Catching up with shows my beloved TiVo has recently grabbed for me, I just watched an episode of The Colbert Report from a few nights ago. It was the one on which the Lord of Truthiness talked with the departed and disgraced FEMA director, Michael Brown. Mr. Brown has been on kind of a redemption tour lately, coasting on some revelations that perhaps he wasn't quite as incompetent and unqualified as was once reported. He's trying to turn that into the belief that he was competent and qualified...and I don't think we're ready to go quite that far with it. Still, the idea that he was the scapegoat for a lot of folks' screw-ups is not without merit.
The great thing about Colbert's interviews is that it's impossible for a guest to be prepared for them. (It's also impossible for the interviewee to be the funny one, as some haven't seemed to realize.) If you had a cause to advance and you went on with Wolf Blitzer or Larry King or Joe Scarborough or just about anyone this side of Keith Olbermann, you could write out a list of 25 questions in advance, prepare responses for each and you'd be pretty well covered. Most interrogators wouldn't get past the five most obvious. Colbert knocks everyone off-script and the more they try to get back on, the worse they do. In the process, some real answers sometimes slip through the cracks.
Here's a link to an online video of Colbert interviewing Michael Brown. It's funny but it's also a more substantive interview than I've seen anyone else do with the guy. Around seven minutes.
Anthony Tollin, who authored Dragnet on Radio, just sent me an e-mail with some more facts about Jack Webb...
Interestingly, Webb didn't want to star in the original 1950's Dragnet TV series. He wanted to work behind the camera as producer/director, and intended to cast Lloyd Nolan as the TV Joe Friday. NBC insisted that Webb had to star in the 1950s TV series in the role he'd created and embodied on radio.
Did you know that the 1950s Dragnet scripts were approved by a young L.A.P.D. police officer named Gene Roddenberry, who was Chief Parker's head researcher and scriptwriter? Roddenberry learned how to write television shows by borrowing Dragnet scripts from Webb's production company and comparing them to the actual telecasts, acquiring the technical terminology so he could later write his own scripts. In 1953, he was assigned as technical advisor to Ziv's Mr. District Attorney syndicated TV show, and launched his scriptwriting career moonlighting on that series.
Jack Webb was intensely loyal to police organizations, and the L.A.P.D. was equally grateful to Webb for providing the best possible P.R. for the department. When Webb died of a heart attack on Thursday, December 23, 1982, Chief of Police Darryl F. Gates eulogized the actor/producer as "a member of the Los Angeles Police Department family" and the man whose image "we all wished we could project." Chief Gates ordered all departmental flags flown at half-mast, restored Joe Friday's promotion to lieutenant and permanently retired badge #714 (which remained on permanent display at L.A.P.D. Headquarters). Webb became the first civilian to be buried with full L.A.P.D. departmental honors usually reserved for hero cops killed in the line of duty — including a Highland piper performing "Amazing Grace," a bugler playing "Taps," a memorial gunshot volley from the Police Color Guard and a missing-man helicopter formation.
If Mr. Webb boosted the rep of the L.A.P.D. — and I have no doubt he did in many ways — it's frightening to think how bad it would have been without him. No matter how good most of them are (and my perception is that most L.A. police officers are very honest and efficient), there are always a couple to remind you that they aren't all Joe Friday. After the incident in 1992 where a bunch of L.A.'s finest used Rodney King for a piñata, Darryl Gates — who was still Chief but not for long — should have projected the image of a Jack Webb. Instead, he made a bad situation worse and did nothing to debunk the notion that cops protect cops, no matter what.
I seem to remember, around the time of Webb's passing, an essay in one of the L.A. papers by a senior police officer. His thesis was that Dragnet actually damaged the image of his profession, in particular when Joe Friday would start lecturing people, berating them with what the author of the article called "one-sided police propaganda." But he also felt that Webb's other shows — Adam-12 and to a lesser extent, Emergency — had more than undone the damage by reminding all that the people who take those jobs are human beings. I forget the specific anecdotes and stats he cited but at the time, it seemed like a logical conclusion to me.
Anyway, thanks for the info, Tony but I have two questions. Did Joe Friday ever solve the case of the Clean Copper Clappers that were kept in the closet until they were copped by Claude Cooper, the kleptomaniac from Cleveland? And would that sketch have been the least bit funny if Jack Webb had been the least bit funny?
Michael Kinsley writes about objectivity in journalism. Personally, I am less concerned about individual reporters developing opinions than I am about their employers (networks, newspapers, etc.) developing marketing and demographic strategies and arranging the news to fit.
I mentioned Dragnet the other day and someone wrote in to ask, "What was the deal with Jack Webb?" Near as I can tell, the deals with Jack Webb were all pretty much financial. He was a shrewd producer who wanted to make a lot of money in radio and television...and succeeded.
Webb was an actor in film and radio who was often cast as a police detective. He was offered a number of different shows in which to star but preferred to create something himself so he could own it. Pretty smart move, there. He had a certain narrative and dialogue style in mind, much of it suggested by a 1948 cop film in which he'd appeared, He Walked By Night. The show he came up with, Dragnet debuted on radio in 1949 and segued to television in 1951, running until 1959. It wasn't all Webb did during that time. He also had a short-lived radio show which later became a movie, Pete Kelly's Blues and he did a film about a drill instructor called The D.I. that probably inspired the creation of the comic book character, Sgt. Rock. Later, about the time Dragnet was cancelled, Webb did a really good film about the newspaper business entitled 30.
In the sixties, Dragnet made a comeback. The way the story was told to me by someone who worked on the show — and I think the "official" accounts differ from this a little — several networks wanted to revive the property but without Webb. They all thought he was too old and stodgy to connect with viewers of the day, either as producer or performer. Webb took the position that it wasn't Dragnet without its distinctive style and only he could replicate that...so he had to be in charge of the proceedings. He also said that he would relinquish the on-camera job only if they paid him as much as Executive Producer as they'd have to pay him as Executive Producer and Star. Eventually, NBC gave in to the extent of commissioning a TV Movie/pilot on his terms. The result was encouraging enough to yield a series, which was on for four years. Each time it was renewed, Webb's production company landed a few more commitments for other pilots and these turned into Adam 12, Emergency and several other weekly shows.
The most interesting thing about the sixties Dragnet show was, to me, the day players. Webb had a little stock company of actors, many of them good friends, who appeared over and over as crime victims and witnesses. They included Virginia Gregg, Julie Bennett, Herb Vigran, Doodles Weaver, Jack Sheldon, Olan Soulé, Bobby Troup, Leonard Stone, Buddy Lester, Vic Perrin and Amzie Strickland. Often, when the studio or casting director tried to freshen things up with new faces, Webb would say, "No, get me Vic Perrin again."
If he cast you in an episode, the big no-no was knowing your lines. Actors did not get scripts in advance and were encouraged not to memorize. The dialogue was all on TelePrompter and Webb, when he directed, would tell the performers just to read what was on the prompter. After each take, he'd have the TelePrompter operator increase the speed a hair. The idea was to get the actors reading as rapidly as possible without sounding like they were auctioning tobacco. Henry Corden, who was on many an episode, told me, "Jack always used the next-to-last take you did. The last take was when it got to be too fast so he'd use the one just before it." If anyone questioned Webb's methods, there was a fast response: It works. He made a ton of cash off Dragnet, especially in the last season when they set many episodes in one or two rooms and were able to film them in one or two days with one or two guest actors.
Webb died in 1982. I met him briefly — for maybe four minutes — the year before that. I was going in to pitch something at CBS and he was coming out from showing a demo tape to the same exec, and someone introduced us. The two main things I remember are being somehow surprised that he sounded so much like Jack Webb...and that, off-camera, he laughed like a human being. He actually had a good sense of humor that wasn't in evidence when he played Joe Friday. But he loved parodies like Stan Freberg's Dragnet spoofs and he even participated in the best one, which was the case of Johnny Carson and the Clean Copper Clappers Kept in the Closet. Here it is...
Here's one more place to get discounted tickets for a few Las Vegas shows...and they have some for shows on Broadway, as well. It's my favorite store in the world for everything from peanuts to Picassos...Costco!
