Longevity expert's time on 'CCO radio show may be short-lived

Dan Buettner's chance of longevity as a return guest on Esme Murphy's radio show were looking iffy Saturday.

"Longevity expert Dan Buettner a no-show two weeks in a row on my show on WCCO-AM, for me it's 2 strikes and you're out," wrote Murphy, Twittering tough Saturday. By Monday, Murphy had softened. "I was being a little facetious. [St. Paul Mayor] Chris Coleman backed out on me Sunday [on her main job, reporting/anchoring for WCCO-TV ] and I Twittered that, " Murphy said, facetiously adding, "I had a good week."

No reply from Buettner to my voice mail and e-mail. Surely he can't be dodging questions about his breakup with supermodel Cheryl Tiegs.

"All we wanted to do was plug his book ['Blue Zones']," Murphy told me. "I've been wanting to talk about this study in monkeys where a reduced-calorie diet of 20 to 25 percent promoted longevity. ... We went on to do a thing about how annoying the whole Brett Favre saga is, which gets a ton of phone calls," Murphy said, adding with a laugh, "So it's probably better than longevity."

Like me, Murphy is getting all the crazy sightings of Favre shopping for a place to live.

"Training camp starts this week and [coach Brad] Childress is supposed to have his opening press conference on the 30th and it needs to be decided by then," Murphy said. "I think the notion that [Favre's] anguished is unbelievably annoying. You want somebody who is excited to play here, not tormented about the possibility of being paid millions of dollars for an opportunity that many question whether he's physically up to it."

I said I'm thisclose to preferring a rumor about Michael Vick playing for the Vikings. "I think Michael Vick is looking pretty good," Murphy said.

A Sally Field sighting? "Sally Field. Why did she come to town Saturday?" read an e-mail from Heidi Losinski. "She was at the airport and a driver had a sign [that read: 'Sally Field'] and was picking her up with people [who] looked like family."

Humm. Field does not strike me as the type who craves the attention her character did in "Soap Dish." I would have expected a less-conspicuous arrival, so maybe she didn't know about the guy with the sign.

If this was Field, maybe she's down at Mayo checking on how the Boniva is working? Let's take this opportunity to thank Field, always cute as a button, for being an actor who doesn't spend every off-screen moment having her face tweaked and juiced into that scary mask preferred by too many others.

'Al and Julia,' the skit Vanity Fair reports that Julia Child so loved the 1978 "Saturday Night Live" skit about her co-written by Al Franken, now U.S. senator from Minnesota, that she "kept a videotape of it under the television in her kitchen."

That's in the August issue of the magazine's article examining the cultural phenomenon of Child, in advance of the movie "Julie & Julia."

Don't expect many MJs The death of Michael Jackson probably won't mean an explosion of impersonators, speculated Brooklyn Park's Todd Anderson, an Elvis impersonator.

"I think Michael Jackson is much harder to impersonate than Elvis Presley, because his voice was so unique and his talent was also so unique with his dancing and his song writing and music." Anderson was at the Fox 9 station to promote his appearance as one of five internationally acclaimed Elvis impersonators who took part in tribute performances Saturday at the Mall of America. It was a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.

After Anderson warmed up his hips, his mom, June Anderson, quipped, "Your claim to fame is behind you."

Although Anderson does pretty well playing Elvis at events and on cruise ships, pretending to be the King of Rock does not pay all the bills. Anderson sells a product at designerantenna.com that hides HDTV antennas behind a decorative board.