Ned Wertimer passed away on January 2nd from complication of a fall in November at a nursing home according to On The Red Carpert. The actor was best known for playing Ralph the Doorman on The Jeffersons. He also had small roles on other TV sitcoms and playing a reporter in the Christmas cult classic in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
So today keep his spirit alive by watching at least one episode of The Jeffersons or/and or tipping a doorman. Something I am sure he is expecting Sherman Hemsley to do now that they are both in heaven. It would certainly be Ralph’s heaven to have someone constantly tip him whenever they can.
On January 26, 2003 Jimmy Kimmel Live! made its debut on ABC at 12:05a and tonight almost 10 years later the show is moving to 11:35p. The new timeslot means that ABC has enough faith in the late night talk show host to put him up against the big guys, David Letterman and Jay Leno. This is something that has been a long time coming, and I am so proud that the show is finally getting the recognition it deserves.
As someone who has been watching the show for almost 6 years, I have seen it grow and I have gotten to know Jimmy Kimmel through JKL!. But what about the people who haven’t been able to stay up until midnight to watch him? Well I was recently on a conference call with him and he told us things about his personal life. Two of the biggest highlights he has had since doing the show happened to him this year when he got interview Oprah Winfrey after the Oscars and David Letterman when he took the show to Brooklyn for a week. In fact he elaborated to me how much it meant to have his teen idol on the show, he said “It might be pathetic to say, but it was probably one of the most meaningful moments of my life, that interview with David Letterman. I mean, for everyone that’s known me, since I was a kid, it was, I really I can’t overstate how crazy it was. I mean, this is somebody that when I was in high school everyone knew me as the guy who watched David Letterman. I mean, it was ridiculous. And to be on his show was strange enough but to have him on my show was beyond anything I could’ve every imagined.” So who hasn’t he had on the show that he would like to interview some day? He would like to sit down and chat with Steve Martin and Bill Murray. These were two guys who he idolized as a kid. He was also a big fan of SCTV and one the show’s biggest stars Martin Short. Howard Stern was someone he listened to when he was teen on the radio, but it was Jimmie Walker’s album that he played nonstop. He also enjoyed the comedic styles of the late greats Redd Foxx, Jackie Gleason, Richard Pryor and the living legend Don Rickles, who has become a JKL regular. Since Kimmel is on TV he also told us what shows he has loved the most throughout his life, they are Modern Family, LOST and Welcome Back Kotter. He didn’t tell us which Sweathog he wanted to be, so I am assuming it would be Vinnie Barbarino, but to me he is more like a Horseshack.
Tonight for his first 11:35p show he will be interviewing Jennifer Aniston (his vacationing Friend) and No Doubt will perform, so he told us his favorites for those two. Office Space is the movie he liked best that Aniston was in and if he followed the title of his favorite No Doubt song he wouldn’t have a job because it is Don’t Speak. So make sure to check out Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight and ever weeknight at 11:35p. You no longer have an excuse because he is on a whole 25 minutes earlier and you ain’t ready to go sleep at that time. I mean who goes to sleep before midnight?
Did Donnie Wahlberg dump the New Kids on the Block for Jew Kids on the Block? Nope it was just the Boston native hanging with some Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn during a break from filming his CBS police drama.
He Tweeted the photo and said, “Thanks to the Hasidic community in Borough Park for welcoming Blue Bloods to shoot today! ‘toda raba'” By looking at the picture, I am not sure who enjoyed it more him or them. Actually he looks like he is ready to convert, so I will say him!
Now even though he isn’t going from NKOTB to JKOTB, I still would like to see them write some songs together like Shiksa Girl, Don’t Turn Out the Lights (on Shabbat) and You Got It (The Rabbi Stuff).
After three underpublicized on ABC, Cougar Town moves to TBS tonight at 10p and they have been giving this show the respect it does.
The Cul-de-Sac crew is back from Jules (Courteney Cox) and Grayson’s (Josh Hopkins) romantic wedding and the newlyweds have to adjust to being married. Grayson is learning the hard way that you do during your first week of marriage shapes what you will be doing for the rest of your til death do you part days. So now the two of them are being careful to do only what they want to do for an eternity.
Coming up in the following weeks; there will be the drinking of wine, someone falls in love, someone gets their heart broken, Jules and Ellie’s (Christa Miller) first meeting in a flashback episode, facial hair, Tom (Bob Clendenin) gets a girlfriend, more of Courteney Cox’s boobs, a night of passion that one partner will remember forever and the other one has no idea what happened and plenty drinking of wine. Oh and I forget to mention lots and lots laughs.
I am so happy that TBS saved this show because moving it to cable made a funny sitcom even funnier!
Betty White’s Off Their Rockers is back on NBC tonight at 8p for an hour and the senior citizen, hidden camera pranking show is just as funny as it was last season.
Last week I was on a conference call with Miss Betty White and she talked about the show and about her long spectacular career. On how Betty White’s Off Their Rockers is different from shows like Candid Camera:
You know, because I think that we wanted to do something that was a little bit more modern and a little bit more fun, and I think that the most fun part of this show is really their reaction to having been pranked, and I feel like you know, that’s a – it’s a more modern take on it to do it in the way that we’ve done it.
On what her Iron Rule for the show was:
Well, it’s silly and nonsensical, but good-spirited. We’re never mean-spirited, and that’s…that’s the iron rule.
On where she gets her humor from:
Well, I don’t know. I was an only child and my mother and dad were great and good buddies, and my dad would bring jokes home. He was a salesman, and he would bring jokes home, and he’d say, now, sweetheart, you can take that one to school, but I wouldn’t take that one to school. And so, we just – I don’t know. I always see more than one meaning to a word, so the double entendre kind of came naturally. But a double entendre is one thing, and then dirty humor is something else. I don’t like dirty jokes, but I do enjoy a double entendre.
On how television has changed throughout her career:
Well, I don’t think the television has changed nearly as much as the audience has changed. When I started out, television was just starting out, and everything was that miracle on the box in the corner of the room where people were actually moving around, and over the years, as television got to be such a major part of our lives, the audience has heard every joke. They know every storyline. They know where you’re going almost before the first line is out. That’s a hard audience to surprise and a hard audience to entertain, and it gets more difficult all the time. That’s why the real movers and shakers in the television business are the writers. They have a bigger challenge every day.
Does the woman who turns 91 next week plan on retiring anytime soon?:
Well, my problem is I love what I’m doing and I love this business and I enjoy the work and I love the people that I work with. I’ve been so lucky for all those 60 years, and I just – everybody says, well, when are you going to retire? Why don’t you quit? How can you quit something that you enjoy so much? I’m blessed with good health and blessed with good energy, so I’m just – as long as they ask me, I’m thrilled to say yes.
Well, my problem is I love what I’m doing and I love this business and I enjoy the work and I love the people that I work with. I’ve been so lucky for all those 60 years, and I just – everybody says, well, when are you going to retire? Why don’t you quit? How can you quit something that you enjoy so much? I’m blessed with good health and blessed with good energy, so I’m just – as long as they ask me, I’m thrilled to say yes.
