My bitter-sweet Lord

What? They’re canceling the chocolate Jesus exhibit at the prestigious Roger Smith Hotel in New York? Outraged Catholics including Cardinal Edward Egan were appalled. Organizers were surprised that a nude, anatomically correct sculpture made in chocolate of Jesus Christ might be considered offensive to some. I guess their reasoning is when it’s okay to display a statue of former heavyweight champ, Buster Douglas in butter at the Ohio State Fair, what’s the difference?

My question is: the artist, Cosimo Cavallaro, and creative director of the gallery at the hotel, Matt Semler (who quit in protest) are SURPRISED by this reaction? If Willy Wonka became a Born Again he’d be smart enough not to do this. There’s a reason you never see chopped liver sculptures of Jesus at Catholic weddings. Or a candy shop at the Vatican. It’s so clearly off-the-charts predictable that this stunt would cause some flack.

On the other hand…is this publicity exactly what they want? I mean, if the Roger Smith Hotel unveiled a statue of me, nude, anatomically correct (or at least enhanced) in chocolate I don’t even think my wife would come. George Clooney? They might have a tough time getting his permission. (I’d be honored so I’m a good get.) But the point is -- do something wacky, anything wacky and you can expect media attention these days.

And the end result: You know the Jesus statue will appear somewhere. And it will draw crowds. Probably in a mall... as part of their Easter Spring Sale Celebration. In the meantime, chocolate bunnies are still okay... although marshmellow bunnies are borderline bad taste.

Happy Easter.

The SOPRANOS are back...finally

Wow, both the SOPRANOS and KING OF QUEENS airing their final episodes. I hope THE SOPRANOS doesn't get overshadowed by KING OF QUEENS mania.

It's been so long since the SOPRANOS have been on it'll take two episodes to remember what was going on. I just barely got up to speed with THE SHIELD.

I imagine the NY POST and ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY will speculate for weeks on how the series will end and they'll be wrong. Creator, David Chase will find some elegant, unexpected, memorable finale. But David, please, don't flash forward to show when they all die.

Interesting that most members of the writing staff are in their 50’s. You mean you don’t lose your talent at 32??

One of the show’s producers should serve as a real inspiration to writers. Matthew Weiner. He was a half hour guy. I worked with him for several years on BECKER. Super talented and funny. A few years ago he decided to reinvent himself and write an hour drama pilot. The networks of course were not the least bit interested but David Chase read it. Matt just completed his third season with the SOPRANOS after having written some of the best episodes from last year. And as a P.S., Matt has a new series of his own premiering soon on AMC.

Here are some past credits of the SOPRANOS staff (not saying these are all bad shows, just somewhat different from what you might expect…so I don’t want a lot of comments saying how great Secret Squirrel was.):

The Magician
2 Stupid Dogs
Batman (the animated series)
Cover Me
Swat Kats
Hack
The In-Laws
Baby Blues
American Gothic
DiResti
The New Flipper
The Naked Truth
Living in Captivity
Sister Sister
..... and of course – the Secret Squirrel Show.

Paulie looks the grown-up Butch Munster.

Meadow is now old enough that I don’t feel like a pervert for having a crush on her.

How is Tony going to listen to his oldies in the car now that WCBS-FM is gone? What he SHOULD do is whack all the stupid CBS radio executives who decided to change the station’s format.

And then, to make matters worse for oldies fans -- they shot Frankie Valli.

More BADA BING scenes. Have Haley Scarnato from AMERICAN IDOL guest.

What’s worse than death? Going from the SOPRANOS to the cast of JOEY. RIP Adrianna.

Switched at birth: Tony Soprano and UCLA basketball coach Ben Howland.

Is there a better actress on television than Edie Falco? And if the SOPRANOS was being cast by a network they would probably have insisted on that Italian go-to-girl, Sharon Lawrence.

Also, if the show were being done for a network the name “Pussy” would have to be changed to “Happy Place”.

No wonder sister Janice is such a mess. Tony got the looks in the family.

My favorite character is still Christopher. Slugging Lauren Becall was one of the premiere moments of the series. (Written by Matt Weiner, by the way.)

I bet in real life the scariest cast member is Lorraine Bracco.

Even in HD Silvio has no neck.

I don’t care if Uncle Junior's trial is ever resolved. I just want the state to take away his drivers’ license. Believe me, he’ll kill more people with his car.

Thanks to David Chase and all the incredibly gifted people who gave us the finest drama in the history of television, THE SOPRANOS.

Random snark

Sorry to see Gina go. Haley came very close. In order to survive next week she's going to have to show nipples. Next Tuesday I will BE at AMERICAN IDOL. I plan on crying so you may see me on camera. A full report will follow.

