It's a boy for Teresa Strasser

Chatter on her Facebook page indicates and a Twitter posting confirms that Teresa Strasser has given birth to a boy.

Teresa is the writer, television and radio personality former Tabloid Baby adversary (she took up the cudgel against our criticism of The Adam Carolla Radio Show, where she once toiled) who turned Tabloid Baby pal about six months ago, after she sent us the nicest note and began a correspondence that made us realize she's actually a very sincere, very genuine person.

And now she's a mom.

Teresa has been chronicling her pregnancy and expectations in a very engaging fashion on her website. Check it out. And mazel tov and congratulations to all.

SEPT. 27th UPDATE: Teresa writes on her Facebook page: "Nathaniel James was born Sept. 24th at 2:57 p.m. He has long feet, a full head of light brown hair and dimples. Thanks so much for all the love. I'm overwhelmed." To Tabloid Baby, she adds: "Thanks for this... Yep. I'm a mom. Writing to you from the hospital where baby and I are doing great."

We like Teresa Strasser now. We heard from Teresa Strasser and now Teresa Strasser is a Tabloid Baby pal.

We like Teresa Strasser now. We had a problem with Teresa Strasser about a year or so ago, but we don't have a problem any more.

The Emmy-winning writer, Emmy- nominated television host and journalist walked into our sights after she was hired to replace Rachel Perry as the "news girl" on the Adam Carolla radio program that took over Howard Stern’s timeslot in Los Angeles and other cities, a show that could only be an also-ran in comparison to the colossal enterprise that betrayed its listeners by moving to a private paid channel, but which sank lower in our estimation through its determined arrogance, amateurishness, boorishness and bullying. Teresa then accepted a job on the whitewashed syndicated television version of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, and after we criticized her role on that fetid platform, she “called us out” on the radio:

“… this media blogger, for some reason he just hates me, and he never writes about the contents of anything I do or my writing, he just writes about how ugly I am…. This guy has a site. I don’t want to say the name of it….But he writes about media... that’s his beat. He writes about our show here, the Adam Carolla Show, and he writes about TMZ… He’s written a book in the past and I think he used to work on Hard Copy. But he can’t work in television any more… I try to put it out of my mind because I thought this is just one guy and I’ve been really lucky I’ve had nothing but mostly nice things written about me. But I woke up this morning and the first thing… I just thought. 'I’m so ugly, I’m too ugly for television.' I started crying.”

Words to that effect only got us going...


So we had an old-fashioned media feud. And while it’s worth mentioning that at the time of our tiff, our online pal Luke Ford chastised us for our “low blow” criticism of Teresa (whom he described as “smoking hot”), we eventually moved on from the Carolla show (she'd left the whitewashed syndicated sister of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site after a few months). We probably last mentioned Teresa in April 2008. Earlier this year, the Carolla show was moved off the radio.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, from out of the blue, we got a Facebook message from Teresa, explaining why she hadn’t accepted our “friend” request.

We won’t reveal the exact contents of the note or the exchange that followed, but will say that we rarely get feedback from celebrities and that she dropped us a note because Luke Ford had vouched for us. We’ll also say that Teresa Strasser is not a phony, manufactured sob sister. What we heard on the radio is apparently what she is in life.


Teresa Strasser is a very nice woman.

She’s now a Tabloid Baby pal. And we are her pal.

Teresa, by the way, is married and, we’re very happy to announce, expecting her first child.

She writes about the impending birth, and reveals that Meredith Vieira smells of “powder, lilacs, and poise” (we’d have expected Grey Goose, Dermablend and Jeff Zucker), in her latest column, which you can read here, and which we hope will lead to a book.

Check out Teresa Strasser’s website here. She celebrates the typewriter, which makes us like her even more.

Harvey Levin wants to spank Oscar

Remember the corporate porn-pushing gossip site, TMZ.com? In recent months, it's proven to be about as relevant as the late Adam Carolla radio show, despite blowing wads (of money) on acquiring a photo of the allegedly Brown-battered Rihanna and its bizarre misogynist stalking of the "Octo Mom" (a story beyond the sewer site's self-imposed "Twink Male Zone"; a departure equivalent to Entertainment Tonight's obsession with severe anorexics). And today evidence of its irrelevance is displayed as TMZ headmaster Harvey's Hollywood hatred and jealousy-- and particular kinks-- come to a head with a campaign urging readers to send in their own nasty, jealous observations while watching the Academy Awards on TV. Any qualms over showing a black handprint on a female ass while pimping Rihanna's abuse elsewhere on the site? We're told morality was not the reason for debate in the TMZ "jacuze"-room over the decision to give Oscar a sex change in the ads-- or to add covering to the statuette's' usually bare bottom. Spank The Academy? Dream on, sister.

We called it in 2006: CBS Radio cancels Carolla

It's official. Adam Carolla has lost his radio show. Anyone listening this morning to the painful banter and bluster between Carolla and his nails-on-a-blackboard guest David Allen Grier would not be surprised and probably be thankful to read this afternoon's LA Times report:

"Beginning Friday at 5 p.m., ...KLSX (97.1 Free FM) will switch formats... to CBS Radio's latest concept, titled AMP Radio.

