This past Thursday night, I attended the Prima Notte Gala at the Los Angeles Feast of San Gennaro in Hollywood, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla.  This was a fundraising event and auction held to pay tribute to the US Military and recognize the outstanding efforts that Italian-Americans have made to serve America during times of war and to support the San Gennaro Foundation.

Robert Davi and Connie Stevens

Jimmy Kimmel, producer Douglas DeLuca and some of Los Angeles’ most prominent Italian-American citizens created The San Gennaro Foundation to benefit underprivileged children and the homeless in Los Angeles.

Master of Ceremonies, Mark DeCarlo, hosted the evening’s celebration that featured performances by Pete Jacobs’ Wartime Radio Review, an old-fashioned USO show, complete with a swinging band.  Actors Connie Stevens and Robert Davi were recognized for their charitable work, especially their work with our military.

I arrived early and was able to sample much of the food that’s available at the Feast.  I had purposely skipped dinner so I was ready to dive in.  I stopped by a booth run by “Nonna” (Italian for “grandma”) and she gave me a sample of some biscotti that was out of this world.  When I came back for seconds, she shooed me away with a wink while surreptitiously slipping some more biscotti into my hand.  If you get a chance, look up Frankie’s Old World Biscotti.  You won’t regret it.  Another standout was Pagano’s Seafood.  Don’t pass their booth without buying something. (more…)

Because many of us who write for Big Hollywood spend the majority of our time pointing out the hypocrisy and liberal bias of leftists in Hollywood, it is oh-so-pleasant to be able to write a post which draws attention to a fantastic cause that many in Hollywood will soon undertake. The cause is honoring our troops while simultaneously raising money for children in need. The charity behind the cause is The San Gennaro Foundation, and the name of the event they’re hosting is “The 9th Annual Precious Cheese Feast of San Gennaro.” (The event begins September 23rd with a fundraising gala, and continues through the 26th.)

This year’s event, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and comedian Adam Carolla, with Mark DeCario as Master of Ceremonies, is structured around honoring the service of Italian-Americans who served during World War II. There will be appearances by special guests like Connie Stevens and Robert Davi, as well as performances by the Peter Jacobs Wartime Radio Review. Moreover, the entire event will be broadcast as a live USO show for our Military personnel overseas. (Way to go, USO!!!)

While typing this post, I was able to catch up with Robert Davi and get his take on the Feast of San Gennaro and his ties to the Italian-American experience in World War II:

AWR: What is it about being involved in The San Gennaro Foundation’s “Feast of LA” that means so much to you? (more…)

As a member of the Writers Guild of America, I stand in solidarity with all union members who seek fair and reasonable wages and benefits.   I do not, however, stand in solidarity with the union members who baked Ryan Bueler under a hot light as he exercised his right of free speech on June 25th.

I have been around union members all my professional life.  They are the real heroes of a production.  They work long hours, they make everyone else look good, and they are some of the kindest and most jovial people to spend time with.  I’ll take a union member over a politician any day.

But not when they behave like this.

This is America.  Everyone has a right to express an opinion.  If you don’t like it, protest in a respectable manner.   However, the behavior of Jimmy Kimmel’s crew was wrong on every count — and in direct opposition with what they hoped to achieve. (more…)

NewsBusters reports that four members of the pro-life group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust got their hands on free tickets to the Jimmy Kimmel Show the other night and caused enough of a disruption during taping that the police escorted them out. The youth group is trying to call attention to that fact that on June 25th, while peacefully picketing outside of Grauman’s Chinese  Theatre, a film crew hired by the Kimmel Show turned a hot spotlight on one of their members, Ryan Bueler. It was an astonishing act of cruelty that’s just now starting to make the rounds online.

Because the victim of the “light-fry” was a young anti-abortion protester and not a terrorist determined to massacre as many innocent Americans as possible, the Huffington Post can’t quite bring themselves to condemn the act, and as if they’re proud of their unique ability to summon brazen hypocrisy, Fishbowl LA writes:

Groups like these live for attention and we have mixed feelings about giving it to them. But the video does look pretty bad.

Fishbowl LA covers a city and industry that is all about groups that “live for attention,” but only now are they having “mixed feelings” about giving into such a thing. (more…)

According to our friends at NewsBusters, on June 25th, a pro-life group called Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust were peacefully protesting outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood when a crew from the Jimmy Kimmel Show arrived to do some filming. The pro-life youth activists weren’t in the film crew’s way — whatever they were shooting was across the street — but then for no reason other than to be ideologically sadistic, the crew turned a hot spotlight on Ryan Bueler, one of the young protesters. Bueler refused to be intimidated and for 15 minutes stood under a light hot enough to partially melt a bracelet he was wearing. This video is unbelievable:

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Well, welcome to Hollywood, where celebrity and those who surround them trump justice, because it wasn’t the goons who tortured the kid the police arrested, it was Survivors’ founder Jeff White. He was eventually released but as of now no charges have been pressed against the real thugs in this case.

