Page Six Scandal Exclusive! Stern calls Burkle "a power-mad, paranoid greaseball" who "should crawl back down his diamond-paved hole!"

Thanks for the email. Obviously it was a set-up, a smear, a vicious attempt at a take-down.

The guy's a power-mad, paranoid greaseball. He should go back to L.A. and crawl back down his diamond-paved hole.

best
JPS

That’s the word from Jared Paul Stern, the man in the middle of the Page Six scandal, going farther than ever in his attack on his accuser, after Tabloid Baby contacted him with some specific questions about accusations he tried to shake down West Coast billionaire Ron Burkle in exchange for nice stories on the gossip page.

Were Stern a civilian, this story could have been punctuated with the sound of his body swinging from the rafters of his attic in the Catskills. But Stern’s no wide-eyed rube. He’s playing the story like a journalism pro, talking to more naïve members of the media (like TV news bookers and producers and straightlaced reporters), giving them follow-up story ideas, and controlling the headlines.

It’s Tabloid 101 (see Tabloid Baby, especially Chapter 19, page 233, for the primer on taking back and controlling the headlines in a scandal).

We’ve suspected all along that big Democratic Party booster Burkle had bigger fish to fry than Stern. And now, thanks in part to Stern’s almost loonie aggressiveness, the spotlight is turning to Burkle.

Sure, the world is shocked to find out that Richard Johnson got a free trip to the Oscars (what’s more shocking is that the Post didn’t pay for their renowned columnist to cover the big event). It’s never a pretty sight when the door to the sausage factory is opened. But what’s more telling is the way some tabloid journalists distanced themselves from Page Six in this time of trouble (rat finks like Rush & Molloy at the Daily News even crowed to Nikki Finke about their pristine ethics).

Just days before the scandal broke, we’d written that New York Post columnist Cindy Adams was far too connected and too good a journalist to be labeled a gossip. Writers like Anita Talbert, Marilyn Beck, Stacy Jenel Smith and Matt Drudge are up there with them. And so’s Page Six editor Richard Johnson.

But gossip is a different game. And there are different rules. It’s not reporting. It’s not straight journalism. It’s a game of favors and tips and grudges and blind items and press releases. It’s Liz Smith writing glowing graphs about a stinker of a movie. It’s Lloyd Grove holding his nose because he thinks he’s too good for gossip. It’s Mike Walker playing The Gossip Game on the Howard Stern show. It’s sniping and it’s fun and a lot of time it’s bullshit.

It’s a game. But it’s an essential part of journalism, because big stories and deeper investigations often grow from the gossip dirt.

In this case, billionaire Burkle’s video sting is already backfiring in his face. Because Jared Paul Stern has the balls to fight back and call him a power-mad, paranoid greaseball. Stern is controlling the headlines. He’s telling his fellow journalists to follow the smell and follow the money. And lots of mainstream journalists are now sniffing around the Ron Burkle story.

Ten Years Ago Today: Tabloid Wedding

Alison Holloway & Burt Kearns

A Little White Chapel, Las Vegas, April 13, 1996.

Hey, Paris can really sing!

Paris Hilton sings Happy Birthday to Hugh Hefner at his 80th birthday party.

Watch the video here.

The act was committed over the weekend at the Playboy Mansion.

Move over, Marilyn! We can't wait for the album!

(Fun facts: Paris' performance was, of course, a grotesque parody of Marilyn Monroe's breathy rendition of the song at President John F. Kennedy's birthday party at Madison Square Garden in 1962. Marilyn was Hef's first Playboy centerfold, and Hef has reserved the crypt next to Marilyn's at the Westwood Memorial Park.)



...and a tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to Ross G...

Kobe's rape rap pays off

The LA Times today runs a feature on ”Kobe’s Hollywood Makeover,” reporting that “lofty stats have put a rape charge and feuds with teammates in the past, helping rejuvenate the Bryant brand.”

So if the past is put behind him, why does Kobe Bryant’s Nike ad (left), the one that’s plastered on the side of a building on Wilshire Boulevard in downtown L.A., look like a mugshot?

And why, with the tagline, “Just do it,” does the ad immediately bring to mind the “just shut up," "just turn around” and “just kiss it” details of his rape allegations?

