Entertainment, tonight.

I found this item that reports on Frank Sinatra's daughter, Tina Sinatra, and her upcoming appearance on 60 Minutes. In a segment on that show, she'll tell of how her father, on behalf of Joseph Kennedy, apparently asked Chicago mob figure Sam Giancana to help John Kennedy win a cruicial West Virginia primary, which eventually led to the Democratic nomination and the presidency. (Without doubt, the nature of the "help" was more energetic than merely going door to door and distributing campaign brochures, but I digress...) But after Kennedy became president, his brother Bobby (who was Attorney General) embarked on a crusade against organized crime, which Giancana apparently considered a betrayal.

The part of the story that drew my attention was that Sinatra felt it was necessary to assuage an angry Giancana by performing two shows, along with fellow "Rat Pack" entertainers Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin, in Giancana's Chicago club, Villa Venice, for eight straight nights. Upon reading this, I went to my CD rack and picked out my "Rat Pack" disk. There, on the back, was the notation: "Recorded live at the 'Villa Venice' Club, October 30, 1962." Wow. Kinda like owning an indirect piece of history. The boys sound grand, by the way, but I cannot help but wonder, seeing how the "Rat Pack" worked tirelessly to get Kennedy elected, if these performances - including the one to which I own a recording - were something of a little "freebie" done to prevent having irreparable harm come to valuable and sensitive body parts.

Cheers...

I don't usually do this...

Watch television, that is.

Tonight, for probably the first time in a couple of years, I sat through three shows on the boob tube.

Don't look at me like that.

They were:

The Fugitive Okay, this show is likely true to the Canon (updated for the new millennium), but I can't get excited about it. The original show suffered from the same basic problem, as I see it, which is that the whole thing is so predictable: the Unflinching Cop close behind, the One-Armed Man just ahead, and Kimball's Freedom trying to balance precariously in front of an audience that knows the Doctor is Innocent. There are only so many ways that an actor can try to show that his character is avoiding cops, and I think I saw them all tonight. In duplicate. All of them make it seem as if the party trying to hide is instead waving a red flag and screaming, "Look at me!" For me, the idea behind the plot is good for one entertainment session, which is why I think the movie with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones worked well.

C.S.I. Stands for "Crime Scene Investigation," or something similar. It's a nice concept, being one of those cop shows that throws a bunch of plots at you like a plate of spaghetti and then resolves them one by one, letting a couple linger until the next episode. This first time out for this cast gave all of the different characters an opportunity to strut their stuff: the nice-guy young cop; the angry but smart black cop; the single mother working the night shift; the newbie whose mother is a police lieutenant elsewhere, the supervisor who gives out with Zen-like advice and seems to be a good leader, and a boss who everyone is going to love to hate. I probably missed someone, but you get the picture. This show looks like it's going to be like most other ensemble cop shows, but with mass spectrometers and UV lights instead of fast cars and dingy coffemakers. If I happen to run across this show again and have nothing else to do, I'll probably watch it.

Nash Bridges Not a new show, but a new season for the show. Since I don't watch it, I have no context. The story seemed a little frail around the edges; one of those "...or else I blow up the city" plots. The planned comic relief didn't. I don't know why I waste my time.

On the other hand, I'm sure I'm not nearly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Charles Osgood, who does the CBS Sunday Morning show, noted last weekend that the average American's television viewing habits have changed in terms of time spent in front of the tube, from an average of 4.1 hours per day to 2.7 per day (if memory serves). I didn't catch when the 4.1 figure was measured; I presume the 2.7 is current. So what are Joe and Jane Sixpack doing in those missing 1.4 hours? Why, says Osgood, they're on the Internet!

Cheers...