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.

LOST!

Calling all LOST fans...tonight the curtain rises for the long awaited season premier on ABC! We promise to post our thoughts and most hysterical theories right here on the Flaming Nose over the next few days. Stay tuned!

In Treatment on HBO: Let's Talk About It

You have to give HBO credit for innovation.Here is a brand new half hour series on five nights a week, in the midst of a TV drought. Irish actor Gabriel Byrne plays Paul Weston, a calm and weary looking therapist. Each night he attempts to offer psychological succor to the desperate, the borderline, the boring and the unquestionably unhinged. The premier episode on Monday of this week featured "Laura", a self absorbed nymphomaniac who harbored inappropriate sexual thoughts about her therapist. Well that sounds sort of interesting. But all she did was talk talk talk about her creepy infidelities in a fidgety annoying manner. Instead of being engaged by her story, I became increasingly mesmerized, and then almost lulled to sleep by her mouth, which was shaped like a triangle. This program is very talky. Think "My Dinner With Andre", but you only have to stay awake for 30 minutes instead of a couple of hours. Other episodes this week have focused on a guilty Naval pilot, a miserable married couple and a young gymnast. There are no flash backs, and it all takes place in Paul's office where they all sit around and...talk. One wishes that more talking would come from Gabriel Byrne so we could hear his lovely Irish accent, but it is the thankless job of the therapist to mostly listen. Friday night's episode will feature Paul visiting his own therapist (played by the magnificent Diane Wiest), so maybe redemption is at hand.

The best thing going for this program so far, is the fact that HBO is featuring all of the episodes in streaming video on their website. So if you have a particularly lenient workplace with a high speed connection and no firewall, it's a cool thing to watch during lunch. I'm going to hang in there and see if they pick up the pace, because the actors are top notch and Gabriel Byrne is a soothing electronic presence if you're having a stressful day.

Beam Me Up Scotty!

Like fellow Noser Jane, last Monday I had the opportunity to attend the first leg of the 5 year, 40 city journey of Star Trek the Tour at the Queen Mary Dome in Long Beach, California. Attending on a Monday morning there weren't any crowds which made the experience that much more enjoyable. For anyone who is a Star Trek Fan this is a must see event. Unlike a convention that occurs over one weekend, this event lasts an entire month and gives one the advantage of avoiding the weekend mass of crazed trekkies.


Star Trek the Tour is a travelling museum of Star Trek props and costumes from every incarnation of Star Trek from the the original series with Captain Kirk to the last series Enterprise. But not only will you find props and costumes, you can step into a transporter and beam away, sit in the captain's chair on the bridge of both the original Enterprise and the Next Generation (and these chairs are the actual stage props for the series), eat in Ten Forward at tables from the Deep Space series, step through the portal of the Guardian of Forever (and all Star Trek fans know what that is), see yourself in an episode of Star Trek and for those brave enough there are two shuttle craft simulator rides.

The exhibit is set up so that you can go at your own pace where ever you want and spend as much time at any one place. You can also rent a device that allows you to access recorded information at many of the displays if you need a refresher in who a particular alien was or who wore a certain costume. There is a trivia game that you can take to test your Trekkie knowledge and each time you do there are different questions. The last stop in the tour is the Encounter Theater where you are part of a space adventure. I also found the staff to be knowledgeable about Star Trek which I thought to be a nice touch. The only thing lacking from the Tour are the actors, however Shatner did make an appearance on opening day.

I thoroughly enjoyed Star Trek the Tour and encourage any Trek fan close enough to one of the 40 stops to experience it for themselves. This is a Disneyland for Trekkies and a once in a lifetime chance to see all that is Trek.

Live Long and Prosper!

History Channel Does It Right -- In the Underworld!

With a new host up on deck for its second season which starts tonight, History Channel's exciting Cities of the Underworld offers up subterranean suspense with a neat dose of history. Tapped as our new fearless guide to the delights deep down is actor/host Don Wildman, a stalwart and heroic-looking fella who might be familiar to you from his work in myriads of commercials and as host of various adventure-y shows on ESPN, Travel Channel and CNBC.

