"MYDOOM" NOTICE

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, I AM NOT ACCEPTING E-MAIL WITH ATTACHMENTS. PLEASE ADVISE ME VIA ATTACHMENT-FREE E-MAIL IF YOU WANT TO SEND ME SOMETHING, EVEN IF YOU ARE A "TRUSTED CONTACT". THIS IS BECAUSE OF THE PROLIFERATION OF THE "MYDOOM" E-MAIL VIRUS DISGUISING ITSELF AS FAILED E-MAIL MESSAGES. I GOT 36 OF THESE MOFOS TODAY. THANK YOU,

Mere Alcohol, It Doesn't Move Me At All

I don't know how this escaped my notice, but there is now a Sinatra Wine available in your local liquor store.

BILLY MAY DEAD AT 87

The last standing of the great big band arrangers, Billy May, has died at the age of 87. Billy May was most closely associated with Capitol Records, producing the soundtracks to records for both adults and children (including those featuring Bozo and the Warner Bros. characters). He was a trumpeter and arranger for Charlie Barnet and Glenn Miller. His first work with Frank Sinatra was the album "Come Fly With Me", later migrating to him with Reprise for some great sides including his great arrangement of the Frank Loesser song "Luck Be A Lady", and he worked with many other great singers. He also scored television shows to magnificent effect, including "Batman" and "Emergency". He even supervised the music for Stan Freberg's comedy records. As Freberg's co-star Daws Butler once attested to, he imbued his sessions with much alcohol-induced jocularity, but he got the job done and delivered some great tunes.

Boy, did he get it done. And now, sadly, Billy May is done.

She Had Legs And She Knew How To Use Them

That description suited Ann Miller to a T, right up until her passing this week. Although she made lots of film musicals (and literally had million dollar legs, the value of RKO's insurance policy), Ann Miller will probably be best remembered for a Heinz Soup commercial. That genius of the black art known as advertising, Stan Freberg, engineered a commercial in which a husband (played by Dave Willock) comes home and asks his wife what's for dinner. (So PI!) Ann Miller breaks into a choreographed dance routine and the kitchen splits apart to reveal a dance stage worthy of Busby Berkeley himself. Once she's sang and danced and spread the message about Heinz' soups, Willock deadpans, "Honey, why do you always have to make dinner into a big production?"

Classic Freberg... and the dancing wasn't bad either. Ann Miller kept active in films until last year; her last film role was in "Mulholland Drive" a few years ago. Ann Miller's status as retired dance queen was the parodic source for a mid-90's SNL sketch called "Leg Up!", featuring Molly Shannon as Ann Miller and Cheri Oteri as Debbie Reynolds.

Bennifer: It Is Over, Part Deux

And ET, Extra, Access Hollywood are all wondering, "Why couldn't you have waited a week until the beginning of the Sweeps?"

I still say it was because "Gigli" was such a bomb, and their romance was created just to hype this movie.

The End Of Walt Disney's Florida Studio...

Not since Max Fleischer was left out in the cold (warm?) in Miami and his studio pulled back to New York by Paramount Pictures has Florida experienced such a sad day in animation history as this past Monday, when Walt Disney Feature Animation closed its Orlando, Florida unit, part working facility, part tourist attraction. The studio started small in the early 90's with a couple of Roger Rabbit (remember him?) shorts, then about a reel or two of "The Lion King", then eventually complete features, up to and including the just-completed "Home On The Range". On Monday, the studio employees were given their pink slips and severance, some being shipped out to Burbank to continue their work, others wondering if they can get a job wearing a Mickey suit around Epcot. Anyway, Jim Hill Media has a great series of articles about the studio and its closure, including this one which includes a charming little anecdote about Frisbees being launched onto Sunset Boulevard from the fourth floor of the animation studio, when who should happen by but Mr. Eisner.... read it for yourself to find out what happens next!

Tug McGraw Dead At 59

Just heard the news (confirmed by two Philadelphia TV stations, WCAU and KYW) that former Met and Phillie great Tug McGraw has passed away. He had been fighting cancer, and was apparently stricken while visiting his son and daughter-in-law, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, in Tennessee over the weekend. He was one of the great relief pitchers for both those teams and coined the rallying cry - "Ya gotta believe!" during the 1973 season that saw the Mets win a National League championship for the second time in four years. Tug was 59.

368

No, Sesame Street is not brought to you by the number 368.

Well, let's backtrack. Remember Dave and Robair's Blood Sugar Challenge? Well, we discontinued it a few months back. Not coincidentally, I was getting a little lax in my blood sugar readings and thought I was doing fine until this number was quoted to me by a nurse at the emergency unit at Florida Hospital in Celebration, FL, in the early morning hours of December 31, 2003.

I had a buffet steak dinner and was shopping for souvenirs when I began feeling funny. I went outside for some air, and then went back to my hotel, where I didn't feel any better. After about a half hour of feeling this way I was convinced I was having something... a heart attack, a stroke, a diabetic coma, who knows what.... I had my wife call the paramedics.

It turns out that when I was at the hospital, my heart and lungs checked out fine, but my blood sugar had been an impossible 368. Any higher and I would have checked out for a while. The ER doc gave me a saline IV and I was home within hours, and the following morning my sugars checked out normal, where they have been since.

I don't know if it was the cumulative effect of the various foods I had eaten since on vacation, or perhaps one cookie too many for dessert - but I am now going to be ever more vigilant about the blood sugar readings, and this time I won't have to put them on public display to do it.

