Monthly Archives: January 2007

Keith Olbermann discusses the claims George W. Bush made in his State of the Union address that four important terrorist plots have been foiled. Here's a link to the video, which runs a little under nine minutes.

I know you'll all be spending tomorrow scurrying about your neighborhoods in your ape costumes, frightening small children and inducing coronaries in seniors, to say nothing of beating and pummelling anyone you encounter named Fester Bestertester. But if you pause for a moment in the day's occupation, you might want to tune in Shokus Internet Radio…say, between 4 PM and 6 PM for those of you on the West Coast or 7 PM and 9 PM for those on the other one. That's when Earl Kress and I will be guests on Stu's Show, taking your calls and discussing cartoons and animation and records about cartoon characters and all sorts of other fluffy topics. Our cordial host will be Stuart Shostak, who puts the "sho" in Shokus Internet Radio.

You can listen to Shokus Internet Radio by mousing your way over to the Shokus site and selecting an audio browser. And like I've been a'tellin' ya…don't wait 'til Earl and I are on to sample this fine station. Here's a link to the schedule.

Eric Boehlert points out a very silly, inaccurate assertion that swept through the press recently. It was the claim that when John Kerry announced he would not be a candidate for prez in 2008, he teared up, sobbed, began crying, whatever. That's not what happened and Boehlert provides a link to a video that proves that isn't what happened.

So why did so many media outlets report that it had? There are two explanations — they didn't check or they just figured the readers wouldn't — and neither speaks well of the reporters. The same thing was true when there was that big, televised funeral for Paul Wellstone and it was reported as three hours of Republican-bashing. If you actually watched the video, you saw it wasn't. And it makes you wonder about the accuracy of reporting in the majority of cases. If they're that far wrong when there is a video record, what's their batting average like on stories where there isn't?

There's talk that the Broadway version of The Producers will close in June. Business is way down from what it once was, and the St. James Theater may be needed to house the forthcoming musical version of Young Frankenstein.

If so, I'm a little surprised that there haven't been more attempts to pump up the box office by bringing in big stars…or at least, bigger than Tony Danza…although two biggies are being mentioned. According to this article, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, who opened the show, may return to close it. I don't know if there's any truth to this but the columnist is right. Those tickets would go for a lot of money, emphasis on "a lot."

Scott Ritter on the current situation in Iraq and why he feels it must not also happen with Iran. Ritter is one of those folks who was right about the Iraq War from the beginning so, of course, he rarely gets on the news talk shows. It's more important to give maximum air time to the people who have been dead wrong at every turn.

Clear the next seven minutes of your life. This is one of the best clips I've had up here.

The late George Carl had one of the most brilliant, hilarious acts I've ever seen in my life…and that isn't just my opinion. Johnny Carson once called it "the funniest twenty minutes in show business" and I think Carson knew a little something about funny acts. I only got to see Mr. Carl in person once — it was when he was in the Lido de Paris show at the Stardust in Vegas — but I'm still chuckling over his skills. He came out, immediately began getting a laugh about every eight seconds, and kept up that pace for the full time he was on stage. When he finished and it was time to bring out the beautiful topless women again, even my friends and I were disappointed.

Some time ago — in this posting — I linked to a clip of Carl performing and warned you that the vignette did not give you the full sense of how funny he was. Neither does this one but it's better. It's George performing on Mr. Carson's show around 1985 and part of the joy is how much Johnny enjoys the performance. You will, too.

Jeffrey Toobin on what the Google folks are up to now and what it means.

Each year, the Animation Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild of America, West presents something they call the Animation Writing Award for lifetime achievement. They've given out eight of these in the past and have just announced that the ninth will be presented to Jules Feiffer. Mr. Feiffer is a cartoonist, a novelist, a screenwriter, a playwright, a former writer of comic books…and he has occasionally dabbled in writing animated cartoons. Anyone here remember Tom Terrific? That was one of his efforts in the medium.

This press release will tell you more about him. Or you can pick up the next issue of the Guild's official magazine, Written By, and read a profile of Feiffer by me.

Okay, Microsoft has just released its new operating system. Here's what I intend to do…

1. Not upgrade to it now.
2. Watch experts complain about it and pronounce it a disaster.
3. Wait as various updates and bug fixes come out.
4. Six months from now, I'll ask my Computer Expert Friend if it's worth it. He'll probably say yes and I'll probably upgrade then.
5. But until then, I'm not going to think about it.

You might want to adopt this philosophy. I do it with every major upgrade of an important piece of software and so far, every time I haven't followed this policy, I've regretted it.

