AbFab redux, Mercer crosses the bar, Current TV, and an author’s angst inspires a Holt Renfrew haiku

NO BIZ LIKE SHOW BIZ:  It’s official — National Ballet chief Karen Kain confirmed yesterday that ballerina Bridgett Zehr, who danced both a tragic Giselle and a sizzling Carmen this season, has been promoted from First Soloist

MERCER: fearless

to Principal Dancer … Tracey Erin Smith returns as your favourite stripper evangelist — “saving souls one lap dance at a time!” — in her Fringe hit The Burning Bush this week for 10 nights only at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts … The Marcus Trio play a rare hometown gig this Thursday at The Smiling Buddha … the 2009 CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival opens tonight at the Bloor Cinema with a program of Award Winners From Around The World,  followed by a glam after-party at C-Lounge … and I guess Rick Mercer didn’t receive that Stars Never Get Their Hands Dirty memo. Last Friday night the fearless TV icon, who will brave the most daunting conditions for a laugh, was the Guest Of Honor at the North Battleford, Saskatchewan Kinsmen Club fund-raiser and drew a sizeable crowd — so sizeable that the Kinsmen’s volunteer bartenders couldn’t keep up with the demand for liquid refreshments. According to a report from one of the Kinsmen, Mercer sized up the situation, leaped over the bar and helped the besieged bartending team keep the beverages flowing. “This,” they report, “was a memorable night.” You said it.

TUBE TALK: The first version with Roseanne Barr and Carrie Fisher didn’t work, and the new and retooled American version of Absolutely Fabulous, this time with Kirsten Johnson (Third Rock From The Sun) and Kathryn

SAUNDERS: she's still Fab. but ...

Hahn (Crossing Jordan) didn’t make the cut either, despite what was reportedly a splendid pilot exec produced by the original series star and creator Jennifer Saunders. Maybe because it’s hard to get all excited about what got us all excited more than a decade ago? And wasn’t it Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley who we were really excited about? … coming soon to a living room near you: Current TV, a joint venture between Al Gore’s Current TV channel and the CBC. The network is a hybrid television channel and web site that airs both content submitted by users and professionally produced content. CBC will request approval from the Treasury Board in order to proceed with launching the channel … FashionTelevision has picked up the Ashton Kutcher-produced behind-the-scenes modeling soaper The Beautiful Life with Mischa Barton (The O.C.) … and just in case you still can’t get enough Hollywood gossip, Star! Is adding Extra! to its two-hour programming block with E-Talk, TMZ and Access Hollywood.

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE:  It’s official — National Ballet chief Karen Kain confirmed yesterday that ballerina Bridgett Zehr, who danced both a tragic Giselle and a sultry Carmen this season, has been promoted from First Soloist to Principal Dancer … Tracey Erin Smith returns as a stripper evangelist — “saving souls one lap dance at a time!” — in her Fringe hit The Burning Bush this week for 10 nights only at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts … the Marcus Trio play a rare hometown gig this Thursday at The Smiling Buddha … and I guess Rick Mercer didn’t receive that Stars Never Get Their Hands Dirty memo. Last Friday night he was the Guest Of Honor at the North Battleford, Saskatchewan Kinsmen Club and drew a sizeable crowd — so sizeable that the Kinsmen’s volunteer bartenders couldn’t keep up with the demand for liquid refreshments. According to a report from one of the Kinsmen, Mercer sized up the situation, leaped over the bar and helped the besieged bartending team keep the beverages flowing. “This,” they report, “was a memorable night.” You said it.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?”

The speaker? Lily Tomlin’s brilliant partner in comedy crime, writer Jane Wagner, who also notes: “Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.”

Gotta love her. I know I do.

QUOTABLE QUOTES: “Holt Renfrew haiku: Eight sales staff doing nothing. Yet I don’t exist.”

