Florida scene, with the little sister

This brother and sister have Connecticut routes, as the older boy plays a baseball game in south Florida, the Coconut Creek area I think. I just like the photo.

Earlier in the year I mentioned a visit to Deerfield Beach in February and I got into trouble with the Chamber of Commerce there. Some thin-skinned snow bird picked up the paper here and spread it around as a D.B. insult. What I said was the Deerfield Beach promenade was lovely but the business area could be friendlier. I probably should have said that it could be more "user-friendly" since there are no commercial establishments to browse and walk until you get to the very end and around the corner. It's all condos and a police/public facility on the main stretch. I pointed out to the Chamber that we really love Deerfield Beach's public beach area and enjoyed a pie at Bob's Pizza around the corner and sandwiches at Kahuna (the bar-grill nearby). So chill. Lower in this blog I ran a few photos from Florida.

Season finale of 24

Here's a few points about the season finale of "24," which was (like the second half of the season) watchable but not very inspired:
Chloe's pregnancy nearly redeemed another dopey hour.
I kept waiting for them to say Jack's brother's kid was Jack's son in reality, but no.
The evil Phillip Bauer was not shown to be definitively dead. He was left injured on the dock with a boat nearby! So they could always bring him back if they've filmed a shot of him speeding away from the platform before it blows up (like Dr. Evil).
Good for Bill Buchanan and Karen Hayes; they're also available next time.
Audrey Raines is out of it because Kim Raver is on a new show in the fall. Stay tuned for that one.
There was less torture in the second half of the season, thankfully. It was every stinking week before that. We don't need torture to foil our enemies. We need our civil rights and way of life.
Season four was still the best, with Behrooz and family.

clarification: not my paragaraph

In my friday column in the Register, this paragraph from a PR release about The History Channel special on "Star Wars" mistakenly was printed as my writing. I'm correcting this here because it's the quickest way to do it, in the blog. I don't want anyone to think I intentionally lifted something verbatim from a PR release. It was part of some material I was using for reference and somehow got into print. The graf:
"As we approach the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars, we have time to reflect on the unheralded film that opened in theaters and took audiences on a ground-breaking journey to a galaxy far, far away. It instantly seized the public’s imagination, and three decades later still claims that grasp."
Yeah. That's PR talk. I might have said, "The 1977 film that caught our attention with its creativity, cool characters and special effects quickly became a career-making franchise for its producers and actors.

Charlie Gibson rules

Winning the May sweep, ABC's World News with Charles Gibson came in first among total viewers and A25-54. ABC also came out on top among A18-49, W18-49 and W25-54.

A breakdown for all three networks for the May sweep (4/26-5/23):
ABC: 7.95 total viewers & 2.0 A25-54
NBC: 7.30 total viewers & 1.8 A25-54
CBS: 6.10 total viewers & 1.6 A25-54

This is a great show for $25 a ticket.

It's called:
"1964…THE TRIBUTE"
and here are the details for anyone in southern Connecticut who wants to relive an exciting phenomenon in the mid-1960s (or, for younger folks, the holy grail of pop music):
(says the PR):
WHAT: Live Performance
WHERE: Chevrolet Theatre
95 South Turnpike Road
Wallingford, CT
WHEN: Saturday, June 2 2007 – 7:30pm
1964…THE TRIBUTE, dubbed “the best Beatles Tribute Show on earth” by Rolling Stone Magazine, is sure to mesmerize Chevrolet Theatre on Saturday, June 2. The band has played to sold-out crowds all over the world, delighting an audience of fans ranging from 8 year olds to grandparents and everything in-between.

I saw this show a year or so ago and it was a lot of fun.

Playing catchup: The "Dancing With Stars" winners

Radio and TV stuff

This from the online edition of Northeast Radiowatch by Scott Fybush... Mostly his words:

An era has ended at the state's big country station, as Floyd Wright exits afternoon drive at WWYZ (92.5 Waterbury) after 20 years on the air there. Wendy Steele moves from middays to afternoons, and the midday shift is now being voicetracked from WGAR (99.5 Cleveland) by Kat Jackson.