Here we go again, people! I will be back on Shokus Internet Radio on Wednesday from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific. That's 7 PM to 9 PM for those of you who live on that side of the country. And it won't just be me appearing this time on Stu's Show with your genial host, Stuart Shostak. This time, I'm bringing along Earl Kress, a fine writer of many things, cartoons among them. There is no one on this planet who knows more useless information about animation than me…but if anyone comes close, it's Earl.

I'm not sure what we'll be discussing. Probably silly stuff about a lot of old cartoons. If you folks call in and ask good questions, it'll be interesting. You can also call in to answer Stu's trivia questions and snag yourself a free Shokus Video DVD, which is more than Kress and I get out of the deal. Maybe if someone prods me, I can be coerced into announcing the name of the actor who's providing the voice of Garfield the Cat in our upcoming animated projects, taking over for the late Lorenzo Music and the expensive Bill Murray.

You can listen to Shokus Internet Radio on the very same computer that's bringing you this lovely website, assuming it has working speakers and an Internet connection that downloads faster than we can talk. Click here to go to the Shokus site and select an audio browser. And don't wait 'til Earl and I are on to sample this fine station. Here's a link to the schedule.

Here's another story from my visits last week to a hospital's emergency room. I have others beyond this one…

There was a woman, right across from where my mother was being treated, who'd been severely injured. Her name was Lily and I overheard her doctor say something about lacerations and contusions and he also used much more complicated medical nouns that sounded even more painful. Then I heard him mutter something about, "…her husband beating the crap out of her." That kind of thing happens, of course, and we know it happens. Still, it's jarring to see the results of it right in front of you, as done to an actual human being. They weren't attractive.

It was perhaps an hour later that I was sitting on a couch in the hallway outside the emergency room making a cellphone call. A tall, well-dressed man walked up to me, sat down and — completely ignoring the fact that I was in the middle of a conversation — he began asking me if I was ready to accept Jesus Christ as my personal saviour or if I was instead prepared to burn in Hell…those apparently being the only two possible options.

You may know the pitch. It's one of those stories that makes God and Jesus sound like egomaniacal dictators who'll condemn you to torture, no matter how else you've lived your life, if you don't pay proper fealty to their names. Helped the poor? Saved innocent lives? That's nice…but if you haven't taken your loyalty oath, you spend All Eternity in the firepit next to Hitler, Saddam Hussein and the guy who green-lights all those Rob Schneider movies.

I gave him my standard reply when confronted by such people. I tell them that whatever they want to believe is their right, and I'll fight to the death, blah blah blah. But I'm suspicious of a religious sales shpiel that's delivered like someone selling magazine subscriptions. I don't buy cookies from total strangers who approach me with a five-minute prepared speech so I'm certainly not going to change my faith that way. I also threw in, as I sometimes do, that I think it cheapens their message to sell their beliefs almost the exact same way kids in college used to try to sell me marijuana. (There were also people at U.C.L.A. then pushing Jesus. I'll bet the marijuana vendors got a lot more takers.)

The man realized he was not about to make a sale so he apologized, told me he'd pray for me to someday see the light and departed. You may have already guessed where this story is going.

An hour later, I was back in the E.R., waiting outside my mother's cubicle while a nurse inside tended to one of those matters that is best done with the son out of the room. Suddenly, I saw the well-dressed man wandering about in the ward and he wasn't wearing one of the Security Badges that we all had to wear in there. One of the nurses spotted him, too. She pointed and yelled with great alarm, "He shouldn't be in here!" A security guard hurried over and after a brief quarrel, the religious pitchman was escorted out.

I assumed it was because he'd been going around asking the sick and injured if they're ready to accept Jesus Christ, which would be annoying enough. But then someone explained to me that he was the husband who beat the crap out of Lily. I don't know if there is an Afterlife but if there is, I'm betting I fare better in it than he does.

Here's kind of a neat triple feature. Three different women have starred on Broadway in what some would call the "Mary Martin" version of the musical, Peter Pan…one being, of course, Mary Martin. It was written for her, rendering obsolete a previous Peter Pan musical and a couple of non-musical versions. Because it's so famous, people think it must have been a long-running Broadway smash but in fact, Ms. Martin only did it in New York for a few months — October of '54 through February of '55. She did tour with it for years but it's mainly known because she performed it three times on television — in 1955, 1956 and 1960. The first two were live. The third was produced on tape and was subsequently rebroadcast on a number of occasions.

I remember liking the TV version, though with reservations. Even as a kid, I thought Mary Martin didn't look like a lost boy who could fly. I thought she looked like someone's very sweet grandmother on a wire. There's a limit to how much you, as an audience member, can pretend and go along with someone or something on screen that isn't convincing and she came perilously close to my limit when I was a lad. And though I didn't know what "gay" was then, I later realized that's what I always thought Captain Hook, as played by Cyril Ritchard, was in that production. His feet touched the floor even less than hers. In the number where Hook lusts after a mysterious lady who is actually Peter Pan singing soprano, I lost all track of who was the boy and who was the girl…and I think they did, too.

