everybody had matching towels

Once a year my family likes to celebrate with a lobster dinner. For the past few years we've ordered our crustaceans from The Shrimp Dock in Bearden. A recent posting on a News Sentinel business blog (found via Michael Silence) mentioned that the store now has a 24 hour webcam. If you happened to be on the Shrimp Dock site around 3:30 this afternoon, you saw me, happily examining my live lobsters.



In years past, I ate a large lobster all by myself. Nowadays, my mantra is portion control. Last year and this year, my wife and I shared a two pound lobster, which yields about three ounces of meat for each of us. I don't know if the old me qualified as a true "foodie" but I did often take pictures of my favorite meals. Here's my lobster from three years ago:

entendre

Seriously, what were you guys thinking?

cover ups and downs

The pop culture site retroCRUSH has followed up their list of 100 great cover songs with a list of 100 bad cover songs. Most of their choices are dead on. They include several of the usual suspects, some of which have been featured on Golden Throats discs. At least two of the more notorious "American Idol" rejects made the list. Plus they threw in a few conversation starters like Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You."

As I went through the list, I found some songs that I thought were too good to be called bad. I actually prefer "Boys of Summer" by the Ataris over the original. "Come On Eileen" by Save Ferris was okay. I especially liked "Gone Daddy Gone" by Gnarls Barkley and "I Melt With You" by Bowling for Soup. It may be that I'm partial to Bowling For Soup. I've written before that I very much enjoy their cover of "...Baby One More Time." However it must be said that their version of "London Bridge" is not all that. I would have taken "I Melt With You" off the worst list and replaced it with "London Bridge."

A friend emailed me a link to a cover song that is not on either of retroCRUSH's lists. Not yet anyway. It's an instrumental version of the Gnarls Barkley tune "Crazy" performed on a Theremin.

putting the MT in CMT

"Have you seen the new Alison Kraus music video?" asked my friend Mary. Truthfully, I hadn't seen any Alison Kraus videos, new or old. Because I knew Mary to be a fan of the rock music when she and I worked together at KLOS and at the Comedy World Radio Network, she felt that she had to explain. Mary said it was her husband, not she, who was watching CMT when the video came on.

Tonight I flipped over to PBS hoping to catch one of my favorite bands, Buckwheat Zydeco on the tribute to Paul Simon. Several famous artists did cover versions of Paul Simon songs. As fate would have it, I missed Buckwheat but saw Alison Kraus. The show repeats tomorrow afternoon. I'll have more to say about cover songs tomorrow too.

Regardless of who is responsible, Mary and her husband noticed that Mark Thompson (of Mark & Brian fame) is in the Alison Kraus video playing the part of a sound engineer. The action takes place in a recording studio as Alison and John Waite sing a duet version of his 1984 hit "Missing You." Mark has been doing a lot of acting and screen writing lately. Mary will get to display some of her fancy flute playing on the soundtrack to Mark's next film, "Two: Thirteen."

this old Wodehouse

Shawn Green hit a foul ball into the Dreamseats just before his walk-off home run Monday night. I had flipped over to ESPN in time to see the end of the game between the Mets and the Cardinals. Unfortunately, tonight's game didn't end as well.

The Dreamseats are luxurious leather recliners near the foul poles. A brief video on their website shows the seats in use and concludes with an address in Hauppauge. They may sell them from New York, but every Dreamseat is manufactured in Tennessee.

