FTW: Great Moments in Whitney Houston-ry, Part 2

1. Whitney Houston singing "All the Man that I need" live for her Welcome Home Troops program. Whitney belts out the number with so much passion you momentarily forget those lesbian rumors.

2. Whitney's song, "My Name is Not Susan." The song that in retrospect ushered in the "street" Whitney of the late 90s, "Susan" was a minor hit for Whitney and is more famous for being name-checked in Salt-n-Pepa's "Whatta Man" but does have its own special quality, especially Whitney apparent donning of Madonna's "Who's That Girl" hair.

3. Whitney sings the National Anthem at a WNBA game. If anybody wants to dispute the accuracy of Debra Wilson's impression, one need only to look at this video.

4. Whitney sings "It's Not Right But It's Okay." A song that still remains one of Whitney's defining moments, Whitney put her new raspy voice to good use while looking like she had wandered off the set of Rosie O' Donnell's movie Exit to Eden.

FTW: Great Moments in Whitney Houston-ry, Part 1

With Whitney Houston's return to the top of the charts with her latest album I Look To You and her upcoming, two-day appearance on Oprah Winfrey, I thought it'd be nice to take a stroll down memory lane. Shall we?

1. Whitney sings at an Arista showcase. Whitney, sporting a hairdon't later taken up by Bobby Brown circa "Every Little Step I Take," sings a nearly unrecognizable version of the ever popular "Tomorrow." Without a subtle note in her whole arsenal, Whitney glory notes her way through the piece, obliterating it into a million musical notes. But from here, you can see the seeds of what is to come in both in terms of serious talent and batshit crazy.


2. Whitney sings on Merv Griffin show. Whitney's first big television appearance, she sings the classic tune "Home" from the musical The Wiz. Her vocals are more restrained, the song builds and Whitney works it out while looking like she's just rolled in from a prom episode of The Facts of Life


3. Whitney, "You Give Good Love." It's as if all of the early to mid-80s were distilled into one music video. Ill-fitting wigs? Check. Someone believing that a hot pink jumpsuit would be an appropriate look? Check. Clearly homosexual male love interest? Check.


4. Whitney singing "The Greatest Love of All" at the Statue of the Liberty. Whitney proves that while her studio albums were on the side of bland, her live vocals always shone through the hermetically sealed productions. Allowed to breathe live, Whitney's vocals have life and spirit to them.


5. Whitney sings "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" for Nelson Mandela concert. A song that she absolutely didn't want to record and is blander than white toast, Whitney at this concert changes it up, adding an almost Smokey Robinson/Motown twist to the ending and glorynotes with the best of them.

FTW: This post wants you to reprise the theme song and roll the credits

SNICK. For nearly twelve years, Saturday night Nickelodeon or SNICK was a long standing viewing tradition in mine and I'm sure countless others. The two hour block of programming included such classic 90s shows like Clarissa Explains It All, The Secret World of Alex Mack, All That, The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, and Are You Afraid of the Dark. All of them were great programs in their own right and deserve their own blog posts but this blog post is dedicated to my personal favorite show that ran on SNICK 1992 to 1994:

That's right kiddies, Roundhouse. SNICK's answer to programming like In Living Color, the variety/sketch show was easily one of my favorite programs as a kid. Smarter and funnier than what's on currently on air, the show was basically a PSA every week but done with good music, usually sung by redheaded Crystal Lewis. Below, a clip from an episode "The First Date":


It's a shame that the program isn't on DVD but hopefully with a recent surge of 90s nostalgia will change that.

Now reprise the theme song and roll the credits.

FTW: This post thinks you're a prostitution whore

Below are great moments of Bravo reality television history:

Real Housewives of New Jersey:


Hey Paula!


Real Housewives of Atlanta

FTW and WTF: Emmy Nominations Awards

It's the most wonderful time of the year, at least if you're television fanatic like yours truly. It's Emmy nominations time! Woot! A time of celebration mixed with bitterness as Hollywood honors the talented, the untalented and the "They are still getting work?" of the industry.

This year was no different as the Emmy nominations were littered with happy surprises, shocking snubs and a laundry list of inexplicable nominations. So in honor of the Emmy nominations, I've created my own awards. And the winners and runner-ups are . . .

The Doris Roberts/Tony Shalhoub Award: This award goes to the actor/actress who will keep getting nominated for a performance for a character long past its sell by date. And the winner is................Unsurprisingly, Tony Shalhoub for his portrayal of Monk on the USA Network show Monk.

The "I Still Don't Know If They Can Or Cannot Act but Sure, Let's Keep Nominating Them Award" is pretty self-explanatory and goes to............Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order: SVU. Hargitay, who has never found a piece of scenery she couldn't masticate with glee, continues to be nominated and win Emmys in spite of really being an awful actress which I guess gives people like Melissa George the will to live.

