The View / Elton John's and Elvis Costello's Spectacle on Sundance

CHECK CARLA BRUNI'S APPEARANCE ON THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN IN THE POST BELOW

I don't know if any of you, my faithful readers, ever watch The View. I never do, because I seldom watch daytime television, and I also find that show beyond annoying - Barbara Walters, well, she is just being her grating old self; I detest Joy Behar, a woman full of prejudices, if there ever was one, and the one (besides Barbara Walters) with the longest tenure on The View so far; I kind of like Whoopi Goldberg, but can take her only in fairly small doses; I do not really know the other two women, but I know that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is the really conservative one, and that she was a staunch McCain supporter throughout the recent presidential campaign - so, let's dismiss her right here and now; Sherri Shepherd is the show's token African American woman but, hey, someone had to replace Star Jones in that role...

Since I love Keith Olbermann, here's a snippet of him on The View, which will give my readers who are not familiar with this show a little idea of its dynamics:



The other morning, I found myself grading French I exams in front of the tube, and The View was on. I decided to leave it on, because I was barely paying attention to the TV set anyway.

The show began with a discussion about male dancers. It started because the main guest on that day was Elton John, who has written the score to a musical version of the British movie Billy Elliott. This musical, which is supposedly a big hit in London, has recently opened on Broadway. For those of you who are not familiar with the storyline of Billy Elliot, it's about a boy (named Billy Elliot) who lives in County Durham in northern England during the mid-1980s - a period of turmoil in this mining region, as the miners are on strike. Billy discovers classical ballet, and wants to be a dancer, something that his father equates with homosexuality. I'll let you view the DVD for yourself to find out how it all turns out, but it was a great film, and I'm sure that it makes a fine musical, although I am not overly fond of Elton John's musicals. His stuff always turns out a bit too bombastic for my taste. For a little interlude, here's the trailer of Billy Elliot (the movie):



Anyway, before Elton appeared on the set of The View, the four women went on discussing at length the fact that being a ballet dancer for a man does not necessarily mean that he's gay. And they went on dropping the names of some "macho" ballet dancers - Baryshnikov, who has publicly flaunted his heterosexuality to the world at large on multiple occasions, being most prominently given as an example of a 100% straight male ballet dancer. They also mentioned Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. I found that discussion a bit vapid and rather stupid, especially when the women of The View felt compelled to mention that a male dancer has got to be fantastic in bed (an episode of The View without a reference to sex would be, as the French put it, like a kiss without a mustache.)

Elton John made his entrance, and there was an in depth discussion about the musical and how it had come to pass. I was definitely tuning out in a major way during that part of the show. Then, the conversation turned to this new music/talk show, Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., which will begin airing on the Sundance channel on December 3rd (9:00 p.m. eastern time.) It was mentioned, because Elton John will be EC's first guest. Irony of ironies, now that I have switched to the Dish Network, I no longer get the Sundance channel. Lou Reed and Julian Schnabel will be the guests on December 10, and Bill Clinton on December 17.

Elvis Costello will be chatting with those folks, and will also perform with them. For more on this upcoming show, which promises to be fantastic, click here. I need to find a way of getting someone to record this show for me!