Host Peter Sagal's guest contestant on this week's NPR quiz show, Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! is Paul Shaffer, the former music director of The Late Show with David Letterman. What's little remembered is that he not only was in the original band on Saturday Night Live (which probably is remembered...), but was also an original cast member.
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The other day while reading a biography of Walter Cronkite I came across a passage about Charles Kuralt. It began to swell inside me that I really wished he was still around and still making his "On the Road" pieces for CBS News. As much as I enjoyed him hosting the CBS Sunday Morning show, it was those road stories that had the most profound impact of enjoyment. They probably haven't aired for almost 30 years, but were on for a quarter-of-a-century, popping up on The Evening News with Walter Cronkite from time to time, and it was always a joy when, near the end of the show, Cronkite would introduce a change-of-pace with his, "And now, let's go on the road with Charles Kuralt." (The Cronkite biography noted how initially the legendary anchorman didn't like the idea of "On the Road" when it was first told to him, bothered that such non-hard news stories would take up valuable minutes from the limited airtime he had every day. Eventually, Cronkite not only came to love the pieces, but he and Kuralt -- with whom he previously only had a passing relationship -- became best friends, even talking about buying a radio station together. It didn't pan out, though Kuralt did himself buy WELY in Ely, Minnesota. I've actually been to Ely, it being the jumping off point for canoe trips into the Lake Superior Boundary Waters area.) I tracked down a very long collection of Kuralt's original "On the Road" stories and have decided to post them here. It's not even close to everything he did, but it's a strong mix. If you too loved the stories, I have no doubt you'll love seeing them again, as well, and catching some you had missed. If you've never seen any of these and don't know much of Kuralt's work, you're in for a treat. Instead of starting in with an "On the Road" story, though, I've decide to begin with a terrific 11-minute look at his life, which the CBS Sunday Morning show, hosted then by Charles Osgood, broadcast in July, 1997, to honor Kuralt on the occasion of his passing. And you'll get a wonderful overview of the "On the Road" stories mixed in, to remind you what you're in for... From the archives. As I wrote last time around -- This week's contestant is Daniel Swartz from Clark Summit, Pennsylvania. Happily, I actually got the composer style this week. Happily, because I had more trouble with the hidden song. There's a long passage where it's clear Bruce Adolph is playing the hidden tune -- but for the life of me, I couldn't get it. And it's perfectly well-known. And Adolph explains afterwards, most of the song is well-hidden...though the contestant did guess it.
On this week's 3rd & Fairfax podcast from the Writers Guild, the guest is writer Tracy Oliver, who wrote the film Barbershop: The Next Cut, and upcoming has Girls Trip,
On Wednesday, I posted a performance of the song "Do Re Mi" from the Dutch production of The Sound of Music, and this is another version of that song, and related to the very same production. But there's a difference. And it requires a backstory. It may even be a more fun version, though the one yesterday -- which you can scroll down to see -- is the final performance, so I felt the one to post first. Let's head back a decade, first. You may recall a TV "contest competition" show around 2007 that set out to discover two unknown to star as the leads for a new Broadway production of Grease. The TV program went by the clever name of one of the songs of the show, "You're the One That I Want." There have been five similar shows done in England, the first of which I believe came a year before the U.S. show. The oft-mentioned here Graham Norton was the host of all five, and Andrew Lloyd Webber was a judge for all five, and produced four of the stage shows. All five had similarly clever titles, which each used a song from their shows. One was to cast 'Nancy' in a stage production of Oliver!, that was called "I'd Do Anything" (and was the only one that Lloyd Webber didn't end up producing, but Cameron Macintosh did, and was one of the judges). There was also a search for someone to play 'Joseph' in a revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoast, called "Any Dream Will Do." A revival of Jesus Chris Superstar to find the lead role went by the name, "Superstar." To find a young actress to star as 'Dorothy' in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz, they did a TV search program, "Over the Rainbow." And the first TV show which started it all was an effort to cast the starring role of 'Maria' in an upcoming production of The Sound of Music, for which the TV show was cleverly called, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" Which brings us up to speed. It turns out that in The Netherlands, they also did a TV contest search to find an actress to star in a new production of The Sound of Music. Their version was called, "Op zoek naar Maria" The actress who won that contest was who performed in the video I posted, which you can see by scrolling below. In this new video here, it's the same song, "Do Re Mi" -- but as performed on the TV show, with all six final actresses in the contest. The children are the same throughout the number, but each of the actresses play a sort of "tag team" as they get their chance to perform. By the way, for those of you keeping a scorecard, the actress who ultimately won the contest (whose name, I've tracked down, is Deborah de Ridder) is the sixth of these, and she comes in at the 3:18 mark. I should add, as good as all those actresses are who perform as 'Maria,', they only have to do their 40 seconds, but it's the kids who almost stand out more, needing to learn the full and somewhat intricate choreography. And sing that chorus over and over and over... And a reminder: every time you hear the line that sounds like, "Fa -- Your father is in hell," it actually means in Dutch, "Your father is a hero." Hence the little salute they all keep giving. Oops, sorry, I was a bit premature there this morning. It turns out that they aren't going to vote on the TumpCare bill tonight, since Trump called the Washington Post's Robert Costa to say he was pulling the bill.
And just for clarification's sake -- this is the bill he approved that Trump called "Wonderful" the day it was presented. In Trump terminology, I believe the expression is "#Sad." So, let's check the scorecard: Seven years for the Republican Party to come up with their own health care bill. Countless Republican votes to repeal the ObamaCare. Continued promises by Trump to repeal ObamaCare on Day One of his administration. And after all of that -- this was the best that they could do. The Republican bill only got 17% support. It's still possible that Republicans could bring healthcare up later, but the same issues remain. To get enough votes, the GOP is going to either make the bill more palatable to the public -- which will lose conservative Republican votes in Congress -- or take away more protections...which will make the public hate it even more. More likely is that there are healthcare regulations that the administration can (and likely will) change. And though it all, the best we get from Trump is that no one knew how really complicated health is. We all knew. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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