A week worthy of television

TONY DODERO

Last Sunday, I told the wife that we just had to watch the “Extreme

Makeover: Home Edition,” that was airing on ABC that night.

Reason being of course that the scheduled episode was the one in

which a Costa Mesa family was to be featured.

Since we are both junkies of the Home and Garden Television

channel, and still in the market for a new house ourselves, it was

hardly a difficult sell.

We gave the kids a bath, put them to bed and plopped down in front

of the TV.

The story on Sunday was about Tom and Deirdre McCrory and their

expanding family and need for more space. It was a great story,

really.

Last month, the couple was the fortunate recipient of a free home

makeover, reality-TV style, in which their humble Rosemary Place

abode on the Eastside was transformed into a glorious mansion.

Well, not exactly, but they did get an additional 500 or so square

feet of space added to their 1,000-square-foot house, complete with

new rooms, redecorations and landscaping.

The transformation was really fun to watch, as was the

reality-based story that unfolded about the crew in charge of doing

the makeover.

The McCrorys were in need of more space because they were

outgrowing their house. They already have two boys, one aged 3 and

another 21 months, and Deirdre is expecting. Not just expecting a

baby mind you but expecting three babies, as in triplets.

And, oh yeah, Tom’s mother is living with them.

We live with my wife’s mother right now, so there was a situation

we could relate to.

But there would soon be more.

As we watched the show, one of the designers mentioned that he

needed to know the sex of the triplets so he could know what color to

paint the new nursery.

They showed a scene in which one of the show’s cast members is

talking with the doctor and looking over the ultrasound pictures and

the doctor whispers the sex of the babies in his ear.

My wife, Beth, screamed.

“Oh my god,” she said.

I looked at the TV.

“That’s Dr. Lindsey,” I said.

Turns out the doctor on the television set was our doctor -- the

same one who had just delivered our 5-month-old son, Nathan.

Michael Lindsey is one great obstetrician, as I’m sure the

McCrorys can attest, but with all the great baby delivery doctors

living in this stretch of the planet, it was amazing seeing him there

on TV.

And it got me to thinking just what a small world it is and just

how much Newport-Mesa is thrust into the limelight.

And it wouldn’t stop with that.

Tuesday at lunch, I had the pleasure of sitting next to County

Treasurer John Moorlach at the Hall of Fame luncheon put on by South

Coast Metro and the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce.

The doings were just getting started to honor South Coast Plaza

executive Werner Escher, South Coast Repertory geniuses Martin Emmes

and David Benson and Orange County Marketplace founder Bob Teller

(congratulations to them all by the way), so Moorlach and I were

chatting it up.

The topic was homes and home prices and how the spike in prices

has had a big effect on the county tax rolls, when the subject turned

to the home makeover show and its Costa Mesa hook.

He said something about the show being HGTV on steroids and I was

telling him about the whole Dr. Lindsey sighting.

“That was Michael Lindsey?” Moorlach asked.

Turns out the Lindsey was Moorlach’s client way back when he was

doing certified public accounting for a living rather than tax

collecting (just an inside joke, John).

And Dr. Lindsey’s partner at the time, Tony Zepeda, delivered

Moorlach’s two sons.

“A small world indeed,” he told me later in an e-mail.

If that wasn’t enough Newport-Mesa six degrees of separation for

the week, then came Ryan Seacrest.

Seacrest, the popular host of the hit TV show “American Idol,”

decided to pipe in on the decision by Ensign Intermediate School’s

administration to monitor the color pink in a recent school photo.

Seacrest, who apparently is fond of pink, decided to stir up the

masses on his radio show and the whole thing turned into a media

frenzy this week with poor Ensign in the crosshairs.

Whew. Time to get back to normal.

Then came Thursday morning. I was bombarded with messages from

staffers and readers who had caught the Wednesday night edition of

“The OC.”

The story goes that in one scene on the hit Fox Network show that

is supposed to be based in Newport Beach, someone tells a character

that he ought to go to a particular party in town because the “owner”

of the Daily Pilot would be there.

At first, that story line got garbled a bit and some had thought

that the character mentioned the “editor” of the Daily Pilot. Now

that would have been real exciting.

Alas, it was the owner they mentioned. And that would be pretty

hard to get the owner in one room since it happens to be the

thousands of shareholders of the Tribune Co., the parent company that

owns the Los Angeles Times. The community news division of The Times

publishes the Pilot.

But then again, “The OC” is NOT a reality based television show

like “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” That’s why I keep hoping the

cast will write the “editor” into the story line, with Brad Pitt in

the lead role of course.

Seriously folks, if you count the rape trials of Newport Coast

resident Kobe Bryant and Gregory Haidl, the son of Corona del Mar

resident and Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, it was a pretty big week in

the media for Newport-Mesa.

As John Moorlach says: “It’s a small world indeed.”