Anyway, here's "I'm Flying" as Mary Martin and Company performed it for the 1960 videotaping. I have a suspicion that when this tape was released on home video, someone went in and digitally "painted out" some of the flying wires. At least, I remember them as being quite obvious when I saw them on my home set at age eight, even though we got lousy reception. With or without them, it's a pretty good number…

In September of '79, the show was revived with Sandy Duncan in the lead. She did it for a year and a half on Broadway, vastly exceeding Ms. Martin's run, then toured it for a year or two. I saw this production out here and thought it was outstanding. By then, her Cap'n Hook was Christopher Hewett, better known as Roger DeBris and/or Mr. Belvedere. Hewett managed to not play it as campy as Ritchard and I thought the story worked better with the villain acting like he wanted to kill Pan rather than to style his hair. I linked to the following clip once before but here it is again…the same number, only as performed by Ms. Duncan and Friends. This was taped for the TV show, Omnibus…

In the late eighties, former Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby began a long stint touring America with a bus-'n'-truck version that played everywhere, including four separate runs in Broadway houses, usually when one had a few months open around Christmas time. She's retired from the role now, which is a shame because I thought she was about as good as anyone could be in the part. Fortunately, her production was videotaped for cable and released to home video. Both the VHS and DVD versions seem to be outta-print but they're not scarce if you hunt around on eBay or at some merchants. Since I never saw the Mary Martin version live, I'm hesitant to say I liked Cathy Rigby better but the fact that I'd consider saying that should tell you something.

This is the Rigby version of…yes, the same number as the other two. Here's how they did "I'm Flying" on the 1991 Tony Awards — a bit abbreviated for the telecast and not as polished as it is on the home video version. It has the addition of Pan swooping out over the audience, which Rigby did each performance as her curtain call "bow" at the end of the show. Sandy Duncan did that in her production, too. I don't care how jaded and sophisticated you are. It's a truly thrilling theatrical moment. If I ever do a one-man show on Broadway, I'll either close by doing that or smashing a watermelon. Maybe both at the same time.

John W. Dean says some things that need to be said about our Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. I assume you all saw the exchange recently between Gonzales and Arlen Specter. If you didn't, its more astounding moments are here. It's amazing that we actually have an Attorney General with less respect for the law than John Mitchell.

The New York Times has a good, rare interview up with Garry Shandling, answering the question of where he's been lately. Garry's a very funny man and a very nice guy, and I wish he'd figure out something new he wants to do, because we could certainly use more of him on the screen.

In the article, he mentions being inspired by a kids' TV show called Hot Dog. I think I've mentioned this before here but we need to get Hot Dog released on DVD. It was a great program that showed how things were made, interspersed with commentary from Jonathan Winters, Joanne Worley and Woody Allen. That's right: Woody Allen. He did a kids' show and he was very funny on it. I'll write a little more about it here in a few days.

As a couple of you actually figured out from my patterns of posting here, I spent much of last week taking care of my mother. I had to transport her to a hospital emergency room last Sunday night. The hospital released her late Tuesday. Then Wednesday afternoon, I had to take her back to the emergency room and she was in the hospital 'til late Friday.

She's home now and doing well so I need to fume about how awful things can get in a crowded emergency room. I've been in a number of them the last few years and it's maddening, utterly maddening. Because people are suffering, people are in pain…some are even on the verge of dying. There's a possible — in some cases, near-certain — cure there but then there are all these things, mostly relating to overcrowding, that keep it agonizingly out of arm's reach for far too long. Almost without exception, the doctors and nurses are wonderful and efficient and caring and everything you'd want them to be. Almost without exception, the admitting process and the red tape and the paperwork and most of all the overpopulation and the "waiting for a bed to open up" are disgraceful and — I'm sure, in many cases — killing people. That includes people who wait for long hours in emergency rooms to be seen and those who don't go there at all because they know what an ordeal it will be.

The Wednesday afternoon visit was one of the worst experiences I've ever encountered. Around 3 PM, I was leaving my house for the Joe Barbera Memorial when my mother's caregiver called and described symptoms that sounded bad. I course-corrected, went over there instead and stuffed Mom in the car. (Naïve optimist that I can be, I actually thought, "Well, Mr. B's memorial doesn't actually start until 6:00. Maybe I can get my mother treated and still get there in time for some of it." I was at the hospital until 2:20 AM…and would have been there longer if I'd just been quiet and done everything according to the rules. By the way, if you want a report on the memorial, my colleague Earl Kress has one up on his site.)

