“Jerry Springer Wants His Privacy - The Daily Beast” plus 1 more

Jerry Springer Wants His Privacy - The Daily Beast

Posted: 19 Apr 2010 07:55 PM PDT

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He may play host to out-of-control oversharing on his wildly successful Jerry Springer Show and the new dating program Baggage, but the Maestro of Mayhem tells Lloyd Grove he doesn't want anyone in his business—and he doesn't have a sex tape.

Irony of ironies: Jerry Springer—who has made gazillions of dollars exploiting the perverse secrets and outrageous exhibitionism of his fellow human beings—is fiercely protective of his own privacy.

"People know virtually nothing about my personal life, which is good, and I like it that way," Springer tells me. "And my family likes it that way—they insist on it. You can't mix your personal life with your public life, because if you do that, you ruin both."

"If people want to come on the show, I tell them flat out, I would never do it," Springer says. "I'm just more private."

That seems a commonsensical approach to existence on earth, albeit a rule frequently flouted by Springer's fellow celebrities—to say nothing of the wretched souls who appear daily on The Jerry Springer Show, which is about to start its 20th season. (For a while there back in the last century, he was even beating Oprah in the ratings.)

You can call him the Maestro of Mayhem or the Titan of Too Much Information—or his more popular title, the King of Sleaze—but he is much more than that: I think of him as the Thomas Edison of Self-Reinvention. The son of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, Springer was born in wartime London (actually, in the Underground, in the East Finchley station) and immigrated to Queens, New York, at age 6. In his 66 years, Springer has been a presidential campaign worker for Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the mayor of Cincinnati, that city's top-rated local television news anchor, a lawyer, a Dancing With the Stars contestant, a country music recording artist, the inspiration for an eponymous hit musical in London: Jerry Springer: The Opera, and despite not being able to sing a note, an actor in the London production of the musical Chicago, playing sketchy lawyer Billy Flynn.

With his strangely likable persona, Springer has demonstrated an uncanny knack for finding the sweet spot in the zeitgeist, wherever it may be, and then mining that rich vein for all it's worth.

Now the syndicated television star is adding a new production to the Springer canon: He's the emcee of a dating show titled Baggage, premiering Monday at 6:30 p.m. on the Game Show Network.

The way Springer describes it, Baggage sounds like a cross between The Dating Game and Long Day's Journey into Night—wherein potentially terrible failings are revealed to a would-be hookup (and the studio audience) instead of the usual perky pleasantries.

"Normally on these dating shows, everybody's trying to sell themselves as to how great they are," Springer says. "Everybody's on their best behavior and you don't find out anything bad about them, and it's only later on in the relationship that you start to find out about what the flaws or annoyances are, or, even worse, things you just can't deal with."

Springer elaborates: "Let's say on one show, there's a guy and he's looking for a date, and three beautiful women come out, and they each have these three bags—small, medium, and large—and they get to open the bags one at a time. The guy may be leaning toward one woman or another, and all of sudden she opens her bag and he says, 'Oh boy, I can't live with that!' And then he starts looking at another woman and finds out what her baggage is. Finally, he selects one, but it's not over yet because then she decides whether she can handle his one big bag."

In the 40 episodes Springer has taped so far, the baggage has ranged from divorced with three kids to five months in jail, with the practice of witchcraft and Facebook stalking of exes thrown in for good measure.

"It can be crazy stuff, but whatever it is, the audience wants this couple to succeed," Springer says. "I can see people sitting around watching it, married couples having conversations among themselves, saying, 'I could never accept that,' and then they start talking about their own baggage in life. If this show catches on, I can see people actually having Baggage parties, where you have dates and everybody brings one piece of baggage that you're set to reveal."

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Walla Walla historic home tour offers modern flair - Tri-City Herald

Posted: 19 Apr 2010 04:18 AM PDT

WALLA WALLA -- Roofs sporting solar panels and worms happily turning kitchen waste into compost aren't unusual sights on a home tour these days.

But finding these on a tour of lovingly restored homes all dating from around the turn of the last century may make the Sweet Home Walla Walla tour Sunday worth the price of admission.

The historic home tour, the second sponsored by Kirkman House Museum in Walla Walla, features six private homes. Unless you happen to know the owners, this is your only chance to pass beyond the threshold.

"We were very excited about the homes on last year's tour and didn't think we could top that one, but we did," said Greer Buchanan, assistant director of Kirkman House Museum.

The tour is a fundraiser for the museum and a way to highlight how historic homes are being used and enjoyed.

"Obviously the museum itself is housed in a historic home, but quite a few homes in Walla Walla are single-family homes that happen to be historic," Buchanan said. "Take the tour and you'll see how it's possible to live in a historic home and still have modern comforts."

For example, the owners of one house that was built in 1904 are going green with worm composting so they have almost no kitchen waste. They also have solar panels on the roof cleverly concealed from casual passers-by.

"A painter owns another of the homes, one built in 1871, which makes it one of our oldest in Walla Walla," Buchanan said. "Those on the tour will see her original artwork and the art she's collected over the years displayed throughout the house. Plus the owner's taken great pains to do period landscaping so the garden has a very Victorian feel."

A third house on the tour, built in 1904, suffered the fate of many large old homes. It was turned into apartments at one time and a set of outside stairs was built to provide access to the upper floor. Instead of simply blocking off the spindled staircase inside, the owners tore it out.

The present owner, who is restoring it to a single-family home, wanted the staircase reconstructed. Nine contractors refused the job before she found one who could, and did, restore it.

"The others refused the job because the space where the original staircase was is too narrow and too steep to easily comply with current building codes," Buchanan said. "But he found a way to do it and now there's a lovely reproduction of the original leading to the upper floor."

She added, "There are fun stories with each home. Many of these people spend years researching every owner, finding out how long each owned it and the details and changes made to the house. On the day of the tour, the owners will be on-site to act as hosts and talk about their homes."

The tour starts at the museum, where tickets will be exchanged for guidebooks showing the locations of the six homes. Tour check-in begins at 10:45 a.m. and ends at 2 p.m., but the homes and museum will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Kirkman House Museum, built as a private residence in 1880, will be open for tours until 4 p.m. Sunday.

"We're just about to complete the restoration of Mrs. Kirkman's bedroom upstairs and it will debut the day of the tour. Many of the pieces in the room are from her collection and date from when she lived in the house," Buchanan said.

Tickets are limited to 500 and cost $20 in advance or $15 museum members. If any tickets are available the day of the tour, the cost will be $25.

You can buy tickets at www.kirkmanhousemuseum.org or by calling 509-529-4373.

New this year, Salumiere Cesario, Walla Walla's gourmet grocery, will offer box lunches for $10. They must be pre-ordered and can be picked up at the museum.

Organizers are asking everyone to leave the high heels, strollers and cameras at home.

To get to the museum from the Tri-Cities, drive east on Highway 12 to Walla Walla. Take the Second Avenue exit and drive about a quarter-mile on Second Avenue before turning left onto East Cherry Street. Proceed to the intersection of Cherry and Colville streets.

The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday, and 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays.

-- Loretto J. Hulse: 509-582-1513; lhulse@tricityherald.com

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