Monday, October 4, 2004

Overflow Seating

In a Broadway musical, the musicians are usually playing from a pit in front of and under the stage. Occasionally, they're on stage. But lately, they're sometimes elsewhere.

• Posted at 9:20 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

You have lots of choices on the Internet today...websites that will tell you Kerry is slightly ahead, even or slightly behind. Obviously, what it means is that a lot can still happen with a month to go and more debates ahead. For some reason, I'm looking especially forward to the Vice-Presidential one tomorrow night. Cheney is so unpopular, even with folks who intend to vote for the Republican ticket, that Edwards may have to decide whether to go in for the kill, or just sit there and look statesmanlike by comparison. One assumes he will not make the error Joe Lieberman made of letting Cheney get away with claiming he has never made money off the government.

More interesting to me is this evaluation of the polls that suggests Democrats have a real chance of taking control of the Senate. I'm not sure, given the choice, I wouldn't rather have President Bush and a Democratic Senate than President Kerry and a Republican Senate.

I am also amused by the fact that Alan Keyes, who was selected from another state to run against Barack Obama, is running around fifty (50!) percentage points down. This is one of those situations where, like John Ashcroft and his track record of convicting domestic terrorist suspects, I think, "Hey, I could have done that!" At one point, the premise was that Keyes probably wouldn't beat Obama but they thought he'd keep the guy busy so he couldn't campaign for other Democrats, and maybe he'd get bloodied in ways that would hamper his future prospects. But Obama's sailing to the easiest win in the whole Senate race, so you have to wonder: Maybe the real motive of the Republican leadership was to rid their party of Alan Keyes.

I don't think Bush is going to get far with his claim that Kerry's use of the term "global test" means that a President Kerry would give foreign nations a veto power over U.S. actions. William Saletan has a pretty good column up today explaining how Bush is misinterpreting the term. Clearly, Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations, filled with solid evidence that has proven faulty, failed some sort of test that we ought to regret.

The question I would most like to see in Friday's debate — of those that might actually be asked: "Mr. President...if, as you say, we're 'making progress' in the war on terror, why do we keep seeing all these orange alerts that say, 'High risk of terrorist attacks'?"

P.S. I just Googled to get the exact wording of an orange alert and I found that if you search for "terror alerts," the highest-ranked page is this one that translates the alerts into Sesame Street characters. Make of that what you will.

• Posted at 11:07 AM · LINK

Set the TiVo

Tuesday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running The Hollywood Revue of 1929, one of the first talkies ever made and a movie with an amazing cast. How amazing is it? It's this amazing: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Jack Benny, Marion Davies, John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton, Cliff Edwards, Conrad Nagel, Marie Dressler, Gus Edwards, Polly Moran, Bessie Love and a number of others. Among other highlights in this plotless spectacular, Laurel and Hardy do a short but funny magic act, Buster Keaton dances a ballet, Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards leads most of the cast as he introduces the song, "Singin' in the Rain"...and Jack Benny makes his screen debut.

Benny is the host, in fact. At one point early in the film, he introduces Conrad Nagel as "a name to conjure with..." and as per the script, he mispronounces the word, "conjure." As filmed, this then led to a brief sequence in which Nagel corrected him, but that bit was cut, leaving Benny saying the word wrong for no apparent purpose. One of the main reviews of the film said, "If Mr. Benny wishes to have a film career, he had better learn the English language."

Also, in case you read this in time: Much of today on TCM is taken up with Buster Keaton flicks, both sound and silent. Many funny things in there.

• Posted at 12:23 AM · LINK