As reported here and elsewhere, columnist Art Buchwald is in a hospice where he is expected to die before much more time has passed. He seems to be going with enormous courage and good humor, which I guess is how we all want to go as we approach the end credits of our lives. Last night, there was a nice little interview with him on Newshour With Jim Lehrer and you can view it on the 'net by going to this page. If you have the eleven minutes, you might find it somewhat inspiring.
I've taken down my Las Vegas Guide section so I oughta recommend The Las Vegas Advisor site as a source of tips and info on that fair city. The best part of the site is subscription-only but there's plenty of valuable info in the free portions, including a guide to every hotel and casino and its website, plus reader ratings of much of what they offer. The Advisor is just about the only entity that reports on what's happening in Vegas without accepting advertising revenue from the businesses on which they're reporting. They're totally impartial and honest, and if a show or hotel stinks, they'll tell you. They also have a strong sense of overview, taking a wide picture of how the business there is evolving.
In the "pay" section right now is an item of some interest. Each year, they track the increases in the ticket prices of Vegas shows, which have been going up and up at alarming rates. Currently, there are 77 different shows in town and the average admission fee is $62.02, which is a 15.58% increase from last year. That's 62 bucks per person. In July of '92 when they began this annual survey, the average price of a show was $27.05. What's more, there are now ten shows with a top ticket price of $100 or more — in many cases, the bottom ticket price is that much — plus two more that are only a buck or two under a hundred. Not figured into the survey is that there are also a number of headliners (Celine Dion, Barry Manilow, Elton John and Reba McEntire, to name four) for whom premium seating will run $200-$225 a seat.
There are probably — this is me talking now, not The Advisor — several reasons for the increase. One is that a number of the seedier hotels in Vegas have closed down to be replaced by fancier ones. This has meant many of the seedier shows have closed, as well, skewing the average upwards. Another is that there's been a trend towards four-walling, as discussed here. This means that the producers of a show are independent from the hotel and not as interested in using entertainment as a loss-leader to get you in to gamble. But the biggest reason is simply that people are willing to pay the new, higher prices. A number of shows simply decided, "Let's start inching ticket prices up and see how it affects business." The answer is that it hasn't affected it much. I'm told that one show went from around $50 a ticket to around $70 with no noticeable impact in the number of seats they were selling. If your business could get away with that, they would.
Fortunately, there are discounts available. There are two outlets in Vegas — Tix4Tonight and Tickets2Nite — which have what are usually half-price tickets for whatever isn't selling out. Once in a while (though not on Friday or Saturday nights), they even have a few ducats for the mega-shows. You cannot purchase tickets or even find out what they have by phone or on the web. You have to go to one of their outlets in the afternoon and see what they have for that evening. Another company, Goldstar Events, does do business online and in advance, and sometimes has nice discounts for Vegas shows and also for events in many other cities.
Going to the ticket outlets — which, depending on where you're staying, may not be conveniently located and which will probably always involve waiting in a line — is a pain and a waste of your vacation time. I suspect that we will soon see more discount outlets springing up across the city plus, to the extent the shows will allow it, services that will go get you half-price tickets for a small fee. In the meantime, it's a far cry from the day, not so long ago, when a bunch of my friends and I flew to Vegas one morning, saw three shows in one evening and caught a 1 AM flight home. Roundtrip airfare from LAX, which hasn't gone up that much since then, was $99 and the three shows plus cabfare and two meals (one of which was all-you-can-eat) collectively cost about another hundred per person. In fact, I won enough in twenty minutes of Blackjack to more than cover my expenses. Hard to do that these days.
Hey, is that Barry Newman — best known as the star of the TV series Petrocelli and for a recurring role on the current hit, O.C. — in the Adams Sour Gum commercial of today's Video Link? It doesn't look like him to me but six of you so far have written in to either ask if it's him or say you're certain. I don't suppose there's any easy way to verify this, nor is it that important. I think Mr. Newman used to live in my area as I used to see him around often. But I haven't spotted him in years and even if I did, I don't think I'd approach the guy to ask him that.
As I explained here, the only chewing gum I ever liked was Adams Sour Orange Gum. A few months ago, the company that acquired the company that acquired the company that used to make it put out what they called a "limited availability" of Adams Sour Cherry Gum and Adams Sour Apple Gum — two of the other flavors that were part of the same line. We've been hoping they'll get around to whipping up some of the orange kind too, and we will not abandon that hope. Until, of course, it looks pretty certain they're not going to do it.
Yesterday afternoon, I called the Cadbury Adams company and asked a nice lady in the Consumer Relations Office if they had any plans to bring it back. She said, "We never know until the folks upstairs announce those things. I haven't heard anything but I'll be glad to submit your request." I asked her if while she was at it, she could do something to get Souplantation to keep the Creamy Tomato Soup around and also get someone to release Skidoo on DVD. I figured it couldn't hurt.
I'm not sure if I want to chew Adams Sour Orange Gum again or if I just like the idea of some lost relic of my childhood making a comeback. What I think I'd really like is for them to start airing this commercial again...
Let me direct you to a short but nice article on Howie Mandel in The Canadian Jewish News. Howie's one of the good guys in the business and if you've never seen him do stand-up, you're missing something. He improvises on stage more than any other comedian I've ever seen. What he does up there is not for kids and now that he has a hit with Deal or No Deal, he'll probably have the problem Redd Foxx had, which was people who came to see him, thinking he was going to be as clean and lovable as ol' Fred Sanford. Still, it's a small price to pay for fame and fortune.
I like Ben Stein on TV and in movies, dislike what he writes for the more rabid right-wing market, and once witnessed him be egregiously and pointlessly rude to a salesperson in the Good Guys store over on La Cienega. But this article makes me like him again, at least for a little while.
Quite a few folks wrote today to say that they remember Otto Preminger's Skidoo and that it's even weirder than I said. Several more wrote to say they're dying to see it and one said, "I don't care if you did show us a trailer for the film. I refuse to believe a movie like that was ever made." I've seen the film and I'm inclined to agree with that last guy.
Several wrote to point out that Harry Nilsson (who was then just "Nilsson") is in the film and also that he performed on the soundtrack and in that trailer. Yes, he is and did — he even sang the credits — but we respect him, anyway. And Jerry Beck noticed something I hadn't: The cast includes Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin and Cesar Romero, the three main male villains from the Batman TV show. Mr. Preminger was also the villain in one episode of that series and George Raft, who's also in Skidoo, did one cameo. I don't know why that's significant but I just know it is.
I have it from two sources that Paramount Pictures has no rights to Skidoo and couldn't put it out on DVD if they wanted. The rights have reverted to the Preminger Estate, and apparently it was one of the movies Otto didn't want shown, lest it cost him his reputation. Easy to understand why.
One person wrote me that they hoped someone would put it out on DVD while a few of the cast members are still around to be interviewed for commentary tracks. Frankly, I'd be surprised if you could get those people to even admit they were in it.
The thing I'd love to find are the radio commercials that Mr. Preminger recorded for the film. They sounded like he knew he'd made a gobbler and was trying to order people into the theaters. His tone was angry and his accent was more Germanic than usual as he yelled, "GO SEE SKIDOO!" And he listed the cast members: "JACKIE GLEASON IN SKIDOO! GROUCHO MARX IN SKIDOO! PETER LAWFORD IN SKIDOO!" My friends and I used to do impressions of him and add remarks like, "GO SEE SKIDOO! YOU STILL HAVE FAMILY IN EUROPE!" Or "WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU SEE SKIDOO!"
Every website needs a cause and this one has three...
Get the Souplantation to add their Creamy Tomato Soup to their regular line-up.
Get the Cadbury Adams Gum Company to bring back Adams Sour Orange Gum. (We'll be discussing this with tomorrow morning's video link.)
Get Skidoo released on DVD.
I was thinking of adding something about stopping the War in Iraq or dealing with Global Warming but I prefer to avoid the easy, unimportant goals.
Gregg Easterbrook on the mess that is our space program. At one point, regarding the money we're pouring into the space shuttle and space station proposals, he writes...
At this point, the shuttle exists almost solely to service the space station, while the station exists almost solely to give the space shuttle a destination to fly to.
