FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH | Bryce Zabel: Don't Miss

I guess most people who read this blog regularly know that I like history, and I like John Kennedy, and I like science fiction. I combined those into an alt.

history for the series and now it looks like I've done it again.
Yeah, I know, I know.

This is the classic what if and it's been done a few times. Historians love to speculate on this scenario, wondering even Watergate.

Knowing what we know now, it seems like they've missed the point. There's a new twist to the answer that wouldn't have been possible to even dream of until about a decade ago.

If he’d gotten out of Dallas alive, John Kennedy might easily have suffered the same fate as his arch-nemesis Richard Nixon -- humiliation and removal from office.
That's the premise of a novel I've been working on for over a year with Harry Turtledove who is pretty much the dean of alternative history novels. Our project is called:
And before you freak out and start calling me names, both Harry and I are life-long Democrats.

We don't hate JFK. We have been as compelled by his story as anyone. We just think that this is one of the best alt.

history ideas either of us has ever worked on. Our premise is pretty simple:
With the eyes of the world on the United States and the media in a frenzy, with JFK himself alive and not a martyr, an immediate investigation would have been launched into who might have been interested in killing our popular American President.

Starting with the Secret Service, the blame-game would have taken on a life of its own, forcing explosive revelations in mere months that have instead dribbled out over decades. Kennedy’s reckless conduct would have become public: the lies about his medical condition, contacts with mobsters, election money-laundering, numerous attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, and even the hundreds of high-risk sexual encounters that endangered Kennedy’s safety and, by extension, our country’s security.
This alternative history novel covers the period from the November 22, 1963 near-miss assassination attempt of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas through the events of early 1966 when the fate of John F. Kennedy careers in the next election.
If you'd like to see the whole bit, just or on the BANNER ABOVE to visit the site.
Must be something in the water.

A few weeks ago, I got the news that my NBC series (co-created with Brent V. Friedman) would be released by SONY on DVD this October. Now comes the news that a series I developed and executive produced for Polygram TV will now be released by NBC-Universal this July.

Woo-hoo!
Apparently, it'll be a four-DVD box set released under the banner.

(And thanks to for knowing this before I did and telling me!) I've been waiting for some kind of news peg like this to hang this blog-post on because I loved that series and it was a terrific creative experience.
It started back in 1998 when I was asked to develop The Crow film and graphic novel franchise into a TV series by the now-defunct Polygram TV. It raised an interesting challenge:
What do you do when the incredibly violent film you are asked to adapt to a TV audience is based on cruelty, and the main character is driven by a thirst for revenge?

My answer?

You expand the premise to fully explore the nature of life after death, and you change the character quest from revenge to redemption.

And how do you handle the fact that the cult film was made infamous by the horrible on-set death of its star, Brandon Lee?
That was a tougher question because the idea behind the TV series was to use the Eric Draven character, the one who'd been in the comics and that Brandon Lee had played.

My take was that, tragic as Lee's death was, George Reeves' tragic death did not prevent Christopher Reeve or Dean Cain from playing Superman, and that we would just have to proceed and hope that our own version stood intact on its own. So, besides the conceptual changes, we also reached out to actor Mark Dacascos who created a Crow/Draven character that was unique itself.
In our 22 episodes, Eric Draven’s mission grew from simply wanting to murder the people who murdered both he and his girlfriend. He began to climb… that’s right… a Stairway to Heaven.
Although the concept of the Crow had history when I came aboard, this shift was no small challenge.

The comicbooks by James O’Barr which started it all were intensely violent, bloodsoaked revenge fantasies. Pretty cool in their own right, but impossible to sell to a mass TV audience. The films, brought to life by several different writers and directors, were dark, brooding mood pieces, also saturated by the blood of sadistic, drug-abusing, violent scumbags.

An equally difficult sell. Yet the films built upon the comics, changed the mythology to adapt to a new medium, and grew the premise in the process. That was the only way to go.

So the TV series had to become its own manifestation of the Crow. It, too, had to grow the mythology, and adapt to its own medium.

At first, a lot of fans who came to the concept by way of the comics and the movies were taken aback. They felt it was not true to the spirit of O’Barr’s creation or the performance of Brandon Lee. Yet we knew that even if every person who read a comic or saw the movie tuned into the series, it would still be cancelled.

We had to bring new people in.
We did.

We brought in women by making it a series with a love story as its central premise –- a love that survived even death. That started with our opening titles where we used the famous lines from the Crow movie (delivered only by Eric) about the soul can't rest and re-wrote it as a poem between Eric Draven and Shelly. This was my first draft:

We brought in others who found our new Crow’s mission to be more hopeful than the films and, therefore, more accessible to their lives. We cast as our lead the incredibly talented Mark Dacascos whose performance gave the Eric Draven character an entirely new dimension of sympathy and whose martial arts skills were crackling and theatrical. We wrote stories as smart as we could, expanding the mythology to include such twists as Draven being a suspect in his own murder to making literal the previously only mentioned Land of the Dead.

