Saturday, November 19, 2005

Browser Beware

One of my little crusades is to have hotels simplify (and not try to make as much money off of) high-speed Internet access in your room. A fee of $9.95 for 24 hours of access seems to be becoming the norm but there are variations. A reader of this site who for some reason wishes to remain anonymous writes...

Here's the new scam. It says you get access for $9.95 a day but what they either don't tell you or tell you only in tiny print is that the day stops at check-out time even if you're not checking out that day. Let's say checkout time at the hotel is Noon. At 12 sharp, everyone's Internet access is the next day. If you first log on at 11:30 AM, then you're paying the $9.95 for that half hour and you have to pay another $9.95 after Noon even if you're only on for five minutes. You could wind up paying $20 for five minutes of Internet connectivity if it started at 11:57 AM. At the last hotel where I stayed, I found four days of Internet access billed on my credit card even though I'd only been at the hotel for three days. The problem was that I'd checked in and accessed the Internet before Noon. When I argued that I shouldn't be charged for four days of Internet service on a three day hotel stay, they erased one day of charges but still this kind of thing should not be tried, especially when their website said "$9.95 per 24 hours."

Good point. I notice that some hotels — particularly the kind that are not likely to attract business travellers on expense accounts — seem to be offering free in-room high speed web connects. Sure would be nice if this became the norm. $9.95 is okay if you're going to be doing some serious web browsing but what if you just want to check your e-mail and maybe the weather forecast for five minutes? I wonder if there are any stats on how much of that 24 hours the average hotel guest uses when he buys a full day of Internet access. I'm guessing not a lot.

• Posted at 2:29 PM · LINK

Harold J. Stone, R.I.P.

Veteran character actor Harold J. Stone died Friday at the age of 92. Here's a link to the L.A. Times obit.

I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Stone for a week on Welcome Back, Kotter about three decades ago. (The story of how he was cast is in this article I wrote.) He was a true professional and a fine gentleman.

One day that week, while the rest of the cast was rehearsing a scene that did not include him, I found myself sitting in the reception area with Mr. Stone, talking about what he'd been doing lately. For the most part, it was performing around the country in productions of either Norman, Is That You?, Come Blow Your Horn or — less often — Don't Drink the Water. They were all plays in which he portrayed a Jewish father who was upset about his son's lifestyle...which is pretty much what we had him playing that week on Welcome Back, Kotter. Stone said he was frustrated that he kept being cast as essentially the same character but very grateful that he always seemed to be working. In earlier years, he'd played a pretty wide range of ethnicities and a lot of treacherous villain roles. Lately though, it had all been Disapproving Dads. He said his favorite TV job of all time had been playing the magazine editor, patterned loosely on the New Yorker's Harold Ross, on My World and Welcome to It. There's a series someone ought to release on DVD or at least put on some cable channel.

As we were talking, the receptionist was flipping through channels on a muted TV, looking for something to have on, and I spotted X, The Man With X-Ray Eyes — a low-budget 1963 horror film in which Stone played a doctor. "Stop there and turn on the sound," I yelled — and the timing couldn't have been better. Thirty seconds later, Harold J. Stone was on the screen warning Ray Milland that if he continued to experiment with an x-ray vision formula, it could have dire consequences.

Next to me on the couch, the real Harold J. Stone alternately chuckled and cringed. It wasn't a bad movie but his scene was pretty awful. It ended with him crashing through a window and plunging to his death. Sitting there in the reception area, Mr. Stone said, "I guess I was lucky. I didn't have to be in the rest of the movie."

Here's a link to his Internet Movie Database listing which, like most Internet Movie Database listings, is hardly complete, especially with regard to television guest star appearances. Even as is, it includes roles on 159 TV episodes including just about every major dramatic or comedy series filmed in Los Angeles for thirty years. It also lists around three dozen movies, including several with Jerry Lewis. Jerry wasn't dumb. He knew how good Harold J. Stone could be.

• Posted at 1:25 PM · LINK

Record Breaker

Throughout the seventies and eighties, and well into the nineties, I was a frequent customer of Aron's Records, following them from one location to another as they got larger and larger. The first two were on Melrose Avenue, across from Fairfax High School, opened by a gent named Manny Aron who (I think) I sometimes chatted with. We never exchanged names but he acted like he owned the place.

This was the first Aron's Records, which was about the size of a box of Raisinets. By around 1973, the place had became so crowded with customers that you often had to wait outside on the sidewalk for someone to leave before you could go in and elbow your way to a bin. I learned to go at odd hours and unless I simply couldn't physically browse enough of the store, I always went home with a pile of cheap used LPs and promo copies. That was one of the big features of Aron's and one of its secrets. People in the music business were always receiving free review copies of new albums and they'd bring them in to Aron's to trade. I don't think I ever went in without seeing someone hauling in a pile of records to swap for store credit.

As I said, by '73 the space problem became impossible. The guy I think was Manny was always telling customers that he had thousands of used albums stashed in nearby garages and warehouses. He just had too many to display in the store...so he got a bigger store. He moved one block east to one that was about five times the size. The space he vacated was soon occupied by a new comic book shop called Golden Apple run by a gentleman in the record business named Bill Liebowitz. The real estate must have been lucky because Bill was soon having the same problems of space and he wound up moving one block east to a large storefront next to the new Aron's.

Golden Apple is still there but in 1990, Aron's moved into an even bigger space over on Highland Avenue. And soon it will close. In fact, it's currently having its big closeout sale.

Not that I'm typical of anything in this world but I'm probably part of the cause. I rarely buy CDs in stores these days and I hadn't set foot in Aron's since about 1995. I'm told that the rare items they come across are more likely to be sold on eBay than in the shop. There just aren't the warm bodies coming in like before as more and more of us purchase on the Internet and download music. A large outlet of Amoeba Music, which takes old CDs in trade, recently opened not far from Aron's and I suspect that has not helped their customer traffic, either. A lot of folks seem to think Amoeba has become what Aron's used to be, and that it's friendlier and offering a better selection.

A while back, I wrote about how used book stores were going the way of the Passenger Pigeon. And I had to admit that while I loved going into them, once upon a time, I hadn't been to one in years. Same thing with old record shops and even the independent sellers of new CDs. It's becoming a world where things like books and CDs are sold primarily on the Internet and the few physical stores are primarily large chains. Something about this bothers me but I have to admit that I'm as culpable as anyone of contributing to the change. I can't expect stores to stay open just because I once liked going in but would now rather make my purchases sitting here at my computer.

• Posted at 10:57 AM · LINK

November 20, 2005 • Current • November 18, 2005