The reference to Hauppauge made me think of an old song from a musical that mentions several places we would pass on the way to Grandma's house. I thought that Hauppauge might have been one of the villages in the lyrics. But as it turns out, the song goes: "let's build a little bungalow in Quogue, in Yaphank or in Hicksville or Patchogue."

the monkey's got a hockey stick

Fox is burning off the remaining episodes of a funny show called "The Loop" this summer. The show has not been renewed for next season, which is a shame because it provides several good laughs per episode. The network has scheduled it at odd times. Last night they ran three episodes, one each at 7:30, 8:30 and 9:30. I gave the show a Season Pass on TiVo so that I wouldn't have to worry about the weird scheduling. As it turned out, I was able to watch the 8:30 episode in real time on the plasma screen in glorious over-the-air HD. Before going to bed, I made some room on the upstairs TiVo by deleting the episode I had already watched downstairs. First, I skimmed through it to make sure it was the same show I had watched earlier. The episode on my TiVo had been recorded in SD via cable. As usual, the picture quality from my cable company wasn't very good. I noticed that our local Fox affiliate plastered huge weather warnings over the bottom third of the screen. But when I had watched the same episode in HD, the warnings were not there. On the one had, I'm glad that my HD viewing experience wasn't interrupted by a larger-than-necessary storm warning that didn't affect me directly. But on the other hand, what if the storms were headed my way? Does my local affiliate not care about HD viewers? Or are there so few of us that it doesn't matter?

list of St. Craig

St. Albert the Great, a newly created parish in Halls, begins celebrating Mass next Sunday in a meeting room at a local hospital. Over the next few years, a new church building will be constructed on Brickey Lane. Meanwhile, St. John Neumann in Farragut plans to open its new church in January.

While Catholic parishes are growing in the South, older parishes in the North are being shut down as membership dwindles and funds become scarce. The latest issue of The East Tennessee Catholic has a letter to the editor with an intelligent proposal. Bob Warshal writes:

My grandparents, like so many other immigrants to the North from Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, contributed their nickels and dimes to build those old churches up north, and I wonder now what is to become of those many church organs, Stations of the Cross, altar crucifixes, marble altars, and stained-glass windows, contributed with the idea of “permanent” remembrances.

Is it possible that the Catholic Church could have a website for parishes around the country and the world to make use of the fittings from those churches, now condemned by decreasing memberships? Is it too hard to imagine that some use could be made of these items in brand-new churches? With some planning, an architect might be able to make his design accommodate such items. After all, the quality of items made in the last century may not be duplicated today, and if the church can see its way clear to charge only for shipping and handling, the building of a new church or the remodeling of an old one might be a lot less expensive.

first day of the rest of your life

After a long day yesterday, I took today off. Completely off. It was great. I didn't have to leave home at all. Instead, I went for a swim and then read most of the new issue of Entertainment Weekly. It features the list of 100 stars they love right now. I also gave the TiVo a rest and watched a couple of DVDs that have been on my stack for a while. They both looked great on the plasma screen even though they contained footage from a time before anyone had dreamed of that technology. First I watched highlights of the New York Mets World Series victories in 1969 and 1986. Then I popped in a disc of lost episodes of "You Bet Your Life," a show that went off the air a week after I was born. I remember watching reruns of Groucho's show when I was in seventh and eighth grades. Finally, I turned on the computer to look for Mass times and to search for any Roadside America attractions along the route of a trip we are planning for later this summer. Oh and best of all, I had a slice of leftover cake with lunch.

holy labor and delivery!

No matter their age, guys like their toys. For example, I still have the Corgi Batmobile I played with as a kid. I've been a fan of the "Batman" TV series as long as I can remember. Naturally, it was a big deal for me to see the real Batmobile at Barris Kustom Industries.

Today, I spent the afternoon doing a remote broadcast from a car dealership. The time flew by quickly while a listener told me about the Batmobile he is building in his garage. He ordered a kit from CY Productions and found his own Lincoln Continental chassis. He said there are several companies selling do-it-yourself Batmobile parts and accessories. One is called Gotham Cruisers, another is called The Batcave.

For model making on a smaller scale, I found a site offering incredibly accurate resin kits of the actors who played the heroes and villains on "Batman." Like the site says, it's the "best likeness of Vincent Price ever done!"

world infamous

The listings for last night's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" promised a new show but ABC aired a rerun instead. Three years ago I took advantage of my friendship with Jimmy to get VIP tickets for a taping of his show. That episode got pulled over a joke about Detroit. I was worried that something similar happened last night but it was actually worse. Jimmy had to cancel the taping so he could have an emergency appendectomy. I sent an email wishing him well to which he replied that he's feeling good.