An era has ended in Hartford TV, too - after 45 years of transmitting from the Avon Mountain tower of WTIC-FM (96.5), Connecticut Public TV flagship WEDH (Channel 24) has signed off for good from that site. In what may be the last full-power analog site to be built from scratch, WEDH has turned on its new facility over at Rattlesnake Mountain, where the WTIC-TV (Channel 61) tower has been extensively rebuilt for the coming of digital TV. Where's WEDH-DT? Still hung up in proceedings over its final channel election, as its tentative assignment of channel 45 conflicts with WABC-DT in New York, so for now CPTV is using 45 at WEDN-DT in Norwich (eventually to move to channel 9), while waiting for authorization to use 45 in Hartford.

And, NBC's WVIT (Channel 30) hopes to break ground in August on a new $20 million studio/office building at its present site in West Hartford, to replace the 1954-vintage building there that the station has long since outgrown. The current building will be razed and will become a parking lot for the new studios when the project is completed in late 2008.

There was a tower collapse here during the big storm there last month: the 188-foot tower of WYBC (1340 New Haven) succumbed to the storm's high winds late on the night of April 14, toppling into the swamp where it sits. (It took several days for the weather to calm down sufficiently for the tower's remains to even be found in the swamp, we're told.)

WYBC quickly returned to the air with a longwire antenna. The collapse was blamed on a guy-wire anchor that had corroded to "the thickness of a pencil," says engineer Clif Mills, and a replacement tower will soon be erected at the same site.

In Hartford, WCCC-FM (106.9) has turned on its HD2 subchannel, and it's relaying the classical "Beethoven Radio" service that's also heard on sister station WCCC (1290 West Hartford), which will now reach a much larger potential audience 24 hours a day on the big FM signal.

Former Giants DB's daughter wins Idol; too many people vote

Fox crows:
JORDIN SPARKS IS CROWNED THE "AMERICAN IDOL"
Almost 610 Million Total Votes Cast
During Sixth Season of Television's No. 1 Show;
World-Record 74 Million Votes Received Tuesday Night



God help us. And God help the folks like us who were obsessing on every play of the Yankees-Red Sox game instead, pausing and rewinding the DVR so we could skip commercials.
"Hey, that kid in the stands, right there, was in my psychology class," says my son, pausing the digital picture.
Good to see Curt Schilling humbled for a change. Very good.

WNPR at Coast Guard Academy

Good work on the part of WNPR radio covering President Bush's visit to the Coast Guard Academy. This is a radio outlet doing the old-fashioned thing with public airwaves, something so rare these days that it should be required listening in schools: journalism and discussion in the public interest.
If only someone had done more of that in the days leading up to the Wolfowitz-Cheney-Rice-Bush selling of the catastrophic Iraq War.

Brooks has Brog, I mean blog

WVIT-30's Gerry Brooks, a longtime witty guy in CT. news who is teamed these days with the excellent anchor Lisa Carberg, has a new blog, http://www.nbc30.com/thebrooksfile/index.html?dl=trayclick in which he mentions the alliterative (and goofy, I might add) name of this blog. Gerry was going to name his blog "Babbling Brooks' Badass Bistro," I hear, but he settled on the "The Brooks File." I may have heard that wrong, I don't know.

Long Island Lolita and the Chooch

OK, TV's "The Insider" show reports that former lovers Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher were caught on video (seen Thurs. on the show) enjoying a romantic Italian dinner at Paces's Steakhouse in Port Jefferson, New York late Wednesday night. "The restaurant, 56 miles east of Manhattan, seated Amy and Joey in a private wine room," says The Insider.
The show reports that the couple dined on oysters on the half shell, surf and turf, garlic bread and shared chocolate mousse and Crème Brulee for dessert.
Oysters, eh?
OK, so the media can't get right the fact that Saddam Hussein didn't have nuke-ya-ler weapons, but we know what Amy and Joey had for dinner last night. And the gun-smacking public probably cares more about this story than the former.
If only the Iraq debacle had some sex attached to it.

Wolfie gets what he deserves

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/washington/18worldbank.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

CW axes Veronica and Rico; Fox says 24 x 2

The CW network, which recently waved goodbye to "Seventh Heaven" and "Gilmore Girls," this week said it was canceling "Veronica Mars," which co-starred Yale Drama School alum Enrico Colantoni as the dad (you remember him from "Just Shoot Me"). Rico's a good guy.
The network announced fall plans for a hip magazine show on Sunday nights, in addition to a show that spotlights cool things on the Internet.
Fox this week gave the green light to two more seasons of "24." Suggestion to writers: Map out a whole season before you launch into writing it. Have a plan that doesn't end in Jack's father working with bitter Chinese operatives.

