The Day the Nets Traded Vince Carter - Recapping a Wild Show Biz News Day

May 16th 1990…. Shortly before Noon.

I was working in radio at the time and as I was gearing up for a Noon newscast, I looked at my script and realized I was about to do yet another exciting newscast about local nonsense that only the cows and chickens cared about in rural Sussex County. Then just a few minutes before airtime, my AP machine started beeping wildly which meant an urgent story was coming over the wires… It was then that I saw the shocking news that Jim Henson the creator of The Muppets had died! Wow, I thought…. the local police report has just been relegated to back burner status…and I get to lead with the death of a celebrity. I quickly did a little paper shuffle and prepared to go on the air with the lead story announcing the death of the voice of Kermit the Frog.

And just moments later, as I was about to stroll to the news studio to deliver my news cast….the AP machine started beeping and humming again… I figured it was just more follow up to Henson’s death, but I went back to the machine just to make sure. It was then that I saw the news that Sammy Davis Jr. had died too! Sammy's death was less of a shocker... his suffering from cancer had been well chronicled over the prior year. But with the clock ticking away and with just seconds to spare, I had to figure out how to lead off the newscast!

Ultimately, I “split the lead”… proclaiming that “2 Show Biz legends have just died… we’ll have more on Jim Henson’s death in a moment, but first we have just gotten word that former Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr. has just died!”. The DJ was shocked to hear about Henson and Davis when I announced it, so at the end of my newscast as I recapped the top stories, she popped on her mike, and we had some newscaster-DJ “small talk” about the 2 deaths. She even opened the phone lines so listeners could call in to speak of the show biz legends. One call came in from the young psychic Pumpstradamus who noted the oddity that 2 famous people died on the same day, and proclaimed that we should watch out for June 25, 2009.




June 25, 2009… Shortly after 1pm

I worked from my home office this morning… and meandered to the office at approximately 1pm. The second I got there… my coworker John (Facebook followers will know we nicknamed our office John and Nate plus low rates) told me that he just saw on the internet that Farrah Fawcett had died.

It was not really a shocker.. she has been sick for awhile and frankly I was growing increasingly disgusted by how she had been exploited during her illness. I liked Farrah.. not a huge fan.. but liked her. She was the perfect looking woman during my early teenage years… but as she got older… not only did she age quite well… but she also turned into a dynamite actress… see The Burning Bed if you don’t believe me that she was more than just a pretty face. Granted she had her ditzy moments on Letterman, but she seemed to be a special part of those late 70s in that Suzanne Somers, Cheryl Tiegs kind of way,

But these last few months, I have grown increasingly disturbed by the media coverage of her illness. The NBC documentary was very well done.. but I was growing a little tired of the Swayze-esque coverage that always seemed to have some kind of connection to Ryan O’Neill. This week he was supposed to appear on 20/20 to announce that he would marry Farrah as long as she could mumble a yes to his proposal. Why do I find this absolutely sickening.

Hearing about Farrah’s death meant the end of that hyped ABC interview and also a moment to ponder whatever happened to Lee Majors? As I started making some business calls, I started to think about news I had read earlier in the day (I think it was in Linda Stasi’s column) that a relative of Walter Cronkite’s had confirmed that not only was the newsman seriously ill as was reported last week, but the 92 year old news legend was not expected to recover.

This raised an interesting topic of discussion during most of the afternoon. I remember that in the late 1990s when Princess Diana and Mother Teresa both died within a few days of each other. The Diana coverage was wall to wall and over the top… and once Mother Teresa’s death was announced, the media realized that they had painted themselves into a corner and there was no way they could air tons of Diana coverage without dedicating a lot of time to Mother Teresa too. Which made me wonder…

Even though I hope he lives to be 120, if Walter Cronkite were to die Thursday…. would his death bump Farrah out of the lead story? And so began the debate.. I thought for sure Cronkite was more important historically and would take the lead…. But my coworkers didn’t necessarily agree… which led to a long drawn out debate about what would have to happen news-wise for Farrah to be bumped off the lead off spot.



June 25, 2009 - Around 5’ish

I was gearing up for a typical Thursday evening of calling my mortgage clients. It had been a somewhat quiet day and as usual I was periodically getting my news fix by checking out CNN.com, and grumbling that the NJ Nets had traded away Vince Carter. I must have seen a “Breaking News” flash that Michael Jackson was in cardiac arrest and really didn’t think much of it. Then I started seeing people mention it on the recently restored Facebook live feed.

It was shortly thereafter when I saw that one of my FB friends had posted word that Perez Hilton’s Twitter was announcing that Michael Jackson was dead! Huh? Nobody else had this story and why oh why would one of my FB friends even bother caring to subscribe to his twits or whatever they are called… I am so sick of Perez Hilton. His stupid irrelevant question cost Miss California her title… who cares what a beauty queen who agrees with President Obama thinks anyway…. But his pathetic cries for help when one of Will.i.am’s entourage beat his sorry little ass after he dared use a gay epithet towards Mr. i.am! And now it appears Hilton didn’t make the comment to Will.i.am but it was actually directed to his CNN hologram…

Nonetheless, that update about the Hilton twit prompted this wishful thinking response:

Nate Kean at 6:15pm June 25
Hopefully this inaccurate irresponsible reporting by Hilton will end his absurd career once and for all.


And then moments later, I noticed after many more refresh hits on my browser that the LA Times was also reporting that Michael Jackson had died… Some facebook friends were updating his cardiac arrest.. some said coma... and a buddy who was at work at Channel 11 was confirming that the story was true. CNN held out official confirmation for about another hour... even asking a family lawyer who himself said he could not confirm it although he slipped in some eerie comments that Jackson's lack of care was reminding him of Anna Nicole Smith.

Jackson was the topic of conversation the other day. A friend of mine bought a new house and told me that a prior owner of that house was a Michael Jackson CPA! However, after a few minutes of Three’s Company-esque confusion, I realized that I had wrongly assumed that my friend had been talking about the LA talk show host!

I really don’t know what to say about Michael Jackson… I always thought of him as one of the most incredibly talented musical artists of my generation…and it seems like we know his whole family. I grew up watching the Jackson 5. And Michael's sister Janet was part of a huge controversy several years ago at the Super Bowl when she bared the same body part that Farrah winkingly teased us with in that bathing suit in that infamous mid 1970's poster. And Michael Jackson's Thriller was an incredible piece of work… and I was impressed that my friend in Clark lived so close to me in the mid 1980’s that I could drive to his house door to door to coincide with the start and end of that song. It’s an odd memory that always stuck in my head

I only saw him in person one time.. as I wrote in a previous column I worked at the 1988 Grammys and got to see the rehearsals and live performance of Michael performing my favorite of his songs… Man in the Mirror. The rehearsals were incredible… he would stop mid song and make small talk just to tweak a little detail so it would be just right. That phenomenal performance is Today’s Clip of the Week.

And yet I felt that he too had been exploited when he was a kid and was really deprived of a childhood. I don’t know if these child abuse allegations were true but it’s troubling to again see replays of the tv interviews where he says there is nothing wrong with an adult sharing a bed with a child. Yet this child in an adult’s body was just really crying for help to regain something he never seemed to have – youthful innocence. Up until recently, he stopped parading his kids around in those crazy surgical masks... now I hope their mom Debbie Rowe is able to get custody before they end up in South America with that crazy Brazilian family that stole David Goldman's poor little kid.

And oddly enough the moment we were informed that Michael Jackson’s heart had stopped beating, Ryan O’Neill’s 15 minutes of fame came to an abrupt end…. And like that day in May 1990, we once again lost 2 incredibly famous show biz legends during one crazy afternoon.


CLIP OF THE WEEK;

A Father's Day Column about.... Mother's Day!

Happy Father’s Day to all you baby daddies out there! Once again the ol’ blog seems to have inadvertently been relegated to Back Burner Status. Work seems a tad busier lately… plus I have a lot of other stuff going on in my spare time that has decreased my computer time including a lot of walking around town, and I am also helping our synagogue recruit Torah readers for the summer! One other activity taking up my time is my fantasy baseball team which oddly this year consists of many west coast players including my 2 stoppers which means ol’ Nate has been spending many late night hours watching the last outs of otherwise insignificant Seattle Mariners and Oakland As games. Just last night I finally finished watching my season finales when I caught the Heroes episode.

Even though the critics have been ripping into it...I was actually impressed with how Heroes wrapped up its season with the "demise of Sylar"… It also further showed that the Petrelli family really is one kooky family with dead relatives being resurrected and other dead ones living on through other wacky methods! Just in case you don’t watch Heroes… Sylar is a shifter who can assume the persona of another person and grab his memories too… Matt Parkman has hypnotic powers, and Nathan Petrelli is a US Senator. Petrelli gets killed and his family decides to cover it up, so they have Parkman force Sylar to shift to Petrelli’s persona and then hypnotizes him so he thinks he really is Nathan Petrelli. Sounds like a plot from a soap opera?


Last month on Mothers Day, I made my inaugural trip to CitiField. My friend Steve K. who lives in town has a season ticket plan and arranged to sell ducats to games to several people. Trophy Wife and I picked out Mother’s Day’s game against the Pirates… plus at the time I had 3 Pirates on my fantasy team although one of ‘em has since been traded (Nate McLovin’ McLouth) and Ryan Doumit is injured.

Nonetheless, we got a terrific deal… the tickets were only 15 bucks each and Sunday morning we were on our way. We went to the Edison train station to grab the train to Penn Station, and then caught the subway to the 7 Train. In the old days, we knew that we were at Shea because you can see the stadium approaching from the above ground train… But now that Shea is gone, we had to just wait for the Willets Point stop to arrive… and watch other Met fans eagerly wait for the train doors to open so they too could take their first trip to CitiField.

However… whereas in the old days you had to shlep off the train and walk down to the park and then around half the stadium to your entrance… now all you do is walk off the subway and there it is… in all its majestic beauty… CitiField! A sparkling new, clean stadium with sinks that have not been pished in!

As soon as you walk in, you see that the park has set up a main grand entrance that includes a pavilion dedicated to Jackie Robinson. It’s a nice touch, even though Robinson never played for the Mets, but I think its important that minority ballplayers (and fans) appreciate the sacrifices that Robinson made and enabled future generations of ballplayers to get paid millions and millions of dollars. Included in that area is a giant #42…. which on my facebook contains the caption… “Here I am getting ready to watch 24 with the dyslexics club!” Yeah yeah.. I know.. I shared this stuff on facebook before my blog readers.



