Monthly Archives: December 2013

• Home Depot founder complains Pope not giving the rich enough love. Pope fires back you can't find a clerk at Home Depot when you need one.

Since none of the late night shows are welcoming 2014 tonight, let's go back to New Year's Eve 1988 and spend a bit of it with Johnny, Doc, the Smothers Brothers and a studio audience, all pretending it wasn't taped earlier. Boy, Tom Smothers looks like Johnny — and you can even catch him subtly doing some of Johnny's mannerisms…

Locked in writing today. I have given up going out New Year's Eve because it dawned on me one year that I had zero memories of having a great time and plenty of bad memories. One bad one involved an ugly break-up with a lady I'd been seeing for some time. Most involved traipsing to one party after another where folks were drinking a wee bit too much and/or trying too hard to have a wonderful time. There were also a few near-misses (or more accurately, near-hits) on the road involving inebriated drivers.

The closest I've come to a great time on New Year's Eve was the time I spent it on the Strip in Las Vegas with another woman — a lady who'd danced in Lance Burton's old magic show at the Hacienda Hotel and wanted to be a witness that night as the Hacienda was imploded. I wrote about it in this article and you'll see that I note the old hotel was to be replaced by a new one called Project Paradise. Project Paradise was indeed erected on that real estate but it wound up being called Mandalay Bay. The dancer is also long out of my life — unless you count being Facebook Friends — but that one, I'm happy to say, ended better than the one that ended on New Year's Eve.

Some people look at me askance when they hear that I've declined all invites and chosen to stay in for the last night of the year. Listen: I'll be as glad to say ta-ta to 2013 as anyone but that'll happen whether I go out or stay in. 2014 will commence even if I'm not standing awkwardly among a bunch of tipsy acquaintances wearing funny hats. I think. So buzz off, you askance lookers, you.

I note that none of the late night shows are new tonight. There was a time when a fresh Tonight Show was almost as much a New Year's Eve tradition as Guy Lombardo on CBS or Dick Clark on ABC. I can't recall when Jay (who did it the last half-dozen years when guest-hosting for Johnny, too) stopped but it was probably a significant marker I missed noting about the decline in importance of late night TV. Turner Classic Movies is running all the That's Entertainment! film compilations if you hanker to see the musical feats of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, et al, without having to concern yourself with storylines.

Since I'm not straying far from this here computer, I'll probably be back later to wish you a Happy '14. So I don't have to do it now.

I'm watching a high speed chase on Channel 9 — a white car has been leading a line of cops through Riverside for more than 40 minutes. They say it contains two men wanted for armed robbery.

The newsfolks, who have to narrate and fill time without a lot of information, are speculating wildly about what the driver is thinking. It never seems to occur to them that the answer to that question is that the driver may not be thinking. Crime is not always a rational, planned act and they're talking about this guy like he's one of those crafty Columbo villains who had what seemed like a sly, reasoned scheme. But maybe he's drunk or high. Maybe he's out of his mind. Maybe he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.

Yes, drivers in these situations almost never get away. Often, they crash. Often, they wind up getting shot. If it does end without physical harm to them, they've at least made things much, much worse for themselves with charges of reckless driving and attempted assault with a deadly weapon. But you have to be sane and in possession of your faculties to realize that fleeing is not a good idea. This never seems to occur to the reporters.

I have a friend who says he can't accept that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of John Kennedy because no one has come up with a logical-sounding motive. I dunno…how logical are the motives of some of the people these days who take an automatic weapon, go to a place where innocent people congregate, and begin firing? I could certainly accept that Oswald was sick of being an ineffectual nobody and just decided to do something that would rock the world. I can also accept that the driver they just nabbed out in Riverside as I was writing the above was panicked and was just driving madly because he couldn't think of what else to do.

(Another possible thought process they never mention. He may simply have believed that if the cops caught him, they'd certainly shoot and kill him. They did that with the driver in another high speed chase a week or two ago. Panic can make someone do a lot of really stupid, self-destructive things.)

Okay, chase over. The guy's car spun out, possibly because of a spike-strip. He crashed into a fence, jumped out and ran through a field and tried to get into a house. Policemen swarmed over the area, tackled him…and Channel 9 lost interest in him. The reporters were unsure if there was anyone else in the white car but now they're on to weather and sports and the chase no longer matters. That man was only of interest while he was fleeing from the police. Maybe that's why he did it.

A funny man named Charlie Hill died today, the end of a long battle against lymphoma. Charlie was the first Native comedian to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He was Oneida, Mohawk and Cree and was diagnosed with the cancer in 2012.

Like I said, he was a funny man. He was funny in the parts of his act that dealt with his Indian heritage and he had some very incisive, important things to say about what it meant to be a Native American in this country in the modern era. He was also funny in the parts of his act that dealt with non-Indian topics.

I didn't know Charlie well but I'd see him up at the Comedy Store often when I was hanging around there, and a bunch of us would go out after for burgers or sandwiches. I liked the guy on stage and I liked him sitting around a table, eating and talking. Here he is doing what he did so well…

As we near the end of the year, it's time to look back on the events of 2013…and at the predictions made for the year by prominent psychics. As usual, their batting average wasn't any better than any of us could do jotting down random guesses. I don't think any of them, including Sylvia Browne, predicted the death of Sylvia Browne, either.

