Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
NBC honors John Madden by taking the original Madden Cruiser on last trip
John Madden’s love of football and family came through the most on Thanksgiving.
On Thursday, NBC will continue to honor Madden’s legacy when it opens its broadcast before the nightcap between the Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers.
The two-minute open features the original Madden Cruiser traveling from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, to Lambeau Field last week. It has remained in Green Bay and will also be featured during the game.
Lambeau Field was always one of Madden’s favorite stadiums, which made this year’s Thanksgiving game on NBC game even more special.
“It’s been unbelievable to see the way John’s legacy is still so important and prevalent,” said Ellie Wright, who produced the opening and was on the trip last week.
The idea of bringing the bus out of retirement first came up during NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” production meetings in early June. Madden donated the Madden Cruiser to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018.
The Hall was all in on the idea of the cruiser taking one final ride around the Midwest. It is a featured attraction during enshrinement week activities, but most of the year, it is stored in a warehouse in northeast Ohio.
On its trip through the Midwest, the cruiser also went through Chicago, where it made a brief stop at Soldier Field and a Boys & Girls Club in Wisconsin before reaching Lambeau Field.
J.J. Johnson, who drove for Madden for the final six years of his broadcast career (2003-08), drove the cruiser last week and narrated the opening.
“As I was driving between locations, the crew would ask me questions, or I’d share stories, and it just brought back so many fond memories. And, for me, it’s honoring John in this way,” Johnson said.
After having a panic attack on a flight before calling a game at Tampa Bay in 1979, Madden would travel to games via train before Greyhound donated the first bus in 1987.
The first Madden Cruiser traveled more than 600,000 miles. It was replaced with an upgraded one in 1994 when Madden went from CBS to Fox.
There ended up being five Madden Cruisers. The Madden family has access to the last two, while the whereabouts of the other two are unknown.
Madden will be honored during all three games on Thursday. It is the third year the NFL has had the “John Madden Thanksgiving Celebration” after the Hall of Fame coach and iconic broadcaster died in December 2021.
Madden called 20 Thanksgiving games on CBS and Fox from 1982 through 2001. He went to ABC for “Monday Night Football” in 2002 and joined NBC in 2006 when “Sunday Night Football” started, but neither network had a game on Thanksgiving.
CBS has the first game, between the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions, and Fox has the late afternoon matchup between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys.
The NFL expanded to three Thanksgiving games in 2006. NBC took over broadcasting the night game in 2012.
This is the second time Green Bay has hosted the night game and the first since 2015.
Even though Madden retired from broadcasting after Super Bowl 43 at the end of the 2008 season, his impact on NBC’s games continues to resonate.
“Sunday Night Football” coordinating producer Rob Hyland, who was Madden’s replay producer when NBC got back NFL rights in 2006, said Madden had a significant role in his development in terms of being a storyteller, not only with football but in producing the Kentucky Derby and prime-time coverage of the Olympics.
“John Madden was the most curious person I’ve ever worked with, and I think his curiosity has definitely rubbed off on anyone that’s worked with him,” Hyland said. “How a player’s ankles are taped may look different than the previous week. He would question a lot, and I discovered a lot because of his curiosity.”
In keeping with other Madden Thanksgiving traditions, NBC will award turkey legs to the game’s most valuable players and turduckens to the winning team.
Hall of Fame safety Leroy Butler, who played for the Packers for 12 seasons, has become an accomplished chef and will prepare the turkeys and turduckens, with some being done on the bus.
“One of our production trucks has a dedication to John on the outside of it. And when it comes to Thanksgiving, when we step out the door, we’re going out to do our jobs on game day, we think of one person, we think of John, and it’s Thanksgiving, and you have to smile,” said Johnson, who drives one of the “Sunday Night Football” production trucks. “Love of football and the love of Thanksgiving and now we’re here in Lambeau Field, one of his favorite locations. I mean, this is a game he would love to broadcast. And we just go out with pride to do the best job we can in honor of John.”
Marilyn Manson drops lawsuit against Evan Rachel Wood
LOS ANGELES | Rocker Marilyn Manson has agreed to drop a lawsuit against his former fiancée, “Westworld” actor Evan Rachel Wood, and to pay her attorneys’ fees, lawyers for both sides said Tuesday.
The move comes 18 months after a Los Angeles County judge threw out much of the 2022 suit in which Manson, whose legal name is Brian Warner, claimed Wood had fabricated public allegations that he sexually and physically abused her during their relationship and encouraged other women to fabricate their own allegations.
“After four years of fighting a battle where he was able to tell the truth, Brian is pleased to dismiss his still-pending claims and appeal in order to close the door on this chapter of his life,” Manson attorney Howard King said in a statement.
Manson had been appealing the judge’s decision but his attorneys reached out to Wood’s seeking a settlement in the spring. Wood’s attorneys said Tuesday that she rejected requests that the terms be kept confidential.