Wildman seems to have the real life chops necessary to carry out his new mission; he's kind of a smart he-man/Renaissance man, tracing his lineage back to the early Quakers and walking the walk as an amateur pilot, scuba diver and other pursuits perfectly suited to his new gig on Cities of the Underworld. He gets to shimmy down skinny little ratholes, poke around spooky dungeons, and explore forbidden hidden spaces guaranteed to fascinate.

Tell me, who doesn't like the idea of scrambling around dark places looking for creepy secrets? For those of us who prefer our thrills brought to us in a neat package with a cool host, Cities of the Underworld is the perfect solution to our couch potato dreams.

Check out the show on the History Channel website -- loads of information plus vid clips and other cool stuff! The show airs regularly on Monday nights but also pops up in other slots; check out the History Channel's schedule page to search for additional airings.

Star Trek: The Tour

It has been over forty years since the original Star Trek series with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy first appeared on NBC. Alas, we are no closer to interstellar space travel today, but it is a far more futuristic world we are living in, then one would have imagined in the 60's, when Gene Roddenberry's legendary vision was created. For one thing, most of us carry around these nifty little communication devices...sort of a cross between a communicator and a tricorder. We call them cell phones. And because most of them come equipped with photo and video capabilities, you can find yourself at a Star Trek convention one morning, and by the afternoon, post the entire experience on the Internet for all the world to see. Actually, I used a Sony digital for these shots. But I could have used my cell phone!

Star Trek the Tour is visiting Long Beach, California over the next month. It features interactive rides, models from the films and Captain Kirk's chair from the bridge of the Enterprise (yes you can sit in it, but it has the longest line at the whole show). You can watch yourself get beamed up, have yourself inserted into a favorite episode on video, or even pull up a metal stool and sit at Quark's bar for an intergalactic beverage. On a rainy Sunday morning in Southern California, it was packed with Star Trek fans of every age, size, shape and color. And if you think Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth, you should have seen the looks of joy on the faces of these fans. The word "spiritual" comes to mind. That a colorful sci-fi TV show which only ran a few seasons could have spawned 4 additional TV series, 10 major motion pictures, and such completely unhinged viewer adoration, is utterly amazing. There is even a JJ Abrams directed 11th movie currently under construction, scheduled for a Christmas 2008 release.

It's easy for elitist critics to dismiss a movement that has generated such rabid fan devotion and billions of t-shirts. But more than a handful of real life astronauts have sited "Star Trek" as the reason they decided to make a living reaching for the final frontier. If you look past the glitz and glitter at the Star Trek tour, you'll see a glimpse of what television can achieve at its finest.

Cloverfield!

It's not TV, or even a movie...it's a ride. And worth every penny if you do the ROI compared to a Disneyland ticket.

Thanks to a very successful and brilliant viral campaign (which included embedded video right here on the Flaming Nose), I was compelled to drag all of my willing friends and relatives to see Cloverfield opening weekend. We helped it sell a LOT of popcorn (with white cheese flavored sprinkles in the Pacific theater chain I attended) and break box office records nationwide. Here is my sociological analysis of this event:

• It was interactive. People in the audience felt free to share their thoughts about the movie, in full voice and very colorful language. They were especially vocal at the end, and in some cases, violent. I saw soda cups and Twizzlers thrown forcefully by disgruntled males in the core 12-17 demographic.
  
• Even though the most secretive part of the promotional campaign involved hiding the identity of the actual monster, most people did not want to talk about the monster afterwards. Why? If you ask me, the movie could have been hugely improved by chopping 10 minutes off the opening boring upscale 20-something pretty people party sequence and replacing it with significantly more quality monster time. Especially when it opens its lizard like cheek flaps and nips a helicopter out of the air. That was awesome.
  
• I think the monster was the main character. Has anyone explored its motivation or origin? What if it was an endangered species? Why didn't they just put it to sleep long enough to build a giant wild animal habitat where it could live and be happy and not have to destroy Manhattan? But we would have to neuter it big time, because it spawns horrible small crab babies that bite you and then you get Ebola and explode. Oh, sorry. Forgot the spoiler alert for the 12 people worldwide that are reading the Nose.
• Does anyone else love...LOVE the news reports that theaters are posting warnings outside that people "prone to motion sickness" might want to avoid the movie? I adore a disclaimer that is based, not on sexual or gory content...but camera style. Is this a first? Warning people that the hand held camera jerkiness is something that they might find nauseating? Why was this warning not posted outside the theater for "Flight 93"? Or "Blair Witch"? Clearly, this is a cinematic breakthrough for annoying camera movements.
  