ABC announces fall; slogan: Women, money, sex

ABC's upfront announcement:
George Lopez is out; Guilford gal Jennifer Westfeldt and "Notes from the Underbelly" and spring drama "October Road" are in; "According to Jim" a possible backup.
Also renewed are “Brothers & Sisters,” “Men in Trees,” “Ugly Betty,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Boston Legal,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “The Bachelor,” “Supernanny,” “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “Wife Swap.”
Ambitious new development includes four comedies and seven dramas, led by "Big Shots" with Yale-educated Josh Malina and Connecticut-raised Dylan McDermott in a show about CEOs and their personal lives, and "Dirty Sexy Money" with Peter Krause.
Also, Connecticut-raised Amy Brenneman will be in the "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff with Kate Walsh, "Private Practice," along with Tim Daly and Taye Diggs. Note the second guy from the right in photo above, next to Brenneman, who is the villain from "Prison Break."

Keep on the "Lights"; Cross off "Jordan" and "60"

In addition to the inventive "Heroes," series renewals for NBC include one of our favorite dramas, "Friday Night Lights," now shifting to Friday nights at 10 (which could kill it); "Scrubs," for a seventh season; and the old man of NBC, Emmy-winning "Law & Order," for its 18th season. But not until January when "Law" and "Medium" return to replace football.
NBC series "Bionic Woman" and "Life" will be re-purposed on SCI FI Channel and USA Network, respectively, shortly after their original telecasts on NBC.
And "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" will actually turn into a USA show that appears occasionally on NBC, we hear.
NBC canceled "Crossing Jordan" and the chatty failure "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."
And in a questionable move, NBC will add "Heroes: Origins." The spinoff will introduce a new character each week; viewers will choose which one stays for the following season. Sounds stupid, although I would definitely vote off the original "Heroes" character played by Ali Larter; the schizo character has never made sense. Completely pointless. Eye candy only.

It's "upfront" week. New on NBC this fall:

Rewritten from NBC:

NBC on Monday announced new dramas "Journeyman," a romantic-mystery from the producers of "The West Wing," about a newspaper reporter (Kevin McKidd, "Rome") who inexplicably begins to travel through time and alter people's lives; and "Chuck," a comedic spy show about a computer geek who is thrown into a new career as a government agent after spy secrets are embedded into his brain.
Also new this fall is the drama "Bionic Woman," a re-do of the old series starring Michelle Ryan as a young woman strangely empowered after a car crash.
"Life" features a police detective (Damian Lewis) who's given a second chance on the force after serving years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
The new dramedy "Lipstick Jungle" will debut in January 2008 on Sundays with Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, and Lindsay Price.
Comedy offerings include "The IT Crowd," based on a British series about misunderstood techies, and due midseason.
The network also ordered 30 half-hours of the hit series "The Office," including five hour-long episodes, and also has increased the season order for "My Name Is Earl" to 25 episodes.

Selleck moving to Vegas

From NBC, on a sometimes-watchable show that features a couple of really annoying characters (you figure out which ones I'm talking about, but pretty much all qualify)
:
NBC announced that Emmy Award winning Tom Selleck ("Magnum, P.I.") will return to television series drama when he joins the starring cast of NBC's "Las Vegas" (Fridays, 9-10 p.m. ET) next season as a charismatic, self-made billionaire who is surrounded by an air of mystery when he becomes the new owner of the Montecito Resort & Casino.
In addition, James Caan, who has starred as Ed Deline, the Montecito's surveillance head for four years, will return to the series for one episode in its 2007-08 season premiere after announcing earlier this year that he would be departing the series after its 2007 season finale.

Viva East Haven

Had a fine time speaking at the East Haven Library Tuesday night, with the friendliest people you'd want to meet anywhere. Some things covered:
We're going to have the Tv listings magazine add the (N) for new episode to prime time.
My Uncle Matt and Aunt Linda were/are beloved in town.
People think I need a new logo photo.
Someone actually mentioned this blog as a cool thing.
I said several bad words in Italian slang; the rest were food items.
A woman who lived downstairs from my father and his huge family 60 years ago on Pierpont Street was there. She said she couldn't walk very well as a child and my Uncle Joe (and/or Matt) would take her for rides in their wagon. My dad recalls she was partially disabled as a child but that she seemingly willed herself to health and a long life. Good to see her.
The Post Service Stamp Out Hunger drive is this Saturday, says Mr. Leonetti, father of former Register reporter Carol Leonetti. So leave your non-perishable food items for carriers Saturday.
There's a woman I met who collects even more Italian slang than I do.
East Haven's center is pretty attractive these days; this is an underrated town in our area.

