BB4 Participant Out The House - And It Hasn't Even Been A Week Yet!

CBS needs to get its crap together on the Big Brother 4 website and admit that a contestant has been expelled from the game already for throwing chairs and having hissy fits because his ex-girlfriend is playing the game too. CBS got its money shots out of that one, for sure.

On the other hand, anyone see that mess on Fox last night called "Banzai"? What pushed you over the edge enough to turn the channel? The chicken levitated by a fleet of helium-filled party balloons? The one-legged striker facing off against the one-armed goalie in a battle of soccer amputees? Or the game of "chicken" played by two old ladies in wheelchairs? I think it was the cumulative effect of it all that eventually made me leave the room in disgust.

LOONEY TUNES DVDS ANNOUNCED

It is official. Warner Bros. has announced a release date of October 28, 2003 for the "Golden Collection" of Looney Tunes on DVD. A 4-DVD box set, it will include 56 classic cartoons plus voluminous bonus material. As soon as it is available from amazon.com, I will make a link available so you may purchase it through this site.

Buy Elizabeth McCracken Books

We now have the books of Elizabeth McCracken in our General Store. While not a personal acquaintance, I have known of Ms. McCracken's work for quite some time through a longtime friendship with her brother, PC World Editor Harry McCracken. Both McCrackens are outstanding writers, but Elizabeth's work is quite thought provoking.

Big Brother: Why Bother?

I could give a flip about CBS's sneaky-peeky hidden camera show this time around. I think the problem with these shows is that the novelty wears off after the first couple. I definitely don't like the ex-SO factor, and someone needs to do something about that Julie Chen. I will pass this season and have more fun this summer.

"Chief Halftown" Dead

The city of Philadelphia embraces its local television personalities like no other, especially its kids show hosts. Philadelphia was the home of such luminaries as Gene London, Sally Starr, Captain Noah, and one of the originals in the market, Chief Halftown. A full-blooded Seneca born Traynor Ora Halftown, the Chief was a fixture on Channel 6 (variously known over the years as WFIL-TV or WPVI) from 1951 to 1999. He had been seen for the last several decades in a Saturday morning time slot, usually featuring the young talent of the region. The Chief died yesterday near his retirement home in Brigantine, NJ, at the age of 86. Funeral services will be held Tuesday morning at St. Thomas Church in Brigantine. (Image courtesy WPVI)

Or Not

Look to the right for the Blood Sugar Challenge.

Bus Gallery

Whole buncha new stuff in the Bus Gallery tonight!

Address Correction - Hal Seeger Productions

Send your cards and letters of support to Hal Seeger Productions, Inc., P.O. Box 231117, Great Neck, NY 11024. And tell em Dave sent you!

SPAM ALERT

Be ware of ANY e-mail message that purports to be from "Pepsi Contest" or other entity. It is a WORM called "So Big". Body of email message says "Please see attached zip file for details". Inside that ZIP is a .PIF which is usually BAD NEWS.

We are soon going to be making a major policy statement on e-mail to this website. Please watch for it, particularly if you are a regular correspondent.

Found The Icons

We apologize if you noticed missing icons from this page yesterday. We had to do a quick change on the page and had no access to Blogger. We tried to do it via FTP but the Index page was looking for all the graphics in a different directory (if you ever save pages in Internet Explorer, you will understand what I am talking about).

Now It's Your Turn To Come To Batfink's Rescue!

There's a reason this icon is at the top of the stack you see at the left. We have always been staunch supporters of the plutonium-infused bat with the wings of steel and the supersonic sonar radar. After what seemed like an eternity (I think we went online with it in 1996), my little Batfink site has finally attracted the attention of the Seeger family, who couldn't be more pleased that we are keepers of the flame.

I am pleased to announce that Batfink's snail mailbox is now open! Hal Seeger Productions wants to hear from Batfink fans! What are your memories? How would you like to see Batfink as he prepares for his big comeback? Revival of the classic cartoons? New cartoons? Maybe even a feature film? The possibilities are endless.

Send your cards and letters of support to Hal Seeger Productions, Inc., P.O. Box 231117, Great Neck, NY 11024. And tell em Dave sent you!

Still Teaching in Toms River Next Year

Tomorrow is my final day with full classes at the three Toms River high schools as Orchestra Director. As I pass the baton back to my predecessor who will be returning from maternity, I receive another baton from a retiring elementary teacher and will be teaching in two of the Toms River elementary schools next year, specifically North Dover and West Dover. I look forward to be giving lessons and running the bands for the Pirates and Blue Jays.

Don Pardo Hanging In There!

You get a gold watch for retiring after 30 years. Assuming at some point Don Pardo retires, what does he get? Today was his 59th anniversary of his hire by NBC Radio Network. He still carries his original ID card, noting his date of hire as June 15, 1944. Keep em flying, Pardo!

BTW, has anyone else beside me who tracks voiceover activity notice that Jackson Beck has pretty much disappeared from the scene? Up until a few years ago Jackson, who turns 91 in June, was still doing commercials and film roles by the score. I think the last thing he ever did was a commercial for Infusium hair care products. Maybe he retired at 90? Hope he's still well. Jackson Beck, of course, was in a ton of Paramount cartoons and was the narrator of the Superman radio show. (How does this tie into the item above? Jackson Beck once did a voice over for a SNL skit. What it was I can't remember. They didn't totally rely on Pardo in the show's formative years. Dan Ingram narrated a skit about a kid addicted to video games, and Bill Wendell was the narrator on the "Spud Beer" fake commercial.)

More "Trading Spaces" Books

Now available for purchase in the General Store are some new Trading Spaces items. Three soon-to-be released books and a calendar you can order now. (You can literally order them now by clicking on each which will take you to our partner, amazon.com.

Chicago Rolls Into Town

I saw Chicago last night. Not the movie, silly, the GROUP that's now on the road in its 37th consecutive year. Jimmy Pankow is still THE MAN.

Big Seeger News

Oh, and there is some exciting news coming soon to the Animation pages, specifically, the Hal Seeger pages... more to come on that.

Answer: The Violin

I was watching "Millionaire" and one of the questions yesterday was "The concertmaster of a symphony orchestra plays which instrument?" The idiot contestant had to use two lifelines, his 50/50 and his Phone-A-Friend (or, to make a pun that only those close to me will appreciate, perhaps his Phone-A-Freund?)

Happy 100th!

Bob Hope made it to 100. Next...

99.99999 years old!

At this writing, Bob Hope has one day and a little less than four hours, West Coast Time, to go to make it to 100.

Whatever you do, Bob, don't sneeze.

Buy Iraq Cards

Forget about the offers your e-mail spam is filled with. You want the
Iraq's Most Wanted Playing Cards, you gotta go through me. Only $6.99 through amazon.com and I get a little spiff on each deck you buy.