Looking for an apology, the pro-life group’s now trained their protests on Jimmy Kimmel. Fair enough. He’s the boss. But my guess is that this crew is part of a union and as we’ve seen since our President urged his followers to “get in their face,” there’s a thuggish union mentality out there that seems more emboldened by the day.

Word to the wise: If the Survivors plan to demand an apology from the union, they might want to hire an army to protect them.   (more…)

Emmy nominations were announced last week, and David Letterman, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Saturday Night Live all got one. I believe Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon are too new to be considered this year, making Craig Ferguson the wallflower. He suggested that the reason he was skipped over was because the Academy hates Americans. (I think he’s on to something). Letterman bragged he got one for “Best Apology.”

I have no proof, but it appears if there is a new sponsor for Letterman’s daily Ruth Madoff joke. For the past several weeks he’s been doing the same exact joke about Bernie Madoff’s wife claiming her $92 million wasn’t from swindling, that it was money she saved by switching to Geico®. His repetition makes me think the insurance giant’s paying Worldwide Pants to do the joke every night. This week, he added a joke every night about Ruth’s favorite item at California Pizza Kitchen® that suggested they were a new sponsor. On successive nights it was chicken ponzi, chicken al-fraudo, and veal scaloponzi. (more…)

While the President was pitching health care and the Speaker was rounding up support for Cap and Trade, the Late Nights were focused on Mark Sanford: a Republican governor that seemed like a comeuppance for Democrat Rod Blagojevich. In fact many of the hosts brought up the Illinois Governor in their jokes.

Craig Ferguson said after Spitzer and Blagojevich, the most normal governor was Jesse Ventura. He also said that a family values governor having a mistress is like Al Gore needing four SUVs to bring his lunch to him.(It was disappointing that Ferguson didn’t see the irony in his remark, because Al Gore DOES require multiple SUVs when he travels) Funniest line went to Conan O’Brien, who said the affair was a shock, because usually, Republicans don’t do well with Hispanic women. (more…)

You know, people, it’s a damn shame. I remember when great comedians like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce held nothing sacred. I know I don’t. And so many comedians, especially late-nighters, are really missing the boat with President Obama. There’s a wealth of material just waiting to be tapped, and I’m really not looking forward to four more years of lame Bush and Palin jokes. Are you?

All it takes is one person to break the ice. Example. Twenty years ago, my brother won tickets to a Journey concert in Worcester, Massachusetts on the radio. We rode a packed WBCN Party Bus out of Boston, but everyone was kind of uptight and kept to themselves, like there were cops in the crowd. So I took a risk and lit up a big fattie anyway. Within minutes, it was like a Cheech and Chong movie. You couldn’t see out the windows. Everyone was laughing, joking, hacking and toking. (more…)

I have had it with Letterman! I used to defend this guy to all of my friends who liked Leno better. I would say from a comic stand point that Jay was a great comic but Letterman was more original and had more style and class than Leno. Two recent events have changed my mind: Jay’s classy departure from the “Tonight Show” and Letterman’s classless left-wing attacks on the kids of politicians.

A comic needs to be an equal opportunity offender. We can’t pick sides in politics. We can have a point of view and a favorite but being a comic means when our guy drops the ball, you have to pick it up and smash it in his face. My friend and political opposite, Will Durst, said this a few years back about Mort Saul (I am paraphrasing here), “You can’t sit down to dinner with the Reagan’s and then pretend you’re still willing to sling mud at them.”

That is what is wrong with comedians like Letterman, Garofalo, and Stewart. They only see one side. Why do none of them at least give love taps to Obama? Why didn’t at least one of them make some comedic hay out of Obama gaffs like “57 states” and a reference to speaking “Austrian?” (more…)

April 29, 2009. 100 days. In case you were in a sensory deprivation tank, you probably know full well that Wednesday was the 100th day of the Obama Administration, and most of the news shows used it as an excuse to give Him the same exact grade they would have given Him for His first day in office.

That grade is completely unchanged by all the goofs and blunders made by this handsome community organizer, who was rushed into an office that was clearly over His head. Their grade was unbesmirched by the other grades given to Him by Wall Street, the President of France,  the North Korean missile launchers, or by four Somali pirates. (The same pirates who were allowed to humiliate the US Navy for three days before the Commander in Chief gave the order to shoot.)

What a great day to do another Late Night Review, and an opportunity to grade the Nation’s Premiere Satirists on their 100 days. In the time since the last review, we saw not only the aforementioned tense situations; but also an Air Force One flyover that created a panic, one heck of a carbon footprint, and a third of a million dollar addition to the deficit, all for the sake of a pretty photograph.

Certainly there must be something worth making fun of by now. We saw Obama calling for an end to privacy, giving a gag gift the Queen, and a bow to the Saudi King. We learned that He works out three hours a day (no wonder He needs a teleprompter to stay current), and thinks Austrian is a language. He again proved that Harvard isn’t so good at teaching American History, claiming He was only three months old during the Bay of Pigs. No news there, He didn’t think He was in government when the deficit occurred either. (more…)

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Pakistan, California, Gitmo, Nancy Pelosi, Global Warming, New York Times, Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, Barbie, E! Network, Scarlett Johansson, and Gary Busey.