For much of the past year, I have been helping out — in the form of writing, guest research, and calling in when no one else would — a woman who has become a great friend of mine, the marvelous JoAnn Kubasek, with her fledgling online enterprise, an internet talk show entitled Stardish Radio. Hosted on the BlogTalkRadio network, a fascinating cabal of self-help and celebrity-driven chat shows, Stardish is a blast of a program whose main beat is connecting fans with their favorite soap stars (although we’ve also stepped outside that box of late, having recently had hilarious exchanges with the fierce and fabulous singer Kimberley Locke and with Academy-Award-nominated actress Marsha Mason, among others), and its moderator — a thirtysomething cancer survivor who recently relocated to the Buffalo area — is a total doll, and one of the coolest gals it has ever been my pleasure to have a conversation with.
Because Stardish is not my show, and because the show is designed specifically for the fans who call into it and not necessarily for its host(s), it often happens that many of my guest questions are forced to go unasked. (In no way am I denigrating JoAnn and/or the show for this; as it is the fans and the fans exclusively who keep these shows on the air, that’s not only the way it is, but the way it should be.) This was never more heartwrenchingly apparent than during a brisk, brilliant conversation we had last month with the legendary Constance Towers (whose best-known role is as Helena Cassadine on “General Hospital”); although I was able to chat with Ms. Towers about a number of topics throughout the hour we had scheduled with her, I was only able to skim the surface of what I really wanted to ask her about. And as utterly grateful I was for the experience and for the opportunity — how many regular schmoes like me get to hobnob with the same folks he watches with awe on television every single day?! — I closed out the episode with an extremely heavy heart.
Later that sleepless night, while exploring BlogTalkRadio’s main website, I ran across a button which read, “Become a host now!” Not sure what lay ahead of me, I clicked the link and filled out the information which the resulting application requested. (You actually wouldn’t believe how mind-bogglingly easy it is to be granted your own show! Anybody can get one!) Literally within minutes, Brandon’s Buzz: The Radio Show was born.
I have no idea what form the radio Buzz will ultimately take. As this blog is largely music-centric, I would hope and expect that the online program which now shares its name will eventually be as well; however, as pretty much any topic is fair game for this blog, so shall it be for the show, at least in the early going. (In my wildest imaginings, the radio show will essentially be the blog brought to glorious, three-dimensional life.) I’ve reached out to roughly twenty celebrities with whom I have always dreamed of having a serious conversation, and while Annie Potts’ (of “Designing Women” fame) press agent gave me a swift and rude “no,” and the divine Robin Strasser’s (of “One Life to Live” fame) webmaster gave me a firm and hopeful “maybe,” I’m thrilled beyond words to announce that I have gotten two bites right out of the gate. One of them has graciously agreed to be interviewed but has yet to be scheduled — we had a lovely chat earlier this evening; tune in tomorrow for more news on that front — and the other has taken an enormously brave leap of faith and agreed to be my very first guest.
Next Wednesday night — January 14, 2009, at 11pm EST (that’d be
8pm PST) — Brandon’s Buzz will welcome the marvelous Robert Krimmer. Once known professionally as Wortham Krimmer, Robert portrayed, with a stunning, steely grace, one of the most unique and riveting characters that has ever been created for daytime television — that of Reverend Andrew Carpenter on “One Life to Live” — throughout much of the ’90s. (You’ll hopefully recall how brightly Krimmer shone in one of the most daring, groundbreaking storylines in the history of the genre, the 1992 tale which found Krimmer’s Andrew falsely accused of molesting one of his teenage parishioners, who just happened to be gay and was struggling to come to terms with the fact. The story culminated with outdoor scenes which featured both the AIDS quilt and a gut-punchingly powerful sermon from Andrew which pivoted on the idea that hatred can only be consumed by love. Trust me: if you saw it, you never forgot it.) After his “One Life” stint ended at the turn of the century, Krimmer stepped away from showbiz altogether and enrolled in law school, and he is now a practicing attorney based north of Los Angeles. And, in what I predict will be a smashing hour of discourse, I and Robert and his fans will broach all of these topics and many, many more.
I can’t tell you how greatly I’m looking forward to this, and I’m very hopeful that you’ll all join me as the Buzz embarks on this latest leg of its journey. The show can be found at www.blogtalkradio.com/brandonsbuzz, and the call-in number is (347) 202-0799. January 14, 11pm EST, be there.
Hope he, uh, didn’t have other plans for August.
In a whiplash-fast change of plans, Houston-based gymnast Raj Bhavsar will be an Olympian after all, after Paul Hamm, who continues to recover from the broken hand that sidelined him at the beginning of the summer, chose today to cede his de facto spot on the American team.
Despite the most thrilling routine of his career on the parallel bars at the Olympic trials last month, Bhavsar fell just nine heart-wrenching hundredths of a point shy of guaranteeing himself a ticket to Beijing, and — because Hamm (whose injury prevented him from competing at the trials) won the individual all-around gold medal in Athens on the strength of a gutsy, fearless performance on the high bar, thereby cementing himself as the eternal hero of American men’s gymnastics, no matter his physical condition — ended up instead being named as an alternate. (A similar fate befell him in 2004, and Bhavsar’s has been quite candid about how his heartbreak over his initial failure very nearly drove him to suicide.) Hamm was awarded a spot on this year’s team, with the understanding that he would be in fighting trim by August 9, and as late as last Saturday, it seemed as though he would be: during a July 19 exhibition, Hamm showed the team selection committee that, though he still had a heavy training regimen ahead of him, his hand had sufficiently healed.
Now, nine days later, having decided that his body simply isn’t in the kind of shape that would allow him to make a real impact in Beijing, Hamm has selflessly decided to step aside and allow Bhavsar a chance to chase the same dream that Hamm himself was able to capture in such a thrilling fashion — seriously, I still get goosebumps when I recall that boy’s explosive, gravity-defying high bar routine (and, more importantly, the stuck landing, which Hamm nailed with such a shattering grace that the resulting echo must have rippled across the whole of Greece for days after the fact) — four years ago. This kind of story is what the phrase “Olympic spirit” is all about, methinks.
Paul and Raj, congratulations — and profound admiration — to both of you. Men, you’re each American heroes. And Raj, baby: go get ’em next month in Beijing. There’s absolutely no doubt you’ve earned it.
“Roland Emmerich wanted to buy my book Mephisto and Onyx to do a movie, and he came to the house. First of all, he’s nine and a half feet tall, which immediately annoys me, because at five foot five, nine foot five people piss me off. So, I made him sit down…. He’s a very nice guy. He has a German accent, and he talks like a valley girl… and I don’t mean to be making fun of him, but this is really the reason I didn’t let him do the movie. He said, [adopts a heavy German brogue] ‘Well, when I made Stargate, you see, like, it was, like, it was, I had to, like, like, I had to get a movie that was really, would go back in time but, like, it was….’ And I said to him, ‘Excuse me, excu—” and he doesn’t listen. He’s still talking! And the person that was with him said, ‘Roland, Roland, Harlan’s trying to say something.’ And [Roland] said, ‘What? Like, what? Like, like, what is it?’ And I said, ‘If you say ‘like’ once more, I will nail your head to this coffee table.'”
— the brilliant Harlan Ellison, discussing the “return” of sci-fi with Tom Snyder in 1996