Bus Shop

The Bus Shop is now open. We offer Jim Lehrer's memoir "A Bus Of My Own", and the Iconografix series of bus history albums, everything from Yellow to Mack to Flxible to Prevost to MCI. Visit, and more importantly, buy!

Dave Mackey and Amazon Team Up To Bring You Stuff

Years ago the slogan was "I wanna be Like Mike." Now, you can be like Dave and shop like Dave, thanks to Dave's partnership with amazon.com. Your purchases will help defray the costs of this website. First up is the Cartoon Shop. There are only a handful of items available, but please visit. We will be adding more as events warrant, and hopefully something new from Warner Bros.?????????

We will also be featuring a Music Shop and a Bus Shop. Also, a General Store, for things I recommend that don't fit into one of the three main areas of the site; right now, we have a selection of "Trading Spaces" books and videos. One other thing: unless otherwise noted, all videos are in DVD format.

Take This Class Trip

I don't know if I will be updating the Music page this weekend, but I have a couple of dates this weekend. Tonight (Friday), I will be part of a hastily-thrown-together horn section that will be accompanying Class Trip (see Blog item below) at their appearance at the Hub, on Hooper Avenue, in Toms River. We start playing about 10:00 p.m. Come on out and say hi to Jesse, Mary, and all the rest of the Class Trip crew.

On Sunday, I will be appearing with the Holy Spirit Ringers of the Manahawkin United Methodist Church at their Handbell and Choir Concert. The church is on Stafford Avenue in Manahawkin, and a free will offering will be taken during the performance to help buy equipment and music for the ringers. I will be conducting one of the joint choir and handbell selections, "Let All The Church Rise Up With Praise", by Forest Green.

"Toon Heads" Tribute to Norm McCabe

This is more a reminder to myself than anything else. Cartoon Network's "Toon Heads" will be repeating their much-heralded one-hour tribute to the 1940s cartoons of Norm McCabe on Sunday, May 18 at 8:00 p.m. McCabe, who is now 92, is the sole surviving WB Cartoon director of the classic era.

Class Trip Band

I know two-fifths of this band. They're the guy and gal at the flanks of the top row. Jesse Frack and his wife Mary Buck have been colleagues of mine in a little band I play with once in a while called The Brass Tacks, and they have been playing out for ages. Check out their site then go and see them sometime!

Blanche The Singing Bartender

As regular readers of this blog doubtless know, my father-in-law died rather suddenly a few months ago. One of his great joys, and one which he has passed down to at least one of his children, was frequent visits to Atlantic City, and Al regarded the Tropicana Casino and Resort as one of his favorite haunts.

While in A.C. on other business, I visited the Tropicana for the first time in several years and was pleasantly surprised at some of the changes - and some things that have stayed blissfully the same.

When the Mackeys were regulars at the Tropicana, the management discovered a young vocalist who was singing while tending the bar at a local nightclub, so the wisdom was that this was a good thing and Blanche Travis Morro began her run as Atlantic City's Singing Bartender at a small bar built for her at the Tiffany Lounge in the Trop. She gained great fame doing this culminating in a national TV appearance on "The Rosie O'Donnell Show". About a year or so into her run, Blanche was taken out of the bar and onto a little stage. It wasn't the same. By the time we switched alliances to Caesar's, we had written off Blanche as a failed noble experiment. Apparently there was some sort of contretemps with a labor union over what she was doing, but that seems to have been settled in Blanche's favor.

Happily, my recent visit to the Trop found Blanche back where she belonged, behind the bar, serving beers and singing as she has for the past five years. You can visit Blanche at her official website, or better still, catch her at the Tropicana.

While some newer slots have been added, the Trop's video poker offerings remain as they have been, using mostly older-model IGT and Sigma machines (part of the place's charm is that they still hang on to these older machines - which still work quite well). The progressives remain where they have always been, but one bank of poker progressives seems to have disappeared for good. New areas have been added with a new hotel tower on the way.

Al would have loved it.

New Home For Coolest Showbiz News

Now this IS cool news!

Mark Evanier, a veteran comedy/comics writer and showbiz observer, has relaunched his newspage (now a blog) features that previously appeared under a variety of other web addresses, at the new address newsfromme.com (News From M.E.). He usually updates several times a day when fancy strikes, but look for the can of Campbell's Cream Of Mushroom Soup that indicates that Evanier is on deadline for one of his many projects and won't be updating the site. One day he had 3-1/2 of them in a row. He must have really been working that day.

NEWS ITEM: The National Network (TNN) To Change Its Name To Spike TV

No word yet if Lifetime is going to change its name to Muffy TV.

Get A Horse! Or A House! Whatever!

I get the weirdest spam. I got one today that said I could get a loan for my HOURSE or car.

My house or my horse?

At least I have a new word I can pop into my Spam Filter. (I do have one. I'm not bothered by those pesky e-mail attachments that are actually spyware or worse - I just don't accept E-mail with those type attachments any more.)

Y107 Bloc Is No More

Once upon a time, there was a quartet of radio stations in the New York City area all calling themselves Y-107, first simulcasting a country format, then, at the failure of the country format, a Spanish language format. All broadcast on 107.1 FM.

Those days are now gone.

The Y-107 group has been officially broken up by new owner Nassau Broadcasting (former owner of several Jersey Shore stations including WJLK, WADB-AM, WOBM, etc. now part of Millennium Radio Group). Two of the stations are carrying the signal of other existing stations - the one in the Hamptons is featuring WLIR and the one in Westchester is featuring WSPK-FM Poughkeepsie - but for now the Long Branch Y-107 and the one in northwest NJ are silent. Nassau may be selling the two New York stations and holding on to whatever stations it still has in NJ.

Whatever format the Long Branch Y-107 takes, they may need to look for new office and studio space. Their old headquarters at 156 Broadway are currently being renovated into more modern office space. (The station originally occupied the second floor of a building that also housed a luncheonette and a thrift store on the first level, both of which went out of business during my four-year tenure at Y-107 in the late 1980's.)

Ass Kickin' Salsa

Unabashed Plug of the Day to originaljuan.com and their line of aptly titled "Pain Is Good" salsas. Right now I am tasting their Batch #37 Habanero Salsa. (I actually ate my last cracker of it about ten minutes ago, but the flavor really stays with you.)

Caution: this is HOT STUFF. Your gums will ache and probably bleed, but it's worth it. I got an almost one-pound jar, and you don't wanna go too crazy with it.

I am dying to try their Batch #37 Jalapeno Chile Con Queso.

