Rock 'n' Roll goodbye letter at the LA Weekly

We don't know Kate Sullivan personally, but we've sure noticed her Rock 'n' Roll Love Letter section in the LA Weekly. She's got a real passion and an ability to get it down in a way that makes that passion jump off the page. Her writing made us notice, so it's too bad to hear she's gotten the axe as the Weekly's music editor and is being replaced by a guy from the Riverfront Times in St. Louis, another paper in the Village Voice media chan that now owns the Weekly (and who put Tony Ortega in the editor's chair at the Village Voice itself).

Kevin Roderick over at LA Observed says "Word around is that it's another example of the chain's desire to dictate local hiring even at papers like the LA Weekly with a pretty good track record of luring talent." Well, it couldn't have been because of her output, because Kate's writing got it right and gave us a reason besides the ads to read the Weekly's music section. If somebody's smart she might even wind up at the New York Times like that movie gal Manohla Dargis, who wrote like a college politics major at the Weekly and LA Times, but grew up (or found good editors) at the Grey Lady.

So maybe now's the time for her to open up her invitation-only "Rockblog" to the public so we can read some more.

Aaron Sorkin: What a dick!

"TV has a very measurable effect on our national mood. When TV gets bitchy and pissy, you find Americans getting bitchy and pissy too."

Aaron Sorkin had one of the most anticipated and big-budgeted series of the past season with Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, and with comic actors like DL Hughley of Cloud 9 and Matthew Perry among the ensemble cast, the West Wing creator with the druggie-hooker tabloid past seemed to have a no-brainer hit on his hands.

Until it premiered. Because with its dreary dark colors, soapbox speechifying, desperate flailing between social issues and screwball stage comedy--and a disconnect from the world it supposedly portrayed (see Rescue Me or Ugly Betty for cool fakes of backstage reality)-- the show was a dud from the start.

Even so, Studio 60 was our favorite bad show of the past year (NBC, feel free to use this for the DVD: "Our favorite bad show of the season! -- Tabloid Baby).

At one point, he even blamed bloggers for his bomb, but now that NBC gave him the honor of filming the remainder of the series after it was shitcanned, and he's got a Tom Hanks flick and three-picture script deal with Dreamworks, it's safe for Sorkin to take the blame himself.

And according to today's LA Times, Sorkin takes the blame for 'Studio 60'. At least in the headline. Because if you read the article, you'll see that he blames the tabloids-- and the audience!

According to the Times, "Sorkin sat down for the first time since Studio 60's cancellation to discuss the perils of failing in public and navigating a media universe where it's increasingly hard to tell if you are being judged by your work or simply by your celebrity persona."

Among his quotes:

"I don't know how to emphasize this enough that I'm not disappointed or upset with anyone but myself. There are only two possible reasons for Studio 60 failing-- it was either my fault or it was just one of those things. On some shows, you can make mistakes and still survive. But with this one, I made too many mistakes for it to survive."

"When all everyone does is try to draw personal connections between your characters and real people, you're not really watching a play or a TV show anymore. It becomes a tabloid experience."

"There were too many people looking at this show like it was the cover of Abbey Road. It was never an autobiographical show. I'm a lot more than a recovering cocaine addict. Jordan McDeere and (former short-term ABC programmer) Jamie Tarses had one letter of the alphabet in common. It was really a lot of silliness."

"I can flat-out guarantee that Phil (Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond) was writing autobiographical stories in his show, but for some reason people just aren't caught up in the gossip of his life. It's just unhealthy. After the Fall is a better play if you don't know that Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe were married. It doesn't enhance the experience of seeing the play if you're being a detective, always looking for clues. You only see the writing through a filter that takes you out of the actual story."

"TV has a very measurable effect on our national mood. When TV gets bitchy and pissy, you find Americans getting bitchy and pissy too."

Hey, if the show was any good, the autobiographical stuff would only make it more appealing. We'd say that the failings of Studio 60 had little to do with autobiography or interest in Sorkin's life. Dick.