I think that's right. Not all that long ago, if you raised the question of why we were doing some of the things we were doing in space exploration, you got back the reply that you were mired in the past and didn't have a vision of the future. Maybe it's becoming a-okay to ask some of these questions now.
Hey, you know what movie isn't available on DVD and oughta be? Skidoo.
You heard me. Skidoo. The 1968 movie directed by Otto Preminger in a misguided attempt to connect with the youth/hippie movement.
Have you ever seen it? No? Well, it ought to be out on DVD so you can experience it at least once...and I won't even claim that it's good or bad. It's too weird to be good or bad. Depending on your mood, you might view it with the "Springtime for Hitler" look or just delight in the fact that Mr. Preminger was so totally out of control. I have this mental image of him giving orders on the set and sounding like that dictator in Woody Allen's Bananas who wants all underwear worn on the outside. You know...the one George W. Bush is starting to emulate.
Reportedly, in mid-shooting, Preminger realized things weren't going well so he called in several writers — including our old pal Stanley Ralph Ross, who worked on that Wonder Woman pilot I linked to here — to try and fix things. It was hopeless. In fact, Stanley later said that the attempt to course-correct in the middle of production probably made things less coherent. He also told me that he attended one screening where the projectionist got the reels in the wrong order and it really didn't make much of a difference.
There's an amazing cast that includes Peter Lawford, Mickey Rooney, Frank Gorshin, Frankie Avalon and Burgess Meredith. Jackie Gleason takes LSD and does a freak-out scene that would have been considered hokey on Dragnet. Groucho Marx was cast in the role of God and I guess he figured he could never top that so he never made another movie. I mean, there's something to be said for a film in which the most restrained, believable performance is given by Carol Channing.
Bootleg DVDs abound but there hasn't been an official release. So how's about it, Paramount Home Video? Your studio made Skidoo even if nobody there will admit it. You probably have the rights to put it out. If not, you can get them. It's not like anyone else will bid against you.
How can you resist a movie that brought in Sammy Davis Jr. and Dr. Timothy Leary just to appear in its trailer? And if you think I'm making any of this up or exaggerating, just click on the video link below.
I mentioned here recently that I enjoy dining at Souplantation, which is a chain of soup 'n' salad restaurants. (In some states, the chain is called Sweet Tomatoes but it's pretty much the same place.) I especially like their Creamy Tomato Soup, which they've been featuring for the month of March. It's scheduled to leave the rotation this weekend so if you haven't tried it, you'd better hurry.
If you have tried it and you like it as much as I do, do us both a favor. Call the Sweet Tomatoes company and tell them. The toll-free phone number of their Customer Service department is (888) 374-8358 and there's supposed to be someone there to take your calls 24 hours, seven days a week.
Tell them you and everyone you know loves the Creamy Tomato Soup and will go back many times and spend much money at their establishments if only they will add it to their permanent line-up. Someone there will ask you which of their restaurants you went to and when, and they may ask for your name and phone number.
And if you like a good tomato soup, get to a Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes soon. Officially, they change their non-permanent menu items every two weeks and the Classic Creamy Tomato is scheduled to go away on Friday. But many outlets won't start putting the new specials out until Monday so you might be able to get my fave on Saturday or Sunday. (Call first to ask and if they say they don't have it, say something like, "Then I'm never coming in your rotten business establishment again, you clod!" Maybe then they'll get the message.) Here's a page that shows you the fifteen states in which they're located. I was going to suggest that if you live outside the area, you plan a quick trip...but that would be really overselling this soup. On the other hand, I've crossed state lines for far sillier — though less moral — purposes.
Most politicians I like disappoint me sooner or later. The last year or so, John McCain has joined their ranks. Some of the reasons why (and why the man will have a hard time becoming president) are summarized in this article by E.J. Dionne.
While you're at it, read this weblog post about how McCain, who once denounced Jerry Falwell as a bigot, is now his bosom buddy. I don't think Falwell is the one who's changed.
There was also the 1982 prime-time animated series that Hanna-Barbera did for NBC called Jokebook...a show that almost no one saw. When I get finished with that script that's due, I'll write a little piece here about it. I didn't work on it but I was at H-B when it was done (the working title was Joe Barbera's Jokebook and they were serious about calling it that on the air) and it was a very sad project that could have been wonderful and wasn't.
And if I remember, I'll also write about the 1968 H-B series, The New Adventures of Huck Finn, which was a series with live actors running around an animated world. That was another show that nobody saw but I thought it was rather well done for what it was.
Eleven of you have written since last night to say that I forgot one prime-time network animated show that came between the cancellation of The Flintstones (it went off in '66) and the debut of The Simpsons (it went on in '89) and you pointed to Wait 'til Your Father Gets Home, which aired from 1972 to 1974. Well, you're right and you're wrong. Wait 'til Your Father Gets Home was a Hanna-Barbera production which starred Tom Bosley as the voice of a working class guy. The show was created by the team of Harvey Bullock and R.S. Allen, who wrote some wonderful things both for animation and live, and the show was largely styled by the great magazine cartoonist, Marty Murphy. The advance publicity made it sound like it would replicate All in the Family as much as The Flintstones had echoed The Honeymooners but that wasn't particularly evident in the show when it got on the air.
It was not, however, really a prime-time network show. It was syndicated. In the early seventies, the F.C.C. instituted its Prime Time Access Rule, which forced networks to cut back on their evening programming, effectively returning a half-hour each night to local stations. This caused a flood of syndicated shows to be created for those time slots and Wait 'til Your Father Gets Home was one of them. Most of the NBC affiliates bought it and ran it Tuesday evenings at 7:30 so it may have looked like a network show...but it wasn't.
But I'll tell you what was. The messages about Wait 'til Your Father Gets Home reminded me that Hanna-Barbera produced ten episodes of a show called Where's Huddles? that ran on CBS in 1970 as a summer replacement (remember summer replacements?) for half of The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (remember Glen Campbell? For that matter, remember Goodtime Hours?). This one was about football players and it starred the voice of Cliff Norton as Huddles, who for some reason looked but did not sound an awful lot like Walter Matthau. Mel Blanc did the voice of his buddy Bubba, and they had a kind of Fred-and-Barney relationship. This was probably quite intentional on Joe Barbera's part. Blanc, of course, was the voice of Barney Rubble and Cliff Norton had once been up for the role of Fred.
(Here's a quick trivial aside of the kind for which this weblog is famous: Throughout the development of The Flintstones, Hanna and Barbera were highly sensitive about getting close to The Honeymooners without getting too close. The original pilot had Daws Butler doing the voices of Fred and Barney, and June Foray as Wilma, and both Daws and June did the same impressions of Jackie Gleason, Art Carney and Audrey Meadows that they'd done for the Warner Brothers cartoon series, "The Honeymousers," which had been done with Mr. Gleason's blessing. It's just a theory, but probably a good one, that Daws and June were replaced because H-B was worried that the use of them would make it too easy for Gleason to take legal action. Anyway, Cliff Norton auditioned for both Fred and Barney, and I'm just wondering if they thought to call him in — and maybe if they ultimately rejected him — because his name recalled Carney's character on The Honeymooners, Ed Norton. Did they perhaps want him for Barney — he would have been great in the part — because Hanna said to Barbera, "We can't hire a guy named Norton to play a character we may have to swear in court was not inspired, even unconsciously, by a character named Norton"? Maybe, maybe not. I once startled Mr. Barbera by asking him if the name "Barney Rubble" was a conscious in-joke because it rhymed with "Carney Double." He did a Tex Avery-style double-take and swore to me that no one had ever brought that up before...but allowed as how it may have been a subliminal confession.)
Sorry, where was I? Oh, right: Where's Huddles? Well, that one was a pretty quick flop but it was a prime-time network animated show so I should have mentioned it. And now, I should get back to a script that's due.
What next? Pawning his no-prize collection for no-money? Renting Irving Forbush out for stud fees? My God, he could even be reduced to writing comic books.