The "How Isn't This a Cast of a Touching All-Female Dramedy Film Written and Directed by Nora Ephron" goes to..................The "Outstanding Actress in a Drama Category." I mean, seriously. Sally Fields, Glenn Close, Kyra Sedgwick, AND Holly Hunter all going for the gold in the same category and NOBODY has used that as a jumping off point for casting a film? For shame.

And the "Way Past its Relevancy but Nice Try Emmys" goes to .............nominating Family Guy for outstanding comedy series. The show, which was brilliant in its first years, has been running on fumes for seasons.

The Biggest Continuing Snub....Cat Deely continuing not to be nominated for best reality competition host so Ryan Seacrest and his Louis Vuitton bag colored skin can prance about and Jeff Probst can be a dick in khakis.

FTW: More Adventures in Infomercials

If Cathy Mitchell is the goddess of useless kitchen tools, Ron Popeil is obviously the king. Here below is the full infomercial for his magical product Ronco Food Dehyrdator. Pay special attention to Ron's assailing of the price of beef jerky.

Part One:


Part Two:


Part Three:

FTW: The Barefoot Contessa.

It began, as some many of these addictions do, ever so innocently. When I was in high school and my mother had fallen into the mad grips of redecorating, our family's television was almost exclusively tuned to the Home and Garden Network aka HGTV. My mother, during her summer breaks from teaching, found countless hours of programming that let her vicariously live through the people who filtered through the various programs on the show. And at the time with just one television to the house, I was held hostage by these programs.

There were the endless crafting shows in the morning that told you all about how to make your own stained glass or how to turn that leftover hat box, which do people still have leftover hat boxes, into something to store dishes or cookies or secret stash of booze. That gave way into the "low rent" decorating shows like Room By Room, hosted by a pair of designers that to this day my mother and I don't know if they were married to each other or not, where no window was spared the embarrassment of having some tacky valance placed upon it. And there was Decorating Cents where, like most of the decorating programs, if the room had colorful walls, they had to be painted in more natural colors and vice versa. HGTV is a network of "Why leave it when you can merely do the opposite." The evening gave way to the upscale, wish fulfillment type of decorating shows as well as the endless parades of Antique Roadshow knock-offs, generations of families heirlooms all being hocked so people could afford granite countertops.

It was about the time I went off to college, when the real estate market hadn't completely been vanquished, that HGTV made the transition to be all about house buying and selling, almost all day long with House Hunters and its illegitimate off-spring clogging the airways. It was then my mother moved her allegiance from HGTV to its sister station the Food Network, which in its own culinary way, offered the same sort of escapism, namely in the form of Ina Garten and her program The Barefoot Contessa.

I watched the program with my mother a few times and sort of became fascinated with the plump Ina, a mass of contradictions. She's gleefully elitist and snobby in her own way with her East Hamptons home, her band of mini-Oscar Wildes including a silver fox known simply as "TR," and her repeated insistence on using "good" vanilla in her distinctly East Coast posh accent. Yet beneath the veneer upper-crusty distance, Ina is infinitely approachable in her food and style and doesn't suffer from the same sort of "Who in God's name would go out of their way to do that" that Martha Stewart, the touchstone of "Nobody in real life has the time for that" way of being as a program.

The truly refreshing thing about Ina Garten is her lack of presence on the Food Network. Undoubtedly she's a popular figure but you wouldn't necessarily know that because her appearances outside of the program are very limited unlike some of her counterparts. In truth, the Food Network is absolutely littered with alleged chefs and cooks with multiple programs, stretching themselves thin. Rachael Ray became the poster girl of ubiquitous with 30 Minute Meals, 40 Dollars a Day, and Rachael Ray's Vacations all airing plus holiday specials AND the launching of her own syndicated talk shows. She was everywhere from the shelves in the housewares department to Dunkin' Donuts. And Ina also lacked the "food porn" label repeatedly slapped on Everyday Italian hostess Giada De Laurentiis whose cleavage was just, if not more, important than the meals she made. And while I have a deep fascination with Sandra Lee, Ina makes food I'd actually eat in a non-"I have to try it to see how screwy the flavor combination actually is" sort of way.

So approachable if occasionally highbrow hostess with beyond delicious food delivered in a calm and relaxing manner? In the words often utter by Ms. Garten, how bad can that be?

Below, a clip from Barefoot Contessa:

FTW: Cathy Mitchell

Cathy Mitchell is the goddess of unnecessary cooking devices. Don't believe me? Anybody who has ever been lazing on their couch weekend afternoons and happened to stumble on say CNBC and instead of seeing Suzy Orman yelling at them about whether they can afford it or not, they saw the plump redhead with well manicured nails extolling the virtues of the GT Express knows exactly what I'm typing about.

Cathy, in a perky, Midwestern mom tone that helps coat her true huckster nature, tells about all sorts benefits of whatever product she is trying to get the sleepy-eyed public to mistakenly purchase. Below is an example from one of Cathy's many infomercials: