Entry tags:

crime, fandom, gossip, internet, television, useless information

Useless Knowledge
Usually when I'm making a mid-evening run to the grocery store, I quickly flip through my radio presets for something to hear.

Sometimes, I'll land on Alice Cooper's show (brought to you by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America); Sometimes it's Dr. Drew and because it's only a two minute drive to anywhere, I occasionally land on a syndicated program called "The Tom Leykis Show" which is sort of a chauvinistic, male-centric advice program. (Sample quote from this evening: "When you look at Victoria Beckham, don't think that all girls in England look like her. For every Victoria Beckham, there's a hundred fat girls with bad teeth")

For years, whenever I've heard Tom Leykis, I'd wonder if he really was Jay Thomas doing a show under a different name because the voice sounds very similar to me. Not to mention the fact that the Leykis program is distributed by CBS Radio and is broadcast from the Paramount lot, which is where, I believe they did Mr Thomas' last couple of television shows.

Tonight, I took a couple of minutes to look-up Mr. Leykis and found on his Wikipedia page that he's quite likely a real person, who has been in radio since the '70s. After I was fully satisfied about the person to whom I've been listening, I flipped over to read Jay Thomas' entry and though I knew he still has as good of a film career as he's ever had, I also discovered that he's on Sirius Satellite Radio and he moonlights as a licensed real estate broker, working with a Coldwell Banker office in Santa Barbara.

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Another entertainment-based thing that has been bothering me, I was unable to solve and for my quest you may need a map, but it might actually be worth it in the end. Though, I guess that'd be up to the individual.

I'm sure everyone has seen the commercial for the American Express' "Membership Project".

I unsuccessfully tried to find an video online, but if you have a television, you know the one; It stars the snowboarder, Sheryl Crow, some young pop singer, one or two other people and of course, Ellen DeGeneres. They're all wearing dark clothes and are artistically posed on chairs delivering lines, when some fellow wearing a light blue oxford walks onto the scene and says something about saving Lake Winnesoki or some such place. This interruption brings Martin Scorsese out from behind the camera, then the young man explains what he means, everyone agrees and Scorsese says that he can stay in the shot.

Well, though the fellow identifies himself as being "Todd" from the office next door, I recognize him as an actor, whom I can see leaning on a sink and talking to his blond sitcom wife, the ditzy star of the show, but I really couldn't place exactly which sitcom, I was seeing in my head. This misrepresentation kind of bothered me because everyone else in the commercial are playing themselves and they're hawking a charitable work, so why make this one guy lie?

Thus, began my search.

Initially and going only from memory, I thought it was David Alan Basche, whom I had to look up in IMDB because I only knew him as the guy in that sisters show, Peter Bonerz directed and played the father.

I still can't swear that it's not David Basche, but because I can't see the commercial at this very moment and my gut says that it's probably not him, I thought that I'd look around for another suspect and decided to set my sights onto the blonde.

As you might imagine, less-than-organized, blonde, sitcom wives on short-lived television shows are a dime a dozen. So, I decided to give up, but since I was in IMDB and because she has a similar body type, I decided to lookup Michelle Pfieffer's younger sister, the one a lot of us first noticed playing the oldest daughter on Ms Shepherd's Cybill.

Since I couldn't remember her first name off the top of my head, I jumped to Michelle's profile, where her sister was linked via the inaccurate information, she was no longer in show business. For someone who supposedly "dabbled in acting" but decided not to make it her life's work, Dedee Pfieffer sure has had a lot of guest roles over the past couple of years.

OK - So, I probably didn't find the actor in the American Express commercial and I ended-up just looking at pictures of a pretty girl; What could possibly make this worth mentioning in a post? You might ask.

Well, way down in the forum section of the younger Ms Pfieffer's IMDB listing, I spotted a questionable post and when I widened it out to show all posts from that particular user, I found that they've only commented to this one actress' board and that three of the four comments are so strange, they're almost scary stalkerish in nature.

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And finally, possibly as a reward for anyone who actually stuck through this entire post: Cindy Adams reported on Wednesday that Natalie Portman is seeking backers to fund a "lifecast", featuring herself. Basically, Ms Portman is wanting to set herself up an "Ed TV", where cameras will follow her around all day and her life will be broadcast on the web.

Hopefully it'll be ad-supported because though I'd certainly watch from time to time, I couldn't justify buying a ticket.