The Spinward Marches

I"m   not sure  of  the   exact  date,,,,,but  sometime in July 1995, Jillian  moved from the  ten pm news  to join  Dot and me  on GoodDay La.  Dorothy  had  been there for several months and I had started  in May. It was not an auspicious  beginning.  There  were  five english language  morning shows on the air  and I think we were about 12th in the ratings. Somehow, someway we stayed on the air  and shockingly turned into one pf thesuprise successes in Los Angeles. As I've often said, there's no accounting  for  taste!So, on this occasion  of, what i think is our anniversay,   I open this blog  to you(as I've done, very infrequently in the past) and  ask the  question,
HOW COME YOU'RE  WATCHING'? 
With  gratitude  Steve

Hi again

Think about it, why do you vote for a candidate? Let's say , for the presidency/

The political season is begining to heat up to the point where the non politically obsessed are starting to get involved. The viewership for the debates is rising (but let's not get carried away, when the cable channels brag that 4 million watched, it means a cool 296 million didn't!) and the rhetoric is getting louder.

I find it interesting and sometimes troubling to see how people judge candidates.
What I often hear is" I really like him( or her); does it matter how personable a candidate is; does that transfer to decision making, hard bargaining on the world stage, an unterstanding of markets etc.
How important is it to you that a person plays well on Oprah or Jay or Jon?
Some people vote as if they're selecting a pastor or deacon, someone who displays a perfect home life with a charming family and has good personal values: how does that translate to running the world most powerful nation at a time when the world has become so much smaller and infinitely more nasty and dangerous. Haven't some of the greatest leaders in history lived lives that are not right off of a Hallmark Card?

What is most important, where a candidate stands in what is called the culture war, on issues like gay marraige and unions, abortion, affirmative action, Terry Schiavo etc; or are these domestic issues that will always be in play or can you disagree on those issues and still vote for him(okay,her) anyway?

Is there one issue,Iraq, ilegal immigration, the economy that determines your vote?

When election day comes, there is aways a hugh push from the media to get out and vote. Most of the stations and companies i've worked for promote the get out the vote theme. and I find myself going against the grain. If we have to beg you, I prefer that you don't vote I don't think it's elitist to say that ...do you?

Those are my thoughts, what are yours?
My best

From DDain: Steven...yet another question...this one about your star status in Los Angeles...do you ever name drop your own name when going somewhere so you can get preferential treatment?

"Don't you know who I am? I'm Steve Edwards...I don't wait in line to eat!"

That's a good question DDain. The reality seems to be through the years that  on occasion I will catch a break solely because I'm on television, but mostly it works the other way:  Being recognized when I'd rather not be (which is almost all of the time) and having nobody have the slightest idea who the hell I am if  it would bring some advantage.

It goes like this:  
I'm standing in line  for something and the guy in front of me does  a double take  and says, "I can't believe you're standing in line..."
The guy behind me says, "Are supposed to be somebody?"
I say, "No, not really."
The guy in front says," Go ahead  tell him who you are."
The guy in back  says, "Yeah who are you?"
I, feeling really uncomfortable mumble, "Uh, Steve Edwards."
The guy behind says,  "I never heard of you. Why should you get special treatment?"
Guy in front, "You know, he does the show with the  two crazy women, 'Good Morning LA'  on Fox."
Guy in back, "Oh yeah..........I hate that  show."

People always use the line about using celebrity to get  a better table at a restaurant. Well, I don't  want a better table. What is a better  table? How can people's egos be so fragile, that their identity  is tied up with getting the right table? How 'bout this... go to a restaurant not  to see how important you are, but just to eat and get out. Status shouldn't be an issue, not getting  food poisoning  should be.

I've seen it happen so often in this business, young actors get their first break, are on the cusp of becoming known and the first time a limo is sent for them, they call their parents in Indiana and say, "Mom, I can't believe this, they've sent a limo for me." Six months later, their show or movie is a hit and it's,  "I said  a stretch limo not a Town Car, and I asked for Panna  Water, not Evian!!!! Can't anybody get anything right here?" OK.. maybe a little bit of an exaggeration (a little), but you get the point.

And finally there's the thing that happens once in a while: A person comes over, all excited, looks me in the eye  and  says something about being a big fan and oh, I'm just so excited. I just can't remember  your  name.

I tell him it's Steve Edwards  and  he  says, "No you're not."
I insist that I am, he pauses, says, "Oh" and walks away.

My best to all of you!!!!!!

Hello fellow human and others...

I know it's been a long time since the last blog. I'd like to blame it on any number of external reasons, but mostly it's just laziness. So to catch up, here answers to the questions that most often come my way.

!- The usual: How do the three of you on GDLA REALLY get along?

I think it's all up there on the screen. Sometimes it's tense, the mood swings can be dazzling (just check out the suppressed terror in my eyes) but mostly it's pretty good. Of course we can turn on each other in a blink, but hey...what's family for?

2-Steve, how much longer will you do GDLA?

At least until next Wednesday, maybe Thursday

3-Steve, who is your favorite, Dot or jill?

What,....are you nuts?

4-Steve...Are you proud of GDLA?

Yes. at least half the time (maybe a third)

5-Do you REALLY REALLY all get along

You know, we've been together for almost 13 years. Think about it, in that time, Jill's gotten married, found her birth parents, made a wonderful new marriage, and had a baby. Dorothy had the much talked about Nash, who's growing up to be quite a boy ....and I've just gotten older, with several hair color changes. We can say bad things about each other...but you can't.

6- Steve, what is the secret of your success?

Restate the question more accurately

6b-Okay....How have you been on tv so long?

Do you mean...just this morning?

7- Steve, do you have a motto you live by?

Yes....Blame nobody, aim high but expect little and be grateful as hell for whatever you get!I

8-Do you Really live by that?

Sometimes.

9- Steve, are you smarter than a 5th grader?

Yes I was... in the 6th grade.


Okay now questions for you...
Do you watch the debates, do you find them more annoying then enlightening?
What if the world had a moratorium on Brittany for a month? What is wrong with us anyway?
Given the impact of the writer's strike, what one show would you hate to see go away.

Bless you all for paying attention to us and have a great weekend!!!

Hey, it's been a while!

There are few absolute certainties, guaranteed slam dunks in this world, right? But here's one, on live TV three hours day, I'm going to get things wrong, make some big mistakes. Bet on it!

I don't mean when my mind has entirely left the room, and at the end of the show on a Tuesday, I wish everybody a good weekend; or when my brain is now on another planet and I look at Jill and Dorothy and get them confused ( I think that's the medication kicking in) or the time I referred to the historical and tragic landmark in Dallas as the Texas School.... Suppository...no those are just what Dot would call brain farts...uh.. toots in her house.

I also don't mean all the comments and opinions that fly around all the time on GDLA, sometimes based a a real grasp of the subject at hand, often based on a feeling, a whim,that quickly passes and is immediately forgotten. Or when a guest is looking at Jill and giving an answer and Jill wonders why the guest is looking at her, totally forgetting she just asked her the question 40 second earlier...Nah, not that stuff

When I make the real factual error, there are always some viewers who catch it and send me corrections and I really appreciate that...really....most of the time.

for instance...in talking about EPO the performance enhancing drug, I referred to it as a steroid, but it is a synthetic hormone. Not a big deal? well it's inaccurate and it is a big deal and several of you caught it and I'm the wiser for it and won't do it again.
In fact, even though I sometimes(more than that) come off as Know- It- All ( which Jill and Dot don't hesitate to point out) , what I really feel is how little I know; that each day is a learning experience for me and I hope..you. Getting the facts and context right are things I take very seriously on the show, the rest of the stuff is party time. ,

Okay, I'm a little pompous at times.

But I was thinking....maybe, the blog is a good place for you to catch errors I've made and could work as a corrective. Maybe that's like saying here's a a bat swing away.
What do you think?