Another of my former KROQ co-workers now performs as lounge singer Richard Cheese. He sent an email today reminding me about his July 18th show in Atlanta. I wish I could go but it's on a weeknight. I hope I can persuade him to stop off in Knoxville for a visit while he's passing through the area. The last time I saw him was three years ago on the same night as the taping of Jimmy's show that I mentioned earlier.

Today's KROQ trifecta is completed by my friend Bean. The email he sent last night reached me first thing this morning. He wanted to get my reaction to a funny parody of "Hey There Delilah" that was deemed too dirty by the corporate lawyers. I wrote back and attempted to pinpoint the lyric that the lawyers might have found most objectionable. Kevin & Bean's show is so popular that they also have a listener who writes a daily blog about it. I read that they griped about the lawyers on the air this morning, which I was then able to hear via the audio archive that one of their listeners posts online. Later, it was a little weird to be skimming through TMZ.com and seeing an entry about the brouhaha.

sweet teeth

The staff at Garde Bien offered me a cupcake when I arrived for my haircut today. They were celebrating the birthdays of an employee and of a favorite customer, Carol Bass. I first met Mrs. Bass at the salon on the day of my makeover. After I finished my cupcake, I realized that I had forgotten to try eating it sandwich style. Cupcakes are an infrequent treat. I'll try to remember to put the icing in the middle next time.

Today's newspaper had a recipe for a different sandwich style treat. The Mint Chip Monster is made by splitting a chocolate snack cake and putting ice cream in the middle. Kids can decorate it to look like a monster. The idea for a fun food is reminiscent of the hamburger cookies I saw at a swim meet last year.

I briefly flipped past the AFI special on CBS tonight. They were up to the movie "Nashville" in their countdown of the top 100 films. In the clip, I heard a reference to the Grand Ole Opry, sponsored by Goo Goo Clusters. It got me wondering if the candies got their name from the initials of the Opry. They didn't. The Goo Goo website points out that the candies have been around 13 years longer than the Opry.

give us 22 minutes

In lieu of writing a blog entry tonight, I decided to share an email that I received this morning. At least I added a bunch of hyperlinks for your clicking enjoyment.

Frank, I Googled WAVA tonight and found the salute you guys did on the 10th "death" anniversary of the station. I wish we had done something like that to observe the 10th "death" anniversary of the ORIGINAL (at least for my money) WAVA, the all-news format.

I had moved from Indiana to work at the station and was caught up in the great firing of everyone on the staff except for Mike Del Colliano.

So many of the anchors at the old WAVA went on to other things. Many of us and some from WASH founded AP Radio. Some of us became the main Washington staff of the late UPI Radio Network, including myself.

Anyway, great Web site. Brought back a lot of memories.

Dennis Daily
KYOS, Merced, California

malem me pakeno

It was impossible not to notice the inflatable King Kong in the parking lot of All Occasion Party Rentals. Upon driving closer, it became clear that Kong had an inflatable dinosaur friend.



The two of them are part of a giant slide that can be rented for various events. Renting is a better option than buying. I found a Kongo Crazy slide for sale on the Internet for $14,195. The Kong and T-Rex slide amused me. Another clever slide is the giant Kraken for $18,395. One slide that tests the theory of tragedy plus time is an inflatable representation of a sinking Titanic. After all, it's been 95 years.

print model

Each month Garde Bien Spa Salon runs an ad in Skirt! Magazine. Because the publication is targeted to women, the salon usually runs before and after photos of a female makeover recipient.

To coincide with Father's Day, Garde Bien used a picture of a man in this month's ad. As I warned you last month, the man is me.

bloody a lot

Earlier this week, Ken Levine went through a list of movies currently in theatres and beautifully explained what makes each of them stink. He closed by recommending an art house film called "Once," which is not playing in Knoxville.