By the way, to go off on a tangent… is Facebook inadvertently killing off blogs? The New York Times had an interesting article about this topic recently that was emailed to me by Pumpstradamus… (with a sidenote that he predicted this…). It could be somewhat true. Back in the pre FB days, if I thought of something funny, I would just write it down and incorporate it into my blog… now I just put it in my status update..but a few days later I forget about it. At least with the blog, there is some sense of permanence to these wisecracks… For example, a FB friend put a status update recently…: “I should have listened to warnings against opening videos – I opened the American Idol Box Set, and now I’m stuck with it”.. I think that’s very clever.. but it gets forgotten pretty quick when its lost in the shuffle with other FB silliness such as quizzes and How Bitchy Are You questionnaires.

Getting back to the trip to Citi… Trophy Wife and I walked around a little bit… on this inaugural trip the game was secondary to the actual adventure of seeing the park for the very first time.. because like losing one’s virginity it is something that happens only once… and stadiums are built to last for approximately 30 years, so it will be until 2039 before I have another first trip to see the Mets play in a new home stadium.

Our seats were way up….. check out this pic to see how close I am to the top… By the way, I actually took this pic on my cellphone.



However getting there was another story. Finding a seat at Shea was like finding the beer at your house.. you know where you keep ‘em and you know where to go to get ‘em. However, like most of the other fans there, we walked around like zombies.. not knowing our way around our new ballpark. The ushers were extremely helpful to point us in the right direction… but most of these guys were in the concourse guiding all the lost souls and there were few of them at each section to show you to your exact seat as we discovered when we found someone else in our seats. Instead of tossing them out… we decided to sit elsewhere in the somewhat vacant section and after being kicked out a couple of times, we finally settled on some other seats around the 4th inning.

The stadium is designed so you can see almost the entire park except for the corner of left field right under where those seats are. This was similar to the location where I saw Tom Seaver win #300 at Yankee Stadium in 1985… I couldn’t see the last out… but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment! Likewise I was at an odd angle to the out of town scoreboard.. but nowadays with smart phones, it was very easy for me to look up any out of town scores that I wasn’t able to see. Also, the upper deck doesn’t appear to be as high up as the upper deck at Shea… you don’t talk a loooong escalator all the way up.. but actually ascend a series of shorter staircases to get to the top of the park.


I don’t remember much else about the game other than the Mets won by a pretty decent margin. The kosher food guy was right near out seats so it was convenient to grab a hot dog. I found it kind of odd that some religious guys approached me at the kosher concession during the 8th inning to ask to join for Afternoon prayers… I asked them why don’t we wait a few minutes till the game ends since those prayers can be said up until around 745 and it was only approx. 3:30 at that point.

Here are some more pics from our upper deck seats…






Steve was also at the game with his teenage son… they had box seats for the game and as the 5th inning rolled around he came up to visit us. I thought that was very nice of him… but even nicer than that… he offered to switch seats with us for an inning or two. Trophy Wife and I took a nearby elevator down to field level… the elevators are (wo)manned by leggy young women sitting on stools wearing little miniskirts that press the buttons for you. As we got down to the field level, we were quite impressed by the incredible view.. as you can see from these pics.




We thought it would be funny to stay down there the rest of the game.. nah just kidding.. we stayed for an inning and then meandered up to our seats. We sat there the rest of the game just soaking it all up…. And even though the Mets were winning, I was hoping the Pirates would tie it up so the game could go extra innings so I could spend even more time at the park on this incredibly special day. The game actually ended after the traditional 9 as the usually reliable K-Rod recorded the last out. Here is the end of the game..




After the game, we lingered at the park for a little while.. checking out a gift shop.. not the main one but one in the upper levels of the park near a nice outdoor plaza.. I’m not a big souvenir guy, but for this one day I decided to spring for a scorecard, and some other stuff like a CitiField keychain and a CitiField baseball hat along with a banner, a bumper sticker and a free All Star ballot which I forgot to vote with. We actually met a nice family from Pittsburgh outside the gift shop who were traveling with a handicapped child, so we took the elevator down to the exits with them so I don't know if they have the traditional exit down the ramps like they did at Shea with the traditional chants of "Let's Go Mets... Yankees suck!" Incidentally the elevators exit is right near the main one and it looks like the park has a lot of the accomodations necessary for people who use a wheelchair.

Overall it was a day I will never forget.. and hopefully there will be many more happy memories there.. and hopefully the sinks won’t get pished in.

By the way, I have never done a column with so many pictures... Gosh is it a pain in the neck to upload all this stuff... I don't know how the amateur porn bloggers do it.. not that I would know about those types of sites. Here is one last shot of Shea taken there during our last game there in 2008.

Rivers, Islands and Sun

In the 1st few years of NWOW, every 3 months we did a “TV Quarterly Report”. This year I decided to do away with that format.. (although the baseball quarterly reports will continue) and just write about TV whenever I am in the mood to do so. Now that we are into the final week of the 08-09 season, I realize there is no way that I could maintain that format even if I wanted to… I still haven’t watched the last 2 hours of 24, the last 2 hours of Desperate Housewives and the last 2 hours of Heroes. Somehow if we get some rain during the Memorial Day wknd, I may just sneak on the computer and get me some Hulu.

This season I only followed one reality show – The Celebrity Apprentice. There was something about watching these celebs show up at a job and bust their chops to win the competition. All of these competitive reality shows are really game shows anyway, but the crazy feuding that went on during Celeb Apprentice was quite amusing. First it was Joan Rivers battling with Clint Black… then she was friendly with him. Did she really like him… or did she find him to be such a douchebag that she decided to help him get into the finals so she would have an easier victory? This has always been the popular strategy on Survivor… the mother of all competitive reality shows.

One aspect I noticed was the comedians playing the game are very smart. There really is no such thing as a dumb comedian because you need a brain to observe the nuances of life that is written into a comedy routine. Tom Green's comments to the camera during the final episode were incredibly astute and he was right on the money when it came to analyzing the game play. Likewise, Andrew Dice Clay played his strategy of staying in character as "Dice"... letting people know that he is still out there and available for weddings and bar mitzvahs!

Ultimately it came down to Joan Rivers vs. poker player Annie Duke and when it was all said and done a wk ago Sunday Joan was declared the winner, I couldn’t have been more pleased… even though I was born the same week as Duke… (she was born on Monday preceding my Friday arrival) I wonder if a 75 year old Apprentice winner is expected to show up for work the following Monday to participate in one of the projects within Donald Trump’s constantly bankrupting empire. Now I see Trump is suing a journalist for calling him a millionaire because he says he is actually... a billionaire. The thing with Trump is I really don't like him, yet he is such a media whore, I actually find him amusing.

I have always liked Joan Rivers and career-wise she probably would have been better off not taking the late night Fox show in the mid 1980s because she seemed destined to take over The Tonight Show after she became Johnny’s permanent guest host. (Remember the days of guest hosts on talk shows? Is there such a thing anymore?) I still think Joan Rivers is very funny, but I am not exactly thrilled with how she has reinvented herself with all those crazy plastic surgeries.

But as much as I like Joan…. I have never liked her daughter Melissa. She is a poor man’s Paris Hilton/Kardashian sister... achieving fame for no reason in particular. Melissa doesn’t tell jokes, act, sing or dance.. but she is a celebrity because she is her mother’s daughter and as far as I know only acted in that one horrible TV movie about her father’s tragic suicide. And when Melissa was hired to be on the Celebrity Apprentice this season… all I could wonder was… Why?

And ultimately Melissa’s time ran out… she was fired after she ran into a strong alliance between Playboy model Brandy Broderick and Poker player Annie Duke. That is how the game is played… but young Ms. Rivers took offense that she had been outplayed and went ballistic after she was fired. Joan, who has a skin as thick as Don Rickles seemed to get quite upset by the rough treatment of her precious Melissa, even though the younger Ms. Rivers is a grown woman in her early 40s.

As soon as Joan saw that Melissa got fired, she stormed into the room where Duke was sitting and in one of the most incredible “real” tirades I have ever seen…started berating Duke because she is a poker player… Earlier in the episode Joan had a great line about Duke.. (and thanks to Poker NewsDaily.com for the quotes)… “She’s so duplicitous. I can’t wait for her to get her first facelift….. because she’s going to need two doctors.” Ultimately, Joan launched the best line of the TV season,.. when she looked at Duke with fire in her eyes and proclaimed…“Your people give money with blood on it. I met your people in Las Vegas. None of them have last names. You’re a poker player. A POKER PLAYER!!!”

And Donald then realized that in order to continue his typical publicity hungry way of life… the only way to crown this season’s champion would be to get rid of everybody else and pave the way for Joan and Annie to battle it out. And so the stage was set for last Sunday capping off a wonderful day that started off with my first ever trip to CitiField…. (I’ll write about the trip next week!) Joan was the winner and here is why…

The task they had to do was this complicated multi marketing project where both Annie and Joan had to use a professional designer to decorate a room where a silent auction was to be held. Joan however did not like the company that the producers had chosen for her, and apparently ticked off the owner of the company. When Duke’s team wanted to speak with their assigned designer, they realized that their phone calls were not being returned…. and with the deadline quickly approaching, Annie was in deep trouble.

Duke decided to go directly to the office only to find out that the cameras were not allowed into the building. The people at that company allowed Annie to talk with them off camera. Once Annie came out she told her teammates that the designers were quitting their involvement with The Apprentice due to problems working with Joan. Now the Poker playing Annie was screwed due to Rivers and had no river to bail her out.

Once she got to the boardroom. Annie proved to Trump why she did not have what it takes to be “The Apprentice”. As soon as she brought up the fact that Joan’s big mouth caused her to lose her designer at the 11th hour… Joan clinched the victory by shooting off more venom in Duke’s direction… Duke was distracted by Joan’s anger, and complained to Donald that Rivers had compared her to Hitler.. to which Joan barked back…”No darling … Hitler never had PMS….”

And so it went…even though Donald likely knew why the designer's departure was Joan’s fault, he kept asking Annie to explain why... but Joan had gotten under her skin and Annie couldn’t shake off the distraction of Joan’s mouth.… And when Annie couldn’t stay on topic with Joan constantly barking at her, her lack of focus, made for a convincing argument that if Annie can’t stay on topic in an Apprentice boardroom, how can she focus when dealing with adversarial conditions in a business setting? And even though it seemed to be Joan’s fault, a corporate faux pas pales in comparison to allowing an enemy to distract you during the heat of battle.

By the way, next Halloween I am dressing up as Joan Rivers and I am going to go to the poker room at a Trump Atlantic City Hotel and yell out..."You're a POKER PLAYER!"




It really amazes me how popular the TV show LOST has become. As the show enters its final season, its ratings may not be American Idol-esque.. but its loyal followers continue to stand behind it and debate it and debate it and then debate it some more. It’s almost like the Talmud based on how many different experts weigh in on this show. Every post Lost Thursday, I go through the same routine. I read the blog posted by Star Ledger TV critic Allen Sepinwall, followed by the recaps posted on TV Squad, TVGuide.com and Jeff Jensen’s remarkably popular column on EW.com. His recaps elicit approximately 2000 comments on Thursdays! Even the ESPN Thursday Fantasy Baseball Q and A’s have people posting questions as Lost characters!