The Wall of Fame at the Disneyland Hotel

The Disneyland Hotel at Disneyland has a big lobby full of Disneyana, including a Wall of Fame of celebrities who'd brightened the park in the past. After dinner at Goofy's Kitchen, we took a second look at the photos-- and Jeez, it looks like Kenneth Anger's scrapbook, doesn't it?

My First Time heads to the stage

My First Time, the groundbreaking late night nonfiction adult drama series produced for Showtime by our pals at Frozen Pictures and their then-partner the Academy Award-winner, is making its way to the off-Broadway stage. My First Time: The Play, said to be "in the style of The Vagina Monologues," features four actors telling stories of first sexual experiences.

Producers say it's based on the original My First Time website that was created to attract people to share anonymous sex stories-- allegedly true-- about their "first times."

And as we all remember, in 2002, Frozen Pictures, teaming up with The Ruddy-Morgan Organization (headed by two-time Oscar-winning producer Albert S. Ruddy, Frozen's partner on the motion picture comedy, Cloud 9), won the rights to that very site and produced two seasons and 26 half-hour episodes of the series in which young women (Showtime's bosses at the time decided they didn't want to hear from men) spoke candidly and graphically about their deflowerings. Their stories were dramatized in high-quality film segments.

The series popped back to the pubic consciousness last summer, in the brouhaha over the TV Land network's decision to steal the title of the brave series (and admitting it did so for the double-entendre buzz) for a nostalgia show.

"We've got nothing to do with the play," says Brett Hudson of Frozen Pictures, an executive producer of the Showtime series. "Funny, because I think we and Ruddy-Morgan still own the rights."

Various release dates for the DVD version of the Showtime series have been announced over the past two years, but delays by the distributor have led the producers to negotiate a new deal, timeframe and special features that should be announced soon.

The play is in previews at the New World Stages Theatre V on West 50th Street in Manhattan. Opening night (heh heh) is July 28th. It contains no nudity.

Seventh Python picture portrayed in poster

Our friends at Frozen Pictures sent this along.

Keep up to date on developments here.

And click the picture to make it bigger...

Who gives a f*** about the Beckhams?

We realize it's an old rag, but who said Paris Hilton jailbreak being a waste of oxygen? The Beckhams are in LA. And seriously, do these people have fans? Aside from his soccer prowess, which is appreciated in other parts of the world, are people really curious about these very British, very European proles with pretensions? Does anyone in the States really give a flying fuck about these vacuous pommie mannekins?

Anyway, Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, the stick figure with silicone bags attached to her chest, will be featured in an NBC special Monday night that was supposed to be a reality series until someone in power, probably new programmer and party animal Ben Silverman, realized a Posh series would contain half the content and brains of Hey Paula! and wisely downgraded it into a single hour, and talks exclusively with Ryan Seacrest (whose American Idol/Simon Cowell/Simon Fuller/Spice Girls connection came in handy) on E! tonight.

The big news? She says she'll smile more.

Give us Kate and Pete. Noel and Liam. Somebody interesting.

Nigel Dempster dead

"If the trade of the gossip columnist is trivial, then all of life is trivial."

A hack and a gossip and a puncturer of pomposity, he had a knack for a scoop and a lust for life.

First he was dead, now Dr. Ruehl's a polygamist!

Tabloid Baby's good friend and contributor, public access TV legend and Tom Green Show regular Dr. Franklin Ruehl is turning out to be the most busy utility man in reality television. Last month, not long after he'd appeared as himself on NBC's Identity, he turned up dead, as a corpse who gets a bronzing treatment on E!'s Sunset Tan. It was only after emails started pouring in here, that we confirmed the Doctor wasn't dead--but acting!

Our reports led to international publicity for Dr. Ruehl, an appearance on The Soup, and ultimately a Sunset Tan confession that the "dead" man wasn't.

Well now, Dr. Ruehl is being outed as a polygamist!

That's his mug in ads for the Game Show Network's UK knockoff, Without Prejudice?, that premieres next Tuesday (July 17th at 9-- 8 Central Time).