I also have a suggestion for a movie that's better than most out there. Go see "Hot Fuzz." My wife and I loved it. It's sort of a cross genre spoof both of buddy cop action movies and quaint British murder mysteries. Yet it is also an actual buddy cop movie that happens to be set in a quaint British village. London's best policeman is making his co-workers look bad by comparison. They arrange to have him transferred to a small town with a crime rate so low it's nonexistent. It doesn't take him long to realize that things are not as they seem. The central mystery has more layers than you would expect from a parody film. It all builds to a satisfying conclusion.

The movie is very funny but also a little gory. I might not have been as surprised by the violent scenes if I had seen "Shaun of the Dead," which was made by the same people. "Hot Fuzz" makes me want to see "Shaun" all the more.

"Hot Fuzz" was chosen as one of the best movies of the year so far by guest critic Christy Lemire on a recent episode of "Ebert & Roeper." Christy didn't do a bad job as co-host. She could be considered as a more permanent replacement for Roger Ebert, who probably isn't coming back any time soon.

stay on up

What was I thinking when I chose to wear that shirt to a taping of "The Price Is Right" in 1993? Maybe I thought it would be easily visible on camera. Or maybe it's just the shirt I happened to wear to my job at the hip-hop station that morning. I was the epitome of hip-hop fashion.

Dave Morales was one of the deejays at Power 106 and is a huge fan of "The Price Is Right." One day after we got to talking about the game show, I contacted Bob Barker's publicist and arranged for a pair of VIP tickets to an upcoming taping. The VIP tickets meant we didn't have to wait in line but it also meant we were not eligible to be contestants. A CBS page gave us name tags and ushered us to the seats right behind contestants' row. There was no doubt that we would be seen. We actually had better seats than a real VIP who was there. Tina Yothers was a bit further down the row from us. Maybe they thought it would be a distraction for someone recognizable like her to be right behind the contestants. At that point she still looked more like Jennifer Keaton than like the lead singer of Jaded.

Anyway, congratulations to Bob Barker, who finished his run on "The Price Is Right" and won a Daytime Emmy tonight.

best mix of the same stuff

The musicFirst Coalition wants radio stations to pay royalties for the songs they play on air. The National Association of Broadcasters will fight the proposal on the grounds that recording artists already benefit from increased sales due to radio airplay. Somewhere along the way somebody caved and allowed the recording industry to collect royalties for Internet streaming of music. Artists should get paid for songs that are downloaded but why get paid for streaming? Radio airplay and Internet streaming are both great promotional tools for the music industry.

I feel that music radio depends too heavily on the recording industry to supply its product. Let's say that you have a radio station that only plays the best songs that everyone wants to hear. There is absolutely nothing stopping a competitor from playing the exact same songs in the exact same order. The music does not make your station unique. It's the deejays and talk show hosts who set your station apart from the next one down the dial. I doubt that the musicFirst Coalition will succeed in collecting a penny from radio stations. All my friends in radio know how tight the budgets are at every station. But in a hypothetical situation, suppose that radio was required to pay for the music it plays. Many stations across the country might drop their music altogether and switch to talk formats featuring interesting, funny, relatable, local hosts who connect with their audience. When the ratings go up, more radio stations nationwide drop the music and find success with unique content that can't be duplicated by a competitor. That wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Eventually the record companies would have to start buying airtime or begin streaming music over the Internet themselves to get exposure for their artists.

Also check out Mark Ramsey's post at Hear 2.0.

put on your pith helmets

The Knoxville Zoo is known for its success breeding tortoises. Earlier this year the zoo made news for hatching a rare spider tortoise from Madagascar.

I saw something about tortoises when I was clicking around the WBIR website the other day. It turned out to be another one of those Glitterville features that astounded me last November. Click here for the story and the video. Really. Watch it.

now hiring in Knoxville

Congratulations to Bishop Joseph Kurtz on his promotion to Archbishop of Louisville. He does a fine job of bishoping and we will miss him in Knoxville. His presence helped make this the most vibrant diocese in America.

