Enotes

I feel sorry for those who never got a chance to see "Truth or Consequences." I don't mean the town in New Mexico , either. I'm thinking of "T or C" this morning amid the news that host Bob Barker is in the hospital after a fall near his Southern California home. "Truth" didn't give Barker, 91, his start in broadcasting, but it put him on television for the first time. And there Bob stayed for some 51 years. It was game show---and reality TV, if you want to know the truth---pioneer Ralph Edwards who passed the torch of "Truth" to Barker, in 1956. Edwards created "Truth" on the radio in 1940. The premise was wacky yet simple. The show was among the first "audience participation" offerings of the day. Regular folks would have to answer an obscure trivia question---always designed for the contestant to fail---and when the answer was wrong, there would be consequences. These usually came in the form of w...

"No news is good news." I always wondered about this oft-used phrase. Is it saying that there is no such thing as good news, or that when you find yourself without any news at all, that's a good thing? However you choose to decipher "No news is good news," I have one for you that is without ambiguity. "The news isn't convenient." There shouldn't be any confusion over that, but yet there is. In the whirlwind of social media sharing and updates in the wake of the horrific murders of two young television journalists---one a reporter, the other a photographer---in Roanoke, VA on Wednesday during a live interview, we had ourselves a genuine "made for TV" violent crime, and there was much pontificating about what to do with it. The alleged shooter of reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward, Vester Flanagan, aka Bryce Williams (on-air name), a reportedly disgruntled and frustrated TV reporter himself, crafted a highly...

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm 51 years old. I only tell you this because, when she was my age, Jeralean Talley was living in the year 1950. And she continued to live, some 65 more years, until passing peacefully the other day in her home in Inkster . Jeralean was 116 years, 25 days old when she slipped away, ending her two-month reign as the world's oldest living person. I wonder what it would have been like to be my age now, in 1950. Harry S. Truman was president. Television was still a relatively new thing and lots of folks didn't even own one. And if they did. it broadcast everything in beautiful, gorgeous, vivid...black and white. The NHL had six teams. Major League Baseball had all of 16. The NFL was still finding its audience as teams were experimenting with something called the forward pass. The NBA was four years old. The only phones we had were mounted on our kitchen walls. You had to actually read the hands of a clock or wristwatch to tell ...

The only thing that is certain in the road rage trial of Martin Zale is that it was tragic. A wife widowed. Children growing up father-less. After that, it gets tricky. Zale is the motorist who is accused of murder in the fatal shooting of Derek Flemming last September 2 in Genoa Township, at Grand River Avenue and Chilson Road. Zale was allegedly driving recklessly and Flemming, on a beautiful afternoon after having lunch with his wife, didn't appreciate it. The vehicles stopped at a red light---Zale's in front of Flemming's---and Flemming got out of his vehicle to confront Zale. Witnesses say that Flemming looked very angry and had both fists clenched as he approached Zale's truck. Moments later, Flemming was dead---shot once in the face. He died instantly. Zale didn't flee; rather, he pulled off to the side of the road and called his lawyer. Those are the basic facts. Zale's trial is happening now, and I think it's going to be fascinating ...

As if suicide isn't rotten enough, it invariably raises more questions than it answers. That's because suicide often doesn't answer any questions at all. Even a note left behind won't necessarily satisfy all the curiosity. In fact, suicide notes are likely to create more questions than they answer, as well. A suicide note is like a press conference where a statement is issued and the issuer scrambles away, without taking any queries. Sawyer Sweeten is dead. Apparently it's suicide. Sawyer, on the verge of turning 20, was one-half of the identical twin actors who played Ray and Debra Barone's twin boys on "Everybody Loves Raymond" (1996-2005). Sawyer played Geoffrey and Sullivan Sweeten played Michael. The twins' older sister Madylin played older sister Ally on the TV show. According to reports, Sawyer was visiting family in Texas when he apparently shot himself on the front porch of the house where he was staying. In the early years of ...

