Inqlings: The Wine School vs. WWE
World Wrestling Entertainment is going to the mat against the Wine School of Philadelphia.
Contact columnist Michael Klein at 215-854-5514 or mklein@phillynews.com. Read his blog at http://go.philly.com/insider. He's also on Twitter: @phillyinsider.
WWE, which trademarked the term Smackdown years ago, is fighting the Wine School's attempt to register Sommelier Smackdown for its grape-centric competitions.
Last month, WWE law firm K&L Gates sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Fairmount business, which started Sommelier Smackdowns in 2007.
"I feel kind of special," said Keith Wallace. "I am being picked on by Vince McMahon. I better start working out." In a note to friends, he wrote that he was calling out McMahon and wrestler Chris Jericho to a wine-tasting double-team cage match.
Wallace calls smackdown a generic term - "and they're trying to bully us. I mean, the word is even in the freakin' dictionary."
WWE lawyer Christopher Verdini, who signed the cease-and-desist letter, did not return my call for comment.
Que syrah, syrah.
Oz's road
Heart surgeon Mehmet Oz is not messing around. On the first day of production for the Dr. Oz show - now seen weekdays at 9 a.m. on CBS3 - he says, he banned junk food on the set. Instead, he says, he stocks the pantry with nuts, granola, whole-grain breads, yogurt, and fresh fruit.But humans are human. Even TV crew members. "I know they sneak stuff. I see the pizza boxes," says Oz, 49, a local guy (grad of Wilmington's Tower Hill School, holder of a joint M.D. and M.B.A. from the Penn School of Medicine and Wharton School, and married to TV producer Lisa Lemole Oz, Bryn Athyn-reared daughter of Presbyterian/Graduate Hospital heart doc Gerald Lemole).
Human nature is the point of the medical advice on Dr. Oz. "People don't want facts," Oz told me on a recent stop here, over broiled salmon and greens from the Palm. "People never change their mind based on that. You have to hear the feeling, hear the emotion."
Oz put himself on Oprah Winfrey's radar. While hosting a show on the Discovery Channel in 2003, he reached out to Winfrey friend Gayle King and said: "We need to talk about health." Winfrey actually was a guest on his show first.
Movie world
Reese Witherspoon and a lineup of U.S. Olympic all-stars took to the diamond at Drexel University yesterday to start a week of scenes for an untitled James L. Brooks comedy. Witherspoon, who plays second base in the film, looked OK in the field, according to a sampling of onlookers. She did not take an at-bat.Speaking of the shoot: While Union Trust steak house was being used for three days of filming last month, costar Paul Rudd accepted UT owner Ed Doherty's offer of a swig from a $32,000 bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII Black Pearl. Witherspoon declined any of the cognac, Doherty told photog HughE Dillon.
Union Trust will come across as an Italian restaurant called Du Du Du. It's likely that audiences will see Union Trust's dramatic interior, but not its exterior. Cameras instead captured the facade of Oceanaire, the now-closed seafood eatery in the Italianate former PSFS building on Washington Square.
Briefly noted
Three Philly chefs will be among the four pot-bangers competing on next Tuesday's episode of the Food Network cooking contest Chopped (10 p.m.): Jeremy Duclut of Georges' in Wayne; Peter Karapanagiotis of Privé in Old City; and Lower Merion caterer Barbara Esmonde.Sax man Clarence Clemons, who takes the Spectrum stage for four shows tonight through next Tuesday with Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, is out with a memoir, Big Man: Real Life & Tall Tales. He'll sign copies at 1 p.m. Sunday at Chester County Books & Music in West Goshen Center (975 Paoli Pike, West Chester).
Contact columnist Michael Klein at 215-854-5514 or mklein@phillynews.com. Read his blog at http://go.philly.com/insider. He's also on Twitter: @phillyinsider.
