Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Recommended Reading

Here's an interview with Paul Krugman in which he explains why there is no Social Security crisis.

• Posted at 3:38 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Seymour Hersh writes that the Bush administration is quietly planning to get us into wars on beyond Iraq. Hersh has been wrong, or at least has seemed wrong, about a number of stories in the past. But he's also been right about an awful lot of things of this nature, and I'm worried he's right about this.

• Posted at 3:10 PM · LINK

The Ghost Who Draws

Congrats to Paul Ryan, one of the best comic artists working today, on his new gig. He's drawing the Phantom daily newspaper strip and his work begins appearing January 31. Good choice.

• Posted at 12:40 PM · LINK

Happy Birthday, Babe!

113 years ago today, a lad named Norvell Hardy was born in Harlem, Georgia. Somewhere around 1910, he began managing a "moving picture" theater and came to the conclusion that he could be as good (or bad) as any of the so-called comedians in the films he ran. By 1913, he was in Jacksonville, Florida where he began making films for the Lubin Company, billed as "Babe" Hardy. The nickname came from an effeminate barber who cut all the actors' hair and was known to rub powder into Hardy's many chins and call him a "nice baby." Years later, when Hardy's father Oliver passed away, he adopted that given name...but off-stage, he was "Babe" to everyone. By that point, he was out in Hollywood, where he'd become one of the busiest actors around. This was not surprising. He was capable of playing comedy or drama, though usually he played the "heavy" (bad guy) in whatever he did.

Oliver Norvell Hardy, it turned out, had a near-perfect, instinctual grasp of how to play to the camera. At the time, film acting was still a new skill, unmastered by most. Those with stage experience tended to go too broad with their gestures, as if they were still doing it for folks in the second balcony. Most of those without stage experience simply couldn't act at all. Hardy sensed how to split the difference, making him among the most effective screen performers. He was one of the first screen comedians to just be funny, regardless of the gag.

He appeared in hundreds of films, to the point where today's historians admit they'll probably never identify them all. As his longtime employer Hal Roach once said, "People just liked working with Babe Hardy. He was always great in front of the camera but he was also always a delight to be around when he wasn't in front of the camera." It was at Roach's studio that someone got the bright idea of pairing the chubby Hardy up with a skinny English comedian. That seems to have worked out well.

• Posted at 10:23 AM · LINK

Note to Self...

Next time I'm at Costco, I have to remember to pick up a crate of canned soup, a 24-roll package of paper towels, a ten-year supply of soy sauce, fifty jars of pickle relish...and a dozen of these.

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK