Friday, October 8, 2004

Recommended Reading

A fact-check on the debate from the Washington Post. And here's one from The New York Times and another from the Associated Press.

• Posted at 11:01 PM · LINK

Quick Afterthought

Dick Cheney seems to have made factcheck.org the place to be. Flipping channels, all the pundits are citing them as an authoritative source of truth. I guess they figure no one can fault them for using that since Cheney sort of endorsed the site and Democrats have often used it to prove their points.

• Posted at 7:53 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Did Charles Gibson really need a TelePrompter to do that closing?

Bush did better than he did in the first debate. Kerry missed a lot of good opportunities. I don't believe in saying one guy won or lost but my sense is that the polls for Kerry will be somewhat higher by the time these two men meet again.

• Posted at 7:41 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Bad, evasive answer on the last question to Bush — the one that challenged him to name three mistakes he made. This is the one people are going to talk about.

• Posted at 7:30 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Kerry's probably losing points with some people by not addressing some questions directly. Neither man is giving the best possible answers to what, so far, have all been pretty predictable questions. Bush answers the questions but says very little of substance and much that is arguable. Kerry starts by addressing the previous question, then works his way to the current one without enough time left to reply with substance.

• Posted at 7:04 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Bush did okay — better than I would have expected — on the foreign part of the debate but he's flailing in the economic parts. A president who's run up the deficit can't lecture someone else like that about fiscal responsibility.

• Posted at 6:58 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Too much repetition. You'd think these guys would learn a second or third way to phrase their main talking points.

• Posted at 6:35 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Bush isn't as bad in terms of finishing sentences and making faces. But he sure seems defensive.

I don't get the point of having a live audience there if they're not allowed to actually talk to the candidates. People could submit questions and the moderator could read them and you'd have the same thing.

I always liked the idea of ordinary citizens being able to ask tough questions of elected officials. I think that's a great example of what separates America from so many nations where the leadership never has to answer to anyone. And it would really be impressive if those citizens weren't forbidden to deviate from their pre-approved questions or to ask follow-ups.

• Posted at 6:28 PM · LINK

Watching the Debate

Bush does not seem to have a bulge on his back.

• Posted at 6:04 PM · LINK

45 Minutes to Broad Statements

In the last hour or so, I've watched every human being even vaguely connected to politics say what they expect will happen with tonight's debate. I have no idea but I'm getting really tired of the phrase, "...first president to create no new jobs since Herbert Hoover." It's true...but Hoover didn't get mentioned this often when he was in office.

• Posted at 5:16 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Fred Kaplan dismantles Bush's explanation of why the war in Iraq was right even though all the original reasons for it have been discredited.

• Posted at 2:36 PM · LINK

Funny Stuff

Quite a few of you have written to tell me of silly recordings that made it onto the charts. Dave Kovarik and Dave Rutman both wrote that Steve Martin's "King Tut" made it to #17 in 1978. Chuck Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling" reached #1 — his only record to do so, says Jon B. Knutson and Jon also mentions Ray Stevens's "The Streak" from 1974 and Rick Dees's 1976 "Disco Duck." John Moore reports that Weird Al Yankovic's "Eat It" reached #12 on the Billboard charts in 1984.

Pat Kelly says that Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" did not reach #1 and also writes...

The last straightforward "comedy performance" record to make the top ten that I can think of is "Sister Mary Elephant" by Cheech & Chong, a top ten single in 1974. The indisputably #1 comedy single would be "The Streak" by Ray Stevens also in 1974, and probably the unarguably comic novelty track to make the top ten was Dickie Goodman's "break-in" track, "Mr. Jaws." There are certainly top ten hits with aspects of comedy in them since, I'd include "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot and the recent "My Band" by Emimem's side project D12, but I don't think either would qualify for Dr. Demento play status.

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd call some of the above "comedy records." Maybe "novelty records" would be a better term. All of them — except maybe the Cheech & Chong one, with which I'm not familiar — are all or almost all music, whereas "St. George and the Dragonet" was basically a spoken word recording. (By the way, is anyone on this planet familiar with the content of any Cheech & Chong records? The folks who never heard them obviously aren't, and the people who listened repeatedly to them probably don't remember that portion of their lives, let alone the comedy albums they heard.)

I doubt we'll ever again see a best-selling comedy single, at least all audio. If it happens again, it'll be an online video like the new one from the JibJab boys.

• Posted at 12:05 PM · LINK

This Day in History

Hey, guess what the Number One record in America was on this date in 1953. It was "St. George and the Dragonet," a parody of the Dragnet TV show, lovingly spoofed by Stan Freberg and Daws Butler. It was so popular that they (and their female co-star, June Foray) flew back to New York and performed it on Ed Sullivan's highly-popular TV show. Not only that but Freberg did a tour of Australia and crowds cheered the record, even though it was at least a year before Dragnet was even broadcast in Australia. Stan claims that when he later toured the continent, people were telling him, "Did you know someone stole your idea and made a serious TV show out of it?"

I'm not sure when the last time was that a comedy record made the Top 100, let alone the Number One slot. Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," probably. Maybe Weird Al Yankovic got onto the lower levels of the chart with one of his songs. Anyway, it's been a long time.

• Posted at 3:05 AM · LINK

My Prediction for the Debate

How will George W. Bush do in the debate tonight? It will depend on the new monthly jobs report that will be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics later this morning. If they're pretty good, Bush will be able to sell the notion of a real economic recovery. If they're as mediocre as they've generally been, Kerry will have a tremendous advantage. And if they're down from previous months, Bush might as well not show up.

• Posted at 12:55 AM · LINK

Set the TiVo

Very late Saturday night — or very early Sunday morning, depending on your attitude about such things — NBC reruns the full, 90-minute versions of old episodes of Saturday Night Live. These give you a rare opportunity to see the whole shows, since the reruns that air elsewhere (on E!, these days) are trimmed to an hour. NBC jumps around from season to season and this coming weekend, they're reaching back to 2/8/86 for the episode hosted by Ron Reagan. It's a fun show, as I recall, with the then-president's son dancing about in his skivvies in a parody of the movie, Risky Business, and also going back in time to meet his parents in a spoof of Back to the Future. But my favorite moment — and it may be one of the cleverest things I've ever seen on TV — was the guest spot by Penn and Teller, making their third appearance on the program.

The first time on, they did the bit where Teller is locked in a water tank and fails to escape on time. The second time on, they did the routine with Teller in the electric chair. And this time, they did...well, I don't want to give it away if you don't know it so I'll just say it's the one where they demonstrate amazing magic feats and make a big deal out of how it's all being done "LIVE!!!" If you know the spot, you'll want to see it again. If you don't know, trust me and set the TiVo or, if you want to be absolutely Stone Age about it, your VCR. I think it comes around two-thirds of the way through the proceedings.

• Posted at 12:41 AM · LINK

Market Research

As you may recall, I had an unhappy experience getting a home delivery from Albertson's Market via their website. Well, there's more to the story and it's prompted another entry over in NOTES from me.

• Posted at 12:21 AM · LINK