If you're in the Los Angeles area, you ought to know about the Writer's Bloc. It's a group that sets up events where one interesting person interviews another...with the latter usually being a writer. At one of their events, I saw John Cleese interview William Goldman. At others, I've seen Rob Reiner interview Al Franken, George Schlatter interview Jerry Lewis, Harry Shearer interview George Carlin, Bruce Wagner interview Eric Idle, and I think there have been others — equally wonderful — I'm forgetting.
On Monday evening, April 3, director Bob Weide ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") will be interviewing Mort Sahl. I dunno if I'll be able to make it but you might want to. Mr. Sahl is one of the most important comedians of his generation...the man who made it okay to be on stage and presume the audience knows something. For information and reservations, visit this website. You'll be glad you did.
Some of the videos I've been linking to here are ones I figured everyone has seen...but I'm getting e-mails that tell me otherwise. So here's a real commercial in which Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble sell Winston cigarettes. A lot of folks have forgotten (or perhaps never knew) that when The Flintstones first went on the air on September 30, 1960, it was ballyhooed as "an adult cartoon." I'm not sure what that meant in 1960...maybe that the leads weren't talking animals. Or maybe it just meant that the ads were targeted at grown-ups.
It aired Friday nights on ABC. That season, ABC opened the evening at 7:30 with Matty's Funday Funnies, a Mattel-sponsored series that recycled old Paramount cartoons like "Herman and Katnip." Then the 8:00 show was a series with no kid appeal at all — Harrigan and Son, a talky sitcom starring Pat O'Brien as a feisty old lawyer who was joined in his firm by his offspring. This then led into The Flintstones at 8:30, which was followed by 77 Sunset Strip, The Detectives and a great comedy/drama called The Law and Mr. Jones which starred James Whitmore.
Obviously, if you were a programmer looking to keep an audience around from show to show, you would have gone from Matty's Funday Funnies to The Flintstones and then to Harrigan and Son and the cop shows. But ABC obviously didn't figure that the kids who watched the 7:30 cartoon show would be interested in the Hanna-Barbera sitcom...or maybe it was the Winston people who felt that way, which is why they agreed to sponsor it. Either way, it wasn't long before someone decided The Flintstones had kid appeal. At first, they didn't move it. The following season, it was still at 8:30 on Fridays but its lead-in was The Hathaways, a sitcom that starred Jack Weston and Peggy Cass as a married couple raising the Marquis Chimps. Eventually, the Modern Stone Age Family was moved to Thursday nights at 7:30, by which time the tobacco commercials were gone and Fred and Wilma instead did commercials for Welch's grape juice and One-a-Day Multi-Vitamins. (That's how it is in life: One day, you're selling vitamins. The next day, you are one.)
In 1961, ABC had Top Cat and Calvin and the Colonel in 8:30 time slots on different nights, in both cases making no attempt to program a lead-in or lead-out with children in mind. (The program on before Top Cat was The Steve Allen Show.) Both series were considered failures and thereafter, networks put their prime-time cartoon shows in the earliest time slot they had. The Bullwinkle Show was on at 7:00, which is when prime-time network programming commenced on Sundays. The Jetsons, The Alvin Show, The Bugs Bunny Show and Jonny Quest all aired at 7:30, which is when prime-time started on other nights. (Only exception: The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo aired Saturday nights at 8:00 but it followed Flipper, which was a show for the very young.).
Prime-time cartoon shows went away after that and didn't reappear until the very end of 1989 when The Simpsons debuted. You could probably make a good case that it was the most "adult" cartoon show ever done, and that it held more appear for adults than many live-action shows of its day. Still, Fox did not buck the tradition: They put it in the earliest time slot they had, which was 8:00.
Anyway, here are Fred and Barney trying to get you to smoke. I believe this is what killed off the Cro-Magnon race.
Here, recommended to me by Shmuel Ross, is an interesting article about the immigration question. I think it's right that there's something wrong with a set of laws that remain on the books but are only enforced inconsistently and arbitrarily.
One thing I'd change in it is the line about how undocumented workers "do the work that Americans won't." As Krugman and others have been noting, they do the work that Americans won't do for that salary. And I guess with that should go the recognition that it isn't just the take home pay...it's also the working conditions.
Item before last, we asked if anyone could identify the woman in the photo with Phil Silvers. Several of you wrote me to say it's Polly Bergen. I think you're all wrong.
Charlene Ryan Aragonés (wife of some cartoonist) just phoned to say she thinks it's Julie Wilson. I think Charlene is right.
Several people in the last hour or so have sent me links to speeches George W. Bush has given recently about the immigration situation. I would like to retract where I just said "I sometimes find myself semi-agreeing with" the man. Or at least, I'd like to emphasize the exceptions noted in that statement.
Who is that woman in the photo with Phil Silvers? Obviously, it's from an episode of Sgt. Bilko (aka You'll Never Get Rich, aka The Phil Silvers Show). But who is she?
A friend of mine needs to know. Drop me a note if you do.
I don't necessarily agree with all of this column by Paul Krugman about the problem of illegal immigration. But I think every point he makes is an issue that will have to be addressed if the matter is ever to be settled. Certainly a lot of people who want all the illegals rounded up and deported are in denial about the economic impact it would have on our society. Frankly, I'm so conflicted and confused on this issue that I sometimes find myself semi-agreeing with George W. Bush on it.
You all remember Die Hard? That was the slightly implausible 1988 movie that starred Bruce Willis as a cop who battles crooks who have taken over an office building near where my mother lives. Well, what you may not know is that the film was a remake of a 1924 silent picture, The Ballad of John McClane.
Okay, you got the premise? Die Hard as a silent movie set in 1924. Good. Here's a nine minute version of that film...
Okay, the polls are closed. We asked you to vote on whether you were okay with having video links embedded in this weblog and an amazing 909 of you wrote in to tell me how you felt. I'm not sure what I would have predicted but it sure wasn't this: 858 of you voted in favor of the embedded videos. 14 of you voted against them. A bit of a landslide, wouldn't you say?
I feel sorry for some of the fourteen...the ones who wrote that the links crash their computers or just plain don't appear...or they're on dial-up connections and the thing loads at the speed of a boulder eroding. To make their visits here a little easier, I've changed something about the main page here. It used to feature the current day's postings plus the previous four days. Now, it features the current day plus three. To read earlier posts than that, you click on the link at the bottom of the page. That should speed page loading up a bit.
The remaining 37 voters said things that didn't fit wholly into the YES or NO categories but were mostly more in favor of the embedding than against...so I think the embedded video links are here to stay. Thanks to all who voted.
Here's an update on the condition of Art Buchwald. He's still dying but boy, does he seem to be making it about as enjoyable an experience as it could be. [New York Times, so register already.]
You may have already seen this. It's been e-mailed more times than that photo of George W. Bush playing the guitar during Hurricane Katrina, plus I linked to it about two months ago. But every day, six or seven people write to me and suggest I put up a video link to Chris Bliss and his incredible juggling finale, so here it is.
An interesting controversy is brewing about this in some circles. I don't know Mr. Bliss but he's a very successful comedian who closes his stand-up act juggling three balls to a Beatles medley. He put a video of it up on his website so that potential clients could see what he did and perhaps hire him...but non-bookers found it, loved it and it's being forwarded and reposted all over the World Wide Web. This has upset a number of professional jugglers who feel that what Bliss does in it, at least from a technical standpoint, isn't all that impressive, especially because he only uses three balls. If you scan the many public forums on which this is being discussed, you'll find an amazing number of irate jugglers writing things like, "My own mother sent me this video and asked why I don't do something wonderful like that."
There's obviously some petty jealousy at work there but there's also some honest (if misguided, I think) upset that people who practice for decades to master more complicated routines are not getting this kind of grass-roots attention. And it's certainly true that the rewards for an accomplished juggler these days are not great. There aren't even all that many places you can do it and make a buck. Then again, it's not Chris Bliss's fault that folks love the clip and are forwarding it to each other. As far as I can tell, he's making no claims other than that audiences enjoy his finale. Which they obviously do.
Recently, a championship juggler named Jason Garfield did his own version of the Bliss routine. He calls it a "parody" while others are suggesting that Garfield, who has apparently been quite outspoken against jugglers who rip off others' routines, has committed that very crime. If I were doing my own parody of someone's act, I don't think I would use his soundtrack, nor would I take bows at the end in response to the standing ovation that he received. I'd also try to parody what he does instead of trying to prove that I can do it better.
