Seriously? OMG! WTF?

I hear that the longtime panelist on ABC’s daytime chatfest, "The View," has signed a lucrative deal with another television outlet and plans to announce her departure live on the air at the end of this month.

Yesterday, Jones Reynolds’ PR rep declined to comment, and a spokesman for "The View," where she’s been a regular since the show’s August 1997 launch, didn’t respond to several detailed messages.

In recent weeks, Jones Reynolds — who’s married to former money man Al Reynolds — has reportedly taken meetings with execs at CBS, Court TV and E! Entertainment, in addition to filling in for Larry King as a substitute host in April. Her contract is up in September.

A knowledgeable source said: "Star has been floating around the studio, and she’s on cloud nine now that she’s leaving. She’s been acting as though she doesn’t have a care in the world. That’s why she was so pleasant, even when Sandra Bernhard was trying to bait her for a confrontation on the show. She’s known for weeks she was leaving, and now that her deal is apparently done, she just doesn’t care what goes on with the show."

Lloyd Grove 

Bet you a K-Fed penny she is going to CNN. 

Goodbye to Dan Rather. He was a good man and served CBS for 44 years with distinction.

Television is a tough business. When it’s time to go, you go . And if you don’t go the way they want you to, they get very upset. They tell the world you weren’t a very good anchorman to start with and you stuttered a lot. Also, you weren’t very sincere on the air.

In the TV business, you have to be right 100 percent of the time. If you’re not, people will start picking on you.

It was at that moment that the television executives questioned Rather’s credentials.

Rather told me bitterly, "CBS and I went to the mat. They wouldn’t give me anything to do, although in the news business there’s always something to do.

"I wasn’t going to sit around and do nothing. I have left CBS with many fond memories — and many ups and downs. But through it all I’ve always fought for a free press."

I asked him if Katie Couric could do as good a job.

He said, "CBS thinks she will."

"The question was: Do you think she could?"

Dan said, "In time, I think she will. It took her 15 years to make the ‘Today’ show a hit. I’m sure it will take her longer than that to beat Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams."

I asked, "Is it accidental that you and Mike Wallace are leaving at the same time?"

Rather said, "We were the great ones. Mike and I will go down in history with Walter Cronkite and Maury Povich."

When I called back to CBS, they said the last they’d seen of Dan Rather, he was flying down outside the 30th-floor window of the CBS building.

Washington Post 

Keanu Reeves reunites with his Dracula co-star Winona Ryder in the upcoming SF adaptation A Scanner Darkly, and both told SCI FI Wire that they have very different memories of their first collaboration, in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie version of Bram Stoker’s vampire novel.

Reeves loved the 19th-century costumes the pair wore in the 1992 movie. "Are you kidding? Those costumes were fantastic," Reeves said in interviews to promote A Scanner Darkly.

Ryder disagreed. "Noooo!" she chimed in. She and the other actresses in Dracula complained at the time about the constricting corsets of the period costumes. Reminded of this, Reeves apologized. "That’s right," he said. "You were bound and gagged in the corset hell."

Ryder said: "I had that coat on my back with strings that pulled back and choked me the whole time." In Dracula, Ryder played Mina Murray opposite Reeves’ Jonathan Harker.

In their latest collaboration, a movie version of Philip K. Dick’s story, the actors play characters set in the future. Their live-action performances are painted over with animation in a technique that mirrors director Richard Linklater’s previous film, Waking Life.

Ryder said that she was thrilled to work with Reeves again and added that she was glad not to have the costumes they wore in Dracula. Reeves concurred. "Well, from my perspective, [the costumes] were fantastic," he said. "Winona suffered for her art in that. I didn’t have to suffer." A Scanner Darkly also stars Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. and Rory Cochrane and opens nationwide on July 7.

Sci-Fi Channel 

Also over the weekend, "Numb3rs" co-star Diane Farr and Seung Yong Chung, head of an entertainment-marketing firm, were married in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Farr, whose previous credits include "Rescue Me" and "The Job," plays an FBI agent on the CBS show.

Zap2It 

From the band that brought you the KISS Kasket comes … KISS Coffee, available exclusively at the KISS Coffeehouse, which opened its doors in Myrtle Beach today.

Choice quotes from the press release:

PAUL STANLEY: "The KISS Coffeehouse is our way of providing everyone with the buzz of great, quality treats and coffee filled with enough sugar and caffeine to get the party started, and keep it going!"

GENE SIMMONS: "Every army needs food and drink and the KISS Army is no exception! Even the non-enlisted will find our treats and java rockin’ good!"

The KISS Frozen Rockuccino™ comes in eight KISSlicious flavors and costs a KISSforable $5.75. ($6 if you’re Ace Frehley.)

I know KISS is all about slapping their brand on everything, but this has to be Gene’s worst idea since "Firestarter."

Stereogum 

Seeing is believing, but I still do not believe it 

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