Showing posts with label Good Day LA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Good Day LA. Show all posts

Saturday, June 18, 2016

My Muhammad Ali update, with great insight into him from two longtime favorites of mine, Roy Firestone and Maureen Dowd; @RoyFirestone @NYTimesDowd



#MuhammadAli thru prism of an avid, teenage sports fan in 1970's #Miami. #transcendent #SoFL
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/remembering-muhammad-ali-thru-prism-of.html

I have seen and read so many great and inspiring things about Muhammad Ali since my initial blog post of June 3rd about him and my memories of him from the 1970's while I was growing-up in Miami and South Florida, where he spent so much time -inc. the time I actually received an award from him- that I initially thought I'd have a lot of trouble deciding what to be sure to include in any update I ever did.

In the end, though, I decided to keep it simple, something that I don't always do here on the blog.

I decided to include the contributions from two hyper-observant people that I've both long admired and have come to know to a small extent over the intervening years since first leaving South Florida for college in Bloomington and my life thereafter.
Each person, uniquely, with their own personality clearly shining through, shares some insight and reflections about Ali and what to me made Ali such a unique character in American and world history: Maureen Dowd and Roy Firestone.

I really encourage anyone who has NOT read my earlier post to do so first, since they'll gain some very useful context on me and my observations about Ali that I think will well serve you to better appreciate the three of them. Trust me, you'll be glad you did!

That June 3rd post of mine also includes a great video of Roy talking about Ali that as I have said and written elsewhere, has the great advantage of not only being funny and sweet, but 100% true.
#perceptive doesn't even begin to describe it.
I've posted it below, too.

Ironically, as it happens, I also once shared an early film review of Will Smith as Ali with Maureen Dowd in the lobby of the NY Times Washington bureau, where she works as a columnist.
That's the same lobby where for SO many years during the 15 years I lived and worked in the D.C. area, until 2003, that I used to spend a LOT of time after work with friends who not only worked upstairs at the Times, but also well-informed media-centric friends who worked nearby in downtown D.C., right around the corner of the Baltimore Orioles team store, another longtime haunt of mine.

(For those of you who are new to the blog, the Orioles store is where, on 9/11, hours after it happened, I first saw video of the Twin Towers coming down, after my colleagues and I were ordered to evacuate earlier that morning from our office, then located across the street from the FBI and Dept. of Justice on Pennsylvania Avenue, due to growing concern about the exact location of a "missing" airplane. The airplane which we subsequently came to know and grieve for which carried the very brave passengers and crew of United #93. 
Knowing that one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers that morning had originated out of Boston had filled me with dread all day because... on 9/11, one of my former Arlington housemates was a flight attendant who worked out of Logan Airport, so...) 

There in the lobby of the Army-Navy Building on Eye Street is also where, as I have blogged about previously, Maureen Dowd and I picked up our respective copies of Variety's Daily Gotham edition, Monday thru Friday. That edition is the one seldom seen in 99% of the country, and has the green masthead on the top to differentiate it from its much-larger weekly edition with the red masthead.

Even in a large and important city like D.C., there was a very tiny delivery window for the handful of people who subscribed to Daily Variety and could get it hand-delivered on a same day basis, at no extra cost, and luckily for me, 1627 Eye Street was one of them.
It helped enormously that the Motion Picture Association of America, MPAA, the U.S. film industry's trade association has its lobbying HQ in D.C. just down the block on Eye Street, which is how it came to be so many times over my 15 years there that I saw and even had a chance to talk sometimes to its iconic leader Jack Valenti, often while he was making his way down to the nearby CVS.