Kobe was once seen as too aloof, too cultured, too Italian, by the admen. Now, Nike’s got his $130 Zoom Kobe I shoe, launched with a "love me or hate me" commercial blitz (and a profile mugshot to go with the front shot released by police in Colorado).

The Times reports: “Sales of Bryant's shoe has been brisk, not at the level of LeBron James or the ever-popular Michael Jordan, but in the same sphere as Kevin Garnett and Carmelo Anthony, according to analyst Matt Powell of SportScan Info, a pro sports retail tracking firm.

"’Retailers signified it was a good start,’ Powell said. ‘I'd say it met expectations, for sure.’"

By the way, according to the Urban Dictionary, two hip-hop definitions of the word “zoom” are:

"to fool," as in "who's zoomin', who's foolin', who's zoomin', who's foolin' who?"
and
“participating in sexual intercourse,” as in Dr. Dre & LL Cool J’s “All I want to do is zoom, zoom, zoom.”

Page Six scandal: Dunleavy's early reaction

Legendary New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy spoke to The New Yorker about the storm surrounding Page Six. The Talk of The Town caught him on Friday afternoon, before evidence developed that there may be less to the alleged extortion attempt and more to West Coast billionaire and Democratic Party contributor Ron Burkle's motives for setting up the videotaped sting.

Excerpts:

...the Post columnist was in his usual spot at Langan’s, an Irish joint on West Forty-seventh Street… a regular hangout for people who work at the Post, which is situated in a skyscraper across the street.

“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” Dunleavy whispered, shaking his gray pompadour from side to side. When he first saw the story, at 6 A.M., he was standing on the doorstep of his house, out in Lido Beach, Long Island, and he thought it was a gag: somebody at the News, perhaps his old friend Martin Dunn, the editor, had mocked up a fake copy of the paper and sent it to him as a joke. “I said to myself, ‘I bet I’m in here somewhere, on page 5, falling-down drunk,’ ” Dunleavy said. But, as he read on, he realized that it was for real.

“It’s the most incredible thing,” Dunleavy, who began his career in journalism in Sydney in 1952, said. “Thirty or forty years ago, maybe there was stuff like this going on. Somebody would say, ‘Put this story in and I’ll do something nice for you.’ And somebody would end up with a fur coat. But nothing as straightforward as this. What was the guy thinking?”

...Although Dunleavy didn’t know Stern very well—the gossip columnist preferred movie premières and fancy restaurants to Irish taverns—he had always admired Stern’s English-style suits. “I asked him where he got his suits, and he told me he got them at outlets in Vermont,” Dunleavy recalled. “Looking back, perhaps I should have thought twice about somebody on a Post reporter’s salary wearing such expensive clothes,” he went on. “He was always very polite, very pleasant. I swear: he never showed any signs of chicanery to me. The only thing I can say is that he went fucking nuts. He must have had some sort of mental breakdown.”

Dunleavy paused and shook his head again. “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” he repeated. “I bleed for the paper, I really do.” With that, Dunleavy took a drink, a long one. “On the other hand,” he said, perking up a bit, “to some degree it legitimizes me. After reading that story, I think I come across a bit more positively. I’ve got into fights, and that sort of thing, but nobody has ever accused me of anything like this, of corruption or extortion.” He went on, “I mean, I get every fourth drink bought for me. But you’d get that at any Irish bar, even if your name was Paul Spratt.”

The real target of the Page Six scandal

The Page Six scandal is not going away soon.

So let’s start with the most obvious question: Why did this California billionaire set up a lowly New York Post gossip freelancer in a federal sting over gossip items?

The target here is Rupert Murdoch, right?

It's interesting that this extortion case concerns little stories that, in Ron Burkle’s case at least, didn’t effect his bottom line or social standing beyond accusing him of being a skirt-chaser. And neither Page Six nor the New York Post is the source of Murdoch’s power.

Fox News is.

Interesting that in today's New York Times, the alleged extortionist, eccentric freelancer Jared Paul Stern, seems pretty nonchalant about the charges:

"I can't defend my lack of judgment here," he said. Still, Mr. Stern maintained that he had not been trying to use his position at Page Six for extortion. He said he had approached Mr. Burkle both to discuss investing in a clothing company Mr. Stern had started and to offer his services as a media strategist. He said Mr. Burkle was the one who first brought up the subject of payments for protection.