Last weeks season finale was as amazing as always… but an incident near the end of the episode distracted me and I had to spend the next few days finding the answer to one plot point that puzzled me. I also wondered how Rose and Bernard knew they went back 30 years since they chose to retire as hermits on that wacky island, but I decided to suspend my disbelief. To figure out the other plot hole, I went to ABC.com and started watching the last few episodes, but I eventually got my answer when I visited TVGuide.com to reread an early April episode recap.

Just to recap.. aside from the mashugas about blowing up a bomb to change history to keep the plane from ever crashing… the other plot involved “Locke” getting Ben to kill the mysterious Jacob. Jacob had been established as the Wizard of Id or Oz on this particular island.. and until the last episode he had never been shown. He actually looked like the guy from The Journeyman… and during the episode we discovered how he traveled freely through time to interact with various Lost characters at key turning points of their off island lives.

In the beginning of the episode we see Jacob at the shore of the island talking to another guy in a time that looked to be very very long ago. The "other guy" tells Jacob that he wishes he could kill him and one day he will find a loophole to do so. Meanwhile in present day Lost, Locke has dragged ol’ beaten up Ben…(he really should have just pursued a career in plastics Benjamin, plastics) to kill Jacob in Jacob’s little hideaway. Just before Ben stabs him, Locke mentions a loophole…. And outside the little murder scene the survivors of plane crash #2 are stunned to discover that a corpse has been discovered inside a box that is the body of…. John Locke.

Finding the corpse is a true watcha talking about Willis moment for the islanders… How can Locke be a dead corpse and alive on the island simultaneously? The viewers then realize that living Locke is not the same as dead Locke! And Dead Locke was supposed to have had a great mission but in reality maybe he didn’t. After all, we saw how Locke was told by Richard that he would have to die to save everybody… but Richard was told to say that to Locke a few moments earlier by the Time Traveling Lockelganger. So now instead of seeing events of the past affecting the present, we are seeing events from future time travelers affecting the present. And the Lockelganger used Richard to convince Locke he had to ultimately die…even though his Shawshank Redemption hanging was stopped by Ben who ended up killing him anyway.

So now we see that the guy who was after Jacob discovered he could use some kind of Sylaresque technique to take over Locke’s body… but only if Locke was dead. But that whole scenario raised one big question for me…

If Sun was on the 2nd plane with dead Locke… why was she so surprised to see his dead body? She knew he was dead. And it was then that I realized that I could not recall her reunion with “Locke” (the Lockelganger) and how it was explained to her that Locke was alive. So after my long journey through old episodes online… I finally found this in the TV Guide.com recap from an episode in early April…

“Along the way, Locke lets Ben know that he knows why Ben wants to be judged: for his role in Alex's murder. Ben is clearly irritated by Locke's newfound omniscience. Arriving at Casa de Linus, they discover that someone, a silhouetted woman, is in Alex's old room. Obviously, it's Sun and Lapidus. They show Ben the picture of the Oceanic 6 in the 1977 Dharma photo, and tell them that a man named Christian told them if Sun ever wanted to see Jin again, she was to wait for John Locke. It's then that Born-Again Locke makes his entrance, without much fanfare, for now anyway.”

Hmmmm… Christian was on the original flight in a body bag and yet he has “lived on” the same way as The Lockelganger. And here is Christian going to Sun and telling her that if she wants to see her husband alive she should wait for Locke… even though Sun thinks he is dead… and she actually later second guesses Jack’s assertion that Locke’s body was really on the plane. Then when she sees Locke.. she is so concerned with reuniting with her husband that she doesn’t really think twice when she sees a man she thought was dead..

And so it goes with the latest theory… is the show a battle between Jacob and The Other guy? And is the other guy trying to defeat Jacob through the use of time travel and possessing bodies?. Locke who was supposed to be such a big character… was really just a pawn whose death had to happen in order for the Lockelganger to assume the persona because it seems he can only do that when the person is dead.

That raises a theory that if Locke was "possessed" by the Lockelganger because he arrived on the island after his death... perhaps that is the way The Other Guy possesses a body... the person has to be DOA when they get to the island. If that is the case, then he must have assumed Christians ID because Christian was also lying dead in a coffin when the plane crashed in the very first episode. And who showed Locke how to get off the island so he could die and come back? Christian... possibly aka the other guy.

And then lets go back to Day 1… did the plane crash so Locke would become the leader who would bring Ben in to stab Jacob? Would anyone really listen to Christian if he tried to recruit someone to do the dirty deed? People would say "Hey who's that guy?" and Jack would say... "Oh that's my dead dad." And if that is the case, then the other guy was motivated to see that plane crash,… but wait a minute.. the Losties are blowing up a bomb in the 70s to prevent the plane crash… and if the plane doesn’t crash… then Locke is never told he has to die and Ben doesn’t kill Jacob. So doesn't that give Jacob a motivation to prevent that first episode plane crash?

And so it appears that Jacob is somehow involved in manipulating the Lostaways to change history in the other storyline. Jack’s decision to prevent the crash by detonating the bomb is inspired by an idea pitched to him by Daniel Faraday. And its his mom who was in cahoots with Charles Widmore who controlled Daniel’s life so he would grow up to travel back in time so he would be shot by his own mother. But then again his mother also encouraged the gang to bring the Locke corpse on the 2nd flight. But wouldn’t the older version of the mother want to prevent her son’s death and do everything in her power to keep him from fulfilling that destiny?

If Faraday is the guy who planted the thought, he was recruited to the island by Charles Widmore. Does that mean Widmore is actually... a good guy since he is engineering the events to prevent the plane crash? Is that why he is so obsessed with finding that island? To save Jacob? Is he Jacob? Could it be that one of these characters was killed off the island and was possessed by Jacob who knew he had to change history to save his life? Some think that Charlie is a young Charles Widmore.... and Charlie died off the island when he drowned... could he have floated back to be possessed by Jacob who is setting up a series of events to keep the other guy from stabbing him? The damage may have been done but in the world of Lost, it can be un-done with a little time travel switcheroo. Perhaps they could do likewise with Monday night's Met game and this time around make sure Ryan Church touches 3rd base.

And how is it that it took us to the final episode of Season #5 for us to realize that the show is really about a chess match between 2 supernatural characters and all these so called main characters in the plot appear to be just mere pawns in a much bigger contest?

And why the heck do we have to wait till January for this craziness to start again. Actually my buddy Albert had a very good idea.. Lost should take an example from 24’s playbook and show a 2 hour movie in the fall so we don’t have to wait so long for more! Now if you will excuse me I need to go to Hulu to watch the season finale of 24… Last time I checked Kim Bauer was at the airport… hey look behind Kim… Isn’t that Sawyer and Kate getting ready to board a plane?

Rate Drops Keep Falling on My Head

Where the heck has Nate been?

Gosh wouldya believe that it has been about a month since our last visit here at NWOW. Wow,… life seems to have taken a turn in the busy direction… and it seems that my late night computer hours have been taken up with catching up on my fantasy baseball team and missed episodes of Heroes and Desperate Housewives. My team is already deep in last place and I may have been mathematically eliminated on Cinco De Mayo! Amazingly, I still have not caught up with my shows, since I’m still 2 episodes behind on Heroes! It's a good thing those 2 along with Lost and 24 are my only can’t miss shows on my schedule…otherwise I might not be back here till July!

Speaking of Lost…as always. I remain totally confused. I see that the story has evolved into a tale of traveling to the past to change the present. The first episode in 2004 started out with people on a plane, crashing into the island due to the release of some electromagnetic energy caused by a human/computer malfunction. Will traveling back and changing history mean that the end of the show will show the plane flying on its merry way with NO release of that energy. Will the unhappy passengers on that flight get a mulligan and never even realize what transpired when the plane "crashed"? I guess they will just show Ben and Juliet hanging out at a book club meeting while up above the plane passengers sit watching a lame-o 2003 movie as Sawyer, Kate and Jack are oblivious to the craziness that has entertained us the last 5 yrs, and we would all know Michael Emerson as a buggy eyed actor who did a fantastic job on "The Practice". Of course by next week I will change that theory too.

Nonetheless… it was raining this past Sunday.. and Trophy Wife was at a Hadassah shindig… so I grabbed my laptop, popped on my earbuds to listen to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem.(from the 80s on satellite radio via my cellphone), and went off to Panera to catch up on some out of town baseball and begin my revisit to NWOW.

Today’s column is one of those synergy (not the energy that Desmond has to press codes to prevent) cross promotional columns in connection with my Mortgage podcast. If you have noticed I also have been a bad boy and not updated my podcast in quite awhile. I started the Podcast a few years ago as a vehicle to discuss different mortgage products. A guy I used to work with taught me how to maneuver my podcast to be listed first when googling the term "mortgage podcast". Interestingly enough I discovered another mortgage podcast that lists first when you google "mortage" podcast, because his references to his expertise are the "mortage" field!

The idea behind the original concept was that the episodes would not be timely so that stuff that I recorded in 2006 would still be relevant in 2009. However, once we had the infamous mortgage meltdown, the entire lending process changed. Banks took away all of their "creative" programs leaving us with basically Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loans and FHA government loans. It’s very difficult to do podcasts about different products when they really aren't there anymore.

However I have branched out and podcasted about other not timely mortgage related issues which brings us to today’s column and future podcast topic that I would like to call... … “Rate Drops Keep Falling on My Head”.

Rates are usually dictated by the movements of the Treasury Bond. Rule of thumb is that if the stock market has a rough day, the rates will tend to improve. However nowadays there are really only 2 loan categories – Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac (also known as conventional) and FHA. All FHA loans involve a monthly mortgage insurance premium, even if you have more than a 20% equity position in your house. On top of that, those loans include an upfront insurance premium payment that is financed into the loan. That is why, a lot of people would prefer to take a conventional Fannie/Freddie loan so they can avoid paying the extra insurance.

However, as we hear breathless news announcers bellow with glee that rates are dropping there is of course a catch. Fannie Mae decided last year to institute “pricing penalties” on borrowers… so when you hear about these great low rates in the high 4’s. you better have a 740+ credit score and own approximately 40% of the value of your house to qualify for that wonderful low rate.

And just like the saying that 40 is the new 30… credit scores have a similar 120 point swing. In the old days, a 500 score could secure you a mortgage loan; now the minimum score is 620. And on top of that, in the old days where 620 could basically get you virtually any type of loan – now you need a 740 to get the best of what is available.

