She’s A Jolly Good Fellow

Helaine just called from Atlantic City. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. For the first time in over a week she was calm, collected, smiling.

Here’s the back story. Helaine and Steffie are big fans of Rick Springfield. You remember Rick Springfield: Jessie’s Girl, Don’t Talk To Strangers, Dr. Noah Drake from General Hospital.

With a huge dollop of help from the Internet, Springfield is able to tour the country, mostly on weekends, filling nice sized venues. A significant percentage of each show is filled with his most rabid fans. These are people who can sing the songs and have probably memorized the set list.

Stef and Helaine try and catch his shows whenever they can, usually a half dozen or more times a year.

Though Helaine is active in his ‘fan world&#185’, she isn’t an officer or board member of anything official. She’s just a fan… an active fan.

As a fan, Helaine knows about Sahara, who with her mother are also fans from Cape Girardeau, MO. Sahara has cancer of the brain stem.

No explanation is necessary. It’s as horrible as it sounds… and Sahara has not quite entered her teens.

Helaine thought it might be a nice idea to help the family by throwing a fundraiser… and that’s what she did, just a few hours ago at Harrah’s in Atlantic City.

It’s not easy organizing a luncheon for 125 woman when you’re three or four hours from the luncheon site. Helaine rounded up items to be auctioned (you have no idea how much Rick Springfield stuff is available on EBay)&#178, arranged for the room and its fixings, dispensed the luncheon tickets and got a commitment from Rick Springfield to show as a special, unannounced but hinted at, guest.

One afternoon, she sat me down with Photoshop to design a “Love for Sahara” logo, which was then printed on buttons. Gotta love the Internet!

As the luncheon got closer, Helaine got a little more antsy. Had she remembered everything? Would Harrah’s provide what she’d requested? What would go wrong?

Let me answer that last part first: Nothing! It all worked perfectly.

Helaine and Steffie, along with Stef’s sorority “Big Sister” and a few other friends, executed Helaine’s wonderful plan. The food was great. The venue perfectly set. The auction a total success.

The numbers aren’t finalized, but when all is said and done, somewhere around $11,000 will find its way to Sahara’s family. I’m sure, with everything that’s going on, the money will help.

I never had any doubt Helaine could pull this off. She very organized and very smart. More importantly, I’m proud of her big heart and compassion.

A room service sandwich is on its way to her hotel room. She threw a luncheon and never had time to eat.

Right now she’s feeling relief… and pride.

&#185- I refer to Rick Springfield’s fan base as the “Rickdom,” which upsets Helaine to no end.

&#187 – My personal thanks to Regis & Kelli and Rachael Ray. Working for an affiliate, I asked for and received tickets to both shows, which were then auctioned off.

Blogger’s note: The original entry has been edited to correct Sahara’s age, which is 12.

Everybody’s Gotta Be Somewhere

Rick Springfield was on Good Morning America today and the ‘stalker tour’, featuring Helaine and Stef, followed along. There were better shots of them standing near Tony Perkins during the weather segment, but I forgot to capture the video on the computer until the very end.

Tomorrow it’s Helaine and Stef with Regis and Kelly. That Springfield guy’s there too, I suppose.

Another Lipsync Debacle

Steffie has been trying to show me this for days. Lindsay Lohan, who Steffie likes, was appearing on Good Morning America to ‘sing’ her new single. In this case I’m using the word ‘sing’ in the Ashlee Simpson sense.

Was the lipsyncing bad? Good grief, it looked like bad karaoke!

In Lohan’s favor, her vocal is so heavily ‘electronified’ and uses punch-ins (allowing her to sing more than a breathful at a time) and other techniques which could never be duplicated in live performance. But, if you can’t perform it live, then don’t.

Doing what she did was embarrassing.

That’s why Steffie asked me to look at the video… and to show me she’s savvy enough to pick up on these things by herself.

Geoff Huntley, down in Australia, has posted the video on his website – a site dedicated to lipsync errors.