Basically, we tried not to pander to the audience, but to challenge them upward.
By the way, if you'd like to read the pilot script, here it is:
If you'd like to read the series bible created before we went on the air (and, thus, something that changed), here it is:
A number of people should be mentioned as having been part of this process. Ed Pressman and Jeff Most are the keepers of the Crow flame, especially in the feature world. Bob Sanitsky and Stephen Gelber were the Polygram execs who were smart enough to get us up and running, then support us creatively.

The production wouldn’t have happened without Gregg Fienberg who came in as Polygram’s man on the ground, but quickly became my doppelganger, seeing my vision with me, and making it happen. Gordon Mark and Brad Markowitz took it from the page to the stage. The other staff writers and producers were Chad Hayes, Carey Hayes, Naomi Jantzen, John Turman and David Ransil.

A great team. It all worked.

The show found its rhythm. Although the action was always intense by virtue of Mark’s fighting talents, some of the most heartfelt scenes I’ve ever written or re-written are in this series. It worked, and it was good.

By the end of the season, we had a real friendship formed between Eric Draven and Detective Daryl Albrecht (played to awesome perfection by Marc Gomes) and Sarah (played so well by Katie Stuart).
The ratings were great by syndication levels (2.

7 and above). Then Polygram was purchased by Universal, and it all fell apart. Universal, you see, wanted Polygram’s music division but, having gotten out of the TV business only the year before, had no desire to nurture a new series in the tough syndication market.

It was just business. The show died.
Maybe, like Eric Draven, the show will come back to life some day. I’d like that. Maybe the fact that the underlying rights are now owned by NBC-Universal (which also owns the Sci-Fi Channel) will mean something.

At the very least, I'd like it if this DVD release could spark the fire that would allow me to wrap up our Eric Draven arc with a film or a limited series, using Mark Dacascos. Then, maybe, Eric Draven really could rest in peace. Anyway, as the Crow flies.

..
...

and maybe it's the real deal if you read the papers and surf the net but, at the very least, it turned out to make for a compelling and interesting What-if? that will soon be coming to a television set near you. All I know is that I spent the better part of year reading about and thinking about what would happen when, and if, the pandemic really hits us.

Writing this particular blog-post may be the literal version of going viral. At least it involves using the Internet to whip up interest in the three-hour special event movie about a virus that threatens to wipe out life as we know it. It's a script that my wife Jackie and I wrote for the Hallmark Channel and its name is .

.. .

Look for it to air either in very late May or very early June of 2007.
Regular readers here know that this is my third Hallmark project.

aired on NBC, USA and Hallmark in 2005-2006. Last year, was on Hallmark as a four-hour version. This year, it's Pandemic.

Hallmark has cut this one down to a three-hour, too, so it can be seen in a single night. Some overseas folks get the four-hour, and that's what will also be out on DVD. In the small-world department, David Kenin who heads up Hallmark is also, like me, an Oregon Duck.

So, you see, it's really a team effort. Although when you're talking about a bird flu, I don't know if sharing a team name like the Ducks is really an advantage..

.
Honestly, I wouldn't push this film if I didn't really like the way it turned out.

As it happens, I do. A lot. It was shot entirely here in Los Angeles and has big production values -- from shooting at Tom Bradley International with lots of extras to scenes in Beverly Hills.

Plus, there are car chases and shoot-outs that are first rate. Jackie and I were also impressed with how multi-cultural the cast feels -- it is as diverse as Los Angeles is in reality. So, hats off to Hallmark and Levinson Productions for a job well done.

They always do an amazing job of getting the money up there on the screen, but this time they've outdone themselves.
That's , by the way, inside the bio-containment suit above. Over here to the right, she's looking a little more like the Tiffani we know and love, along with two of her co-stars French Stewart and Vincent Spano. She plays Dr. Kayla Martin, the first person to take the Riptide virus of our movie seriously. I think there may be some people who might think she would be too lightweight to play a committed CDC doctor but, having seen the final film, both Jackie and I were surprised at how positive we felt about her performance.

And, no, her hair does not look that good in the actual film. As you can see below, there's a lot of covering up in the medical scenes.

The project got its start back in late 2005 when Jackie and I pitched a mini-series, Plague , to Dan Gross and Mike Moran over at Larry Levinson Productions. Basically, the title got changed but the film that got made is remarkably similar to that very first one-page description. In it, we laid out a world where authorities were so busy getting ready to fight the Bird Flu that another strain took them by surprise.

Our film begins with a surfer dying on a plane bound from Australia to Los Angeles from a flu that has jumped from dying seagulls to people. Upon landing, everyone on the plane is quarantined in a Los Angeles hospital. There are lots of sub-plots but, suffice it to say, complications ensue.

By the second half, the pandemic has escaped from the hospital to the streets of LA and soon authorities have no choice but to use the National Guard to lock down the entire city.
We named that first fatality Ames Smith, using the name of one of our son's friends, thinking it would probably be changed during legal clearances.