They were television advertising icons who resided on the banks of our cultural consciousness. Mr. Whipple (Charmin bathroom tissue). Madge the manicurist (Palmolive dish detergent). The Maytag Repair Man. Even the Qantas koala bear. Those were just a few commercial characters who invaded our living rooms in the 1970s and '80s. Their ads---usually 60 seconds in length or even longer---were rarely the same. The format might have been nearly identical, and of course the tag lines were ("DON'T squeeze the Charmin!"), but each appearance by Mr. Whipple or Madge usually had them interacting with different customers. The actors behind the characters were often nameless, as it should have been, but I'm sure their paychecks weren't nameless---or paltry. The pitchman on TV these days is usually a local litigator or a voice-over hawking prescription meds. There isn't really any character that is iconic---no one who, when they appear on the screen, instantl...

My first experience with spicy food came when I was a youngster. I was a latch key kid, and that included lunch. My grade school was literally across the street from the house, more or less. So I would let myself in and prepare my own lunch, as early as age 11. This was circa 1974-75. Nobody reported my mother to Child Protective Services. I managed to not burn the house down. I'd fix my lunch, eat it, and be back in class on time. Somehow along the way I have lost that efficiency in my life, but that's another blog post entirely. The point being, my first encounter with spicy foods came in the form of those Vlasic hot pepper rings in a jar. Again, I was 11 and I started nibbling on those tangy, vinegar-encased yellow rings, usually combining them with a sandwich of some sort. That was some 40 years ago, and it was way before I discovered Szechuan Chinese food, Indian cuisine and Thai delights. It was also way before fast food joints and snack manufacturers discov...

Traditions are terrific things. Whether they run in families, bring together communities or even entire nations, there is no mistaking the notion that honoring tradition is a noble and cozy thing to do, when not misguided. But let's do away with the funeral procession, shall we? In simpler, less crowded, less rude times, the funeral procession, particularly when done using the horse and carriage, was a fine way of respecting the newly-deceased. Today, it's more along the lines of a nuisance and, frankly, it can be dangerous. The journey from church (or other nonsecular place) to the cemetery or mausoleum can certainly be a somber one. There isn't a limousine leading the way with cans and string attached, with a hand-painted sign that says "Just Died." So I get it that commuting during an occasion of burial isn't the most pleasant thing in the world. And I have nothing against respecting and honoring the dead. But the funeral procession has worn out...

Today's Miss Americas serve their term and then they're never heard from again. Or so it seems. There's no prerequisite, of course, that the winner of arguably the most famous beauty contest of all time needs to stay in the limelight when she hands the crown over to her successor. But there was a time when Miss America was often the springboard to bigger and better (or, at least, more profitable) things. Mary Ann Mobley was one of those Miss Americas who stuck around in our consciousness long after she sashayed down the runway. Mobley, 77, passed away the other day after a battle with breast cancer . She was the first Mississippian to win the legendary contest, and she parlayed that distinction into a pretty decent stage and film career as an actress. Like so many other women of her era, Mobley was able to star opposite Elvis Presley on screen, and like her brethren, she out-acted him. Mobley had a smile that went from ear-to-ear and her dark beauty was a star...

My bar-hopping days are long gone, so maybe I know not of what I type. So call me naive, but do we need bars to be open until 4 a.m.? A hurried-through bill by the Michigan State Legislature would allow some bars to stay open until 4 in the morning on weekends. According to the bill's sponsors, it's a matter of competition. Senator Virgil Smith (D-Detroit), the bill's sponsor, says the measure is needed so Detroit can compete with other big cities, like New York. Come again? We are going after the lush crowd? Tourists will decide their destination based on bars being open further into the wee hours? Another legislator said that the bill merely gives businesses that serve alcohol the option to stay open later. "Who are we to tell bars how late they can stay open?" was the quote. OK. That seems to be a shocking display of being short-sighted. I mean, we are talking about alcohol consumption here. There figures to be some degree of consequence to ...