COUPLAND: Holt's shopper

The author? Author Doug Coupland, sharing his thoughts with his Tweeple. And judging from some of his other comments, Holt’s may not be the ideal place for him to shop. “No matter what I do to my body I never look modern. I look like an Antarctic explorer from the 1940s … I still look old-fashioned no matter what I do. Like I should be on a postage stamp. When I try looking modern it just looks wrong.”

Coupland, who is currently finishing the second draft of his book on Marshall McLuhan, is basically an urban explorer. “Met Paul Potts at a radio station,” he notes. “Asked him what advice he had for Susan Boyle.” He also shares his current social observations. “Q: How do you know you’ve had young people over for dinner? A: You don’t get a thank-you email, phone call or note.” But his description of ‘Holt Renfrew haiku” is far more typical of his everyday existence. “The cell phone in my left pocket rang and demagnetized my hotel room card swipe,” he reports.  Sometimes he sounds like he’s reliving Woody Allen’s sophomore years. “Universe looking very large. Me feeling very small,” he confesses on an earlier posting. And on another he fearlessly sums up his past 24 hours: “One great big total sack of shit of a day.”

Hmmm – wonder if he knows that song, Sucks To Be Me …

-/-

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500 channels, and not a single show I want to see. (Yeah, yeah, we know, awreddy!!

Wishing you could get away from reruns? 

 

HEATON: sans Raymond

Lots of new shows are coming our way from our next-door neighbours. But hey — be careful what you wish for.

 Accidentally On Purpose is a new CBS sitcom in which Jenna Elfman (Dharma & Greg) plays a film critic who gets pregnant after having a one-night stand and decides to raise the baby as a single mother. (I know, I know – hilarious.) Brothers is a new Fox sitcom starring Michael Strahan as a retired NFL star who is reunited with his brother whose promising football career ended because of a car accident. (Hey, the laffs just keep coming!) Modern Family is a new ABC sitcom written

GRAMMER: new series

 and produced by Christopher Lloyd and Steve Levitan about three different families seen through the lens of a Dutch documentary filmmaker and his crew (think The Office with accents and Married With Children anti-hero Ed O’Neill,) Cougar Town, exec produced by Courtney Cox Arquette, casts Friends alumnus Courtney as a divorced 40-year-old woman with a 17-year-old son and a 26-year-old lover. (Yup — problems ensue.) Patricia Heaton’s new ABC sitcom, sans Raymond, is The Middle, Her character, a car dealer salesperson, “is middle class in the middle of the country and approaching middle age.” And Hank is a new ABC sitcom, exec produced by Kelsey Grammer, who plays a washed-up Wall Street executive who is forced to return to his hometown and reconnect with his old friends. (James Burrows directed the pilot that got the green light. This is a good thing.)

GROSS: devilish

New hour-long dramas set to go head-to-toe with Jay Leno’s new nightly gabfest include The Beautiful Life, exec-produced for CW by twitterbug Ashton Kutcher, about a group of young male and female would-be models in New York. with Elle Macpherson and Mischa Barton. The CBS drama Three Rivers with Julia Ormond tells the backstory of organ donors and their lucky (sometimes) recipients. NBC is in the medical mix too, with Trauma, about first responder paramedics. “When emergencies occur, the

MARGULIES: Good Wife

 trauma team from San Francisco General is first on the scene.” Jerry Bruckheimer’s new ABC drama The Forgotten spotlights a group of amateur sleuths who take on John/Jane Doe cases to identify the victims so that they can bring their killers to justice. And Joseph Fiennes gets madly mixed up with quantum physics in ABC’s FlashForward,

Classiest of all fhe new drama entries: The new Tony & Ridley Scott venture, The Good Wife, with Julianna Margulies, Chris Noth and Christine Baranski; Parenthood, a “contemporary re-imagining” of the hit Steve Martin film, exec produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, with: Bonnie Bedelia, Peter Krause and Craig T. Nelson; and Eastwick, a shot at re-spinning the hit flick Witches Of Eastwick, with angelic leading man Paul Gross inheriting Jack Nicholson’s devilish role.

Now that should be something to see!

-/-