The two performances are not really comparable. Bliss did his in one take in front of a live audience. Garfield did his sans audience in a gymnasium somewhere and the tape appears to be edited together from multiple takes. My own reaction, just going by these two videos, is that Garfield is the more skilled of the two but his performance is cold and impersonal, and his juggling doesn't connect with the music the way Bliss's does. But it's not fair to judge either man by what they did under different conditions. Perhaps in front of a packed crowd, Garfield would have given a warmer performance. Perhaps with the luxury of editing, Bliss would have attempted more elaborate feats.
I admire both but if forced to choose, I'd rather watch Bliss. What's impressive to me is not that he can keep three balls in the air for four and a half minutes without dropping one but that he moves them (and himself) with the rhythm and emotion of his accompaniment. I'd also rather watch Michael Goudeau or Charlie Frye or Anthony Gatto or the Flying Karamazov Brothers or the Passing Zone or any of a number of other great jugglers out there who do what they do with style and personality, even if they aren't always keeping five balls aloft.
Jason Garfield's performance is our non-embedded video link today. Our embedded video link is Chris Bliss...
I spent some time today, as I sometimes do, reading the websites of folks whose views on the world do not often coincide with mine.
On the subject of the Iraq War, I would feel a lot more optimistic if the supporters of George W. Bush would spend less time trying to prove he was right to invade and more time arguing that he knows what to do now.
I've received over 700 votes so far in my survey as to whether you folks would prefer that video links on this site be embedded or non-embedded. Voting has been lopsided but I won't tell you which way. I'd like to get as many "ballots" as I can, just to see how this will play out...so if you care at all, read this message and send me a quick e-mail, even if it's only to say YES or NO. The polls are open 'til Noon tomorrow, Pacific Time at which time the bars can reopen and I'll announce the result. And please, no electioneering within 50 yards of your computer.
The other day in this post, I noted that I would soon be watching the 1966 movie Penelope for the first time since 1966. I said that I remembered it not being very good and that my father and I felt cheated because Jonathan Winters, though billed among its stars, was only on the screen for — and I quote myself: "...what seemed like about two minutes. It was probably more than that but I'll bet it wasn't a lot more than that. Four minutes, tops."
I have now seen Penelope for the first time in forty years. By an odd coincidence, I won't be watching this movie again for another forty years. What a non-entertaining piece of celluloid. The single interesting thing about it is Peter Falk, playing a cop and apparently warming up to play Lt. Columbo many years later.
As it turns out, I was wrong about the length of the appearance of Jonathan Winters in the film. Leonard Maltin says in his indispensible Leonard Maltin's 2006 Movie Guide that Winters is on screen "less than three minutes." That's correct but Leonard, you may want to change that line in your next edition. In fact, I insist upon it. The actual, measured-by-a-stopwatch length of time from when we first see Jonathan Winters to when we last see Jonathan Winters is one minute and thirty-one seconds. Exactly.
A couple years ago, back before I learned how to do a frame grab so I could post a TV photo, I posted this item here...
I'm watching a rerun of The Flip Wilson Show that TiVo (we love TiVo) snagged for me this morn from TV Land. In the sketch, Dennis Weaver is playing a Justice of the Peace and Flip is in wedding dress drag as Geraldine, who's waiting for her never-seen boy friend, "Killer," to show up and marry her. Okay, you got the picture?
There's a knock at the door and Flip/Geraldine says, "Come in, Killer." And in comes another guest star on the show, O.J. Simpson, looking very groom-like in a tuxedo. I am not making this up.
"You're not Killer," Geraldine says. (Right the first time, lady!) Actually, Simpson's the Best Man, and he's there to stand in for Killer, who's too busy shooting pool to show up for his wedding. Weaver proceeds to try to conduct a proxy marriage of Geraldine and Killer...until Simpson tries to call it off because "he won't treat you right." Geraldine goes ahead and marries her absent beau anyway.
Geraldine Jones has not been seen in many years. Which proves it's dangerous to stand next to O.J. Simpson at your wedding...even if he's only the Best Man.
TV Land ran the episode again this morning so I TiVo'ed it intentionally and extracted the above photo. And suddenly, I'm suspicious all over again. Because not only has Geraldine Jones not been seen in a long time but that Justice of the Peace recently met an untimely demise, as well.
The Max Fleischer cartoon studio was making Popeye shorts and embarking on their first feature when their releasing company, Paramount Pictures, asked about doing something with a new comic book hit called Superman. The Fleischer Brothers weren't all that interested and they also knew that the more realistic style that Superman would require would be very expensive. So, largely to blow the deal, they asked for a price they were sure Paramount would never meet. When Paramount did, they had no choice but to go out and make what may still be the best adventure-oriented cartoons ever made.
Here's one of 'em: "The Mechanical Monsters," an extra-long (10 minutes) Superman cartoon that was made in 1941. You can watch it below or if you want to save it on your computer, go to this page where you can download it in several different formats. Here we go...
Our non-embedded video link for today is on pretty much the same theme. It's this commercial for the new Citroën.
And for God's sake, don't click on this link. Do you understand? I don't know why I even posted it but please, for your well-being and mine, DO NOT CLICK ON IT. Avoid the temptation. Don't think, "Oh, I have to click on it just to see what it is. Believe me: You don't. Show a little strength of character and do not click on it. Please.
My TiVos were upgraded early this morn with the latest software. The big new feature is a "recently deleted" folder which enables you to reclaim a show you deleted by accident. We like this a lot. Matter of fact, a show I deleted two weeks ago was still in there and I thought, "Hey, I'd like another look at that" and — ZAP! — it's back. I don't know why they didn't do this years ago.
I am informed that the TiVo website no longer sells the lifetime service option but that it is still available by phone — meaning, you call the TiVo company — until April 15. A friend of mine speculates that TiVo is getting rid of it because they plan on slowly raising the cost of monthly service in the future. If so, it will make lifetime service an even bigger bargain than it already is.
When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.
And it goes on to say that as with other laws Congress has passed, he feels he can disregard the portions he doesn't like, especially those that say what he can and cannot do.
I've read an awful lot of articles about this interpretation Bush has of presidential powers. I have yet to read one that made what I thought was a reasonable case on his behalf. In fact, I have yet to read a defense written by anyone I thought wouldn't demand the impeachment of any Democratic president who even toyed with this concept.
We're waiting for the results in our survey about embedded vs. non-embedded video links. So far, I've received more than 40 votes and it's unanimous for...well, I don't want to influence the vote. But I sense an early trend here. (On the other hand, I am using Diebold machines to count...)
In the meantime, we're going to offer one embedded video link and one non-embedded one. The embedded one is an intermission trailer for 7-Up that was inspired by an earlier and more famous trailer. It was also, one suspects, inspired by the cartooning skills of Robert Crumb. And yes, I think that's the late, great Paul Frees supplying the voiceover. Here's that video clip...
And now, over on a site that isn't set up to allow the embedding of video links, here's the original intermission trailer. And isn't it odd in this day of product placements in the movies and TV shows themselves to see what's basically a commercial with no product placement?
If we believe his official bio, cartoon mogul-director Joe Barbera is 95 years old today. There are animation historian people who claim Mr. B is a year or two older than that, and that decades ago he fudged a bit on the topic. Either way, March 24 does seem to be his birthday and that's good enough for us.
I had the pleasure of working for Mr. Barbera for several years. Even when we disagreed — and I'm not proud to say that was often — I respected him and found him charming. Ultimately, it was probably a more pleasurable experience to fight with Joe Barbera than it was to get along with some of the other cartoon producers who hired me. I found him brilliant and clever and ruthless and compassionate and...well, I'll tell you what. In honor of his birthday, I'll tell a quick Joe Barbera story...
I had an office on the west side of the Hanna-Barbera building — the side that faced Cahuenga Boulevard. Outside my window was a small forest-like area and sometimes, one might espy sexual activity occurring in those bushes. There was a prostitute who sometimes worked out on Cahuenga — we called her the Hanna-Barbera Hooker and talked about getting her a Wilma suit — and she was known to service her clients without travelling far. Eventually, she got tired of the security guards shooing her away and/or calling the police but for about a month there, she sometimes conducted business not far from my window.
