Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Recommended Reading

If you aren't reading Doonesbury this week, you're missing a powerful storyline. Here's a link to Monday's strip and then you can click to Tuesday and then on to today.

• Posted at 10:58 AM · LINK

You Can Call Him Al

I've been listening occasionally to Al Franken's radio show and enjoying it more and more. The guy actually engages in discussions, and not with people who agree maniacally with his position. I like that.

If anyone reading this has a pipeline to Mr. Franken or his producer, I have a suggestion to make which would vastly improve his show. Franken is not an experienced radio personality and he has a tendency to drift off-mike, as if he's turning his head away from the microphone. Occasionally, it's difficult to understand part of a sentence and it causes the listener to lose focus. Say what you will about Mr. Limbaugh but he really knows how to work a microphone and grab your attention. If Franken isn't using a headset microphone, he should. And if he is using one, someone should move the mouthpiece in front of his mouth.

Air America Radio is not on the air in Los Angeles in the moment but that's okay (for me) because, being a TiVo Person, I rarely sample live programming. But it's possible to download MP3 files of all the Air America shows from a number of Internet sources, so I do and I listen to Al as I work or drive. (So far, the other shows haven't impressed me much.)

Oh, by the way: I just found something very tasteless on the weblog for The O'Franken Factor. It says there that Max Cleland "...is now stumping for his friend and fellow veteran, John Kerry." Couldn't someone find a better verb than that?

• Posted at 12:18 AM · LINK

Correction

It has been pointed out to me that I had a somewhat-misleading headline on my last item about the Simpsons voice cast and their fight for better pay. I put "The Simpsons Strike" up there and that's not really true. The actors are not on strike. Their old contract has expired and they're attempting to negotiate a new one at better terms, which is what every single human being who appears on a successful TV show tries to do.

The difference is significant because, for P.R. purposes, some would like to cast them as the villains in this little drama and make it sound like they had good jobs and walked off them. Another way of looking at it is that the old contract expired and Fox has not yet made them a decent offer to return for more shows. This kind of thing happens all the time in Show Biz, often without making the papers.

• Posted at 12:04 AM · LINK