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Band Boosting
At the end of yesterday’s blog post, I was looking online for additional video from the Rose Parade. One thing I found was an explanation for something that happened during the KTLA telecast. I could tell Bob Eubanks was stretching to fill time before RFD-TV’s Roy Rogers float arrived but I didn’t know why. Their cameras showed many of the 100 Palominos accompanying the float but didn’t show one of the horses throwing its rider. Somebody spotted it on NBC and posted the video to YouTube.
You can watch KTLA’s complete coverage in eight parts online. You can also watch video of each of the marching bands, taken somewhere else along the route. During the telecast, KTLA showed the Kyoto Tachibana High School Band playing “Sing Sing Sing.” The additional web video shows the band playing “Bad Romance.” Here’s their whole performance at the 32nd Annual Pasadena Tournament of Roses Bandfest.
Here they are during the parade, playing a Disney medley that included “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” and the theme from the Main Street Electrical Parade.
Speaking of Disney, I would have loved to have been visiting Disneyland last Thursday night when the Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School Green Band marched down Main Street USA.
I was also impressed with the Crestview High School Big Red Machine, which played the James Bond theme in the Rose Parade. During the Bandfest, they did a medley of several well-known songs from James Bond movies.
Sunday, Monday, Happy Trails
The 123rd Tournament of Roses Parade ended with a dead horse! The finale was a float sponsored by RFD-TV to honor the late Roy Rogers. It had the actual Trigger (and the dead dog Bullet) mounted on it. The taxidermied Trigger and Bullet were purchased by RFD-TV a year and a half ago. The parade rolled through Pasadena today instead of yesterday due to their “never on Sunday” rule.
Living in California made me appreciate the Rose Parade. Living in Knoxville made me appreciate the television coverage of the parade. I had already moved to Los Angeles when my family finally joined me on New Year’s Eve many years ago. The next day we watched KTLA’s all-day repeats of the parade in an apartment with no furniture.
As always, I skipped ABC’s and NBC’s coverage and opted for the commercial-free broadcasts from HGTV and KTLA (via the Hallmark Movie Channel). HGTV’s coverage is far superior but I still watch the KTLA telecast for nostalgic reasons. It was obvious that KTLA gave short-shrift to HGTV’s Dream House float. It got barely any screen time while the too-numerous equestrian entries were each on camera much longer.
Prior to the parade, HGTV aired an excellent hour-long special on the making of their float. As a result, I knew what details were missing from KTLA’s coverage. Over on HGTV, they even showed the far side of their float as it passed by. Back when my family and I volunteered to help decorate Burbank’s floats, we noticed that more attention was paid to the “TV side.” They even had it marked as such during the building and decorating process. Speaking of Burbank, I was a little disappointed that US Bank’s Idea Factory was basically the same idea as the City of Burbank’s Dream Machine. I thought that the parade committee discouraged those similarities.
The “Surf’s Up” float from Natural Balance Pet Foods included a huge wave pool. HGTV got lots of great shots of a bulldog named Tillman and other canines surfing in the pool before the float turned the corner onto Colorado Boulevard. Tillman was supposed to surf again while the float paused in front of KTLA’s cameras. Perhaps the turn or the slight downhill grade caused a problem. Either way, the wave pool didn’t work, which necessitated several minutes of awkward ad-libbing by Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards. Later, Bob had no problem ad-libbing about horses when a delay caused the Roy Rogers Palomino riders to stop.
I was impressed with KTLA’s Micah Ohlman, who graciously played third-banana and seemed unflappable, especially compared to Bob and Stephanie. In the past I couldn’t get over the resemblance between Micah’s voice and that of his uncle, long-time Los Angeles anchorman Paul Moyer.
On HGTV, the Avon Marching Black & Gold played Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke.” On KTLA, they turned the corner and played Cee Lo Green’s “Forget You,” although without words it sounded like the original R-rated version of the song. Another great musical performance came from the Crestview High School Big Red Machine, which stopped and turned toward the TV microphones to play the James Bond theme.
Kyoto Tachibana High School Green Band got a huge response from the crowd. On HGTV, they did “Bad Romance” and the “Super Mario Bros. Theme.” On KTLA after the turn, they played “Sing Sing Sing,” which happens to be one of my all-time favorite big-band songs. Unfortunately Hallmark interrupted every marching band with a loud voiceover promoting their upcoming movies. However, if Hallmark hadn’t ruined the musical performances, I wouldn’t have been motivated to search for the band online and I wouldn’t have found a video of them from the 32nd Annual Pasadena Tournament of Roses Bandfest on Saturday. They’re great.
Belleville Ringer
On the way to pick up our son from college, my wife and I listened to a recording of Frank Jr. at age 3, reciting “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” It is amazing to us that the same little boy is already a college senior.
We made some time in our schedule to do a little sightseeing before returning home. On Wednesday night, we went to the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, Illinois. From mid-November to New Year’s Day, the outdoor shrine is decorated with a drive-through display known as the Way of Lights. They also had areas offering camel rides, refreshments, a laser show and much more.
My family and I were most impressed by a mosaic made of Lego blocks on display in the visitors center. The mosaic was created in 2003 by Eric Harshbarger. From a distance, it looked like an accurate reproduction of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s painting “Song of the Angels.” The original painting is at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale. My wife has had a small print of it hanging in our entrance hall for several years. She purchased the print on a field trip to Forest Lawn with Frank Jr.’s sixth-grade class.