Happy Birthday, Bob Elliott

Today is the 80th birthday of Bob Elliott. You young uns may know him as Chris Elliott's father, but he's one half of the great radio comedy teams of the 50's and 60's, Bob and Ray. Together with the late Ray Goulding, Bob and Ray fabricated a very subtle, literate brand of radio humor, with such fixtures as Wally Ballou and Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife delighting listeners of many New York stations, including WOR, WINS, WCBS, WHN, etc., influencing along the way the likes of Johnny Carson and Garrison Keillor

David Hinckley, writing in today's New York Daily News, notes that Larry Josephson, who is the official archivist of all things Bob and Ray, notes that the comedy routines are being preserved on compact disc and are available for purchase at bobandray.com.

Unfortunately, although listed in their catalogue, no longer available for purchase is a 90-minute comedy special they did in the late 1970's called "Bob And Ray, Jane, Laraine And Gilda" which featured B&R with the ladies of "Saturday Night Live" as a fictitous offering of the "Finley Quality Network". It was produced by Lorne Michaels and used a lot of the same framework as SNL, complete with musical guest (Willie Nelson) and live band (here under the direction of Tom Malone).

And always remember...

"Write if you get work!" "Hang by your thumbs!"

Beverly Arnold Has Died

We'll sure be getting more info on this, but I've just been informed that Beverly Arnold, wife of cartoonist Hal Seeger and voice actress in many of his cartoons, has died at the age of 73.

Settlement In B'way Musicians' Strike

The settlement, announced this morning, allows for a slight reduction in the number of musicians required for a production, but still enough to ensure that live orchestration will continue to be a part of the Broadway experience. All the affected shows are reopening tonight. Some may even be over by now due to Tuesday's earlier curtain times.

802 On Strike Against Broadway

Broadway is mostly dark this Friday evening due to a strike by members of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 802. At issue is the minimum number of musicians that a theatre must employ. The musicians' union fears that if those minimums are reduced further, live music will disappear on Broadway. The actors (Equity) and stagehands (IATSE) refuse to cross the AFM picket lines, so the shows are shuttered.

This weekend I am playing my first pit job in several years, the Toms River High School North production of "State Fair", a show which I saw on Broadway in its short run at the tiny Music Box Theatre. I am again reminded of the power of people acting and singing on a stage with a sizeable orchestra full of capable musicians in front of and slightly below them. We had our share of showstopping moments in our show. Particularly tonight. Several times, I thought, "what if we tried to do this show with only three musicians, since this is only a high school auditorium, and filled in the rest of the parts electronically?" I don't even want to consider that inevitability.

But it doesn't have to be that way. As a member of Local 399, I wholeheartedly support my Union brothers of Local 802, and hopefully the theatre industry will take note and realize that our position is the right way... the only way.

Notice

Due to another passing in my family (more details), it may be a few days before I get back to my e-mails, so please be patient.

Candy

I don't have a picture I can put up quickly to share with you, but I will find one later today. Candy, our beloved lab/shepherd mix who has been a part of our lives since December 1991, was put down yesterday afternoon. She was the most gentle and sweetest puppy in the world and she never hurt or bit anybody. (Well, maybe she nipped at Daddy a few times, but that was it.) Guesstimates on Candy's age range from 14 to 18, since we don't quite know how old she was when we adopted her.

Mom

Tuesday, February 18 is the third anniversary of the passing of the matriarch of the Mackey family, Eleanor or "Dolly" as everyone called her.

Mom had been in and out of the hospital since the end of 1999 in the end stages of her battle with Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (or Osler-Weber-Rendu syndrome), a disorder in which the body's system of veins and arteries develop shunts that bypass the capillaries. Characteristic symptoms include severe nosebleeds and other bleeding, which Mom certainly suffered from most of her life. On February 17, 2000, I decided to spend the night with Mom, by now comatose, off life support and being given medication to make the end as comfortable as possible. Bob, John and I had all had our nights to keep an eye on her. Around 1:00 a.m. the next morning, I went downstairs to get a bite of food. When I got back, Mom's labored breathing had ceased, and we brought the doctors in to confirm that she was gone.

I urge you all to learn more about HHT, or ORW, by visiting the website of the HHT Foundation.

The Music Man - New Version

I did see "The Music Man" last night because my band job was called off due to the big snow. Unfortunately, I wasn't that impressed with Broderick in the role of Hill - I just felt the entire time I was watching him there was something missing.

Kristin Chenoweth is another story! She put emotion and feeling into all her song numbers and she made for a wonderful Marian. Plus she's so damn cute.

Also, I watched the "Married.... With Children" special on Fox last night, reuniting the entire cast. I can't believe they didn't even mention SEVEN the entire show!

ABC To Present New "Music Man"

I'm generally not excited about Disney trying to remake everything on God's green earth, but this one is different. ABC will broadcast a Disney-produced remake of "The Music Man" this coming Sunday night at 7 p.m. Eastern time, with Matthew Broderick in the role of Professor Harold Hill, con-man turned bandleader, and Kristin Chenoweth as Marian The Librarian.

I'm a fan of "The Music Man" and not just because its big hit song was "76 Trombones". It's perhaps the greatest musical ever to spring fully formed from the mind of one creator - book, music and lyrics all by the estimable Meredith Willson, whose grinning, bespectacled image graced a US Postage Stamp some years ago as part of the Broadway Composers series (and was a very visible panelist on one of ABC's few panel-show successes, "The Name's The Same"). Of course, it was made into a big-budget film musical with Robert Preston, Shirley Jones and a very young Ronny Howard. The film production successfully captured that sense of small-town Americana that Willson and others of his generation cherished, and in some measures miss dearly.

"The Music Man" was successfully revived on Broadway several years ago, but with the added star power of Broderick (now a full-fledged musical star after his bravura turn in "The Producers" on Broadway) and Chenoweth, this production cannot possibly miss. I'll be out gigging on Sunday night, but when I get home I'll pop the tape in the VCR and watch this - I've got all night, I don't need to be in school on Monday.

Read Dave Barry

Highly recommended: Dave Barry's Blog. He's just as witty on his blog as he is in the newspaper.

Eddie Anthony Back On His Feet

We told you a little while ago about Eddie Anthony's bus website. I am pleased to report to you that Eddie, as of Wednesday, has been fitted with a prosthetic right leg and is very happy and proud to be back on two feet again. He had been using a wheelchair until that point.

This just in from Gobbler's Knob

Six more weeks of winter, says Punxsutawney Phil!

Oh boy.

Rosa Parks' Bus Restored

This Old Look is not just any newly restored bus, but a rolling piece of civil rights history. This is the actual bus on which a black woman, Rosa Parks, declined to give up her seat to a white man and was subsequently arrested as a result in 1955, one of the significant events of the civil rights movement.

