Friday, November 18, 2005

Going Postal

The late Jack Benny always claimed to be 39 years old. The U.S. Postal Service is about to raise the price of first-class postage to 39 cents. Don't you think there ought to be a 39-cent Jack Benny stamp? Of course there should be a 39-cent Jack Benny stamp. It goes without saying that there should be a 39-cent Jack Benny stamp and it doesn't have to look like the little fake one I whipped up in about two minutes of Photoshopping.

So stop reading this weblog and go add your name to this online petition.

(Don't let the fact that you're asked for your e-mail address stop you from doing that or anything. A lot of folks are afraid to give out theirs for fear they'll be bombarded with Nigerian scams, loan offers and Cialis bargains. Easy way to avoid it: Get a Junk Mail Address. Go to Hotmail or Yahoo or some other free online e-mail service and sign up for some e-mail address you will use whenever a site asks you to sign up or enter that info. You can check out that mailbox every month or three or when you sign up somewhere that asks you to validate your address by responding to one e-mail. It can never affect your regular e-mail account in any way.)

UPDATE, a half hour later: Yes, I know there was a Jack Benny stamp in 1991, part of a set drawn by Al Hirschfeld of famous comedians. So what? There have been eight million stamps with George Washington on them and he wasn't even all that funny. There can be another of Benny.

• Posted at 11:16 PM · LINK

A Variety of Bloggers

Longtime Hollywood columnist Army Archerd is no longer writing several times a week for Variety but he is doing a weblog on the trade paper's website. Here's a recent entry about Ralph Edwards that expands on the story I told here about how Angie Dickinson refused to be the subject of an episode of This Is Your Life.

And of course, you routinely check out the fine weblog about comics that my friend Tom McLean does for Variety.

• Posted at 8:58 PM · LINK

Hail to Thee, Fat Person!

I've received and am enjoying My Son, the Box, which is the 6-disc collection of darn near everything Allan Sherman ever recorded in his short but wonderful career singing song parodies. I hope in the next week or so to compile and post a list here of everything that isn't in this collection. It's not a long list.

Rumor has it that the 4,000 limited edition copies that have been issued by Rhino Handmade are going fast. If you'd like to order one, you can use this Amazon link but you'll actually save money at some other sites. CD Universe, for instance, has it for $98.

Allan Sherman's records were very important to me when I was a lad. I played them over and over and over again to the point where I have most of them committed to memory — though perhaps not as well as I'd thought. These new CDs are clearer than my old records and I'm noticing a few lyrics that I'd previously misunderstood. I'm also noticing that Mr. Sherman didn't know some of his lyrics as well as he should have. On My Son, the Folk Singer, there's a short tune that goes, "Mammy's little baby loves matzoh, matzoh / Mammy's little baby loves matzoh balls." In it, Sherman sings...

Stole the skillet
Stole the lead
Stole a lotta balls
Made of Pesach bread
Stole the chicken
Out of the soup
Stole the pot
And made a lot of chicken soup

I always thought it was "Made a Pesach bread." Then again, I'll bet the line after next was written as "out of the coop" and Sherman sang it wrong at the recording. There are a couple of those on his early albums and with someone obviously deciding that the over-all performance was too good to correct.

I'm also learning a few lyrics I had wrong from Robert Sherman's site. Robbie is Allan Sherman's son and we have him to thank for this wonderful boxed set of CDs, and for the fact that it's so complete and so everything Allan Sherman fans could have wanted. Over at www.campgranada.com, he's posted the lyrics to most of the songs in his father's repertoire. Again, I'm discovering that I had a few lines wrong all these years.

And here's one other link of note. You can purchase an Allan Sherman ringtone for your cellular phone here.

For the most part, the material holds up very well. Yes, a lot of the references are dated. But when I first heard and loved My Son, the Folk Singer, I was ten and I didn't get some of the references then, either. David Dubinsky? Olga San Juan? Sherman was just a funny man and we don't have to understand everything he was talking about to enjoy his work. I never have, anyway. I'm very happy with this new collection.

• Posted at 6:16 PM · LINK

The Delicate Delinquent

Last night, I linked to a blog entry about an encounter between Jerry Lewis and some protesters. Rogers Cadenhead digs a little deeper into the matter.

• Posted at 9:52 AM · LINK

Friday Cat Blogging

I don't know where the tradition started but a lot of weblogs can't let a Friday pass without hurling a cat picture at you. I took this one about a week ago in my backyard. This is the same step and the same dish where the possum was eating a few posts ago. We have two stray cats who are nearly identical except that one is not shy about demanding to be fed and the other is very timid. So the gutsy cat howls until I fill the dish with Friskies, eats some and then turns the bowl over to the timid cat. It is highly unlikely I will ever get a photo of both of them together so you'll have to settle for some pics of the bold one. I'll post another next Friday if I remember. Then maybe you'll see this cat's lovely face.

• Posted at 12:11 AM · LINK