Aug. 24 show

Ben Mulroney was back in the tiny (and cheesy) eTalk studio for tonight's show -- the very same studio, incidentally, where he first made CTV fall in love with him as one of the co-hosts of the moribund Chatroom on the now defunct Talk TV. Oh how the emotions must spill out every time he steps foot in there. I digress. The top story was about how R&B artist Massari "flew to Toronto's Pearson airport" to help a World Vision relief effort to Lebanon. Um, "fly to Toronto?" Doesn't he live here? Dude's from freakin' Ottawa. They actually used those annoying swoosh effects while talking about bombs flying over Lebanon... I always hid behind the sofa. Turns out Massari's relief efforts consisted of putting stickers on bundles of supplies and then autographing them... just what the suffering people of that war-ravaged country need. To put it all into perspective, some crappy wire service news about Tom Cruise was next. Then, eTalk had a clip with Dave Navarro which had been teased in the show intro as "an eTalk exclusive" even though almost every media outlet in Toronto did something with Navarro while he was in town. The segment wasn't labelled "exclusive," though, so perhaps producers were hoping we had forgotten that it was promoted as such at the top of the show. This was followed by the "network premiere" of the new video from The Killers -- not such a big deal when you consider it's already been on the music channels and all over the Internet. Besides, they only showed a few seconds of it and made us listen to Tanya Kim's horrible read over it. Next, the obligatory Canadian Idol segment, this time offering a look behind the scenes of Theresa Sokyrka's new video, as if anyone outside her family and optician cares. Yawn. David Giammarco, apparently far too filthy and scruffy to be seen on camera tonight, voiced-over a lame report on The Emmy Awards that re-hashed stuff anyone who cares would have already read/heard/watched elsewhere. Too bad eTalk couldn't have come up with some unique angle instead of taking the easy (read: cheap) route. After the break, the lovely Anna Cyzon showed up with her usual collection of headlines. Susie Wall, a competent reporter who is often fun to watch, followed with an interesting on-set piece with Jason Priestley, Adam Beach and Graham Greene. Next, a puff piece on Cheyenne complaining about not being able to go anywhere without being recognized. Honey, you could have served me at McDonald's and I wouldn't recognize you. Of course, eTalk managed to work in the obligatory Chantal Kreviazuk/Raine Maida mention. (I swear, they must have pics of Jordan Schwartz screwing Morley Nirenberg.) Sophie Gregoire was up next with blurbs on the Montreal film festival and Quebec actor Roy Dupuis. With the Canadian content mandate fulfilled, eTalk went right back to serving as a promotional vehicle for film studios with a commercial for...er, a segment on the movie Beerfest and one on How to Eat Fried Worms. Again, 30 minutes of my life I will never get back.