• Why, in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eight, do women still find it necessary to run for blocks and blocks and through devastated monster wrecked tunnels, without taking off their stiletto high heeled shoes? Hate them in 1950's retro horror movies. Hate them now. Just saying.
  

Best question of all; what does this have to do with TV? You're kidding. Everything becomes television eventually. If a ride (Pirates of the Caribbean) can become a movie; then a movie (Cloverfield) can become a video game (no brainer there), which will eventually turn back into a ride with vibrating seats at a theme park. And then we'll buy the DVD. In Blu-Ray. Which we will ultimately view on television in the familiar confines of our living room. Isn't it a great time to be along for the ride? We'll save a seat for you, right here on the Nose.

Life Without People

Life Without People aired Sunday night on the History Channel and I must say it was definitely intriguing. What would happen to the earth if suddenly there were no people. How fast would it revert back to nature and I must say it was surprisingly fast.

I loved seering the cities that exist today that were suddenly abandoned due to nuclear blasts. People left hurriedly and never came back. A playground where no children would ever play was shown, the grand opening was to have been 4 days after the blast-- that is of course if the blast had never happened. Stuck in a time warp. Fascinating! I love time warps.
Temples abandoned by tribes long ago were overtaken by vines and trees all growing over the temples and obscuring them. A stadium in Texas abandoned, the field where football had been played had reverted back to a forest. The grandstand where people had watched falling down and in disrepair.

The show went in progression first in 1 year and then 5 year increments--or something like that--showing what cities would look like if suddenly there were no people to maintain the city. Things we take for granted such as paint on bridges. Without daily, weekly or yearly maintenance the Golden Gate bridge for example would rust and eventually fall apart.
Windows in office buildings--without a careful eye for maintenance--would eventually fall out of their casings and offices would become open to the elements. Pigeons would roost on computers and use papers that were so important and confidential at one time to some one as mere fodder for nesting.

In this age of Blackberry's, IPOD's and razor thin computers none of that means anything if we don't appreciate what we have. How quickly if nature held humans in captivity like a monster, would we see our world as we know it today return to what it once was. Very quickly indeed.

Try and catch this as I'm sure it will be played and played again. It's well worth the watch.

"Life After People" -- Tonight on the History Channel

Quel domage! The Eiffel Tower has turned into the Leaning Tower, and there's nobody left on Earth to prop her back up again. That's the intriguing premise of Life After People, History Channel's new two-hour documentary premiering tonight at 9pm. Envisioning an Earth where humanity has been wiped out, LAP puts on screen the hypothetical conclusions which scientific experts surmise might be the fate of what's left behind after we've gone.

As the cities and landmarks crumble, what of the various ecosystems? Will kudzu take over the Empire State Building? Will wolves roam the White House (and one might ask aren't they already)? Life After People is another one of those amazing apopcalyptic scenarios that are so fascinating (to some of us, at least) and work so well on TV these days thanks to the terrific special effects available to illustrate them.

The special promises intelligent theories, a perhaps shocking and unthinkable possible future, and a chance to ponder the imponderable -- Mother Earth sans her homo sapien inhabitants.

I know I'll be glued to the set, and I hope you are too!

Life After People, tonight at 9pm, and it will run several more times during the week. Check out the History Channel website for more information, the whole schedule, and special features on this riveting special.

Nose-talgia: Some Classic Star Trek

Completely juvenile, and completely funny, what can I say? A very short Star Trek parody from the original series episode "Obsession".

Mega Disasters on History Channel Today!

By now you must know how much The Flaming Nose loves apocalyptic television, such as History Channel's excellent and exciting series Mega Disasters. It's a bit late notice, but there's a three episode mini-marathon of MD today starting at noon eastern time, with "Asteroid Apocalypse", "Mega Freeze" and "New York City Hurricane" all set to wreak havoc. What a line-up!