“He said Mr. Burkle was the one who first brought up the subject of payments for protection.”

The Times reports on viewing a section of the sting video: The moment is captured on a heavily edited version of a secretly recorded video of the meeting. It was provided to The New York Times by a person who had a copy of the entire recording, which was made by Mr. Burkle's security team with the aid of a private investigation company. The edited version contains only six minutes of roughly three hours of conversations...

At one point, the discussion was reduced to a bald question. The billionaire, Ronald W. Burkle, asked: "How much — how much do you want?" Mr. Stern paused for close to 15 seconds, shifting uncomfortably in his chair, holding his head in his hands at one point. Then, haltingly, he answered: "Ahhh, I think, like, you know, a hundred thousand to get going, and then we can do something like, month to month, like say, ten thousand."

Interesting that the scandal just happens to break as Page Six editor Richard Johnson leaves town to get married, possibly at Page Six mainstay Donald Trump’s spread.

Johnson, his staff, and possibly Post editor Col Allan, will most likely take the hit here. But this promises to go deeper as the first strike in a major offensive against Murdoch's influence and organization.

In fact, it's all promising to be even bigger than the revelation that George Clooney had signed a deal with Paramount Television promising cooperation with Entertainment Tonight as long as they kept him off Hard Copy. And we hear that the ethical questions raised by the Page Six flap will spread beyond newspapers to TV infotainment shows that shovel most of the flak-fed celebrity gossip to most of America.

Stay tuned here for the latest.

Let us now praise Page Six

Yes, there’s a big scandal breaking with the New York Post’s Page Six, as its editor Richard Johnson ships out to get married.

Page Six will be thirty years old in January 2007. So now's as good a time as any to remind ourselves of its place in tabloid history and popular culture, and to remember our great departed brother, Neal Travis, who helped give birth to Page Six and fed it through its Wonder Years.

We don't know Jared Paul Stern, who's accused of trying to extort a billionaire in exchange for nice stories, but we've been seen on Page Six, we've been seen with the team, and we won't kick 'em when they're down--or at least seem to be.

From Vanity Fair:

It was "Page Six” that broke the news in 1983 that the city's cultural-affairs commissioner, Bess Myerson, had hired Sukhreet Gabel, daughter of the judge who happened to be presiding over the divorce trial of Myerson's boyfriend, Andy Capasso-an incident that would eventually make its way into the national press. And people are still talking about the column's coverage of the public sexual favor that former New Line production chief Mike De Luca received at the 1998 William Morris pre-Oscar party. More recent "Page Six" scoops have included Donatella Versace's rehab stint and Spears's engagement to Kevin Federline.

Mostly, though, "Page Six" serves to provide a daily, pointillist portrait of an increasingly ephemeral culture. The Page's hallmarks are alliteration ("portly pepperpot"), memorable word choice ("canoodling," "bloviator"), an unswerving adherence to the creed that conflict is good for business, and the regular reward and punishment of the latest bad boys and "It girls" seeking the limelight. The exploits of 80s "Deb of the Decade" Cornelia Guest and actor Mickey Rourke have receded, only to be replaced in good time by the adventures of socialite-actress Paris Hilton, actress-dipsomaniac Tara Reid, and current "self-described It boy" Fabian Basabe, whose manhood was recently mocked on the Page after he was pantsed at a party.

Those who have felt the sting of the Page-- or complained that they've been steamrolled by an editor or reporter who carried a grudge-- don't always see what's so entertaining about the column. And there are those who contend that "Page Six" has become as fervently right-wing as the rest of the paper. But when it's doing what it does best-lampooning pomposity and ostentation and sticking it to lying publicists--"Page Six" provides a caffeinated kick the city has come to depend on. It's difficult to imagine how the New York Post would survive without it.

"Page Six"'s DNA can be traced directly back to the man who introduced Australian Rules tabloid journalism to America's genteel Fourth Estate in the mid-70s. The story begins in the days of hot-metal type and IBM Selectrics, when Rupert Murdoch, the driven Melbourne-born media baron… whose assets then included The Australian and the London Sun as well as "the Murdoch mafia"-- a band of hard-drinking, fiercely loyal newspapermen who would follow their stern-faced leader anywhere-- hired James Brady in 1974 to serve as the editor of the National Star (known today as the Star), the supermarket tabloid Murdoch started as part of his initial foray into American media… And when Murdoch bought an ailing liberal tabloid, the New York Post, in 1976, he put Brady in charge of developing a feature that would herald the paper's new ownership and direction: a gossip column.