Why does the ice cream man have the market cornered on driving trucks around the neighborhood, selling his wares? Think about his clientele---six-year-olds, who aren't exactly loaded. How much disposable income does a first grader have? This may seem like a strange time to bring this up, because we're hardly in ice cream truck season, but I say this is the perfect time to discuss this. With ice cream no longer a viable purchase option at your curb, why not consider other items that a grown up would run out of his/her house to snatch up? Liquor, for one. Can you imagine if there was a liquor truck that cruised the neighborhoods? The driver would make a mint. Adults would be lined up down the street as far as the eye could see. The possibilities are endless. How nice would it be if you could purchase an apple pie from a truck in front of your home? Or a dozen doughnuts? The items for sale wouldn't have to be limited to food stuffs. I'd have killed at tim...

Allen Funt created television's  Candid Camera . But he was not the star. If Funt were alive today, he would concur. Funt, who took the idea of a roving microphone capturing unguarded moments from the days of radio and turned it into a TV phenomenon, also never liked the notion that his show made fools out of unsuspecting people. Funt preferred to think that Candid Camera was more of a series of case studies on human behavior, rather than a gag-filled half-hour. Regardless, the star wasn't Funt, though he hosted the in-studio segments and often appeared during the hidden camera "case studies." The stars of Candid Camera were always the people---the folks whose behavior was being chronicled in a very unfiltered and unscripted way. Therefore, the laughs that resulted were always from the audience's glee at the reactions of the unwitting, caught by Funt's hidden camera. But that was then. TV Land has trotted out a new version of Candid Camera, hos...

I wonder if you could get away with calling them "Ethnic Festivals" these days. I've kind of lost track of political correctness. I don't know what is acceptable terminology anymore. But what I do know is that, as a high schooler and into my college years, my buddies and I would descend on Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit and partake in "ethnic" food, people watch, and maybe have a nip or two. Yes, it was before we were of legal drinking age. Amazing how enterprising teenagers can be. Anyhow, they called them Ethnic Festivals and they would rotate throughout the summer, on the weekends. You know---Greek, Italian, Arab-American, etc. The Plaza would be host to live music, vendor stands/kiosks and underneath, in the below-ground portion of the Plaza, were loads of food nooks. Imagine an underground food court, like they have at the malls. All you needed to do to find the food vendors below was to follow your nose. The food was yummy. There was also...

In a perfect world, Derek Flemming would have been able to march up to the driver of a car that cut him off, express some anger, and get back into his own vehicle---without fear of losing his life. The 43 year-old husband and father of two young children would have vented his anger and frustration and still lived to re-tell the story to friends, co-workers and family at every opportunity. We do that a lot, you know---turn storyteller when we are wronged, whether it's from poor service at a restaurant to being incredulous at a retailer's return policy, among other things. But then we get it out of our system and we move on, until someone else relates a story that fires your mental file cabinet into gear and your story gets retold yet again. But Flemming paid the ultimate price in an act that unfortunately will have people---like yours truly---getting into "blame the victim" mode. Flemming was gunned down at a traffic light near Howell after he allegedly comp...

Sometimes the 24-hour news cycle gets extended. Sometimes it's a 48-hour or 72-hour news cycle. And, on occasion, a story manages to stay in the public's consciousness for a week or more. News stories anymore are like pieces of pasta thrown against the wall. Only some stick. The Stephen Utash beating has beat the 24-hour news cycle, by far. Now the question is, Will it matter? The Utash story is right out of a novel or a made-for-TV movie. White suburbanite hits a young black boy with his pickup truck, in the city. The suburbanite stops to check on the condition of the boy and is then beaten senseless, perhaps to death (that's a part of the story that has yet to be resolved), by a mob of black men. It's a story that almost had to happen, to provide the most recent litmus test of where we are as a society, particularly when it comes to violence and race relations. The elements are all there, and if they weren't, the story wouldn't work as well. It w...

