Month: September 2003

Reasons why I can’t stand K Street:
-Bragging in the second episode about the impact of James Carville-feeding Howard Dean his line in the first. (Not only do we make news, we shoot and edit the show as fast as the news cycle!)
-Being forced to imagine just what it might be like inside the Carville/Matalin marriage.
-Watching journalists like Joe Klein and Howard Kurtz giggle and smirk (respectively) through their cameos. (Yippee! I’m on TV and it’s not even Sunday morning!) (Incidentally, Klein described a Carville-like character in his pseudonymously published book Primary Colors as looking like he’d been conceived during the love scene in Deliverance. Meow!)
-Not being able to read the newspaper anymore without wondering what stories will make their way into the show next week. (Of course, Mary Matalin’s continued consulting with Dick Cheney will certainly limit or change the tone of coverage.)

Reasons why I enjoy K Street:
–Roger Guenveur Smith is an amazing actor and maybe this show will finally bring his one man show A Huey P. Newton story to a wider audience.
-The little Soderberghian touches like the phantom woman who keeps appearing to John Slattery (shades of Solaris?).
-The name of the imaginary lobbying/consulting firm is Bergstrom/Lowell, which is clearly a reference to muckraking former 60 Minutes producer (and occasional Times investigative pinch-hitter) Lowell Bergman, memorably portrayed by an over-the-top Al Pacino in The Insider.
-Knowing that George Clooney gets to be a politician without giving up his movie star lifestyle.

Yes, it’s painfully easy to rail against George Steinbrenner and his disdain for salary caps and smaller market baseball cities. But why should we exclusively scorn the Yankees’ bossman?
It seems as though his uber-capitalist TV-revenue-seeking mindset has spread to his employees as well. Listen to NY’s celebrated/overrated slugger Jason Giambi’s pullquote contribution to a Washington Post article about the celebrated matchups in this particular baseball postseason:
Jason Giambi can see why there’s so much enthusiasm.
“The teams that are in the postseason – the Cubbies always have great support. These playoffs should be great, a lot of TV viewers.”
Maybe George’s mouthpiece is anticipating a raise, what with all the exciting licensing revenue sure to come in this fall!

I have seen tomorrow’s Maureen Dowd column and it contains a Pepe Le Pew joke.

Good morning, rappers and rapper-wannabes! Today is the day to send your men servants (that means you, Farnsworth Bentley!) to J&R to get a copy of the cynically-reissued Scarface 20th Anniversary DVD.
As anyone who’s ever watched an episide of Cribs knows, rappers love the rags-to-riches-to mountains of coke saga of Tony Montana. Heck, just this week mush-mouthed rapper and walking clay pigeon 50 Cent bought Mike Tyson’s Montana-esque 18 bedroom mansion to live out his drug lord fantasies. Yep, rappers love Scarface! My question is, have any of them watched the film all the way to the end? The fall of the House of Montana (its foundation built on coke instead of sand) makes the Hammer Behind the Music seem positively uplifting.

Queens-bred, Oscar-winning model-lover and Dummy star Adrien Brody got into a little fender-bender on Delancey Street yesterday.
“I saw this big SUV on my left, and the next thing I knew, he was trying to switch lanes, but we ended up colliding instead… He said: ‘Didn’t you see me? Why didn’t you make room for me?” says Heidi Hong, the driver whose car he hit. “He seemed pretty angry, but there was no way it was my fault.”
Adrien. We expect better from you! Where did you learn such a thing? Oh, right. Next up, Brody snogs Durst.