Murdoch, according to James Brady, wanted the Post's new gossip page fashioned after "William Hickey," a gossip column that ran from 1933 to 1987 in London's Daily Express newspaper. Named after an 18th-century Irish rake, who, as penance, chronicled his drunken, scandalous life in a memoir, the column was written and edited by a changing cast of characters that once included the well-known British gossip Nigel Dempster. The Post's new column would work on a similar premise: a group of reporters would gather and write up brief, pithy stories about the powerful and famous and file them to the column's editor, who would imbue them with a unifying voice and plug them into a modular format…

By the time Murdoch actually began publishing the paper, Brady says, he himself had already been tapped by his boss to head his newest acquisition: New York magazine. Editorship of "Page Six" then fell to the natty, elfin Neal Travis, a New Zealand-born product of the Australian tabloid scene. His recruits included a young Post reporter named Anna Quindlen, who already had one foot in the door of The New York Times.

Remarkably, since Travis himself departed "Page Six" in 1978, only a handful of editors have presided over the column for any length of time. Claudia Cohen succeeded Travis, and when she left, in 1980, Brady returned for a two-and-a-half-year stint. Up next was Susan Mulcahy, who wrote a book about her experience, My Lips Are Sealed. She was followed, in late 1985, by Richard Johnson, who is the current editor of "Page Six" and the column's iron man, having held the top byline for more than half of its 28-year existence. There have been a few notable cameos too, including longtime Post columnist and former A Current Affair personality Steve "Street Dog" Dunleavy. And, surprisingly, given the disdain that was once heaped upon the profession, a number of people who worked for the Page have been Ivy League graduates...

Xenii marks the spot for scandal

Paula Abdul is making news for saying she was attacked at a private party over the weekend. Our sympathies are with the loveable lunatic from our favorite TV show, but the attack seems to be less newsworthy than the party itself.

Paula's police report pulls back the lid on a big fat Hollywood Babylon scandal just waiting to happen. According to reports, the party took place in Hollywood on a rented soundstage at the Sunset-Gower Studios, sponsored by a “private society” called Xenii.

As if the Freemasons, Scientology and the Mondrian SkyBar aren’t enough to deal with in this town, apparently we’ve had Xenii (“Ex-ee-knee,” rhymes with ”weenie”) floating around for months now: an exclusive, elite, secret club that advertises on the Internet. Go figure.

From a look at the website, Xenii is a Hollywood networking group that throws weekly private parties that flow far into the early morning hours, past closing time at different locations; not exactly a throwback to the Players Club, but an opportunity for people to pay money to party with celebrities, publicity flaks to get ink, party boys to meet B-girls, people like "DJ Adam" Goldstein to become known and everyone feel exclusive and important in the tradition of studio gates.

One site calls it: “L.A.’s solution to keeping Jane Schmoes away from Leonardo DiCaprio and Average Joes from Lindsay Lohan. And no, you can’t talk your way into THIS party, invite only! Agents expense the membership fee and modeling agencies have their clients work the parties, all to keep the social circuit so fresh and so elite with a higher caliber of starfuckers…”

Judging by the Xenii website and various blogs connected to it, the Xenii events include the usual party people, a dash of porn stars, lots of black entertainers to sing and dance and spin records to keep the white folk with cell phones dancing and enough photographers on hand to keep the celebrity magazines filled with role models and stars like DJ Adam.

From the website:

“Xenii is a private society, not open to the public.

"Individuals are accepted into Xenii based on the strengths of their relationships with trusted members, and the qualities and attributes they bring to the Xenii Community.”

A private society that includes Paula Abdul? The site has photos of the membership:


A real pretty bunch, wouldn't you agree?

“Think 1965… Andy Warhol and the Factory
Think 1925… The Great Gatsby Gatherings.”

Yeah, right. Think Entourage meets Fatty Arbuckle in Nicole Ritchie’s hot tub.

