Life after Howard

Howard Stern has five radio shows to go before he possibly disappears from the mainstream public eye and ear (I’ve checked out some of that Sirius equipment at Best Buy and it looks like a lot of work that only a month of bad car radio will force us to look into). Howard's goodbye seemed to peak the week before his Thanksgiving vacation, but this last week of shows will be historic in any case.

We’ll miss him. In the meantime, what’s the future of radio?

The view from LA:

THE GOOD

Phil Hendrie: He may be the most brilliant talent in all of show business right now.

And his take on the talk show never gets boring.

The best.




Michael Savage: The most hilarious radio personality out there.

Savage is a lunatic, and his hair-trigger ascents to screaming rants are hysterical.

It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum he’s from.

The fact that his real name is Michael Weiner and that he once ran a flower shop and wrote love letters to Allen Ginsberg only adds to the wackiness.








Johnny Wendell: Punk rocker turned music journalist turned smart liberal radio talk show host.

Johnny works himself up into his own rages on the air, but it’s absurdity and unfairness that gets him going. He’s on the local Air America station, and his audience and scope will grow.



Steve Jones: Punk rocker turned Sunset Strip guitarist turned rock ‘n’ roll deejay. They give him a sidekick to translate his Cockney mumblings, but his snorting, farting, gurgling amateurishness is part of what keeps us tuned in. He plays old music hall & Benny Hill 45s, then picks up an acoustic guitar and bangs out a rock ‘n’ roll parody in the key of the original that follows. Inspired casting.

Stephanie Miller: Nice Sixties-style comedy lady does a funny, smart morning show with a good impressionist.







THE BAD

Mancow: First of all, that name is very disturbing. Man Cow. Supposedly it’s a nickname from college, but it brings to mind a hermaphroditic guy with breasts (which, photos indicate, he does indeed resemble). I don’t get it. And I don’t get the Mancow act. His show reeks of racist, homophobic, jock-sniffing, evangelical Christian right wing creepiness, it’s always got this Nazi heavy metal guitar crunching in the background, he’s got a guy who imitates Lewis Black, prank phone calls that aren’t funny, and when he’s not picking on poor people like New Orleans victims, he’s saying degrading things about his wife. He tries to be Howard, but he’s the anti-Howard. This guy really blows.

John & Ken: These reactionary nitwits play up racism and anti-immigrant hysteria for ratings. We hope Tookie Williams escapes from prison and climbs into their bedroom windows. That would make good radio.

Sean Hannity: I don’t believe this guy is a true conservative. I think he’s a college radio dork who jumped on the conservative bandwagon because he didn’t fit in with the music hipsters and came up with an angle. When he slips in references to his good pals Ollie North, Charlie Daniels and Phyllis Schlafly, this literal lowbrow reveals how out of touch and stupid he is.



Larry Elder: Listen to his show and realize he’s the one major league talk show host who yells at, then hangs up on, his listeners when they make good points that disagree with his. He seems to be afraid of real debate and his bits with his mother are not revealing. Dull.




THE SAD...

Conway & Whitman: Tim Conway Jr. and his partner Doug Steckler worked a long time to develop a very dry comedy chemistry that even took the edge off their “What the hell is Jesse Jackson saying?” bit. It worked because Steckler was a weird old guy who’d last touched the big time writing for SCTV more than twenty years ago, and Conway was, well, Tim Conway’s kid who spent his days at the racetrack. Then, weirdly, Steckler quit or was fired and Conway just carried on with a new partner, radio voice man Brian Whitman. They still do the Jesse Jackson bit (and for some reason they use this really heavy compression on their voices, making them sound like they’re caught in Cousin Brucie’s echo chamber). But they're just a dull radio team, two contemporaries teamed arbitrarily like "Frosty, Heidi & Frank" or Peter Tilden and his cohorts on the country station.

(NOT SAD)

At least Tilden is a lesson in how not to lose your dignity or patronize your audience when your situation changes. He made his reputation doing smart talk radio. He became a morning country music jock. And he doesn't sound like a country jock. He sounds like a smart talk radio guy. But he plays it straight. And funny. Too bad most of the music is terrible. But that's a different story and it's coming from a country fan.

Richard Pryor, finally dead

Richard Pryor’s official website is subtitled “I ain’t dead yet, M*therF@ck%r!!”

We guess they'll have to change that.

We don't like marking deaths. Obits and death anniversaries take up too much space. But deaths of the great ones are signposts along the way, as we get closer.

Anyway, Richard Pryor:

When we were kids growing up in the Sixties, he was one of the comedians on the Ed Sullivan Show, alongside Jackie Vernon and London Lee and George Carlin.

He was a skinny guy in a suit and he was really funny.


He was in Wild in The Streets.

Big movie.

Big influence, in a Monkees kind of way.


Those of us who hung out in record stores remember the album cover, where he was naked with the ring in his nose, holding a bow and arrow, like a tribesman.

We didn't buy the album.

But the cover was up there.


His comedy concert movies were scary and funny as hell. They were embarrassing and real and in the end made everyone in the audience feel like they were united somehow. We used to watch them on 42nd Street so we could hear people talk back to the screen.

