just a Broadway baby

The Tony Awards are a week from tonight. I thought they had already passed until I saw a listing for them in the "What to Watch" column in Entertainment Weekly.

In my entire life I've only seen two shows on Broadway and one of them shouldn't count. My high school prom date and I went to see a legitimate play called "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" It wasn't very funny and there was no sign of Colin Mochrie or Ryan Stiles. My first Broadway experience came when my parents gave me a pair of tickets to "Beatlemania" for my birthday. I had asked for the tickets because of the constant commercials on New York television. It's more of a concert than a play. Worse yet, I bought the original cast album.

At a recent family reunion, I met a precocious relative who has already seen about twenty-five shows on Broadway. He reads Broadway.com and Playbill.com and The New York Times for theater reviews. Oh yeah, he's only eleven years old. Nothing I could write here would do him justice. Instead please enjoy a nine minute podcast interview with him. Like me, you can listen to him in slack-jawed amazement.

of ice and men

The two most interesting stories from Oscar night had nothing to do with the awards themselves. One happened before and one after.

On Sunday night I mentioned that I was looking to see Stuart Weitzman's million dollar shoes on the red carpet. It's become an annual tradition for him to adorn a pair with diamonds and let an actress or nominee wear them to the ceremony. Diablo Cody was fitted for the shoes but decided at the last minute that wearing them would ruin her street cred or something. I think it backfired on her. She looks more foolish now than if she had just worn the pumps. Maybe she'll offer a better explanation in her next Entertainment Weekly column. I cannot believe that a pop culture maven like Diablo never heard about the million dollar shoes. I've known about them for at least six years.

On Monday morning, a couple of the entertainment blogs and I were all about Jimmy Kimmel's star-studded music video with his new pal Ben Affleck. It aired on his post-Oscar special, which will be repeated Friday night. The rest of the world caught up last night and today. There are great articles about the making of the clip in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, People and on MTV.com.

On the same day that Jimmy's show is the most talked-about late-night program, Bill Carter writes in the New York Times that ABC is interested in hiring Jay Leno. Boo! Carter says that if ABC landed Leno, he would replace "Nightline." I guess that means Jimmy could be pushed to 12:30. Boo! Fortunately there are a couple of other deep-pocketed suitors also interested in hiring Jay when his NBC contract expires in January 2010. There is also enough time for "Jimmy Kimmel Live" to continue gaining momentum and to solidify its place in the late-night lineup. By the time all is said and done, Carter will have enough material for a sequel to his book "The Late Shift."

thank the academy

The Oscars are always must-see TV at our house even though I've seen hardly any of the nominated movies this year. In the past, my wife and I have made an effort to see the films nominated for the major awards. With the price of gas and everything else going up and money getting tight, I am reluctant to shell out cash for movie tickets, much less the concessions.

Lately some movies I had wanted to see in the theater have been showing on a plethora of HD channels. In the past month I've seen "Children of Men," "Pride" and "The Astronaut Farmer." None of them won any Oscars but I enjoyed them nevertheless.

I won't attempt to live-blog the awards like they're doing at Best Week Ever and elsewhere. However, I noticed a few things worth mentioning. Did Steve Carell actually curse when pretending to be upset that he was presenting the animation award instead of the documentary award? One of his "shoots" sounded like the real deal to me.

During the dead celebrity tribute, I always feel embarrassed for the people who don't get applause. Some of the deceased get carryover applause by having their name announced right after a popular actor or actress. Shouldn't they mute the microphones during the annual montage?

I thought I saw Knoxville Catholic High School alumnus Cormac McCarthy in the audience when the Coen brothers won the adapted screenplay award. Yes, it was him. They pointed him out when "No Country For Old Men" won Best Picture.

All night long I've been trying to catch a glimpse of Diablo Cody's shoes. I read that she was going to wear the million dollar pair from Stuart Weitzman. Why do I care? One year, Stuart's publicist hired me to help out during Oscar week. According to her blog, Diablo has mixed feelings about wearing them. Oh yeah, she won an Oscar for "Juno," one of the few nominated movies that I saw.

Hey, the "I Drink Your Milkshake" guy won! I look forward to seeing that movie next year when it's on HBO or Showtime.

thanks for your vote

The official results of the East Tennessee's Best Readers Poll were in this morning's Knoxville News Sentinel. Because I knew my name would be in the paper as first runner-up in the voting for best local blogger, I thought it might be nice to pick up a few extra copies for family members. I flipped to the Favorite Pastimes section and looked for my category. The fact that I had gotten more votes than world famous super blogger (and second runner-up) Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com was overshadowed by the picture and description of the winner. The page was dominated by a large photo of Justis Richert, also known as Knoxville-based adult performer Barbie Cummings. Her now-defunct blog was voted number one. I won't be sending a tear sheet to Mom or Grandma.