Huh?

Barry Bonds, barring a catastrophe, is going to break one of sports most cherished records; Hank Aaron's 755 home runs, which in turn broke another cherished record, The Babe's 714.

There may be a few souls left who believe Bonds' power is unaided by any controversial substances but the rest of us are pretty much convinced that it's not the ball that juiced...it's Barry. Well, if it is, it's not just Barry, and it's not just Mark and Sammy and a bunch of guys who can hit the ball 500 feet, It's pitchers, and fringe players who hit 260 and think they would be out of the big leagues without a little of the juice.

It was believed that since the mid nineties, baseball has been in the "roid era, but that timing may be off by a decade. Does it matter? Fans love to see home runs and after all baseball players, just like the rest of the world is always trying to find the extra advantage; caffeine, greenies, brownies, tobacco juice, spit, KY jelly.. whatever. So what's the BIG DEAL? How 'bout the simple argument that baseball, where statistics have emotional meaning and the key records are touchstones shared by generations has been living a Big Lie and probably a lot of people knew it and still know it.

Forget the possible health damage done; you could say that's the players' problem, they brought it on themselves, but what about impressionable kids who follow in their paths and want to emulate them? Sports always finds a way to "beat the cup". stay one step ahead of drug tests. Now steroids and amphetamines are tested for, but do you really think players are drug free? Does it matter that HGH, for which there is no test yet might be behind the success of a lot players? Does it matter if there were no baseball rules broken, just laws? What do you think? Cheers !!!!

Slick and Sleek Here's the deal on the movie Fracture:

it is is sleekly, done beautiful looking and provides a good workout with Master Devious himself, Sir Athony and the exploding Ryan Gosling. Anthony Hopkins is a very successful guy who, when all others are confused, can point his finger at the basic flaw in a complicarted jet engine etc. He's brilliant, the smartest guy in the room, except... His wife is cheating on him, so he kills her and plans to get away with it. Into this scheme come assistant DA Gosling, a hotshot on his way out of the DA's office to the glamorous,sexy and high paying world of corporate law, but first he has to handle this little slam dunk murder case(sounds like I'm giving too much away, but im not). It turns out o be a slam...but no dunk. It becomes a cat and mouse game and while there are some key moments where you might say,"oh come on" it all works. LA has never looked better, in fact, I wish director Greg Hoblit ( who's really good at this kind of movie) would have lingered a little longer on some of the views. So you've got Hopkins and Gosling and Fracture...not bad at all!

Mike Becomes Christine I don't know Mike Penner, the sportswriter at the LATimes, but was moved by his announcement after 40 years of dealing with it, he is changing his gender;:(see his article here) when he comes back from vacation he will be Christine Daniels. It's a brave thing to do but ultimately he feels he had no choice. Whatever the basis for his transexuality (perhaps events dring his mother's pregnancy) he has been a woman living in a man's body. I liked the comment of his boss, Randy Harvey when Penner told him of the change, he looked out at the sports department and said now there'll be more diversity! Good luck Christine!

The Race is On And a comment about the presidential contenders and pretenders. We seems to treat the race for the presidency as a popularity contest; who's got the best personality, who is more likeable. but remember, it's not American Idol, it's America's future. While it may be about character or piety or wit or looks, it's really about policy and vision. I wish most americans would get as involved in thinking about the process as we do with thinking about Sanjaya and Lindsey Lohan.

Those are my comments..... yours? My best to all of you!

Move over James Frey...You got nothin! So James Frey wrote that book, A Million Little Pieces,

and several of those pieces were trumped up, embellished and not worth the paper they were written on...AND he hoodwinked Oprah, the most effective place to sell books to women today. Oprah caught on and nailed him on her show and it was a big chapter in pop culture.

Ah, but Clifford Irving had Frey beat by at least a million different pieces, More, than thirty years ago, he wrote the autobiograpy of the then most reknowned, reclusive celebrity in the world...the mysterious and extremely weird Howard Hughes, a man so isolated that no one could get to him except the writer Irving who gained unprecedented, one on one, access to the hermit Hughes.