"During the last three months of 2008, KLSX averaged a 1.3% audience share among listeners 12 and older, which placed the station at No. 27 in the market. In fact, KLSX never truly recovered in the ratings after losing its major morning lead-in, Howard Stern, to satellite radio. When Stern was still on the air in late 2005 at 97.1, the station enjoyed a 2.2 share...

"...Beginning next week, new episodes of Carolla's show will no longer broadcast in any market, although it is believed that "best of" shows may air in some territories..."

Los Angeles to lose its worst talk radio station

We haven't bothered with Adam Carolla's radio show in the past year or so, as it slid from shockingly amateurish and boorish offensiveness (all the worst because it replaced Howard Stern in Los Angeles) to a bland, neutered version of its droning self after its sole saving grace Danny Bonaduce was jettisoned and the show took on a more feminized demeanour in wake of Carolla's Dancing with The Stars appearance. But attention should be paid as it is rumoured that Friday is the show's last day on the air in L.A. Friday is also apparently the final day on the air for the mirthless, forced laughter of the Frosty, Heidi and Frank team, and for Tom Leykis (who sounds too often like his strained voice needs a rest, anyway), because radio station KLSX is switching from talk to an all-music format-- reportedly Top 40. Note that the imminent departure of these talents does not bring the same bemoaning wails of a month ago, when a format change at 103.1 forced the departure of the singular Jonesy's Jukebox.

Indie 103.1

So after two days of announcements interspersed with Offspring songs and Sid Vicious' version of My Way, Los Angeles' Indie 103.1 is officially gone this morning, off the air, exiled to the Internet and replaced by a Mexican music station-- some good rootsy Mexican music, but nevertheless-- let's take stock: Los Angeles radio still offers

John & Ken,
Mark & Brian,
Frosty, Heidi & Frank
and
Adam Carolla.

But no Jonesy's Jukebox.

Okay.

Howard Stern regular dies and nobody hears

If a
Howard Stern
sidekick
drops dead
and nobody
hears about it,
is he really dead?

Well, it's happened, but who would know? Or care? Gosh, has it really been that long since Howard was relevant-- or even real? For you younger readers growing up in an aural wasteland dominated by the likes of the surprisingly pliable and recently feminized monotonal bore Adam Carolla (he now plays the “modern woman” to his pre-liberation sidekick Teresa Strasser and Eighties pop culture gal “Bald Brian”) there was a time when the radio personality was a vital force in pop culture, with his radio show debated on television and in print and the comings and goings of his subsidiary characters like Jackie The Jokeman and Stuttering John treated like characters on a radio reality show.

But since Howard sold out his fans and moved to private pay radio, he works in a vacuum. Forgotten by the mainstream and occasionally popping up in the media few days after the fact, thanks to a vigorous PR efforts and public displays of inebriation by his pathetic sidekick Artie Lange (whose phony on-air explosion and possible "firing" was an obvious publicity stunt before a vacation a couple of weeks back), whose sad claim to fame is being at the top of most Celebrity Death Pools.

But another Stern player has beaten Artie to the punch. Kenneth Keith Kallenbach, the hippie burnout who parlayed his Stern exposure into other appearances, died in jail last week (he'd been arrested for pulling an underage girl into his car-- looks like Howard didn't bail him out). The death was announced Thursday on Howard’s private show, but news from Stern's hideout travels as quickly as it did in the days of Pony Express.

Who would know if we didn’t mention it here?

On the breakup of Conway & Whitman

Don't we know how to pick 'em? Only weeks after we praised Tim Conway Jr. and Brian Whitman's nightly radio show on the creaky KLSX in Los Angeles comes word that Whitman has quit, leaving Conway Jr. and fans in the lurch.

Some of those fans have set up a tribute board (here) to memorialize Whitman, who came on board to replace Conway Jr.'s first partner, cranky old man Doug Steckler, and over the course of two years managed to, as we wrote:

"...settle into a rare, classic talk radio groove... two guys cracking each other up, and in the process, entertaining a wide audience..."

Word is that Whitman's got depression or something, though the resignation comes in wake of the recent and disturbing on-air fantasizing and virtual stalking of Whitman by Frosty Stilwell (right), who plays the celibate eunuch on the station's midday talk show on which he, a raunchy younger male and a recently-announced "lesbian" (collectively "The Triplets") trade mundane insights punctuated by mirthless fake laughter.

We'd hoped that the break-up announcement was the precursor to an April Fool's Day joke, but apparently it's not, and it's all the more disheartening in light of the continued presence of Adam Carolla's failed morning radio show on the same station.