But, as it turns out, Ames has stayed the course as Patient Zero in the pandemic. To the real Ames, we can only wish you a long life and happiness. We can only imagine how weird it would be to be 20 years old and watch a movie made where a character who shares your name is a flu fatality that starts a worldwide panic.

Well, everybody wants to be important, right?
Anyway, here's the .

My only advice is not to read the synopsis if you plan on watching Pandemic since it lays out every single plot point. The good folks at Hallmark PR (special thanks to Pam Slay) have done their job and then some. I wouldn't be surprised if this complete story is for reviewers who never get around to watching the film when it's mailed out or who can't remember who played what part and how their name is spelled.

In any case, Major Spoiler Alert!
On the other hand, since Hallmark is spilling the beans in full, here's something that some of you may find interesting.

It's our First Draft of Part One. So, it won't spoil how things turn out, and it's been changed anyway, but for those of you who think it's intriguing to see how things change from the page to the stage this might be of interest. Check it out.

In our Pandemic world, Faye Dunaway appears as the Governor of California and Eric Roberts plays the mayor of Los Angeles. Roberts gets a lot of advice from Bruce Boxleitner who plays his assistant (he's standing behind Roberts on the cell). Boxleitner, by the way, is married to another friend of mine, Melissa Gilbert, who ran the Screen Actors Guild at more or less the same time I ran the TV Academy.

The two of them were and the conversation touches on our mini-series. Bruce and Melissa and Jackie and I had dinner together a couple of years ago at Saddlepeak Lodge here in Malibu. Here in Hollywood you won't find many people as real and as easy to get along with as these two.

Another great performance comes from Bob Gunton who plays Dr. Max Sorkosky, the top dog at the CDC out of Atlanta who we modeled after Donald Rumsfeld. The character is pedantic, corrects the media, scolds his doctors and, for all his efforts, ends up kidnapped and having a cohersive measure applied to him that, well, it's something that would make Jack Bauer proud.

If you think it's too sick to be believed, all I can tell you is that I thought of it (Jackie is innocent) and Gunton had to shoot it on his first day of production.
During the research and writing phase of this project, we certainly learned enough to scare the hell out of ourselves.

People compare the possibility of a pandemic today to the one that hit us so hard back in 1918. This one will be different though. Viruses traveled much more slowly back then.

These days, as we show in our film, they can hop, skip and jump an entire continent in a jet full of new carriers. On the other hand, the knowledge and understanding we have of disease is greater than ever. Will the two balance themselves out?

Who knows?
Our film certainly follows the spread of the disease, and the medical attempts to contain it. What we found most interesting, however, was adding in the fact that people being imperfect humans are going to screw things up, constantly, even when it's ultimately not in their best interests.

So we have people breaking out of the hospital, blockade runners, carriers who cough and sneeze their way across LA, others who steal anti-viral drugs, etc. On the side of truth and justice, we have a very hot looking CDC doctor. The smart money remains on Tiffani.

Obviously, the film is meant to be dramatic and not a documentary. If you want to become an expert on disease control, this is probably not the best way to get that expertise.

But we did receive some great technical advice from the CDC's Dr. Stephen Ostroff and from Los Angeles superstar internal medicine expert Dr. Jeffrey Galpin.

They really did help us keep it real.
Jackie and I just talked to freelance writer and publicist David Martindale (no relation to Wink) for an hour this morning.

He's preparing the press materials for the May campaign. As it turns out, Hallmark likes the way this has turned out so much that there's even talk of mounting an Emmy campaign. Maybe being a past chairman of the TV Academy will pay off.

Here's all I can say. Our family has purchased a box of high quality surgical masks and stashed a good supply of Sparkletts water and jars of peanut butter.

If the real pandemic comes, you need to be able to keep a low-profile for three weeks at least, and maybe more. There won't be any public gatherings: no school, no movies, no Dixie Chicks concerts or Oscar awards. It will be time to stay home and wait it out.

There is only one thing you can take heart in:
Okay, it's officially two weeks until Christmas. If you are still stuck on some gift ideas, looking in the $25 range, and want to do a good deed at the same time, you just have to think of .
I've written a lot about it, but the essence is this. 20 different celebrities from film, TV and cooking each contributed an entire meal's worth of recipes to the book in honor of their favorite charity and -- this is the great part -- $5 FROM EACH BOOK GOES TO CHARITY. You can check out the celebs by clicking on the book cover to the left and seeing the larger version.

All kinds of people have supported this cause: Bob Saget, Ron Howard, Anne Hathaway, Michael Chiklis, Eric Close, Thora Birch, James Denton, Brendan Fraser, Paige Hemmis, Greg Grunberg, Scott Wolf, Kerry Washington, Mark Dacascos, Treat Williams, Esai Morales, Jane Kaczmarek, Bradley Whitford, etc. and chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Nick Stellino and Mario Batali.
The book is just rolling out for the 2007 sales season, so it's not in every Barnes Noble (although they just had a successful book signing at The Grove here in Los Angeles), but it is available for order on-line.
If you go to , there's an Amazon button that you click on, then search for The Hollywood Cookbook and you can buy the book.

It is in stock now through Amazon, and they can have it delivered to you in days, plenty of time to make it your Christmas gift.
Let's say you give ten books.

You know people will be thinking of you throughout the next year as they read the book and cook the recipes. But you will also know that you made a gift of $50 to charity.
For all of you who were born after the Beatles broke-up, well, you can't ever quite know how it was. How it was, when a new Beatles album was coming out, was beyond extraordinary and although there are anticipated artists and albums today, these instant classic albums were in a class by themselves even then.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Las Vegas to see Love which is the Cirque du Soleil show featuring Beatles music, approved by the surviving Beatles and the departed Beatles families.

The show was wonderful -- taking two artistic expressions I love -- Cirque du Soleil and Beatles -- and putting them together. I left feeling up and inspired and nostalgic and sad and glad, all at the same time. I knew when I saw the show that the actual soundtrack was due out the next week so I was waiting for it.

Now that I've had some time with this new CD, I can really say that it reminds me the music is the thing. The show was great, mind you, but the CD is everything I could possibly want as a Beatles fan.

Listening to it, on headphones as I used to savor an original Beatles album, I was transported again to that time when you couldn't wait to finish your first listen so you could start your second.
This was like a new Beatles album to me, not a re-packaging, not a tribute, but a vibrant, original conceptual work.

It is surprising, touching, powerful, thoughtful, emotional. It's terrific. It's been described as a Beatles mash-up but it's so much more than that.

George Martin -- the Beatles original producer -- has done a superb job here, working with his own son, Giles. I tried to imagine how much fun this assignment had to be.

Working as father/son, and going through every original Beatles recording you could get your hands on, and being challenged to put it all together any way you want, using only that material, and keeping it to an hour-and-a-half. Wow! There is a surviving member of the Beatles beyond Paul and Ringo and his name is George, George Martin.

If you haven't heard this CD and you don't really know the Beatles, it's still a great way to get to know these musicians. But if you do know the Beatles, you are in for the best treat you've had since 1970.

I'm about to go take a car trip and I can't wait to fire up the iPod for another listen.
A few years ago, when I was the chairman of the TV Academy, some scoundrel in Romania bought my domain name, , and turned it into an adult site. I’m not kidding! Later, the Romanian transferred the domain name to somebody else who sold household products and cosmetics on it.

This led to a multi-year quest to reclaim my name so that, if for no other reason, my friends wouldn’t think I’d gone into the pornography business or had fallen on hard times and was now running internet scams.
It was identity theft, pure and simple. What made it even more maddening is that the domain owners actually used some of my TV and film credits on these sites to make it look like I was behind the whole thing.

So, next to a link to a kitchen product web-page you'd find one called The Crow: Stairway to Heaven which would, surprisingly, also take you to the kitchen product web-page. Sigh..

.
It never sat right with me, but it seemed as if it would be too costly in time and/or money to prevail.

I even offered to buy back my name at a premium and was turned down. Finally, this year, urged on by my friends Scott and Fred, I just said enough was enough. This led to some back-and-forth communications with the company which registered my name to these people.

I explained that I was pretty damn sure there aren't a lot of people named Bryce Zabel out there and I was positive there was only one who wrote on Mortal Kombat and Atlantis and all the other credits which had been appropriated. I suggested after the first few e-mails that if they didn't facilitate turning this domain name over to me quickly they would stop hearing from me and start hearing from a lawyer.
I guess I must have sounded exasperated and persistant enough that, finally, a couple of weeks ago, they quietly transferred the domain name to me.

Then it was like Redford in The Candidate wondering what to do after you've won. I’m not entirely 100% sure about what should be on this new site, but at least it will have my blessing, whatever it turns out to be.

For now, while I'm debating that issue, it starts with links to my blogs in case people want to read them, biographical information in case anybody wants to see my credits, and portals to a few websites I’ve built for work projects. I’m sure there’s more to come, but that’s a good start.

It will not, however, sell you cleaning fluid or triple-X anything!
holidays that they might actually like and, at the same time, give money to charities that help make the world a better place, would that be of interest to you?

Regular readers of For What It's Worth know that I've never asked you to buy anything in all the time this blog has existed. This one just seems like such a great idea that I want to help. started a couple of years ago when my wife, Jackie, got this idea. She would find , each one with , then ask them to supply for a cookbook. Five bucks from each book would go into a pot to be distributed to the charities.

She'd get the -- a group that has an outstanding reputation -- to divvy up the money. She'd sell the book, starting at the holidays, so that people could give it instead of a card saying A donation has been made in your name. I mean, let's be honest, I'm always glad that a charity has gotten money in my name but it's a little disappointing.

We'd like something tangible to go with it. Well, now you have the perfect compromise!
It's been . She's partnered with her good friend, Morgan Most, and together the two of them have practically willed this into existence. Celebrities like Ron Howard, Michael J.

Fox, Jane Kaczmarek and Bradley Whitford immediately wanted to help. Charities were supportive and appreciative and put some of their key supporters in touch with the women of Good Looking Cooking (that's the name they came up with in order to publish the book). Later, as an added bonus, some also came aboard to offer some of their own special recipes.

