Bette Midler

Usually, when people describe a concert as "a good show," they're using the phrase in its most generic sense. Because even though most pop concerts involve elaborate lighting, stage sets and choreography, you rarely see any real show biz in the performance.Unless, of course, the pop artist in question is Bette Midler.Midler may owe her current commercial standing to oversized, sentimental ballads like "From a Distance" and "Wind Beneath My Wings," but she built her career on brash, bawdy shtick -- and she brought plenty of both to the Merriweather Post Pavilion last night.

Johnny Carson's legacy is not one of catch phrases or famous one-line jokes. It was his physical shtick - his trademark golf swing at the end of every monologue or the trip on stage when he made his entrance as the bumbling Carnac the Magnificent. It was his perfectly timed deadpans and slow-burn reactions - who'll forget the look on his face when a marmoset relieved himself on Carson's head? It was his gallery of zany characters whom audiences never tired of during his three-decade tenure on NBC. Here's a look at some key moments in the history of Carson's reign on The Tonight Show: 1964: Carson introduces two of his most popular characters: the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-silly mind reader Carnac the Magnificent and the crabby, wisecracking Aunt Blabby.

NEW YORK-- --Patty Griffin is back in front on her new CD. When Griffin recorded her first album 13 years ago, her producer gave her a stinging suggestion. "He told me, `It's so much nicer when you sing quietly,'" she recalls. "I got that from a lot of people. So I thought my voice must be really harsh and ugly." That's far from the case. But the criticism stuck - to the point where Griffin tempered her powerhouse voice for years, stressing more croons than shouts. Now, that's changing.

Just when you think the sitcom genre might finally have run out of gas, along comes Bette Midler in "Bette" to show how many more wild laughs, witty repostes and moments of keen cultural satire are left in the tank. All it takes is the right driver, and Bette Midler goes pedal to the metal from the opening moments of tonight's premiere. The CBS sitcom is a throwback to the backstage/on-stage comedies of the 1950s and 1960s, such as "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" or "The Jack Benny Show," in which show biz celebrities play themselves in a merger of the star's on-stage persona with a fictional world of neighbors, managers and family members.

The art of conversation is not dead. Granted, it may not as widely practiced as it one was, but there are still those capable of turning a few moments; chatter into a witty and engaging bit of wordplay.Take Bette Midler, for example. It's one thing to be funy when you've carefully choreographed every bit of stage busines, quite another to seem equally witty in an ad-lib. But as anyone who's caught Midler's current art onstage knows, some of the funniest moments in the show are her off-the-cuff cracks between songs.

THE NEW JERSEY BOOK OF LISTS.Gerald Tomlinsonand Ronald A. Mayer.Home Run Press.1! 192 pages. $9.95 (paperback).This is an amazing collection of trivia on New Jersey, written by a resident of Lake Hopatcong (near the largest lake in the state -- Page 78) and one of East Hanover (home of Prima Donna's restaurant, No. 11 of the state's top 12 Italian restaurants -- Page 137). You may learn all you may ever want to know about the Garden State -- or is it the Mosquito State, or the Switzerland of America (nine nicknames for the state -- Page 176)

By name, he's Prince again, but on the concert trail he was king. Prince's Musicology tour grossed $87.4 million in 2004, tops among concert attractions in North America, according to Pollstar magazine. The concert-industry-tracking publication will finalize figures this week for some acts that are on tour through the end of the year, but no one will earn enough in the next few days to dislodge Prince, whose tickets averaged $61.04 on his stops in 69 cities. He also sold more tickets than any other act, more than 1.4 million.

Forget the studio politics and pretensions of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. What did lowly moviegoers really like last year?Try "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," "Silence of the Lambs," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "City Slickers," "The Naked Gun 2 1/2 " and "The Addams Family."Those are the contenders for favorite motion picture in the People's Choice Awards. The 18th annual edition can be seen at 9 o'clock tonight on WBAL (Channel 11), two weeks in advance of the Academy Awards ceremony.

"Gypsy" isn't the first Broadway musical that comes to mind when thinking of holiday TV fare.It's about the backstage mother of all backstage mothers, a woman with enough compulsions and obsessions to be the life's work of any psychiatrist.But "Gypsy" is about dreams. And dreams are the stuff of Christmas.The TV "Gypsy," which premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday on WBAL (Channel 11), also has Bette Midler as its star. And there aren't enough superlatives for what she does with the queen-size role of Mama Rose.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Grammy Awards last year: The voters' taste improved dramatically.Instead of the usual assortment of chart-topping fuddy-duddies, the Grammy winner's circle suddenly became a haven of hip. Bonnie Raitt, a veteran blues-rocker whose reputation had always been more impressive than her sales figures, led the way with four Grammys, including Album of the Year. Following close were a host of critically acclaimed performers, among them such first-time winners as Lyle Lovett, k.d. lang, Metallica, Living Colour, Peter Gabriel, Dr. John, the Neville Brothers and John Lee Hooker.