Same ol' shit, different underwear...

POTTY MOUTH!
No doubt y’all heard about actress Sally Field getting bleeped by Fox TV during Sunday night’s annual Enema—sorry—Emmy Awards broadcast when she made anti-Iraq War remarks during her acceptance speech.  Much debate has since ensued about whether Fox was censoring Field because she used the term "Goddamned" or because she protested the war (I personally think it was a little of both) but the bleeping was rather unnecessary anyway because according to the Nielsen ratings, no one watched the show in the first place!  Fox, of all networks, oughtta know better than to go head-to-head against the NFL in prime-time anyway.  Just to show you how much I watch current series TV anymore, I wasn't even aware Sally Field was on a network show this season...

And I have no doubt that Bill O’Reilly seized the opportunity to get up on his soap box this week and condemn Sally Field and every other "Hollywood type" who has spoken out against the war, labeling them unpatriotic bleeding-heart liberals, yadda x 3.  While I do agree that Sally’s choice of words was inappropriate for the setting, and an award show is not the proper forum for political protests, I side with Ms. Field.  I also thought Michael Moore's tirade on Dubya was out of line at the Oscars a few years back (even though I totally agreed with him), but this is still America, and we do have this thing called freedom of speech.  As for O’Reilly, Hannity, Malkin, Limbaugh, Coulter and all the other conservative pundits who so avidly bash anyone who protests this stupid fucking war (that would include me), if you didn't know any better, you’d think they want this damn thing to just go on forever and ever…

MR. POT, MEET MR. KETTLE—YOU’RE BLACK!
Speaking of Billy Bad-Ass, I couldn’t help but chuckle at him calling Barry Alan Pincus a "pinhead" on "O’Reilly Factor" last night.  You might know Mr. Pincus better as singer Barry Manilow, and B.O. (what appropriate initials, btw) proceeded to rip ol’ Bare for—horror of horrors—his refusal to appear on ABC’s "The View" this week because he didn’t want to be interviewed by his friend Rosie O’Donnell’s arch-enemy, the ever-conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck.  Evidently, this makes Barry a "pinhead" in O’Reilly’s book.  As we used to say when I was a kid, it takes one to know one, Bill!

This is so typical of O’Reilly’s bullying style of "fair and balanced" editorializing, too.  What is Barry Manilow anyway, but a schlocky has-been ‘70s singer who now relies on singing other people’s schlocky ‘70s songs to prolong his long-dormant career because he can’t come up with any new material—why should it matter to a douche like Bill O’Reilly what show Manilow appears on, much less who interviews him?  Oh, by the way, Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a fucking airhead, and regardless of what her political affiliation might be, anyone who formulates their political views by watching this vapid waste of TV airtime ("The View") should start using their head for something besides a hat rack.  Come to think of it, the same could also be said for "O’Reilly Factor"…

HAPPY B-DAY TO THE REAL BATMAN…
Actor Adam West turns 77 today.  Fuck Val Kilmer, fuck Michael Keaton and fuck anyone else who portrays the Caped Crusader—Adam West is the only Batman who's officially recognized in my house...

YET ANOTHER GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING…
These are heady days for stand-up comics and TV news outlets the world over, and they owe a debt of gratitude to Orenthal James Simpson, don’t they?  Evidently his search for the "real killers" led him to a hotel room in Vegas where someone had his memorabilia stashed away, and now he faces more time in the pokey for attempted armed robbery, kidnapping and just generally being a moron.  And of course, all the O.J. apologists and sycophants out there are crying foul that The Juice was gas-lighted this time, but I'm having none of it.  Is there any shadow of a doubt what an asshole this guy is?  And yes, I think he’s guilty as hell of double murder, too…