This is a terrific show, with great CGI sequences and the kind of oh-my-god scenarios that ought to make your everyday annoyances seem fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Let's hope so, anyway. Programs like this offer good old-fashioned thrills and chills along with a bracing dose of science, and there's hardly a better combination than that. Wow! I can't imagine a kid not being fascinated by this stuff, too. Too scary? Wouldn't you rather know about a possible danger than have it completely surprise you? Give me a little forewarning and I'm good, and I hope you are, too!

So enjoy Mega Disasters today on The History Channel, starting at noon!

Today's Nose-talgia: Paul Winchell & Jerry Mahoney!

Anybody else like ventriloquists like I do? This is one of the best, Mr. Paul Winchell and his friends Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff!

TV Nose-talgia: Lost in Space

This video accompanied the presentation of one of the Lost in Space robots to the Kennedy Space Center visitor center, last June. Enjoy!

Some Flaming Nose Favorites Win at Globes

Despite a severely altered format and correspondingly dismal ratings, the results of Sunday evening's Golden Globes telecast were of some cheer to The Flaming Nose when several of our favorites made out well.

We were happy to see Tina Fey of 30 Rock win as Best Actress in a TV Comedy or Musical, Jeremy Piven of Entourage as Best Supporting Actor in TV, Extras win for Best TV Comedy or Musical, and John Hamm of Mad Men as Best Actor TV Drama and the show itself win for Best Drama. Not happy, of course, to see Michael C. Hall not win for his superb work as Dexter, but Hamm was a solid contender. We were also especially rooting for Alec Baldwin or Ricky Gervais to take Best Actor TV in Comedy, but David Duchovny's equally fascinating and worthy performance in Californication got the award.

Check out our "Labels" section on the righthand side of page to find our previous posts about all these wonderful shows and performers. Congrats!

The Feasty Boys Eat America!

The Feasty Boys are coming to town. Please make sure your prescriptions for cholesterol lowering medication are up to date and filled. Jon Mayer and Jim Stump are two cheerful and rotund cooking advisers, who insist that the main ingredients for balanced meals are the "Four B's": Beer, Butter, Bacon and Better not forget the Cheese!

Jon and Jim hail from Maryland, and together they have provided nearly 600 pounds of Good Ole Boy fun to ESPN's morning show Cold Pizza as well as Good Morning America. Now they will be showcased on The Travel Channel , and you can catch their shenanigans January 16th at 8pm. An upcoming episode has them visiting a cranberry bog in New England so they can demonstrate how to make a deep fried turkey injected with butter and cranberry juice. There are already a few artery clogging cooking shows on the air. Paula Dean on the Food Channel comes to mind...we love it when she says "Butta" in her pearly Georgia drawl. But few look as down home fun as The Feasty Boys. Emeril Lagasse used to be the Pied Piper of cooking for regular guys, but he's just too darn important now. He was the Grand Marshall of the Rose Parade 2008, for heaven's sake! For big boy cookin' with dudes who look like they'd be happy to pull up a lawn chair at your house and crack open a beer, The Feasty Boys are just what the doctor (preferably a cardiac surgeon) ordered.
(This blog is dedicated to my dear brother, the late Eric Collins, who loved science, cooking and pork fat, and not necessarily in that order)

The Terminator's Back -- Tonight on Fox!

It's been nearly twenty-five years since the first Terminator movie came out in 1984, and it's now TV's turn to take over this exciting science fiction franchise. Premiering in two one-hour installments tonight Sunday and tomorrow Monday, Jan. 13 & 14th, 8p and 9p respectively, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles begins as Sarah and her son are thrust again into the fight of man vs. machine.

Beautiful British actress Lena Headey (300) stars, along with Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau and Richard T. Jones. It's an attractive cast and we're always up for some good robot mayhem around The Flaming Nose clubhouse.

Good luck to Fox with this and do check out the show's website here and I'm assuming that if you miss it tonight, it will be available online at Fox very soon. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' regular timeslot is Mondays at 9pm following Prison Break.

