Who's too long-toothed for the booth?
IT HAPPENS all the time on daytime TV: A longtime couple who you would have sworn was practically Gorilla Glued together blows apart, dramatically, publicly, when a younger woman pops into the picture.
But to see it happen at the G-rated Rose Parade? Live? And wet?
Three days later and still it's the talk of the town: Stephanie Edwards, L.A.'s explanation for why they call them "TV personalities," got exiled to the storm-swept bleachers for Monday's Rose Parade after about a quarter of a century of cohabiting the cozy KTLA broadcast booth with another TV personality, Bob Eubanks.
And while plucky, perky Stephanie was outside as wet as Flipper, Eubanks -- preternaturally eternal in a Dick Clark way, the onetime local DJ who mortgaged his house to get the Beatles to L.A., the host of the sniggering, groundbreaking game show "The Newlywed Game" -- was still warm and snug and a trifle smug up there in the booth with
I don't know when Pereira was born, but it can't have been too many years on either side of the New Year's Day that Stephanie and Bob began their once-a-year broadcast marriage.
Through decades of broadcasts, Steph and Bob became a familiar couple -- a little amiable bickering, a little simpatico chit-chat, she chirpy and tireless, he sounding sometimes as if he hadn't had his coffee yet.
That was part of the reason to watch. When he remarked to Edwards on Monday that "there's no end to your limitations," it could have been a slip of the tongue -- or a slip of the knife.
If Edwards' new "roving co-host" assignment is such a great job, as KTLA claims, why didn't they put Pereira out there? She's from Canada -- she's used to bad weather. And she could use the seasoning in the trenches. People have been talking about her limitations.
Having imbibed the Disneyland Kool-Aid -- she used to work for a Disney outfit -- she primly scolded Eubanks when he spoke of Disney characters in the parade as actual people in costume (which they are, but oh, don't spoil it for the kids
She talked about the "wonderful" Newport Beach jazz festival -- wrong city, wrong state, wrong coast. And, most gravely for any journalist -- her job description as a co-anchor -- she called parade Grand Marshal Sandra Day O'Connor (the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court) a "Superior Court justice." The whole thing, in the words of one post-parade blogger, was a New Coke moment.
