Lian Ch'eng's Open Salon Blog

O'Donnell: Time for Leno to step aside

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:01:05 -0500

PASADENA, Calif. – Rosie O'Donnell said Thursday that it's time for Jay Leno to step aside for Conan O'Brien and "not try to flatten his tires before he even gets going."
NBC is seeking to move Leno into his old 11:35 p.m. "Tonight" show time slot and push O'Brien past midnight again, after Leno's prime-time show failed. O'Brien is balking at the move after only seven months at "Tonight," and a negotiated exit from NBC seems likely.
O'Donnell, talking to reporters while promoting an HBO documentary, said she was a huge fan of O'Brien.
"If you're privileged enough to drive the bus, you should say, 'Thank you' and drive it to the best of your ability, and when it's time for them to hire a new driver, you should say 'Thank you for allowing me to drive this as long as I did' and pass the keys to the new guy with red hair, and not try to flatten his tires before he even gets going," she said.
O'Donnell was even more blunt on her blog, saying Leno had bullied his way back into college so he could be the quarterback again.
She also revealed on the blog that when Leno started on the "Tonight" show in the early 1990s, NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff offered her the chance to sub for Leno on Friday nights as Joan Rivers did for Johnny Carson. O'Donnell said Leno nixed the idea.
The former daytime talk show host said she has no interest in late night, particularly given what's going on now.
"That question today is like asking if I'd want to have a vacation in Haiti," she said.

Hall returns with real estate plot

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:01:55 -0500

"Silencer" (Minotaur Books, 276 pages, $24.99), by James W. Hall: After 10 books, fans of James W. Hall's series featuring an amateur detective named Thorn have grown accustomed to seeing the reclusive roughneck come charging to the rescue. So it's startling, in book 11, to find him spending most his time held prisoner in an underground pit while his friends try to figure out where he is.
As followers of the series know, Thorn recently inherited millions from a distant relative. But the money is wasted on a guy whose idea of a good time is sitting around in cutoffs tying fishing flies in Key Largo.
Thorn can't wait to rid himself of the money, so he puts his girlfriend, Rusty Stabler in charge of figuring out how. Sharing Thorn's love for what's left of Florida's natural landscape, she cooks up a complicated real estate deal to preserve 300 square miles. But some bad people have other plans for the land.
In quick succession, 87-year-old Earl Hammond, a key player in the land deal, is murdered, Thorn is kidnapped and thrown in the pit, and his friends, Stabler and Sugarman, begin their desperate search for him.
Hall, who is not only a fine crime novelist but also an excellent poet, retired recently from his job as a college literature professor. (Dennis Lehane, author of "Gone Baby Gone" and "Mystic River," was once one of his students.)
What Hall has done in "Silencer" would be a big gamble for a lesser talent. It's generally not a good idea to keep your hero immobilized for most of the book. Yet Hall, who excels at character development, has created a passel of fascinating good and bad guys to drive the action.
For example, there's Hammond's greasy son, Browning and his feisty wife Claire, who are suddenly not seeing eye-to-eye. And two low-life brothers, Jonah and Moses Faust, who make their living selling murder memorabilia (autographed picture of Charlie Manson, anyone?). Meanwhile, the brothers also do the occasional contract killing on the side.
These characters and several others keep the story jumping until the very end, when Thorn finds a way out of that pit (you knew he would, right?) to lend the other good guys a last-minute hand.

'Blonde' bombshell: London critics praise musical

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:01:55 -0500

LONDON – OMG: "Legally Blonde: The Musical" has warmed the hearts of London's crusty theater critics.
The stage show, based on the 2001 film starring Reese Witherspoon, tells the story of Elle Woods, a bubbly blonde from Los Angeles who discovers her inner strength at Harvard Law School. The show earned a lukewarm reception on Broadway, where it ran for a year and a half before closing in October 2008.
"Blonde" opened Wednesday at London's Savoy Theatre after a month of previews that saw large, enthusiastic and female-dominated audiences embracing its brand of frivolous fun.
Despite themselves, British critics were largely won over, too.
"I tried, I really tried to hate this show, but resistance is futile," wrote Charles Spencer in Thursday's Daily Telegraph, praising the show as "light, fast, fun and frothy."
"The stage show has its tongue in its cheek throughout, it knows it is ridiculous and infantile, and celebrates the fact with knowing wit," he said.