Remembering Johnny Grant

For those of us who worked at KTLA-TV years ago, the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood Johnny Grant was also our co-worker. He was director of Public Affairs at the station for years and it was a boring day indeed if you didn't get a chance to chat with him as he passed by. As many of you probably have heard already, Johnny died on Wednesday, and many very nice tributes are showing up. I wrote one for my other blogger life at Turner Classic Movies Movie Morlocks site, which I will point you to for more info on Johnny and some great links to coverage.

The friend I refer to at the end of the post is indeed fellow Flaming Noser Jane--thanks for the phrase! Johnny Grant was always nice to everybody, and I recommend going to the L.A. Times' article and checking out all the comments that have been posted about him. It's clear that he had a tremendous positive influence on everybody he met, and boy, wouldn't you like somebody to say that about you when you're gone?

He had his own website but it was down yesterday (and it's still down today) because of too much traffic. Let's hope that somebody takes it over and keeps it alive as a tribute to this man who kept Hollywood on the map and never lost the zest for life. So long, Johnny!

US Presidential Election 2008, The Race is On!

As my fellow "Nose" writer Lisa would agree, there is never a shortage of great things to write about in the world of television. We generally write about programs that capture our imaginations,
but here we take a moment to note the tremendous build of excitement being generated over the US Presidential elections, 2008. The interest in the political process, as US citizens attempt to sort it all out and exercise one of their most important rights (voting) is reaching a fevered pitch, and it is effecting all media news, whether TV, Internet, radio or the struggling (and still important) paper press. As the two past primary elections in Iowa and New Hampshire have so amazingly demonstrated, the races on both sides of the political arena are incredibly close. And the viable candidates represent a new spectrum of diversity that is generally not seen in a US presidential election. The prospect has left all the media pundits salivating. There is more posturing, hypothesizing, and flashing red/white/blue graphics on TV right now than you can shake a stick at. But mixed in with all the hysteria and glee, is also an element of hope. Hope that people are actually watching and caring, as this all important political process unfolds. And TV is covering it on every possible pipeline: local news, broadcast news (for the over 80 set), cable news and PBS. If you miss your favorite television coverage, the web is there to provide you with an instant recap, 24 hours a day and on demand.

I have two people in my own world, who are utterly captivated by the upcoming election, and both will be first time voters in America. One is my son, who will turn 18 just in time to cast his very first vote in a US Presidential election. The other is a co-worker, who has just become a new US citizen in 2007. They are just the tip of the interest surge, but beneath the waves, an entire iceberg of jaded American voters is just beginning to thaw. US politics are suddenly (wonderfully) hot and important for everyone. Television news producers take note. Take advantage. I think it will continue. Who would have imagined, that the writer's strike could have such an impact? It just might be responsible for the biggest voter turnout in US history. When there is nothing else on TV, it turns out American viewers love politics after all.

It's Official -- "Dexter" on CBS in February

This just in: the first season of Showtime's hit series --and The Flaming Nose's fave, too-- Dexter will air on CBS Sunday nights beginning in February. The cleaned-up versions of the gritty, grisly and gruesome (especially in the 1st season!) episodes will be broadcast at 10pm beginning Sunday, Feb. 17th, and continue for the next eleven weeks.

Pictured above are Jennifer Carpenter and Michael C. Hall as Debra and her brother Dexter, just two of the wonderful actors that mainstream America will now be able to enjoy with the broadening of Dexter's viewing base, by many, many multiples.

Obviously Dexter is a great fit--at least promotion-wise--with CBS' many crime dramas, but the inclusion of Dexter could have the unintended side-effect of making all those other shows seem just a little bit lame in comparison. It will be interesting to see how the show feels with the rougher and bloodier edges honed away, but the excellence will remain intact, no doubt.

Season One of Dexter was incredible, what with the whole Ice Truck Killer thing, and what a treat CBS viewers have in store for them! Dexter, welcome to Middle America!

P.S.: Check out this detailed article from yesterday's Variety with more information on the Dexter CBS pick-up. Interesting remarks from a Dexter producer about the appropriateness of Dex as a character for mainstream TV, and from a Showtime exec who says that the show, cut-down, will be "exactly" the show it was and that that cuts are things that nobody would miss. That's pushing it a little, but let's assume the edits will be done well and won't hurt the show, at least. I love the show, too, and I understand the exigencies of making the show suitable for CBS, but hey, they're cutting it. It won't be the same. That's just the way it is; you can't pretend otherwise. But don't worry, it will probably work just fine. It's that good.