In a last-ditch attempt to boost ratings,management is apparently switching gears and feminizing the boorish, luggish Carolla and aiming his show away from the beer-belching frat boy crowd and toward the LGBT community, with a slant toward queer-friendly guests and topics, a movie collaboration with the star and director of the lesbian romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein, a stint on Dancing with the Stars, and a new gossipy gay bent to the show, like this morning's dishing of Kimora Lee Simmons (Carolla did manage to insert his more familiar racism into the "rant"). And where he once could, if he hadn't been so insecure, bounce off the testosterone-pumped brilliance of Danny Bonaduce, Carolla is now egged on by encouraging one-line squeaks from the wispy, estrogenic voice of someone called "Bald Brian" and and the self-pitying "smartypants" whining of pre-Feminine Mystique-styled "girl" Teresa Strasser. We realize we'd said we probably weren't going to be writing about the passe Carolla any more, but this doesn't count because we're really writing about Conway and Whitman.

We probably won't be complaining or writing about The Adam Carolla Radio Show any more

Not after seeing this. What's the point, right?

Carolla's "news girl" brags to the lovelorn

From this morning's
broadcast of
The Adam Carolla
Radio Show:

Bobby Slayton: "Valentine's Day was on a Thursday--"

Carolla: "It was a Wednesday."

Teresa Strasser: No. Thursday. That was the day I got engaged."

Teresa Strasser, the former cable television hostess, short-lived reader on the inconsequential whitewashed syndicated television version of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, and "news girl" and self-proclaimed "co-host" of the radio show that replaced Howard Stern in LA and a few other markets, is using her recent engagement to relaunch her sideline career as a stereotypical, pre-liberation, unlucky-at-love, single Jewish girl sob sister columnist.

Her latest essay appears this morning in The Jewish Journal:

"There's nothing more smug and insidious than a girl who has finally fallen in love and thinks she now has all the answers. She can save you from your sad, pathetic, damaged love life and cure you of your nasty man-repellant habits. No matter what condescending tip she's giving you, it always drips with the self-satisfied knowledge that the spinster bullet she so artfully dodged is headed straight for you.

"I hate that girl.

"I can't turn into her, and maybe that's why I haven't written for the past nine months, since I met and fell in love with the first man I've ever been sure about. When it finally happened, it felt much more like dumb luck than brilliant man maneuvering. More dice than poker. I can't be gloating all the way to the altar because the fact is, I'm just a girl who left the house one Saturday night to have dinner with her girlfriends, saw a cute guy across the room and hit the jackpot.

"The only magical insight I can share with you has to do with the leaving the house part. Even Eli Manning can't throw a touchdown if he doesn't break out of the huddle. That's really all I can tell you for sure..."

"When I ask myself how I finally stopped screwing up my love life, the only answer that comes to mind is the same one famously used by one of Ernest Hemingway's characters to explain how he went bankrupt: 'Two ways, first gradually then suddenly.'

"The gradual part was the usual therapy in Tarzana... The suddenly part was meeting a guy who is so boundlessly good-natured and patient that he makes me want to bake him cakes and write syrupy e-mails..."

Teresa moves on to the cliche of connecting creativity with her neuroses and happiness, confirming the bond, by name, to Sixties columnist Erma Bombeck, and though the column ends on the cute-- "Three days after writing this column, she got engaged. She is very happy -- hopefully, not too happy."-- repeating the claim that "love" has kept her from writing "a darn thing" in nine months, hinting that in a passive-aggressive fashion, she's blaming her new beau for her lack of creative output (rather than focusing on months of abuse in Carolla's shadow), which doesn't bode well for the writer's-blocked days to come. We wish her the best.

(And a tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to our pal Luke Ford...)

Free advice for radio host Adam Carolla

#101: When doing a phone interview with a heavyweight comedian like Larry The Cable Guy, don't cut him off and then keep him on hold for four minutes while you go into a bit about comics being forced to do the acts of others, cracking yourself up the entire time while Larry's mic is shut off. Generosity is a key to being a good radio host and getting guests in the future.

Note to his "news girl" and self-proclaimed "co-host" Teresa Strasser: While it certainly serves you well to polish the apple of your sexist boss Carolla by chirping in with repetitive words of reinforcement, as in...

Carolla: "Larry, we have to do a television show where every comedian has to spin a wheel and do the other comedian's act..."
Strasser: "The wheel of comedy!"
Carolla: "Blather blather blather..."

...this is not exactly Robin Quivers-level radio work.

Adam Carolla, the personal trainer-turned-quasicomic and former sex show wisecracker who was handed Howard Stern's radio slot in LA and a few other markets two long years ago and has driven it into the ground ever since, has recently shown himself open to change, with a reported feminization of his anti-entertainment show and a very "gay" upcoming stint on Dancing with the Stars. So we're sure he'll be open to suggestuons from a group of frequent listeners.

Stay tuned here for more Free Advice for Radio Host Adam Carolla...

Adam Carolla goes gay, explores feminine side

We haven’t done any extended listening to the Adam Carolla Radio Show in a couple of weeks, and we have to admit we haven’t missed the amateurish borefest that two years ago had the misfortune of replacing Howard Stern’s brilliance with its host's solipsism, insecurity and arrogant mediocrity.