Get ready for the thrills & chills of Bingo on TV

ABC begins "National Bingo Night" on May 18, and it promises "high-action bingo games in-studio." That reminds me of the "Mike and the Mad Dog" jingle where they hype it by singing, "They're talking sports just as hard as they can!"
But there is an at-home component, and here's how it works, according to ABC:

Millions of viewers will also be able to play along at home by printing out free cards via ABC.com. Beginning May 11, viewers can log on to ABC.com and print out game cards. Each time a person prints, three pages will be generated, one for each game that is played per episode on the telecast (a Red, White and Blue card). Each game card has three Bingo grids on it, allowing the participant three chances to win per card. Online winners are not competing against the clock; anyone who gets a Bingo from the numbers called for each Red, White or Blue game on their corresponding cards can log on to ABC.com after the broadcast and enter the serial number from the card to verify their winning card. Viewers at home who get five numbers up and down, across or diagonally will be eligible for the grand prize drawing for that game. Online players must enter their serial number from their winning cards by 6:00 p.m., ET, the Monday following the Friday broadcast to redeem their prizes. Cards for the upcoming Friday episode are available immediately following the airing of the current episode.

Renewals Yikes!

NBC has issued an early renewal for its mediocre drama "Medium" (Wednesdays, 10-11 p.m.) for a fourth season in 2007-08, but the big news is ABC renewing "Lost" for the NEXT THREE SEASONS. Wow. At the end of six years, the actual time elapsed on the island will be like 48 days.

amazing race winners

from CBS:


"THE AMAZING RACE'S" SEASON 9 LOVEBIRDS, ERIC AND DANIELLE,
ARE CROWNED THE WINNERS OF "THE AMAZING RACE: ALL-STARS"
DURING THE SEASON FINALE ON SUNDAY, MAY 6
ON THE CBS TELEVISION NETWORK

Cablevision adds Extra Innings package

the release:

BETHPAGE, NY, May 4, 2007 – Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) today announced that it has reached agreement with Major League Baseball and iN Demand to offer its iO digital cable customers the MLB Extra Innings package, featuring up to 60 out-of-market baseball games each week. The programming package is available starting today at a price of $159 for the entire season, and can be ordered conveniently through the digital set-top box on iO Upgrades Channel 900 or by contacting Cablevision customer service.

Not sure if this will help Red Sox fans, who can't get NESN on Cablevision.

John Stossel will straighten us out Friday

John Stossel has another of his "myth-busting report" airing on “20/20,” coinciding with the paperback release of his book "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity." (I must have missed the edition where Stossel exposed the biggest, most costly bit of "downright stupidity" in American history: deciding to invade Iraq and then re-electing the guy who led us into a trillion-dollar hole).
Here are Stossel's "myths" that he'll apparently tear down (and my comments):
· Gun control makes us safer (I say that if the VT crazy didn't have a gun, he would only have been able to stab one or two people. Guns kill, period. That's what they do. They don't grow gardens or do computing or transport us. Here's an NRA myth, John: If everyone had guns, it would protect people from abusive partners or home invaders MORE than it leads to tragic slayings.)
· Stress causes grey hair (Stress actually causes some hair to fall out, but few people say it causes grey hair.)
· Ethanol from corn will save the earth (No one's saying that; we know it's flawed. It's one tiny piece of a puzzle that Cheney and Co. would rather we don't solve while gas is $3.20 a gallon.)
· Second marriages are more successful than first marriages (Who says this? Every marriage is a challenge. There's no magic number.)
· Opposites attract (Everyone is different, so every couple has opposite traits.)
· Dropping a penny from a tall building could kill someone (No, dropping a dime on someone can kill them, like on "The Sopranos.")
· Most burglaries occur at night (Why would a burglar work at night when so many houses are empty during the day?)
· You shouldn’t eat out on Mondays (unless the place is closed, like so many are).
· When gambling, there are ways to beat the odds – and win. (Some folks do win. Not me, but a "lucky" few do.)
· Foreign aid cures poverty (Only if it's done incredibly smartly, is put into infrastructure and free-market support. It doesn't cure poverty, no, but it does keep starving people alive for a while, which would seem to be a humanitarian idea, no?)