Monday, January 9, 2006

Still Amazing

He doesn't seem to need them but we're sending "get well" wishes anyway to the Amazing Carl Ballantine, a great comic actor and the uncontested king of funny magic. Carl was recently hospitalized and a few Internet forums erupted with dire word about his health. What's the matter with you people? The guy's only 83 years old, after all. It's not like he's an old man. (And I'm only half-kidding. I have lunch with Carl every so often. Wish I had half his energy.) They slapped some sort of pacemaker in him the other day and sent him right home. That's where he is right now, figuring out when he can next get to the racetrack or to his favorite dining establishment, In-n-Out Burger.

Carl's one of the most wonderful comic talents I've ever had the honor to work with. I hired him a couple times to do voices on the Garfield cartoon show and boy, did he make me look like I knew what I was doing. Everyone adored him. I wish he was on television more often because there's no one who's funnier.

• Posted at 7:02 PM · LINK

Clubs I Won't Be Joining

Number one in a series.

• Posted at 4:12 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

This Robert Novak column is interesting, not so much because of what it says but because he's saying it. A lot of Republicans are probably mulling over when they're going to distance themselves from George W. Bush and over which issues. The new Medicare prescription plan, which almost no one is willing to defend, is a good starting point. Novak is the kind of columnist who pretty much just takes dictation from some powerful Republican with a story to plant. Wonder who dictated this one.

• Posted at 1:58 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Edward Jay Epstein on why Blockbuster Video is not long for this world.

• Posted at 12:12 PM · LINK

Quick Correction

Sometimes, your brain goes North and your typing fingers head South. I just got a couple of messages from folks asking me to tell more about the Boondocks pilot I worked on. I thought to myself, "That's odd. I never worked on a Boondocks pilot." Then I realized what I'd done. In the piece I wrote about Lou Rawls, I meant to type the name of Jump Start, which is another fine newspaper strip. Some years back, I voice-directed little five-minute animated pilots for a number of strips and Lou Rawls was in the one we did of Jump Start. Only I didn't type Jump Start. For some reason, I typed Boondocks. Very dumb of me.

• Posted at 11:52 AM · LINK

Animal Style

Every so often — not as often as I'd like, of course — I allow myself an In-n-Out Burger. In case you live outside the few states where one can get such a thing, In-n-Out Burger is a chain of fast food burger shrines that does a small menu but does it right. It's hamburgers, fries, soft drinks, milk shakes, milk, coffee and nothing else. No turkey burgers, no chicken sandwiches or nuggets, no salads...you can't even get hot tea at an In-n-Out. What you can get is a hamburger done right. The beef is never frozen, the potatoes for the fries are cut fresh on the premises (you can watch them do this) and everything is done with more expertise than you see in a place that hires minimum-wage teens to crank out pre-fab food. There's something almost inspirational to see that it's possible to build a business without anything artificial and still make a real profit.

One reason for the quality control is that In-n-Out does not franchise — every one is company-owned, company-operated — and they do not expand too fast. So it's unnerving to hear that there is strife and open warfare within the family that owns this fine chain and that it may lead to serious expansion. According to this article in the L.A. Times (which may make you register), a power struggle is in progress and those never end well. The folks who will probably win it sooner or later want to bring in new management that will grow the chain and maximize income...something the old management has never done since the first stand was opened in 1948.

Is this beginning of the end for In-n-Out Burger? Probably not. Fatburger went from a couple of outlets to many without seriously compromising their product. Of course, I do recall that a brief attempt some years ago to expand my once-favorite local burger joint, Cassell's, into a chain was a disaster. All the new ones they opened closed rapidly because as was quite evident to all of those who flocked to them, they'd abandoned the basic principles and standards that had made the first one work. Today, only that first, original outlet of Cassell's remains...with new ownership and reduced quality. So I'm just the tiniest bit worried.

• Posted at 3:36 AM · LINK

Quick Thought

Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd? I hate to prejudge a movie, especially long before it's even made. But gee, that sounds wrong to me.

• Posted at 2:47 AM · LINK