About ten years ago, we were leaving the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip when we noticed the marquee at the Comedy Store was advertising Richard Pryor. He was deep into multiple sclerosis at the time. We investigated. Tickets were seven dollars. “Is this THE Richard Pryor?” we asked the guy at the ticket window. He shrugged.

It wasn’t even the main room. There was a Jewish comic, a Latin comic and a black comic. Or maybe another Jewish comic. They all cursed a lot, did sex jokes and ended their acts by thanking Richard Pryor, the man who made it possible. Then sometime before midnight, they wheeled Richard Pryor into the back of the room. A big man carried him onto the stage, plopped him on a chair and he sat there. Everyone cheered. A lot of people were crying.

Pryor was game. He went right for the multiple sclerosis stories. “I’m in my car. (long pause) In traffic. (long pause) And I look over. (long pause) And there’s this really beautiful woman in the next car. (long pause) And she’s waving to me. (long pause) And I look down. (long pause) And I realize, (pause) I was covered in piss! I peed myself…”

Pryor was "there all week” as they say. I called Steve Dunleavy and I think he did a column in the Post about the shows and what happened to Richard Pryor. We all figured it was historic and the guy would be dead by the end of the month.

We're surprised he lasted another decade (and Dunleavy’s still alive and kicking).

It was Pryor’s ex-wife Jennifer Lee who’d gotten him back on stage. They were married in the Seventies. He beat her and performed other cruel acts, and she was apparently lucky to get out alive. Then, after he got sick, she came back into his life. Took it over. Some say it was to exact revenge. In any case, she set him up in a house in the Valley, and took control of his legacy. He remarried her in 2001.

A couple of years ago, Chaunce Hayden interviewed Pryor’s daughter, Rain. She complained she and her sister were only allowed to see their father once a month:

“Put it this way. If you’re a women who this man used to beat up for years and years and years. Like even his children watched him beat her up, right? And than all of a sudden when he’s at his sickest, sickest, sickest moment and can’t speak you marry him? Why? What’s the motive? And now your name is on everything. When there’s something about him, your name is on it and his children don’t exist. You don’t talk about his children. It’s like none of us were ever born. That’s a horrible situation. That’s tragic. But he’s not tragic.

“…She has hired wonderful caretakers to take care of him. They clean the house and they live with him. They make sure his feeding tubes are in and out and they love him… On the surface everything looks really fine and dandy and wow, isn’t she doing a great job. But she hired people to do a great job for her…”

Prepare for the Pryor family feud.

Twenty-five years

The email newsletter from our favorite New York City Irish rock band, Black 47, arrived today with some poetic words from leader Larry Kirwan:

"How strange! Twenty-five years since John Lennon was murdered and, next May, the same anniversary for Bobby Sands. So much passion, so much idealism swept away, to be replaced by what? Is rock & roll even a pale shadow of itself now? Can you imagine Lennon allowing this travesty in Iraq to go without some howl to the heavens? Or am I missing out on something? Are there great songs, that I'm not hearing, protesting the fact that working class kids are again being sent off by rich chicken-hawks in DC to be killed and maimed? Oh well, it's time for me to get back to Fox TV and find out how Mrs. Clinton justifies her vote for invasion now that the polls are showing that the people have finally woken up to the lies and deceit of the current governing parcel of rogues...."

Sheryl Crow's Cowboy Tw-hat

What the hell is this?


This is on display in the Hard Rock Cafe in San Antonio, Texas, a memento from Sheryl Crow's 1999 concert tour.

The color of the display is accurate.

Now when we walked into the gift shop, all's we could do was take off our own cowboy hats and scratch our heads.

What the hell is this?

Well, this of course, is her... hat.

Texas, of course, is Lance Armstrong's home state.

What did she sing?

The first cut is the deepest?

We guess this makes her a, uh.. country... star.

Exclusive Photos: Gangsters Go Goth

Armand Assante was John Gotti in the TV miniseries.

Gray Frederickson won an Oscar for producing The Godfather: Part II.

Now the goodfellas have met in Oklahoma City, Gray’s hometown, to shoot the Graymark vampire film, Soul’s Midnight.

Gray promises the movie won't suck.

But Tabloid Baby’s good pal Armand and his costar Lucila Sola surely do.


Fun fact: Gray & Graymark executive produced Cloud 9, the Burt Reynolds beach volleyball stripper comedy out on DVD January 3rd!

Free advice for CBS News: Forget Katie

Here’s some free advice for Sean McManus and Les Moonves and CBS News.

Save the $20 million a year.

Katie Couric’s not worth it.


She’s a former cutie who’s been temporarily retooled into a glamour puss.

She’s pushing fifty.

She’s not going to age well, physically or emotionally.

And people don’t like to work with her.

Katie’s a morning show host. Reading the TelePrompter and gravitas ain’t her shtick. Give her a talk show and move on.

Besides, it’s a new century. The network news half hour is over. It doesn’t matter!

ABC admitted it when they settled on Elizabeth Vargas and “Bob” Woodruff to replace Jennings.