People like Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali (plus Mark Dacascos from Iron Chef. )
The book is literally at the printer now, pre-orders are being taken, and it can end up in your hands before Thanksgiving, in plenty of time to wrap it, mail it and give it to friends and co-workers for the holidays.

Listen, I could go on and on about this idea. I work in Hollywood where so often everything is a problem and it's great to salute an idea where everything is a solution.

You want to know what was the most significant problem to overcome? Figuring out how to get $5 guaranteed to charity, given all the costs that go into books these days. But Jackie and Morgan have been unyielding.

$5 to charity. Not a penny less.
They have that explains the whole thing better than I can do in this blog. Check it out. Feel good this year about at least one of the gifts you give.

Make a difference. You can see all the charities there and check out the links to their sites for yourself.
Let me put one other thought out there. After you've checked out , you'll probably agree it's a great idea, too. Now, let's do some math.

..
Say they sell 10-thousand books before Christmas. That means charities will get $50,000 to split. But if we can push that number up to 100-thousand books that would mean a $500,000 check going to charity in early 2007.

So, check out the site and if you catch The Hollywood Cookbook fever like I have, stick a link to it on your blog or website, write about it in your own words, send the URL to your local newspapers with a personal note of endorsement and send one of those e-mails to all your friends asking them to send it to all their friends. Even better, buy a book for everybody on your shopping list and be a force multiplier.

Think of it this way: buy 10 books; give $50 to charity.
!

We're the Internet, dammit, this is easy!
My first reaction upon seeing the ads for The Path to 9/11 was, Huh? Exactly ten years ago this month (September 21, 1996), I was launching an NBC series called that was darkly paranoid and floated what my writing/producing partner Brent Friedman and I liked to call the Unified Field Theory of Conspiracies: that President Kennedy had been killed because he was going to tell the truth about UFOs in his second term.

I remember that I loved the graphic imagery of this key art the instant I laid eyes on it. It captured the paranoid essence of our series perfectly.

During the rush of production, I never got to know the talented woman who actually did this work. Thanks to the connectivity of blogging, however, she saw the earlier post and wrote me today which allows me to properly credit her work!

The original concept is by Alicia Fernandez of Blue Sky Creative. She actually that year.

ProMax is the industry organization that deals with promotion activities. If you want to see the full-size version of the art, just click on the photo above.
It was great work, Alicia. Let me know when ABC sends you a residual check!

• To read more about the Dark Skies series, including downloads for the pilot script about JFK's assassination and the episode script which deals with the New York power black-out, the death of Dorothy Kilgallen, Jack Ruby and Dan Rather all in one fell-swoop, please .

Paul McCartney actually turning 64 used to have the same resonance with me as waiting for 1999 to roll over to 2000. It seemed so impossibly far in the future that it was almost silly to ponder since it would never happen.

Then the millennium rolled past me and now Paul is 64 on Sunday.
Paul was just on , if you can believe it. His face shows his years now, but whose really doesn't when they get to their 60s, I suppose.

Of all the tributes you'll probably read, I found that oddly enough, this AARP section is quite good, especially their life timeline they put together for him. Here's on McCartney, if you prefer.
Even though it's a drag to getting divorced as Paul is from Heather Mills at such a time, and surviving John Lennon, George Harrison and his first love Linda McCartney, Paul has still had one of the most charmed lives of anybody on the planet.

He's still vital, worth $1.2 billion, makes $20-million a year off Beatle royalties alone.
I remember my sophomore year of college, living with three other guys in a house, and each one of us taking on the character/stereotype of one of the Beatles.

Jim was our cynically political, drug-taking John. Taylor was our Tai-Chi mystic George. Jay was our fun-loving people-pleaser Ringo.

This left me as the commercial mainstream Paul.
I guess, even though I've enjoyed all the Beatles as men and musicians, Paul really was my favorite. At the very least, I've spent more time with his music than the others.

Here are five McCartney songs that never end up on lists (because he's had so many hits) that I've always enjoyed a lot:

1. Freedom
Saw Sir Paul last year here in Los Angeles at Staples Center. It was a good concert, even though I practically needed bottled oxygen from where I sat. I particularly enjoyed into both his and the Beatles' songbook for some tunes that played as fun surprises like She Came In Through the Bathroom Window and I Will.


This was the fourth time I've seen McCartney in concert. A few years ago, also at the Staples Center, I had some phenomenal close, near floor seats. About ten years earlier, I'd seen him at the Inglewood Forum.

That's a concert I'll never forget because it was the first time I ever heard him perform a Beatles' song live. It was pretty much a blow-away to hear Sgt. Pepper for the first time that way.


But the one that will always stand out takes me back nearly thirty years. It was 1976 and I was working the morning shift at KZEL-FM in Eugene, Oregon as a news man. We were the counter-culture life-line to the city (and sometimes the region) back in those days so if anybody was wired into what was happening, we were.