Except that he didn't....He made it all up. There were no interviews, he never met Hughes, Hughes never heard of him. There was also no Oprah, but(if my memory is correct) he went on 60 minutes with none other than Mike Wallace and Wallace questioned him about the truth of the book, I remember Irving looking straight into the camera and asking Howard to go public and tell the world that it's all true.

James Frey=small fry fibber It was a big deal then; now with celebrity obseesion, E, Extra, Access, ET, all the celeb driven tabloids, not to mention the internet and talk radio etc..this would be a Hugh, Gigantic story! Maybe as big as Paris Hilton,,Okay that's probably going too far..but you get the point. It seems the movie, The Hoax, directed by Lasse Hellstrom isn't playing in a lot of theaters and that's too bad. Starring Richard Gere in one of his best performances as Irving, a man on the edge of panic, but always quick to come up with a lie, The Hoax is really a lot of fun, a little bit of a hoax itself. It tells the story, ( with a few extra added embellishments of it own), could have been a little shorter, but kept me involved all the way through. you've got to see Alfred Molina as Irving's sidekick and suffering co-conspiritor. Catch it while you can and let me know what you think.

Another movie I really liked was The Lookout with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This was another good one that just slipped through and deserved more attention. Anybody see that? Finally, what happened to Grindhouse? I didn't see it....what did you think?

Thanks for stopping by my blog!  Ask any questions you like and I'll respond right here!

 Steve
 

Hello again..... No movie review this time, (check Elaine's), but how about a review of Goodday LA? It's astounding to think that the three of us have been doing this thing for almost 12 years!

When we we started together there were 5 morning shows and we finished about 12th in the ratings. There was a day we had what is referred to as hash marks, i.e., officially, no one was watching. We had more people operating the studio cameras than we had viewers! There was another when we had an interview with the former Surgeon-General of the United States who was basically fired by her long time friend, Bill Clinton, because she advocated masturbation as a way of reducing teenage pregnancies and sexualy transmitted diseases. She came on the show and talked about the dissapointment and betrayal she felt from her former friend whom she believed had caved into political pressure and was being a hypocrite in his actions. We all thought it was a great and truly interesting segment......Three people were watching. I think we had four when it started and we ended up with two...so the average was three. Maybe all three liked it. i'm not sure. We had some strengths, Tony McEwing foremost among them,but it took time. Eventually the show evolved into what it is today . We've described it many ways....You give us 20 minutes, we'll give you a headache

or...... How much can one man take?....

which Jill and Dorothy now call , How much can two women take? Or, We're Number One... There's no accounting for taste! I attribute what success we've had to the leadin that Tony and Jean and Lisa B give us...

and the advantage we have with Rick in the chopper

and strong reporters with big tv presence in the field, Rick L, Nischel , Elizabeth, Bobby Dl, ( you should check their blogs..but I realize that I'm too close to the action to fully get why the three of us just don't annoy everybody to death. We annoy ourselves! But have you noticed, slowly, over the years that we, in spite of ourselves, started having a good time? I I'm just free associating and a real review is beyond my ability to separate myself from the noise...so.... even though this may sound like a cop out... You Do The Review!!!!!!!! What is your take on GDLA? Why do watch? Why do you not watch? Go to comments or whatever it is called and fire away!!!!!

Robert Crais has written a series of books starring LA private eye Elvis Cole. It's a great series and the newest book is the best.

It's called 'The Watchman' and this one features Elvis' partner Joe Pike; the lean, lethal guy who is emtionally deeply scarred but never swerves from his sense of right and wrong.

When he runs for exercise at three in the morning along Ocean Ave in Santa Monica, coyotes run with him. He's that kind of guy.

In 'The Watchman,' his task is to protect a Paris Hilton clone wild child from sinister forces and we learn about the really screwed up Pike.

The book flies by.... Elvis is there for laughs and support and the wild child comes to grips with her life.

Read it!!!

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