Sunday, August 17, 2003

Alan Brady Lives!

Here's an interview with Carl Reiner about The Alan Brady Show, an animated project that debuts this evening on TV Land.

It isn't mentioned in the piece but Mr. Reiner was a member of the voice cast of the 1964 Saturday morning cartoon show, Linus the Lion-Hearted, along with Sheldon Leonard, Ruth Buzzi, Jonathan Winters, Gerry Matthews and Bob McFadden. Leonard did the voice of Linus while Reiner played Billie the Bird (an extremely annoying mockingbird) and most of the other supporting roles in the Linus segments. At the time, of course, Leonard and Reiner were producing The Dick Van Dyke Show, which I've mentioned once or twice on this site.

The Linus the Lion-Hearted show is largely unseen these days. Each of the cartoons in it was based around a different character from a Post cereal box (Linus was spokeslion for Crispy Critters, "the one and only cereal that comes in the shape of animals") and Post funded the series. One day, the F.C.C. declared it a half-hour commercial and it was gone. By the time deregulation decided that half-hour commercials were okay, no one was interested in reviving the program.

If you have RealPlayer installed, you can hear Mr. Reiner in action. A fine website called Toon Tracker has put up an episode at this link and in it, Carl Reiner seems to do the speaking voices of everyone but Linus. They have more info on the show over on this page.

• Posted at 1:33 PM · LINK

Another Genius in Office

So Wisconsin State Senator Tom Reynolds gets up at a town hall meeting in his state and vows that he will fight the appointment of a woman named Helene Nelson to a certain state office. Everyone present cheers.

But then afterward, someone has to tell Reynolds that Helene Nelson was confirmed to the post last June. What's more, the vote was unanimous, and Reynolds was among those who so voted.

Informed of this, he replied, "I would have to talk to my staff. I'm not sure if that's so...I'll have to check with my staff to see how I voted...It had not occurred to me that that vote had taken place."

Here's the long version of the story.

• Posted at 12:27 PM · LINK