Sometimes, in her haste to get upstairs, depending upon who swung by the concierge's desk in the lobby first that particular morning, Maureen would grab my copy by mistake, so I'd have to take the copy with her name on the mailing label.
Which, as I've remarked here previously, occasionally, got me some pretty quizzical looks on my Metro ride home later to Arlington. :-)













Roy Firestone remembers Muhammad Ali on Good Day LA. with hosts Steve Edwards and Maria Sansone. He talked about his first interview ever, and it was interviewing Muhammad. He was only 21 years old.
FOX 11 Los Angeles YouTube Channel video, Uploaded on June 10, 2016
https://youtu.be/NKguJRUCIx0


Muhammad Ali's Procession
The New York Times YouTube Channel, Uploaded on June 10, 2016
https://youtu.be/G5ZDZMLfgqY


Muhammad Ali's Funeral
The New York Times YouTube Channel, Uploaded on June 10, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bYFb97j7Ro




Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Sasha Alexander & Angie Harmon, America's savviest, sexiest and most-likable TV crime fighters, return Tuesday night as Rizzoli & Isles returns to TNT for Season 3 at 9 pm Eastern. Love #rizzoliandisles


KTTV FOX 11 Los Angeles' Good Day LA: Sasha Alexander of TNT's Rizzoli & Isles, June 4, 2012. http://youtu.be/nC9FCsVvgYY



Sasha Alexander & Angie Harmon, America's savviest, sexiest and most-likable TV crime fighters, return Tuesday night as Rizzoli & Isles returns to TNT for Season 3 at 9 pm Eastern, the first of 15 new episodes.


On Tuesday afternoon, TNT is re-running six episodes from Season 2 from 3 p.m. until the Season 3 premiere at 9 p.m. Eastern. The encore is at 11 p.m. 





ABC-TV's The View: Angie Harmon of TNT's Rizzoli & Isles, June 4, 2012.
http://youtu.be/H5aVeodTfH0

 

TNT video: Rizzoli & Isles, Season Two Rewind
http://www.tntdrama.com/video/?oid=312570&eref=sharethisUrl

http://www.tntdrama.com/series/rizzoliandisles/


http://www.youtube.com/user/RizzoliIslesTNT


http://twitter.com/#!/tessgerritsen


http://twitter.com/#!/JaneRizzoli  @JaneRizzoli


We all know from all the TNT promos and teasers that Jane and Maura are on the outs after Jane changed her mind and might've shot Maura's criminal father, Paddy in the Season 2 finale, leading Maura to get all primal on Jane.


My own intuition -and knowledge of how TV dramas like to resolve things- tells me that as the first few episodes develop and the facts emerge, it'll become clear that that it wasn't bullets from Jane's gun that did the deed but rather bullets from the gun of Jane's love-interest on the DL, FBI Agent Dean. 
Which will be how and why the Internal Affairs folks come into the picture and "out" their relationship.








Did I mention yet that a few months ago, I was part of TNT's focus group that -theoretically at least - helped shape the  direction of the print ads for Rizzoli & Isles this season? 
There were some really good ones and some ones that seemed, well, not quite so inspired.
In any case, when they start showing-up in the usual media sources, I'll comment here from time-to-time on the news ones, since I kept notes on what I originally thought of the various renderings we were given to examine, and how they ranked among the ones I graded.

I nixed almost all of the more egregiously gun or handcuff-oriented ones -like what Kanal 9 uses in Sweden- just because they seemed to remind me of silly Grade B film ads from the 1960's and '70's, or seemed designed to appeal to people who aren't already watching the show.


While every show always likes to add viewers, at this point, since they have a winning formula and are getting very good ratings and have advertisers very interested in being associated with  the show, I think their priority ought to stay on making the show more consistent and on keeping their present viewers happy and properly motivated, not expending energy trying to get new viewers by portraying the show as something it's not.

Meanwhile, Angie Harmon has been making great use of that killer smile and killer body while 
production was dark on the Rizzoli & Isles set...




Craig Morgan- This Ole Boy (Official music video) features Angie Harmon. January 9, 2012. http://youtu.be/59q432IKIpI


Given what I've written here in the past about how much I like the stars and the show, it probably won't surprise you to learn that I'd watch this even if it were a silent film...





Above, beautiful and talented -and like me, Texas-bornAngie on the cover of the September 2000 Texas Monthly, which I bought when I still lived in Arlington County, VA -and was flying pretty frequently. The particulars are that I bought it iAugust of 2000 while I was at a Walmart located on the drive from DFW Airport to Sulphur Spings, halfway between Dallas and Texarkana on I-30, for a fabulous-but-hot weekend that featured the wedding of my dear friend, Shannon.
That weekend, when the Cowboys lost to the Eagles, it averaged between 110 and 115 degrees.