A Catholic blogger is credited with reporting the first rumors about the transfer. Today he posted an update, written Kentucky Derby style. Another Catholic blogger posted several updates over the past couple of days. Last July, Bishop Kurtz was rumored to be a candidate for a job in Pittsburgh. At the time, I wrote about how the Bishop always remembers meeting my mother and my grandmother four years ago at my daughter's Confirmation. To the surprise of no one, the story came up again this year at my son's Confirmation.

don't send food to HBO

Almost every blogger had something to say about "The Sopranos" finale. I especially enjoyed Ken Levine's review that alternated between Tony and the Tonys. Many Sopranos fans holding on to the hope that the characters will live on in a feature film.

"Veronica Mars" fans are holding on to the hope that they can convince The CW to uncancel their favorite show. "Jericho" fans got a reprieve for their show by sending nuts to CBS because nuts were somehow important to the storyline. So naturally Veronica fans want to send Mars Bars to The CW. The only catch is that Mars Bars are no longer sold in the USA. Some fans are ordering Mars bars from stores that sell foods from Great Britain. Others are sending Snickers Almond bars to the network, which seems to miss the point entirely.

Many TV commercials for radio stations miss the point entirely. A note-perfect parody of such spots is posted on a site that I added to my blogroll today.

do-re-mi

A family friend approached me after Mass this morning. She thought I might be able to offer advice for her 20-year-old daughter who wants to pursue a singing career. I have no expertise in that area but was willing to do some on-the-spot brainstorming. Please feel free to leave your own ideas in the comments section. The daughter is mainly interested in country music, so I suggested that before picking up and moving to Nashville, she go to the next set of auditions for Dollywood. There's a bulletin board at Broadway Sound where musicians post notices looking for band members. Maybe she could find a local singing gig that way. Of course, if she's as good as her mother says, there's always "American Idol" and "Nashville Star."

neat, sweet, petite

The dark chocolate bandwagon recently picked up some Snickers for the ride. Milky Way has had a great dark chocolate bar for a long time. I finally tried a Snickers Dark Mini at Sam's Club the other day. If I were a NASCAR fan, I might have already known about these.



It was pretty good but my favorite "mass market" dark chocolate is still M&Ms. Snickers, Milky Way, M&Ms and CocoaVia, the "healthy chocolate," are all made by the same company. When I first heard "The Addams Family" theme in the M&Ms Dark Chocolate commercial, I was very much amused.

Hearing the familiar music made me think about the upcoming Addams Family musical. Perhaps to avoid a situation similar to what happened when the TV version debuted the same year as "The Munsters," the Addams musical won't make it to Broadway until two years after the "Young Frankenstein" musical. Frederick, Igor, Inga and the rest hit the Great White Way this fall.

pink champagne on ice

It was fun to watch the media stake out Paris Hilton's house on the DirecTV News Mix channel this afternoon. Using the News Mix as my guide, I flipped between Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. I tried E! and the soon-to-be-renamed Court TV too but their coverage was too sporadic. At first I thought that Fox News was the only channel to have live updates from Harvey Levin of TMZ.com but then I saw him doing the same thing a few minutes later on CNN. I forget which channel I had on when they went from Paris coverage to a commercial for Hilton Hotels. No kidding.

On MSNBC, I saw Robert Kovacik of KNBC get a little roughed up as the police cars drove Paris to court. Robert's sister Becca used to work as a publicist. She would call me to book her clients as guests on KROQ and KLOS.

Jake Byrd, a character from "Jimmy Kimmel Live" could be heard on CNN expressing his "dismay" over the re-incarceration of Paris. The full story will undoubtedly turn up on tonight's Kimmel show.

three things on Thursday

As a source of Body Farm information, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the article about it in the current Newsweek. The writer recaps the history of the facility at UT and briefly mentions the plans for new body farms in other climates.

Michael Cera played George Michael Bluth on the late great "Arrested Development." By coincidence, I watched an episode of it last night on HDNet. Cera and his friend Clark Duke now star in an online mockumentary about life in Hollywood. In the webisodes, Clark and Michael try to sell a script to a studio.

