News Bullets

• TV Guide is watching CSI, too. In Monday's edition of the magazine's daily Watercooler column, Robin Honig complains about the complicated storyline in CSI: Miami's "After the Fall," as well as the gruesome visuals. "I could live without those slo-mo shots of that guy puking," Honig writes, "even if his bile helps solve the crime. Keep showing stuff like this and I might come up with some 'evidence' of my own." Two days later, Damian Holbrook made the same complaint about New York's "Officer Blue" in his edition of the column, but for him, the show's both "cool and gross."

• How do the three CSI bosses compare with real-life managers? Wallace Immen at the Canadian Globe and Mail interviews four management experts about the leadership lessons that can be learned from Gil Grissom, Horatio Caine and Mac Taylor. Unfortunately, the web edition of the article is cut off, so you'll have to buy the print version of the paper to get the experts' opinion on who's the best leader.

• Sofia Milos (Yelina Salas) is featured in the December 2004 issue of ZINC magazine. Four photos from the magazine can be found at the actress' official web site.

• Milos can also be seen at Yahoo, on a photo of her and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, riding on a float as they participate in the 73rd annual Hollywood Christmas Parade. Thanks go out to Luka for this!

• Between the 23rd and 28th of December, Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor) will be narrating a presentation of the Christmas story at Walt Disney's Epcot. Sinise will be joined in his presentation by a mass choir and 50-piece orchestra, who will all be performing three times each day - at 5, 6:45 and 8:15 p.m. Sinise's effort is part of the month-long Holidays Around the World, which will on other days feature stars such as Jim Caviezel and Edward James Olmos as narrators. Information on how to attend can be found here.

• And next week Saturday, Sinise and his Lt. Dan Band will be performing at the 1st Annual Road to Recovery Conference & Tribute organised by the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes. Find out more here.

• That same Saturday, David Caruso (Horatio Caine) will be one of 500 guests attending Best Buddies' eighth annual Miami Beach Gala, taking place at 6:30pm at 35 Star Island in Miami, Florida. According to the Miami Herald, the evening will be entitled "Arabian Nights, a Caravan on Miami Beach" and feature a performance by Macy Gray.

• This week's edition of People Magazine featured a profile of Jonathan Togo (Ryan Wolfe). "He's such a spark," his co-star Emily Procter (Calleigh Duquesne) said. "The minute he walked on set, we all fell in love with him."

• The Los Angeles Daily News reports that the Californian city of Santa Clarita reported a 47 percent increase in filming days compared to last year. One of the television shows shot in Santa Clarita, and thus helping to bolster the local economy, is the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

• Afraid that you won't make it through the long winter rerun period, or are you just looking for a somewhat more gruesome antidote to Christmas cheer? The Detroit Free Press looks at three forensic books that might interest CSI fans, such as "Scenes of the Crime: Photographs from the Archives of the LAPD" and "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death."

• Texas fans looking for more ways to get through the holidays might be interested in CSI: North Pole, an interactive murder saga being performed at the Spaghetti Warehouse in Arlington, Texas, every Thursday in December. Full details can be found at their web site CrimeSceneCompany.com, or in this Star-Telegram article. Thanks go out to Lysette for this!

• Thursday's edition of Entertainment Tonight featured a preview of In Good Company, the new film starring Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows) that's opening December 29. "It was fun working with Dennis [Quaid]," Helgenberger said of the actor whose wife she plays. "He is just a great guy. Easy, fun, supportive, generous and very cute, of course, which is the added bonus." Thanks go out to Al Forno for this!

• Bad news for high-paid news anchors: the Washington Times reports that what matters for the ratings of local news shows may not be the on-screen talent, but rather what show the station airs right before its newscast. The main example used in the article is of CSI: New York, whose ratings success has also lead to increased news viewership for Washington's CBS affiliate.

• And bad news for CSI: Miami, also courtesy of the Washington Times. In the paper's op-ed section, Diana West took issue with shows such as Miami and Desperate Housewives, writing that they "expand the boundaries of accepted, even expected, talk and behavior."

• Christian Science Monitor TV critic Jeremy Dauber listed his 20 things to be thankful for this holiday season. Coming at no.13 was "forensic detection," which Dauber suggested CBS should be as thankful for as the viewers.

• The Sacramento Bee's Rick Kushman also included CSI in his words of thanks, mentioning New York executive producer Anthony Zuiker by name. "The creator of the CSI franchise infused his imaginative zest for life into shows about death and crime," Kushman wrote in his article.