It must be nice to be in a profession where you can be consistently wrong and people still trust you. Some of these folks make Dick Morris look like Nostradamus.

You're about to hear, assuming you click and watch, from John Green, an Indiana-based author and video blogger…and also a pretty smart guy. He and his brother Hank talk to each other via YouTube videos and John was responsible for a very sane, much-watched one I posted here some time ago about health care costs.

This one is about the value of a college education. It's wise as far as it goes but I can't help note that it doesn't apply to a lot of folks…say, those who do what I do. I quit U.C.L.A. before I got any sort of degree. I don't think I learned one useful thing while I was there and I can't imagine how I would have made one nickel more if I had hung around 'til I actually graduated. Yeah, I might have learned something if I'd taken more classes but I wouldn't have learned the things I did learn because I was working full-time instead of working part-time and going to college. College is surely cost-effective in some fields of endeavor but I've never had a position where someone would have paid me more if I'd had a degree, nor did they ask about it when they considered hiring me.

I went to college largely because my father bought into the belief that his son would do better in the world if he did. One of these days, I'll write one of those family-oriented essays here about how we both came to realize that wasn't the case. In the meantime, here's Mr. Green with his view on what's probably true for most people…

One of those folks who didn't want me to post their name wrote…

Your comment intrigued me. Don't you think there's a value in not giving up? My folks taught me there was no such thing as a lost cause. My father used to say, "A man who won't be defeated can't be defeated." If you believe in something enough, whether it's a political cause or a dream you have, shouldn't you pursue it with every breath you have left in you? If you give up on something, doesn't that mean you never really believed in it in the first place?

Not to me. Your mileage, as per that slogan they no longer use in commercials, may vary. But I have found that for me, it's healthier to be realistic about what you can and cannot accomplish and to cut your losses on the latter. The time and effort you spend pursuing an impossible goal is time and effort you don't put into a possible one.

When someone gives me that line about how a man who won't be defeated can't be defeated, I always think, "So what happens when two prizefighters get in the ring and they both have that attitude? Does each of them knock the other one out?" For that matter, if I decide tomorrow that I want to be the Heavyweight Champion of the World, could I possibly be determined enough to make any portion of that happen except maybe the part about "heavyweight?" I mean, dreams are great and noble causes are wonderful but you need to have at least one foot grounded in reality.

Politics, they say, is The Art of the Possible. Not everything is, at least in the foreseeable future. When we assess the merits of Barack Obama's presidency, a lot of us will have long lists of what we wished was accomplished and wasn't. Those lists will be not dissimilar to the lists his detractors and opponents will have of what they're proud they were able to block. I've given up, for example, on Single Payer Health Care.

I think it's time for folks who for the most part are on the other side of that question to give up on repealing Obamacare. But there are still crowds that can be rallied, votes and campaign contributions that can be harvested by those vowing to "repeal and replace" in much the same manner that Max Bialystock figured to profit by promising little old ladies that Springtime for Hitler would be a smash. So that campaign goes on…but not because it stands a real chance of reaching its objective.

But in non-political matters, The Art of the Possible is also important. I've run into people whose career objectives that are on a par with someone else's fantasy about winning the Mega-Millions Jackpot. That's theoretically possible but it's not prudent to stake one's entire future on that happening. It's setting yourself up for failure…and I think some people do it for a reason that they can't admit to themselves. In the next week or so, I'll try and write more about this.

Matt Taibbi on the coming attempts within the Republican Party to cleanse itself of candidates that the Republican leadership thinks are "fools." This is going to be interesting even if they do seem to be defining "fools" as anyone who they think can't win.

As we near the end of the year, it's time to look back on the events of 2013…and at the predictions made for the year by prominent psychics. As usual, their batting average wasn't any better than any of us could do just jotting down random guesses. I don't think any of them, including Sylvia Browne, predicted the death of Sylvia Browne, either.

It must be nice to be in a profession where you can be consistently wrong and people still trust you. Some of these folks make Dick Morris look like Nostradamus.

See 10 Famous Los Angeles Filming Locations Then And Now.

• Ted Cruz is about to renounce his Canadian citizenship. Canada has better health care than America, better ketchup…and now this.

Audra McDonald sings the hell out of this song…

If ever a couple didn't need more sad news in their lives, it's Stan and Sharon Sakai. Sharon has been terribly sick for some time to the point where friends are organizing a benefit to help them with medical bills. Now comes the news that their 20-month-old grandson Leo has died in his sleep. That's twenty months. No cause has been announced.

Condolences, expressions of sympathy and good thoughts are all we can offer about that and they hardly seem sufficient because…well, they aren't. But we can all be helpful to the Sakais by donating to and participating in that benefit. Donations of cash and artwork can be made here, and we'll be announcing soon how and when you can buy stuff in the auction.

Every so often, the New York Times acts like the New York Times oughta. Here's a link to a major investigative report that says, among other things…

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO's extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

This debunks an awful lot of what we've been told, mostly because partisans made up details to spin the story so they could use it. I'll be interested to see who rebuts it, who accepts it and who just ignores it. I'm betting "ignores it" will be the norm.