The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI unveiled the bus yesterday. The bus had been sitting, vacant and neglected, in a field in Alabama for thirty years after its retirement. The owner of the bus at the time was told by the transit agency in Montgomery, AL, that this was the "Rosa Parks Bus", but needed further proof. Newspaper clippings had ID'd the bus to its fleet number (2857). Librarian Tom Jones of the Motor Bus Society helped further by verifying the bus as a 1948 GM TDH-3610, serial number 1132 and concurring that the bus was in service in Montgomery in 1955. All of the pieces of the puzzle had come together: the bus was the one, alright. The Ford Museum spent almost $800,000 acquiring and restoring the bus to near-new condition (the goal was to have the bus as it appeared on December 1, 1955). The bus will be on permanent display at the museum. Ms. Parks, who will celebrate her 90th birthday in a few weeks, was not at the ceremony on Friday.

Return To 1966

Here's an interesting new book by Hal Lifson about the year 1966. Lifson was only six when this year occurred and I was five, so we are pretty much working on the same base of nostalgia. A graduate of UC/Berkeley, Lifson has spent the last 20 years as a pop culture commentator, even hosting an all-60's radio show called "Radio A Go Go" on KRLA, Pasadena. He has also been manager or publicist for a number of stars including Nancy Sinatra and Adam West, both of whom have written material for the book.

Check it out at your local or online bookstore. If you are of a certain age, you're sure to find something in there that stirs up those childhood memories.

Greyhound Through Express

One of the Yahoo groups I belong to is called Greyhound Through Express. A very active group with lots of posting, mostly on topic (thankfully), and full of characters. One such guy is Eddie Anthony. I've never met him, but he is a very enthusiastic West Coast based bus fan. Last summer, he had a pedestrian accident (running across the street to catch a bus) which resulted in the loss of his right leg below the knee. But Eddie's persevered and he's back on the streets of LA taking pictures of Greyhound and other buses. He's just launched a new site, labusfan.net. Features bus pix from all over Southern California, with a heaping helping of LACMTA, Big Blue Bus, Long Beach Transit, etc. Makes me wanna go back! Thanks, Eddie!

Announcing...

Haley Ross and Ryan Ross, newborn twin son/daughter of my niece Carol and her husband Kyle. Carol has twin uncles, so she knows a little something about twins. Congrats to all!

The New Davemackey.com is open!

The majority of you should be on board with the new site by now, so it's time to introduce our new graphic look. It's just another cleaned-up template but someday I may get a little fancy with it. We are trying to fix the hit counter, but otherwise we should be okay.

Site Update

Well, with most of the precincts reporting, it's fairly certain that the Webmasters version of www.davemackey.com is now on air practically everywhere. We've been fixing some of the broken links and missing pictures, and hopefully you won't find other things missing.

We're Not Quite In Sync Yet

Like a syndicated television show of the 1970's, some of you are indeed seeing us at our new host. Others of you are still seeing the old site, but within the next day we should have the whole world hooked up.

We have relocated the Bus Gallery pages back to the mother ship. The Coach USA gallery, which many of you enjoyed until it got lost in the server shuffle, is going to be reconstructed and included back into the Bus Gallery site, simply because Coach USA is on its way to becoming a dinosaur.

Look for many exciting new features on this site!

Welcome Webmasters!

If you can see this, you are now at www.davemackey.com at Webmasters! We are proud to be with this web hosting company that offers 750MB websites for $9.95/month. They offer fast turnaround on your site!

"This Is The Moment We've Been Waiting For!"

Fans of the late 1970's talent train-wreck "The Gong Show" have plenty to be thankful for tonight. In connection with the upcoming wide release of "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind", creator Chuck Barris' "unauthorized autobiography" brought to the screen by director George Clooney and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, two cable networks tonight have scheduled presentations that are putting this 70's artifact back on the small screen, if only for a night. The program, which premiered in July 1976, lasted two years on NBC and a concurrent syndicated version (first with Gary Owens at the helm) ran for four seasons.

E! Entertainment Television, known for its tawdry documentaries, plays its card first at 8:00 p.m. Eastern with "The E! True Hollywood Story: The Gong Show". The obligatory backstage drama and scandal typical of all E! THS' is due to be on display. Look for coverage of the last-minute host switch (John Barbour was gonged after five shows were taped), outrageous acts including the dreaded "Popsicle Twins" (actually called "Have You Got A Nickel" on the show), panel anarchy at the hands of Jaye P. Morgan, Jamie Farr and Arte Johnson, and Chuck's gradual transformation from stiff, tuxedoed presenter from something more closely resembling himself - wearing blue jeans, athletic jackets and goofy hats on the air (usually covering his eyes so as not to see the audience), jamming with the house band, and dancing around with Gene Gene The Dancing Machine.

Of course, immediately after the E! show ends, tune to Game Show Network for a three hour tribute to "The Gong Show" and to "Confessions..." with interviews with Barris, Clooney, and the movie's stars, Sam Rockwell and Drew Barrymore. GSN usually slots five half hour shows for a three hour marathon to allow for interstitials and interviews. Hope GSN picks five good ones.

The Un-Illustrated "MAD"

© EC Publications

We have a wonderful 16-year-old sweetheart living with us. One of her few failings is her inability to hold or read a book, so all reading material must be read to her. We have enrolled her in our state's Talking Library program. We have been provided with a slow-speed 4-track cassette player and tapes. Often, we receive magazines on tape, usually once a month. For some reason, this month one of the magazines was MAD.

So I sat and thought, "How does a comic book like MAD translate to the spoken word?" Well, for starters, the really bizarre stuff is left out. This includes, oddly enough, most of the works of Sergio Aragones. His marginal cartoons and a fullsize feature were left out of the recorded version, as well as "Spy Vs. Spy".

Some of the rest of the stuff translates quite nicely to spoken word, such as Dick DeBartolo's satire of "Signs" and a narrative detailing what Martha Stewart might be writing into her datebook these days. Even Al Jaffee's Fold-In is described in its folded state and a Duck Edwing punchline is described in detail. However, some of the newer humor by MAD's cadre of young turk writers puts me off my feed, and there's a Frank Jacobs "All Purpose Do It Yourself..." deal (you fill in each of a number of blanks with items from a pre-defined list) that doesn't go over. Letters page consisted mostly of an identifier of roughly 100 artists and writers whose pictures appeared in a previous issue marking MAD's 50th anniversary.

She seemed to like it, laughing appropriately in spots, but fell asleep near the end. (I'm sure that MAD would love to hear about that one!)

Now, all I need to satisfy my curiosity on such matters: how do they do Playboy for books-on-tape?