1976 was a time of rumor concerning the Beatles. Everybody hoped and prayed for a re-union and a rock promoter named Bill Sargent had just offered $50-million dollars for a single re-union concert. Against this backdrop, Paul was on tour with his own band, Wings.

My program director dropped into what we affectionately called the News Cave after I'd finished the morning news and laid this bombshell on me.


If it's going to happen, it's going to happen tonight in Seattle.


He handed me a couple of tickets to McCartney's concert and told me to get on the road fast and to be ready to go live as soon as it was over.

It's a nearly six-hour drive from Eugene to Seattle, as I recall, and I made the trip in my rumbling '65 Mustang beast in record time. All I remember is being on a natural high the entire way. I was getting paid barely minimum wage at KZEL, but this was going to more than make up for it.

In the Time magazine you see here, McCartney had been quoted thusly:


The only way the Beatles would come together is if we wanted to do something musically.


That sentiment, of course, left the matter open, despite the fact that all three of the other Beatles steadfastly refused to say anything on the matter.
The concert took place at the Seattle Kingdome which has since been destroyed (there was some phenomenal video a few years ago of them blowing up the place).

I'm not sure how many people in the crowd actually knew what I knew. It felt like an incredible top secret. McCartney came out that night and he was wonderful, of course.

But as the concert continued, it became more and more obvious that there would be no full-fledged Beatles re-union. Still, I kep hoping that, maybe, John would pop out on stage like he'd done for Elton John around the same time during a New York concert. No such luck.

No John, no George, no Ringo. It was an incredibly odd feeling. I was seeing a Beatle, for God's sake!

, and yet I was feeling let-down and deflated. It didn't help that Paul stubbornly refused to embrace and played not a single tune from the Beatles; only his solo and Wings work made the cut.
It could have been the most magical of nights, but it wasn't meant to be.

With and George gone five, it will never happen. Maybe it was never meant to happen at all. to never give in to that temptation, knowing that the reality could never be as good as the expectation.


Still, when McCartney opened his last concert with Magical Mystery Tour I had a flashback to what might have been. Man, that would have been something..

.
For now, though, it's time to give McCartney his due. He was always just as talented as John, he managed to keep a family together and sane even on the road as a rock-star, he's dealt with tragedy with grace and made an example of how to move on and still keep memories dear and, now, he's showing us you can grow old and still be cool.

Well-done, Paul, and happy birthday!
This was a hard week for one of my good friends. He had concert and plane tickets ready and was completely psyched to attend the 37th New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival.

He knew that Bruce Springsteen was going to play the music from his new CD, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. Then my friend's sister died. When came out on the day of the funeral, the critic said that in his 40 years of reviews this was the best live performance he'd ever seen.

Sometimes life makes no sense...


So when I saw him yesterday my friend hadn't even had the time to listen to this remarkable new album -- it had only been released just days before the New Orleans concert. Thanks to that timing, though, this allowed all these great songs from America's folk tradition to speak directly to the effect of Hurricane Katrina on the region's people. Apparently, the Boss opened with the spiritual O Mary Don't You Weep which is my favorite song on the entire CD.




Brothers and sisters don't you cry / There'll be good times by and by.


I don't pretend to be a music critic. Those people have an entire vocabulary at their disposal to describe in words things they hear and, mostly, that skill eludes me.

I do, however, know what I like.
I really, really like this entire CD. I'm sure some of his hard-core fans were looking forward to this about as much as a collection of show tunes, although it sounds like those who saw the concert liked it just fine.

All of the songs were popularized by folkie legend Peter Seger who had the distinction of being blacklisted in the 50s. He was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as it investigated subversive influences in entertainment. He refused to cooperate.

Back in college, I had a vinyl album of Seeger music that was played so much on our home's record player that we wore out the grooves. Yes, this was before CDs..

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The upbeat songs really rock in a very unique way. In particular, besides O Mary Don't You Weep I really love the 1800s protest song Pay Me My Money Down, and the classic Jacob's Ladder.

When he slows it down, there's nothing to compare with his version of We Shall Overcome which Bruce calls the most important political protest song of all time. I've never heard it so right.
Here's where the words start to fail me.

There's a lot of things in here that sound, I don't know, New Orleans-like. Probably that's the horn section because New Orleans is supposed to be the brass capital of the world, right? There's also banjo, accordion, fiddles, Dobro and steel guitar.

Whatever the blend is, it works for me. I've heard the whole thing nearly ten times so far since downloading it from iTunes last Friday.
Every tune was recorded in three one-day sessions in 1997, 2005 and 2006.

No rehearsals, no arrangements, no overdubs. Apparently, he's taking the Seeger Sessions band on tour with this material before getting back to writing for the E Street Band.
Springsteen always surprises.

The Rising also immediately hooked me with its songs after 9/11. If it had been an album, it, too, would have had no grooves when I was done with it. As it is, it's still in my iTunes and gets revived often.

But when it came out, I thought it was really caught the emotional aftermath of 9/11 better than anything else that came from that horrible event. Now he's gone someplace completely different.
You want to know what else will blow your mind?

