News of the Week: New Celebrity Apprentice, New Mary Poppins, and New Fall Books

Goodbye Donald, Hello Arnold

Earlier this year Donald Trump and NBC parted ways (he’s running for president, if you haven’t turned on your television the past two months. So they needed a new host for The Celebrity Apprentice. Would it be someone like Mark Cuban or Richard Branson? Nope, they went with the ex-governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

They might need a new tagline to replace Trump’s “You’re fired.” Conan O’Brien has a few suggestions:

Too bad Carly Fiorina is busy. She would have been great.

Supercalifragilisticexpialatrocious

Eventually, Hollywood will remake/reboot/sequel-ize every single movie and TV show that has ever been made. The latest is Mary Poppins. Disney has announced that they’re making a sequel to the beloved movie, which will take place 20 years after the original. It will be directed by Rob Marshall, who directed Chicago.

This is where I would put in the obligatory “I wish Hollywood would stop doing this!” line, but at this point it’s too late. Everything is up for grabs. A screenwriter is even thinking about doing a new version of Columbo.

RIP, Dickie Moore

Last week we got the news that Our Gang actress Jean Darling had passed away. Now comes word that fellow Our Gang actor Dickie Moore has passed away. He was 89.

Besides the 1930s comedy shorts, he also appeared in many movies, including Out of the Past, where he played Robert Mitchum’s mute employee at the gas station; Miss Annie Rooney, where he gave Shirley Temple her first on-screen kiss; and films like Oliver Twist, Sergeant York, and The Bride Wore Red. Moore served in World War II and left the movie business in the early 1950s and eventually opened up his own PR firm, Dick Moore & Associates. He had been married to actress Jane Powell since 1988.

I Now Pronounce You…

In some places, fake weddings are really popular.

I don’t mean fake weddings as in whatever the heck happened with Kim Kardashian and basketball player Kris Humphries a few years ago, I’m talking about weddings that are actually fake. The Atlantic has a piece about marriages in Argentina that aren’t really marriages at all. They’re parties where fake grooms and brides and others get together to party. Guests pay between $43 and $65 for tickets, and that includes a video of the event and “some drama.” So it sounds like a reality show you pay to attend. I can’t imagine that this won’t be popular in the U.S. at some point.

Recent statistics show that 50 percent of all fake marriages end in fake divorce.

New Fall Books

Finally, fall is in our sights. Soon the rancid heat and humidity will be replaced with crisp, cool air, pumpkin-spice everything, and new TV shows. And books! Books are released throughout the year, of course, but fall seems to be when a lot of the eagerly awaited books are released. Here are seven that sound like fun:

• Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham (Wynwood Press, October 20)
  Grisham’s latest novel is about a lawyer who works out of a van that has bulletproof windows, Wi-Fi, even a full bar. I can picture the movie already.
• Why & When The Dick Van Dyke Show Was Born by Carl Reiner (October)
  The creator of the classic sitcom gives an in-depth history on how it was created.
• Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging by Dick Van Dyke (Weinstein Books, November 3)
  Reiner isn’t the only Dick Van Dyke Show alum to have a new book. Wouldn’t it be great if they did a book tour together? Available: October 13
• The Time of Our Lives, by Peggy Noonan (Twelve, November 3)
  This is a collection of her essays and columns over the years, and it should turn out to be well worth getting. She’s a fantastic, thoughtful writer.
• The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King (Charles Scribner’s Sons, November 3)
  I’ve lost track of how many books Stephen King has released this year. This one is a new collection of short stories, and King includes notes on how and why he wrote each story.
• But Enough About Me by Burt Reynolds (Penguin Random House, November 17)
  Reynolds promises to name names in Hollywood so this memoir should get a lot of attention this fall.
• This Old Man: All In Pieces by Roger Angell (Doubleday Books, November 17)
  A collection of essays, letters, reviews, profiles and light verse from The New Yorker writer, on subjects ranging from life, baseball, and war to music and aging (Angell turns 95 tomorrow).

September Is National Breakfast Month

I have not eaten breakfast in years. Sure, I’ll have tea in the morning and throughout the day (oh so many, many cups of tea throughout the day), but I never, ever actually have any breakfast. They say it’s the most important meal of the day, but I’ve heard that line for so long who knows if it’s actually true or just one of those medical wives’ tales.

But if you do eat breakfast, it’s National Breakfast Month. RecipeGirl has a great breakfast section on her site (actually, the entire site is great), and you might want to try some Pumpkin Spice Muffins or an Onion, Bacon, and Spinach Fritatta, or the Two-Ingredient Pancakes.

As we mentioned last week, McDonald’s will start to serve breakfast all day long on October 6. They should have bumped it up a month.

Upcoming Events and Anniversaries

Tolkien Week (September 20-26)
And September 22 is Hobbit Day, the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins! The Saturday Evening Post Archives Director Jeff Nilsson on the concerns parents had when The Hobbit became popular in the 1960s.

Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs (September 20, 1973)
There were actually three Battle of the Sexes tennis matches. One had Riggs against Margaret Court (which he won) and a later match against King (which he lost). The third was played between Jimmy Connors and Martina Navratilova.

H. G. Wells born (September 21, 1866)
ABC has announced that they’re making a TV series based on the sci-fi film Time After Time, about writer H.G. Wells battling Jack the Ripper through time.

Neptune discovered (September 23, 1846)
Who should get credit for discovering the eighth planet?

William Faulkner born (September 25, 1897)
The Southern writer published 22 short stories in the Post and was recipient of both the Nobel Prize in Literature and a Pulitzer Prize.

First televised presidential debate (September 26, 1960)
The common wisdom is that people who watched the debate on television thought John F. Kennedy won (Richard Nixon sweated a lot) and those who listened to it on the radio thought Nixon won.