Happy Days are Here Again at WPEN

Philly-area oldies fans have a new choice as of 8 am today (Wednesday). According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

WPEN-AM (950) will flip from adult standards to oldies, with a playlist covering the 1955-to-1964 pre-Beatles era. Oldies 950's lineup will include WOGL-FM (98.1) alums Charlie Bennett (doing mornings, 6 to 10) and Jim Nettleton (afternoon drive, 3 to 7). Jerry Blavat will host a noon-to-1 lunchtime special (starting Sept. 15) and will keep his 5 to 7 p.m. Friday show. New station manager Brett Beshore said 950's vibe would be similar to Philly's old Wibbage and WFIL. He called the move "a natural evolution."

Sounds good to me.....

More Toons on the Tube

On the occasion of tonight's premiere of Dreamwork's "Father of the Pride" on NBC, this article on MSNBC.com takes a look at the current boom in animated programming on network and cable TV. The article includes a look at current and future programming on Fox and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, among others:

Adult Swim is finally getting a production budget, and the result will be several new shows in the next year. The first one recently premiered: "The Venture Bros.," an action cartoon spoof sure to be oversimplified as "Jonny Quest after puberty," with gratuitous sex, violence, nudity, drug use and Patrick Warburton defiling mummies. Coming soon are a family of hillbilly squids, a cop comedy with a talking car, untitled projects from actor Seth Green and OutKast's Andre 3000, and new episodes of "Family Guy" to air both on cable and on Fox. And a project to bring the controversial comic strip "Boondocks" to television, just rejected by Fox, has been revived by Cartoon Network.

JLU News

Tom Everett Scott ("That Thing You Do") is providing the voice for Booster Gold in the Sept. 11 episode of Justice League Unlimited, "The Greatest Story Never Told." Here's how Cartoon Network describes the episode:
The Justice League is in epic battle with Mordru in downtown Metropolis, but the real story is what happens to Booster Gold while he's supposed to be on 'crowd control.'"

Batman Beyond and Static will both be guest-starring in "The Once and Future Thing, Pt. 2," the season finale of Justice League Unlimited. Will Friedle is reprising his role of Batman for the episode.

Click the headline above for more toon and comic news of the day from Comics Continuum.

And, for a great - and informative - review of last week's episode, "This Little Piggy" check this out.

"Monk" Returns in January sans Sharona

According to today's Hollywood Reporter, someone else will be handing Adrian Monk his moist towelettes when the top-rated cable show returns in January. Due to "creative differences," Bitty Schram, who was nominated for an Emmy in her role as Sharona Fleming, has left "Monk."

Producers are now casting for "a world-weary but attractive thirtysomething widow, who works as a bartender."

Sources indicate that unsuccessful (for Schram, anyway) contract negotiations were the reason for her departure. In fact, all of the supporitng cast, including Schram, Ted Levine (Stottlemeyer) and Jason Gray-Stanford (Randy) have been trying to renegotiate their contracts. That's why they were written out of the next-to-last episode that aired this season (when Monk helped his father-in-law investigate a game show host). Levine and Gray-Sanford, however, will be back when the show returns.

For more info, click here

"The Scweam"

In an effort to ease the pain of the theft of the famous painting " the Scream," by Edward Munch, the family of classic Warner Bros. cartoon director Chuck Jones has donated the late director's lithograph, "The Scweam," a parody of Munch's work to the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway.

From the Business Wire article:

According to Craig Kausen [Jones' grandson], the Jones family is all too aware of the emotions surrounding the theft of beloved works of art, having suffered through a string of burglaries from their own galleries in the early 1990s. "Chuck was very philosophical about the first theft," said Kausen. "In fact, he said he felt flattered that someone would go to the trouble to steal one of his paintings. However, when the second painting was stolen, it was much more aggravating. We certainly empathize with the curators and the staff of the Munch Museum."

See the lithograph of "The Scweam" here

Tough Week for Star Trek crew

It's a tough week for Enterprise crew members as James "Scotty" Doohan made his last public appearance and Patrick "Capt. Picard" Stewart underwent angioplasty.

Doohan, who recently announced that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, was the subject of a tribute/roast, attended by all surviving cast mates of the original Star Trek (DeForrest "Dr. McCoy" Kelley died in 1999).

According to E!online:

"Beam Me Up Scotty...One Last Time" is the quite-serious title to a three-day event at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel billed as a farewell to the actor who, as fiery Montgomery Scott, ran the U.S.S. Enterprise's engineering deck on Trek's 1966-69 flagship series and six big-screen adventures.

Unfortunately, Stewart had his own health concerns this week:

The actor, who plays venerable, chrome-domed leaders in both the Star Trek: The Next Generation and X-Men franchises, underwent what was termed a "preemptive" angioplasty Monday in Los Angeles on the advice of doctors who discovered a potential blood-flow problem during an exam.

Current buzz indicates that Bryan Singer, director of the 1st 2 X-Men movies, and now onboard as director of the long-troubled Superman movie franchise, wants Stewart to play Jor-El, Superman's Kryptonian father.

On a related note, a Special Edition of Star Trek: Generations, featuring both Doohan and Stewart, is available on Sept. 7. This is the movie that introduces the Next Generation cast to the big screen. The Special Edition includes commentary and an alternate ending among its extras. I enjoyed this movie and am considering picking up this new release.