Question: Televisionary, love your column. I am writing to call on your considerable talent in tracking down titles of songs heard in commercials. The song I have been trying to name is heard in a commercial for the Nissan Xterra, and I believe the singer is Stevie Ray Vaughan. Please, oh, please can you name the song and ease my troubled mind? (OK, that last part might be asking a bit much.) Thanks. — Jeff E.
Televisionary: Ah, Jeff. If only it was within my powers to steady the nerves of all my readers, you'd be walking around with a big, goofy grin on your mug as I type this.
Can do on the song I.D., though, which is what's really important. The song you seek is "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" and it is indeed the late Mr. Vaughn's remake of the late Jimi Hendrix classic playing in the Xterra ad. Color me a purist, but I firmly believe the original is far superior — and not just because the title of that recording spells "child" correctl
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Question: I know I'm a little late to the party, but I only recently began watching the late Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a buddy of mine has a bunch of tapes) and I'm dying to know just what this thing is. Why is this guy watching these movies, who are the robots and why is the old guy gone and a new guy in his place in some episodes? Thanks much. — Drew A.
Televisionary: Not to worry, Drew — better late than never. You see, I'm a big MST3K fan, but it's not something I'm comfortable discussing in public, since admitting to closet Mystie-hood is much like knowing too many lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Both are perfectly understandable, given the brilliance of the material, but not that much consolation when you're being held down and subjected to multiple wedgies for being a geek. (Okay, so I'm a grown man and still on the lookout for evil jocks and frat boys.)
Anyway, the firs
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Question: Was there a character named Baboo in an animated series or movie?
Televisionary: If you're thinking what I'm thinking, the spelling is actually Babu. He was the husky, hapless genie who served as the laugh-inspiring sidekick for Jeannie in Jeannie, the Saturday-morning animated spinoff of I Dream of Jeannie. In the series, which ran on CBS from September 1975 to August 1978, surf dude Corry (Mark "Luke Skywalker" Hamill, who recently voiced The Joker for the most excellent animated Batman series) let Jeannie (Julie McWhirter) out of the bottle and earned her services.
Unfortunately for all involved, the clutzy Babu (former Stooge and Hanna Barbera fixture Joe Besser), who served as the screw-up magician in the grand tradition of Bewitched's fumbling Esmerelda and countless other mixed-up
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Question: Is Walker, Texas Ranger being cancelled this year?
Televisionary: Cancelled, friend? Why, the only hombre tough enough to send Cordell Walker to boot hill is the pointy-toed lawman himself — and that's just who's a-doin' it.
Yes, the CBS series ends its successful Saturday-night run this spring, but it was executive producer and star Chuck Norris who made the call, not some yella network suit. The 60-year-old Norris says he'd like more time to live his life and wants to go out a winner. (While suffering a steady decline in viewership, the show still wins its 9 pm/ET time period.)
Norris, who starred in such big-screen action fare as Good Guys Wear Black, A Force of One, Lone Wolf McQuade and the Missing in Action
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Richard Hatch may have gotten his way on Survivor, but his lawsuit against the state of Rhode Island's Department of Children, Youth and Families has been dismissed. Last July, Hatch claimed his civil rights were violated when he was arrested on a child-abuse charge — which was later dropped — and his adopted son, Christopher, 10, was removed from his home for a month.
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In a last-ditch effort to avoid extinction, the popular online song-swapping service Napster said it would immediately begin blocking users from downloading copyrighted songs. However, the move seemed to have little impact this weekend. As one user told Reuters, "I've been downloading like crazy."
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Boston Public's Chi McBride takes great pride in his role as formidable principal Steven Harper on David E. Kelley's high school drama. "This is the strongest African-American character I've ever seen on TV," he boasts to TV Guide Online. "People aren't writing [roles like this]. That's what [places] me in a unique situation, and that's also what I think is a feather in David's cap — the fact that he wrote this character."
Appropriately enough, McBride gets the chance to thank Kelley at the third annual TV Guide Awards — airing March 7 on Fox (8 pm/ET) — when he presents his boss with the Brandon Tartikoff award. Named for the legendary NBC exec, the trophy honors creative movers-and-shakers behind the scenes.
None of that's to say McBride has any illusions about the social significance of a series like Boston Public. Laughs the actor: "I think it's ridiculous for TV to co
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Michael Skupin — the 38-year-old pig killer from West Lake, Mich., ousted from Survivor: The Australian Outback after burning his hands in a campfire mishap — admits that the last thing he wanted was to be near his wife and three kids while he recovered.
"It was so important for me to come back [home] whole, because I didn't want my wife to see how I was," the cocky software publisher told Jane Clayson on Friday's Early Show. As a result, he declined executive producer Mark Burnett's offer to be flown back to the states, choosing instead to remain Down Under and undergo treatment at the country's top burn center. "I went through physical therapy and occupational therapy, and I would work my hands out until they bled and [the doctors] would say, 'Stop Stop, you can't do anymore.' I was so determined to get home whole so that my wife and family could see the whole progress, the whole progression of what happened."
In last Thursday
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Back in the '80s, Lorenzo Lamas intoxicated viewers as studly playboy Lance Cumson on Falcon Crest, the classic primetime sudser set at a California winery. But when CBS axed the show in 1990, it was a sobering experience for the privileged son of Old Hollywood mainstays Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl.
"At that point, I was at a crossroads in my career," Lamas tells TV Guide Online. "I really felt that an action-type character would be fun to play, so I went up to Canada and did a series of movies that went to the international film market." A series of obscure B-movies, actually. These included the Snake Eater trilogy, wherein the actor says he played "a cross between Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry." Never saw 'em, you say? Lamas probably figures that. Still, he points out, "those movies did an incredible amount of business overseas, which basically paved the way for my action viabil
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The L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center — the largest gay and lesbian organization in the world — has chosen Will & Grace Emmy-winner Megan Mullally as the recipient of its Creative Integrity Award... Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez has signed a deal with Tommy Hilfiger's younger brother, Andy, to create her own clothing line, the New York Post reports... Peter and Bobby Farrelly — the filmmaking team behind There's Something About Mary — will write and produce a big-screen version of The Three Stooges, according to The Hollywood Reporter. — Michael Ausiello and Daniel R. Coleridge
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