Timberlake Christian School (TCS) in western Virginia buried the lead in their letter to the guardian of eight-year-old Sunnie Kahle. The last sentence was the most true and the most telling. "We believe that unless Sunnie as well as her family clearly understand that God has made her female and her dress and behavior need to follow suit with her God-ordained indentity, that TCS is not the best place for her future education." No kidding, it's not the best place for Sunnie's future education. Like, I'd pull that child out of there yesterday. Sunnie is an eight-year-old girl, but by her own admission and her grandmother's (Sunnie's legal guardian) own acknowledgement, Sunnie likes a lot of "boy stuff"---such as autographed baseballs and hunting knives, according to CBS-TV affiliate WDBJ. But Sunnie also digs jewelry and stuffed animals, too. "It's fun," Sunnie says of her varied interests ---some of which don't seem ...

A few weeks ago, hurried and on my lunch break, I stepped into the Barnes and Noble bookstore in downtown Royal Oak. My goal was simple: purchase a newspaper. Every Friday I cash my paycheck in Royal Oak and then take in lunch somewhere in town. But I'm one of these people who can't eat alone if I don't have something to read. Hence the newspaper. My usual provider, the gas station by the bank, was out of papers, so I remembered B&N. The bank took longer than usual, so the sands in the hourglass were dwindling. But hey, it's only a newspaper, right? The newspapers at B&N are located behind the cashier's counter. They're not self-serve. So first I had to wait for a cashier, which knocked off precious seconds from my meal time. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part came when I voiced my request. "Detroit News," please, I said to the college-aged cashier. He retrieved it. I had my dollar ready, eager to pay, leave, and l...

By the time you read this, the turkey is likely in the oven, or in your stomach. The football game is on the television---and that is probably the case, as there is football on the tube from 12:30 until 11:30 at night. The family arguments are either in full swing or the cops have been called. And the cranberry sauce was forgotten in the fridge. It's kind of routine on Thanksgiving for bloggers to make a laundry list of things they're thankful for. I could do that; after all, I am just as blessed as the next guy. But I thought it might be fun to present to you a list of what other people should be thankful for---if I may be so bold. Detroit mayor-elect Mike Duggan should be thankful for Tom Barrow, and the ne'er do-wells who tried to keep Duggan off the ballot. The Republicans should be thankful for Obamacare's shaky rollout, for taking the GOP's ridiculous efforts to shut down the government off the front page. Comedians should continue to be thankful for...

I was in the waiting room, last week, as my wife had her eye surgery, and I happened upon a recent issue of Reader's Digest. In it, they listed the 100 Most Trusted People in America. Before I tell you who No. 1 was, let me say that there was a time when veteran newsman Walter Cronkite was deemed the most trusted man in the country. Not far behind him were other news anchors of the day, and worldwide public figures like the Pope and Mother Teresa. On today's list---and I have no idea how it was culled---you had to go all the way to no. 25 before you could find a news person, and I don't even recall who it was. The rest of the Top 25 was filled with actors and other recognizable faces---but not those who deliver us our news every day. By the way, the Most Trusted American, according to the Digest , is actor Tom Hanks. While that sinks in, I'll tell you that no. 2 on the list was another actor, Sandra Bullock. I will also tell you that President Obama wasn...

Have you heard what you read like? The great thing about e-mail, texting and other forms of digital communication (like in chat rooms or forums) is that it's quick and convenient. The not so great thing? It can leave too much open for conjecture. There is no tone. There is no facial expression. There's no inflection. And that can lead to hurt feelings. Hence emoticons---those little faces that are there to help the text along, with smileys, frowns, winks, etc. Facebook is becoming less of a social media site and more of a public forum for debate on everything from sports to politics to what kind of dish detergent to use. In the heat of the Tigers playoff run, I have engaged in many a discussion on Facebook about baseball and the team, and what is needed going forward, etc. Some of the discussions have gotten a little heated. But the heat was turned up because some comments, sans emoticons or any other buffers, read pretty cold and terse. Email can be like that t...