“We will soon be operating every single day out of the new Xenii House, which will be completely decked out and staffed as a place of refuge for members and as a place for us to host exclusive daytime and nightime gatherings. Similar to a VIP lounge at an airport - the Xenii House will provide members with full complimentary amenities including food, drinks, coffee, wireless internet, periodicals and more.”

Bottom line, Xenii is bound to make the police blotter again.

First it’s Paula Abdul getting thrown around by some entitled wanksta in a silk shirt, next it’ll be Suzie Wannabee found in a ravine off Mulholland and the investigation begins.

Keep an eye on Xenii.


(L.A. never got the velvet rope scene right. For a glimpse at what the Sunset Strip and Hollywood bar and club scene was like not too long ago, when nobody drank and the only velvet rope that mattered was at that bar near the Farmer's Daughter motel on Fairfax, give Tabloid Baby a read.)

The Morning After: Bye Bye, News Babes

One of the highlights of the CBS Evening News with old Bob Schieffer is his rotating gaggle of newschicks, these beautiful Charlie's Angels types jetting around the world, gals like Lara Logan (dubbed "34D Lara” by The London Sun after underwear modeling shots were revealed), Trish Regan and Serena Altschul.

We fear we will be seeing far less of them and more Steve Hartman as little chubby Katie takes the reins.

Funny how the PR machine has spun dry Katie Couric’s image from the fearsome tyrant, “at the first sound of (whose) peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights...", back to the spunky, perky, loveable squeezeball who’ll bring fun and sun to old CBS.

Bill Carter leads today's New York Times Couric story with one of his patented intimate scenes, this one around the Couric “dinner table,” as Katie runs the CBS balloon past her two daughters:

…Ellie, 14, at once voted for the jump to CBS, pointing out that mealtime was certainly no problem because, thanks to her mother's unusual schedule, they had been eating "early-bird dinners" for their entire lives, while almost everyone else they knew did not sit down to eat until 7 or 7:30.

When Ms. Couric turned to Carrie, 10, she got an equally quick response. Carrie said she would choose CBS as well, because that would make her mother "the first woman in that job.”

Does that scene ring true? It doesn’t ring true to us, not like Carter’s Jay Leno-hiding-in-the-NBC-broom-closet scene. We don’t buy it. Sounds like phony-baloney PR at work.

Check out the Epilogue to Tabloid Baby. Katie and Matt Lauer are mentioned specifically as the new standard bearers of tabloid journalism on the Today show. The tabloid-“mainstream” inbreeding has been going on for years now. And the injection of spunkball Couric into the CBS News bubble is only the latest step in Les Moonves’ deliberate destruction and tabloidization—or, darkly, the Entertainmenttionightatization-- of CBS News.

It’s got little to do with the Evening News job (the "managing editor" title they tossed her devalues that role on resumes, past and present-- and, oddly, her "from the heart" Today show farewell, read off a TelePrompter script, showed that newsreading is not Katie's forte). That stained throne is not what it was. ABC showed how little they think of it when they turned theirs over to Bob Woodruff and Liz Vargas, then put Woodruff in harm’s way (Vargas acted out her nonchalance when she set herself up for immediate pregnancy leave). NBC gave the seat to pretender-in-waiting Brian Williams. They’re not the premiere broadcasters of our day and not even the best qualified in their respective news departments. Katie won’t be grinning her gummy grin for the Depends and Metamucil crowd for long. We agree with Hollywood Thoughts on that one.

A note about her Today show replacement, Meredith Vieira: We knew Meredith long ago when she was a local news reporter for WCBS-TV. In fact, in our very first weeks living in New York City, we ran into the young Vieira in the acrid haze on 23rd Street as she did a live shot about the pier fires that covered Manhattan in grimy smoke. She would've fit in with Schieffer's Angels in those days.

She didn't wear well on The View. But who would?

No talk about ageism here. Despite all the skinny chiquitas wrassling for Katie’s job, Meredith is FIFTY-TWO.

Ready for the Big Time

New York Times splits hairs, avoids correction

Dear Reader:
I am the corrections editor for the Metro department of The Times. Your e-mail was forwarded to me for review….