Why Dave Frishberg Rocks

One of my favorite singer/songwriters is a guy most of you have heard, but never heard of. You've seen his name on my Schoolhouse Rock pages, as author of such songs as "I'm Just A Bill", "Hardware", "Number Cruncher", "Dollars And Sense", "$7.50 Once A Week" and "Walking On Wall Street", the latter two of which he sung.

But Dave Frishberg is more than just those songs. He has an entire catalogue of quirky songs with names like "My Attorney, Bernie", "Blizzard Of Lies" (a tune inspired by wife Samantha who collected lots of "yeah, right" type epithets like "The check is in the mail", "Your secret's safe with me", "I am not a crook", etc.), and some songs that have actually become standards like "Do You Miss New York" and "Let's Eat Home" (both recorded by Rosemary Clooney, a fervent promoter of Frishberg's work who also covered "Sweet Kentucky Ham"). He's collaborated with the likes of Bob Dorough (a Schoolhouse Rock colleague on a tune called "I'm Hip") and Alan Broadbent ("Marilyn Monroe").

But Frishberg is probably best known for a song whose lyrics entirely consist of the names of baseball players - "Van Lingle Mungo", named for a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants from 1931-1945. Frishberg noted that growing up in pre-Twins Minnesota, baseball players were nothing more than names in newspaper boxscores.

This page documents one baseball card collector's quest to obtain one card from each of the players mentioned in the song "Van Lingle Mungo". Some of the more prolific players mentioned in the song include Johnny Mize, Roy Campanella and Early Wynn; the obscure, rare ones who only played a few years and don't have many cards include Pinky May, Augie Bergamo, and a player who shares his name with one of my nephews, Danny Gardella. Frishberg followed up "Van Lingle Mungo" with a slightly similar, but more coherent tune called "Dodger Blue" which was premiered at a Dodgers old-timers day game.

Frishberg is like another of my jazz favorites, the beautiful and talented Diana Krall, in that they both have voices that you wouldn't associate with a singer. Frishberg has a very nasal, pinched tone. But their delivery is first rate and their piano playing is impeccable. Catch Frishberg if he ever shows up in your area (he does a great live show), and go find his CD's on Amazon, CD Now, or eBay.

Merry Christmas

Happy December 24th, everyone. At this Holiday season, when my brain goes into neutral for a few weeks before I must return to the classroom, I will tell you that after a number of years with HostCentric, it is finally time to change web hosting providers. I have not yet chosen a new provider, but hope to do so by the end of the year. HostCentric is a good company, but I feel as a legacy customer from an acquired operation, I got a little lost in the shuffle and was allowed to flounder for too long under an outdated web hosting package.

So www.davemackey.com will soon be parked elsewhere. There may be further changes to the site, so stay tuned. None of the URL's are expected to change, so the only things you see will be cosmetic and philosophical changes.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

How To Get Me To Delete Your E-Mail (Revised And Updated)

• Subject line of merely "Hi" or "Hello" - this ain't Jerry Maguire. You won't have ME at Hello.
• Advertise printer cartridges or the X-10 camera
• Anything having to do with being single - I am married, thank you
• I like my "equipment" the size it is, thank you
• That damn Wealth Builder guy!
• Mini RC Racers
• Anything with a vague attachment
• A funny website
• You're the first player

Grambling-Southern Rivalry On NBC

In much the same way that the Daytona 500 is just another NASCAR race, the annual football game between two of America's Historically Black Colleges, Grambling State and Southern University, is just another football game... that happens to have a wild halftime show wrapped around it, featuring both schools' marching bands. (It's officially known as the 29th Annual State Farm Bayou Classic.)

The bands' primary showcase has actually become the Friday evening performances (with a Greek stepping show added) in the New Orleans Superdome. The Grambling Marching Tigers and the Southern Human Jukebox are arguably the two best college marching bands in America, bar none. Combining the traditional marching band stylings with equal does of soul, funk and even hip-hop, both schools arduously prepare and drill to put on the best show they can. This is not to say that the halftime show during the actual Saturday game takes a back seat. The formation to watch for at this game every year is Southern's band spelling out the game's halftime score on the field. No matter the score, the drill is always perfect and I've never seen them flub it up. The weekend also features a Saturday evening concert, a Friday afternoon job fair, and a fan fest that runs all day Saturday.

The game this year is expected to be a one-sided affair, with Grambling (10-1) winning all but their first game this season and Southern eking out a 5-6 record. With Eddie Robinson's retirement some years ago, Grambling's program is now under the helm of former Tiger QB Doug Williams, who went on to a successful NFL career that saw him earn Super Bowl MVP honors.

The game - and those bands - will air Saturday, November 30 beginning at 2:00 p.m. on NBC.

That Other Dave Mackey

How do you like this? I've got competition!

I have found out there is a davemackey.net, and it's not me. It's another guy named Dave Mackey, from the great Midwest. He registered the domain name on March 17, 2001, but hasn't put anything up on his page just yet.

Listen To This!

This is the first album from the Brass Tacks, "Live & Kickin'". Please visit the Music Page for all pertinent details.

Joe Dante Doesn't Read My Website

From a print interview with "Looney Tunes: Back In Action" director Joe Dante:

Most of the humor in the original Looney Tunes cartoons was for adults; it's only in recent years that cartoon characters were juvenilized. My 10-year-old niece can watch one of Tex Avery's Bugs cartoons from 1943 and still laugh.

I'm laughing too, because Dante is blissfully unaware that by 1943, Avery had been shipped out of Termite Terrace and was over in Culver City making cartoons for M-G-M.

Disney Wants To Monopolize Your Kids' Entertainment Options

This LA Times article notes that the current #1 song on Radio Disney is a sprightly little tune called "I Can't Wait", by that well known songstress, Hillary Duff.

What? Who?

Turns out that Hillary Duff is the actress that plays Lizzie McGuire on the Disney Channel TV show aimed toward adolescent teens. And it also turns out that no other radio stations in the country are playing this song, only the 56 Radio Disney stations nationwide.

What gave me a real laugh in the article is that the director of programming for Radio Disney says, "Now, it's Hilary Duff that kids want to hear. It doesn't matter that she's signed to Disney. We don't need to disclose it."

That's where you're wrong, lady. On two counts.

1. Kids don't want to hear Hillary Duff. If kids wanted to hear Hillary Duff, every other radio PD and MD in the country would have run with this record. Nobody bit.

2. It does matter that she's signed to Disney. Radio Disney plays what it wants to force on its young, impressionable listeners, and it is always product that the company itself can profit from in other ways. If you watch enough of the Disney Channel on television, you will find the same attitude there - its marketing strategies almost always exclude entertainment options from other companies (i.e. Nickelodeon, Warner Bros., Universal, etc.) Try watching their "Movie Surfers" interstitials for info on the upcoming Harry Potter movie. Since it is not a Disney product, it does not exist in the Disney empire. This is dangerous and is possibly in violation of anti-trust statutes.