Interestingly enough, one byproduct of this latest downward trend in interest rates has been a rise in fees. Before this recent rate drop, I rarely thought it was a good idea to pay points on a mortgage loan… because usually paying a fee of 1% of the mortgage loan usually got the rate down by about 1/8 to ¼. But the conventional rate sheets are quite clever… they have changed the spread on how mortgage loans are designed.. now people have a chance to pay a point to knock the rate down approximately 1%. Nowadays, qualified borrowers actually benefit from paying the point – since it can now bring you a substantial discount in your final monthly payment. Fannie and Freddie cleverly set it up this way, because not paying the point gets you a higher undesirable rate.. and if you are not a “desirable borrower”, they don't want your business and want those people to be tempted to go towards an FHA loan which has a much lower rate, but usually a similar payment once you add in the mortgage insurance.

Now that May has arrived the latest curveball is coming our way. One conventional pricing penalty involves loan to value – how much your loan is divided by the value. In the old days, loan originators had a roster of qualified local appraisers who knew the area well and could do the proper detailed research needed to find the correct value… many times those values have flown in right under the wire.. reaching the amount needed to avoid one of those pesky penalties. And once a loan officer builds up relationships with his appraisers – those appraisers will do a search of comparable properties in advance.. just to make sure that the value is going to be there. It’s a terrific courtesy to save your customers the expense of an appraisal if the appraiser knows in advance that the value of the home is too low to make the loan work.

Well that luxury is now … gone! Starting May 1, banks are now in charge of hiring the appraisers for conventional loans… (FHA is not a part of this). And, the days of comp searches in advance are how history, which kind of sucks if you are the kind of mortgage guy who doesn't like surprises and prefers to know the value in advance. Unfortunately, I also have encountered a few lousy appraisers in my day… and it makes me nervous that some of these shlubs are going to now be appraising houses for my customers. Luckily there is an appeals process, for appraisals that come in way off...but nonetheless this should be an interesting next few months.

Now if you'll excuse me I am going to see if turning that wheel will push me back in time before all this mortgage craziness started!


CLIP OF THE WEEK

Here is the original song that inspired the title of today's column.

Baseball Preview - Top 14 Teams of 2009

Well folks.. its that time of year.. Opening Day has arrived and today we present our Annual Baseball Preview… We will get to that in just a moment, but I wanted to write a little follow up to the previous Paul Harvey column where news about radio newscaster George Weber’s death was being announced just as I was finishing up the column.

After learning the sordid details that Weber went on Craigs List looking for sex and allowed a 16 year old into his home to perform sex acts on him, I have done a considerable 180 in this story. I wonder what would have happened if the father of the minor that Weber was molesting had stabbed him? And… what happens if George had survived that brutal attack? I am pretty certain that his radio career would have been finished and he would have gone to jail, and upon his release he would have signed up as a registered sex offender. Surfing the web for sex with people under age 18 is a serious offense, and as much as I like reading the WABC New York radio bulletin board, I am quite surprised how so many people are so supportive of Weber on this matter. Granted he was an excellent radio newscaster, and it is unfortunate that he is dead… but I really wonder if any of those pro-Weber people would ever allow their children to be alone with him if they knew that in reality he was a child molester.



This year’s baseball preview is a little different than the ones we have done in prior years on NWOW… Usually my fantasy draft is held on the ESPN-created Opening Sunday.... but this year, our draft was moved up a week earlier. This means instead of cramming all this info to my brain for my draft today, it is over and done with and I can write about specific players without worrying that members of my league will find NWOW and steal my trade secrets.

I was reading a magazine article about a guy who belongs to my Temple, who has been advocating for a certain cause and has turned into a bigshot and even recently got to hang out with President Obama. In the interview he commented about certain idioms that he finds to be very odd and frankly I couldn’t agree more.. For example… why are there so many phrases involving horses… “put the cart before the horse?”… “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”.. and even the incredibly offensive “you can’t beat a dead horse”…. Why would somebody beat a dead horse?

In light of the all the wars, the military term of “firing a salvo” puzzles me when it is used as a phrase concerning a debate or argument where somebody unleashes a verbal volley. And as I gear up for the 2009 season, I start to remind myself of Uncle Rico, the character in Napolean Dynamite who looked back with nostalgia at his high school football team that he feels he could have led to a championship if only the coach would have brought him in off the bench. (By the way, the actor who played Uncle Rico is Ben Linus’s father on Lost.) I am the same way when it comes to the 2007 season where my 1st place fantasy team was cruising into September towards a championship until a guy in my league named Bob Salvo acquired a red hot Kevin Kouzmanoff and blasted right past me to the championship. Bob Salvo is my Newman.. and since that day I cringe when I hear anything involving “Bob Salvo”…because it was Bob Salvo who cost me a victory. Last week I had to sit at the draft table opposite Bob Salvo and grind my teeth because I was so close to my adversary. And as I gear up for this season and write today’s blog…. I have one last thing to say on this topic…

April 5th Fools Day Bob! I heard that you read the blog and I just wanted to congratulate you for winning and wish you best of luck in 2009.


So as I prepared a list of 14 teams to watch for in 2009, I started to wonder if there are really 14 good teams this year. I checked out the SI Baseball Preview (which is picking the Mets to win it all) and if you look at their predictions, they think that only 12 teams will finish better than 2 games over .500. Could this be the season where we move farther away from parity… sort of like the NBA’s Western Conference where it’s either feast or famine? Lets take a look starting with …

THE METS – The powers that be seem to think that the bullpen was the sole source of last years late season collapse… the pen may have been the sole scapegoat.. but there were other problems as well. The team swiftly fixed the pen, cutting players they didn’t want to see booed at the new Citi Field and adding K-Rod and JJ Putz. But even though they have an exceptional left side of the infield and centerfielder, there are question marks about Carlos Delgado’s abilities at his advancing age and the fact that the corner outfielders consist of a rookie, Fernando Tatis and a guy with a concussion. But teams evolve over the course of a season, and the Mets may have taken a step in the right direction by bringing on Garry Sheffield.

Player to Watch – Ryan Schneider – nobody expects him to hit, but he has to catch the bullpen and starting staff which could be a bit shaky beyond Johan Santana and Mike Pelfrey.

THE PHILLIES – Last year’s world champs return almost intact…. Pat Burrell has been replaced by Raul Ibanez. Otherwise they still have that winning formula with an exceptional offense. Nobody expects the pitching staff to repeat last year’s success especially Brad Lidge who never blew a save. The starters also are questionable with Cole Hamels looking a little injured, the ageless Jamie Moyer starting to age, and the fact that Joe Blanton… is Joe Blanton.

Player to Watch – Ryan Howard – possibly the premiere power hitter of this decade as we enter into the post Steroids era where almost nobody else except Adam Dunn appears able to crack the 40 home run mark.

THE CUBBIES – Now that the World Series drought is past the 100 year mark, everybody is ready to see if the Cubs can get a little farther in the playoffs after last year’s first round shocking 3 game sweep by the Dodgers. The team is also pretty much intact plus they get a full year of Rich Harden who seems to be a little fragile. (No fragile it must be Italian jokes are allowed after April 1.) Some question marks come up concerning Carlos Zambrano and newcomer Milton Bradley’s attitude and ability to get along with fiery manager Lou Piniella. The bullpen is anchored by Kevin Gregg who was imported from Florida to replace Kerry Wood, and with the Cubs playing a very weak division, another NL Central Title should be a piece of cake.

Player to Watch - Aaron Heilman. Watch the close-ups on WGN to see how happy he is to be out of NY where he went from 2006 post season almost playoff hero (until that pitch to Yadier Molina) to 2 yrs of constant booing at the late lamented Shea Stadium.

THE REDS – One of my surprise teams for this year.. I really dig this rotation of youngsters Edinson Volquez and Jonnny Cueto and veterans Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo. Fransisco Cordero is extremely reliable in the pen… and the offense is solid down the middle of the lineup. The division seems a little weaker this season and if Harang can bounce back from last season’s 6-17 disaster, they have a chance to make some noise this season.

Player to Watch – Brandon Phillips. Literally stolen from Cleveland a few years ago for a minor leaguer nobody hears much about, Phillips has a shot at moving up in the ranks of all time 2nd baseman. He had a 30-30 in ’07 and slumped a bit last year in a season cut a bit short due to injury. But.. if he can bounce back to another 30-30 this year, he could move up to the ranks of superstar.

THE CARDINALS – They always seem to make their way into this list…due to the genius of manager Tony LaRussa. I don’t know he does it, and his motley crew this year again looks rather unimpressive. But, when you play in a division with the Astros, Pirates and Brewers (who will really miss Sheets and Sabathia) interesting things can happen to .500 teams in August. Albert Pujols remains a superstar… and even though he hit 58 points lower, Ryan Ludwick had similar power numbers. And even though Kyle Loshe has no chance of another 15-6 season… La Russa is bound to pull something else out of his bag of tricks.

Player to Watch – Ryan Ludwick – He came out of nowhere to hit .299 with 37 homers and 113 ribbys. His ability to have another similar season will take a lot of pressure off Pujols.

THE DODGERS – Last year’s team changed its whole approach after they acquired Manny Ramirez. And who exactly did they give up besides Andy LaRoche? Talk about another steal of a deal… But in reality a lot of other guys chipped in late last season to help this run including outfielder Andre Ethier who was on fire in August and September. I’m not exactly thrilled with the rotation… but since they will play a lot of games against the weaker Giants, Rockies and Padres… this non parity year will considerably help LA… especially as their young lineup with Ethier, budding superstar Matt Kemp and James Loney continue to hit well.

Player to Watch – Hin Chuo Kuo… LA got rid of most of its bullpen.. and now Kuo will be the set up man. Hes had a lot of arm injuries including 2 Tommy John surgeries which Asia may rename Hin Chuo Kuo surgery… Nonetheless, he barely allowed a baserunner per inning and his success in the late innings will be key for the Dodgers probable return to the playoffs.

Now over to the American League…

THE YANKEES – The New Yankee Stadium looks very much like.. The Old Yankee Stadium.. and the Yankees might be getting old as mainstays Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter all celebrate another birthday this year. Nonetheless, the Yankees are looking to return to their late 90s early 2000 success as they remade the rotation with the initals boys.. AJ Burnett, and CC Sabathia. Last year’s team missed the playoffs so to avoid history from repeating itself the team also added Mark Texiera, but with both Tampa and Boston in the division, a playoff spot is gonna be tough.

Player to Watch – Arod. His hip surgery sidelined him for the Yankee home opener so his controversial presence wouldn’t upstage the opening of the new Stadium. But.. once he is back will the distraction of the steroids saga and Madonna’s inability to adopt another African baby from parents who didn’t want to give up the baby affect him?

THE SAWX – My friend Barry’s favorite team and I haven’t heard the end of how good the ’09 team since around early November. The outfield is JE (Jacoby ellsbury) JD (Drew) and JBay (Jason Bay) and the rest of the lineup is pretty intact although Jason Varitek continues to chug along. Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis have established themselves on the infield and the rotation is pretty solid. Could be another interesting battle in the AL East this year.