K.C. CONCERT TICKET FUBAR, EPISODE II
Thousands of Kansas City parents are pretty cheesed-off about how quickly tickets were snapped-up over the weekend for the upcoming Hannah Montana concert.  For the second time in a month, tickets for a Sprint Center show went on sale at 10AM and were history by 10:01AM, not unlike what happened with Elton John tickets, yet all the ticket broker outlets have plenty of overpriced tickets for sale once again, thus leading folks (including me) to suspect foul play/collusion on the part of TicketBastard.  While I have to question why any prepubescent wants to see this schizophrenic chick singer who in mid-show morphs from this blonde wig-wearing Hannah Montana persona into Billy Ray Cyrus’ mullet-free brunette daughter Miley (what a pedigree, huh?), I can certainly understand people’s frustration here, and you can’t tell me there ain’t some sort of racket going on in the ticket biz these days.  Makes me long for the days of camping out overnight for concert tickets behind the strip mall at Tiger's Records (remember them, K.C. readers?) back in the day...

NO RACE CARD-PLAYING, PLEASE
Embattled Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb claimed on HBO this week that black quarterbacks in the NFL have more criticism heaped on them by the media and the fans than their white counterparts.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always liked McNabb myself, and find him to be a classy player—hell, I even have a McNabb replica jersey in my collection.  I also staunchly defended him when Rush Limbaugh made his ignorant remarks on ESPN about him a few years ago, but I’m not buying this one.  Even after factoring the over-zealous Philly fan base and sports media into the mix, I have two words for Donovan regarding QBs getting unfairly criticized:  Rex Grossman.  And here’s two more:  Eli Manning.  And two more:  Joey Harrington.

BRETT SOMERS, 1924-2007
I want to acknowledge the passing of comedienne Brett Somers, who died of colon cancer on Saturday at age 83.  Seems rather ironic that she passed away within a few months of her de facto partner-in-crime on "Match Game", Charles Nelson Reilly.  I grew up on game shows back in the ‘70s, and "Match Game" was a regular staple of mine (when I wasn’t in school, that is), and it’s still fun to watch the reruns on GSN.  I never knew it at the time, but the banter between Somers and Reilly would often intensify as the week wore on, and by the Friday broadcasts they were usually in full-goose-bozo razzing mode with each other.  The reason for this phenomenon is fairly simple—they taped all the week’s episodes on the same day, one after the other, and apparently alcohol was readily available between shows, so nature took its course, and voila!  "Match Game" regular Richard Dawson was known to imbibe quite a bit on the show, as well.  R.I.P. Brett, you were one funny dame...

I used to wonder why Game Show Network chose to emphasize "Match Game" so much in favor of other classic game shows, but sadly the answer is that’s really all they have to choose from.  In one of the all-time biggest crimes against humanity, network TV executives back in the late ‘70s decreed there wouldn’t be any future use for the videotapes of old game shows, thus many of them were either destroyed or re-used for other programming.  What a crying shame!  ABC and NBC were especially guilty of this practice, therefore virtually all of their game show output from the ‘60s and ‘70s is gone, apart from a handful of episodes of the original "Hollywood Squares" that are still in captivity.  At least CBS had the forethought to hang on to some of their game show videos, like "Match Game", "The Joker’s Wild" and the ‘60s version of "Password". A few shows from other networks survived, like "Let's Make A Deal", "$10,000 Pyramid" and "Card Sharks" but those are the rare exceptions.  Tragically, this generation has been deprived of seeing so many wonderful game shows from back in the day, like two early Alex Trebek classics like "The Wizard Of Odds" and "High Rollers", along with other classics like "Jackpot", "Split Second" and "Concentration", and especially shows that involved celebrity guests like "Baffle", "Celebrity Sweepstakes" and the '70s version of "Password" on ABC.

There's also a short-lived game show that I would give my left nut to see just one episode of again, "The Magnificent Marble Machine".  It only ran for one season on NBC in 1974-75, which is roughly the same time Elton John's version of The Who's "Pinball Wizard" was all over the radio.  "TMMM" was this huge pinball machine that you could actually stand on, and the contestants had to maneuver the silver ball, which was about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, around with these mammoth "flippers".  It was at least a creative show, if not a long-lived one.