There was a press release in my email today for a cross-genre cover act. A classically trained harp duo decided to cover some Metallica songs and call themselves Harptallica. Perhaps if I was a fan of Metallica I would have enjoyed the cover songs more. I thought I heard had some dissonance in parts of "Enter Sandman" and other songs. I hope that's the right word for it. Maybe they can try again with some other bands. Any suggestions? The Harp Eyed Peas? Harpleback? Gnarls Harpley?

sincerest form of flattery

After two episodes, "The Next Best Thing" continues to hold my interest. The contestants are amusing but one of the judges is a little irritating. Jeffrey Ross and Elon Gold are both trying to be the Simon Cowell of the series. Ross, as a veteran of celebrity roasts, is perfectly suited for the role. Gold is an impressionist who should offer helpful advice. It could be the editing but it seems that he rarely gives constructive criticism. Instead Gold often tries to one-up the contestants by doing his own impressions or tries to one-up Jeffrey Ross by insulting the bad contestants.

Tonight's show featured Sevierville resident Denny Murphy as Kenny Chesney. He easily made it to the next round. One of the contestants who advanced to the next round during last week's show was David Gee as Jack Nicholson. Gee is friends with comedian Allan Havey and often opens for him at comedy clubs in casinos. When I worked on Havey's radio show, Gee would call in to do his Jack Nicholson impression. One time Havey had him call during a discussion about something that had happened in Minnesota so that "Jack" could close out the segment by saying "you can't handle Duluth!"

paley in comparison

One of my favorite places has a new name. The Museum of Television & Radio is now known as the Paley Center for Media. The museum and I go way back. I used to go there when I was in high school and the museum was still known as the Museum of Broadcasting. At some point they decided that the word "broadcasting" wasn't broad enough for the scope of their collection. They had started to include shows that were made for cable and hadn't been broadcast over the air.

When I worked at KROQ, I arranged for the morning show to broadcast from the museum in New York while we were there to cover the MTV Video Music Awards. When I worked at KLOS, I arranged for the morning show to broadcast from the museum in Beverly Hills so that we could put on old time radio plays in their John H. Mitchell Theater.

I once sent an email to "The View" to complain about the way Barbara Walters always referred to the museum. I think she called it the Museum of Television & Broadcasting. My complaint was that she omitted radio. Now she can just call it the Pawey Centaw.

time to face the music

One of the funnier lines in "Knocked Up" involved a character who said he was breathing like James Gandolfini. There was plenty of cause for heavy breathing on last night's episode of "The Sopranos." Tony hasn't been whacked yet but there's still a good chance for that to happen in next week's finale. It makes sense to me that the story of Tony Soprano should end with the character's death.

I watch "The Sopranos" even though it's not one of my favorites. But it is one of those shows that people (like my friend Terry Morrow) love to talk about, so I try to keep up. I don't have any sympathy for the characters, who are mostly murderous villains. The food on the show doesn't appeal to me either. "Gabagool," although probably delicious, sounds less than appetizing. Even Tony couldn't finish his and threw it in the trash after a couple of bites last night. Without spoiling anything, let me say that I must show some respect to the incredibly well done cinematic sequence in the toy train shop. I watched it several times at regular speed and in slow motion.

This morning on both "Live with Regis and Kelly" (with sub Bryant Gumbel) and on "The View" (with sub Kathy Griffin), the hosts were anxious to talk about the mob characters who were killed off on last night's show. The "View" women thought that Tony would survive the finale to be in a "Sopranos" movie someday. I'm sticking with my prediction that they will finish him off.

Kathy Griffin looked like she might have had a little more work done to coincide with the tomorrow night's season premiere of "My Life on the D-List." Earlier this year I saw a red carpet photo that made me think Kathy had found the world's greatest plastic surgeon. She looked better than ever. Then I read the caption and discovered that the woman in the photo was actually