"I will also be on GSN, in conjunction with this new show, announcing, 'I have seven wives!,'" Dr. Ruehl writes us. "Now, the irony is that I am actually a bachelor who has NEVER been married, in congruence with the program's theme that people are not always what they appear to be."

The ads appear in The National Enquirer and People magazine, which means that teens across the country will be ripping out the page and taing homemade Dr. Ruehl posters to their bedroom walls.

Fly-over country or comb-over country?

We were watching Hee Haw the other day and realized that Buck Owens really set the stage for Ted Koppel.

Tabloid Baby's connection to Spielberg tribute

Last night's Spielberg on Spielberg tribute on TCM reminded us that back in the summer of 1974, the author of Tabloid Baby was fresh out of high school and an extra on the set of Jaws in Martha's Vineyard.

Today, all these decades and successes later, the director of the Atlantic Ocean horror movie and the writer/producer of the Pacific Ocean beach comedy Cloud 9 both shop at the same Gelson's supermarket in Pacific Palisades.

By the way, look closely at the photo above that's Tabloid Baby's author and editor, in the cowboy hat, third from the left at back, with his old buddy John Garofano.

'Informational vermin' lead to LA Times closure

A tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to the informational vermin!

The LA Times is backtracking on the Villaraigosalinasgate scandal, with an astounding column yesterday by media columnist Tim Rutten that attacked the "informational vermin" who whip the LA Times' lazy ass on hot city stories, and yearned wistfully for the good old days when the LA Times had a vice grip on local media coverage and could cover up mayoral scandals, even when they imapcted city business, as when the wife of Villaraigosa predecessor James Hahn split on the family, leaving him to leave work early every day to care for his kids in San Pedro:

When it comes to reporting on politics and elected officials, distinguishing between what is properly private and what is necessarily public becomes more difficult all the time.

It's easy to blame the news media for this — for all the obvious reasons. They include an increasing number of editors willing to take their cue from journalism's lowest common denominator, the gossip sheets, whether online or on slick paper, that continue to proliferate like informational vermin. By its very nature, gossip does not respect the distinction between public and private because it doesn't acknowledge the existence of such a dichotomy...

Clearly, the mayor would not be in the fix he's in— and it's quite a fix— without the emergence of a vigorous online media that is reshaping the city's political landscape. Los Angeles mayors Sam Yorty and Tom Bradley were married men who had affairs, which never got into the papers because, even if City Hall reporters had been inclined to pursue the story, it would have been virtually impossible to make it conform to the standards their editors enforced. When James K. Hahn's marriage broke up in the middle of his term, there hardly was a ripple in the local press.

No more.

Depending on how you look at things, we're witnessing the digital execution of either decency and discretion or of a culture of excessive deference to power. Take your pick, though the truth probably resides, as it so often does, somewhere in between...

Rutten's pomposity is either the laugh of the newsroom or the chilling harbinger of the new edict. And the temperature drops a few more digits with our pal Steve Lopez, the prize catch journo at the Times who's able to look at the company town ith an outsider's eye and allowed to riff away from the pack, returning to the irrelevency beat today with a column on "An ER doc with surf in his blood."

Sure, the piece is probably an evergreen saved for a Sunday, but he should have insisted they shelved it with an update-- because the Villaraigosa story is developing by the hour. The lack of intensity and focus is similar to his gradual easing off of Cardinal Mahony during the molestation coverup scandal. Had he continued to snarl and tear and rip at the trouser leg, the corrupt politician may have been dethroned-- and Lopez would probaby have gotten the Pulitzer.

It's clear the Times has an agenda here, and doesn't want the facts to lead to Villaraigosa's downfall or have an effect Hillary Clinton's chances for the White House.

Meanwhile, for full, exciting coverage of the City Hall scandal, the Pulitzer-deserving journalist is Luke Ford, a journo whose focus borders on the autistic and whose website is the new "paper of record" for the most portentous story in Los Angeles and possibly American politics.

A trip to the Kwik-E-Mart

We took a field trip to Culver City this evening to visit one of the dozen 7-11 convenience stores that have been transformed into Kwik-E-Marts to promote The Simpsons Movie. We'd thought the only time we'd wait on line at a 7-11 would be during a beer rationing, and in fact there were grumbles in the crowd when they realized the products that were Simpsonized didn't include Duff.


