Past Deadline

Spinning Down That Paper Trail Leaves You Breathless

It's a thrill ride only a network affiliate could love: The Whirly Merge, which takes visitors to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. on a glorious trip back to the 1996 merger between the Walt Disney Co. and Capital Cities/ABC. Described as "It's a Small World and Space Mountain Meets Barbarians At the Gate," it transports its riders -- strapped in plush leather seats to "boardroom tables" -- through a series of fast-paced and intricate business meetings, all leading to the climactic acquisition stage. As holographic accountants dance in giant piles of cash, then-Disney chief Michael Eisner conceives a plan to invest the money rather than pay exorbitant taxes on it. An animatronic Eisner, meanwhile, greets visitors outside the ride entrance.

Ah, if only the Whirly Merge were real. It is instead a parody conceived by the geniuses at the satirical media empire The Onion, which is of course too bad. I really wanted to experience "the 80-foot Due Diligence Drop, the laser-light e-mail exchange, the lightning-speed courier chase and the Dolby Digital Surround Sound-generated whoosh of legal pad pages in your ear." Heck, I'd even wait in line for this one. For an hour.

In anticipation of April Fool's Day on Sunday, the time seemed right to share this with all of you good folks. Were this Sunday, I'd be trying to sell this thing as real. But we're still two days early. Nonetheless, it's ingenious stuff. Man those Onion dudes are good. Too damn good, if you ask me.

'Well Dang! Catfish DOES Taste Just Like Chicken!'

I'm not sure we even want to know what's really going on here, do we?

Wait a Minute...You Mean He Isn't Already a Robot?

Oh thank you God. I take it all back. You are good and merciful, taking such pity as you are on my satirical dearth of late by crafting a story that has Your all-powerful spoofy hands all over it (the very same hands You have the whole world in). It even involves Michael Jackson, making it doubly cool. Here is how far off the radar Jackson has been: Next week will mark a year that I've been doing this blog, and until now I had no "Michael Jackson" category. I mean, how is that even possible?

But Jacko's back, yessirree. With a surrealistic vengeance. The opening sentence: "Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself that would fire lasers while roaming the Las Vegas desert, according to reports." It's...it's...RoboMike! As I said: God, I owe you one Dude. This is evidently the heart of Jackson's comeback plans following his reputation-crushing 2004 child sex case. And sure, I don't think you can do much better to restore a fallen icon's moral rectitude than a 50-foot electronic version of him taking laser shots at cactus and tumbleweeds.

The Metal Michael would reportedly be visible to aircraft as they descend into the Vegas area and is designed as the centerpiece of an elaborate new stage show. A guy behind the proposal told the New York Daily News, "It would be in the desert sands. Laser beams would fly out of it so it would be the first thing people flying in would see."

It's right about here that you have to ask yourself, Where, oh where, are the sane people in Michael's life? Where are the advisors to shoot down harebrained ideas, who earn their money by saying, "No, Michael, I really don't think that a 50-foot robot version of yourself is going to win you renewed respect and new fans"? Where are those tough-love intimates to tell their friend that in order to save Michael from himself, they're going to have to arrange for him a frontal lobotomy followed by six months of bed rest, capped by the admonishment, "We will never speak of this again"?

They all have failed Michael. And so now he's in danger of sprouting to the size of Godzilla and wandering the desert with only a laser beam for company, perhaps forevermore. And once he grows to 50 feet, he'll no longer need a plastic surgeon but an excavator. I'm getting depressed just thinking about this. Mitigating factor: could give rise to possible spinoff monsters-run-amok feature film franchise "Jacksonic Park."

Every Time I Use 'Canceled' and 'Studio 60' in a Headline, My Hits on Google Head Off the Charts!

In honor of the above headline -- sorry to be so crassly self-serving and needy, by the way -- I give you the very latest about NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," aka The Show Whose Fate Will Determine The Future Of Western Civilization -- or at least, you know, that of the True Believers (you know who you are).

A rumor had been going around (imagine that -- a rumor on the Internet!) that after having gone back into production earlier this month on episodes 17 through 22, the show had ceased production and the plug finally, irrevocably pulled. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! (Imagine it -- an inaccurate rumor on the Internet!) I got the scoop this very afternoon from Lesley Cerwin, the NBC publicist assigned to the show, and she confirmed that production on episode 19 was scheduled to be completed today and work on episode 20 commenced on Thursday.

