Tuesday, December 9, 2003

Hoedown Déjà Vu

Every weeknight, the ABC Family Channel runs two old episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? For some odd reason, this week they're rerunning the exact same episodes they ran last week. There's probably a good reason for this but I'll be darned if I know what it is.

• Posted at 10:07 PM · LINK

Aw, Shucks...

The guy's gone and corrected the eBay listing, which was for an 8mm print of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein wrongly identified as Laurel and Hardy Meet Frankenstein. It was not only a great typo, it was a great concept for a movie. They could even have used some approximation of the same script, casting Jimmy Finlayson as McDougal (the guy who owned what he thought were wax statues of Frankenstein and Dracula) and maybe Mae Busch in Lenore Aubert's role. And don't think we could never see this. It would not surprise me if one of these days, the technology of computer imaging reached the point where it was possible to "create" a performance by some real actor and use it in constructing a movie. I'd like to see them start by taking George Lazenby out of On Her Majesty's Secret Service and putting Sean Connery in. Where he should have been in the first place.

• Posted at 9:30 PM · LINK

Speaking of Castle Films...

Can you find the error in this eBay auction listing?

• Posted at 3:35 PM · LINK

Bob Gregory, R.I.P.

Bob Gregory, who wrote and/or drew hundreds of Donald Duck comic books for Western Publishing has died. He was 82 and the official cause of death is listed as pneumonia. Gregory was born in 1921 in Los Angeles, where he eventually attended Otis Art Institute. He did several years as a technical illustrator for an airplane manufacturer but the work did not suit him and he began submitting ideas and sketches to Western Publishing. In 1958, they finally began accepting his work on a steady-enough basis that he could chuck the aircraft job and go full-time. Thereafter, he wrote scripts for others to draw and scripts for himself to draw, and while he worked on most of Western's "funny animal" comics, his main gig was as writer-artist for Donald and other ducks. In the seventies, he wrote and pencilled most issues of Daisy and Donald. He was the guy who drew the ducks with very round heads, which he usually created with a circle template.

His work was quite popular and he obviously had cartooning in his blood. You can tell because he passed it on to his daughter, who is also a cartoonist and a very good one. Roberta Gregory created the popular feminist anti-heroine, Bitchy Bitch, who is not exactly Daisy Duck but does continue the family tradition.

• Posted at 3:39 AM · LINK

Vote Early...

I've been busy this evening for two reasons. One is that there's a full moon so I had to go out and be a werewolf for a while. Then after I'd bitten almost enough people for one night, I came in and read about two dozen political websites. On them, I found at least three dozen speculations as to why Al Gore has decided to endorse Howard Dean. They're all predicated on the assumption that Gore thinks it will aid his own self-interest. He wants a cabinet post or a Supreme Court appointment or to stick it to Joe Lieberman or to solidify his base with a certain wing of the party or...whatever. A number of folks seem to think Gore's trying to position himself for a presidential run in 2008. The way that one goes is that he knows that if a Democrat wins in 2004, that Democrat will run for re-election in '08, so Gore wants to support someone who's likely to lose, and that's Dean.

I have no idea what's on Gore's mind and neither do any of the speculators. But most of these theories sound pretty far-fetched to me, especially the notion that Gore (or anyone) is really acting with an eye on 2008. Let's see: The theory is that he wants his party to lose so he's endorsing the front-runner. And of course, if he endorsed anyone other than the front runner, they'd say it's because he wants to see a weaker candidate in there. Or if he didn't endorse anyone, they'd say he's withholding his support because he wants the Democratic nominee to lose...

Aren't there simpler, less devious explanations? Like maybe Gore thinks Dean is the best candidate? None of the people guessing at Gore's motives seem to think that but maybe Gore does. And maybe he thinks it will serve the party's interest, and indirectly his own, to help Dean nail down the nomination a.s.a.p., before a contentious primary battle fractures the Democratic party.

The other thing I notice is a lot of pundits saying Dean has darn near tied up the nomination. I'm not that old but I can still remember when, even after all the primaries, there was still an uncertainty about who'd be the nominee, all the way up until the second or third night of the convention. Then, thanks to changing party and primary rules, we reached the point where the presidential nominee was set before the election and the suspense at the convention was who he'd pick as his running mate. Then even that small nugget of suspense went away and the veep was selected before the delegates convened. Now, we seem to have arrrived at the next, obvious step: A nine candidate race is being called before a single primary has been held.

If this keeps up, we won't even need that silly part of the process where we actually vote. That will be good because, hell, those Diebold machines weren't going to count our ballots, anyway. And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out for some more werewolfing...

• Posted at 2:16 AM · LINK

Trio Trouble

One of the best TV channels I get on my satellite dish is Trio, which describes itself as "the only pop culture and arts channel." It's actually the "weird stuff" channel with a schedule that includes reruns of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, old Letterman shows from when he was on NBC, music shows, documentaries about the entertainment industry and the occasional outright oddity. At the moment, they're rerunning old episodes of Battle of the Network Stars. I tend to watch it rather often.

DirecTV is now superimposing on Trio broadcasts an occasional message that says, "DirecTV's carriage agreement with Trio network expires on December 31st. If we cannot reach an acceptable agreement by December 31st, Trio will no longer be available to DirecTV subscribers." Trio has set up this webpage to urge people to write to DirecTV and say it matters to them if Trio is in the channel lineup.

This is probably about money and nothing else. Last time I heard, about half of Trio's viewers came to them via DirecTV, so losing that outlet might finish them off. DirecTV is figuring they can get better terms out of Trio. Trio is figuring DirecTV won't want to piss off subscribers by taking away something they already get. It's all a game of Chicken but I decided it wouldn't hurt to tell DirecTV I really want to keep seeing Trio on my satellite, so I filled out the form on the Trio site. You might want to do likewise.

• Posted at 12:08 AM · LINK

December 10, 2003 • Current • December 8, 2003