The Buzz Cola was sold out. So were the KrustyOs and Chutney Squishees and Simpson family member bobble head dolls-- there were lots of Mr. Burns and Apu bobbles left-- so pink donuts were the souvenirs of choice. And through it all, the Indian staff wearing Apu-style uniforms didn't appear to be insulted at all by the ethnic stereotyping or celebration of bad service, but seemed to be having a blast.

Exclusive! Neil Innes movie coming soon

Get ready to meet the most important rock star you've never heard of. We've just gotten word that our mates at Frozen Pictures are finally in post-production on the long awaited musical feature film, The Seventh Python.

The Seventh Python tells the story of legendary musical satirist Neil Innes-- a man whos managed to keep a low profile for about forty years, while being a prime mover in both the pop music and comedy worlds with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Rutles. Paul McCartney produced his first hit single; he appeared in Magical Mystery Tour; he performed with the Pythons on television, on tour, in films and The Concert for George tribute to his pal George Harrison; he plays a mean ukulele; and he's even got a songwriting credit on a tune by Oasis-- the greatest rock 'n' roll band ever-- who acknowledged they ripped off his song "How Sweet To Be An Idiot."

The film includes interviews and appearances by many pop superstars, friends and associates of Innes, including Python Michael Palin, who says, "Neil was the nearest we’ve ever come to a seventh Python," and Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, who tells Neil:

"I based all my work on the teachings of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band."

The documentary also features many musical performances that bring Innes genius and popular appeal into clear focus, including two star-studded shows that marked Innes' first appearances in Hollywood in close to a decade.

The Seventh Python is presented by Sean Connors Films, Ltd., executive producer of Frozen Pictures' forthcoming feature film, Psych House.

Frozen Pictures' latest documentary film, Basketball Man, is available on DVD.

The Seventh Python will be headed to festivals and theatrical release by the end of the year.

Old Tom T. Hall has a song George W should hear

Our pal Lewis Bailey from Bailey Mountain, Georgia--Tabloid Baby's eyes on the South, the best news cameraman in the whole USA, and country music aficionado and tastemaker-- alerts us to to a powerful, heartbreaking and very timely new recording by country music legend and great American poet Tom T. Hall.

The song is called A Hero in Harlan.

Lewis tells us that "somebody should send this song to President Bush":

Tom T. is sounding old--about like some of Johnny Cash's last records.

I have been a Tom T. Hall fan from the day I first heard the song, "Harper Valley PTA."

Anyway, I have listened to the song so many times that I have learned the lyrics and have copied them in this post. You can hear a sample of the song by going to this website and following directions.

A HERO IN HARLAN
By: Dixie Hall & Tom T. Hall

A grey silver casket rolls off the airplane
The Stars and the Stripes are draped over the lid
Inside is the body of our litle brother
they say he's a soldier, but he's just a kid

We're' here to take him to Harlan Kentucky
where he will buried in our family plot
We think of that day when he went in the Army
expecting a much better job than he got

He'll be a hero in Harlam
Like all the young soldiers before
he's not the first and he won't be the last
to lay down his life in war

Somewhere in the records in the records he'll just be a number
Another young man lying under a sheet
We're taking him home to rest high on a hillside
And he'll be a hero in Harlan this week

He never made A's when he sat in the classroom
Never got dates with the prettiest girls
When he got turned down for a job in the coal mine
I guess that's what led him to go save the world

(repeat chorus)

The world is a place and maybe needs saving
but what can a country boy do with a gun
He used to win teddy bears down at the fairgrounds
when living was easy and shooting was fun

They fold up the stars and the stripes for his mother
and gently trade her the flag for her son
a harder exchange never took place in Harlan
But it's not the first time it's ever been done

(repeat chorus)

And he'll be a hero in Harlan.

Click here to hear Hero in Harlan. And yes, at 71, Tom T.'s sounding his age and then some. Though he's as clear and true as he ever was, and unlike Johnny, isn't being exploited in his final days by hipsters seeking authenticity.

