FYI
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
7E
Monday, August 19, 1996
Taking in the tunes
Students and Lawrence residents enjoy listening to Common Ground at the Bottleneck,737 New Hampshire St. Many places downtown offer live music almost every night.
Daily Show laughs at the world
Comedy Central's weeknight show is news alternative
Edmée Rodriguez/KANSAN
By Frazier Moore
The Associated Press
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Cable News Network not enough news for you? Now cable gives you even more!
More headlines, analysis, context.
More perspective, profiles, background, foreground, color — hey,
wait a minute, is this newscasting or Intro to Painting and Drawing?
Strictly speaking, it's neither. And, by the way, we're certainly not talking about the ambitious new MSNBC news-and-information channel that signed on last month with hours upon hours of — well, news and information.
Instead, asking only 30 minutes of your time each weeknight at 10:30 p.m. — and several encores — is the promising new Daily Show, which premiered last month on Comedy Central.
Almost as clever as its title isn't
Almost as clever as its title isn't—how come it's called "Daily" if it comes on at night? — it offers a fresh, distinctive look at what's going on. At least, what's going on in the minds of its writers.
But you gotta love a TV show whose anchor admonishes the young viewers in the audience to stay informed if they're going to watch. "We all have to start reading the front page," he exhorted them last month.
The anchor, by the way, is Craig Kilborn. He displays perfect hair, ends his sentences in pandering whispers, and has a hair-trigger pivot to face whichever camera is picking him up. In short, he comes across as so real it's amazing.
Stay informed, dude! How you gonna understand the report on half-price moviegoer Bob Dole's 73rd birthday if you don't know who Bob Dole is?
But, then, he used to be real.
Kilborn is a former anchor of ESPN's SportsCenter and sports director of a TV station in Monterey, Calif. Which put him in good
stead for the Daily Show coverage of the Summer Olympics, with its "smug sneaker salesmen we call 'the Dream Team'” and swimmer Michelle Smith, “the first Irishwoman to ever be fully immersed in water."
Talk about saving you time! Instead of watching all that gymnastics coverage, you could have seen actor Jon Cryer do his impression of Kerri Strug trying to stand on one leg after injuring the other.
"The Daily Show," which tapes a few hours before airtime, doesn't try to do a simple sendup of a newscast, as does Saturday Night Live's fixture. Weekend Update.
And, sparing you from having to sit through Jeopardy! at dinner time, The Daily Show supplies that day's Final Jeopardy! answer and question, phoned in by head writer Lizz Winstead's mother.
With twice the irony, The Daily Show combines the headlines of a Weekend Update segment with packaged reports a little reminiscent of Michael Moore's edgy magazine show, TV Nation, where sometimes you couldn't decide if you were watching broadcast journalism or social satire.
Indeed, contributor Brian Unger phonied up such convincing sadness for a report on the death of Princess Kitty that you could imagine this soppy tribute to a performing cat running on your local-TV newscast. Heaven knows you've seen worse there.
But you'll probably find The Daily Show more consistently, funny than the local news. It's also funnier than its ABC competition, Nightline—which means much funnier than NBC's Tonight show.
How does it stack up next to Late Show with David Letterman?
Well, does Dave keep you in the know with regular features like This Day in Hasselhoff History and the Kathie Lee Quote of the Day? (Here's one: "You can't beat a chubby little kid in a tiny little Speedo.")
Each Daily Show edition seems dedicated not to laughing with its subjects, but at them. Mercilessly. You'll probably be laughing, too.
Next season, Single Guy won't get the girl
LOS ANGELES — The Single Guy is going to be more single in the upcoming television season, says the guy who plays the title role, Jonathan Silverman.
The Associated Press
The NBC sitcom became a first-season winner for NBC and not just because it benefited from a platinum time slot — between Friends and Seinfeld on Thursday nights. Still, networks love to tinker, and the show will have a slightly different direction next season.
"I think they brought up a very good point: For him to truly be a single guy, he's gotta have a lot less luck with the ladies," Silverman said.
"I think that was fine and funny and certainly a good introduction in that first season. But we all agree we should explore other aspects of his being single and a bachelor, with the pain and pitfalls as opposed to having a 'Babe of the Week' show," he said.
"He couldn't have been so successful with all the dates, otherwise he wouldn't be the single guy. One of them would have worked out."
Silverman himself remains single, but he admits to a terrific relationship with country singer Annaee that has lasted more than two years.
"So I feel like a married man, as opposed to a single guy, in real life," he said.
Silverman was accustomed to one new project after another in the early years of his career, so he's looking forward to the sophomore season of The Single Guy. But beyond that he wouldn't predict:
It was during baseball season that Silverman and The Single Guy came together. A lifelong baseball nut, the actor is a player with the Hollywood All Stars, celebrities who play exhibition games for charity. A few seasons back, Silverman appeared at the annual Hollywood Stars night, playing the outfield before a regular game at Dodger Stadium.
"One season at a time," he said. "We'll see what happens."
"Lo and behold, Tom Selleck, 'Mr. Baseball',' hit a shot over my head. God was with me, and I robbed him of what should have been a double or a triple. A few innings later, the same thing happened. He hit one more toward right center, and I caught it," he said.
"The fine folks at Castle Rock were in attendance. Through the efforts of our shortstop, Billy Crystal, I was offered a job in a baseball picture called 'Little Big League' as a relief pitcher for the
Minnesota Twins. Castle Rock gave me an overall deal, which eventually resulted in the television show".
Silverman grew up in Los Angeles and attended Beverly Hills High School, as did current luminaries Richard Drewfuss and Rob Reiner.
"I didn't really have any specific ties to the industry," he said. "But growing up here, you can't avoid it. It's all-encompassing."
Silverman left for New York at 17 and found a patron in Neil Simon. The young actor appeared in all three of Simon's autobiographical plays: Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biliot Blues and Broadway Bound. In November, he'll appear with a stellar cast in Simon's London Suite on NBC.
"I suppose in the back of my mind, I thought, 'Hey, if I ever do pursue this as a career' — this really wasn't in the forefront of my mind. I had an inkling of how I would go about it. I would know what not to do, judging from the people I was surrounded by."
He also appeared in feature movies such as Stealing Home, Class Action and the infamous Weekend at Bernie's duo, in which he and Andrew McCarthy managed to get laughs out of escorting a corpse.
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