Neither Mr. Barbera nor his partner stood on a lot of ceremony and they both worked long hours and with incredible energy. If something had to be discussed, they often wouldn't stand on the ceremony of summoning you to their offices. Bill Hanna would come to my office to complain that a script I'd written had too many scenes or so much action that it would go way over budget. Joe Barbera would come to my office to say that he loved the script I'd written and he only had a few tiny suggestions which would only mean rewriting every word of it.
One day, Joe walked in to talk about an outline I'd prepared for a proposed series. "It needs a bigger finish," he said.
Just then, I noticed shrubs rustling outside and knew what it was. I motioned to the window and said, "How about something like that?"
J.B. walked over, peeked out the window and said, "I like it but Bill will say, 'It'll cost too much to animate.'"
As you've no doubt noticed, I have recently been embedding video links in this here weblog. You click on the picture and you see a little video clip which is actually situated over on Google Video or YouTube or ifilm. I have mixed feelings on how this is working.
The good thing about them is that you just click and you get to see the clip and it will usually not be preceded by an ad. The bad thing is that the embedded links sometimes cause this page to load slower. The little window I embed calls up a still picture from the other site and if that site's busy, it may not appear on this page immediately.
I don't know which is preferable so I've decided to conduct a survey. The cut-off time will be Noon (my time) on Sunday. At that point, I will tally all the votes and that will be the policy for this site. I will keep linking to video clips of interest no matter how the vote comes down but this will determine whether I embed the video links (as I've been doing lately) or if I just put up a link like this one or this one or even this one. So write and give me one of these two answers...
EMBEDDED VIDEO CLIPS, YES! - Yes, I like the little windows that I can just click on and watch a video clip on your site, Mark! It does not interfere with my browsing at all.
EMBEDDED VIDEO CLIPS, NO! - No, I would prefer to just have a normal link that I can click on and go see the clip on another site if I want, Mark! And yes, I know this may mean several more clicks or sometimes sitting through a brief ad.
Send your votes to this special address: survey@newsfromme.com. You can tell me why you feel the way you do but I'll be satisified if you just send me a YES or a NO. Thank you...and please note that this may be the fairest election you've voted in for years.
Hey, wanna see a great job of baseball fielding? It's September 28, 2005, Tampa Bay Devil Rays versus Cleveland Indians. The ball is hit for what should be an easy single and Eduardo Perez is the baserunner heading from first to second. And he would have made it too, but the ball went near infielder Ronnie Belliard and...well, just watch what happened. (Perez was so impressed, he switched teams and joined the Indians.)
In a Las Vegas casino, that's where. According to a recent (unlinkable) article in The Wall Street Journal, around 1,800 people, including gamblers and hotel employees, have had their heartbeats restarted in Vegas casinos over the last nine years. It all began when a Vegas-based paramedic named Richard Hardman had the idea for a life-saving program. He noticed how often he and other rescuers were called in to treat heart attack victims and how there was always a security guard standing there, looking helpless and with no idea what to do.
Hardman went to executives of the Boyd Group, a company that owns many Vegas hotels, and proposed that they not only have defibrillators handy but that security guards and other staffers be trained how to use them. This was a much more involved process than it sounds because it involved studying the problem and compiling data on it and then the concerns of attorneys had to be addressed and local "good samaritan" laws had to be changed. Eventually, a pilot program was started and the first time it saved someone's life, other casinos saw the publicity and wanted in.
Across the country, among people who suffer cardiac arrest in public places, the survival rate is under 10%. In Vegas hotels, it's 53% and if the defibrillators are applied within three minutes of the collapse, that number goes up to 74%. Today in most casinos, there are enough defibrillators strategically dispersed — and enough people qualified to use them — that three minutes is quite possible.
So that's the answer to the question I asked earlier. Unfortunately, we do not have stats on how many people had heart attacks just because they were in Vegas casinos. But between the smoke and the buffets and the Blackjack dealers who can draw five cards to a 21 and beat your twenty, I'm guessing the number is high.
You may have noticed that every so often, I write here about TV coverage of high-speed car chases. I'm not sure why I find them interesting. It might be the odd mental state being displayed by someone who flees from police despite the fact that there always seems to be about a 98% chance of being caught and/or involved in a car crash. (And — oh, yeah — they sometimes wind up getting shot, too. Like there weren't enough other good reasons to not try it.) I may also be fascinated by the general cluelessness of local news anchors who have to ad-lib, sometimes for an hour or so at a time, without benefit of very many facts to impart.
It's also kind of fun to see something on your TV and you have no idea just how and when it's going to end. I mean, you can pretty much bet it's going to end badly for the guy being chased...but how bad? And how and where will it happen? And will any innocent people be hurt in the process? I love moments when what's on my television is completely out of human control.
Oddly enough, I don't like those World's Wildest Police Videos shows that make up about half the schedule of Spike TV. They're phony with their precision editing and phony soundtracks. Do people even notice that it doesn't matter which state or even country the pursuit is in, it's still the same helicopter reporter covering it? And that there's the same annoying sound effects track of police sirens and tire squeals and crash sounds even though there was no microphone at the actual chase that could have recorded the noises?
But I sometimes get hooked watching the real things, especially when they occur on streets I know. If you're so inclined, I'll tell you about a huge online library of video from Southern California police pursuits. It starts on this page of the website of KCBS and KCAL, which are channels 2 and 9, and which share a common news crew. Most of what they have there are edited reports from the local news but they also have "web extras," which are usually long and untrimmed. Some of them are the raw footage that the copter fed back to the newsroom even when the anchors weren't chiming in with their comments.
This may not interest you in the slightest. But if it does, you'll waste quite a lot of time over on that site watching crazed drivers and hearing about P.I.T. maneuvers and spike strips.
I know the answer to this and I'll post it later today. But it's an intriguing thing to think about...
What, according to The Wall Street Journal, is the safest place in America to have a heart attack? Now, they're not talking about having it in a hospital or at a fire station or in the back of an ambulance or at the home of some world-famous heart surgeon. We're talking about a place that you would not normally associate with treating such ailments. And I'll give you the hint that we're not looking for a specific place but a kind of establishment where some of us are likely to be once in a while. If you had one — and we're not recommending this, by the way — where are you most likely to receive quick and effective treatment from folks with no medical license?
Jacob Weisberg tosses out the idea that while a military draft would not work today in this country, the lack of one ain't working too well, either. I think he's probably right but that there isn't a single politician alive who wants to touch that third rail and discuss the matter, let alone change things.
In 1966, my father and I went to a movie at the Crest Theater, which was on Westwood Boulevard just south of Wilshire. I forget what the movie was but the trailer was for a film called Penelope starring Natalie Wood, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk and Jonathan Winters. I, of course, instantly noticed that it was a reunion of three of the leads from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. What interested my father was that Jonathan Winters was in it. (He may also have been interested in the scenes in the trailer than had Ms. Wood running around in her underwear. Come to think of it, so was his son. I was fourteen and I was interested in any woman running around in her underwear. If it was Natalie Wood, so much the better. But when you're fourteen, you're not that fussy.)
My father thought Jonathan Winters was the funniest human being on the planet — a not-uncommon opinion, then or now. "We'll have to see that," he said to me. A week or two later, we were back at the Crest seeing that. My recollection is that, underwear scenes aside, neither one of us liked the movie much. You got the feeling that a lot more thought had gone into Natalie Wood's wardrobe — she seemed to go through about ninety-seven outfits in 97 minutes — than into the script.
We especially disliked the paucity of Mr. Winters. Though billed as a star, he was in the film for what seemed like about two minutes. It was probably more than that but I'll bet it wasn't a lot more than that. Four minutes, tops. It was certainly not an appearance commensurate with his billing. His name on the marquee of the Crest was just as large as Natalie's. What's more, about half of his performance was obviously done by a stuntman...and most of it had been in that trailer. If you'd seen the Coming Attractions, you'd pretty much seen Jonathan's contribution to Penelope. (Over at the Turner Classic Movies site, on this page, they have a video of a trailer for the film. I think it's a shorter version than the one we saw at the Crest.)