Player to Watch - Dice K – Not the comedian who couldn't last longer than Dennis Rodman on Celebrity Apprentice. It's amazing that Dice-K goes 18-3 with a 2.90 ERA and Red Sox nation thinks he is awful! Whats with these people? Not a bad record for a #3 starter and hopefully he won’t learn English to understand what the fans are saying about him.

TAMPA BAY – The success story of 2008 and the team all my fellow Mets fans rooted for during the World Series, especially now that Scott Kazmir has not established himself as a great pitcher and the one that got away in that illfated Victor Zambrano deal. The D-Rays built themselves with a solid offense with draft pick Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena who has a shot at being the AL HR king in ’09 now that ARod is going to miss some time. The rest of the offense is solid with Pat Burrell bringing his 33 HRs over from Philly and the pitching staff is solid. This could be the best team in the AL.

Player to Watch - David Price. Not the CBS Weatherman. Did you see this guy in the playoffs? He was amazing.. and now he is in the minor leagues as the financially challenged Rays exploit a little loophole to delay salary arbitration for another year. Once this guy comes up as either a starter or reliever, the Rays are going to be awesome which is incredible considering how lousy they used to be… sort of like the 1986 NJ Devils.

THE WHITE SOX – They showed a lot last year with their amazing run to win 2 extra games to punch their ticket to the post season. The middle of their lineup consists of 3 guys who hit more than 34 homers… Carlos Quentin, Jermaine Dye and Jim Thome. The rotation looks pretty decent 1-3 but you get nervous when the 4-5 spots are anchored by Jose Contreras and Bartolo Colon. They probably would have had an easier run to the playoffs last year if Quentin didn’t get hurt at the end of the season.

Player to Watch – Quentin – Is this a trivia question for what street is between Avenue P and Avenue R in Brooklyn? A budding superstar or a one year wonder? So far it looks like he is the D-Rays fans version of Scott Kazmir! They traded him for a guy named Chris Carter. Didn’t he create the X-Files?

THE INDIANS – A late addition to this year’s list.. I am adding them and deleting Arizona. Cleveland doesn’t quite have the offense from the glory years, but Grady Sizemore is a superstar and if Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner can bounce back from injuries, it might be enough for them to have a good season. Kerry Wood comes in to anchor the pen but how many saves he will get will depend on Cliff Lee and Fausto Carmona. Lee won’t repeat his 22-3 2008 season but 15-16 wins wont be too shabby. And Carmona was awful last season but could have that Bret Saberhagen-esque ever other year success.

Player to Watch – Carl Pavano – see Aaron Heilman above. However, in Pavano’s case I never saw a pitcher so hated for being injured except for maybe Victor Zambrano. Check out the broadcasts on ESPN and MLB to see how happy he looks to be away from The Bronx.

THE TWINS – It seems like their offense is Justin Morneau and a bunch of young guys who keep them competitive. Last year Morneau had an “off year” with only 23 home runs but he did drive in 129 runs. Catcher Joe Mauer is out for awhile with back problems and that loss will have to be made up by solid pitching led by their solid young rotation. It’s amazing that this pitching staff kept them in contention last season after they traded Johan Santana and Matt Garza! Joe Nathan is solid in the pen and with enough mediocrity in the AL Central, they have a chance for another good season.

Player to Watch – Joe Mauer – not only is he a reliable .300+ hitter…. but his value in catching the pitching staff has to be taken into consideration when it comes to weighing the chances of this teams success. If Mauer is out for too long, it could be a long season in Minnesota.

THE ANGELS – I thought they made a great deal when they signed Bobby Abreu as a free agent. He joins a solid lineup along with Vlad Guererro and Torii Hunter.. They may have Angels in the outfield, but their rotation is on the DL… and there is concern since they won’t have John Lackey, Ervin Santana, and Kelvim Escobar to start the season. They also lost K-Rod to the Mets and Texeira to the Yankees.. but they should still contend in the weak AL West. Brian Fuentes comes over from Colorado to replace K-Rod and he is good for at least 30 saves for a team that probably will have a pretty decent lead all season.

Player to Watch – Joe Saunders. He went 17-7 last season and with all the injuries to the starters moves up to the top of the rotation. Despite his record and 3.41 ERA all the fantasy websites are not predicting a good year for him. He might be the man that keeps the staff together until the injured players return.

OAKLAND – My 2009 surprise team… With Justin Duscherer on the DL, the rotation is a bunch of no names, but as is the case each year, these guys tend to keep the A’s in contention, and with the Angels looking a bit vulnerable this might be a good chance for the A’s to do well if they get off to a good start. The bullpen is solid with the virtually unhittable Brad Ziegler and I am one of the few people impressed with the offense with Jack Cust, and newcomers Matt Holliday, Jason Giambi, and Orlando Cabrera. Giambi isn’t really such a newcomer since he was in Oakland before his Yankee days… but I have a feeling this offense will make life a little tougher for LA this season.

Player to Watch – Matt Holliday – Not only for the tongue twisting games against Toronto…(And Halladay’s pitch to Holliday)… but also for the fact that he is in a walk year and if the A’s contend he will be a big cog for them, or a cog somewhere else if the A’s don’t do well and another team decides to take him for a September spin.

Predictions
Surprise Teams – Reds and A’s
Disappointments – D’backs and Yankee fans who expect the playoff drought to end.
NL Division Winners – Mets, Cubbies, and Dodgers
NL Wild Card - Phillies
AL Divison Winners – Rays, White Sox, Angels
AL Wild Card – Red Sox
NLCS – Mets vs. Dodgers
ALCS – Tampa vs. Boston
WORLD SERIES - It won’t be Shea and it won’t be Buckner and Mookie.. but Youkilis better be careful on any sharp ground balls hit by Carlos Betraaaaan. Mets in 6!


Enjoy the season and check the sidebar for updates on all of the games.Now excuse me while I order the MLB network from the cable company and think of a clever name for my fantasy baseball team! I'm thinking of something with a (2)007 theme.. if if weren't for that Bob Salvo...

CLIP OF THE WEEK: Before Citi Field opens next week, here is one last look at our beloved old dumpy Shea Stadium!

News and Comment... And The Rest of the Story

Hello again everybody…

A few Saturday Nights ago, Trophy Wife and I were at home watching Momma Mia for the umpteenth time, and as Pierce Brosnan pierced my eardrums with his horrific singing, I took the opportunity to pull out my cellie and check the news update on CNN. That was when I found out that radio legend Paul Harvey had died. This column would have been more timely a few weeks ago, but this is the time of year when my late night computer time is spent scouring the web looking for baseball nuggets to prepare for my annual fantasy draft(s).

It’s amazing how Paul Harvey's commentaries were so popular for so long.. yet nobody else delivers that type of radio broadcast anymore... But you can bet that his style has inspired quite a few blogs and podcasts… So without further ado, let’s launch today’s column with a salute to Paul Harvey’s format of news and comment, and feel free to insert a dramatic pause wherever you feel necessary…


FACEBOOK – It’s interesting to see how many people truly loathe the new format they dumped on us a couple of weeks ago. I'm not that annoyed by it (although I just sent out a group email through it that I thought was just going to one person), but there were 2 features they removed that have basically moved it to the backburner on my favorite website list. First is the live feed that changed automatically every time one of your friends posted anything whether it was a status update or posting “Halloween” cross dressing pics as one of my buddies recently did…. The live feed was like a private real time newscast…

And the new friend announcements are also puzzlingly gone. For those of us in our very late 30s its fun to watch the updates to see names from our past pop up that are long forgotten, yet have suddenly rediscovered a mutual facebook friend. Others use it as a warning about people they want to avoid from their past who have just climbed aboard FB.... giving enough warning to adjust the settings to “block” the offending person from seeing your Facebook profile.

This may have been a very smart or very stupid idea. One friend suggested that FB is obsessed with Twitter. I am not a twitter-er, but I hear that the new FB is very similar to its competitor. But just because a website wants to remain competitive doesn’t mean it has to destroy itself to copy somebody else. Google acquired blogspot and it competes with Wordpress, but Google incorporated Blogspot into its own site and didn’t totally redesign itself to try to beat its competitor.

Also, FB has ads along the right column, so if you watched the old live feed, the ads never changed. But if you watch the new format, you have to refresh the page to update the feed which means – a new batch of ads! And if you want to see whos friending who… (sort of like Whos Zooming Who… a tune that will now crawl into your brain and haunt you for the rest of the day)… you have to go to each friends individual page and get that info there instead. Which means – more fb ads! Or… maybe these young 23 year old whippersnappers who run Facebook should be more focused on drinking and chasing chics instead of sinking the website with constant unnecessary changes.


Page 2

NBC? – Whatever happened to the TV network that used to rule the Nielsen ratings in the days of Seinfeld, Friends and Cosby?

While NBC falls apart,… CBS continues to amaze me with its incredible prime time lineup this season. Even Fox which has the American Idol juggernaut tweaks its lineup every few months. But CBS? I don’t think they have cancelled a show since they took away that fantastic Swingtown in September. Even that crazy Jennifer Love Hewitt talking to ghosts show chugs along and I don’t recall any changes CBS has made to its lineup this season.

ABC was in a similar NBC rut in ’04 but then they started airing Lost and Desperate Housewives and started having some water cooler shows. ABC may have taken a major step in the wrong direction by cancelling the amazing Life On Mars.. LoM is a remake of a BBC show… and the BBC original inspired a spin-off…. Perhaps ABC could undo its dopey mistake and do likewise?

But when it comes to NBC…. its prime time lineup has virtually no buzz. Its incredible how NBC gets great ratings from The Today Show and Jay Leno… yet nothing in between. By the way, did anyone catch Letterman this past week with the bit about the Madoff sitcom? The actress playing Mrs. Madoff wore a Trophy Wife T shirt and the “credits” showed that the sitcom was written by my Trophy Wife’s cousin Sheldon Leonard! Even NBC's daytime lineup is in the crapper with its lone soap opera Days of Our Lives on life support. (If NBC cancels it, the ghost of my mother will haunt that NBC executive and I don’t even think Jennifer Love Hewitt will be able to step in to help!) The only shows on that network that people talk about now are Heroes and Celebrity Apprentice.. with a little mini buzz buzzing about for The Office and 30 Rock. And even Heroes is taking a beating from its fans for losing its original charm and most people TIVO, VCR it, or watch it online since 24 is soooo much better!

Last week on Celebrity Apprentice,… Dennis Rodman got drunk, picked up some chics and didn’t bother showing up the next day at his team’s assignment at the Bridal Shop. Teammates knocked on his door and he refused to respond. He later said he had an “eye infection” due to an allergy to “cats”…. This was quite ironic because I happened to have a real eye infection and realized that when I called in sick on Monday, nobody who watched The Apprentice the night before would believe me… But… it was really an eye infection!