• Meanwhile, Zuiker himself spoke to the Hollywood Reporter for an article on the Golden Globes, nominations for which will be announced soon. According to Zuiker, the nomination for the original CSI helped put the show "on the map. The [Hollywood Foreign Press Association] has a way of spotting shows before even America does, and we were fortunate to have been anointed that way. We also hope one day to bring one of those statuettes home." We found this through Elyse's.

• And finally, Zuiker is featured in the Rebel Yell, the university newspaper of the University of Las Vegas, where he graduated with a B.S. in Philosophy and a B.A. in Communications in 1991.

• Eric Szmanda (Greg Sanders) visited Townsend Harris High School in Queens, New York, yesterday. The CSI star would lead a "blood- splatter-pattern" demonstration for junior and senior forensics students, according to the New York Post.

• Proving they have their finger firmly on the pulse of popular culture, the people at the Philadelphia Daily Inquirer appear to have noticed that CBS decided to do a spin-off of the original CSI, and put in on the air in the form of CSI: Miami. "We'd watch CSI: Miami because it's still a better show than most other TV programs out there," TV critic Noelani Torre writes in the paper's review of Miami, "but if CSI were showing at the same time, we'd rather catch that one."

• Jorja Fox: Online has been updated with high-definition screencaps from the first nine episodes of CSI's fifth season.

• Students at Waltham High School in Waltham, Massachusetts, recently got to investigate a mock crime scene set up in their school's wrestling room. The Boston-based Daily News Tribune reported in an article entitled "CSI: Waltham" that teachers felt this was a great way to put the lessons from the school's Constitutional Criminal Law classes into practice.

• Forensics seems to be a popular topic in Massachusetts, as the local high school in the town of Medway has also added a forensics course to its curriculum, according to the Country Gazette. "The kids tell me they are really enjoying it," the school's principal is quoted as saying. "It's certainly a very unique class."

• We're not making this up: the Boston Globe also has an article on the popularity of criminal investigation classes. The Globe visted Northern Essex Community College in Lawrence, also in Massachusetts, and heard Northern Essex sophomore Adam Goujon say that he "took this class because [he] wanted to see if the things on television are real."

• Remember when CSI: New York set a new record by having its syndication rights sold for $1.9 million per episode to SpikeTV (story)? Reuters reports that record lasted all of two weeks, as cable networks USA and Bravo are teaming up to pay $2 million per episode for the rerun rights of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Still, the deals aren't really comparable: while USA and Bravo together will be airing L&O seven days a week, SpikeTV only obtained the right to show CSI: New York once a week.

• Bhetty Waldron, who appeared in the very first stand-alone CSI: Miami episode, "Golden Parachute" passed away this week at the age of 63, according to the Palm Beach Post.

• The web site of Knox College in Galesburg, Il., has been updated with a report on a Knox graduate who now works as a a forensic scientist with the State of Ohio. "You can't get DNA results in one hour," Sarah Custis said during a lecture when she returned to her alma mater. "It can take 40 people, working for six months, to do the work one [episode of] CSI does in one hour." Thanks to Elyse's for this!

• Robert Scheer, columnist for the Nation, suggests that the United States may be a "nation of lascivious hypocrites." How is it possible, he asks in his latest column, that a whopping 70 percent of Americans condemn the mass media as being "responsible for debasing our moral values," while at the same time even in solidly conservative areas like Salt Lake City "the gory CSI franchise dominates local TV sets?"

• It seems CSI may not just have positive effects on the classroom: the British Telegraph reports that many traditional chemistry departments are closing, as they find that students are only interested in forensic science courses, while admissions for other science courses dry up. Thanks go out to Tyler Volz for this!

• Bruce Kluger and David Slavin at the Los Angeles Times suggest that now that many voters seem to long for a return to "values," primetime television might be revamped with a few new shows, such as CSI: Toledo. "In a new spinoff of the white-hot forensic franchise, a crack team of investigators heads to the Midwest to infiltrate illegal gay weddings in Ohio. Harvey Fierstein stars as wily Detective Leslie McGreevey, who can 'spot a nancy-boy clear across the dance floor.'"

• The Kern County Regional Crime Laboratory in Bakersfield, California is holding a one-day open house on the 13th of January, from 9am to 3pm. In addition to tours of the facility, appearances are expected by Jorja Fox (Sara Sidle), David Berman (David Phillips) and CSI producer Josh Berman. Further information on the Kern County lab can be foundat its official web site. Thanks go out to Elyse's for this!

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