Copious Notes

Carson Daly shooting "Last Call" on the street. Photos by Chris Haston | NBC.

The most overlooked victim in NBC’s late-night imbroglio earlier this year was Carson Daly.

While people stewed over what would become of Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, Daly, the host of the 1:35 a.m. Last Call With Carson Daly, was getting thoughtless slams. David Letterman constantly acted as if he couldn’t remember Daly’s name, calling his show the Pluto of late-night TV, and NBC executives forgot to mention him among personalities they wanted to keep on the air.

In one scenario, Daly would have lost his show.

That would have been the scenario in which Leno, whose 10 p.m. Jay Leno Show was cancelled last month, would have taken over a half-hour show before The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. As night owls now know, O’Brien decided not to take the deal, Leno now hosts Tonight - again – and Fallon and Daly are right where they were.

Daly took the weeks of uncertainty in good humor, even mocking his plight on The Jimmy Kimmel Show on rival ABC and posing for new Last Call promotional photos with a pair of defibrillation paddles on his chest.

Most important, he came back with the most inventive and interesting late-night show on TV.

Read the rest of this entry »

Revive.

If the eight bands on the Winter Jam show at 6 p.m. Saturday at Rupp Arena are not quite enough for you, you can get started earlier in the day with an acoustic show by Aussie worship artists Revive at Crossroads Christian Church on Todds Road.

Tickets to the show, organized by Crossroads teen Katy McKnight, are $10 and the proceeds go to benefit the Crossroads Youth Group’s summer mission trip to Boliva.

If you are heading to Winter Jam, check back here late Saturday or before you head to church Sunday for a slide show from the concert.

Who knew these UK Opera kids were so funny?

The last few years, they haven’t had much of a chance to show it. They’ve been dealing with subjects like slavery (River of Time), murder (Lucia di Lammermoor), pretty young things dying of loathsome diseases (La Boheme and River of Time) and childhood abandonment issues (Hansel and Gretel).

Oh, where’s an operetta with a ridiculous little plot when you need one?

That’s what the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre is offering up through Saturday with its production of Joahann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus, a show as silly as its title sounds.

This may sound like an easy assignment, but ask anyone who’s tried to make an audience laugh and they’ll tell you, comedy is tough. Die Fledermaus needs the laughs, because without them, the show is nearly three-hours of memorable melodies strung together by the thinnest of plots.

Three residents of a house, Eisentein and Rosalinda and their maid, Adele, are invited to the same party, but they each think they are sneaking out on the others. It’s all part of an elaborate prank by Dr. Falke to get back at Eisenstein for a humiliation in the past. This is one of those plots popular in opera and Shakespeare that depends on intimate acquaintances suddenly not being able to recognize each other in close proximity.

You need to be laughing to maintain your suspension of disbelief.

Fortunately, we discovered Thursday night that the ranks of UK Opera include several gifted comic singer-actors.

Read the rest of this entry »