Aye, Caramba!
It sounds as strangely comical as an episode of Fox's The
Simpsons, but it's real life: Big-mouthed fourth-grader Bart Simpson
has created an uproar in two Orange County, Calif., school districts,
where T-shirts with the slogans ''I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are
you?'' and ''Underachiever and proud of it'' have been banned.
Superintendents Ronald Randolph and Rich Hermann found Bart's
wisecracks to be in bad taste and kicked him out, but they may be
headed for a First Amendment showdown with the bug-eyed cult hero:
The Orange County ACLU and the state Department of Education already
have expressed concern about interference with freedom of expression.
Meanwhile, kids in the two districts can still wear T-shirts with
another Bartism: ''Don't have a cow, man!''
Shirts That Say It All, Part 2
With many of the enigmas of ABC's Twin Peaks still indecipherable,
fans now can wear a solution to TV's most-talked-about unsolved
mystery: ''I killed Laura Palmer'' T-shirts, available by mail from
Leafy Green Dreams in Sky Forest, Calif., have been selling faster
than coffee at the Double-R Diner. They're available in special agent
Dale Cooper's favorite shades: cherry-pie red and huckleberry-pie
blue.
See Jane More
No woman has coanchored a nightly network newscast since the
ill-fated pairing of ABC's Barbara Walters with Harry Reasoner in
1976, but speculation is high that NBC is ready to give the
two-anchor format another try, reuniting former Today deskmates Tom
Brokaw and Jane Pauley on NBC Nightly News. On May 11, after a month
of third-place finishes for its evening newscast, NBC announced that
Bill Wheatley, the show's executive producer for five years, would be
replaced by Steve Friedman, the executive producer of Today from 1980
until 1987 — the Pauley years. Since leaving Today, Pauley has become
one of NBC News' brightest stars; she's preparing five news specials
for the network, and has been promised a weekly NBC News series as
well.
Rising Sons
One of the new comedy pilots NBC announced as a potential fall
series could get a trial run by June. Esther Rolle and Harold Gould will star in Singer and Sons, about a widowed deli owner who
hires his housekeeper's two sons to take over his business; four
episodes are in production. NBC's plans for original summer
programming also include six made-for-TV movies, including the
docudrama Hiroshima, which will air in the first week of August.
Living Choler
If the loopy lettering on the new Fox series In Living Color strikes you as familiar, you're not alone. The rock band Living
Colour is suing Fox, claiming the group's logo has been
wrongly appropriated by the skit comedy show. Executives at Fox,
which recently extended its order for In Living Color from 8
episodes to 13, refused to discuss the case. Also headed for court:
the producers of ABC's recent movie The Story of the Beach Boys:
Summer Dreams. Song licenser Irving Music has accused them of
misrepresenting the film's content to obtain rights to Beach Boys
hits. The film's producers were unavailable for comment.
