A Shoe on the Freeway

Did you catch Oprah scolding author James Frey? Oh, mama. It was rich. There was Frey, sitting forlornly on the couch in the Principal Winfrey’s office, where Oprah scowled the look of a woman scorned.

Frey is the fella who wrote “A Million Little Pieces,” supposedly a memoir but come to find out he embellished his life story from whole cloth or the lives of others. Hey, anybody who used that long might have issues, right? Who knows? The guy pumped out a huge hit, no denying that.

Nor is there any denying Oprah’s support for the book, including a talk-on during “Larry King Live” when she defended Frey after some careful readers wondered about the “memoir’s” veracity.
A week later Oprah, so important use of her last name is optional, summoned Frey to the office when she publicly caned him and his dishonesty. For his part Frey was contrite, but this show was Oprah’s and the subject was her and the couch was hers and the scowl was hers.

James Frey made some of it up. He’ll have to deal with those literary demons although I wonder if the Oprah dress down will help sales. Why he consented to be on the show, I’ll never know. Yeesh! Scary stuff.
That’s because while Oprah was rightly angry about a fictive memoir, her little session with Frey on the couch was all about her, all about her — like the rest of us — being duped.

I haven’t read “A Million Little Pieces” but friends recommend it. I have read enough about it that Frey claims his recover from drugs and alcohol was apparently a matter of willpower. That’s some sort of will.

But still not enough to have a good response for the Principal Winfrey.

Posted by George Ayoub at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe it’s the early May afternoon passing by the windows in this building on January 27, but I have no interest in the Winter Olympics, now 14 days and one Super Bowl away.
Can we be walking around Suck’s Lake in shorts watching kids fish and lovers snuggle and still expect to foam at the mouth that evening about the U.S.’s chances in luge?
I suppose if I skied or skeletoned (basically sliding on ice atop a shiny hot plate at 70 mph) or rolled a Frosty up in my front yard, I might be inclined to watch.
Or maybe if I lived in Colorado or Lucerne.
As it is now, the biggest news about Torino has been Bode Miller’s confession that he sometimes races under the influence, or at least that his BAC the morning after renders him Otis-like. Of course, Otis only let himself into the Mayberry hoosegow; Miller is letting himself through slalom gates at femur snapping speeds.
I’ll probably watch a little, just to see some snow, ice and well-coiffed and turned out European sophisticates in Spandex and fur.
Meanwhile, pass the sun tan lotion.

Posted by George Ayoub at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Treasury Department has come to senses, such as they are. The Feds had banned Cuba from participating in the World Baseball Classic, which will take place in San Juan and throughout the U.S. in March.
The government originally denied Cuba from taking the field because it was nostalgia week with foreign policy. Based on Cuba and Castro’s behavior in the 1960s, the U.S. has had a long-standing policy of not allowing certain financial transactions with the island nation.
The Bush administration reversed course Friday. Good. Castro is old and toothless and continued time and energy used to keep him near the top of our enemies list is not well spent. Greater evils exist, and none of them have a anyone who can throw a decent slider.
This is baseball. In an Olympic year, let’s hope we can keep foreign policy and sports separate.

Posted by George Ayoub at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let’s stick with television. I watched most of the “Golden Globes,” known more familiarly as the “Cleavage and Stubble Showcase.” I trued switching from a live Kiefer Sutherland to a taped Jack Bauer to see if he could save the hostages and the world on “24.” I had never watched much of the show, but was pleasantly surprised to see my buddy James Morrison playing the role of Bill Buchanan, an apparent reoccurring gig.
The Globes, one precursor to Oscar, is reportedly the best party of the year in Hollywood. It’s also a wakeup call for us slackers who have yet to see some of the films being nominated and honored. The fact that “Brokeback Mountain” won four Globes will probably anger a bunch of folks and probably send a bunch of others to the box office.
In the vernacular, stay tuned.
It was a giggle to watch the four nominated actresses from “Desperate Housewives, in anticipation of the Best Actress in a Television Drama award, holding hands like a quartet of coeds before the prom queen is announced.
I laughed out loud when Mary-Louise Parker, the only other nominee in the category won for “Weeds.”
Quickly back to the terminal when bad guys were in charge, but alas, Bauer had worked some sort of magic. I missed it … but it is always good to see James.

Posted by George Ayoub at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a moment of weakness I looked over the top of my magazine to see Jerry Rice, former heavenly wide receiver in the NFL descending into television hell called “Dancing With the Stars,” an endless hour or so of glitter and gasping.
I was the one gasping.
Don’t get me wrong. I like dancing. I even went to see “Shall We Dance,” a semi-forgetable Richard Gere feature. The dancing was very hot, however.
The reason I needed oxygen was the star turn. Rice wasn’t bad, nor was the female wrestler and the journalist. But the rest of the “stars,” well … at least they looked pretty good.
My very wise wife told me to lighten up.
I tried.
But that was before the ice storm hit.
Apparently Fox will start airing something called “Skating with Celebrities.” That’s right six “skating super stars” — you would have to point them out to me — will be paired with Dave Coulier, the funny guy from “Full House,” Olympian Bruce Jenner, Todd Bridges from “Different Strokes” by way of a series of courtrooms, actress Kristy Swanson, singer Deborah Gibson and TV “personality,” Jillian Barberie. Yeah, I never heard of the last three either.
Well, good luck with that.
Personally I can’t wait for “Open Heart Surgery With the Stars,” where, in the series’ first episode, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are teamed with two famous cardiologists to see who can tie those arteries off first.
Stay tuned right after OHSWTS for “Crossover Appeal Celebrity Engineering,” during which Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Justin Timberlake are teamed with three MIT grads in a race to see who can design and build a new tower Donald Trump will accept and use next season’s “Apprentice.”

Posted by George Ayoub at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back on the blog, holidays and co-workers finished interfering with the my occasional offering. All blame aside, I’ve noticed at their most basic level blogs are beasts that need to be fed.
I thought Kathleen Parker had an interesting take on the blogosphere in a piece last week in Thursday’s print edition. She wondered about the sheer volume and spotty veracity blogs have to offer. According to Parker, the great democratic cyberleveler apparently comes with conditions and no warranty.
I had those same concerns when blogs exploded a few years — about the time Parker professed their goodness as Dan Rather was being outed.
But as Parker noted, many in the B-sphere do not do any actual reporting or research. Instead they rely on each other or the dreaded mainstream media, the same MSM they are trying to supplant for information.
Go figure.
Anyway, it was a good column and not simply because I agreed. Her insight about accountability and oversight was on the money … in my humble, now-blogging opinion.
Not that I came kicking and screaming into this. Instead, blogging — which I’ve done from the State High School Basketball Tournaments for four years — was the natural course for smaller observations or … don’t laugh … even a thought or two.

Posted by George Ayoub at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)