Playing Kitsch-up
The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile visited some of my old haunts in Burbank and North Hollywood this week. My friend Susan Olsen was an honored guest along with songwriter Allee Willis and Americana archivist Charles Phoenix. For starters, the three friends rode the giant hot dog to the Brady Bunch house on Dilling Street. I always loved taking out-of-town guests to see it, even though the subsequent owners took pains to change its appearance and discourage looky-loos.
Allee posted great pictures of the journey on her blog. They went to two Burbank restaurants that I used to frequent: Bob’s Big Boy and Chili John’s. Perhaps the most clever picture was taken at Circus Liquor, which was also used as a location in the movie “Clueless.” They positioned the Wienermobile so that it looks like the giant neon alcoholic clown is standing atop the vehicle.
I had my first experience with the Wienermobile when I was working at WAVA. One morning I had privilege of riding in the vehicle while broadcasting via cellphone. I had my upper body through the sun roof as we drove around Washington D.C. and Arlington. I tossed wiener-whistles to people and shouted “I’m in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile! Don’t you wish you were me?”
Stay Classy
The shiny desk at East Tennessee PBS had a familiar look to it. The desk used to be part of the Good Morning Tennessee set at WATE. When WATE made the switch to high-definition, they gave pieces of their news sets to Fulton High School and to East Tennessee PBS.
My assignment on Sunday night was to sit at the desk and ask for pledges. I also plugged the premium items available during three programs: “Ava Barber’s Smoky Mountain Christmas,” “Great Performances: Andrea Bocelli Live in Central Park” and “Barbra Streisand – One Night Only at the Village Vanguard.”
Ava Barber and Cylk Cozart were the celebrity guests during Sunday night’s pledge drive. I first met Ava in August in the same studio. Cylk was surprised to hear that we first met 19½ years ago in California. Shortly after the L.A. riots, Power 106 aired a Stop the Violence radiothon, hosted by Arsenio Hall. I was the producer for that show as well as a subsequent live broadcast from the Galaxy Theatre complex in Hollywood. Cylk Cozart, fresh off the success of “White Men Can’t Jump,” was one of the very first celebrities to agree to participate in the radiothon.
East Tennessee PBS arranges for a local restaurant to donate food for the volunteers each night of the pledge drive. Sunday night’s food came from Five Guys Burgers and Fries. The staff of the TV station put the fries in crock pots to keep them warm, with successful results. Two of the managers from Five Guys added red bow-ties to their uniforms as they answered phone calls from donors.
The phone bank was also manned by volunteers from the Morristown Theatre Guild, who asked me if Einstein Simplified would be interested in doing a fundraiser for the Guild. One of their board members is a lovely woman named Kay Flockhart, whose daughter Calista is a well-known actress. Mrs. Flockhart told me that she and her husband retired to Tennessee after moving all over the country for his job with Kraft Foods.
Bean There
A picture of the interior of Doc Brown’s DeLorean got me thinking. Yesterday was the 26th anniversary of Marty McFly’s fictional trip from 1985 back to 1955. I realized that on the real Saturday, October 26, 1985, my friend Bean and I were hard at work on a show called “The 25th Hour.” Without the benefit of digital technology, we put together a one-hour program full of songs about time. It aired on WAVA as Daylight Saving Time ended on Sunday, October 27 and the clocks were changed from 2:00 a.m. EDT to 1:00 a.m. EST. One of the songs in the show was “Back in Time” by Huey Lewis and the News from the “Back to the Future” soundtrack. I don’t think either of us realized that we were using that song on the pivotal date from the summer’s hit movie.
Six years later, October 26 once again fell on a Saturday. That year I was in Los Angeles, interviewing for a job with Jay Thomas at Power 106. After a bizarre meeting in which Jay and the station’s marketing director pretended to be a gay couple just to make sure I would be okay with it, I had the evening free. I went to dinner with Bean, who by then had started working at KROQ. After burgers at Carl’s Jr., we went to Bean’s apartment near the Hollywood Freeway to watch the World Series. I’m pretty sure we heard gunshots in the neighborhood.
Bean asked if I wanted to go to a movie or if I would rather go to Las Vegas and be best man at his wedding to Donna. I had not been to Nevada, so I chose the wedding. In rapid succession, we took a Southwest flight to Vegas, a cab to the Clark County Courthouse and another cab to the Graceland Wedding Chapel. The sign out front said Lorenzo Lamas had been married there two years earlier. According to Vegas.com, the Thompson Twins were also married there on October 27, 1991. I never stopped to figure out if Bean and Donna’s wedding took place before or after midnight local time. As a result, I’m not 100% sure if their 20th anniversary was yesterday or today.
Hold That Tiger
In the aftermath of the Ohio private zoo tragedy, Josh Ault of WATE did a report on how Tiger Haven in Roane County has taken precautions against an animal escape. Similarly, Ben Tracy of CBS News did a feature on Wildlife Waystation in the Angeles National Forest, where many former exotic pets can live out their lives comfortably. Seeing Martine Colette on the news reminded me of the many times she visited KLOS to promote various fundraisers for the sanctuary.
One day Pam Baker and I decided that we needed some tigers for a photo shoot, which prompted us to call Martine Colette. We had persuaded Mark & Brian to dress as Siegfried & Roy and to pose with the big cats. Martine, of course, knew better. She strongly suggested that the tigers and deejays be photographed separately. We could combine the images later.
At the time, ABC’s West Coast offices were in Century City. Because we were required to use a network photographer for the publicity shoot, we arranged to meet Martine and the tigers there. The tigers relaxed on the grass just outside the network photo studio until we were ready for them. Martine and her associate posed them in front of a green screen for us. After the cats went back outside, Mark & Brian stood in the same spot and posed as if they were straddling the tigers. I would love to see those pictures again but I don’t know who has them.
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