We’ll admit, we threw up our hands when Carolla engineered the ouster of the entertaining Danny Bonaduce, whose presence on the show in 2007 saved it from certain cancellation, before Carolla staged a backstabbing coup, just in time for Christmas. Without Bonaduce’s genius crowd appeal, Carolla seems to be on the exit ramp once again, but recent events have shown he’s tap dancing to stay afloat on the rolling log of show business survival. He crossed picket lines to appear on Jay Leno’s show; this week it was announced he’ll join other D-listers competing on Dancing with The Stars; and according to another regular listener, he’s shifting his show focus to appeal to an audience beyond the xenophobic, women-fearing fratboy crowd he was molded to serve.

“Sam V,” like us, was banished from even viewing the Adam Carolla Show Message Board for posting an item that the webmistress found inappropriate (translation: “Not worshipful to Carolla”). In a message to Tablidbaby.com, he offers a different take on the show, which we post, with footnotes:

After being banned from the "Official Adam Carolla Show" board (1) for the fourth time. I thought I would write you with the new direction the show is going.

Since Adam's show will never be a male ratings contender anymore, it seems like Adam is now targeting chicks and gay dudes (nothing wrong with that):

* Adam is now on Dancing with the Stars (2)
* Lynn and Alex America’s favorite gay couple (3)

* First they had Teresa's "fake" wedding

* Now they made a big deal about Teresa's engagement (4) (she even barged into Frosty, Heidi, and Frank (5) to yap about it, who cares?)

I can list dozens more examples, but If the topics aren't gay or female-related they are boring crap like one of this week’s topics:

* "Wedding Songs that you WANT to hear, and Wedding Songs you DON’T want to hear.

* Movie reviews that you can't understand because a guy with a Nicaraguan accent (6) reads them ( I get it, funny the first dozen times).

I don't see how this show can stay on this long.

On the upside, I can’t wait for Adam’s fans to see him wearing spandex doing the tango. I can hear it now: “Is this The Man Show (7) Adam?”

FOOTNOTES:

1 See TabloidBaby.com, January 11, 2008: “Carolla, unfettered! Carolla, unlistenable.”

2 Tabloidbaby.com, February 19, 2008, “Adam Carolla is the new Heather Mills.”

3 A West Hollywood gay couple who competed on The Amazing Race 7, they have gone on to market themselves as stereotypical "gossip queens,” and, like Perez Hilton, have been regular guests, and targets of ridicule, on the Carolla show.

4 A former third-tier cable television presenter and writer affiliated with Carolla mentor Jimmy Kimmel who was recently fired from an on-air role on the inconsequential whitewashed syndicated television version of the corporate porn-pushing website TMZ.com, Teresa Strasser cultivated a “smartypants” image when she joined the show as newsreader, but gradually emerged with a pre-liberation self-pitying, luckless “single girl” persona, whose recent engagement serves to continue the character arc that will surely end in disappointment. Allows Carolla and his jock sidekicks to refer to her “V” and to refer to her as a “Jewish news girl.” Now that Bonaduce is gone from the show, she serves to encourage Carolla’s droning monologues by parroting the end of his sentences. Warning to Carolla: refers to herself as “news girl and co-host” on her MySpace page (where her picture shows off an "engagement" ring-- apparently from a pre-engagment photo session). Tabloidbaby.com, January 8, 2008, “While Carolla gets a third chance to make his radio show work, his ‘news girl’ could use a new photo”; October 5, 2007, “Exclusive! TMZ-Carolla-girl Teresa Strasser nude!”

5 The radio team that follows Carolla’s show in Los Angeles is distinguished by regular injections of forced, fake, mirthless laughter throughout their conversations. Tabloid Baby, December 12, 2006, “Carolla Forced to partner with Danny Bonaduce!”

6 Carolla has regularly humiliated a Nicaraguan construction worker named Ozzy, laughing hysterically and mockingly as he has the man read movie reviews and song lyrics in his thick accent. Carolla excuses the racism by pointing out that he gives Ozzy work and that he is a “close friend.” See Tabloidbaby.com, Adam Carolla search.

7 An old Comedy Central series originally hosted by Carolla and mentor Kimmel, celebrating loutish, racist, sexist males also known as “couch potatoes.”

Adam Carolla is the new Heather Mills

Ha! Don't we have a lot of influence! From Harvey Levin to Heather Mills, offensive media figures only seem to rise in stature and success after they cross the Tabloid Baby radar screen and become the subjects of our howling warnings into the wind! The latest recipient of the inverse effects of our inveighing is the boorish and boring morning radio "host" Adam Carolla. The egomaniacal mediocrity who's punished LA radio listeners with his repetitive, elongated dronings for more than two years now since he was sadistically given Howard Stern's morning show, has just ben handed a gig on a popular reality TV series and is probably on his way to mainstream stardom despite of-- hey, more likely because of-- our attentions!

