Category: Audra McDonald

The New Television Season QUESTIONS

1. What new shows are you most looking forward to checking out?

For me, it’s that nighttime soapy-looking Dirty Sexy Money on Wednesday nights on ABC, not because of the premise, but because of the cast: Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, and Jill Clayburgh.

The show with the most buzz: Pushing Daisies, also on Wednesdays on ABC. Of course, “buzz” doesn’t always equal quality.

What else is on Wednesdays on ABC, anyway? Oh, yeah, the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, Private Practice, which has a buzz too, but not such a good one. I’ll have to watch it at least once, because of the luminescent Audra McDonald, pictured, before I bail; I’ll probably end up watching Bionic Woman on NBC, if anything.

There’s a show on Mondays on the CW (The CW?!) called Aliens in America, about a Pakistani Muslim exchange student, which will either be very good or very bad, but which I’ll at least try. It has reviewed surprisingly well, so far, and it’s got to be better than a show about the Geico Cavemen.

Finally, there’s Back to You,b Wednesday on FOX. It actually started last week, and Ken Levine liked it, though Tom the Dog did not. I’ll have to at least watch the premiere episode

There are probably others – better check my TV listings for the time and channel in my area.

2. What returning shows are you looking forward to seeing?

NBC Thursday night comedies: Earl, Scrubs, The Office. I’ll probably even give 30 Rock another go. Last year I wrote: Watching Tracy Morgan on the second or third episode of 30 Rock doing some jivin’ riff, I said, “I don’t need this,” shut it off in mid-episode, deleted it, deleted the next yet unwatched episode, and removed it from the DVR recording schedule. But I also noted that lots of people whose opinion I respect like it. And it did get some Emmy love.

Oh, and that dysfunctional family – I relate to dysfunctional families – on ABC’s Brothers and Sisters Sunday nights. I’m not saying Sally Field deserved the Emmy more than, say, Edie Falco from The Sopranos, but I like her, I really like her in this show.
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Upright Citizens Brigade on DVD, “The Return of America’s Best Sketch Comedy Group”.
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Mr. Brown posed his own three TV questions, one of which hit on one of mine: What show will be canceled first? Entertainment Weekly picked Viva Laughlin, a “musical-dramedy”, and I’m thinking it’ll go early, but it’s not even premiering until October 21, by which time that show with the Geico cavemen, I’m hoping, will have bitten the dust.

ROG

ROG

Unlucky

I’d like to address a karmic imbalance. Much has been made of the significance of 07/07/07 as a lucky day, so lucky that the number of marriages registered on theknot.com was triple the usual number of July weddings. But that date happens once every century. Meanwhile, we have a Friday the 13th at least once a year, usually twice, occasionally more. This means there are more unlucky days than lucky ones, by a ratio of about 200:1. Even if you choose to embrace 07/07/77, or the Chinese lucky number 8 in 08/08/08, there’s still a wide disparity.

And I can’t find any reference to 7/7/1977 being a day that lots of people were particularly embracing. Maybe, it’s the three 7s, not unlike the slot machines. (Though I did find President Jimmy Carter’s daily log for 7/7/1977).
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There’s a 30 second video on YouTube: Al Jazeera English – What do you think?, There were, as of last night, nearly 70 response, most of them far longer than the 30 seconds requested (one was 10 minutes!), and most of them reasoned responses, though at least one is not. A couple are very funny. I have no response about Al Jazeera English, because I’m unlucky enough that my cable company, like most in the country, does not show it, even though they don’t charge cable companies for it. It IS available online, however, and I’ll have to make a point of checking it out.
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New Mexico governor and Presidential candidate Bill Richardson has apologized for using an anti-gay slur. Generally, I like him, though I thought his May 27, 2007 Meet the Press appearance showed up real inconsistencies over the past couple years. I think he still has a good chance of being the Democratic nominee – he’s doing OK in the money race – if the Democrats decide that Barack is too inexperienced and that Hillary is too…Hillary. I think it would be problematic for the party faithful if the Dems fail to nominate either a woman or a black, the folks raising the most money, and they end up with a non-Hispanic white male AGAIN. That said, I really enjoyed watching Ron Paul and Mike Gravel on ABC This Week this past Sunday. Neither has a prayer of winning, but both insist that they’ll be in the White House come January 2009. And if I were a voter in the Republican primary, I would certainly be voting for Ron Paul, who ran as the Libertarian 20 years ago.
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Boots Randolph died last week. He’s most famous for a song called “Yakkity Sax”, which most people know better as the theme from “Benny Hill”, a show my father loved and I hated. I like the song, though:

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That youngster Charles Lane died this week. Mark Evanier is all over it. And if you don’t know who Charles Lane was, well, you WILL recognize the face.
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Can Credit Cards Make You Fat?
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Sprint drops needy customers.
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Is Merrin Dungey unlucky that’s she’s been booted off that Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, or will Audra McDonald feel unlucky that she’s gotten the recast part?
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Bad trip, indeed.
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ADD found a reference to a report suggesting that copyright should be 14 years. I don’t know about that, but I do feel that Jefferson, Franklin and other Founding Fathers/inventors would feel that the country has been ill-served by the constant lengthening of the copyright period.
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Someone, I really don’t remember who, suggested that tennis legend Bjorn Borg

is starting to look more like Ed Begley, Jr.


Judge for yourself. (Born is in the middle, between the Wimbledon men’s finalists, winner Roger Federer and runner-up Rafael Nadal.)

And speaking of Wimbledon, Venus Williams makes the Christian Science Monitor. Not unlucky.
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It would be most unlucky if we lost Eyes on the Prize:

ROG

ROG
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