NOT A DOCTOR BUT PLAYS ONE ON TV
Returning from heart surgery, David Letterman brought his doctors and nurses onto the stage for a moving opening to his first show back. Months later it was revealed that the man introduced as his chief heart surgeon actually was an actor.
KILLJOY OF THE YEAR
Brian Reynolds, the mortgage banker who bought the Lounge Ax property on Lincoln Avenue, forced the legendary club to close after 12 years as ground zero for independent rock in Chicago. Reynolds said he would convert the space into a bar, but nearly a year after the departure of co-owners Sue Miller and Julia Adams, it remains maddeningly empty.
SORRY, YOUR 15 MINUTES ARE UP
Rick Rockwell and Darva Conger
Richard Hatch
Sock Puppet (and its Pets.com Web site)
Dr. Laura
PlayStation 2
Katherine Harris
AND THE LOSER IS . . .
Internet movie dude Harry Knowles posted the pool of Oscar nominees on his Ain’t It Cool News site days before nominations were announced. When they proved to be as accurate as a Cade McNown pass, Knowles blamed a technical glitch.
THOSE INSURANCE PREMIUMS MUST BE KILLER
“Ally McBeal” proved to be the show most in need of a full-time medical attendant, as Lisa Nicole Carson was hospitalized for “exhaustion” in January, Calista Flockhart collapsed in December, and this season’s key guest stars have been Robert Downey Jr. (sad drug relapse around Thanksgiving) and Anne Heche (dazed naked wanderings after her August split with Ellen DeGeneres.)
PLEASE, PLEASE JUNK THE ‘BEST SONGS’ MEDLEY
After promising a streamlined show, the Oscars’ producers delivered 4 hours and nine minutes of Hollywood-hyping blather, breaking the Academy Awards’ length record for the third straight year.
Just because our editorial page is reactionary doesn’t mean we can’t have fun!
In an effort to spoil the only reason to stay tuned for those 249 minutes, the Wall Street Journal attempted to poll all 5,000-plus voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to determine who would win key Oscars. (The paper blew its Best Actor prediction, anyway.) The paper might be better served applying its journalistic pedigree to topics that actually would serve the public, like revealing the endings to “Pay it Forward,” “Hollow Man” and “Unbreakable.”
DOG DIVA
Not content with stealing every scene in which he appeared in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Zoro the dog gave swell-headed interviews to the press in which he attacked critics as “hacks.” Besides that, at some performances, when he didn’t like the looks or the Gucci loafers of certain customers in the front row, he took to growling and acting uppity. Sigh . . . that’s what happens sometimes when an unknown suddenly becomes a star.
IT’S OUR LOSS
The Ravinia Festival in Highland Park earned one of our stinky fishes for letting Zarin Mehta get away (he’s now at the New York Philharmonic). As Ravinia’s president, Mehta brilliantly championed eclectic programming not only on the North Shore but in the city as well. Couldn’t the Ravinia board at least have offered him part ownership of the grounds?
MMM! MMM! BLECCH!
ABC-TV’s “The View” accepted big bucks from Campbell’s Soup in exchange for on-the-air plugs. Sample: Co-host Meredith Vieira described how her daughter, Lily, “won’t eat anything but Campbell’s Mega Noodle.” Barbara Walters responded, “Didn’t we grow up eating Campbell’s soup?” Her co-hosts replied: “Mmm! Mmm! Good!” Walters claimed her journalistic integrity hadn’t been compromised — just diluted with a can of water and heated over a medium flame for 10 minutes.
SELLING CHEESE IS BAD, TOO
“CBS Morning News” co-host Julie Chen didn’t do her journalistic reputation any favors either with her brain-dead reports about the insufferable bores occupying the reality-TV nadir “Big Brother.”
GOOD FENCES MAKE MAD NEIGHBORS
Since opening its doors on its new Lincoln Park location two years ago, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum doesn’t seem to be working overtime in the good neighbor department. After last year’s uproar over the museum’s plans to remove the beloved and long-standing casting pier in North Pond for “aesthetic reasons” (a plan eventually shelved) came this year’s uproar: Neighbors, upset with the tall fence erected around the pond, launched a petition drive to get it removed.
JUST THE THING TO LURE YOUR TEEN AWAY FROM DOWNLOADING INTERNET PORN
Lyric Opera’s production of “Rigoletto” smothered Verdi in raunchy deconstructionist cliches. Rape, incest, simulated coitus, sexual degradation of women — it was all there in Christopher Alden’s Eurotrash staging. Whoever said high art can’t get down and dirty with popular culture?
GORILLAS ON A RAMPAGE
The promoters of the summer’s Hard Rock Cafe Rockfest at the Chicago Motor Speedway in Cicero get a special cluelessness award. In the midst of the corporate hucksterism, including pitchmen in gorilla suits firing a car manufacturer’s T-shirts into the crowd and commercials blasting on a five-story video screen, a concert somehow broke out, and Guster singer Ryan Miller dared to poke fun at the crass sideshow from the stage. The band was docked $5,000 from its promised $10,000 payday by promoters, who claimed to be embarrassed — not by the guys in the monkey suits but by Miller’s all-too-accurate zingers.
NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?
“If you think Napster is great now, just wait,” Napster inventor Shawn Fanning said when his free Internet music swapping service teamed up with German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG in October. Let’s see: You can either wait for the pending copyright infringement case in federal court to shut down Napster for good. Or, if the court sides with Napster, you can wait for Bertelsmann to get rid of all that free music and replace it with music that you pay for. Sounds great.
AND THEY WON’T BE COUNTING ANY MORE HANGING CHADS, EITHER
Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association President Henry Fogel’s declared that the “public” portion of the acoustical fine-tuning of still-problematic Orchestra Hall is essentially over.
WE HONOR OUR OWN, 2000 EDITION
Lewis Manilow, the only prominent Chicago arts person to have a cameo appearance in a videotape of fundraising at the Oval Office, this year became the only prominent Chicago arts person to receive a National Medal of Arts from President Clinton.
SILLY HATE SONGS
Rapper Eminem used gay-bashing, spouse-abusing lyrics to launch “The Marshall Mathers LP” millions of record sales. Now he’s back together with the wife he repeatedly threatened to kill on his records. Ah, the power of true love . . .
CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME
As part of a lawsuit to prevent Judith Banks Terra from moving the Terra Museum of American Art to Washington, D.C., the Illinois attorney general alleged that she kept her husband — Daniel J. Terra, founder of the museum — on life support for several days after a heart attack, allowing her to collect an additional $1.5 million under the couple’s pre-nuptial agreement. Terra’s will had specified that funds not going to his wife would support the foundation running the museum.
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
Hey, That’s not funny!
In its annual Foe-Paw Report, the folks at the Ark Trust Inc. bash movies, TV shows and newspapers that “convey anti-animal messages.” This year’s dirty dozen include the film “Wonder Boys,” in which a dog is murdered to advance a comic story line; CBS’ “Survivor,” for the on-air preparation and consumption of rats, fish and chickens as food; UPN’s “The Hughleys,” for an episode that “demeans companion animals”; and comedian Tom Green, twice, for tormenting a mouse, piglet and two puppies. Somehow, the mockumentary “Best in Show,” with its slanderous portrayal of show dogs and their owners, missed the cut.
AND NOW, THE NUDE FISHING COMPETITION . . .
The Miss America Pageant hit an all-time low in TV viewership in 2000, so pageant officials, in an attempt to revive interest, are considering a series of reality-based telecasts over the summer to determine the eventual 2001 winner.
WHAT’S NEXT, JERRY SPRINGER’S
FAMILY CIRCLE?
After the smash launch of Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, McCall’s announced that come spring it will be renamed Rosie’s McCall’s in honor of its new editorial director, the ever-annoying Rosie O’Donnell.
RAGE AGAINST . . . SOMETHING OR OTHER
A Bronx cheer to the New York City police, who arrested Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford when he climbed up on the set during the 2000 MTV Video Awards and refused to come down. His whacked-out sit-in supplied the only spontaneous moment in the over-orchestrated event; rather than having him arrested, MTV should have hired him as a programming executive.
DISQUALIFIED
The brainiacs over at NBC-TV opted not to air one live minute of the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, relying instead on pre-packaged profiles spotlighting the competitors’ past diseases and catastrophes. Most catastrophic: the ratings.
HEY, DENNIS, CAN I BORROW SOME THREE-SYLLABLE WORDS?
Jesse Ventura, who has seemingly left no stone unturned in lucrative self-promotion since becoming Minnesota governor, signed on in 2000 for yet another gig voters didn’t elect him to do: He’ll do color commentary for the new XFL football league organized by pro wrestling promoter Vince McMahon.
THANKS FOR, UH, SHARING
Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher probably had the pick of the litter — so to speak — when selecting the sperm donor for their children. The genetic winner, as announced with a family-of-the-new-millennium portrait on the cover of Rolling Stone? Recovering addict, walrus-resembling singer David Crosby. In an unrelated note, the couple split later in the year.
HOW ABOUT A ‘D’ RATING — FOR DUMB
In the new math, as practiced by the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board, films automatically are branded “R” if they contain more than a couple of F-words. No matter if a sweet little picture, like “Billy Elliot” or Barry Levinson’s “An Everlasting Piece,” doesn’t also contain graphic violence or gratuitous sex — it immediately falls into the same category as “Quills” and “Eyes Wide Shut.” Solution: Add a PG-15 rating for harmless in-between flicks.
FORGET EXPERIENCE, CAN WE GET ANOTHER TALL GUY?
Roger Ebert, who publicly ripped the New York Times for hiring book reviewer A.O. Scott as a movie critic, ended a year and a half of musical chairs try-outs by naming Sun-Times pop-culture columnist Richard Roeper to occupy the late Gene Siskel’s seat on the newly retitled “Ebert & Roeper and the Movies.”