Carolla's ties to mentor and business partner Jimmy Kimmel got him the radio show and have kept him on the air. Now the Kimmel connection has paid off once again, as Carolla's been selected as one of the competitors in the sixth season of ABC's Dancing with The Stars (Kimmel, ABCs late night host, does comedy segments on the series). And just as producers referred to Season Four competitor Mills, best known as a one-legged former porn model and alleged prostitute and Paul McCartney nemesis, as a "charity campaigner," so is Carolla named in production notes as a "TV and radio personality." Sure, the Dancing contestants are a mangy brood of D-list wannabes, has beens, never wases and never heard ofs, but they do tend to get more work from the gig. And though we wonder how Carolla's homophobic fratboy fanbase will handle the news (our guess is that he'll cast himself in the "nimble boxer" role that Evander Holyfield and Floyd Mayweather held in past seasons), at this point, we're betting on Larry Baras becoming the next commissioner of Major League Baseball. That's just how influential we are, and how much our opinion counts.

What's right with Conway & Whitman's radio show illustrates what's so wrong with Adam Carolla's

You should have heard Tim Conway Jr. and Brian Whitman, the night team on KLSX Radio in LA (where Adam Carolla whiles away the mornings) break down Larry King’s Snoop Dogg interview last night. It was a casual radio classic: two guys stopping and starting a tape and riffing on it, cracking each other up, and in the process, entertaining a wide audience.

As we were laughing out loud in the car, we realized that what’s right about these two guys, paired up by management in 2005 after Conway’s partner, old Midwestern comedy writer Dennis Ray Steckler was bounced, demonstrate what’s so wrong about the failed yet highly-paid morning man.

Among other serious deficiencies, Carollas’s got no one to bounce jokes or ideas off. Since he maneuvered the ouster of Danny Bonaduce, a cohost who was more than his equal in experience and charisma (yet who gamely took the second chair), he continues his self-indulgent monotony in a vacuum. His fawning, self-described “news girl” is like a nervous beaten puppy, trying to please her master by parroting the ends of his sentences, while the only other on air voices are those of crew members who act like members of a jock club of which Carolla is president.

In a radio roundup a few years back, weeks before Carolla was handed the microphone, we’d listed Conway & Whitman under “Sad” because of the way they’d simply carried on the Conway-Steckler shtick and bits. In the time since, though, they’ve developed their own chemistry and style, and when they’re doing live shows from bars or casinos, urging women to pull off their shirts, they’ve settled into a rare, classic talk radio groove. Conway has always been one of the driest, most cynical old school wits in radio, more Hollywood Park than Hollywood, and Whitman, a radio impressionist, is quick and very funny, with a very good Rick Dees.

One sour note: We almost didn’t make it to the Larry King bit, thanks to a bit, featuring a woman called “Robin” reading the news in an exaggerated Margaret Dumont voice, that was so annoying we’d switched stations until she went away. Whether she’s a consultant’s addition, someone's wife or another Whitman voice, she needs to go.

You can probably find Conway & Whitman's King-Snoop (and "Robin with the news") segment here.

Bye-byes begin: Carolla loses San Francisco

Adam Carolla's notorious radio show, which has been given a third chance to succeed since the semicomic was unlucky enough to have been given the late Howard Stern's morning timeslot in LA and a few other western cities in January 2006, is on shakier ground than CBS Radio's letting on. As the colossal bore struggles on without sparkplug and attention-competing Danny Bonaduce (aced out by Carolla in a jealous coup last month), he seems happy as a pig in a mud bath in the solo spotlight, with the fawning Teresa Strasser (apparently dumped, as we'd predicted, from her role on the inconsequential whitewashed syndicated television version of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, where her tired plainness was no match for the pretty young things who make up Harvey Levin's band of lost boys) and an obsequious amateur called Brian managing to interject occasional encouraging phrases amid his droning monologues and time-killing characters like "The Deaf Frat Guy," the Carolla show has been axed in San Francisco, as The Chronicle's (and Rolling Stone legend) Ben Fong-Torres reports at the bottom of his radio column:

WAKE-UP SHAKE-UPS: Adam Carolla, anointed by CBS Radio to be Howard Stern's replacement in major markets after Stern's move to Sirius satellite, is no longer heard in the Bay Area. He'd been on KIFR (Free FM at 106.9) until CBS ditched the rowdy-talk format last June for lack of ratings, replacing it with the return of KFRC. Because Carolla's contract called for him to have an affiliate in San Francisco, CBS moved him - and other talk shows - to KYCY (1550 AM). That is, until Dec. 31, when the deal expired. Carolla carries on in Los Angeles and a couple of other markets (CBS also dropped Free FM in New York and Philadelphia), but not here. "We just can't afford him," said Stephen Page, program director at KYCY.

Scab: 'Blue collar' Adam Carolla to cross WGA picket lines to pimp his awful radio show on Leno

If you haven't caught his radio show, here's a good enough reason to dislike Adam Carolla, the freeform monotonal "comedian" who's in his third year of attempting to create a listenable, if not successful, radio show in slots once occupied by the late Howard Stern in Los Angeles and a few other unfortunate cities: This morning, he's advertising his appearance tonight on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and offering up ten tickets to listeners who want to sit in the audience to see him go through the motions after crossing the Writers Guild of America picket line. (Remember the days when a ticket to The Tonight Show was a hot commodity? Those were the Carson days.)