"Lost" Episodes in HD Streaming Video on ABC.com

Lost fans among us -- and who isn't one? -- will be pleased to know that ABC.com has all three previous seasons of Lost available online in streaming HD, in anticipation of the new season coming up at the end of this month. The quality is great and if you've missed any episodes or just want a comprehensive refresher course, this is the place to go. The only problem I can see is that they don't have the episodes numbered, but if you go to the site and click on whatever season, if you scroll down the first episodes are at the bottom of the list, not the top. So, if you want Season 1, to get to the pilot go to the last listing. And pay no attention to the dates they have on there; must be the dates the videos were posted because they mostly don't seem to correspond with airdates (except for Season 3).

Not everybody likes watching TV on their computer but I think it's super. If you do too then enjoy this generous serving of Lost while you can!

How To Look Good Nekkid -- on Lifetime

Okay, I'm not a fan of makeover or reality shows, but the good review in the New York Times prompted me to take a look at Lifetime's new show premiering tonight at 9pm. How to Look Good Naked, based on the British show of the same name, pairs host Carson Kressley (from Queer Eye) with a woman who has a negative body image, and he then helps her overcome the self-loathing. Big job, thanks to the years of propaganda and conditioning that all women are in varying degrees aware of throughout their lives.

Kressley became the breakout star of Queer Eye a few years back because of his over-the-top personality, and frankly I'm sure that many of us had just about enough of him when that show was on top. However, he seems like he has a good heart (or can play like he has one on TV) and it makes HtLGN kind of sweet and I ended up liking it. If you're already a Size 0 and can't fathom why these curvy gals are even allowed to live then you might want to skip the show, but for the rest of us, I think we might be able to discover a little something and ease up, already, on ourselves.

Lifetime has made the first episode available online so if you don't catch it tonight do take a look at it here. The How to Look Good Naked website has lots of features which you might also want to explore at your leisure.

Yikes! Monsters!

I'm in love with History Channel's new-ish wonderful (in the true sense of the word) series MonsterQuest, a weekly journey into cryptozoology (the study of mysterious, rare and elusive animals). Now, whether or not something this exciting and fanciful even belongs on History Channel is certainly up for discussion, but I understand their desire for younger demos and this may be a great way to capture them. If the show weren't so well done there might be an issue, but it's super. Nat Geo already has Is It Real? which deals with some of the same subject matter (and seems quite at home on the channel), and it's good too, but there's something about MonsterQuest -- probably starting with the hilarious menacing beastly eye logo that shows up frequently during the show (as seen above)-- that is extra-exciting and oh so watchable.

If you've never checked out this well-made and serious-minded show, you've got a chance tomorrow, Sat. Jan. 5th, when they're running six episodes on a row starting at 11am. You'll see the latest on Giant Squids, Sasquatch, strange big cat attacks (kind of relevant really, with that tiger attack at the S.F. Zoo, and what about the revelations that those boys may have been taunting the tiger with slingshots? Ick. The Flaming Nose hates animal abuse and that changes the whole story, doesn't it?), Killer Apemen (with kooky CGI footage of an army of Russian chimp footsoldiers marching in Red Square, very much worth tuning in for!), Swamp Beasts, and giant killer fish. It doesn't get much better than that.

Grounded in hard science and with much use of DNA and modern identification techniques, MonsterQuest has one foot planted in crazyville and the other in the laboratory. I love the sincerity of those who study this field and hope that one day they'll find their Yeti, Nessie, Ogopogo or whatever else they search for. Until then, we can all go along for the ride and experience our vicarious monster-hunting thrills on History Channel's MonsterQuest!

(If you don't catch up with tomorrow's marathon, MonsterQuest regularly airs Wednesdays at 10pm. Check out the show's website for more information and fun extras! I also found this nice interview with MonsterQuest's creator Doug Hajicek right here.)

Okay, I Know This is a Movie, But...

Wow! I can't wait! If you're not excited by this, you ought to be!

Maybe the Best Moment on TV Last Year?

From the Extras Finale, with Ricky Gervais --