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Rickey Smiley making amends for Chastain tantrum
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A year ago, standup comic Rickey Smiley refused to go onstage at Chastain Amphitheatre, unhappy about a fellow comic who came on before him who he felt broke the flow of the show and swiped topics he was going to address. “You can’t do comedy when you’re angry,” he said.
As penance for his surprise absence, Smiley offered fans an autographed poster, a CD and written apology to anyone who wrote to him.
Friday, at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, he’ll be back for the first time since that incident as the headliner with handpicked lower-level comics who won’t steal his thunder.
He told Buzz that he sent out several apologies after his no-show and even offered free tickets to this performance. “We want everyone to continue to be a fan,” he said.
Smiley, a morning jock at a Dallas radio station, said next year he plans to follow the path of Atlanta’s Tyler Perry and create a musical comedy instead of just doing standup. The tentative grammatically challenged name of the play: “Ain’t Nobody Called Me and Told Me Nothin’.”
Atlanta-based Third Day is headlining a six-day Christian cruise trip dubbed Music Boat Cruise 2007 scheduled to leave Miami April 30, 2007, destined for the Caribbean. McDonough’s Casting Crowns performed the first Music Boat last fall. So bookmark the site www.premierchristiancruises.com to buy tickets when they go on sale in August. …
Comic anchors morning show for ‘grown folks’
Steve Harvey is joining the Atlanta airwaves Monday at 102.5, which is now a hybrid R&B music/talk station.
Harvey, best known for his stand-up comedy and his long-running sitcom, is now a syndicated morning host on more than 20 radio stations nationwide, including New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia and Detroit.
“It’s absolutely the funniest morning show on the planet,” Harvey told Buzz. “I’ve done the math on this. It’s not bragging.”
He also said the radio show allows him to reveal multiple facets of himself, including his inspirational side.
At the same time, he won’t trash-talk his rival Tom Joyner, heard locally on Kiss 104.1, which has a much stronger signal than 102.5. “I respect him,” Harvey said. ” I enjoy him. We’re friends. That’s all.”
Harvey will replace Silas “SiMan” Alexander, the morning host for 102.5 since 2002. SiMan will do evenings 7 to midnight.
A gracious SiMan said he’s appreciative that 102.5 is keeping him on as the local voice and face of the station, even if it means a much lower-profile time slot. “It’s a good move for the station,” SiMan said. “Steve has star power. And he’s funny.”
Once exclusively an R&B music station, 102.5 has gone through a transformation the past year with the additions of all-talk Michael Eric Dyson and Al Sharpton from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and relationships guru Michael Baisden from 3 to 7 p.m. Both Baisden and Harvey blend R&B music with entertainment. The station’s new slogan: “Grown folks radio, the new 102.5.”
No Cars, Blondie
Saturday’s New Cars/Blondie concert at Chastain Park Amphitheatre has been postponed because Cars guitarist Elliot Easton broke his left clavicle after a near crash June 5 on the tour bus. He played four more shows but was told by doctors he needed surgery. Easton is in New York recuperating. A new date has not been announced, but tickets will be honored later.
Pop star reaches out
Atlanta R&B star Usher pulled on some work gloves, grabbed a pair of trimmers and chopped away at a patch of vines that had overtaken a fence at a New Orleans school shuttered by Hurricane Katrina.
Usher joined dozens of volunteers Tuesday to clear the overgrown lawn of the International School of Louisiana, the state’s first foreign language-based charter school, which has been closed since Katrina hit Aug. 29. He got his first glimpse of Katrina’s destruction Monday, when he visited storm-damaged neighborhoods in New Orleans and nearby St. Bernard Parish.
“To see it in this state, it’s devastating,” Usher said, cutting away at the vines that had twisted through the chain-link fence surrounding the school.
Random bits
CNN evening host and GQ cover boy Anderson Cooper has landed at the top of the New York Times best-seller list with his “Dispatches From the Edge,” a hybrid mix of memoir and reportage. He has been promoting the book heavily in the media (“Oprah,” “Regis,” et al.) and on his own CNN show. Coincidentally or not, his ratings were up 24 percent in May, year over year; in April they were down 36 percent …
Celebrity birthdays
Actor Jim Belushi is 52. Actress Helen Hunt is 43. Actress Courteney Cox Arquette (“Friends”) is 42. Rapper-actor Ice Cube is 37. Actress Leah Remini (“King of Queens”) is 36. Actor Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.”) is 33.
Contributing: news services.
If you have a tip, call 404-526-5688 or e-mail buzz@ajc.com.
If you have a tip, call 404-526-2749. Or fax 404-526-5509. Or e-mail: buzz@ajc.com.
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