Meanwhile a few days later Lindsay appeared with Regis and Kelly, but didn’t sing. She said her throat was too sore. Next.

Quizzzzzzz-master

I was speaking to someone tonight about game show hosts. I’ll let you in on a poorly kept secret – I’ve always wanted to be a game show host.

I remember the classic Mary Tyler Moore Show episode when Ted is asked to host a game show. Lou, trying to stop him from making the move says, “Ted… is that what you want to be… a quizzzzzz-master?” The “z” in quiz prolonged, to make the point.

That night I yelled at my TV – “YES! I do.”

I’m not sure when or why the job started to appeal to me. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that as host you always knew the answer to questions, even when the contestants didn’t. Maybe it’s because, as a kid growing up in New York City, most of my local TV heroes also hosted game shows.

Back, sometime in the early sixties, I actually went to a live broadcast at 30 Rock. I don’t remember the show, or who the host was. I remember Wayne Howell, the announcer.

Wayne warmed up the audience. Considering my age at the time, it was probably my first experience seeing standup. He was very funny. The jokes were very corny. There is one joke Wayne did that day that I have stolen as my own.

The floor director counted down the time to air, saying “one minute,” “30 seconds,” and finally “10 seconds to go.” At which time without missing a beat, Wayne Howell said, “If you have to.”

The audience screamed, and we were on our way. Forty years later that cheap, little joke still has significance to me. He pulled it off so well.

There have been some excellent hosts. Looking back at the old tapes on Game Show Network, I can see why I loved Match Game’s Gene Rayburn. He was so fast on his feet and always listening, making him topically funny.

Even when he used a contestant’s flub as the butt of his joke, he never came off as anything but nice. It’s easy to make a joke at someone else’s expense and look mean. He was masterful in avoiding that trap.

Bill Cullen was another great host, but in a different way. He was more of a bright everyman. I don’t remember him throwing one liners, but as with Rayburn, he was always listening and responding.

The most important on-air quality for a host to possess is his/her ability to make the audience believe he’s rooting for the contestant. Watch Pat Sajack spin the wheel in the final round – always finding big money. It’s no accident. I think viewers sense Pat is consciously doing that, and subconsciously they like it and him.

Bert Convey was that way too. Though he did a number of shows, I think his best work was on Tattletales. Tattletales was a show where celebrity husbands and their (now divorced or deceased) wives would be quizzed on what they knew about each other. It was similar to, but less low brow, smarmy or sexual than the Newlywed Game. Convery was everyone’s friend, always helping.

I’d like to throw Chuck Barris into this mix for his work on the Gong Show, but I suspect I was watching one very stoned individual who would be incapable to duplicating his performance while straight. I really don’t know that, but it’s my assumption.

And there’s Chuck Woolery, Allen Ludden, Bob Barker, Tom Bergeron, Ken Ober, Regis, and a host of others who’d be offended if they ever came across this site and saw I left out their name. That’s life – get over it.

Without game shows I wouldn’t know about the Michael C. Fina Company or Spiegel – Chicago 60601 or that it was McCormick in the east and Schilling in the west (or was it the other way around) or remember Kathy Lee Gifford as Kathy Lee Johnson, when she was adorable and sang 5 seconds at a time on Name That Tune..

As is often the case in the performing arts, it’s not just the game ,or just the host, but a plethora of interlocking imponderables that make for a success or failure. Chuck Woolery never had the success with Wheel that Pat Sajack does. A number of different hosts tried doing syndicated, nighttime versions of the Price is Right – without success.

I’ve seen Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, from Singapore, hosted by The Flying Dutchman (a morning disk jockey there). Same set, same music, same game. It needed Regis.

Who knows if I’ll ever get the chance? I’d move heaven and Earth. It’s a crap shoot, I suppose. Whether I’m talented or not, being the weatherman in New Haven is probably not a huge selling point. Though I’m immature for my age, it might be said that I’m too old.

I hope I’d be good at it. It would be fun to find out. I think I already know how to play the game.