Ratings for AMERICAN IDOL have gone down this year. The Sanjaya travesty is beginning to take its toll. And getting hair tips from Diana Ross isn’t helping.

Meanwhile, LaKisha Jones is now selling Italian charm bracelet add-ons with her picture on them. Haley Scarnato pasties and tassels go on sale next week.

Tomorrow morning at 8:50 I will be on KNX radio in Los Angeles talking about AMERICAN IDOL. 1070 on your AM dial, if you even have an AM radio anymore.

Halle Berry recently got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. When you see these ceremonies you probably wonder, who is that little man who’s always there? That’s Johnny Grant. Former LA disc jockey now Hollywood’s Honorary Mayor who takes his salary in hugs and cheap thrills. He’s the uncle you’ve been threatening with a restraining order.

Other major stars who will receive theirs this year include Erik Estrada, Jerry Stiller, Mariah Carey (who can forget her performance in GLITTER?), Crystal Gayle, and local sportscaster Stu Nahan.

Among last year’s inductees: Nathan Lane, Vanna White, Judge Judy, local sportscaster Jim Hill, Motley Crue, Shecky Greene, and Wink Martindale.

But 2005 was the real banner year. Emilio Estevez, Fred Travalena, and Donald Duck.

Glad to hear NBC is renewing 30 ROCK. Maybe if they didn’t put it in the Thursday night death slot against GREY’S ANATOMY and CSI it might have a chance of attracting some viewers. If NBC really wants to launch 30 ROCK they should schedule it Monday night at 9:30… on CBS.

I plan on being the only blog on the internet not to do a Keith Richards snorting his father joke. I know it may cost me a coveted Weblog nomination but I’m going to take the high road on this one.

A headline from today's Sydney Morning Herald: Air Pacific says it has apologised to a young Japanese woman after a Fijian soldier urinated on her.

On Monday’s ESPN coverage of the Royals-Red Sox game, bumbling commentator Joe Morgan admitted he was wrong about something. It was a national E.F. Hutton moment. If you’re not familiar with Joe’s work, picture Randy Jackson calling a baseball game but less articulate.

I will miss Soledad O’Brien (pictured left) on CNN’s “American Morning”. She did such a great job of reading the news that I’d watch with the sound off and still enjoy her. When I become the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood she's the first person getting a star.

Barack Obama has raised more money than Hillary Clinton. $23.5 million to $20 million. In third place was LaKisha Jones with those charm bracelets.

American Idol this week

I was hoping the theme for this week’s AMERICAN IDOL would be “Songs of Passover”. I would have loved to have heard Blake Lewis beatboxing during “Dayenu” or Sanjaya singing “Had Gadya” while wearing long peyis.

As it was, a good night. They’re down to the top 8 and Sanjaya. Tony Bennett offered some great advice… although it’s hard to take anyone seriously wearing a yellow sports jacket. I’m sure most contestants didn’t know who he was. And the ones that did thought, “Oh yeah, the old dude from MTV”.

Blake’s rendition of “Mack the Knife” made me long for Kevin Spacey’s. None of it worked for me. The lounge lizard look and the clunker notes. I thought the judges were kind.

I pictured weird Phil Stacey singing “Night & Day” to a girl just before he cut her up and put her in mason jars.

And Paula thought he was a young Frank Sinatra? Frank Sinatra Jr. maybe. Or Tina.

Michael Buble is a young Frank Sinatra. Phil Stacey is a young Hannibal Lecter.

Melinda Doolittle is in a different league. Like Barry Bonds batting clean-up at a fat man’s picnic.

When Chris Richardson came out in the Sinatra pork pie hat I thought, “uh oh”. Please don’t do “Mrs. Robinson”. (Have you heard Frank’s version of that song? “How’s your bird, Mrs. Robinson? Jilly loves you more than you will know. Whoa whoa whoa. The P.T.A., Mrs. Robinson, won’t approve the way you do your thing. Ding ding ding.”) But he was pleasantly terrific.

You heard it here first: Jordin Sparks could sneak in and become the American Idol. She sings great, has a effervescent personality, and her million dollar smile might be a thirty million vote smile.

Gina Glocksen – Simon was dead on. She’s good but there are three other women who are better. She needs the theme to be Joan Jett week or she’s toast.

Sanjaya – Andy Garcia meets Tinkerbell. America’s joke.

Haley Scarnato went back to her strength – showing off her legs and breasts. Among the many things her performance was lacking was a pole. I mean, when Paula, who is excited when you dangle a piece of string in front of her eyes, can only say “green is a good color on you”, you know you’re in trouble.

And finally, I’m getting tired of LaKisha. Yes, her voice can reach the back row…of the Acropolis, but there are no shadings. Melinda is a singer. LaKisha is a belter.

