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

THE BEST GOLF TEACHER I EVER HAD

Because he taught me how to properly address the ball. You just walk up to it and say....

HELLO BALL!

R.I.P. Art Carney.

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?

Show Us Your Shoes...

The Miss America Parade is on for tonight on the Boardwalk. Winds should be diminishing through the day making it a safe experience for all. The parade was originally to have been broadcast by CN8, but they pulled out. (Not too late to pull back in, guys.)

Tomorrow night is the Miss America show, hosted as previously noted on this blog by Tom Bergeron. If he can handle a tic-tac-toe grid with nine stars, then certainly he can handle 51 beautiful women competing for scholarship and other awards.

SNL Band In Vegas, Baby!

The Saturday Night Live Band has a Vegas gig to warm up before kicking off the show's 29th season. They, along with vocalist Christine Ohlman, will be at Bally's on Wednesday, September 17. Contact Bally's for more information.

In other SNL Band News, happy belated 55th birthday to trombonist Steve Turre, and a shout out to Katreese Barnes (and yes, we will fix your spelling!) for the nice e-mail and pointer to her website, www.katreese.com. The site is currently in the lab for an overhaul to be rolled out on Season Premiere night!

"BENNIFER": IT IS OVER

Why I take particular glee in the apparent end of Ben and Jen, I don't know. But I do. I've seen these sort of things before. Relationships that look like they're more designed to promote movies than true romance. Once "Gigli" failed, that was the final nail in the coffin.

9/11

This pic by Trevor Logan says all that needs be said today.

Warren Zevon dead

I saw Lon Chaney walking with the queen, doing the Werewolves of London.

I saw Lon Chaney Jr. walking with the queen, doing the Werewolves of London.

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada down at Trader Vic's.

His hair was perfect.


Thanks, Warren.

48 Hours... 2 Designers... 1 Carpenter... $1,000... 4 Friends... And Your Ol' Pal Dave!

Yes, that's a davemackey.com navigation flag with Paige Davis' picture on it. That can only mean one thing... Trading Spaces is coming to davemackey.com!

In the true spirit of Trading Spaces, our Trading Post is presently under construction. Amy Wynn is out in Carpentry World building me some bookshelves and a love seat. Some designer bios and other graphics are missing from the pages, and we're working on cleaning it up (without benefit of that nifty speed up music, unfortunately). But what we hope will be the true meat of the site will be our Episode Recaps of all Season 4 episodes. Season 4 begins tomorrow and you can expect to see the recaps - some authored by me, some authored by Robair - on the Monday after new episodes air. We will also have episode galleries so you can see what we're talking about.

Why is davemackey.com doing this? Because televisionwithoutpity.com doesn't want to any more. For them to discontinue coverage of this show at the height of its ratings popularity can't possibly help their credibility. (I'm waiting for tvtome.com to recap the "What's My Line?" that aired the other night where Groucho Marx literally hijacked the show and made it into something a plane more zanier than your garden variety episode of "You Bet Your Life". But I digress.)

So join me, Robair, Gen, Hildi, Doug, Ty, Amy Wynn, Paige, Rick, Barry, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds and the entire crew as we do Trading Spaces... MACKEY style!

New Contact INFO

Psst... look down below for new contact INFO.... many of you who have been in regular contact have gotten my new private address... if not, send a line to INFO and I will make sure you get it. (It's not clickable for security reasons.)

UPDATE: I have already started receiving SPAM at this address. Please be advised that all SPAM sent to the INFO address will be reported!

Fox News Is A Big Fat Idiot

Fox News has dropped its lawsuit against Al Franken, over his new book that includes the words "Fair And Balanced" on the cover. "Fair And Balanced" is ostensibly a trademark of Fox, but they don't really use it too much. (It got a workout a few Fridays ago in weblogs around the country on Fair And Balanced Day.)

The Fox spokeswoman, announcing the dropping of the case, said (paraphrasing) that it's time to return Al Franken to the obscurity to which he is accustomed.

Excuse me? A charter writer and featured player for "Saturday Night Live"? A political pundit? The man who wrote "Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot"? Obscure? Lady, they don't even know your name, so I wouldn't talk if I were you.

(By the way, scroll down to the August 13 blog entry if you want to order Franken's book and support further davemackey.com projects.)

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Effective IMMEDIATELY, I will NO LONGER BE ACCEPTING E-MAIL AT dave@davemackey.com DUE TO PROBLEMS WITH THE SOBIG VIRUS. Please give me some time to set up a new secure e-mail box and we will be in touch again soon.

Fair And Balanced - What Have We Learned?

Well, we have come to the end of Fair And Balanced Day. What have we learned?

• I wasn't alone in this endeavor. Neal Pollack led the way, along with Noam Alaska's "Demagogue" blog, the-hamster.com, Brian Plank's Helmethead Journal, Andy Ihnatko's Colossal Waste Of Bandwidth "Yellowtext" (the Bear and Valance version), and Mark Evanier's News From Me; if you know of others, pass them along and I'll update this entry.
  
• Dotto was cancelled in spite of the fine job Jack Narz did
  
• A butcher still won't give you a quarter pound of rump roast in New York City - you can't get there until the subways start running again
  
• Frank Buxton is still the man
  
• The Brits kick our ass when it comes to Batfink sites
  
• No matter how small you make Dakota Fanning's picture, her movie still sucks

One interesting sidelight to Fair And Balanced Day and the man whose bacon we are trying to save: I was flipping channels yesterday afternoon, and on Encore was the movie "Trading Places", and there, as an Amtrak baggage handler, was the man himself, Al Franken (super: "AL FRANKEN"). He was there along with his writing partner of those years, Tom Davis.

And Idi Amin is dead! My, how the once-mighty have fallen.

Batfink Rocks The UK

We continue our quest to be Fair and Balanced by bringing you news of a relatively new Batfink website, an official effort from the show's UK distributor. The URL is www.batfinkuk.com. (Just be fair and balanced and remember who was first on the web with a Batfink site!)

FRANK BUXTON SPEAKS

In our ongoing attempts to be Fair And Balanced (and make sure the "And" is capitalized), I wish to acknowledge this blog entry by Mark Evanier, who is also observing Fair And Balanced day. It includes a quote from the extremely fair and balanced Frank Buxton, who was half of the regular voice cast of "Batfink" and happens to mention the other half, Len Maxwell, in his quote. It seems that both Maxwell and Buxton, as well as actresses Julie Bennett and Louise Lasser, comprised the voice cast (and all took writing credits as well, to make a fair and balanced point) on the Woody Allen dub-fest, "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" (Buxton also hosted a game show, a kids show called "Discovery" and was the writer of the famous "Password" episode of "The Odd Couple".)