Today’s Video Link
James Lipton gives Mitt Romney advice on how to come across as a more "authentic" human being. This is a little like Newt Gingrich counselling couples on how to have a long, faithful marriage but here you are...
Ellen Twain
I didn't think to mention one nice thing about Ellen DeGeneres getting that Mark Twain Award: It reminds us that groups like that so-called "One Million Moms" can stomp their considerably-less-than-two-million feet and denounce someone as a bad person...and fail spectacularly to hurt that person. They demanded J.C. Penney fire her as spokesperson. J.C. Penney said no. J.C. Penney sales went up. One Million Moms crawled away from a confrontation that proved how little power they had. And now Ellen's receiving one of the biggest honors she could possibly receive. I still think they should be honoring folks who have a larger body of work but it never hurts to point out that groups like that are all bark and no bite...unless someone panics at the barking.
My Tweets from Yesterday
- TSA agents did a complete pat-down of Henry Kissinger at the airport. Found six harbor mines, three nukes and Jill St. John. 13:43:45
The Three-Minute Rule
One memory here leads to another. I was writing here the other day about a "crush" I had back around '71 on the actress Paula Prentiss...
I was hardly alone in this and hadn't been since certain of my friends discovered that the cute lady on He and She (a sitcom in desperate need of a DVD release) was undraped in Playboy. In 1970, she appeared with clothing off in the movie version of Catch-22 and the following conversation occurred in a group that included me and some male friends...
"Hey, that movie they made of that book — you know, Catch-22 — opens on Wednesday. We have to go see it."
"Oh, I hated that book. All that war crap and the story jumping around every which way..."
"The movie has Alan Arkin in it. And Bob Newhart and Orson Welles and Jack Gilford..."
"A team of wild horses couldn't drag me into that theater..."
"And Paula Prentiss is in it and I've heard she's naked..."
"What time is the first show?"
"Do you think we oughta go get in line now?"
I remember the conversation but I don't remember who said what. Any of those remarks could have come from any of us, even the friend whose current marriage is not recognized in Southern states. We all hated the book but not nearly as much as we liked the thought of Paula Prentiss ungarmented. About six of us went to the very first screening on the very first day at the National Theater in Westwood.
Ms. Prentiss removes her duds for about thirty seconds about ten minutes into the movie. It would be tacky of me to provide a link to view those sacred moments so for those of you who don't have the twenty seconds it would take to find those thirty seconds via Google, let's just say they did not disappoint. The rest of the film actually was too but, you know, it's not like they were going to top those thirty seconds.
So the film ended...and none of us left the theater. We all just sat there with the same idea, waiting for one of the other guys to suggest it. Finally, someone (not me) said it out loud: "Hey, let's stay for the next showing and see the first ten minutes again." This was back before home video, back before the Internet, back when no one had heard the term "frame grab." At that moment, we couldn't conceive of any way to ever see those thirty seconds again after we exited except to buy another ticket to see this movie...which would soon disappear from theaters, presumably forever. I mean, they might show Catch-22 on TV some day we figured...but probably not with those thirty seconds.
We decided by unanimous vote to stay for a second look. Then one of us (again, not me) said it would look wrong to sit there, wait until Paula Prentiss got naked again and then get up and walk out. Everyone else in the theater would say, "Wow, look at those horny guys...sitting through the first part of the movie again just to see the nude scene." Which is, of course, exactly what we were planning to do but we were somehow embarrassed to make it so obvious.
Finally, one of us (might have been me) said, "Here's what we'll do. We'll stay and then we'll wait three minutes after Paula's big scene before we leave. Then it won't be so obvious what we're doing." Everyone concurred. Three minutes.
Before long, the next showing began. Before long, Ms. Prentiss was naked again. After the last shot of her like that, we all looked at our watches. Precisely three minutes later, we all got up to leave...
...and so did about forty other males in the theater. We all had the same idea...including the three minutes.
I finally met Paula Prentiss in 2005 at the Memorial Service for her He and She co-star, Hamilton Camp. Despite the fact that at that moment she was 67 years old, mourning the loss of a dear friend and standing right next to her husband of 44 years, I still for about two seconds considered asking her to run off with me. Fortunately, the woman in my life then and now is even cuter so I kept my tongue and as much of my dignity as I ever have.
I can however report that she was quite charming and quite lovely and she did laugh (and "get it") when I told her that I sat through Catch-22 one and one-seventh times.
Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy
Number two hundred and thirty-four in a series...
Street Smarts
Okay: At the advice of dozens, I have reported the Google Map problem to the Google folks, along with the suggestion that they consult Mapquest, which has it right. I hope they don't take that as a personal attack. Let's see how long it takes to get this corrected. Thanks to all who told me how to file my report.
Street of Dreams
Here's an interesting "Should I do anything?" question. Google Maps has just decided there's a street in my neighborhood that doesn't really exist. There's an unnamed alley that I guess kinda looks like a street on their aerial satellite views. But it's an alley with no name and you can't really travel down it very far, in part because it hasn't been repaved since the Crimean War. Google's computers have, I guess, not only decided it's a street but that it's a continuation of a legitimate avenue that is situated roughly on the same longitudinal line but which terminates many blocks to the north.
So on Google Maps, the alley is now named with that avenue name and if you're searching for directions around here, Google Maps wants you to drive on that street...which like I say isn't a street and doesn't even have street signs. Folks who go looking for a street by that name in this area will never find it. They'll see an old, unpaved alley and think, "Well, that can't be it." I think I should report this but I have no idea who to report it to.
Today’s Video Link
John Cleese, stuck in traffic...
Never the Twain Shall Meet…
So the next Mark Twain Award for American Humor is going to Ellen DeGeneres. I like her but as folks say whenever Gilbert Gottfried opens his mouth, "Too soon!"
Let us remember some of the great living comic talents who have not received the Mark Twain Award: Sid Caesar, Stan Freberg, Shelley Berman, Don Rickles, Mort Sahl, Robert Klein, Carol Burnett, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, David Letterman, Tim Conway, Dan Aykroyd, Jerry Lewis, Jon Stewart, Dick Van Dyke...
For that matter, they seem to have decided that though Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens was an author, the award in his name should go only to performers. What about someone who's funny in print? The website for the Kennedy Center not only says this but says it twice on the same page...
As a social commentator, satirist and creator of characters, Samuel Clemens was a fearless observer of society, who startled many while delighting and informing many more with his uncompromising perspective of social injustice and personal folly. He revealed the great truth of humor when he said "against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."
Wouldn't that apply to Garry Trudeau? Or Dave Barry? How about Norman Lear or James L. Brooks? How about giving it to one of the writers who created the material that some of the performer-winners performed?
Aah, why am I getting annoyed about this? It's not about honoring humorists. It's about selling tickets to the ceremony. Forget I said anything.
Innocence Lost
So did Texas execute an innocent man despite clear-cut evidence that he was innocent? Some folks at Columbia University think they have solid proof that Carlos DeLuna, who died via lethal injection in 1989, was the wrong guy. Why do I have the feeling this will get swept under the rug and never properly addressed?
Max is Not Smart
A rare photo of Max not eating.
One of the three remaining feral cats I feed in my backyard is Max. He's the one who's about the size of a Honda Accord. This is because he is perpetually hungry and I'm dumb enough to feed him about 5% of the time he demands to be fed. It still works out to four or five meals a day.
But I'd like to think I'm a bit brighter than him. In the evening, I usually give him an entire can of some variety of Friskies containing some variety of alleged fish. I used to just dump the contents of a can into a bowl but I've since learned. Now, I split it up and put the same amount of food into each of two dishes. He devours both. In fact, he sometimes can't decide which bowlful to devour first so he goes back and forth, eating a little out of one dish, then eating a little out of the other dish, then going back to the first dish for a while and so on until he's licking them both clean.
It's the same exact food in both dishes and the same quantity I used to put in one dish. But Max is happier this way because he thinks he's getting two dinners.
Recommended Reading
Norm Ornstein used to be one of those talking heads you saw all the time on TV newstalk shows, especially the Sunday morning kind. Now, they don't want him.
What did he do? Well, it might be this book he co-authored that advances the theory that contrary to the frequent consensus on those shows, it is not just a matter of "Both parties are to blame for our problems." Ornstein and his collaborator Thomas Mann have been arguing that the Republican Party is more to blame and is in doing a great many destructive things to America. And now Ornstein can't get on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or some of the others to say this.
Hmm. If he was on all those channels a lot, some would say it was proof of Liberal Bias and how the mainstream media is controlled by Democrats. What does it indicate if they're not welcoming him to their guest chairs?