Manson “filed a lawsuit against Ms. Wood as a publicity stunt to try to undermine the credibility of his many accusers and revive his faltering career,” Wood’s lawyer Michael J. Kump said in a statement. “But his attempt to silence and intimidate Ms. Wood failed.”
Manson agreed to pay nearly $327,000 in attorney fees for Wood.
The settlement comes nearly four years into a criminal investigation of the 55-year-old Manson involving multiple women that remains unresolved. Outgoing LA County District Attorney George Gascón said in October that his office’s sex crimes division had just discovered new evidence and that a decision on whether to file charges would be made when the picture was more complete.
The women involved in the criminal case have not been identified, but “Game of Thrones” actor Esme Bianco has said she was among them, and criticized the district attorney for taking so long to investigate. Bianco settled her own lawsuit against Manson last year.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Wood and Bianco have.
Manson has denied engaging in any non-consensual sexual acts.
In 2017, with the #MeToo movement gaining momentum, Wood said publicly that she had been raped and abused, and gave testimony on the subject to a Congressional committee in 2018, but did not name anyone in either instance.
Then in a 2020 Instagram post, Wood said it was Manson who had “horrifically abused me for years.” The two revealed they were a couple in 2007, and were briefly engaged in 2010 before breaking up.
Manson’s original lawsuit alleged that Wood and another woman, Ashley Gore, also known as Illma Gore in court papers, defamed him, intentionally caused him emotional distress and derailed his career in music, TV and film. It says they used false pretenses, including a phony letter from the FBI, to convince other women to come forward with sexual abuse allegations and coached them on what to say. The suit said Wood had only glowing things to say about Manson during their relationship.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Teresa A. Beaudet dismissed the part of the suit dealing with the disputed FBI letter, which Wood denied forging. Beaudet also tossed out a section that alleges Wood and Gore used a checklist found on an iPad for other women to use to make abuse claims about Manson.
Other parts of the lawsuit had remained because they were not subject to Wood’s motion, including allegations that Gore hacked Manson’s email, phone and social media accounts, created a phony email to manufacture evidence that he was sending illegal pornography, and “swatted” him, using a prank call to send authorities to his home.
Gore’s part of the lawsuit was dismissed and Manson paid $130,000 in her attorney fees.
Police deny sitting on evidence in JonBenet Ramsey’s killing
DENVER | Amid renewed interest in the killing of JonBenet Ramsey triggered in part by a new Netflix documentary, police in Boulder, Colorado, refuted assertions this week that there is viable evidence and leads about the 1996 killing of the 6-year-old girl that they are not pursuing.
JonBenet Ramsey, who competed in beauty pageants, was found dead in the basement of her family’s home in the college town of Boulder the day after Christmas in 1996. Her body was found several hours after her mother called 911 to say her daughter was missing and a ransom note had been left behind. The details of the crime and video footage of JonBenet competing in pageants propelled the case into one of the highest-profile mysteries in the United States.
The police comments came as part of their annual update on the investigation, a month before the 28th anniversary of JonBenet’s killing. Police said they released it a little earlier due to the increased attention on the case, apparently referring to the three-part Netflix series “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey.”
In a video statement, Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn said the department welcomes news coverage and documentaries about the killing of JonBenet, who would have been 34 this year, as a way to generate possible new leads. He said the department is committed to solving the case but needs to be careful about what it shares about the investigation to protect a possible future prosecution.
“What I can tell you though, is we have thoroughly investigated multiple people as suspects throughout the years and we continue to be open-minded about what occurred as we investigate the tips that come into detectives,” he said.
The Netflix documentary focuses on the mistakes made by police and the “media circus” surrounding the case.
JonBenet was bludgeoned and strangled. Her death was ruled a homicide, but nobody was ever prosecuted.
Police were widely criticized for mishandling the early investigation into her death amid speculation that her family was responsible. However, a prosecutor cleared her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, and brother Burke in 2008 based on new DNA evidence from JonBenet’s clothing that pointed to the involvement of an “unexplained third party” in her slaying.
The announcement by former district attorney Mary Lacy came two years after Patsy Ramsey died of cancer. Lacy called the Ramseys “victims of this crime.”
John Ramsey has continued to speak out for the case to be solved. In 2022, he supported an online petition asking Colorado’s governor to intervene in the investigation by putting an outside agency in charge of DNA testing in the case. In the Netflix documentary, he said he has been advocating for several items that have not been prepared for DNA testing to be tested and for other items to be retested. He said the results should be put through a genealogy database.
In recent years, investigators have identified suspects in unsolved cases by comparing DNA profiles from crime scenes and to DNA testing results shared online by people researching their family trees.
In 2021, police said in their annual update that DNA hadn’t been ruled out to help solve the case, and in 2022 noted that some evidence could be “consumed” if DNA testing is done on it.
Last year, police said they convened a panel of outside experts to review the investigation to give recommendations and determine if updated technologies or forensic testing might produce new leads. In the latest update, Redfearn said that review had ended but that police continue to work through and evaluate a “lengthy list of recommendations” from the panel.
—From AP reports