So what happens? Its time for Donald Trump to fire someone… and who gets canned? Tom Green! How does that make any sense if Green did what he was supposed to do, yet Rodman gets spared even though he was definitely not a team player. Rodman actually told Trump that if he was still a Chicago Bull, he wouldn’t have answered his hotel room door even if Michael Jordan was knocking.

I don’t like the regular Apprentice show, but I like the Celebrity Apprentice because its neat to see these famous people doing all these silly tasks. But as Trump was getting ready to make his decision, he realized that Green has fallen way off the radar, while Rodman remains a very interesting bizarre personality. And that was when Donald realized he had to make a decision… With the ratings for his show and the current fate of NBC riding in the balance, he realized that the show would be more entertaining with the former NBA star and that is why Rodman didn’t get the ax. Now, if The Apprentice was on CBS… would Green have been spared?


PAUL HARVEY – I bought a clock radio approximately 20 years ago at a store called Consumers Distributing. If you remember this odd store, they had catalogs in the store… you would check off what you want.. bring your sheet to the counter and then get your merchandise. Then, they got rid of the format and changed it to Consumers Express and turned it into a regular Kmart type store. At the grand reopening of the Roselle, NJ store in the late 80s, I was one of the first customers that very first day and I purchased a Sony Dream Machine clock radio that I continued to use for many years.

At one point around 2000, the AM stopped working so I started waking up to FM radio… mostly Howard Stern. But once Imus got fired by WFAN, and then rehired by WABC, I decided to buy an alarm clock with a functioning AM band to hear the new show. That Sony clock lasted almost 20 years, but it was time to ditch the last souvenir of the long closed Consumers Distributers/Express Stores. And once AM was back, I rediscovered Paul Harvey., whose News and Comment I used to listen to before my radio broke.

Every morning the new alarm clock would wake me up to the Imus show, and on Saturdays it would be Mark Simone’s weekend show. Paul Harvey’s commentary always came on at some point on Saturdays… as I tried to shake off the cobwebs of yet another crazy week at work in my weekly attempt to wake up for Saturday Morning synagogue services. The hourly ABC network newscast on Simone’s show was anchored by George Weber whose shocking brutal murder was announced on Sunday as I was finishing up today's column.

In recent years, the elderly Harvey’s appearances were not so frequent. I remember one morning Scott Shannon, a radio legend some notches below Harvey, filled in and with the glee of a school boy, happy that he was privileged to fill in for Paul Harvey. And over the last year, it was usually Paul Harvey’s son anchoring the broadcast.

On the Saturday that Paul Harvey's death was announced, I again woke up that morning half asleep and as I got the cobwebs out of my eyes, I again heard Harvey’s fill in. I did not know that this was the day that Paul Harvey would pass on, and more than likely he was somewhere up with the angels getting ready to broadcast his News and Comment over Heaven’s radio airwaves.

The Friday night before that fateful Saturday, as Trophy Wife was cooking yet another gourmet dinner… a little voice started chirping from the ceiling…. It was our detector announcing that we had a dangerous amount of carbon monoxide. I thought nothing of it.. maybe a battery issue? I opened a window and the woman’s chirpy voice stopped… But moments later… it started again. We called the fire department, and it turned out we had very high levels of carbon monoxide in our house due to a now discarded faulty appliance. The house was aired out, and the levels came down and it was time to eat dinner.

It’s a good thing we have those carbon monoxide detectors… and you should have them too. If we didn’t have one, we would never have woken up the next morning. And yet as thrilled as I would have been to wake up that Saturday morning to hear Paul Harvey News and Comment... I must admit that in retrospect, I am quite happy that on that particular morning… it was NOT Paul Harvey we were listening to!


And there you have ….. The Rest of the Story!

Now go check your carbon monoxide detectors!

American Psycho - A Movie Club Column

Well now that Christian Bale’s reputation seems to have survived his recent on set meltdown, it is time for a Movie Club column. Today we present Part II of our Bale movie series – American Psycho. It took me some time to write today's column, because after several trips to Blockbuster to rent this movie, I left with a different movie instead, because the only copy was always rented out… apparently by the same person! At one point, I asked the Blockbuster counterperson/resident film expert if this person believed in returning videos. Ironically, the main character in this movie – Patrick Bateman uses the concept of returning videos as his alibi for everything… including Murder!!


Here is a clip of the trailer…




It's tough to write a spoiler free column about this movie, but since it is about 9 years old, I am sure I won’t be giving away too much by revealing certain plot aspects. This is the Bateman portion of the Bateman to Batman trip through Bale’s career, and I think this movie cements his reputation as being the rare combination of a great actor AND a movie star… Unfortunately… there have been a lot of great actors who have not become stars.

The plot revolves about Bateman, a Wall Street rich boy who has been handed a silver spoon and a cushy six figure job although his mornings seem to consist of finding lunch reservations and his afternoons are spent finding dinner reservations – all of these at very expensive hoity toity restaurants. The shallowness of his dial-a-restaurant existence is not lost on Bateman. He admits he is a man devoid of emotion except for greed and disgust.

In the movie (and the book the movie is based on) Bateman “kills” a number of people… but I put that in quotes because despite numerous debates I have seen on this topic…. I don’t think he really “kills” all these people… I think its all part of a fantasy life he lives in his vivid imagination.

The first time I watched this movie… several months ago before I decided to write about it for NWOW, I spent most of the movie thinking he was to paraphrase Larry David and Mel Brooks, f'ing n-v-t-s. But when I watched it the 2nd time, I started looking at this as more of a dark comedy. My logic which some may disagree with, is based on a comment made by another character about seeing one of Bateman’s victims “alive”… although the argument could be made that within the context of the storyline, that person was really not seen alive. Incidentally, the American Psycho book is nowhere near as subtle, it is very clear that Bateman is a mass murderer.

The first time I saw this I was mortified… the 2nd time more amused, and I started to take notice of the incredible shallowness of these characters. These rich 1980’s Reagan-era Wall Street young hot shots sit around showing off their hoity toity business cards as if the quality of the ink and paper they are printed on are their status symbol mid life crisis convertibles. Bateman at one time tries to pick up a little money hungry lolita and when asked about his career, slips it in that he is into "murders and executions"; the woman's reply indicates that in her half listening state she thought he said the more common "mergers and acquisitions".

Bateman’s arrogance is breathtakingly incredible. He has a fiance who strangely wants to marry him while he carries on an affair with the mentally ill girlfriend of a guy named Louis whose beard is not necessarily on his face, and carries a little man crush for the muscular Bateman. Bateman runs into a hungry homeless guy in an alley and instead of tossing him a few bucks or a doggie bag,.. plunges his unused kitchen cutlery knife right into the poor shlub’s chest. . He later has dinner with a shallow colleague who never seems to be get Bateman’s name right… the two subsequently end up at Bateman’s apartment where he meets a bloody demise. Or does he?

When it comes to murders…. this movie sure knows how to make them look stylish. In the pre Ipod 1980’s, the rich people were discovering the evolving technology of cd’s… back in the early days when they were sold in bulky large packaging, I guess so they could fit into the old record bins at Sam Goody’s and all the other now defunct record stores. I remember a party on Long Island in the mid 1980s, these people were so rich that despite the fact that the house had an indoor pool, soda fountain, and futuristic computerized security system, what impressed me most was their incredibly large collection of these newfangled compact disks!!

When Bateman invites Paul Allen over to his ritzy Manhattan apartment that fateful night, he pops in a Huey Lewis CD, and goes into a Casey Kasem-esque monologue that actually provides a historical perspective behind the music selection being played. That is followed by Bateman attacking the poor guy, and then taking steps to cover up the crime. Later scenes will make you cringe the first time and chuckle during the 2nd viewing when he invites hookers and a co worker to his home and launches into Kasem-esque monologues about Phil Collins and Whitney Houston.

In one scene, Bateman is trying to squeeze a corpse filled bag into the trunk of a cab… only to have a shallow pal stroll by and remark about the expensiveness of the designer bag. Willem DeFoe portrays Detective Donald Kimball, whose investigation goes according to Bateman’s schedule… such as Bateman’s need to take his time pondering his alibi for the night of Allen’s disappearance… Bateman later agrees to meet the detective for a lunch date, at his convenience to discuss that aforementioned alibi. His total manipulation of the detective’s crime solving schedule, is the first big sign that these so called murders may not have really happened. Even the "Peace of Chaleef" on Soap was more efficient than this cop! Bateman also has a tendency to use the term “returning videotapes” as an alibi for murder... and also as an excuse to cancel plans with his long suffering fiancé.

There are also some amusing scenes involving hookers who Bateman hires to act out his sexual fantasies. But not before more cringing lengthy music monologues, a Hitchcock-esque story telling device which evokes dread like the Jaws shark music… you know that something bad is going to happen. He also spends a lot of time looking in the mirror flexing while he engages in his 3-somes… those scenes by the way are more graphic on the DVD since it was cut out of the theatrical (and HBO) versions in order to get an R rating. And it really makes you wonder what hookers think of their crazy clients and all their strange requests. One hooker bolts out of the apartment when she realizes she is dealing with a freak... who chases her through the hallways butt naked!… I won’t spoil the outcome when Bateman tries to play javelin with a chainsaw.

Ultimately, Bateman is a bored guy… and it’s a testament to Bale’s excellent acting skills…(and very good American accent – unlike Pierce Brosnan in Mama Mia which we just saw for the umpteenth time) that he is able to create such a fascinating yet boring character. Bateman and his colleagues sit around all day really doing nothing… but while Seinfeld characters hang out doing nothing in a diner.. these characters just make plans to dine out.. but would never get caught in a diner.. or any place a regular person like myself would go to.… It’s incredible that a guy who eats all his meals at restaurants would actually have a knife set… or any food in his fridge… although a peek inside his fridge elicits memories of 1980’s mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Which actually raises the point of those who will disagree with me… If Dahmer could get away with killing so many… why not Bateman? But whatever the case may be, even though the movie is quite violent, Bale delivers yet again proving that he is truly one of our finest young actors in the 21st century.

Here is Ebert's TV Review

On a scale of 1 to 4 bladders meaning how less likely you would be to leave in the middle to go to the bathroom… American Psycho gets 3 bladders.

Next Movie: "The Prestige"


CLIP OF THE WEEK:

In our last column we ran Pumpstradamus's version of "Do a Dish".. a video I appeared in more than 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the original had been taken down from You Tube, but has been put back, so now you can see the original and the remake!

Here is the classic original...




And the remake with Pumpstradamus!

Pumpstradamus 2009 Predictions - A Multimedia Extravaganza

Welcome to our annual Pre Oscar column… which includes our annual visit with Pumpstradams and his predictions for 2009!

Last Monday I went to see a President’s Day Matinee and as I left the theater, I realized that I had just seen an incredible movie.

While “Titanic” took a tragic ship accident and worked a story around it… Slumdog Millionaire takes the story of a young man appearing on India’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and turns it into the story of the tragic life of one of its contestants. I will never again wonder why so many Indians move to Central NJ after seeing this movie and how horrific life can be for so many young kids growing up there.