It's been 31 years since Born to Run. Watching the evolution of Bruce Springsteen as an artist has been such an involving experience.
Anyway, at the gathering after my friend's funeral, we talked about the concert he missed (his sister loved Springsteen, too).

We talked about that CD that he still hadn't found the time yet to listen to, and how those songs are about finding redemption through faith and the resilience of our spirits. Springsteen's best work never dodges the fact that hardship happens to most of us, but we carry on.
My friend will get a chance to listen to these songs now.

He'll hear the message. We shall overcome.
United 93 feels like a sacred film; like something that should be shown on TV every September 11th, like It's A Wonderful Life at Christmas-time.

Not only is it the best film I have seen this year, but it is without any doubt the most important film released this year, and probably this decade. I can hear the Fahrenheit 911 crowd jumping to attack that statement, but I'd ask them to take a moment to think through this.
People need to remember what happened that day, stripped of all the political name-calling, second-guessing and hidden agendas.

Can anyone really doubt this need?
What happened on 9/11 was a sneak attack that easily surpassed Pearl Harbor because it was an act of war on civilians by extremists and not governments. Thousands of innocent Americans died.

If you have forgotten how you felt that day, then go see this film. You will remember. You should remember.

We all should.
Take a moment and give your country a break. Don't try to minimize the film by talking about Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or the war in Iraq.

These were things that were set in motion by the events of September 11. That day was so tragic and awful that it deserves, for at least a few hours, to be understood in its own context and not what it spawned. In the same way that United 93 works because there is no back-story to the characters on the plane (we only know what they know and know them only by what we see them say and do on the plane), the film should be watched without trying to contextualize it with the events that grew from it.

We do that every single day already from what I can read in the papers. We argue and accuse and second-guess and, from where I sit, we have forgotten the dark power of 9/11.
I've seen a lot of ink spilled in the past few weeks wondering if it was too soon for this film.

Not for me. If anything, I wish it had come sooner.
For an actual review of the film, check the blog in a few hours.


This will never happen again in your lifetime. Unless you live until April 5, 2106.
I remember thinking that February 2, 2002 was a good day (02/02/02) as was January 1, 2001 (01/01/01).

We'll have these every year throughout the decade.
But this next numerical fun zone, it's as unique as they come. Maybe it's not quite like living through the Millennium, but at least there's no Y2K madness to worry about.


Heard about this one from my pal, Jeff Androsky. We shared an office at Eye on L.A.

over at KABC in the 80s and now, nearly two decades later, we're still trading useless information. We just use the Internet now!
And, no, the picture above has absolutely nothing to do with this unique moment in time.

Attach your own significance...


Sleeper Cell. It's a great series. I've just watched the entire run from beginning to end over the space of two weeks, I'd guess, and it's been a hypnotic ride.

Although the network is only up to airing episode #4, I believe, I can tell you that this Showtime series about terrorists trying to kill as many people as they possibly can here in Los Angeles -- all told from the POV of the terrorists themselves -- deserves your attention.
Part of what made this viewing experience extraordinary was that the backdrop to all of this was the latest Usama Bin Laden videotape coming out, the one where he threatens still more attacks on the U.S.

Also, there was the news that the Palestinians have elected the Hamas terrorist group to run their government, an organization which is bent on the destruction of both Israel and the U.S. Oh, and there's always Iran, which pretty much has always wanted to destroy us, only now they're getting set to build a nuke or two or three.

Paranoia strikes deep. Especially since I've actually been to every target they discuss destroying in Sleeper Cell from the Westside Pavillion to Dodger Stadium.
I've read most of the 9/11 Commission report and it's obvious that writers Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris have, too.

Many of the things that you might think are improbable actually happened. It will creep you out and not with that fake slasher feature fear factor either. It will disturb you because you will just intuitively know that although dramatic license has been taken there really are bad people out there.

My wife and kids could only stand to watch a couple of episodes because it was so real, but I was in for the ride.

Michael Ealy as Darwyn , the FBI agent who's infiltrated the group, delivers a phenomenal performance. He's a great actor we'll be seeing a lot more from.

And Oded Fehr as Farik , the cell leader, couldn't be more chilling. He plays a vengeful Islamic fanatic who's masquerading as a Jewish security guard. I also got a kick out of seeing Megan Ward, the star of my series , playing the wife of Darwyn's FBI handler.

The acting throughout is spot on.
What made this early viewing experience possible is the decision by Showtime president Bob Greenblatt, a man who I've worked with when he was a Fox executive and, later, when he was producer of Six Feet Under. Bob decided that rather than wage a nomination campaign by sending out a few episodes of a show to the TV Academy members in late spring when they normally get sent out that he would instead send them in January to avoid the rush and that he would send the entire season.

I wrote him last week telling him that I think this is the single best strategy for winning an Emmy that I've ever seen. I mean, I started watching and I couldn't stop.
Sleeper Cell certainly has my vote this year.