I have never allowed Radio Disney to be on my car stereo, because they have in the past censored or re-recorded versions of hit songs to "sanitize" them for the young audience. Now I have even more ammunition to say no.

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?

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.

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.

"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.

He Is Outta There!

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

Can't wait for the 2003 season!

$15,633,171

Warner Bros. should be sticking HIM up for the balance!

Happy Birthday John

Happy birthday to the man whose face beams with pride near the bottom of the right sidebar out the driver's side window of his 1996 Corvette, my brother John Mackey.

The Corvette Challenge pages, webmastered by Edgar Perez, detail John's involvement with a Corvette race series held at intervals throughout the year at Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ. Known to drag race fans as E-Town, Raceway Park is one of the top drag tracks in the country. If you've got a Vette and can cough up the modest entry fee, come out and race with John and his friends. (Be sure to show up on the right day, however, or you might find yourself tyring to outpace, f'rinstance, Angelle Savoie, the fastest woman on two wheels in the world!)

ATTENTION NEWSMEDIA

Please stop overplaying newstape of such "caught on tape" news stories as the mother beating up on her kid and the baseball coach being assaulted by fans. Replaying more than a few times renders their newsworthiness into ratings-grabbing sensationalism. Please stop. That means you, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and ESPN's family of channels.

Great Radio Talkers

Here's one to start some debate at the dinner table. A radio industry trade paper listed the top 25 radio talk hosts of all time. Their list:

1. Rush Limbaugh
2. Howard Stern
3. Don Imus
4. Larry King
5. Sally Jessy Raphael
6. Bruce Williams
7. Laura Schlessinger
8. Barry Gray
9. Barry Farber
10. Joy Browne
11. Michael Jackson
12. Art Bell
13. Ronn Owens
14. Jerry Williams
15. Neil Rogers
16. Bob Grant
17. Long John Nebel
18. David Brudnoy
19. Arthur Godfrey
20. Bill Ballance
21. Neal Boortz
22. J.P. McCarthy
23. Jean Shepherd
24. Gene Burns
25. G. Gordon Liddy

Granted, comparing a Howard Stern to the likes of Barry Gray and Long John Nebel - radio talkers from a generation long departed - is apples and oranges. The real shock is why Dr. Laura, sex-obsessed sensationalist, is so high on the list, and Jean Shepherd, humorist and storyteller, is so low.

And where's Brad Crandall?

Well, at least some personal faves made the list, like Don Imus (whom I first listened to as a kid in the 70's despite the well-meaning resistance of my mother) and Barry Gray. And aforementioned Long John Nebel, who was actually said to invent the radio call-in format, and, from what I always heard, may have developed one of the first delay devices by moving a playback head on a tape machine way ahead of the record head - the birth of the Seven Second Delay! The website Radio Free New York has a page full of Long John Nebel/Candy Jones prank phone calls in RealAudio from WMCA's days as a talk station, before they reverted to a Christian format.

Eddie Murphy Update

Eddie Murphy is still in the hole to the tune of $15,683,242, finishing on the box office chart just ahead of a reissue of "The Producers". Thought you'd like to know....

CURSE YOU VILE MOUSE!

Today I am the Mouse Terminator! I was running the work vac around the basement and there he was, the little bastard I've heard scrabbling around the ceiling tiles above and to the right of my desk. Instinctively, I sucked up Mr. Mouse and ran the shop vac out to the street. The critter was already dead, so we held a brief service before setting him adrift in the depths of the Robo-Can.

Boy, are my Sundays exciting.

WNEW Gets One Right For A Change

When last we left WNEW, the FM talk station had fired its potty mouth PM Drive team and sent its AM Drive jock talker packing. They have now begun to rebuild by making a logical move. Infinity Broadcasting owns both WNEW and WFAN, so why not co-brand the WNEW morning show as a WFAN show, particularly since WFAN doesn't have sports in the morning (opting instead for Don Imus). They have brought in Richard Neer to host this show, and there are several reasons why this works.

• Neer is a throwback to WNEW-FM's classic rock days
• Neer has been with WFAN for 14 years
• Neer is a very intelligent and informed sports talk host and now hosts pre- and post-game shows for New York Giants football games

Good move, WNEW!

Royal Crown Revue - Kings Of Swing!

Friday the 13th is as good a time as any to plug an album that, four years after its release and maybe three years after the "swing craze" of 1997-1998 died down, still occupies space in the various CD players in my house. The Contender is from Royal Crown Revue, one of the groups that sort of bubbled under the radar of more renown groups such as the Brian Setzer Orchestra and The Cherry Poppin' Daddies (remember "Zoot Suit Riot"?) Featuring the vocals of Eddie Nichols and a group of solid instrumentalists - guitarist James Achor, bassist Veikko Lepisto, drummer Danny Glass, saxes Mando Dorame and Bill Ungerman, and trumpeter Scott Steen. The level of musicanship on this album is unmatched. In fact, RCR's subsequent release, "Walk On Fire", was a major disappointment. So I keep going back to this album.

The songs are top notch. The title track, "The Contender" opens the album with a burst of energy. There's a remake of "Zip Gun Bop", yet another cover of "Stormy Weather" (a tune which RCR revisited several times), the ponderous "Port Au Prince (Travels With Bettie Page)", the stunning "Everyone Knows You're Crazy", and the whimsical "Friday The 13th", which brings us back around to the reason I'm talking about this in the first place.

Black cats, they don't bother me,
I smile in bad company
I'm cool as the day is long

© 1998 Sharp Eleven Music/Zip Gun Music/Black Bozo Music

Find this album. Buy it. Play it. You'll be glad you did.

Lionel Hampton Dead

I have a picture hanging in my office which I'll scan and post on my music page later (see left). I see this picture every day and it helps in those rare cases when I need of a reminder of why I've made music a big part of my life. It's a picture taken of me and Lionel Hampton, circa 1980, after a performance at Brick Memorial High School that will go down as one of the most unforgettable performances I ever saw. Hampton must have been in his 70's at that time, and there was no stopping this man even at that age. He led a swinging big band and he was everything I had read and seen about the man - the big smile, the joy of making music, his kinetic stage manner, and the way he played those vibes. As a neophyte musician who had been struggling with trying to play swinging music, it was a revelation to see and hear it done live. Hamp was a very gregarious performer, even at that age....

