Sunday, August 10, 2003

Governor Guido?

Yes, the "Don Novello" who appears to have qualified for the California gubernatorial ballot is the same Don Novello who portrayed (and may still portray, for all I know) the eminent Father Guido Sarducci. For those of you who can't place the name, Father Sarducci was the gossip columnist and rock critic for the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, and occasional Assistant Managing Editor of the Vatican Inquirer. Novello wrote on and off for Saturday Night Live for years (he is often credited with the "cheeseburger, cheeseburger" sketches, among others) and sometimes appeared on the show, or on other programs as Sarducci.

In yet another identity, he was Laszlo Toth, author of a brilliant book entitled The Lazlo Letters, which actually defies description but I'll try: Novello made up a character named Lazlo Toth, named after Laszlo Toth (note the different spelling), the latter being the man who took a hammer to Michelangelo's Pieta. What Novello's Toth wrote was almost as destructive. He penned very strange letters to an array of prominent individuals, received an amazing array of replies, and then published both in The Lazlo Letters, which was subtitled, "The Amazing, Real-Life, Actual Correspondence of Lazlo Toth, American." Could all three of these men, rolled into one, be the next governor of California? Probably not...but the actual result won't be any less bizarre.

• Posted at 10:42 PM · LINK

Alan Brady Lives!

For months now, Gary Owens has been telling me about his role in this. It's an animated show about the fabled star for whom Rob Petrie, Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell wrote on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Maybe Dick didn't get a comic book out of the deal but Carl got a cartoon show.

(I noticed this link on Jerry Beck's fine Cartoon Research site. Credit where it's due.)

• Posted at 11:36 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Here's an article in The Washington Post entitled, "Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence." Despite its rep from Watergate days, the Post has been very reticent to suggest the White House wasn't being entirely candid with the American people. This and a few other pieces suggest that is changing.

• Posted at 10:46 AM · LINK

Recommended Viewing

Most PBS stations are running a nice little special this week. It's called Broadway's Lost Treasures and it features musical numbers from great Broadway shows as they were performed on the Tony Award broadcasts. You get Robert Preston doing "Trouble" and Zero Mostel singing "If I Were a Rich Man" and Jerry Orbach and the original cast of 42nd Street belting out "Lullaby of Broadway." Can't do much better than that. The broadcast I just watched was, like so much on PBS, a marathon pledge break interrupted by snatches of program.

But it was enjoyable and since they were offering copies on VHS or DVD (with five more numbers), perhaps I'll pick one up. If I have to, I might even rejoin my local PBS station which I supported for years with a subscription but finally abandoned. I think it was the hourly mailings urging me to resubscribe that finally made me feel my money was not being used to support quality programming; it was being used to send me ads.

• Posted at 12:08 AM · LINK