GL Stars Bring Full Hearts, Willing Hands to Norfolk, Virginia

GUIDING LIGHT stars Frank Dicopoulos ("Frank Cooper"), John Driscoll ("Henry 'Coop' Bradshaw") and Nicole Forester ("Cassie Winslow," pictured), will be in Norfolk, Virginia, this morning to donate their efforts as volunteers at Haven House, a local homeless shelter. The appearance will coincide (and hopefully help to promote) a major renovation for the shelter where volunteers will include painting, cleaning, landscaping and restoration of common areas.

The appearance is the latest in a series of public and community service efforts by GL stars in support of the GL "Find Your Light" initiative which encourages good works as a means of celebrating GL's 70th year of radio and television broadcast. For more information on "Find Your Light" and the milestone anniversary, visit www.findyourlight.net.

Videos, pictures, and a description of the GL cast's recent "Find Your Light" efforts to help rebuild the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast area, click here (it starts about 1/3 of the way down the page).

AMC Takes Home GLAAD Media Honors

ABC's ALL MY CHILDREN was honored at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards in New York last night, for "their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives."

AMC, which faced competition from AS THE WORLD TURNS, GENERAL HOSPITAL, and PASSIONS, likely edged out the competition with its groundbreaking story of a transgender rock star, portrayed by Jeffrey Carlson. (Could this bode well for PASSIONS, and its similarly groundbreaking "down low" storyline next year?)

GLAAD describes itself as "dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate, and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation." Last night's ceremony in NYC saw the presentation 26 of this year's 42 media categories. Additional awards will be presented in Los Angeles on April 14, in San Francisco on April 28, and in South Florida on May 10.

More information on the GLAAD Media Awards, including a full list of nominees, categories, and information on upcoming ceremonies, can be found here.

NPR's 'Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me' Turns its Satirical Eye on Daytime

Daytime continues to show it still has the stuff of the zeitgeist, finding itself featured this week as a topic on NPR's hit comedy gameshow Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me.

The celeb-studded Wait, Wait... (which bills itself as "the oddly informative news quiz") turns a satirical and side-splitting eye on current events each week. The show has a regular segment called "Bluff the Listener" where a listener-contestant is given details of three potential news stories based on a similar theme and asked to determine which is real.

This week's theme was "Daytime TV to the Rescue" and featured three "potentially" true news accounts of "do-gooders on the daytime dial," including:

• DAYS OF OUR LIVES choosing to throw an environmentally friendly wedding for characters "Sami Brady" and "Lucas Roberts," played by actors Alison Sweeney and Bryan Dattilo, complete with biodegradable party favors, as a way of raising viewers' environmental consciousness.
• Talk show hostess Kelly Ripa (ex-Hayley Vaughn Santos, ALL MY CHILDREN) claiming "cuteness" gets no respect to a weekly magazine, dissing Charlie Gibson, and proposing an "attractivness onslaught," led by Anderson Cooper, Reese Witherspoon, and the cast of NBC's HEROES--all capable of proving just how intelligent "cute" can be.
• GENERAL HOSPITAL, home of Luke and Laura (who panelist Charlie Pierce describes as "the hairstyles that did so much for daytime in the 70s") seeking to raise public awareness of holistic medicine by adding a character, "Dr. Sanjay Prada," who is specialist in Eastern Medicine--and facing protests from the evangelical right in the process.

Readers of Soappipe, of course, know that the correct answer is DAYS's upcoming "green wedding," and that the others came from the show's very creative imagination. Sadly, the listener-contestant did not, incorrectly identifying the made-up GH alternative medicine story as the correct one.

(More on Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me here.)

DAYS's Sweeney 'Takes to the Floor' in Hollywood

From the UK's Daily Record:

"DONCHA wish Carmen Electra could keep on her feet? The ex-Pussycat Dolls stunner came a cropper while hosting a charity fashion show in Hollywood.

She was closely followed by on the deck by US soap star Alison Sweeney, who took an even more spectacular tumble.

The DAYS OF OUR LIVES actress was left sprawling full-length on the floor and the two ended up looking more like fashion victims than icons."

Editor's note: I saw the footage last night on Keith Olbermann's show, and I can absolutely say that Sweeney and Electra showed everyone present exactly how to recover from an embarassing moment--with big, beautiful smiles and a laugh all around.

DAYS Invites Viewers to Daytime's First 'Green Wedding'

Whatever love DAYS OF OUR LIVES isn’t getting from the Emmys this Spring is likely to be more than made up by goodwill from environmentally conscious soap fans.

When DAYS’s resident bad girl “Sami Brady,” portrayed by Alison Sweeney, finally makes it down the aisle (which is not to say she will actually make it through the ceremony…the character has been left at the altar too many times to count) with soulmate “Lucas Roberts” (Bryan Dattilo), the nuptials will be chock-full of what the show is describing as “earth-friendly elements."

Executive producer Ken Corday, points to Al Gore's Academy Award winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth as an indicator of a growing consciousness of environmental issues by the general public. A higher profile for environmental concerns is also an opportunity for DAYS and the soap industry, Corday said, to "fall in step in helping to raise the viewers' consciousness of certain environmental problems and solutions.”

Partnered with DAYS in putting together the fictional ceremony—set to feature pesticide-free flowers and biodegradable wedding favors—are organic chef Ben Ford (son of actor Harrison Ford) and wedding Web site TheKnot.com.