So yes, it appears that at least the full season complement of shows will make it into the can for Aaron Sorkin's noble but low-rated hour. But all of you "Save Studio 60" cyber sites and blogs, take note: it is now highly unlikely the show will be brought back this spring. The more probable scenario (strictly my conjecture): it will come back in originals over the summer as something of a "bell lap" final farewell.

Don't hold your breath for the show's second-season renewal. That probably ain't happening. Networks typically reserve that stuff for shows that don't bleed millions of dollars, being as they are in the profit business and all. I don't mean to belittle "Studio 60" supporters, as it is an intelligent and worthy piece of television, but the era of petitions making a difference in rescuing a series from the chopping block has long since passed, I'm afraid. This here petition, for example, boasts nearly 17,000 cyber signatures, but unless at least 500 of the signers reside in Nielsen homes I don't really see it turning the tide.

Now remember: this is NOT official. It's just my blubbering into the cyber ether. Or as I like to say, positively certain, as I am never wrong -- except, well, you know, a lot of the time.

The Living Room Couch As Darwinian Metaphor

Just about everyone you talk to seems to agree that this past Sunday night's edition of "The Simpsons" served up what had to be the best couch gag in the show's 18-year history. And history is indeed the operative word here. It goes on for better than a minute and finds Homer evolving from a single-celled amoeba/zygote to his current incarnation. Along the way, there are pitstops in the prehistoric era (Bart and Lisa are dueling dinosaurs) and the Renaissance. And bartender Moe is shown devolving from man back to ape in a brilliantly clever stroke.

The whole thing is superb, underscoring the point that this show has yet to implode creatively despite my "jump the shark" declaration back in November. In fact, "The Simpsons" has built some impressive momentum as it looks to its unfathomable 400th episode in May and feature film in July. But for now, this couch thing serves notices that the show still has plenty of gas left in that tank.

Dear Paula: What Did You Do With Corey and When Did You Do It? Still Wondering. Your Pal, Barry

(Special Commentary by Barry Garron)

We’re deep into a new season of “American Idol” and something isn’t right. I know I should be fixated on the finalists. I know I should be focused on who will be the next victim of the digital Russian roulette ritual performed with cell phones and computers.

At the same time, I know what you really want to read is detailed analysis about whether Chris or Sanjaya deserved the ignominy of garnering the smallest vote total instead of poor Stephanie. But I can’t bring myself to write about that. Not while my mind continually drifts to thoughts of Paula Abdul.

I see her everywhere. She beams at me from the cover of “TV Guide.” She smiles confidently in the face of cameras from “Extra” and “Access Hollywood.”  She seems to be everywhere at once and my torment grows greater.

That’s because no one ever asks her the most important question, the one that cries out for an answer. No, they ask what she puts in her Coke cup. They ask if she has secret feelings for Simon. They ask why her speech is slurred and why she bobs and weaves on TV interviews. To my way of thinking, none of that matters.

Now here’s what I would ask. I’d ask what she was talking about all of that time with Corey Clark. Remember Clark? He was a finalist on “American Idol” in 2003. A couple of years later, he told some incredible stories about how Paula gave him advice on how to game the system, how she bought him a cell phone, paid for his clothes, coached him on what song to sing, spent intimate moments with him and called him incessantly.

“Primetime Live” on ABC investigated the claims. Some of Clark’s evidence seemed pretty thin but he did have the cell phone bills with dozens of lengthy calls with Paula.

Now I’m not suggesting that Paula compromised the integrity of the show and that Fox played viewers for chumps by acting like this was no big deal. And I’m not suggesting that the FCC dropped the ball by not looking into whether “American Idol” was rigged. After all, Fox hired a big law firm that conducted dozens of interviews over more than three months and concluded that nothing could be proven. At least, I think that’s what the law firm concluded. Fox never released the report, only Fox’s own summary.

But if I’m sure of one thing in this life it is that Fox would never twist the truth merely to protect its biggest hit show. So if Fox says their lawyers found no hanky-panky, I believe it. Corey Clark can describe all of Paula’s beauty marks in all those intimate places from now until doomsday. I’m still going with the lawyers and Fox.