...fast forward to the year 2000. At Atlantic City's annual music festival, Hampton and his combo perform a free outdoor concert at Brighton Park, the courtyard which is surrounded by the Bally's, Claridge and Sands casinos. Hampton is clearly hobbled by age. No longer playing standing, and not playing very much. Maybe a note here or there, or maybe three or four at a time if we were lucky. His wheelchair awaited at the edge of the stage, and he needed a lot of help getting places. But just being there was probably a huge accomplishment for Hampton, who in his lifetime had enough accomplishments for three or four men, including being a part of one of the first racially-integrated music ensembles ever, the Benny Goodman Quartet (which also included another African-American, Teddy Wilson, on piano, besides the Caucasian Goodman on clarinet and Gene Krupa on drums), leading his own big band after 1940, authoring the symphonic composition "King David Suite", touring the world as an ambassador of music, and becoming the recipient of many awards and accolades, culminating in the National Medal Of The Arts bestowed by President Clinton (himself a musician) in 1997. And suddenly it didn't seem quite so intrusive that we were witness to this man's weaknesses in his latter years.

Lionel Hampton died at 6:15 a.m. this morning, not three hours ago as I write this. (Officially, his age at death was listed at 94, but there have been reports that he was as old as 100.) His influence on the world, present company included, will never be forgotten.

Schoolhouse Rock!

I cannot go out of my way enough to recommend the new Schoolhouse Rock DVD just released by Walt Disney Home Video. You get all the Schoolhouse Rock ever done on two disks with bonus goodies. I haven't checked out the bonus stuff yet because I haven't gotten through all of Disk 1 yet, which has the 46 original shorts (minus the Weather Show and the three Scooter Computer segments, which somehow are on Disk 2). For about $20 street price (I paid $19.99 at Boscov's because I was in there buying yet another VCR) you cannot go wrong.

More Money To Eddie Murphy's Deficit

We add another couple of hundred thousand dollars to the Eddie Murphy Relief Fund... and now, the total deficit stands at $16,183,428 sirignanos. I don't see this movie ("The Adventures Of Pluto Nash") making any more than, say, $4.5 million total, making this a box office bomb of "Ishtar" proportions.

Bloodbath At WNEW

Fire up the turntables for the fall book?

WNEW is continuing to have fallout from the problems with Opie and Anthony (see story below). In the wake of the allegedly obscene broadcasts that caused O&A, their producer, the station's general manager and program director all to lose their jobs, word came today that morning man Scott Ferrall has been handed his walking papers and told to go do sports elsewhere. (Ferrall previously did hockey play-by-play for the Pittsburgh Penguins and a syndicated show called "Ferrall On The Bench".) The midday talkers, Ron and Fez, have moved their live show to afternoon drive and offer reruns in their old midday time slot. NEW brings other talk shows in off the bird like Tom Leykis. But this is a station that is clearly in maintenance mode, rather than trying to build a team.

The rumor mill is now beginning to churn. In ten days, the fall 2002 ratings book begins. Could WNEW be eyeing a return back to the classic rock that made the station's name in the 1970's and 1980's? One can only hope.

Good Bye, Opie And Anthony

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you... Opie and Anthony.



At least these two guys won't insult the morals of radio listeners as their namesakes have. As a radio guy from way back, it really depresses me that some of these guys like Opie and Anthony and the Greaseman fritter away whatever talent they have in order to broadcast from the sewer. The final straw for O&A, as you know, was their broadcast of a play-by-play of a couple having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral, one of the world's most sacred places and one of the most beautiful churches in the world. Infinity Broadcasting initially suspended the boys, then yesterday announced that their show was cancelled and Opie and Anthony were out of a job.

Hopefully, the rest of the radio industry will get the message about this sort of radio "entertainment" and band together to ensure that Opie and Anthony no longer have the opportunity to defecate all over the medium that once brought us Fibber McGee & Molly, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Bob Hope.

THANKS A 30,000

Hey, I just noticed we made our 30,000th page view this week. And it only took six years. Thank you all.

Presenting the Eddie Murphy Scoreboard

It will show how much more money the film "The Adventures Of Pluto Nash" has to make before his overinflated $20,000,000 salary can be paid off. The current tote board is....

$17,817,100

And, of course, since the movie made about $2.1 million this weekend, that means that Murphy's chit will be roughly paid off in about 132 years. Of course, there is roughly another $80,000,000 of the production to be paid off. Perhaps it can be booked into that same theatre in Borneo or wherever that's been running "Me Tarzan You Jane" continuously since 1932. Or perhaps WB can siphon off some of those "Harry Potter" dollars later this year.

WHERE'S MY CELL PHONE?

If anyone in the vicinity of the Lido Diner in Springfield, NJ found a cell phone anytime after 11 p.m. on Wednesday, August 14, please contact me via e-mail. There is a nice reward for the return of my cell phone. It is very likely the cell phone fell out of the car somewhere between the Brass Tacks gig on Wednesday night at Echo Lake Park and there. (The phone has been disabled so don't try using it.)

Site Updates

We have an updated Brass Tacks schedule (including information on tonight's performance at Echo Lake Park in Northern NJ - come on out!) on the Music page and in the Animation area, information on the new Schoolhouse Rock DVD being released in two weeks.

Counting The Days

24 days until the start of school. My vacation will end sort of early, because the week before school starts, I have all sorts of orientation meetings, in spite of the fact that I've been teaching in these schools (three of them) since last February. I am really anxious to start this school year. It's exciting to start fresh with a semi-new, semi-familiar group of kids. I got advance class lists so I pretty much know who I've got coming back.

My compatriots in the Band department are starting Band Camp tomorrow. So on the first day of school, the band kids will already have had a head start, where with Orchestra, Day One is the first day of school. I anticipate starting rehearsals that Friday, with a couple of days of getting acquainted lectures including my expectations for smooth running rehearsals and assignment of instruments. There WILL be a Blog on the Orchestra pages, so look for up to date messages there. I hope to have the Orchestra pages up no later than the first day of school.

Martha's Going Down!

Now that one of the higher-ups at Imclone has been indicted on charges of bank fraud and obstruction of justice, I can almost smell the sweet aroma of cold steel handcuffs encircling Martha Stewart's wrists.

And that's a good thing.

Eew! Anna Nicole Smith!

I am now firmly convinced that if you put anything on TV that even smacks of bizarre, people will flock to it. We just learned here that E's sorry debacle of reality TV, "The Anna Nicole Show", was the highest rated program of the week, even beating the ubiquitous WWE Wrestling and Spongebob.

28 days to the start of school, kids....

Chick Hearn, LA Laker Voice, Dead

Chick Hearn died at 6:30 p.m. PDT tonight. (See item below)

Dylan Returns To Newport

That's Bob Dylan on the right, at this past weekend's Newport Folk Festival. The man playing the bass is former SNL Band bass player Tony Garnier, who I once ran into at an animation art show looking over some Tom & Jerry original art. Dylan showed up at Newport this year for the first time since he "plugged in" in 1965 and was booed mercilessly (but was very warmly received this year, in stark contrast).