On the way out that evening, my father felt swindled and it wasn't because the movie wasn't very good. It was because he felt it had been misrepresented. A man who I guess was the manager of the Crest said to us at the door, "Hope you'll come back soon," and my father blurted out his dissatisfaction. He pointed to the marquee and said, "We came to see Jonathan Winters. You shouldn't have his name up there if he's only in the movie for three minutes."
Immediately, the manager whipped out four free passes, almost like he'd had them ready for us. "Please accept these with my sincere apologies," he said. Then he turned to an employee and said, "Go get the letters for the front and the ladder. I want to change something." Sure enough, the next day when we happened to drive down Westwood, the name of Jonathan Winters was no longer on the Crest marquee. Dick Shawn's was in its place.
I'm sure this all sounds trivial today but I remember the incident vividly. It was the first time I was ever acutely aware that you ought to speak up when things aren't right...and not just because you might get something (like free passes) out of it. You do it because few things that oughta be fixed ever get fixed if no one says anything.
It is, of course, possible to overdo this. I broke up with one lady friend because she seemed to go through life, finding fault everywhere and demanding that the world be corrected to her liking. It got very tiresome, especially when I found myself fixing things that really didn't need to be fixed, just so she'd stop telling me they did. A lot of people criticize because they like the attention it gives them and the feeling of power to make others jump through hoops to please them. There have been times in my life when my biggest complaint has been people with complaints. Still, it's just as wrong, if not more so, to suffer in silence.
So that's the memory I associate with the movie Penelope, which I haven't seen since '66. In fact, I can't recall ever seeing that it was running on TV or available on home video...but it's on Turner Classic Movies this Friday evening and I'm setting a TiVo. This is not a recommendation that you do likewise since I barely remember anything about it except for how quickly Jonathan Winters disappeared and that I didn't like anything except Ms. Wood's undies. Then again, how bad can a movie with Dick Shawn, Peter Falk and (briefly) Jonathan Winters be? Plus, it also has Lou Jacobi and Carl Ballantine...so right there, you have five of my favorite comic actors.
Still, tape or TiVo it at your own risk, especially if you want to see what Ms. Wood is and isn't wearing in it. I'm just watching to see if it's any better than I remember...and also, I want to run a stopwatch on Jonathan Winters's screen time. I have the feeling you could use it to time a boiled egg.
Larry Johnson writes about how the Bush administration uses the language in evasive ways. You know, they said Al Qeada was behind 9/11 and they said Saddam Hussein was indistinguishable from Al Qeada in the war on terror that began that day. But they never meant to imply that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.
One of the most-visited pages on this website is this article that I wrote in 1999 about a brave comedian/puppeteer named Rod Hull. The late Mr. Hull was a huge star in some countries for his performances with Emu, a mean-spirited rubber bird who tended to attack everyone within reach.
Our video extravaganza today is a short clip (under two minutes) from an appearance Rod and Emu made on a Dutch TV show. It's nowhere near his best or funniest work but at least it'll give you some idea of what the puppet looked like and how much audiences delighted in its antics. Click on the little arrow and enjoy. [NOTE: This is an ifilm link and it doesn't seem to work for all browsers. If it doesn't work in yours, you can see the clip by going to this page.]
As noted, I'm very interested in the pro-Iraq War arguments, especially those that don't spring from a "Bush doesn't make mistakes" demagogy. My request for links has brought me this article by Christopher Hitchens, this piece by Fouad Ajami, this article by Victor Davis Hanson and this weblog by Bill Roggio. What I mainly notice is that most of these explain why the goal is or was proper and even if the execution has been horribly botched, we have to "stay the course" because if we did it right, it would be well worth doing. I suspect that will become the position of more and more hawks who can't deal with the way things are going over there and over here.
Yesterday afternoon, I came as close as I ever have to killing another human being...and the guy wasn't even an inept TV producer. At least, I don't think he was. He looked to be about twenty and he was riding a shiny new motorcycle on Third Street, darting down an imaginary lane that he thought existed between the real ones in which I and many other folks were driving. He was ducking and weaving and when he abruptly pulled in front of me, I had to brake and steer madly to the right to avoid getting his innards all over my hood. I came within about four pixels of crashing into him or someone else.
Two blocks down, I stopped for a traffic light and the kid was next to me, gunning the engine on what I think was a brand new Kawasaki. I yelled to him, "That's not a smart way to ride" — and I guess he didn't hear me because his response was, "Today's my birthday." Or maybe he did hear me and expected me to say, "Oh, it's your birthday. Then by all means, drive like an idiot!" Before I could say anything else to him, the light turned green and a nanosecond later, he was doing sixty down the boulevard, zig-zagging between Hummers and Hondas.
I don't know what it is lately but everyone's driving like they're desperate to get on The World's Wildest Police Videos. Maybe it's the proliferation of Starbucks outlets. I gave up caffeine about a month ago and since then, it seems like the whole world is a silent movie projected on a sound projector. Everyone and everything is about eight frames per second too fast. If it were up to me, those electric signs on the freeway wouldn't be displaying fraudulent estimates of how long it'll take you to get somewhere. They'd just flash in big letters, WHAT'S THE HURRY, BUB?
It's a lesson we all need to learn — especially that kid on the Kawasaki. I don't know if that cycle was the best birthday present he's ever received...but I have a feeling it'll be his last.
All this talk about What's My Line? reminds me that I should alert my friends in the Los Angeles area: Tomorrow (Wednesday) night at the Acme Comedy Theater in Hollywood, you can see the wonderful What's My Line? Live show — four witty panelists, a fine host, a lovely hostess, a great musician, three contestants and one Mystery Guest. None of them are the people in the above photo but that's only because the people in the photo are all dead. If they were still with us, they'd be proud to participate in this faithful and funny re-creation of the original series.
You can go tomorrow night or you can go next Wednesday night...but after that, the show's taking a hiatus. So you might want to go before that happens. It's a lot of fun and the details are all here.
Not long ago here — in this post, to be exact — we were talking about the famous Abbott and Costello comedy routine, "Who's on First?" So today, I'm linking to a six minute version of it that they did on (I think) The Colgate Comedy Hour. Looks like that's where it's from.
Anyway, one of the things I find interesting about watching those two guys at work is that Bud Abbott's contribution goes so unnoticed. Everyone thought Lou Costello was the guy who did all the heavy lifting in that team and that Abbott was getting an enormous free ride. But you can see it in this clip if you watch carefully: It's Abbott who's running things. Costello is getting the laughs and pulling focus and it's all about him...but Bud's the one who keeps driving the routine forward. A couple of times, Costello bobbles the words and Abbott is right there to get things back on script.
In burlesque and vaudeville, it was traditional for the straight man in a comedy act to get paid more than the comic. Part of that was because the straight man was usually expected to dress well and to do other emcee duties...but part of it was because it was recognized that he had the harder job. When Abbott and Costello teamed, that's how it was — Bud got 60%, Lou got 40% — and it stayed that way 'til they got big and Costello insisted on a change. Thereafter, the percentages were reversed. This was probably fair in the sense that audiences loved Costello and were generally indifferent to Abbott...but appearances can be deceiving. The more I watch Abbott and Costello, more conscious I am that Abbott contributed just as much to their performances.
Before we get to our film presentation, I need to mention something. The other day here, I told you a way to capture the video clips that are embedded on this site and others, and suggested you might want to do this because clips sometimes get removed from the web. Well, that's happened with the Tom Lehrer video I linked to a week ago last Friday. If you notice that any of the other embedded videos here go dead, let me know so I can remove the link.
Okay, that's all I wanted to say. Take it away, Bud and Lou...
Looking ahead at GSN's reruns of ancient What's My Line? episodes: I just told you what's on Tuesday morning. Wednesday morning, the Mystery Guest is the legendary movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. Thursday morning, it's Gordon and Sheila MacRae and one of the contestants is a hot dog vendor named Mike Kilkenny. Mr. Kilkenny later stopped selling franks at ball parks and started playing...for the Detroit Tigers and a couple of other teams.