The movie has some odd twists… no spoilers here, but the closing credits were similar to the style we saw in “Mamma Mia”… and it didn’t really make a lot of sense for such a serious movie. Maybe this is how all the Indian Bollywood movies are made? Also, some plot developments near the end were just a bit hard to believe, but then again look at the mashugas Lost fed us this week…. I guess I can suspend some disbelief… But despite that, Jamal the main character, had been through so much during his tortured young life that you really feel that something good has to happen to this poor fellow.

The movie is told partly in flashback… Jamal the main character runs through the questions on Millionaire, but after he was won a ton o' money, that day's episode has run out of time, and Jamal is invited to come back to finish his game on the next episode. Usually, they run the credits, the contestant chats with Regis or Meredith, and they then proceed to tape the next episode. But that is not the case in India!

Suspicion starts to brew that this uneducated young man from the slums would be smart enough to get so many questions right... even though he needed an early lifeline for a relatively easy question. The police sense some monkey business, and call Jamal in to Jack Bauer-esquely question him about how he was able to get so many questions right. As part of the interrogation, they rewatch the show that was just completed (and aired live), Jamal reveals that the questions were not that hard for him because virtually every answer reminded him of a difficult chapter of his nightmarish younger days.

Interestingly enough, a woman from my town recently went on Jeopardy and the day after I saw Slumdog, I ran into her at Shop Rite. I was going to ask her how she knew all the answers but then I decided… maybe not. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear any more horrible stories.

The director Danny Boyle successfully weaves three time lines into the movie as we see the story during the actual show, the interrogation, and Jamal's childhood. We watch the shocking story as he crawls out of a very full outhouse to meet an anticipated visitor while totally covered in years of his neighbors crap. We also watch how he and other children are exploited by "loving adult rescuers" who resort to torture to give these kids a so-called better life. While most kids his age grow up striving for high scores on video games, Jamal obsesses over other kids who were not able to get a better life like he did... not that his life was so spectacular.

There are many situations where this movie's harsh realism is like taking a punch to the gut. Overall however, it is one of the best movies I have seen in years, and hopefully the Academy will recognize this on Sunday Night. On a scale of 1 to 4 bladders meaning how less likely you would be to leave in the middle to go to the bathroom – Slumdog Millionaire is a 4 bladder movie!

Pumpy’s Oscar picks are in the podcast… here are mine.

Supporting Actress - Penelope Cruz
Supporting Actor – Heath Ledger.. but I really think that Robert Downey Jr.s amazing performance in Tropic Thunder would have made this race closer if Ledger was still alive.
Actress - Meryl Streep
Actor – Sean Penn
Director – Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire
Movie – Slumdog Millionaire… possibly the best movie since Schindlers List in ’94! (notwithstanding Superbad)




Now time for the videos!


A couple of weeks ago, we posted the Do A Dish video I did in college. I hope you got to see it because today Pumpy flexes his acting chops with our own version of… Do A Dish! (The original 1988 Do a Dish was taken down from You Tube temporarily… we will repost it here on NWOW upon its return)



And now with a special nod to the now defunct Shea Stadium… here is Pumpstradamus with his 2009 predictions!



Next Week: The movie club returns with “American Psycho”!

"Where Do You Get Your News?" Revisited

Back on March 21, 2006.... in the early days of this fine blog which today marks its 175th column, we did a column about different ways to get your news. Now, with all this fantastic technology, we have a lot of ways to get the latest news AND inform others about what is going on…. I thought it would be a good idea to revisit the entire concept by taking a look a Paul Harvey-esque look at news and comment, and also where we may or may not be getting it in 2009.


A Rod has been the biggest story on the news this past week. And it’s not a moment too late for Michael Phelps whose Olympic heroics took a little bit of a beating when some weisenheimer with a camera snapped a pic of him partaking in some marijuana related activities. Of course in the era of TMZ and Facebook, the pic found its way to the internet and now Phelps has been suspended for 3 months of non Olympic swimming activity that few people pay attention to… Worst of all Kellogg’s yanked away his endorsement deal.. And this just in to the NWOW Newsroom – The local dime bags sold in stores have now ended their affiliation with Tony the Tiger. You’ll have to find something else to make you feel Grrrrreat!.

As much as I like the Mets and don’t care much for the Yankees… I am just steroided out. All this talk about A-Rod not going to the Hall of Fame is a bunch of malarkey. Everybody watched Barry Bonds break Hank Aaron’s record and just used that bad guy Bonds milestone as a marker till the Good Guy A-Rod would take the record for himself and heal all of baseball’s problems. But, was it really A-Rod’s job to undo Bonds damage?

That scenario came to a crashing halt when the alleged stalker Selena Roberts broke the story… and made me realize that its time to cancel satellite radio and spend the subscription moola on MLB Network instead. And while there is definitely something morally wrong about steroids, players were not subjected to suspensions back then, and the test results were all to be kept secret. The fact that it was revealed actually is a crime by the health professionals who by law must keep this information confidential.

For one thing, I watch sports for escape-ism and I am getting tired of all these scandals. When I go to the movies, I go for the escape there too and I really don’t need to hear that the director and leading man didn’t get along and that 2 of the actors were hooking up during filming even though their spouses were at home. I just want to be entertained and not be distracted by all the craziness behind the scenes. If I want distractions, I'll watch Billy Walsh flip out while filming Medellin only to resurface on 24 as an alleged bad FBI agent when the bad agent is really Janene Garofalo's character.

Of course steroids enhance a player’s body to give the modern player an unfair edge that players in the olden days did not have. Modern athletes have a lot of “good” advantages too… such as advanced training techniques to heal injuries, Tommy John surgery, excellent medical advancements, and better medical technology that helps them heal much better than the players of decades ago. And while steroids makes baseball players stronger… how much does that strength really contribute? Were Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens mediocre players before they started taking the stuff? Obviously, the added strength gave them more homeruns and more strikeouts… but Bonds still had to hit the ball and Clemens needed to have accurate pitch location to get their desired results. Clemens, Bonds, A-Rod and all these other “cheaters” enhanced their stats… but even without any supplements, I get the feeling none of these guys woulda been playing for The Bad News Bears.

By the way a quick sports prediction that you will read here first to bridge the dog days between the end of football and the beginning of baseball..(Pitchers and catchers are thisclose!!)…. For the Final Four my Feb prediction is UConn, Oklahoma, Duke and North Carolina. And that is for the NCAA Men’s AND Women’s Tournaments!


Also in the news is the Sully New York Love Tour – I’m watching the hero pilot on Letterman right now.. and his amazing gentle crash into the icy Hudson is THE perfect example of how my news reading has changed in the interactive era of the internet. My Facebook friend Sue has a view of the Hudson from her window and suddenly updated her profile status that fateful day with the stunning announcement that she sees a plane in the River! From there, she started providing updates from an eyewitness perspective… and speculated on how many people must have been killed.

Luckily she was wrong, and journalistically, nobody would have said they were sure there were dead people… but Facebookers are not expected to be journalists so you need to take what you read there with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, it was confirmed shortly after that announcement that thankfully everybody got off that plane virtually unharmed.

The other day, Mayor Bloomberg gave the plane’s crew a key to the city… I am wondering if they might build a statue for Sully at La Guardia. But then again, wouldn’t that attract…. Birds?



The other big news story is Octo-Mom - This is the story that baffles me and I have gone back and forth on this. At first I was mortified that a single mother was going to try to raise 14 kids and use taxpayer money to do so. Then I did a 180 when I heard she won a $165,000 settlement after she was injured on the job. Okay, I thought… she has a six figure settlement, and with 14 kids to spend it on… it decreases the odds that her Palestinian father will send donations to Hamas. I wonder if DAS and his liberal fans are reading today’s column….

But again, I have changed my mind. I didn’t see Ann Curry’s Dateline NBC Tuesday night… but I read about the interview and it turns out this woman is collecting food stamps… which means the taxpayers are supporting her irresponsible decision…. because her six figure settlement went to pay for the fertility treatments. And you wonder, that if Curry got the exclusive for Dateline… is this going to be the beginning of regular vists with Octo-Mom and her Baker’s Dozen + 1? Every year Curry visits the McCaughey Septuplets and you can see how incredibly difficult it is for those parents with their septuplets. But Curry's chat was no lovefest... she lobbed some difficult questions towards Octo Mom expressing the general disgust that even the liberals have towards her. And you oughta see the letters to the editor in the LA papers!

I think Octo Mom needs to get herself a caffeine advertising campaign… perhaps a commercial for Folgers with its Yiddish “best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup”. (IN Yiddish cup = head) And to think it was such a big deal when New Jersey had the Kienast Quintuplets back in the 1970s!! Can you believe those 5 little pishers who were featured annually in the Star Ledger amazingly will turn 39 on Feb. 24th??


And speaking of the Ledger… this goes me to my next point.. WHERE we get the news. The internet has kicked the newspaper industry in the guts and even though the NY Papers seem to be doing ok… The Star Ledger has not. I grew up learning to read the comics in the Ledger and at this point, the comics are the only reason I still get the paper.

Budget cuts have killed the paper and now it is a shadow of its former self. The sports section used to be fantastic but they got rid of the beat writers for the Rangers and Knicks and over the last several months phased out their regular Sunday columnists who wrote excellent columns about Baseball, The NFL, NBA and NHL. Oddly enough, the paper kept a Tuesday Soccer column!

And while the paper’s price has gone up, the quality has gone down. Sections are being merged, and a week ago Monday, the Today section was condensed to 4 pages and stuck in the back of the Sports…. Last Monday it was back in its usual spot. It’s bad enough Parade is about to sink with the death of James Brady…. one less reason to get the Sunday paper….but there have been other changes too including the decision to cut out half the channels from the TV listings. Apparently a lot of people complained because they restored a number of channels a few days later. The paper has made a lot of other subtle editorial changes too over the last few months that most of us probably didn’t even notice.

Another issue with the Ledger is it has no internet identity. Its website is NJ.com which it shares with other NJ papers. That’s not good enough in this day and age… every paper locally has its own website and the Ledger needs to do likewise so they can maintain a marketing platform to maintain an identity for its advertisers and readers. The only “Star Ledger” site I have seen was a site set up in December to add a Christmas tip for the paper boy. I went on that site several times before the holidays and it was always down!! Maybe it is time for them to break away from the other papers and create its own web presence, so it can continue to have a “Star Ledger-y” presence.
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ADDENDUM: I just found out that the Ledger has cut all of its baseball writers and instead will be using baseball coverage from The Daily News baseball writers instead. (The Daily News will use the Ledger writers for The Devils and Nets). I guess it's too early to react to that change... although its great news if you like the Daily News reporters... but bad news for the News' circulation if that's the reason you buy the paper! But at least local baseball teams will continue to have reporters covering them for the Ledger.
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But its not just the papers getting hammered…. The TV stations have gotten hit too. Channel 11’s owners filed for bankruptcy…. Channel 4 cans approximately 4 on air staffers each month including the very attractive Sunday anchor Carol Anne Riddell….and Channel 2 got rid of all of its regular sports casters except for Samantha Ryan who years go used to do updates for Joe Beningo on the overnights on WFAN. Then when you realize that Channel 2’s nightly anchormen Chris Wragge and Steve Bartelstein used to be sportscasters you start to see that the local sportscaster might be headed to oblivion. Channel 4 already has its sports reports sponsored by Verizon Fios which gets its own little song and lingo on screen.