Earlier this week, The New York Times made at least one big mistake in an article about New York Post columnist Cindy Adams:

“Reporters from Variety, 'Entertainment Tonight' and 'A Current Affair' might be expected to remain corralled behind a length of velvet rope, but at a recent premiere for 'Inside Man' at the Ziegfeld Theater in Midtown, Mrs. Adams curtly rebuffed a perky film publicist who had asked her to join the salivating pack...”

A Current Affair was canceled in October 2005, so there’s no way one of its reporters was behind that velvet rope. Additionally, A Current Affair was regularly denied access to celebrity red carpet lines, because it did real tabloid entertainment journalism and refused to regurgitate studio pap and myths, like ET. So you'd figure the Times would at least cop to placing a nonexistent reporter at the scene, no?

We asked the Times for a correction, and were pleasantly surprised when, in small-town, old school fashion, the paper actually responded to our request.

Through some big city hair-splitting, however, they found a way to avoid a correction:

Dear Reader:

I am the corrections editor for the Metro department of The Times. Your e-mail was forwarded to me for review.

You are correct in noting that "A Current Affair" has been canceled. However, the article does not say that a reporter for "A Current Affair" was at the premiere of "Inside Man."

The paragraph in question reads:

"Reporters from Variety, 'Entertainment Tonight' and 'A Current Affair' might be expected to remain corralled behind a length of velvet rope, but at a recent premiere for "Inside Man" at the Ziegfeld Theater in Midtown, Mrs. Adams curtly rebuffed a perky film publicist who had asked her to join the salivating pack."

The first part of this sentence is written in the conditional tense; it means that at red-carpet events like the premiere, those reporters would probably stay behind the velvet rope. The second part goes on to describe what happened at this particular premiere.

Thank you for writing.

Karin Roberts
Assistant to the Metropolitan Editor
The New York Times

Legit response or Geraldogate II? You be the judge…

Sorry, Les. We warned you...

WARNING #1: 7 December 2005
WARNING #2: 15 February 2006
WARNING #3: 16 March 2006

A moment in time

Our Man Elli in Israel reports:

On Wednesday,
at two minutes
and three seconds
after 1:00 in the morning,
the time and date will be
01:02:03 04/05/06.

That will never happen again.

Stay up late Tuesday night.

And catch Our Man Elli on television, over the Internet.

Our pal the veteran newsman is a now a TV news reporter for the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Click here and then click on ENGLISH TV NEWS.

New York Times revives A Current Affair!

Monday’s New York Times has a great article on Cindy Adams, the New York Post columnist whose influence, political contacts, savvy and style raise her high above the label “gossip” (the title, of course, is On Job With Empress of Celebrity Gossip).

There’s a small ironic twist. The story opens with Cindy at the premiere of Spike Lee’s new movie:

“Reporters from Variety, 'Entertainment Tonight' and 'A Current Affair' might be expected to remain corralled behind a length of velvet rope, but at a recent premiere for 'Inside Man' at the Ziegfeld Theater in Midtown, Mrs. Adams curtly rebuffed a perky film publicist who had asked her to join the salivating pack...”

Catch that?

The TV show A Current Affair, listed up there with the standbys Variety and Entertainment Tonight. A Current Affair, its very name shorthand for the best tabloid entertainment reporting in the business, relaunched at great expense and with great fanfare one year ago, reuniting a pack of top tabloid and television talent for the first time in more than a decade--

Someone's got to remind The Times that A Current Affair was cancelled last October-- suddenly yanked off the air after Fox News boss Roger Ailes took over Fox Television, in part because the show was competing with his cable channel, the time slot given to his expensive pal Geraldo Rivera (and who knows that show’s still on the air?).

Besides, no studio flak would ever give an A Current Affair reporter a spot on the receiving line next to tradesters like Variety and PR-regurgitators like ET. We'd be covering it from the street...

We'll watch for the correction.

(Cindy was a star of A Current Affair in its original incarnation. Read more about Cindy’s exploits in Tabloid Baby. She and her late husband Joey Adams play a big part in the story!)

Dr. Ruehl: A man of letters (to the editor)

Dr. Franklin Ruehl, cable television cult hero, USA network character extraordinaire, nuclear physicist, and future host of Dr. Ruehl’s Dance Party, today sees his eighteenth letter published in the L.A. Times.

