Cincinnati soldier on "60 Minutes" & lotsa stuff

Cincinnati soldier on “60 Minutes”
Willie Brand, the Cincinnati military police reservist convicted of abusing a detainee in Afghanistan, tells his story on “60 Minutes” Sunday (7 p.m., Chs 12, 7). The 1998 Western Hills High School graduate was a member of the 377th Military Police Company, based in Roselawn, which served in Afghanistan in 2002-03.
Two Afghan detainees during the war were found beaten to death and chained from the ceiling. Brand tells “60 Minutes,” in his first TV interview, that when prisoners were combative, he controlled them by striking his knee into their legs.
“This is what we were trained to do, and this is what we did. I was not the only one, there were many others hitting them,” he tells correspondent Scott Pelley.

Gawking at Bill Hemmer
Great story about Cincinnati native and Fox News reporter Bill Hemmer seeing NBC’s Al Roker in New Orleans during Mardi Gras on Gawker.com, the Manhattan media gossip site. When Roker didn’t recognize Hemmer at a restaurant, Hemmer said, “I’m Bill Hemmer. You know, I was on CNN.”
Here’s the link:
http://www.gawker.com/news/bill-hemmer/bill-hemmer-fox-news-just-aint-the-same-157749.php

Come to the zoo, zoo zoo
Did you see Sarah Jessica Parker singing an old Cincinnati Zoo jingle on David Letterman’s “Late Show” Wednesday? You didn’t? Well, you’re not the only one. Zoo officials had no clue until I called them about it.
Parker, who grew up in Clifton in the early 1970s, talked about how much she loved the zoo, then sang the jingle from back then:
“Come out to the zoo, zoo, zoo
“The Cincinnati Zoo, Zoo, Zoo.”
Don't blame me if that dumb song gets stuck in your head.

Clooney vs. Clooney
Here’s an odd quirk in TV scheduling: While George Clooney attends the 78th annual Academy Awards Sunday (8-11 p.m., Chs 9, 22), where he’s up for three Oscars, CET will air a “Tim Janis: Coastal America” narrated by Clooney (9-10:30 p.m. Sunday, Ch 48). Clooney narrated Janis’ first public TV pledge special two years ago, which raised more than $1 million for PBS. Janis is a hot young classical composer who mixes his concert footage with beautiful video of US landmarks.

Blast from the past
Norm Clarke, the former Cincinnati sportswriter for Associated Press, makes his prime-time acting debut tonight on “Las Vegas” (9 p.m., Chs 5, 2). He’s the curly-haired guy with an eye patch. Clarke, who covered the Reds and Bengals in the 1970s and early ’80s, is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Plan ahead
Wanted to mention this today, in case someone wanted to make the trip up to Oxford Monday afternoon:
“Dayton Codebreakers,” the World War II-era documentary which premiered on Dayton’s WPTD-TV (Channel 16) last April, will be screened at 4 p.m. Monday in Oxford in 115 Shideler Hall on the Miami University campus.
It’s the story of Joe Desch, a National Cash Register electrical engineer who was recruited by the U.S. Navy during World War II to lead a code-breaking effort aimed at stopping catastrophic losses of American ships to German U-boats. The top-secret work in a Dayton NCR lab remained classified for more than 50 years.
After the screening, filmmakers Deborah Anderson (Desch’s daughter) of Kettering and Aileen LeBlanc of Yellow Springs will talk about the film (www.daytoncodebreakers.org).
If you can’t make it to Oxford, watch your public TV listings this spring. More than 100 public TV stations – including CET and KET – plan to air the film, LeBlanc says.

Have a good weekend. We can buzz about the Oscars telecast on Monday.