Villaraigosagate's Ford gets the CNN treatment

Luke Ford, the Woodward-Bernstein-Drudge of LA's Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa infidelity-ethics sex scandal (Luke defied the mainstream press corps in LA and reported that the emperor had no clothes-- or in this case- that the married mayor had no wedding ring, leading to the revalation that Hizzoner was banging a hot TV reporter who was covering him at the time), was interviewed on CNN this week, and has a hilarious, and deadpan account of what went down, the way things work-- and some insight into why some stories don't get reported:

The show is American Morning. The topic? Is there a public interest in reporting on the sex lives of politicians?

I taped my interview at 6 a.m. Thursday with host Betty Nguyen. I don’t know when it will air.

I went to bed at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. I fell asleep after 1 a.m. I woke up at 3:17 a.m. I showered, checked the Web for the latest on the mayor, and walked outside at 4:20 a.m. for my limo.

I got to CNN at 6430 Sunset Blvd at 4:40 a.m. I waited in the green room until 6 a.m.

While I’ve been interviewed many times on TV, I’ve never done it live.

I walk into a little room at 6 a.m. This is going to be taped (it was originally scheduled to be done live at 5:30). There’s no make-up. The director in New York encourages me several times to straighten my tie and button up my top shirt button.

Then host Betty Nguyen taped a post-show four-minute interview with me.

She asked me if people in Los Angeles were outraged about the mayor’s adultery. I burst out laughing and said I hadn’t met any.

(After the taping, someone at CNN told me that she was outraged by the mayor’s behavior.)

Betty: "Well, you’re obviously outraged by how much you’ve written about it on your blog."

Luke: "I’m not outraged at the mayor. I’m outraged that we have such a shoddy second-rate newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, that was too paternalistic to report the truth on the mayor. Their journalists knew the mayor’s marriage was over but their editors didn’t believe the public had the right to know."

Betty got outraged that I was taking all these "unfounded" shots at The Times, which she said was an award-winning newspaper.

The interview came to a quick halt.

When I came out of the building, my limo was gone and I had to catch a taxi home.

Villaraigosa a no-show at Palisades parade

LA's philandering and ethics-flaunting mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was scheduled to appear in the Pacific Palisades Fourth of July parade today-- but to the surprise of few, didn't show up. "He was... busy!" laughed a parade organizer.

Today's parade lacked the political controversy of last year's march, when the racist Minuteman brigade marched to protests and their promoter, John of the John & Ken radio show rode the parade route to jeers and catcalls (the hate radio slug apparently wasn't invited back this year). Instead, it provided a bizarre trip to earlier years with parade grand marshal Pat Boone, a right wing Christian compatriot of Palisades honorary mayor Gavin MacLeod-- and Brady Bunch star Barry Williams.

(And while no one expected Villaraigosa gapal Mirthala Salinas to show up in public today, Brigadier General Angela Salinas did ride along the route.)

photos © Tabloid Baby

Did Villaraigosa's gal have an abortion?

Luke Ford broke open the Antonio Villaraigosa extramarital sex scandal. He's the one who posted the story back in January that the Los Angeles mayor wasn't wearing his wedding ring-- leading to a less-than-candid response from the mayor and an Old School dismissal from the lazy, cynical City Hall press corps. And now that it's been revealed that the mayor was having an extramarital affair with a local television newsreader and reporter (who, it turns out, is a reputed "powerf***er" who'd been passed on to the mayor from his buddy the State Assembly Speaker), it appears the local media has been complicit in the cover-up.

Mirthala Salinas is a sexy star on Telemundo. According to the LA Times, she's been boffing the mayor for at least a year and a half. We work in newsrooms. You can't tell us that everyone in her newsroom didn't know what was going on. Telemundo is a sister station to the local NBC news affiliate. You expect us to believe that journalists in that newsroom weren't aware? Veteran political reporter Laurel Erickson shares the same ladies room with the woman (and they can't use the invasion of privacy excuse. A public official's illicit affair with a reporter who covers him is news, not to mention an ethical breach).