In today’s Calendar section, Dr. Ruehl, an esteemed sci fi authority on (among many other topics) sci fi movies and television series, sets the record straight on the classic BBC sci fi series, Doctor Who.

“I have never had any response to them, or been able to parlay them in any way to further my career,” says the Doctor. “But it is a nice ego trip.”

May the power of the cosmos be with you, Doctor! The letter follows:

SEVEN cheers for the original "Dr. Who" TV series! Silurians! Cybermen! Sontarans! Daleks! These are just a few of the intriguing alien entities that the seven original Doctors did battle with on the classic British TV series "Dr. Who." And they engaged in endless mind games with such nefarious foes as the Master, Davros, Morbius and the Rani.

Lewis Beale's emphasis on the series' "cheesy" special effects ["Sci-Fi Show With a Special Effect," March 19] unfairly denigrates a program that enraptured viewers week after week with one absorbing extraterrestrial encounter after another. It was a program that adroitly united the mystique of limitless time travel with the concept of unbridled space exploration.

Indeed, it proved that a sci-fi show, when written intelligently and abetted by solid acting, does not have to rely on multimillion-dollar special effects to captivate the imagination!

May the power of the cosmos be with you!

FRANKLIN RUEHL Glendale


Dr. Ruehl, Dr. Who & Dr. Smith

A statue for Greg from the newsstand?

“I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being... So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.” -- Death of A Salesman

"When I take the dirt nap, they'll put a statue like that for me at the newsstand." -- Greg Burgess

Jon Crowley over at Hollywood Thoughts, known for his definitive essays on Disneyana and Hollywood history, has literally made the world pay attention to the death… and life… of Greg Burgess.

Greg was the ZZ Top-looking guy who worked at the Sherman Oaks Newsstand at the corner of Van Nuys and Ventura. His passing Monday at the age of 59 might have gone unnoticed, if not for Dodger Jon and his touching, Pulitzer-worthy essay on the death of a newsman.

A tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to L.A. Observed for linking to Hollywood Thoughts. The story sped through Cyberspace. Other bloggers posted memories, and the L.A. Daily News today runs a feature-length obit on a guy who probably never thought twice about how important he was to the lives of other people:

"He brought smiles to the faces of passing motorists. Heard the cares of customers. Handed out toys to children. And for decades was a fixture at the landmark Sherman Oaks Newsstand.

Gregory Mark Burgess, the artist clerk whose smile had cheered passers-by at Van Nuys and Ventura boulevards since the early 1980s… News of his death raced this week across the blogosphere. Drew calls of condolences from Jay Leno's office. And shocked a Sherman Oaks community longing for the ZZ Top-like hot-rodder perched each evening with a copy of your favorite news mag or paper.

“He was the jewel of the neighborhood,” said Jon Crowley… “He knew everybody. He cared for everybody. He belonged to everybody. He was the outdoor bartender... but instead of pouring a drink, he'd pour out words of wisdom.”

Burgess, a native of Columbus, Ohio, was raised in Covina and the inland town of Perris, where he developed a life-long love of hot rods, Harleys and high-heeled curves. A hell-raiser, he raced drag bikes, wrenched on top-fuel dragsters-- and spent at least one night in jail for joy-riding the fire chief's car…

Sunday through Thursday, rain or shine - Burgess always had a joke. A smile. Some advice. Or a copy of your favorite "Forbes" or "Easy Rider" tucked beneath the register. Leno of "Tonight Show" and Max Baer of "The Beverly Hillbillies" were regulars….

When he wasn't peddling news, the man whose favorite artists are Jackson Pollack and Von Dutch loved to tour art galleries, cars shows or create "rockabilly" art with homemade frames. His company, Scavenger Enterprises, fashioned model cars.

…Once, when eyeballing art in Orange County... Burgess noticed a statue of the famous Laguna Beach greeter. "He said, 'When I take the dirt nap, they'll put a statue like that for me at the newsstand."'

A statue for newsguy Greg?

Wouldn’t that be something. A statue for all the newsmen, artists, writers and folks who mean so much but never get the credit or more than a passing nod.

Get moving, Hollywood Thoughts.

We’ll make the first donation. Let’s get Leno… and Max Baer... and ZZ Top...to follow.