Chick Hearn Is Checking Out

I grew up on the wrong coast to be able to fully appreciate Chick Hearn's gifts as a basketball play by play announcer, but I am no less aggrieved that he now lies in a hospital in Los Angeles, near death. His condition has worsened this morning since a Friday fall that led to a couple of emergency brain surgeries that didn't do quite enough to stave off further injury. Hearn is on life support and comatose. I can't think of any other announcers in basketball who were so identified with their hometown team - maybe Johnny Most of the Boston Celtics, he of the famous "Havlichek stole the ball!" call, or even Marv Albert with the New York Knicks, however diluted his national duties made him when NBC and TNT had the NBA national games (moving to ESPN and ABC this season).

Clearly, the Maker has called him, and we pray that Hearn leaves this earth in peace and without further pain for his appointment.

"Millionaire" Dreams

Well, in case you haven't read my posts to alt.tv.game-shows, I will reveal to you that I scored quite well on the "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" audition test. I don't know exactly how many of the 30 questions I answered correctly before the expiration of the 12-minute time limit, but I got in. Robair, unfortunately, didn't score as well on the quiz. So I am now a solo player. A post card, a phone call, a limo ride to NYC, and 15 questions are all that stands between me and $1,000,000. I think I'm up to the challenge.

"Millionaire" Sees Double

Since the show began a little more than three years ago, I have tried many fruitless times to become a contestant on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." With the primetime show now history, the show is actively soliciting contestants for its new daytime syndicated version, which will be hosted by Meredith Vieira. I am going to be trying out with my brother Robair in tow for the Twins Week competition. Of course, if either one of us tanks, the other can go on and become a single player. The auditions are tomorrow at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York. The show is also hitting the road with a bus tour (I hope this show actually has a Real Bus, not a motorhome like "Jeopardy!"'s so-called "Brain Bus") which will end in New York for yet another round of auditions in September.

Actually, trying out for the syndicated version seems to be more advantageous. The show has abolished the Fastest Finger (which is actually called Fastest Finger First in the show's country of origin) qualifying round, meaning that anyone who makes the show will actually get on. (Because Fastest Finger is gone, there's no need for the FF-like Phone Game.) Plus there are going to be more shows because this Millionaire will be on five days a week. The show will tape in the afternoon several days a week to accomodate Meredith Vieira's commitment to host "The View" live from 11am-12pm most mornings. (Either "Millionaire" or "View" will need a new director, since it seems impossible for Mark Gentile to do both in the same day. Directing a TV show is tough work, and I can't imagine Gentile being able to go from one to the other at the drop of a hat.)

One of the last things I told my mother when she still had all her faculties before she passed away was that I was someday going to conquer the 15 questions and take home the million. Hopefully, with the Twins Edition, Robair and I can put our estimable brains together and walk away with the prize. We will keep you posted.

Mr. Mackey Will Return

It took a bit longer than I expected, but the Toms River Regional Board Of Education has finally approved my employment for next school year. I will be returning to teach the orchestra classes in all three high schools for the new school year, beginning on Wednesday, September 4. Our concerts this year will be January 30, 2003 and May 29, 2003, both Thursday nights. Keep practicing, kids... the Mack is back!

Site Update

We are embarking on a major redesign of the NJ Transit Bus page. We are feverishly converting pages and hope to have our new look (no pun intended) on the streets this weekend.

I Didn't Get The Hook Up!

Gee, I was in Seaside Heights yesterday, and unbeknownst to me, JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT was at the MTV Beach House. How spectacularly uninformed I was! (kicking self)

Yousuf Karsh dead

The man who took this picture of Chuck Jones (which was last seen on this blog to honor the memory of Jones after his February 22 death), as well as many other great photos, has died. Yousuf Karsh, 93, found many great celebrities and statesmen on the other side of his camera lens. His home base of Ottawa permitted him access to many great world leaders. He is perhaps most famous for a picture he took of Winston Churchill while Prime Minister in the 1940's.

Late-night talk show joke waiting to be told

An elderly couple asks for their money back at the movie theater, because they went to go see "Road To Perdition" and were disappointed that Hope and Crosby weren't in it.

Need A Ghost?

Check out this website... www.phantasmechanics.com. An old friend from my BIX days, Doug Ferguson, has obviously been doing quite a bit in the black arts since I lost touch with him and his lovely wife Barbara about a decade ago. His site is about creating "dark rides", haunted mansions, ghosts and other apparations designed to throw some good-old-fashioned scare entertainment into you. Mr. Ferguson is also an audio engineer of some note. Go visit and tell 'em Dave sent you.

Gambling At Home Is A Gamble

I now notice television spots running on some cable channels for online casinos. I am wondering why these ads refuse to address the risk of casino gambling, or even include the customary taglines that most legitimate casino ads use such as "Bet with your head, not over it" and "Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER." Back when I had links to casino sites on my web page, I made sure to use these tag lines myself, because I do recognize that gambling is a problem for some people. The ads I see on TV for these online casinos quite frankly do not and really play up the prospects of winning without warning of the odds and risk.

Now, back in the days of more steady employment for us both, my wife and I would visit Atlantic City at least once per month. However, even then, we would never think of using an Internet casino.

Never mind the rather gray legalities surrounding these sites, which all operate outside the U.S. legal jurisdiction. I think there's something rather empty and impersonal about gambling at home using your own computer rather than traveling and making an event out of it (even though I live about an hour from AC, we made it an event every time we went). Between rounds of blackjack or video poker, what is more enticing: visiting the buffet and enjoying hot food that someone else is making, or running to the cupboard for a half-eaten bag of Lay's? Entertainment: would you rather go to the showroom to see someone like Danny Gans, or have a rerun of "The Andy Griffith Show" on TV Land playing in the background as you deplete your credit cards?

Tweaks

A few minor tweaks this morning to the NJT Roster pages, because of the discovered existence of 8200-series MCI D4500 coaches.

Search Engine Jive

It seemed like a good idea for a laugh. I went to a search engine peek page to see what sort of stupid questions people would ask, but I now realize that the fix is in. It appears to me that marketing companies trying to push their products are deliberately popping questions into such search engines to ensure a result that is favorable for their product. The last straw was the last question I ever expected to find in an Internet search engine: "Where can I find the magazine People?" Hello? People Magazine, for better or worse, is sold at practically every place magazines are sold in this Hemisphere. If you have to ask a search engine that kind of question, you're stupider than the question. So it has to be a corporate marketing plant designed to drive traffic into People Magazine's web site and look at their stupid ads. Boo.