So let's ratchet the story to the next level: Did he knock her up?

When asked if rumours of Mirthala's pregnancy were true, Villaraigosa offered a rare clear and decisive response to one of the questions that has swirled around this sleazy story for weeks now:

"I can tell you emphatically that that question is outrageous and the answer is no, she is not pregnant."

Okay. Let's sit back a moment. The mayor's lied before in this matter (ask Luke Ford, who first wrote about Villaraigosa's missing wedding band.) He may not be lying technically in this case, but is he telling the truth? Villaraigosa has proven himself to be a disciple of Bill Clinton in more ways than one, so let's parse that quote from a Clintonian perspective:

"I can tell you emphatically that that question is outrageous."

Clever, trying to throw attention away from the subject at hand. Outrageous? Why? According to the LA Times, the mayor was seen with a bottle of wine at Mirthala's apartment building eighteen months ago. One would assume he was at the apartment to have alcohol-fueled, passionate, illicit extramarital sex (most likely performing acts his wife would not). Pregnancy, planned or otherwise, can result from such fevered couplings. We'd say the question is not outrageous at all, Mr. Mayor!

"The answer is no. She is not pregnant."

A straight answer, but taken in context of Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," it seems we need a brave City Hall reporter to ask: "Okay. Mirthala's not pregnant now. But was she ever pregnant? And if so, were steps taken to end the pregnancy? Did you ask her to have an abortion?"

Could an affirmative answer to those questions lead the molester protector Cardinal to excommunicate Villaraigosa from the Roman Catholic Church? One thing those questions could end, for now, are the political aspirations, and possibly the mayoral term, of Antonio Villaraigosa.

Or Antonio Villar, since we hear his wife wants her half of the name back.

His 'Yakety Sax' was Benny Hill's theme song

Nashville session player Boots Randolph has died at 80. He played saxophone of Elvis Presley's Return to Sender, Roy Orbison's Oh, Prettty Woman, Brenda Lee's Rockin Around The Christmas Tree and Al Hirt's Java-- and was in the house band on Hee Haw.

His one solo hit was Yakety Sax, an instrumental released in 1963. It became his signature. And it became the theme song for The Benny Hill Show.

And for that reason, Homer Louis "Boots" Randolph is a Tabloid Baby immortal.

Lindsay's birthday party: WTF??!!

So Lindsay Lohan turns 21 in rehab in Malibu, gets out to have a birthday party and invites every bad infuence who helped get her into rehab in the first place. Party buddy/rival DJ Samantha Ronson, sex partner Calum Best and the best influence of all-- and by "best" we mean "worst"-- her mom Dina, who's playing house and partying elsewhere on the beach with her new boyfriend while Lindsay's baby brother watches.

Lindsay's next bash is August 24th. In court, when she's arraigned for that DUI coke crash. We hope someone close to her hears the warnings from her dad Michael-- and get the point about her recovery.

Spectacles take on Michael Bay's latest spectacle

As they get deeper into recording the album that's shaping into the definitive rock music statement on LA's summer of 2007, indie music heroes The Spectacles are taking aim at one of the summer's blockbuster productions: Michael Bay's Transformers movie.

The day the movie lumbers into theatres, the band has written, recorded-- and unleashed-- Lost Episode-- a song that stands up for the individuality of a beloved character "who was originally a Volkswagen Bug, and not a GM piece of shit like Michael Bay wants everyone to believe."

Lead singer Brent Crowe roars:

"We are incensed by the casting of a Camaro in the role of Bumblebee in this film. Bumblebee isn't flashy. He's a fucking Volkswagen Bug through and through (except the robot in disguise part). Bumblebee's the kid no one wants on their robo-kickball team.

"He's the guy who wants more than anything to prove himself as an equal, but no one's ever paying attention to him except this annoying little human kid. Is there a little Bumblebee in all of us? Well, that's a question we're inviting you-– no, daring you-– to ask yourself."

Hear The Spectacles' latest here.

And watch this space for more on the making of a classic.