In every emergency room, you first encounter someone who does "triage," meaning they kind of log you in, check whether you're there for a heart attack or a hangnail, then prioritize who gets treated in what order. This particular emergency room was so busy and so disorganized that the triage people were running a good half-hour behind. I don't mean a half-hour to get the sick people inside so treatment can begin on them. I mean a half-hour to decide if someone is about to drop dead without immediate attention.

This, obviously, was not acceptable and I got into a very loud argument with one Triage Lady…which I guess was foolish on both our parts. Because while she was standing there yelling back at me, she wasn't processing patients and that was kind of the desired goal. So I broke it off, ran upstairs, snuck into a department that I shouldn't have been in and pressured my mother's doctor's chief nurse into phoning downstairs to demand a speedy admission. By the time I got back to the emergency room, my mother was undergoing the triage examination and shortly after that, she was wheeled inside. It also helped that I dropped the names of high-ranking hospital officials and the fact that one of my best friends from high school is a doctor in this particular emergency room. These are the times when you have to go into Full Bilko Mode, saying whatever it takes.

But you know, it shouldn't come to that. I kind of cheated and fast-talked and relied on connections to get her in there ahead of others…and I could only get that nurse upstairs to intervene because it was 4:00 in the afternoon and the rest of the hospital was still open. If we'd gotten there after hours when the upstairs departments were closed, that wouldn't have worked. The decision that my mother's condition warranted prompt action wouldn't have been made until a half-hour later, if then.

The call from upstairs got me got into another argument with the Triage Lady. She was furious that I'd gone "over her head" and she apparently felt that expressing that anger to me was more important than processing the dozens of people who were waiting for medical care…in some cases, critical medical care. Once again, I broke it off so she'd go back to doing her job…which I'm afraid was taking down their particulars, telling them to have a seat and then making them wait forever. Either that, or she told them it might be eight hours and they were free — hint, hint — to go to some other facility. Trouble was, she couldn't tell them where it might be any less of a wait. All throughout the evening, every time I passed through that waiting room, I saw sick people who'd arrived before we had, sitting there…praying to see someone who could treat what ailed them. It was very sad.

When I left at 2:20 in the morning, my mother was in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in the main hospital to become available. When I returned the next morning at 10 AM, my mother was in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in the main hospital to become available. They had yet to find her one so I spent four hours trying to hurry that up. Again, I had to bend/break rules, sneak into offices where I technically should not have been, go to superiors and ask them to intervene, etc.

This was more than just a matter of my mother's comfort. The doctors in the E.R. had signed off on moving her to the main hospital and to the care of specialists up there. That was right and fine. Trouble was, she hadn't actually been moved upstairs. The doctors who were now in charge of treating her didn't have her…so she was in kind of a Medical Limbo. The E.R. crew had stopped the immediate pains and problems but they were unequipped to deal with figuring out what had caused it and how we might prevent it from happening again. To get that part of the process underway, I had to get her upstairs.

It finally came down to the point where a room was assigned but the previous patient was still in it. A friend was with her and they hadn't left because the friend's son, who was going to drive them home, hadn't been able to get off work yet. They were eager to leave, I was eager to have them leave…so I gave them cab money, took them out and put them in a taxi. If I'd waited for the system to work, it would have been at least another three hours before my mother got into that room. And of course, getting her out of the E.R. freed up the space for them to treat someone else in there.

So I want to give you some advice. If you have an elderly relative and you care about them, do not ever let them go by themselves to an emergency room. Drop whatever you have to but get over there and fight for them to get prompt service. They cannot do this alone. They need you there to be an advocate, to stand up for their rights, to make the system work as well as it can for them. To the extent possible, accomplish all this by ingratiating yourself with the staff and following the rules…but don't stop there. If you have to, get loud and get in the way. And whenever the system doesn't work, circumvent it. This may be difficult because it will probably mean figuring out the system in order to figure out ways around obstacles…but you're a smart guy. Or at least, you'll be smarter than your unwell Loved One will be at that awful moment.

We're now hearing a lot in this country — and it's about time — about National Health Care. I understand all the arguments against government getting involved in this area and I would certainly not discount the possibility that the wrong action could make a bad situation even worse. But I also think we have to acknowledge the bad situation and do something to try and correct it, especially in the area of emergency care. One of the reasons that emergency rooms everywhere are so crammed and unable to deal with emergencies is that so many people today can't afford basic medical coverage. So they aren't receiving treatment for ailments when they're minor…and when those ailments get to be major, the only thing the infirm can do is go to some emergency room and overwhelm the triage people. This doesn't work for anyone. It doesn't even work for people who have decent health insurance — I do and my mother does — because we have to get in line behind them and either wait forever or do as I did and cheat a little.

I'll probably write a bit more about the past week in the next few days here. I have a few other relevant anecdotes. But I also have deadlines I'm now behind on. So stay tuned to this station for more grousing about Emergency Rooms and those who bar entry to them.