On this week’s Naked Lunch podcast, co-hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild welcome back Peter Frampton.  As the show writes, “Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Peter Frampton -- the subject of a new documentary showing at this year's Tribeca Film Festival -- returns to ‘Naked Lunch’ to discuss his shiny new album, ‘Carry The Light.’ This time around, Peter is joined by his son Julian Frampton with whom Peter wrote and produced his first album of all-new rock material in 14 years.”

On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest contestant is Olivia Munn.  Her conversation with guest host Negin Farsad (who is overly enthusiastic whenever she sits in, though is less giggly here than usual) is a lot of fun – helped by her being a good talker, and a fun story how she started her career.
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts at the 20:46 mark.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that Jimmy Kimmel would be receiving the Peabody Award.  Surprisingly, he didn't reference it on his show -- though last night he finally did, since on Sunday was when the ceremony took place for the award being presented.

Here's his short, 3-minute acceptance speech that's funny, self-effacing and thoughtful.

Live from Savannah today, on this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest contestant is actor D.W. Moffett who began his career in Chicago, and then went to Broadway where he appeared in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and was in the original production of The Normal Heart the next year, and has had a long career in film (including the Oscar-winning One Battle After Another) and as a regular on TV series, such as Friday Night Lights, Hidden Palms and Switched at Birth. His entertaining conversation with host Peter Sagal is charming, as it covers his diverse career, focusing on his odd role in One Battle After Another, and being chair of the film and television program at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
 
Side Note: He was born in Highland Park, Illinois, where my dad’s medical office was, went to my high school New Trier, and graduated from the beloved Northwestern University.
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts at the 21:00 mark

It's been a while since I posted the last one, so let's rectify that.

Here’s another of the wonderful TV documentaries that George Plimpton made with David Wolper for ABC in the early 1970s.  Though the editor of the erudite Paris Review, Plimpton was most famous for his participatory journalism, where he wrote books about his experiences training in a wide range of challenging fields, mostly sports, but he branched out on occasion, generally for these TV documentaries.
 
As I mentioned before, my favorite of those TV films was one where Plimpton sort of re-created his Paper Lion experience.  It wasn’t with Detroit again, but this time with then-Baltimore Colts.  (The later team later moved to Indianapolis, and years after that Baltimore got another ballclub, the Ravens.)   And that’s what me have today.  Plimpton!  The Great Quarterback Sneak.
 
Although there was a movie about his Paper Lion experience, that wasn’t with Plimpton himself, but an actor (Alan Alda) playing him.  For the TV documentary, however, it’s all Plimpton – going through training, interacting with the players and then getting another chance at redemption, to run four plays at quarterback in an exhibition game.  But this game was ratcheted up – it wasn’t an intersquad contest, but playing against another NFL team.  And making it more dramatic, that other team was his old team, the Detroit Lions.  Furthermore, it was held in a stadium where…106,000 people were in attendance!  At the time (and maybe still, I don’t know), the biggest crowd to ever see an NFL game, albeit an exhibition. 
 
I find it a joy, most especially if you like football, but even if you don’t.  Because like all of Plimpton’s work, while detailed about the sport (mostly in the first segment, to establish the world we’re now in), it soon turns and becomes about the people involved, not the event itself, as Plimpton talks with the players on the sidelines and throughout the training camp, and in the dorm, getting them to open up, more than a typical athlete interview after a game.  Plimpton’s narration is thoughtfully described, not by a professional athlete but an outsider trying to make sense of it all.  And ultimately, hoping he can put together all he learned, as it leads up to his four plays…
 
Here then, running 50-minutes (not 64 like the video shows) is the wonderfully titled, Plimpton!  The Great Quarterback Sneak.

The is a bit of an oddity, though I don’t know why I didn’t know about it until now, almost six years after the fact.  It’s a 24-minute “Zoom movie” done in 2020 during COVID as a fundraiser for World Central Kitchen – that’s the “third” (sort of) in the now-trilogy of Father of the Bride movies, called Father of the Bride Part 3 (ish).  The entire cast is reunited, along with a few additions that includes one big, uncredited surprise.  And it’s written and directed by Nancy Meyers, who made the first two films.

With such pedigree, I was hoping it to be a great treat.  But it’s not especially funny, though still enjoyable to see for the reunion of everyone.  (And I suspect it will probably better if you know ahead that it’s not especially funny, so your anticipation and expectations will be lower.)  However, it does pick up a bit when Steve Martin enters.  And two actors admirably really throw themselves into things – Martin Short (who comes in late) and Florence Pugh, who’s one of the additions, playing the granddaughter.