Carolla's guest spot is a sign of Leno's difficulty in booking guests during the WGA strike, when most compassionate performers will not cross the line to pimp a product, not to mention Hollywood's disapproval of Leno's decision to continue to write monologues and somehow find scripts for videotaped bits despite his membership in the WGA.

It also indicates that Jimmy Kimmel had his own interests at heart when he created an alliance with Leno against the WGA strike limitations. Kimmel, of course, is Carolla's "rabbi," a CBS radio "comedy" consultant who has been instrumental in keeping Carolla on the air. Now the perennial also-ran is getting his friends and associates on a late night show that actually has some viewers.

As for Carolla? What a hypocrite. The supposed "working stiff," who mocks immigrants on his radio show, Carolla, who last month maneuvered the ouster of co-host Danny Bonaduce after Bonaduce brought the show new life and ratings, plods on toward cancellation with a dull cadre of followerss including the drab Teresa Strasser (who works for the whitewashed syndicated television show based on the corporate porn-pushing gossip site, TMZ.com) and a few other nonpro acolytes.

Shame on the lot of them.

Carolla, unfettered! Carolla, unlistenable!

We've had a chance to listen to the new -- read "old"-- Adam Carolla radio show a few times this week. We tuned in for about forty five minutes to an a hour at a time, between 8 am and 10 am-- as a matter of fact, we're listening right now (Carolla is "interviewing" "The Deaf Frat Guy," one of the show's time-killing "characters"). This is the third incarnation of the show that replaced Howard Stern in L.A. and some other markets, beginning the season last week without second banana Danny Bonaduce, who was imposed on the show last year, boosted the ratings considerably, and was ceremoniously edged out by a jealous Carolla in December.

Based on our listenings, this third season has been all Carolla, all the time, with no guests save his inhouse lugs and regular peeps and giggles from his servile "news girl," Teresa Strasser-- former plain jane "smartypants" TV hostess and John Fugelsang attachment who's now one of Harvey Levin's drab "co-hosts" on the whitewashed syndicated television show based on the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com.

Carolla continues his anti-art of droning on about mundane subjects, rehashing old comedy bits and stretching what would could be a fifteen second thoughts into a fifteen minute monologues. On the mornings we've listened-- and as we're listening now-- he's droned on about subjects as exciting as fixing flat tires, lame Craig's List ads, Segways and homosexuals; solipistic audience-antagonizing ramblings that are broken only by the occasional ass-kissing of his mentor (and his radio network's "comedy" consultant), Jimmy Kimmel-- as in this morning's gushing appraisal of Kimmel's appearance last night on The Tonight Show:

"I thought Kimmel was excellent!"

Carolla's monotonal nasal bray is joined by his civilian football fan sidekicks and acolytes like "Brian," who were for the most part benched in the Bonaduce era, and fawning interjections by Strasser, who reads poorly-paced news items and chirps in trying to keep up with Carolla's alleged witticisms, like a dumb girlfriend or kid sister out to prove she's up on subjects she has no understanding of or interest in. It's sad to say, but "T" can't keep up. And it shows.

If ever a show needed the brash brilliance and entertaining diversions of the quick-witted Bonaduce-- anything to throw open the blinds and lift the show away from the lint-filled navel-gazing of a radio host who thinks the object of a four-hour radio show is to fill every available second with the sound of his own voice-- it's this one. Carolla is back to square one. He and his beerbong buddies have slammed the door on the outside world and cancellation is surely on the horizon.

A funny aside to all this: two Tabloid Baby contributors found themselves banned from the new, official Carolla Show message board earlier this week-- one for posting a link to a story on this site--the other for questioning the ban. When the first commenter (we'll call here "Goodie") emailed the site administrator to complain, the following, quite colorful, exchange took place:

Goodie: why did you suspend my account?

Adamcarollafan@gmail.com: We simply do not need you cluttering up the forum with ridiculous banter which ultimately is meant to get people to tabloid baby. It didn't work on the Official board, and it won't work here.

You're clearly not interested in discussing the show, rather you want to directly (or indirectly) link to tabloid baby.

Look, I realize you have a website to pimp - but rather than covertly doing it with links to the url, it would have been a bit slicker to actually add to ongoing discussions and build some trust/respect before slapping your site address in posts.

Anyways, if you showed any interest in actually talking about the show we wouldn't have a problem.

Goodie: who the f--- are you to say i cluttered the forum?

I WAS talking about the show.

I'm not pimping anything. I'm bringing up issues that people are talking about beyond the forums.

CLUTTER? With one post?

Ridiculous banter? Discussing Teresa Strasser's image problem?

F--- you .

The link I offered was a legitimate conversation point. You're the reason why the Carolla radio show will fail because you want to keep it all in your own little ass-licking clubhouse.

You're a toadie and a f---ing fool and have no respect for free speech, the exchange of ideas or the Internet. And watch who you call a pimp, because you're nothing more than a whore for Carolla.
What's your name?

