Blog Spelled Backwards is Golb

Bottles of wine bearing the image of Greta Garbo are set to go on sale Oct. 1 to commemorate the 100th birthday of the Swedish actress. It will be a limited edition sparkling wine called the 2001 Greta Garbo Brut Rose. If she were alive today, I'm sure Greta would have said, "I want to be Merlot."
The Emmys were certainly a train wreck of massive proportions, weren't they? This was possibly even worse than the Tribute to Comedy a couple of years back. Anybody remember Wanda Sykes trying to get the audience to dance and Peter Krause from SIX FEET UNDER was the only taker. Funny...he wasn't nominated again after that incident and nobody saw Wanda Sykes again for a looonnngg time. This year, they made Doris Roberts dance with Earth, Wind and Fire or The Black-Eyed Peas, which ever it was, it was definitely an embarrassment. Poor Ellen DeGeneres. After 9/11, she brought the house down with the postponed Emmy show and gave her career a second life. She should be thankful she has her talk show to fall back on after Sunday night. It was as if her angel fish character from FINDING NEMO fell out of the aquarium and flopped on the floor, gasping for air...or Bruce Vilanch. The show suffered from that insipid Emmy Idol crap that was saved by the "great" Shatner with the STAR TREK theme. However, the show forward promoted it so much that by the time they performed the bit, the surprise was zilch, therefore it scored only a double, not a home run like it could have. The GREEN ACRES piece with Trump, having the luxury of being first, beat it hands down as the highlight of the night, which is saying absolutely nada. As for the awards themselves, as I said, who cares? If any of the DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES had to win, I'm glad it was the one real actress-Felicity Huffman.
By the way, what's the deal with James Spader? Has he been hanging around Shatner too much? Damn he's a weird duck.

In other TV related nonsense...
NIP/TUCK is back and all is well. Any show that features an obese woman whose skin has been grafted to a sofa she's been sitting in for three years is okay with me.
RESCUE ME went out as it came...beautifully. I can't wait until next season. However, I have to agree with Entertainment Weekly's critic Dalton Ross who said that the musical montage that closed every episode, as it does with several other series, is a technique that has been done to death and has become the most commonly used cliche of modern TV. I hope its days are numbered.

I hope my aren't.

A Little Yin For My Yang

Every now and then I find it necessary to balance out all the bitching and moaning I find myself

perpetuating in this web log thingamajig with some things that I actually enjoy enough to pass on to you, the public...or anybody that happens to come across this tree that falls in the the forest every two weeks or so.
Here are three for now:

1. RESCUE ME-The FX cable network has managed to pop out some excellent television on a less-than-regular basis. THE SHIELD, the documentary series (I refuse to use the "reality show" moniker) 30 DAYS and of course, the one and only NIP/TUCK, the most deviously clever hour of dramatic television of the last five years (returning this September). Right up there with the PLASTIC SURGEON FUNHOUSE is Dennis Leary and Peter Tolan's RESCUE ME, a no-holds-barred look at a New York firehouse in the post 9/11 world. Always amusing, often heart-wrenching, sometimes outrageous, this show takes absolutely no prisoners in its depiction of people who face a life and death struggle each and every day of their lives. This may be more of a guy's show than anything else, but if that's true, it takes the guy's show to a whole new level. I don't mean in an idiotic Tom Leykis fashion either but with a wit and intelligence not often seen in these circumstances. RESCUE ME shows men in all their complexity-heroic, moronic, childish and paternal. It is the male equivalent of SEX AND THE CITY and it's about time. The first season is out now on DVD if you'd rather catch this from the beginning instead of diving right in the middle. While you're at it, check out Leary's other series THE JOB, also out on DVD. New episodes of RESCUE ME air Tuesday nights at 10pm and are repeated throughout the week.

2. HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS-recently released on DVD and now showing on pay per view, this is not just another martial arts film, despite the pulpy title, but the best love story of the year. (That's right. A love story. I am a big mush pot. I've heard it before.) Director Zhang Yimou's followup to last year's best film, HERO, may not be as fantastic as its predecessor, but it ranks a close second. It does, however,contain one of the most spectacular action scenes ever filmed-a battle in a bamboo forest, one of those jaw-dropping sequences that is forever etched into my memory. HOUSE stars the great Ziyi Zhang of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON and HERO, putting her right on the top shelf of one of the current world cinema's finest treasures. She has the sweetest little smile and would kick your ass from here until next Spring. Her co-star, Takeshi Kaneshiro, has the potential to be a real international star as well. A spectacular picture.My only regret is that I didn't see this on the big screen. My loss.

3. TAKE 5-The best damn candy bar of the new millennium-milk chocolate, peanuts, caramel, peanut butter and a salty pretzel-right in the middle. Sweet and savory all in one bite. Here's the real Yin and Yang! Hershey's, you've done it again.

A TV show, a Kung Fu movie and a candy bar...
They might not seem like much of a silver lining to you, but to me...
at least they're something.