Friday, December 30, 2005

Game Time!

This is for those of you who live in or around Los Angeles. After a brief hiatus, the live theatrical production of What's My Line? resumes this Wednesday evening at the Acme Comedy Theater in Hollywood. It's hosted by J. Keith van Straaten, who is very good at game show hosting, and each episode features four celebrity panelists, three contestants with odd occupations, a Mystery Guest and a live commercial or two, plus live music by Adam Chester. They'll be doing it every Wednesday evening through March but since it's different every week, you can go every week. For more info, enter this website and sign in, please.

The Acme will also be the site of another show we're going to recommend in one of our next few postings here. Stay tuned.

• Posted at 8:49 PM · LINK

Overload

Well, we seem to have found a possible side effect of our game, There's No Such Website! Earlier this morn, I put up links to four real websites and one bogus one. Enough of you apparently clicked on the link to one of the real sites that it exceeded its daily allowance of bandwidth and is now shut down for a bit. I assume it will be back at some point and if its proprietors read this, my apologies. I hadn't reckoned with the awesome power of news from me links.

Remember: When you play the game, the fake website link is the one that takes you to one of my pages that tells you you've found the phony entry. If you wind up on a page that tells you the site in question is unavailable, that does not mean it's the fake website. In fact, it means the opposite.

• Posted at 5:56 PM · LINK

Bud Blake, R.I.P.

I'm a day or two late in noting the passing of Julian "Bud" Blake, who wrote and drew the newspaper strip Tiger for close to 40 years. Tiger was one of those "stealth" strips that was widely respected but often overlooked. Blake won the Reuben award three times, which is a lot, but I can't recall ever hearing anyone say Tiger was their favorite strip or even mentioning it when they rattled off a list of the greats. On the other hand, I also can't recall ever hearing anyone say they didn't like it. On the rare occasions it was brought up in a group of cartoonists, the unanimous opinion would be, "Oh, yeah. He's great. Is he still doing that?" I have to admit that I never followed it on any regular basis even though when I did see it, it always impressed me as well done.

Here's a link to one of the many obits currently on the web. There seems to be some confusion as to whether Blake was still producing Tiger at the time of his death or if it had been handed over to assistants or what. My understanding — correct me if I'm wrong, somebody — is that Blake retired two years ago at the age of 85 and that while it was reported then that other hands would begin writing and drawing the feature, that never happened. Instead, it quietly went reprint...and since the strip was timeless and Blake's style had changed so little over the years, few noticed. Most of its 100 or so remaining client papers are overseas and King Features will continue to offer it to them in reprints.

• Posted at 10:48 AM · LINK

There's No Such Website!

By now, you should know how this works but just in case you suffer from short-term memory loss, we'll review: Below are links and descriptions pertaining to five alleged websites. Four of these are unlikely but real websites on the Internet. One is not. One is a disgraceful sham of a fraud of a hoax invented by the crackerjack team of filthy liars we employ here at newsfrom me. (We hired them away from The Washington Times.) Study all five. Try to figure out which is the phony. Click to find out. Do not pass "Go," do not collect $200, do not forsake me, oh my darling...

Joogle - A special search engine just for Jews. Actually, you don't have to be Jewish to use it. But it helps.
Afterlife Telegrams - Want to write to someone who's no longer among the living? For only $5 a word, you can send them a telegram.
Animal X - The Society for Animal X is a group trying to right a terrible wrong. There's no animal with a name that starts with "X," thereby creating a nasty void in alphabet books. So they're going to find one.
The Amish Homepage - A place for the Amish to gather on the Internet, complete with Amish links, Amish e-mail and even a few recipes.
Juan Meatball - Follow Jorge Martinez (AKA "Juan Meatball") in his inexplicable mission to eat at least one meatball in each of the 556 Olive Garden restaurants in the U.S. and Canada.

And that's how we play There's No Such Website! Thanks to Richard Gersh, Rephah Berg and Barry Toffoli for suggesting real sites that don't sound like real sites.

• Posted at 1:07 AM · LINK

December 31, 2005 • Current • December 29, 2005