Adamcarollafan@gmail.com: Interesting reaction. Level-headed, calm response to you being wrong'd. I like it.

You're right, I'm a whore for Carolla - nothing more, nothing less. I guess I should really whore it up and start a messageboard revolving around him and his show.

Anyways, think what you want about me/us being a whore or a toadie or whatever of me. I'm not into censoring stuff, hell it's one thing that bothered me about the Official board. Give you an awesome example, I hate Dave Dameshek. Well, not hate, but strongly dislike. I think he's obnoxious, loud, and unfunny. For whatever reason(s), he was removed from the show after 1 year. He has a lot of dedicated fans that post on this board -- and while I cannot understand their appreciation of him, I realize that they exist. We have a Dave Dameshek forum. And while I personally believe that Bonaduce is one of the worst personalities in the history of radio, we have a forum for him as well --- and would openly discuss him if he hadn't been removed from the show as well.

Your link would be a legit talking point if you were a member that randomly happened across a story on a quality site - rather, you posted to simply to link to your site (after condemning the messageboard) then continued the discussion "naively").

In any case, thank you for well thought out response, I appreciate the time you took to compose it.

Goodie: f--- you you sophomoric little putz. I never condemned the message board. and its not MY SITE. I added to a thread about teresa strasser. you say youre "not into censoring stuff" yet you censor two comments on a little read thread and then cancel my account? f--- you. are you the same fool who shut down the original board? And what's your name, you nazi f---?

AdamCarollaFan@gmail com: Again, thank you for your reply.

No, not the same guy that shut down the Official board, but thanks for giving me the credit.

Anyways, sorry that we're losing such a quality contributor. But, it's a war out there and you're bound to lose some good men in the heat of battle.

Sig Heil.

We emailed AdamCarollaFan@gmail.com asking them to explain the ban and confirm the exchange. They denied sending the replies, expressed surprise at the banishments and claimed they'd been "hacked."

Leno & Kimmel's dangerous liaison

Passive-aggressive late night TV host Jay Leno and Sarah Silverman's boyfriend/Adam Carolla's mentor Jimmy Kimmel are both angry that David Letterman made a sidedeal with the Writers Guild of America that allowed his writers to go back to work. Both hosts, WGA members, crossed picket lines to return to work last week without writers. Leno, as we know, has been writing (or getting help writing) his nightly monologue in defiance of union rules. Kimmel, who mines the "working slug" "lucky to be on television" image, has raged publicly against the restrictions.

According to the New York Times, "in an unusual act of unity emerging from the screenwriters’ strike, two of television’s late-night hosts, Jay Leno of NBC and Jimmy Kimmel of ABC, will appear on each other’s shows on Thursday... The two hosts and their networks will announce the arrangement on Monday...

"Neither host has appeared on the other’s show, but in the course of meetings with the writers’ guild over what the hosts would be permitted to do and telephone discussions between the shows about mutual interests, Mr. Leno and Mr. Kimmel established a relationship..."

These guys know the rules and how the game is played. Whatever game they're playing behind the scenes is a move into dangerous territory.

While Carolla gets a third chance to make his radio show work, his "news girl" could use a new photo

Were you listening this morning? We missed it, but apparently radio blowhard Adam Carolla returned for a third year of turning away listeners from Howard Stern's old radio slot in Los Angeles, but without the benefit of sharp, compelling, relevance-infusing radio veteran Danny Bonaduce (Tabloid Baby's Radio Personality of 2007) to keep things real. That's because Carolla ran a backstabbing campaign to get Bonaduce, whose presence raised the ratings in Carolla's second year (and chance), off the show.

Of course, Carolla has his female "news girl" (as she calls herself) back on board. Teresa Strasser plays the part of the whiny, servile, stereotypically unlucky-at-love "Jewish princess," and her positioning in the ad on the Carolla website (top) shows she definitely knows her place. Strasser also has a minor role in the syndicated television series based on the corporate porn-pushing gossip site, TMZ.com (where she also knows her place), but she apparently only has one air-brushed "sexy picture" that the ad department has to use and re-use every time there's a new ad campaign or change in line-up (above). They flip it and cut it and move it around, but it's the same shot (see yet more versions on her MySpace page here and website here). But that's how Carolla and his very limited dorky male audience like her.  Airbrushed and pretend-sultry-- and way in the background.

Anyway, did you hear the Carolla show? Or Bonaduce's afternoon entry?  Let us know.

The 2007 Tabloid Baby Awards

The Tabloid Baby Person of The Year award has been about as anticipated as Time magazine's copycat honors, but we make it a habit to not necessarily bestow it every twelve months. For us, it all began in 1999, when Steve Dunleavy and Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D. were given the first special Tabloid Baby public service awards, and debate and controversy would follow as honors were handed out in the years to follow. Who could forget the uproar among "serious" journalists when Tabloid Baby alone cited NYPD Blue actress-turned-CNN anchorette Andrea Thompson for her courage and style in the transition from sexy scriptreader to sexy TelePrompter reader and named her Person of The Year in 2001?