I’d say Haley and Phil are the bottom two. Maybe Gina. AMERICAN IDOL will adopt the “Passover” theme by passing over Sanjaya for another undeserving week.

How to hide the miracle of life

Was at a party recently and bumped into Shelley Long (who looks fabulous, by the way!). She mentioned that her daughter just turned 22. Wow. It seems like just yesterday we were in the third year of CHEERS and Shelley was pregnant. Whenever an actress on a series gets pregnant it presents a tricky dilemma for the writers – especially if you don’t want her character to get pregnant as well. I don’t know what they would have done on the FLYING NUN.

On CHEERS, if Diane had a baby it would alter the entire series, taking it in a direction we didn’t want to go. So the question became – how do we hide it?

I thought the staff came up with a pretty ingenious solution. Diane and new beau, Frasier would vacation in Europe. We could film those scenes early in the season before she was showing and then place them in episodes later in the year. During the early stages of the pregnancy she deftly hid behind the bar or a tray. And when it was impossible to hide her anymore we had the Europe episodes in the bank.

Since those Europe scenes were independent of the main stories they could sometimes be shuffled around. I remember watching an episode at home one night, written I believe by Sam Simon. I was laughing and enjoying the story and then they cut to one of these vacation scenes. It was odd. I felt a weird déjà vu. I knew this was a first run episode I hadn’t seen yet this scene was vaguely familiar.

And then it hit me – David and I wrote this scene. It was taken out of our show and inserted into this one.

There have been many times I’ve watched scenes and thought to myself, I wish I had written that. This was the first time I watched a scene and said, “Oh my God, I did write that!”

I imagine whoever wrote the vacation scene that appeared in our episode had a similar reaction.

Things were so much easier with Rhea Perlman. She got pregnant several times during the run of the series but since it was established that her character, Carla popped out kids like a Pez dispenser, it actually made things easier for us.

Starting with Lucy (didn’t everything start with Lucy?) all the way to Amanda Peete on STUDIO 60, writers have dealt with series stars getting pregnant. And they’ve always found solutions.

Except one. On BEWITCHED they never could explain which Darren was the father of Tabitha.










Late tomorrow: My weekly AMERICAN IDOL review. I'm anxious to see how many of the finalists have even heard of Tony Bennett.

Why our eyes wander... and where they go

It’s not our fault!

When a man is looking at a woman and his eyes drift downward do not be offended ladies, it’s how we were programmed.

No… really.

Thank God for the Nielsen/Norman group for uncovering this TRUTH. They conducting a study on Web site design and happened upon this monumental discovery. In tracking eye movement researchers had 255 men and women look at photos of other people. Men always snuck quick peeks at the subject’s crotch – even if the subject was another man.

When shown a photo of admittedly strapping George Brett (pictured right), women locked onto his face. Men couldn’t help checking out his package.

That CLICK you hear is every homophobe now logging off this site.

The study however, concluded that these peeks weren’t a sign of sexual attraction (in most cases… I mean, who are we kidding?). They were a natural response for men to check out the competition. (And just to put your mind at ease guys, he wore a cup.)

We men glance down when looking at a woman for the obvious disgusting reason but the key here is that it can’t be helped! Please consider that the next time you haul off and slap us into next Tuesday.

The survey continues:

Both groups were asked to look at photos of puppies on the American Kennel Club’s site. Women focused on the cute puppies’ big brown eyes. Men’s eyes STILL drifted south towards the dogs’ genitals.

So here are the conclusions I’ve arrived at: Somehow I feel vindicated..

and really creepy.

The BONANZA theme

One of the favorite CHEERS teasers is the one where they sing the BONANZA theme. Here are the lyrics and the actual theme. Sing along.


We chased lady luck, 'til we finally
struck Bonanza
With a gun and a rope and a hat full of hope,
we planted our family tree.
We got hold of a pot full of gold,
Bonanza

With a horse and a saddle, and a range full of cattle, How rich can a fellow be?
On this land we put our brand, Cartwright is the name, Fortune smiled, the day we filed the Ponderosa claim.

Here in the west, we're livin' in the best
Bonanza
If anyone fights any one of us,
he's got a fight with me
Bonanza

Hoss and Joe and Adam know
every rock and pine
No one works fights, or eats,
like those boys of mine
Here we stand in the middle of a grand
Bonanza

With a gun and a rope and a hatful of hope,
we planted our family tree,
We got a hold of a potful of gold
Bonanza

With a houseful of friends where the rainbow ends,
How rich can a fellow be?
On this land we put our brand Cartwright is the name,
Fortune smiled, the day we filed the Ponderosa claim
Here in the west we're living in the best
Bonanza

With the friendliest, fightingist, lovingist band,
That ever set foot in the promised land
And we're happier than them all.
That's why we call it
Bonanza...bonanza.. bonanza..