But then there are those phone records. If Paula wasn’t telling him what to wear or what to sing and if she wasn’t making all those dates that Clark said they had and that the Hollywood Hills security guard said he witnessed, what do you suppose they were talking about?

It could have been an op/ed piece in the L.A. Times on how hard it is to achieve peace in the Middle East. Or it might have been about whether inflationary pressure will force the Federal Reserve to take action. Or maybe they just exchanged recipes for strudel.

But, unless someone finally asks during one of those thousands of interviews with Paula, we’ll never know. And I’ll keep wondering when I really should be concentrating on Gwen Stefani being a guest judge.

Paris and Britney, Eat Your Overexposed Hearts Out!

Top Searches

1. Cathy Seipp
2. Steven Furtick
3. American Idol
4. Myspace
5. Elsa Pataky
6. Dell
7. Twitter
8. Sanjaya
9. Youtube
10. Kim Kardashian

Yes, my beloved journalist friend Cathy Seipp, who died on Thursday at 49 of lung cancer, has rather remarkably shot to the top of the national blog searches roll on Technorati -- well ahead of the likes of Paris Hilton (#11) and Britney Spears (#15). This is a little bit like having your neighborhood softball championship team land higher primetime ratings than the World Series.

Cathy would have thought this extraordinarily wonderful while adding with cool detachment, "Well, of course." She's managed to pull off one of her greatest feats posthumously. Not that I ever doubted for a second she could.

So Long Larry "Bud" Melman, Comedy Genius

It is with a heavy heart that I comment on the death of Larry "Bud" Melman (aka Calvert DeForest) -- long a fixture on NBC's "Late Night with David Letterman" and later CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman" -- at age 85. He passed on Monday in Long Island, NY following what was described as a long illness.

DeForest, in the guise of the potato-shaped, horn-rimmed Larry "Bud" Melman, proved to be a perfect guileless foil for Letterman, a deadpan goofball who played it to poker-faced perfection. I can recall collapsing in hysterics a bunch of times while watching DeForest (it seems weird to call him that, as he always was just Larry "Bud") conduct incompetent man-on-the-street interviews during which he'd pull away the microphone before his subject was finished speaking. But you didn't even need to hear him to be entertained. Simply looking at this earnest shmoe was more than enough.

I interviewed him back in 1991 and recall asking DeForest if he ever felt humiliated as the butt of so many jokes that painted him as such a schlemiel. His reply: "Are you kidding? I'm having the time of my life. Who knew me before? No one. Now, I'm famous. I'd love for someone to tell me what the down side of this is supposed to be."

Meanwhile, Back Among the, Uh, Living...

Somehow, I thought CNN was joking about this series dealing with the real-life dramas of doctors working in a busy Atlanta trauma center known as Grady Memorial Hospital. But evidently not. I'm thinking this place was chosen less for its captivating, tension-wracked atmosphere than its name, since it allowed CNN to call his thing "Grady's Anatomy." Dr. McDreamy, meet Dr. Gupta (as in Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent and practicing neurosurgeon).

My question: if these docs are so busy saving lives, why do we care about whom they sleep with in their off-hours (or, more to the point, whom they flirt with in their on hours)? Anyway, this special report unfolds over on Saturday and Sunday nights. And the above link will even take you to a podcast about how the CNN cameras followed Gupta and a handful of other medical residents as they juggled their "personal and professional lives." Not sure about you, but I don't want to know that someone trying to save my sorry hide even has a personal life. And if they do, I'd rather they not give it a whole lot of thought while at the office.

Is that really so wrong?

She's Free At Last

For those following the blog progression here, the divine Cathy Seipp finally succumbed to her illness this afternoon at 2:05.

Sleep peacefully, kiddo. You've earned the rest.

Thanks for keeping our hearts such good company.

ADD: Here is Cathy's elaborate obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

UPDATE: My longtime friend and extraordinarily talented fellow blogger Rip Rense, with whom I worked at the L.A. Daily News back when it was still known largely as the Valley News & Green Sheet, posted this magnificent tribute to Cathy on his superb blog The Rip Post. If you can read only one Seipp remembrance, make it this one.