And debate still rages after the controversy that erupted when CNN's "anchorman" Anderson Cooper won the honor in 2005 for representing the end of the Hestonian "anchorman" era with his groundbreaking "Brokeback Anchor" style. We saw him as the herald of more than the gay sensibilities of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com, but the new brand of ironic, unauthoritative newsreaders like Katie Couric and silly, posturing Brian Williams. But neither Katie nor Bri-Bri won the honor for 2007-- not as Tabloid Baby's Person of The Year, nor even its Journalist of The Year for 2007. There are two separate honors this time around. We'll get to them soon enough.

But first... the Tabloid Baby team has come up with others who stood out in the Tabloid Baby universe in 2007 (and notice how we don't make the decisions in November like some people):

ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Neil Innes

Neil Innes is the greatest musical satirist of the past fifty years. For most of that half century, he's made a monumental, if deliberately subtle, impact on popular culture, music and comedy. Having made his mark on rock 'n' roll, television, art, publishing, children's programming and philosophy, Innes was hard at work this year, overseeing pristine reissues of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Rutles catalogue, recording and releasing the first new Bonzos album in 35 years (earning four stars in MOJO), and completing filming of the musical documentary about his life and work. Innes set the stage this year for what will surely be a time of recognition and appreciation as Frozen Pictures’ film, The Seventh Python, brings the world up to date on this brilliant artist.

TELEVISION & FILM PERSONALITY
OF THE YEAR
Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D.

After decades as a cult figure thanks to his fascinating pubic access show Mysteries from Beyond The Other Dominion, Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D. finally fulfilled his lifelong dream of Hollywood stardom in a year of mainstream breakout performances on network television, on film, and on the Internet He’s been a regular on The Tom Green Show web phenomenon, done featured acting roles on television series like The Ghost Whisperer, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Sunset Tan and Mad Men, appeared in films including Nothing But The Truth and even inspired a character in The Bigfoot Gang, the followup from the creators of Napoleon Dynamite.

COMEBACK OF THE YEAR
The Hudson Brothers

Twenty five years after they went their separate ways, the Hudson Brothers reunited for their first group photos in twenty years and their first group project, albeit behind the scenes, in producing and supervising the music for The Seventh Python. The Hudsons, an influential rock ‘n’ roll group whose career was elevated yet stymied by success as a network television musical comedy team in the Seventies, is the rare act from that decade that has not cashed in on the VH1-TVLand nostalgia market, but individually blazed new trails in music, television and film. With their classic television series about to be released on DVD and talk of an onstage reunion, we look forward to more Hudson Brothers activities in 2008—as well as a potential boycott of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and its parent, Rolling Stone magazine, if the contribution continues to be ignored.

RADIO PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR
Danny Bonaduce

Danny Bonaduce may be best known on the national stage as a tabloid trainwreck, a steroid-fueled angerball whose lack of self-control and past addictions to drugs and alcohol had the former childstar on a balls-out death ride on the Highway to Hell. But radio aficionados others know Bonaduce as an experienced, hard-working professional personality whose career reached a welcome pinnacle after he as hired a year ago as co-host of the failing, flailing Adam Carolla Radio Show that was filling Howard Stern’s timeslot. Bonaduce’s forced entrance into the mix of fawning worship of the dullard Carolla injected an adrenalyn shot of relevance and raw-nerved reality that peaked when his wife, known to millions from their reality TV show, announced her intention to divorce. While Bonaduce reached Sternsian levels of greatness, he was quickly muzzled by a jealous Carolla, and recently cut from the show after a six-month on-air backstabbing campaign by Carolla and his acolytes. KLSX, which treasures Bonaduce, has given him an afternoon slot. Watch that show expand in 2008 as Carolla fades from the dial.

OVERLOOKED
INTERNATIONAL NEWS STORY
OF THE YEAR
The Israel Baseball League

The story of the first season of the Israel Baseball League may have been a pleasant footnote in sports history if not for what transpired after the final pitch of the season, when Our Man Elli in Israel (Elli Wohlgelernter to those in the journalism world) wrote an article about what really when on during that season in the sun, uncorking a flood of allegations, outrage, whiles setting off a chain events that included a federal fraud lawsuit against the league’s founder, the resignation of the league’s commissioner and much of its advisory board, the creation of a rival league, and announced plans for a second season in 2008. Remarkably, nearly every step in this incredible international saga of mismanagement, betrayal, intrigue and broken dreams was broken exclusively here, on Tabloidbaby.com, while the mainstream media either followed our lead or ignored the story altogether. While the official spin continues this month with the brief arrival of a IBL booster blog, and a naïve, inaccurate Bleacher Report story naming the IBL’s feelgood PR report of the first season as “The Best Sports Story in 2007,” the behind-the-scenes soap opera is far from over.

His work on the story made Elli Wohlgelernter a candidate for Tabloid Baby’s Journalist of the Year. But was it enough to grab the honor?

Tabloid Baby's Journalist of the Year and Person of the Year for 2007... are ahead...