Daniel Kells

So I have lots of time on my hands, and need to avoid playing poker (else Daniel will blow all his money and be brokey-broke…), so I’ve been watching movies, both on TV and in the theater.

I’m going to refrain from doing movie reviews.  I might, on occasion, suggest that you see something, or that perhaps you steer clear of something else.

But anyway, this has nothing to do with what movies you should or shouldn’t see.

It’s about pill-popping.

I was watching “Rumor Has It” starring Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner (okay, don’t see it — it’s creepy), and the morning after having a drunken fling with a man who might or might not be her father (ummm… gross, anybody?), Aniston takes some aspirin.

And so here’s the entire point of this post.  Have you ever noticed that people take pills in movies completely differently than the way people take pills in real life?  In real life, you put the pill in your mouth, take a sip of water and swallow the pill.  In the movies, you put the Smartie (or Tic-Tac or whatever it is) on your tongue, you tip your drink too far, and then jerk your head back rather violently, all in an effort to get the damned pill down your throat.  It looks completely strange…

Okay, I’ll admit it, this is a rather pointless post.  Okay, not completely pointless.  I suggest you avoid “Rumor Has It.”

Famed Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto passed away earlier this week.  For those of you from the New York area who might not have been baseball fans, you probably know Rizzuto more from his The Money Store commercials than his play on the ball field.

In honor of him, then, find below a small collection of commercials I found on YouTube, the second one being for The Money Store.  There are a couple of other commercials, including one of my favorite anti-drug commercials (”I learned it by watching you”), and a completely whacked-out clip of Oprah at the very end (make sure to stay around for it, it’s very funny!).

This video is a hoot, unless if you’re a girl.  In which case, perhaps, it brings up some awful memories.

UPDATE:  For some reason these two videos were taken down from YouTube.  But somebody re-posted the “Walk it Out” version of the dance, so the link should now work.  No guarantees on the original.  –DJK

Okay, this has been viewed over a million times, so it’s not like I discovered it or anything… But, I still love it.

Equally entertaining, is the original, “Mexican Breakfast.”  Enjoy!

Makes me want to catch a “Three’s Company” marathon…

This is a song and video by an Israeli singer name Ivri Lider.  I think it’s pretty sweet.

I admit it, I love Larry King.  He’s strange, he’s quirky, he doesn’t ask the hardest questions when he’s interviewing political-types, and he sometimes has on the worst guests imaginable (Dog the Bounty Hunter! tells about his brush with the Mexican legal system!!), but I still love watching him.

It started when I was a young boy (I feel so old and lacivious even typing that!).  Anway, back when I was known as Danny, we lived in a mother/daughter house, and my grandparents lived in an apartment in our house.  With two Italian women living under the same roof, nothing gave me more pleasure than finding out what my mom planned to make for dinner, then what my grandmother planned to make for dinner, and choosing which I wanted more.

When I would choose my grandmother, I would eat with her and my grandfather in front of the TV, and we always watched Larry King.  It’s tough to sum up what I learned during that time, but much of it has to do with personality.  Recognizing it, appreciating it, to a certain degree envying it, and studying it.

Anyway, I don’t bring this up to wax all poetial and stuff.  I bring it up to mention something from the show this evening.

Larry was interviewing Roe Messner, Tammy Faye Messner’s widower, who owns and operates a firm that builds churches.  It was a very captivating interview.  Some of Larry’s most interesting guests are the ones who aren’t on-camera for a living, as it makes me, as a viewer, feel more voyeuristic.  Like, I’m seeing something raw (think reality TV, only real).  Anyway, one of the things he talked about is his own battle with cancer.  He has choosen to not treat it; to ignore it.

I haven’t been able to find much on the subject, actually, but I did find this from an info page on the Mayo Clinic’s website:

If the burden of treatment side effects outweighs the benefit that treatment can bring, you might choose not to be treated. But that doesn’t mean your doctor will abandon you. Your doctor can still provide comfort measures, such as pain relief.

 It’s part of a longer article on cancer myths.  I thought it was an interesting read.  Morbid, but interesting.  Roe Messner’s choice to not treat his cancer seems kind of like being a Christian Scientist, only with painkillers.

Last weekend I finished up the run of Kiki & Herb at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.  Great show, fabulous people, beautiful theater.

The box office for the venue is in a storefront right next to the theater, and, like most storefronts, has display windows.  On one side of the door, they have a display that advertises whatever show is going on, or coming up.  (For Kiki & Herb, for example, they had a table set with cocktail glasses, a blonde wig, etc.  Very cute.)

On the other side, they have a poster hanging for the J.W. Marriott Hotel, obviously a major sponsor.  Here’s a picture of the poster that’s hanging (sorry, it’s not the best photo in the world…).

But, if you look closely, the poster says the funniest thing.

Pre-theater.  Post-theater.  Or even instead of theater.

I’m not sure that’s the message a theater wants to be sending, at the box office no less.  “You know what?  Don’t even come to the theater.  Ideally, buy your tickets then no-show.  But, regardless, stay in your hotel room.  Pick something up on pay-per-view…  Get some room service.”

In the last post, I used the term “collapsed bridge death-watch,” and now I thought I should explain what that means.

First, it would help to tell you that I can get pretty obsessed with cable news.  I like to toggle between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox to see what they’re covering vs. the others, and how they’re covering what they’re covering.

That said, the three networks all will generally go to non-stop coverage of a big story when a big story happens and unfolds.  And because they’re working on the fly, the anchors and reporters can sometimes say some pretty stupid things.

But more than just saying stupid things– (For example, you ask? This from CNN: “It’s a tragedy like this that makes me happy I’m not covering Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton.”  Happy, eh?) –more than stupid things, the whole lot of them focus so hard on the death toll.

Don’t get me wrong, the death toll is an important aspect of covering tragedies such as this.  But, the sheer obsession with it sometimes gets in the way of covering the story (in my humble opinion).

The obsession with the death toll, for example, led all three networks to report that seven people were dead, but that number might be nine.  That was last night when I went to bed (okay, earrrrly this morning).  But now, this morning (11:00 a.m. specifically), the death toll is four.  If they hadn’t broadcast the number seven non-stop last night and into the wee hours of this morning, the fact that the number is down to four would not seem so significant.  But rather than seeming like good news (because, in truth, I’m sure the number will go up), it instead highlights the desperation of the news media to report on the deaths, always the deaths.

Thus, “death-watch.”  And there have been other death-watches.  The two most famous death-watches were not even about numbers of people dead, but instead about the pending death of a single person.  First, there was Terry Schiavo death watch, wherein the media breathlessly waited for that poor woman to die.  And then there was Papal death watch, wherein the media camped outside the Vatican and speculated that the Pope had died every time the light was turned on or off.

I leave you with a quote from a reporter at CNN.  He was interviewing a sheriff on the scene of the bridge collapse.  Here’s his first question:  “I want to ask about the death toll.  Sorry, I hate using that term.  Umm.  Number of deaths.  Has there been any change in the death– uh, numbers.  Number of deaths.  Death toll.”  The sheriff just stared at him for a moment, then said, “Uh, I don’t know.  I think four.”

Ohh, this commercial made me laugh, and, as I was in the middle of collapsed bridge cable television death-watch, I wasn’t expecting to laugh.