WEEKLY ROUNDUP

THE YADA-YADA

"Television is the greatest single achievement in communication

That anybody, or any area of the world, has ever known."

Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey

THE CROSSOVER OF THE WEEK

'RAW' & 'Monday Night Football' (& 'Desperate Housewives')

[See the essay "Towelling Off"]





THE GREAT LINK

Tele-Cognizance in the TV Universe

[See the essay " 'Raw' Talent"[



ZONK

PETER: Wow, a gay network. 20 years ago, the closest we had was 'Cagney and Lacey'.

JACK: Well, let me tell you, we've come a long way. Now there's an entire network devoted to reruns of 'Cagney and Lacey'.

['Will & Grace']



I think they've beaten me on this one. I suppose I could go for a splainin dealing with the two earlier incarnations of 'Cagney & Lacey': the TV movie with Loretta Swit and Tyne Daly, and a limited run version of the series with Tyne Daly and this time Meg Foster in the role of Cagney. I might say that either one of those were based on the lives of the real Chris Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey.



But then how to splain away that the actress playing Lacey looked like the "real" Mary Beth? From that point, I'd have to track down some TV character played by Tyne Daly who led the life of an actress.



Too much trouble.....



SPLAININ

But I had no trouble bending over backwards to splain away another 'Will & Grace' zonk: the triple-breated dream Grace had in which she cited 'Desperate Housewives', 'Jeopardy', and 'Lost'...

[See the essay "3 Boobed Toob - Zonk"]



THE LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES

Carmelo Anthony - Nike

(Tommy Davidson also appears in this commercial, but I believe that since he's invisible to Anthony and is talking to the audience viewing at home, that he's probably the serlinguistic ghost of some other character.)



Peyton Manning - MasterCard



Snoop Dogg

Molly Shannon

Jeffrey Tambor

Paris Hilton

Burt Reynolds

Peter Dinklage[?]

Wayne Newton - all for T-Mobile /Google



Rip Taylor - He was up for the role of Out-TV's spokesman, but lost to the actor who played the Cocoa Devil in a long-ago commercial.

('Will & Grace')



Reverend Al Sharpton was called in to perform another "Hail Mary" pass for the sake of a client.

('Boston Legal')



LA TRIVIATA

The Cocoa Devil! The world only knew him as a four-inch tall demon superimposed on Gabe Kaplan's shoulder. The actor won a Clio for his work in that ad and soon had a Mazda 626. And because of his reputation as the Cocoa Devil, he was the perfect mid-level-celebrity-nobody for that mid-level-nothing cable network, OUT-TV.

('Will & Grace')



Between her first and second marriages, Karen Walker backpacked through Japan, Vietnam, and Bhutan.

('Will & Grace')



Atooshi Kodki is "the energy drink of today's youth". It was a beverage full of minerals, vitamins, and 22 grams of nicotine.

('Will & Grace')



At the end of a 'Jack & Bobby' episode dealing with the suicide of a gay teen, a PSA was shown for the Suicide/Crisis Line for Gay & Questioning Teens with the number 866-4-U-TREVOR and website www.TheTrevorProject.org.

('Jack & Bobby')



REALI-TV

TV helps teen deliver boy

BY DAVE GOLDINER

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Raynita Anderson learned all she knows about delivering babies from watching shows like "Birth Day" and "Babies: Special Delivery" on cable television.



The upstate teenager and aspiring doctor put her reality show know-how to real-life use when her mom's friend went into labor early on the Saw Mill Parkway.



Even though the boy was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, Anderson saved him - unwrapping the cord and then using her shoelace to tie it off early on Thanksgiving Day.



"I was stunned," said Raynita, 15, a 10-grader from Wingdale, told the Journal News paper. "I didn't know it was going to come out that quick."



The baby and his mother, Yonkers cop Jacqueline Walker-Jones, were both doing fine.



Walker-Jones had nothing but praise for the two "miracles" in her life. "After all he's been through, I think he's a miracle baby," she said.



Glancing at Raynita, she added, "And she's a miracle, too."



OBITUARIES

MATTHEW KRAMER

Since the sixth grade, Matt had been one of Jack McCallister's closest friends. But in 2003, he came out to Jack and confessed that he was in love with his best friend. Unfortunately, Jack didn't handle the situation well and Matt felt rebuffed in the friendship as well. They became distant to each other and Matt finally committed suicide around Thanksgiving of 2004.

('Jack & Bobby')



MRS. HUBER

Mrs. Huber was the nosy neighbor on Wisteria Lane who was finally revealed to be the blackmailer behind Mary Alice Young's suicide. She also knew that Gabrielle Solis and the teenaged gardener had been trimming the verge, and that Susan Meyer had burned down Edie's house.



Mrs. Huber was struck over the head with a blender and then strangled by Paul Young, the distraught husband of Mary Alice, once he found out the truth about her blackmail attempts.

('Desperate Housewives')



CROSSOVER HALL OF FAME

In case anyone was interested in who the other 'Trek' inductees have been up to this point, here's the rundown of the year so far:

January - Captain James T. Kirk

February - Lt. Uhura

March - Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy

April - Commander Montgomery Scott

May - Yeoman Janice Rand

June - Zephraim Cochrane

Birthday Honors - The Cast Of The Original 'Star Trek':

William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichole, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, Grace Lee Whitney

July - Ensign Pavel Chekov

August - Helmsman Hikaru Sulu

September - Gene Roddenberry

October - The Tribbles

November - Ambassador Sarek



Well, that's it for another week. Please stay tuned!



BCnU!

Tele-Toby