I want to thank the paramedics of the Osceola County Rescue department and the staff of Florida Hospital in Celebration for their care. And hopefully my appetite won't get me into more trouble in the future.

Dave On Vacation

Tomorrow morning, I am leaving on a 10-day vacation to the Southland. I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and I will be back with you sometime in 2004, the Good Lord willing. So don't look for e-mail. Don't even SEND me e-mail when I'm away. That means you too, spammers.

Happy Birthday Susan Lucci

Susan Lucci is 56 today.

Somewhere in her house there's gotta be a picture of her with wrinkles, saggy skin and shock white hair.

All of which she certainly doesn't have!

Pushing Prom

I want it recorded to the world that on December 19, 2003, I saw a PROM magazine at the supermarket checkout. Sweet Jesus! I'm sure even the most airheaded and vacuous teenage girls know that it's too damn early to be thinking about "Prom" (as it's now called, somewhere during the last generation, the "the" was dropped), and all the extracurricular activity that goes with it.

Were I still teaching high school students, I would have taken a poll of the teenage girls in my classes to see if they are of the same mind as me - that it's TOO EARLY to be thinking about the Prom in December.

We're Back

Congratulations if you can read this. The Christmas elves reminded us in the (St.) Nick of time that our domain name was up for renewal, and we have done so. You should be able to read this again in a day or so. Meantime, you may want to resend that e-mail... but only if you're not selling me something I don't need or you're not one of my long lost friends from Uganda wanting to siphon money through my bank account.

In Case You Missed It Last Night..

Hope you saw this Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" rerun on Game Show Network... you never know who may show up at the game!

New Horns For Asbury Park HS Band, Courtesy Of...

...The Boss.

As one of the beneficiaries of this weekend's concert performances by Bruce Springsteen and The Max Weinberg 7, the Asbury Park High School Marching Band will step out on its next performance with an entirely new set of band instruments and drums, as well as a nice monetary donation to the program. APHS Band members will attend this weekend's performances and solicit further donations in the hopes of purchasing new uniforms.

The APHS band actually disbanded in the early 1990's when its longtime director Dorian Parreott Sr. retired. I've known Dorian for years and more recently as a member of AFM 399, and remember the glory years of the band program back when I was a high school student. However, the program had been in decline for several years prior to Dorian's retirement. Two years ago, James Dinella was hired and charged with resurrecting the marching band, and this just-ended football season marked the first time APHS fielded a halftime show since the Parreott days.

As an elementary band teacher, I feel it's critical that the students who take the time to learn instruments have a decent place to go when their time is up at their current school. Thanks to Bruce Springsteen and his friends, the kids in Asbury will have greater pride and a better sound playing on their brand new instruments, and hopefully down the road, new uniforms. Who knows? One of them could be the next Clarence Clemons or Max Weinberg!

HELP

Okay, here's the deal. I wrote back on USENET on January 1, 1995...

How did Vanna White's singing debut on last night's pre-taped "Merv Griffin's New Year's Eve" go? To me, it was underwhelming. She sang "You Do Something To Me" from the roof of some hotel in Beverly Hills, then we found out who she was singing about: her son Nicholas.

More exciting than Vanna's singing was what came before it: Mort Lindsey and the band played the new version of the "Wheel Of Fortune" theme, "Changing Keys". It was the exact same arrangement used on the TV show beginning this season.

I have this show on tape somewhere. Only thing is, I have to look through ten years of tape to find it. I sounded a clarion call for this show sometime before, but if anyone out there in the tape-trading subculture has it, I'd like to talk. I have dozens of episodes of Trading Spaces, rare cartoons, all kinds of stuff available for trade... anything out of the Robair Collection of rare game show episodes.... who's got the Merv Griffin ringing in 1995?

"It's an O.J. world again..."

We couldn't agree more with the opinion of veteran writer Mark Evanier on this blog item, but I sure wish Mark and the rest of the news media would not strip Michael Jackson of the last bit of dignity he has - his NAME. The five-letter nickname that appears in most of these reports make it appear that his middle initial should be "T", standing of course for "The".

Random thought

I wish I had a nickel for every clown who had a middle initial "T" and claimed it stood for "The".

New lyric

Spotlight on Arthur Conley (yeah, yeah)
He's our one and only (yeah, yeah)
Singin' "Sweet Soul Music" (yeah, yeah)
Oh yeah (yeah, yeah)

MR. SMITH GOES TO TOMS RIVER

I truly apologize for the late notice on this. G.E. Smith, the former bandleader of Saturday Night Live, will be appearing TONIGHT (Wednesday, November 12) at the Ocean County Library on Washington Street in Toms River, at 8:00 p.m. G.E. will be performing during the awarding of a $19,000 100th anniversary Harley Davidson V-Rod motorcycle, to benefit the library's expansion.

And how's this for a cruel twist of fate! Because of parent conferences at one of my schools, I'm unable to attend.

Damn.

Ocean County Library Press Release
SNL Band Pages

Taps

...But it's the deaths that are a little closer to home that are a little harder to take. I just found out from a fellow union brother that we've lost one of the better reed men in the county, Jerry Walther. Jerry was also a member of AFM 399. I played with Jerry in a few ensembles and what I am most reminded of is his perseverance in learning oboe so he could play that instead of clarinet in the Ocean County College Band.

Visiting hours are Thursday at the Anderson & Campbell funeral home in Manchester.

Gerhard Walther obituary