NBC has Brian Williams. Now there’s a guy who connects with that young demographic.

So CBS, here it is:

Think Charlie’s Angels.

Think Steve Edwards.

Keep old Bob Schieffer in the “anchor” chair. He’s like Steve. Glad to be anywhere. And fire all your reporters except the sexy news chicks, all those hot gals who camp it up in CBS drag; the only reason guys watch CBS News in the first place.

Make Schieffer the only male on the show. Surround him with the CBS Maxim girls. They’re already on the payroll. Lara Logan. Serena Altschul. Thalia Assuras. Susan McGinnis. Trish Reagan.



Let Bob play the exasperated male, putting up with all the young birds.

It’s like Harry Smith on that CBS Morning Show, the one nobody watches, only with testosterone and hot chicks in places like Iraq.

It’s almost as good as Moonves’ idea to clone Naked News.

Mark my words.

Sorry, Wong Number!

Latino comedy pioneer and Cesar Chavez pallbearer Paul Rodriguez is bracing for more attention than George Lopez's new kidney, playing a stereotypical “Chinaman” in Cloud 9 , the Burt Reynolds sports comedy out on DVD January 3rd.

Rodriguez says of his character, "Wong": “Wong is more confused than the Bush Administration… a Mexican guy who thinks he’s Wong for the wong reasons. He figures that if you’re Mexican you’re just a gardener, but if you’re Asian, you’re a landscaper!"

And he says more on the Frozen Pictures blog.

Cloud 9 is Burt’s follow-up to Tuesday’s DVD release of The Dukes of Hazzard. In his first good ole boy starring vehicle since the Smokey & The Bandit days, he plays the coach of an all-stripper beach volleyball team.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's January 3rd DVD release just misses the Oscar nomination deadline.


Cloud 9 happens to be producer Albert S. Ruddy’s follow-up to his Academy-Award winning Million Dollar Baby!

It’s also fellow writer-producer Burt Kearns & Brett Hudson’s follow to the failed relaunch of A Current Affair. Now we know where the volleyball strippers came from.

But we already knew that.

Frozen Pictures

Elephant cruelty at the Studio City Parade

While L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa awaits his promised study on whether to end cruelty to elephants at the L.A. Zoo, the Studio City Chamber of Commerce sponsored a startling display of animal abuse and child endangerment at its low-wattage Christmas Parade last night.

Hundreds were waiting in the biting cold for the delayed parade on Ventura Boulevard, when a big, sad, betusked elephant was trotted up the boulevard by two “handlers,” and stopped in front of the Mexicali Restaurant to give perilous rides to a hapless few.

It could have been a scene out of King Kong as mama handler screamed, spit and snarled frantically at frightened children and confused parents, ordering them to move back and onto the sidewalk, lest the unhappy beast go on a rampage!

Unhappy? The elephant’s head swayed and its body rocked to and fro as the male keeper yanked its tusk, slapped its mighty head and shouted warnings to the beast to calm down. Of course, he added a few pokes and pulls with the barbaric "ankus," the sharpened hook used for centuries to keep the behemoths under control.

(We haven’t seen any abuse so blatant since witnessing Bobby Berosini’s orangutan antics backstage at the 1987 Jerry Lewis Telethon in Vegas (see Tabloid Baby, pg 74).

Mommy and daddy hid the sharp end of their sticks so as not to alarm the already-scared kids.

But while Betty White led a demonstration to keep the elephants in their cramped enclosure at the antiquated L.A. Zoo a few miles away, the true face of elephants in captivity was paraded out in the middle of the boulevard.

And somebody human could have gotten hurt, too.

The only other “celebrities” in the parade were Richard Karn from Family Feud, some drippy soap opera actresses, and too many realtors.

The real starpower was on the sidelines. Among the crowd at Mexicali were tabloid television legend Doug Bruckner and this old gray-haired guy who plays a lot of cops and priests on TV (I think he guested on NYPD Blue). Parade spectators included Terminator’s Robert Patrick dressed up like a Fifties gas station attendant, complete with fat wallet chain, Linda Gray and Jimmy Kimmel, who haunted the block near Art’s Deli in a white OJ watchcap. (Would Johnny wander alone aimlessly up and down Ventura on a Saturday night? At least Jay would be riding a Stanley Steamer and wearing a train engineer’s hat.)

Animal activist Chris DeRose runs Last Chance for Animals. He’s the point man in the elephant cause. Visit the LCA site and learn.

The Studio City Chamber of Commerce hired the elephant and runs next year’s parade, too. 818-655-5916.

Big Ten Inch Jesus

Someone pointed out Steven Tyler's sensitivity in selecting stagewear for his performance at the Big Ten Million Dollar Bat Mitzvah.

Mitzvahpalooza fallout: Oy!

Jesus f-in' Christ! What's going on out there?

First, thanks to Gawker.com for the new Tabloid Baby tagline:

"Tabloid Baby does some impressive reporting work!"

And to the anti-Semitic dirtbags who turned the November 29 comment board into an Aryan Nation-Al Qaeda dating site:



...a Christmas gift for you!