BRILLIANT

Wow. This oughta make you buy the Golden Collection. We're going to be reworking a lot of title cards and bullseye graphics over the next few days. They are just so much nicer on the DVD. By comparison...

Okay, not really a fair comparison, because they're from slightly different eras... but hey, the DVD one looks SO DAMN MUCH BETTER.

Rod Roddy 1937-2003

Robert Ray "Rod" Roddy, announcer on "The Price Is Right", died this morning in a hospital in Los Angeles, at the age of 66. He had been hospitalized for the past two months with breast and colon cancer.

Besides "Price", other game shows with Roddy as announcer included "Press Your Luck", "Love Connection", and "Hit Man". He also provided the voice of Mike the microphone on "Disney's House Of Mouse". He had also been a disk jockey, working in the early days of Top 40 radio with such legends of the genre as Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon, and also branched out into radio talk, including one particularly memorable stint at KLIF in Dallas.

A week ago, I appealed to you to send cards and letters into Rod as soon as possible. Nobody would say as much, but we knew that we were going to lose this much beloved member of the Price family.

Looney Tunes DVD's Coming Tomorrow!

We repeat our earlier recommendation of the Looney Tunes DVD's, which are being released tomorrow.

I strongly recommend you lay out the bucks for the Golden Collection, the four-disc set loaded with extras. If you click on the handy link, you can get it from amazon.com at a discount and make your obedient humble webmaster a few cents in the process. I once again suggest this collection rather than the lower-grade Premiere Collection.

All Sitcoms Should Take This Pledge

With the debut of "Two And A Half Men", Chuck Lorre is back in the sitcom business. If you will recall, the 107 episodes of his previous effort, "Dharma And Greg", each had a different message scrawled in very tiny print on the producer's "vanity card" at the end of each episode (basically his production company logo). Lorre has continued the tradition with "Two And A Half Men" but this time he has a halfway decent show to go with them. Check out the show on CBS and read the text of his latest manifesto here, a pledge every sitcom should heed. We'll check back with you, Chuck.

Maybe Rush Limbaugh IS A Big Fat Idiot After All...

With a little more fanfare than he perhaps wanted, Rush Limbaugh has recused himself from his commentator slot on "ESPN NFL Sunday Countdown", or whatever they're calling it these days.

Limbaugh now joins the likes of the late Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder and Al Campanis in the Foot-In-Mouth Hall Of Fame, for controversial comments that the media wants a black NFL quarterback such as Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles to succeed.

Don't these guys ever learn? I'm not the biggest Eagles fan, but don't you think that a quarterback like McNabb has succeeded on talent, not because of media expectations? Even a casual football viewer like myself can see that.

Is it too late to bring Dennis Miller back?