I also won't be going to the awards luncheon to pick up my certificate. I wanted to go, like I did five years ago. I even emailed Jack Lail asking if he knew the date of the ceremony. I got a reply from the paper's marketing department. They offered to send my award to me. It turns out that the banquets have been discontinued due to poor attendance. Maybe they could have gotten more people to show up if they could guarantee that Justis/Barbie would be there.

how is this possible?

No matter how many times I replayed the voice mail message, it did not change. "Hey Frank Murphy, this is Sherry Long from the Knoxville News Sentinel. I wanted to let you know that you placed first runner-up in the East Tennessee's Best Readers Poll for the best local blogger." She went on to ask if I wanted to buy an ad in the October 19th special section announcing the winners. I called her back to explain that my blog doesn't generate any money, it's just a hobby. Maybe I should accept some ads. Any thoughts?

Obviously I am very happy about the news that I am now an award-winning blogger but I am also quite surprised. Make that shocked. First of all, thank you for voting for me. I really did not see this coming especially since there are so many great blogs in this area that get a lot more page views than I do. I'm chagrined that I didn't cast a vote for myself because I didn't think I had a chance of winning. In the past I have tried to drum up support for Einstein Simplified in the Metro Pulse poll, always to no avail.

It's been five years since I was invited to the East Tennessee's Best award luncheon. In 2002, I was fortunate enough to win a runner-up award in the morning radio duo category less than a year after moving to Knoxville. I may have gotten the wrong idea that winning was easy. I appreciate it more this time. Thanks again!

batmobile lost a wheel

"One Knoxville media personality" is a media label used by Terry Morrow yesterday in his review of the Emmy Awards. I'm pretty sure he's referring to me and I'm thrilled about it. In context, the whole sentence reads as follows:

As one Knoxville media personality cracked to Tele-buddy on Monday: The Emmys paled next to even some commonplace affairs like the People’s Choice Awards.

Also more entertaining than the Emmys is the coverage of the award show on the gossip blog Crazy Days and Nights. They supposedly had an actress texting some dirt from inside the ceremony. They followed that with some juicy blind items about the backstage goings on. I'm a new reader to CD&N. I first heard of it about two weeks ago when I found a link to the surprising Old Hollywood story of an award winning actress who was really a man. The answer to the mystery was revealed today. TV's Joker is also involved.

The topic of media labels came up in January, 2006 when I found one that would amuse my friend Bean. The mention was in my review of "Carved In Bone." Meanwhile, Bean and his wife are vacationing in Italy this week. He's been sending me occasional emails from his i-Phone including one of his wife waiting in line at the Sistine Chapel and one of his new Pope snow globe.

first b.r.a.

So what if it's a new twist on the old chain letter? So what if it's just another type of meme? I won an Blogger Reflection Award and I'm happy about it. D.O.M Dan has chosen to award my efforts this Labor Day weekend. In 25 months of blogging, I have now received exactly one award and one meme. Dan gave a posthumous award to Bean's Blog, which I also miss a great deal. I accept this award and thank Dan for his gracious remarks:

My final award goes to Frank Murphy. I discovered Frank’s blog while reading Bean’s Blog. Frank posts everyday, and I think that alone is deserving of an award. Frank is a man of faith whose posts are many times about his family, sometimes about his town of Knoxville, sometimes about his life experiences and travels, and although I don’t often leave comments, I read it regularly.

Rules of participating:
1. Copy these rules.
2. Reflect on five bloggers and write a least a paragraph about each one.
3. Make sure you link to this post so others can read it and the rules.
4. Leave your chosen bloggers a comment to let them know they've been given the award.
5. Put the award icon on your site

East Tennessee is a hotspot for blogging. Four of my five award recipients are from the Volunteer state. First, I choose to award Shots Across the Bow. Rich Hailey gave me the nudge I needed to start blogging in the first place. His political and social commentary rings true with me almost every time. He recently wrote that the way to get teenagers to stop wearing their pants ridiculously low would be for their parents to start wearing them that way.

About two months before I started my blog, I went to a party at Rich Hailey's. That's where I met Les Jones and his wife. I started reading his blog and found a lot of things I was interested in and only a few that I wasn't. I choose to award Les.

Frank Strovel somehow found my blog and posts an occasional comment. I began reading his regularly and I have linked to it several times. Blogging is not a competition, yet I sometimes feel like I've been scooped by Frank's fine efforts. Especially when I first learn of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" news on his site. Left of the Dial receives my next award.

