| |
BY CLIF GARBODEN
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THURSDAY 14 8:00 (5) ABC’s 50th Anniversary Bloopers Celebration. Only Dick Clark could bring Tom Bosley and Donny Osmond together on screen. A repeat special running through outtakes and flubs from a half-century of American Broadcasting Corporation television. (Until 9 p.m.) 8:00 (25) Football. The Oakland Raiders versus the San Francisco 49ers in pre-season play. 9:00 (2) Broadway’s Lost Treasures. Repeated from last week. Performance clips from Tony Awards shows (between 1967 and 1986) featuring Angela Lansbury, Yul Brynner, Zero Mostel, Joel Grey, and Carol Channing. (Until 10:30 p.m.) 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Featuring music from Dennis DeYoung. To be repeated on Saturday at midnight and 2 a.m. (Until 4 and 6 a.m.) FRIDAY 15 8:00 (4) Football. The Green Bay Packers versus the Cleveland Browns in pre-season play — which is really bad football to watch, and it may be a mistake to air so many pre-season match-ups. On the other hand, this is August; Channel 2 is mired in fundraising; thanks to short seasons, the reruns are in reruns; all those "reality" shows just suck; and even the cable channels aren’t letting any good movies slip into our living rooms. Fortunately, vintage episodes of Law & Order are on TNT almost nonstop, providing at least one haven for downhearted channel surfers. 10:00 (2) All-Star Bluegrass Celebration 2. Repeated from last week. Vince Gill hosts this now-annual event from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Featuring Alison Krauss and Union Station, the Del McCoury Band, Nickel Creek, Ricky Skaggs, the Whites, 11-year-old mandolin prodigy Sierra Hull, the Fairfield Four, and Vassar Clements. To be repeated on Monday at 7:30 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until midnight.) SATURDAY 16 4:00 (2) Dusty Springfield: Reflections. Always underappreciated, Dusty Springfield (née Mary O’Brien), who died in 1999 of breast cancer, was a consistently strong voice among Brit folkies, then among Brit rockers and crooners, then among white soulstresses internationally. This retrospective features her highlight performances of "The Look of Love," "Son of a Preacher Man," and more. To be repeated on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. (Until 5:30 p.m.) 4:00 (5) Basketball. The Los Angeles Sparks versus the Houston Comets in WNBA play. 4:00 (25) Baseball. The Sox versus the Seattle Mariners. 8:00 (5) Football. The Pats versus the Washington Redskins in pre-season play. 9:00 (2) Frank Sinatra: Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back. The 1973 NBC special that kicked off Frankie’s mid-career self-reinvention (he’d claimed to have retired). When he got back, he still carried a lot of old material — much of which he performs on this special. (Until 10:30 p.m.) 10:30 (2) Vintage Sinatra. Frank’s younger brother Vinny steps up to the mike . . . Actually, this is an anthology of old Frankie tunes, including numbers from his 1957-’58 TV series. (Until midnight.) Midnight (2) Austin City Limits. Featuring music from Joan Osborne. (Until 1 a.m.) Midnight and 2 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Repeated from Thursday at 3 a.m. and featuring Dennis DeYoung. SUNDAY 17 1:00 (4) NFL Pre-Season Special. Likely more hype and analysis, but it’ll set the stage. (Until 2 p.m.) 1:30 (2) Soul Comes Home: A Celebration of Stax Records and the Memphis Sound. Repeated from last week. Nashville is fun, but Nashville’s music is white and Memphis’s is black. All-around, Memphis wins (with Elvis tipping the scales drastically). A tribute to Stax recording stars of the 1960s and early ’70s. (Until 3:30 p.m.) 6:30 (2) Dusty Springfield: Reflections. Repeated from Saturday at 4 p.m. 8:00 (2) American Soundtrack: This Land Is Your Land. Judy Collins and the Smothers Brothers host surviving acts that didn’t make the final cut for A Mighty Wind. With the Limelighters, Roger McGuinn, the Highwaymen, the Brothers Four, and more — all of whom hold up better than expected. (Until 10 p.m.) 9:00 (4) True Crime (movie). Clint Eastwood directed himself in this 1999 story about a drunken reporter trying to save an innocent death-row convict from execution. Co-starring Isaiah Washington as the man who didn’t do it. This film was made before John Ashcroft started offering to administer lethal injections personally whether inmates are guilty or not. (Until 11:30 p.m.) 9:00 (7) Stephen King’s "Storm of the Century," part three. Apologies for declaring part two (aired last Monday) the conclusion of this dreadfully long King TV-movie. It ain’t over yet. But you probably should have stopped wasting your time by now, so we aren’t going to grovel. Tim Daly stars as the only sensible man on a storm-bound Maine island beset by a rash of ghoulish deaths. (Until 11 p.m.) Midnight (44) Globe Trekker: Ethiopia. An unexpectedly fascinating edition, with trekker Ian Wright exploring Ethiopia’s ancient and peculiar religious sites (the church that housed the Ark of the Covenant) and natural wonders (the Blue Nile Falls). Plus some market shopping, festive dancing, stick fighting, and cow jumping. (Until 1 a.m.) 2:00 a.m. (44) Soundstage. Featuring music from Jackson Browne. (Until 3 a.m.) MONDAY 18 7:00 (2) And Thou Shalt Honor. Generally referring to the elderly. Joe Mantegna hosts a look at the state of long-term caregiving in the US. A new Bush policy, by the way, involves marooning our aging parents on the icebergs that float south thanks to global warming. (Until 10 p.m.) 7:30 (44) All-Star Bluegrass Celebration 2. Repeated from Friday at 10 p.m. 8:00 (5) Football. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers versus the St. Louis Rams in pre-season play. 9:30 (44) The American Experience: Seabiscuit. The documentary version. A film by Stephen Ives about America’s most famous rags-to-riches racehorse. (Until 11 p.m.) 10:00 (2) Josh Groban in Concert. Who is he? (Until midnight.) TUESDAY 19 8:00 (2) Journey of Man. Sixty thousand years ago, every human’s common ancestor somehow reproduced, and the rest is history. Geneticist Spencer Wells tours the globe tracing DNA links to that ancient African. This view of things must go down really well with all those dumb-asses who don’t even admit to evolution. (Until 10:45 p.m.) 9:00 (25) The O.C. Continuing tales of the Old Country. Tonight, our lovelorn hero, Falngmn, who has put his international bowling career on hold in order to retrieve his betrothed, Singredd, from the clutches of Thagarr, the shoemaker of Dolnth, infiltrates O.C. Orthopedics ("Heels Vhile U Vait") only to discover that Singredd never showed up. "I pay good money to father," exclaims the excitable and heavily accented Thagarr. "And vhat then happens? No gurrl! I get suspicious. I think girl run avay vith boyfriend instead." Falngmn, relieved that Singredd has dodged her indentured servitude, is nonetheless concerned for her safety and worried that her father may blame him for her disappearance. Confused, he returns to his hovel in the poor quarter of Dolnth to look for her there, only to discover that his room has been ransacked by what neighbors describe as a short man in a green cape accompanied by a basset hound and three elderly women wearing goatskin tunics. Our hero is dismayed to find that his custom-drilled bowling ball has been stolen. (Until 10 p.m.) WEDNESDAY 20 7:00 (2) Great Performances: The Art of the Violin. A showcase of the world’s most celebrated 20th-century fiddlers. With vintage performance footage featuring Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, and Isaac Stern. (Until 10 p.m.) 8:00 (7) Shania Twain Concert Special. Shania Twain is actually better than her diminishing street cred would lead you to believe. Her artistic sin has been to follow the crossover money a bit conspicuously. This 2002 concert to support her album Up was taped in Chicago’s Grant Park. (Until 10 p.m.) 10:00 (2) Mario Frangoulis: Sometimes I Dream. Now we have a Greek tenor. He also mixes classical warhorses with pop tunes. We dream as well. For example, we dream that one of these days one of these tenors is going to tackle "Born To Run." Imagine it. Dream a little dream with us. (Until 11:30 p.m.) THURSDAY 21 8:00 (25) Football. The Dallas Cowboys versus the Pittsburgh Steelers. 8:30 (2) Play Piano in a Flash. Somebody named Scott "The Piano Guy" Houston purports to show viewers "fun techniques" that will enable them to play piano like a pro. Possibly like a pro wrestler. Could be amusing; just roll that old upright next to the Trinatron and give it a shot. (Until 10:30 p.m.) The 525th line. One for the Book-’Em Dept.: It came to our attention (from our daughter, Molly, who spends her school year in Dublin) that in Ireland (bear with us, this is mysterious) a phone company uses the tune to the theme from Hawaii Five-0 as a jingle to promote its directory-assistance number (which we presume scans neatly into the "Da-da-da-da-daah-daah . . . " opening phrase). There’s more. Continuing this tenuous cultural connection: the cartoon spokesperson for said phone company is an antic figure of fun named Danno (whose image does not resemble James MacArthur’s). And more. Danno (of phone-company fame) appears in phone-company-sponsored pre-feature films cautioning Irish moviegoers to turn off their cell phones in movie theaters. Okay, that’s a stretch, but since Hawaii Five-0’s star, Jack Lord, was an Irish-American, and sidekick James MacArthur’s Danno Williams at least had an Irish nickname, there’s some justification for elements of the popular 1968-’80 CBS series working their way (somewhat obliquely) into Irish culture. And the "book-’em"/phone-book pun is hard to miss once you buy into the gimmick. (In Hawaiian, "Book ’em" would be "Puke iaia, Danno," by the way.) This revelation prompted some on-line Five-0 research, and though right now the series seems to be airing only on something called the Hallmark Channel, its legend looms large on the Internet. The best Five-0 site uncovered was the exhaustive www.mjq.net/fiveo/. Here we discovered an even more unbelievable fact: the theme song to Hawaii Five-0 has lyrics! Yes, and they are horrible. No, they’re are not related to the show, as in "It’s Hawaii Five-0/Way across the sea./It’s Hawaii Five-0/Protecting you and meeee . . . " The real lyrics are even worse: "If you’re feelin’ lonely,/You can come with me./Feel my arms around you./Lay beside the seaaaaaa./We will think of somethin’ to do — /Do it ’til it’s perfect for you/And for me too./You can come with meeeee." Second verse; everybody sing! "So leave your world behind you./You can come with me./Sing a song I’ll teach you;/Live your fantasyyyyyyy./Love ya in a natural way./Doesn’t matter what time of day/You and I play./You can come with meeeee." And who better to render these asinine lyrics than Sammy Nixon Davis Jr.? You can download Sammy’s version (from www.mjq.net/fiveo/) as well as a terrifying punk-mock version from a Canadian band called Hookahman, but not, alas, the original recording by the Islands’ favorite son, Don "Tiny Bubbles" Ho. Who knew? Aloha.
|