But beyond its entertainment value, it reminds us that there really are people out there, who live in our cities, who are actually plotting to kill us. You may have even been standing in a grocery line or waiting at a car wash with one of them today and not even known.

Do you play videogames?

Okay, stupid question. These days, who doesn't? Anyway, let me introduce you to .


Check out this blog by a USC School of Cinema and Television student who's one of the first six people at that school to qualify for a Major degree in Interactive Media, specializing in videogame design.
His forgotten futurist reviews are witty, wise and well-written and informed by having tested hundreds of games and studying them at USC. In fact, he and a partner just lead a Videogame Deconstruction Workshop at USC that was a big hit.


You'll find reviews for almost all the new games of the past two years on this site. Here are just a few highlighted if you want to hop right to one:
This reviewer even speaks reasonably fluent Japanese and is going there again this year on a USC scholarship where he'll be studying gender bias in videogames. Last year he visited another hotbed of videogaming, South Korea, observing some new trends there.


This rising star's name is .Okay, we're related, but I'd say this anyway.
Read a few reviews and you'll see what I mean.


Maybe NASA's timing could be better, what with the bill for Katrina looming large, but the news is good -- we're getting back in the manned space exploration game. News now that NASA just told the White House that it plans to spend $100 billion over the next 12 years building the spacecraft and rockets it needs to put humans .

If you were alive the last time we went to the moon back in 1972, you must be at least 33 years old. I'm old enough to remember the first time, back in 1969, and those are still strong memories.

We remember most big news events for how important they were, yes, but also for what we were doing when they happened.
So -- from JFK's assassination to 9/11 -- the memories of modern Americans are intermingled with their personal stories.

For me, it's the moon-walk and, from my POV, it always feels like I was a participant, not just an observer.
It was 36-years-ago that Neil Armstrong made that little jump off the ladder from the lunar lander: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

And it was 36-years-ago that I was fired from my first job.
Back then, I was the youngest fry-cook in Hillsboro, Oregon, having scammed my way into a job at the Arctic Circle drive-in before I was strictly employment legal, I think, based on the fact that my older brother had paved the way.

It was a sweet deal -- I was making a full $1.35 an hour, up from my starting wage of $1.10 a year before.

Do the math, that added up to a whole $10.80 a day and, if overtime was involved, man, that was serious bread. Of course, those burgers only cost a quarter.


The boss was a tough immigrant -- a Basque from Spain -- named Mariano Bilbao and he was living (or working) the American dream. Work, work, work and, if you did that, life would be easier for your kids.

His kid was just a baby, and Mariano was in full pay-the-dues mode to get ahead in time for his kid to have the good life he dreamed of.
When the schedule for the week of July 20 got posted, I got a sinking feeling because I had the night shift and, if all went according to plan, Neil Armstrong was going to be moon-walking while I was slinging burgers.

At the time, I was very into the whole moon landing, even more (if possible) than the rest of the country. Plus, I'd been raised in a house where my dad -- a strict father if ever there was one -- was also a strict American history teacher and history didn't get much bigger than this.
So I asked Mariano if I could trade shifts with someone?

No. Maybe we could have a TV in the kitchen so we could watch with every other person within ten miles of a TV? No.

A radio then, just to listen to hear in real time how it went? No.
Resigned to missing it all, I accepted my fate, strapped on my apron, and went to work. Being the boss, even Mariano was at home, of course, watching the moon-walk with his wife. Back at the grill, I was going insane and about thirty minutes before Armstrong was scheduled to set foot on the lunar surface, I snapped.

I called my dad and told him I wanted to come home to see the moon walk. Would he come pick me up?
There was a long pause.

If you remember Kevin's dad from Wonder Years , then you remember my dad, Harvey. That same gruff son-of-a-bitch exterior, always pissed off, never connecting with his kids. I waited on the other end of the phone, knowing that The Lecture was coming.

About responsibility, about sticking with your decisions, about not screwing up. Instead, he said, You know you'll be fired?
I said I knew. I waited again. Surely The Lecture was coming now.

Another beat. I'll be right down.
So my Dad drove down to the Arctic Circle Drive-In on Baseline Street in a moment of high drama in my young life. We went back home, gathered with the rest of the family around the TV set, held our breath with everyone else and watched Armstrong's ghostly image from the moon. When it was over, dad said we had to go back to the restaurant and I had to face the music.

I had done the crime, now I had to do the time. As I returned, it was clear that my co-workers had given me up to Mariano, who was there waiting for me and, man, was he pissed. He was a short guy with a fiery temper and his face was as red as I'd ever seen it.


Mariano fired me that night, as predicted. My dad told him he was missing a great worker and he was a small-minded man to not understand the importance of what was happening, and how this event had changed the world for everyone.

Even fry-cooks.
All I know is that my dad had never stood up for me quite like that before and never quite like that after.

I remember July 20, 1969 as clearly today for turning in my greasy apron as I do for Armstrong and Aldrin doing the moonwalk.
So -- that giant leap for mankind -- for me, it isn't about where I was when it happened -- but all about where I wasn't.