Byron Chesney has multiple sites. His Knoxville Trivia Blog is a regular read for me. He had a great post recently about the lawn sprinklers running at a local utility office during the drought. Obviously I especially enjoy his posts about the local TV news. For that, he gets an award.

I seriously thought about reserving my final award for a blog that I haven't discovered yet. Perhaps you readers would suggest some new ones for me to try. But that would be a cop out. Ken Levine's blog has become hugely popular and doesn't need any help from me. Similarly, I have disqualified professional blogs by very talented newspaper writers. Instead I'll give my fifth award to Perry Simon. He and I will never root for the same sports teams but I can still appreciate his fandom for teams I really dislike. Add to that his vast knowledge of radio and I'm hooked.

did get fooled again

Between TiVo and online streaming, it's getting harder to miss your favorite TV shows. Yet I missed one of my favorites on Sunday night through no fault of my own. When the bloated Oscar telecast finally ended 53 minutes behind schedule, I manually reprogrammed my TiVo to record "Jimmy Kimmel Live" with a couple of minutes of wiggle room on either side. Today when I sat down to watch Jimmy's post-Oscar special, I was extremely disappointed to find that our local ABC affiliate did not carry it, even though the TV listings said they would. After the Oscars, their local news was followed by an old episode of "CSI Miami" which was followed by that night's edition of "The George Michael Sports Machine." Instead of Kimmel, I got Caine. Jimmy's post-Oscar special must have been pretty good. It's supposed to be repeated when he goes on vacation next week.

get to the good stuff already

After looking forward to the Oscars for weeks, both my wife and I are having a hard time staying awake for them. The HD broadcast looks good but we're an hour and forty-five minutes into the show and they've only handed out one major award so far. Eddie Murphy (no relation) got robbed. The other supporting actor nominees were all deserving though. Why not alternate between the popular and technical awards? The live bloggers at Popwatch and Best Week Ever are doing a good job of describing the boring parts without falling asleep.

Jimmy Kimmel has a post-Oscar show on ABC tonight, which I will record. I was thinking about recording the "Ellen" and "Live with Regis & Kelly" post-Oscar shows tomorrow morning but my interest is waning. Here's a note to my sleepy wife: click here in the morning to see some of what you're missing right now.

hooray for Hollywood

The movie review in my favorite magazine says that if you love "Entertainment Weekly," you will love "For Your Consideration." It's another comedy from the same people who did the very funny "Best In Show." This time they make fun of "Oscar buzz," the industry's speculation over who will get an Academy Award nomination. However this time they don't use the "mockumentary" style that I love so much. I enjoyed the movie but some of the satire rang so true that it made me a little sad, especially toward the end. I would have rather left the theater laughing than feeling bummed out. I still liked it better than Betsy Pickle did.

I promised to tell you how I have participated in some Oscar hype myself. The now split public relations team of Weissman/Angellotti once asked me to book a then little known writer/director/actor as a guest on the Mark & Brian show. Their pitch convinced us to have Billy Bob Thornton come on to promote "Sling Blade." It would be great if our listeners bought tickets to go see the movie but they were really trying to reach any Academy voters in our audience. We made Billy Bob promise to return if he won the Oscar. He showed up the morning after still wearing his tux and carrying the trophy.

During my unscheduled hiatus from radio in 2001, publicist Roger Neal would occasionally hire me for odd jobs. He had me escort celebrities down the press line at the Saturn Awards. I delivered stuff to fashion stylists like Phillip Bloch. I babysat camera crews from CNN and Entertainment Tonight. The most interesting task was working the Stuart Weitzman hospitality suite during Oscar week. Stylists would come by to get free shoes for their clients to wear to the Academy Awards and/or any Oscar party where there would be a camera and an opportunity to tell a reporter whose shoes they were wearing. A few actresses showed up to claim their shoes in person.

I wish "For Your Consideration" spent less of its time on the set of "Home For Purim," the film within the film, and more time on the all the stuff that happens after a movie wraps. As the announcement of the Oscar nominations neared, the characters were briefly interviewed by radio deejays and TV hosts. The satire seemed sharpest when skewering shows like "Access Hollywood" and "Good Day L.A." Both Jane Lynch and Fred Willard were letter perfect in their roles as the hosts of "Hollywood Now."

The filmmakers were willing to parody the moviemaking process but they went too easy on the actual awards. They missed an opportunity to spoof some of the lesser award shows like the Golden Globes and the Critics' Choice Awards. They could have ridiculed all the free stuff given to nominees and presenters. But if they did that, they may have found themselves empty-handed when award season comes around in the Spring.