Now I feel like I have reached a fork in the road.. I’m about to break up with my newspaper.. and I already have started reading the NY Post on Sundays… Now my loyalty to Channel 4 may be dwindling too… I’ve started watching some Channel 7 at 5pm… (on the rare occasions that I’m home at that time) and I’m watching Channels 2 and 7 on the weekends… even though Channel 4’s Saturday anchor Melissa Russo has been looking a lot better lately… Decisions Decisions.. where will I get my news??

When it comes to the future of newspapers and TV News… its all about the advertising money. In these crazy economic times, its very important for businesses to spend money on advertising especially in this tough economy. This is the perfect time for businesses to take the bull by the horns and ramp up their marketing and advertising. And that is why I really don’t understand why all these critics are complaining that Citi should remove their name from Citi Field even though the TARP bailout money is not paying for the stadium naming rights. In reality, if Citi spends money on stadium naming rights, … it is just going to create more awareness about Citi.. assuming we still have sportscasters and sports columnists. ….Ultimately, Citi Field will create more product awareness and bring in more business... and isn’t that what the bailout is all about??? To bring in more money!

I just wonder if a rain delay at the Mets new Stadium will mean that they will roll out the TARP...


CLIP OF THE WEEK:

I should have posted this last week. I think Lost and Heroes fans will get a kick out of this...

The Weather May Be Cold... But the Tube is Sizzling

Well folks we are back on the desktop in the ol’ Bunkey Room…. Just in case you are a new reader here at NWOW, we call it The Bunkey Room because my office is in one of the spare bedrooms that still has the bunk bed that was left behind by the previous owners. Technically it’s a loft-bed… but that’s besides the point. Thanks to my pal Danny at Compusave… I have my computer back and it is working better than ever. If you saw the earlier column, my computer had to be wiped clean after it caught a nasty virus from the the blogskins dot com website which I innocently clicked on while looking for a new background for this blog and my podcast. I brought the machine to Danny and as soon as I told him I messed it up by going on a skins site… I knew I sounded just like every other goofball that picks up spyware from porn sites…even though my virus acquisition was rather innocent.


So this year is off to a wintry start… It’s either cold or snowing.. but we still haven’t had that big ass kicking snow storm.. just little 2-3 inch snow falls that require some minor shoveling but are nonetheless quite annoying. So with the weather cold… at least the Winter 2009 TV season has been quite hot.. with this one notable exception.

LOVING LEAH – What a bizarre show this turned out to be. In an era where TV Movies and miniseries have been replaced by dopey reality shows, CBS continues to occasionally run the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. This one was about a woman named Leah who married a “born again” Jew. Her husband went from a lifestyle of minimal Jewish involvement to becoming ultra Orthodox. Unfortunately, the poor shlub drops dead at the beginning of the movie and because of a rather obscure Jewish law, his poor widow Leah is told that she must marry her husband’s unmarried brother. Unless…

Well it turns out the brother is a doctor living in DC, and embracing the lifestyle of a pais wearing Talmud studier like his brother is not in the cards. The widow Leah tells him that he can get off the hook by participating in an ancient ritual. Unfortunately, the Rabbi who conducts this ceremony should have done it in Hebrew, because one line just rubs the good Dr. the wrong way and he backs out and announces that he will marry Leah instead.

Well this marriage is one of those “Let’s fool Mr. Roper/Mr. Furley with our living arrangements”… Leah feels restricted by her lifestyle and decides a move out of Brooklyn away from her domineering mother might not be such a bad idea and then we spend the rest of the movie wondering if these two knuckleheads are going to hook up.

However, whoever cast this movie had a sense of humor because Leah’s frumpy sister is played by Natasha Lyonne from American Pie and worst of all her mother is played by Susie Essman, the foul mouthed comedienne whose crazy ad libbed monologues on Curb Your Enthusiasm prevent it from ever being syndicated on cable. That casting might have backfired because instead of following the movie, you spend the whole time waiting for this ultra Orthodox woman to unfurl a slew of f bombs on the other cast members.

Was this movie realistic? Perhaps. The ultra Orthodox single women do sneak into movie theaters and I have heard even sneak away to go clubbing… (I have been with Trophy Wife for so long I don’t even remember the women that I used to see at the bar and club scene!) But the writers had to be very careful here to not step on any toes while maintaining some semblance of accuracy. Aside from a couple of minor errors, the movie was somewhat plausible. But I did cringe when the Doctor asked Leah if she loved his brother and she didn’t say anything. Usually these women get married after a few dates and of course they don’t love their husbands at their weddings.. but they do tend to grow to love them over time. That might have been a better answer to that very sticky question.

Oddly enough, there are very few scenes involving the Ultra Orthodox Men... it's mostly women we see which makes you wonder if the screenplay writer had access to the men in a community that spends a lot of time doing things seperately. The screenplay was written by a woman named Peninah Goldstein. The men appear to be more isolated from the real world spending almost all of their time stuyding the Talmud or at work. Perhaps Goldstein felt more comfy writing about the women for the sake of accuracy since she wouldn't have been able to do any Oprah/Barbara Walters-esque interviews to see how the men really feel.

And The Jewish Week weighs in this week in a column by Jonathan Mark where he criticizes Essman for telling the ladies on The View that when she did the movie she portrayed her character as upset about her daughter’s dating the non religious doctor as if her real life daughter was dating a right wing Republican. Mark seems offended by this as if it’s a dig on ultras but in reality that answer is pretty much on the money. Mark compares the Leah character to a Chabad-nik, but the movie never really states what kind of Chasidic group this family belonged to. And in reality, the average chusid would be quite upset if their daughter had married a non observant man… so Essman seems to have hit the nail right on the head. Essman actually did a decent job... but it woulda been funny in the scene where Lyonne’s character was eating donuts if she would have barged in and yelled….”Hey stop eating those donuts you fat f---!!”


LOST IS BACK

Woo hoo.. I am confused as always.. but thrilled that the show has taken on this Time Travelling twist. And rumor has it that the guy who created the Time Loop Theory that I have written about in the past is actually an employee of ABC! Is this really a plant? I don’t know.. but the show is just as wacky and weird as always.

I still don’t get it that all 6 have to go back to save the ones left behind.. Five isn't good enough? Trophy Wife thinks that they all need to get back in time to the moment they got on the helicopter so they can readjust the stuff that happened after that fateful moment. Nonetheless, the whole idea of getting off and getting back on the island seems to be a back burner story since all the fun seems to go on on that wild crazy island. Now we find out that the oh so popular Desmond is trying to find Daniel’s mom because he suddenly remembers that Daniel once told him to do so.

Last Wednesday, Desmond found a link between his evil father in law Charles and Daniel. This is one of those crazy situations you rarely find on TV where 2 or more characters have the same first name since it makes un-natural TV dialogue more confusing. Nonetheless, Desmond had a friend on the island named Charlie and named his son Charlie. Now the Lost blog commenters are speculating that the time maneuverings that all 3 Charles are actually the same person… Other sites wonder who he is named after…. Isn’t it obvious? Charles Nelson Reilly!

Desmond’s father in law tells him he can find Daniel’s mom in LA. That perked up my ears because I remember that Kate was in LA last week hanging out with Sun. And while we are all trying to figure out whos the mama… Kate has assumed the identity of Baby Aaron’s mother even though Aaron’s mom was really Claire. Ladies and Gentlemen I present my latest Lost theory…

Daniel is from the future… and his “mom in LA” is actually Kate,… but in reality he is Claire’s son Aaron. Sounds like a soap opera doesn’t it?

Someone at ABC thought it would be a great idea to put Life on Mars with its time travel elements on after Lost. Not such a good idea… especially since they don’t even have a commercial or a Liz Cho news tease between the end of Lost and the beginning of LoM. They just go - boom – right into it. Huh? You need some time to decompress after watching that crazy show… and LoM had such a wacky opening with a non sympathetic cop and a building jumper that it was hard to squeeze all this stuff into my poor little brain!

The episode by the way was not as good as the first batch and from what I have read on the internet – the format is being tweaked to welcome the viewers that did not see the earlier episodes. Those earlier shows in the fall followed the format of the very popular British version which I am now thinking of watching if I can find it somewhere. Nonetheless, the fact that our time traveling cop ended up doing the ol' hoochie mcscoochie with a woman who he later found out was the boss’s daughter was quite an amusing twist. I have heard a theory that Sam Tyler is really in a coma after being hit by a car, and he is dreaming that he is in the middle of a 1970s crime drama. That actually makes sense to me.

24

Jack is back and 24 is kickin butt. I see a lot of fans are kvetching on line about this season.. but I must admit that after not seeing a fresh 24 since May of ’07…(except for the movie late last year that came too soon after a thrilling Giant game)… the show seems right on track with the usual twists and turns. Interestingly enough, I have noticed a lot of shows have been using storytelling devices in non chronological order. I don’t know where this started… maybe the Seinfeld backwards episode where they went to India? That was actually based on the backwards storytelling in a play. Maybe the brilliant movie Memento, which involved a man who has no short term memory so he is just as in the dark as the viewer? Nonetheless, 24has to play by some strict rules and can only do linear story telling in real time, so let’s give the writers credit for playing under some very difficult rules!

This season picks up with the usual craziness of past seasons... even though CTU is no longer around and Bill and Chloe seem to have started their own intelligence company. I also never realized how young Janeane Garafolo looks! She is actually older than me, but her character could probably pass for her late 20s. The whole twist with Tony being alive is a little soap opera-esque… but it’s still rather entertaining. I don’t take the fans complaining too seriously since those same fans will be back on the same websites criticizing Heroes once that show comes back. If you don’t like it,… watch something else, but quit the endless (fill in the show) sucks and jumped the shark banter so the rest of us can enjoy ourselves!


PUMPSTRADAMUS SUPER BOWL PICK: Pumpy set a new record hitting 11 wins and finished 11-6 while Unbiased Giants fan ended the season at a respectable 31-19-1. We hope to have Pumpy on a podcast shortly. This Sunday the Steelers are 7 point favorites over Arizona. Sayeth the Pump: "Because the Vatican reinstated a Holocaust denying Bishop, I must go against the Cardinals! Take the Steelers!"