Sunday, October 27, 2002

An Angel Of A Man

Best shot of the post-World Series festivities: not the shot of manager Dusty Baker carrying his crying child out of the dugout, but a glimpse of the man who was the soul of the Angels for many years, former owner, the late Gene Autry.

Who says a cowboy's work is never done?

Sunday, October 20, 2002

Website Updates

I am attempting to update some of the files in the Bus Gallery but am having a good deal of trouble with Comcast's proprietary publisher. Hopefully we can get these issues resolved soon.

10/24/2002) We have reuploaded a lot of the Bus Gallery files to include serial number information for a lot of the buses, plus to just plain fix some of the pictures. There have been problems with Front Page and my graphics program not agreeing on whether file names for pictures should be in ALL CAPS or no caps. This is causing some of the pictures to show up with the little red X's. Everything has been fixed.

Sunday, October 06, 2002

New SNL Book Gives The Band Short Shrift

For possibly the first time ever, I was in absentia for a Saturday Night Live season premiere. Therefore, there will be no updates to the SNL Band pages until next week. I have been told there is a new image of the band in the main titles, and we usually update that as well as going through and changing the hard date references as far as certain musicians' longevity.

BTW, I did purchase Tom Shales' and James Andrew Miller's "Live From New York: An Uncensored History Of Saturday Night Live" (Little, Brown & Company; $25.95 list). Had I read the caveat early in the acknowledgements regarding the decision to concentrate on the comedy element of the show and leave reportage of the music of the show, house and otherwise, to others, then I probably would have waited for paperback. Which is a shame because the book nicely fills in the gaps since the last major treatise on the show's behind-the-scenes history was published back in 1985, giving us coverage of such show landmarks as the ascent of Jon Lovitz and Phil Hartman, the Andrew Dice Clay and Sinead O'Connor incidents, and the tragic deaths of Gilda Radner, Hartman and Chris Farley.

The only music department employees to speak on the record are the show's inaugural music director, Howard Shore (who has more of an influence on what kind of show SNL was conceived as than some may think), and musician-turned-actor Paul Shaffer. Shore had some revealing thoughts on the types of musicians that populated the early SNL band, and we learn that the band actually scored some coke on air during a commercial break once, but that's about it. Cheryl Hardwick is mentioned only sporadically, and then mostly in the context of being Mrs. Michael O'Donoghue, although Victoria Jackson remembers her input on the "I Am Not A Bimbo" song. Shore and Dan Aykroyd also speak on the formation of the Blues Brothers Band with most of the musicians being procured through Tom Malone.

A major work, to be sure, but if the band and the music is your thing, skip it.

Friday, October 04, 2002

"From New York, The Greatest City In The World..."

 
Tonight's "Late Show With David Letterman" Top Ten, postponed from last night, will feature ten high school principals. Two of them are from the Toms River school district - Maureen Madden, from High School East, and John Coleman, from High School North. You can see the results above.

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

He Is Outta There!

Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out, Valentine.

Can't wait for the 2003 season!