley does a cannonball?

All hail the return of LOST.

It's the most maddening, engaging, stimulating yet soothing television show on earth. Many LOST fans spend hours spawning intricate theories on "what it all means". These are people who like math and Sudoku. The whole point of LOST is for it to never make sense. Blue water, white sand and a sweaty Sawyer strutting around without a shirt is what it's all about. Sun and Jin's baby, Charlie's heroism, Ben's pale evil eyes and the endless unrequited dance between Jack and Kate is the glue that holds it all together. This is a character series, plain and simple. Well maybe not simple. We LOVE the characters. Plot, action and advancing story lines are all secondary.

It sounds like a plane crashing in aisle #3. I look down and the paper plates are in my cart, nestled between some frozen pizzas and a bottle of ocean blue Windex. How did they get there? Doesn't matter. I'll be back on the island again in a nanosecond, and all will be right with the world.