Friday morn, they should be airing an episode with Melina Mercouri as the Mystery Guest and Victor Borge on the panel. The episode was notable because at one point, an intruder walked out on the stage — this was live television, remember — and started delivering a commercial for a dating service. He was quickly removed and turned over to the police who reportedly had trouble figuring out what crime he could be prosecuted for. In his book about the show, producer Gil Fates noted that it was not against the law to deliver a commercial on television.
Saturday morning, the Mystery Guest is Joan Crawford. Sunday morning, it's Robert Ryan and Nanette Fabray. Next Monday morning, it's Tony Martin. And then next Tuesday morning — and I'm going this far into the future so I can mention this — it's Robert Goulet, but the show also features as Mystery Guests, the cast of Beyond the Fringe. Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore were then playing New York. So there's a nice bit of history.
The What's My Line? episode that airs on GSN tonight — actually, tomorrow morning — features among its contestants a woman named Joanna Lee. Ms. Lee was a writer of sitcoms beginning in the sixties and she was among the writers of The Flintstones. She wasn't the first woman to ever write for animation but she may have been the second. (The first may have been Barbara Chain, who wrote for Crusader Rabbit and Mr. Magoo.)
Paul Krugman writes about what he called "Bogus Bush Bashing," meaning erroneous criticisms of the guy in the White House. Those of you still on Bush's side won't like this column any more than the ones that just criticize the guy.
Before I forget: The other day, I asked for suggestions of sites that presented the history of the Iraq War with a "things are going well" viewpoint. I've only received three nominations, all of which were to subscription-only sites that I can't read, let alone link to. One person did offer the thought that I'd already linked to one with the Donald Rumsfeld article I recommended last Saturday. If nothing better comes along, that may have to do.
Greg Preston is a photographer and comics enthusiast I met several years ago. He was then travelling the country and taking photos of cartoonists, comic book illustrators and animators for a proposed book project which, I am happy to say, is finally happening. This summer, Dark Horse will release The Artist Within, a hardcover collection of Greg's photos, which are very, very good at capturing the personality of the subjects. In most cases, the subjects were photographed in their natural habitats — their studios — and the backgrounds themselves are full of fascinating details.
Amazon is taking advance orders for the book, which they say will be out at the end of August. I hear it'll be out in time for the Comic-Con International in July. Whenever it comes out, you'll want a copy of it.
This has been around the Internet for a while and I may even have linked to it long ago...but hey, there's gotta be someone visiting this site who hasn't seen it. I'm not a big fan of trained animal acts but sometimes, the animal seems to be enjoying it so much that that alone makes it fun to watch. The lady is named Carolyn Scott, the Golden Retriever is named Rookie and the clip runs a bit over two minutes...
I discussed this in the Las Vegas Guide section of this site which I've recently removed. Increasingly, shows in that there city are being done on a "four-wall" basis where the producer (or performer) rents the showroom from the casino. The Los Angeles Times has an article about this practice. I think you'll have to register to read it but so what?
Think Progress, a Liberal website, offers a rundown of significant events (and embarrassing quotes from the Bush administration) from the three years of the Iraq War.
I'd like to link to a more Conservative overview of the same period. Can someone suggest one?
It's long (12 minutes) and it has a lot of naughty words in it, and I've already embedded one video link here today. So I won't embed but will recommend this link to "Truth in Advertising," a very funny and incisive Canadian film about what goes on in your basic advertising agency. Much of it also goes on in television studios and movie companies, and some of it reminds me more of people I've dealt with at TV networks than in ad offices. And yes, that's Colin Mochrie of Whose Line Is It Anyway? among the cast members.
By the way — and by the way, have you noticed how often I say "by the way" on this website? — this might interest some of you. The video links I've been embedding in this weblog (meaning they play right on this page) so far are all from either Google Video or YouTube. They play here and on those sites via a player that employs Macromedia Flash to load and play a video file.
If you would like to capture any of these video files to your own harddisk, this can be done. Go to KeepVid and enter the direct URL (webpage address) in the appropriate place and it will decode the internecine links and format the file for your downloading pleasure — and it also works for many other websites that offer video clips. In some cases, what is saved to your computer will be an "FLV" file. That's a flash video format and in order to play it, you'll need to install a flash video player like this one. (MAC users: There are several out there that will work on your computers but I don't know which one is the best.)
Capturing online video clips is sometimes a good idea because you'll have them even after the link goes away. But you may also want to do it because clips will generally play smoother and without downloading pauses that way.
If you want to know what's going on with the issue of warrantless searches, you need to read this article in U.S. News and World Report. Basically, we have an executive branch that thinks "9/11 changed everything" with regard to any limits whatsoever on what the president can do if he says it's "national security." This, I believe, is known as The Nixon Doctrine.
The great thing about having a weblog like this is that if you ask a question, you get an answer. Of course, you get a lot of wrong answers but somewhere in there may be the correct one.
Last night before bed, I asked here if anyone could identify the background music being played when John Leader is introduced in the video to which I'd linked. This morning, my e-mailbox contains fourteen different answers from 31 people, including eight messages from folks who think it was the James Bond theme. (No, the video starts with that music. I was asking about the piece being played as John Leader is introduced.) Two people also thought the correct answer was "New York, New York" and three said it was the main theme from Chariots of Fire.
Eliminating the obvious wrongos, I went to the Amazon site, looked up the CDs of the other suggested answers, played a little of each and now I know. It's from the 1993 movie, Rudy, scored by Jerry Goldsmith. Thanks to Jim McClain, who was the only one of the thirty-one to send me that information.
Congratulations, Jim...and for the rest of you, we have lovely parting gifts and our thanks for playing Name That Background Music.
I linked to this once before but it's worth another peek. It's a trailer featuring five men who do voiceovers for movie trailers. They are Don LaFontaine, John Leader, Nick Tate, Mark Elliot and Al Chalk. (Oh — and there's a sixth trailer guy in this video...a brief phone call from Hal Douglas, who starred in our video link for yesterday.)
So enjoy it. And can someone identify for me the music heard in the background as John Leader is introduced? It's one of those "I know that tune but cannot place it" things.
If you've recently sent me the kind of e-mail that warrants a reply, you probably haven't received one. This is because I suddenly got deluged and busy at the same time. It's not because I'm snubbing you. I simply got a couple hundred messages in the last week and I'm not able to answer 'em as fast as they're arriving. I'll do what I can to get through the folder but I also have some deadlines to meet so some of your messages will languish a bit longer. Sorry.
It's about time I posted another one of those...and this time, it's harder. Many of you were able to pick out the phony website when it was one out of five choices. How will you do if you have nine real websites and only one spurious one? Well, let's see. You have to pick six of them before you get an offer from The Banker to buy your case and...oh, wait. That's a different game. This is There's No Such Website!
[NOTE: The links below to the real websites point to real websites. A site may be down or it may be so flooded with hits because of my linkage that you can't get to it. That does not mean it's the phony website. The link below to the phony website goes to a page on my site that tells you you've selected the phony website.]
The Museum of Coathangers - They hold your clothes. They mate in the closet when you're not looking. If you lock your keys in your car, you may even use one to get in. They're coathangers and someone has compiled a collection of their history.
Egg-Coddlers.com - They hold your eggs for coddling purposes. They...well, they don't really do anything else but if you need to have an egg coddled, they're indispensible. Here's a website devoted to them.
The Airsickness Bag Virtual Museum - Here's a collection that will make you sick. It's a gallery of those lovely bags they put in front of every seat in an airplane to remind you that it may not be a smooth ride.
Things My Girl Friend and I Have Argued About - Mil Millington and his companion Margaret sure argue about a lot of interesting things. One wonders if they argue about him putting these topics on a website and in a book.
Modern Mummification - You have nothing better to do today. Why not have yourself or a loved one mummified? It's one of those things you'll have forever.
I Hate Clowns - Do you hate clowns? Do you have nightmares about being surrounded by clowns? Then here's a website where you'll find people who feel the way you do. Includes online games where you get to punch and slap clowns.
I Hate Mimes - Do you hate mimes? Do you have nightmares about being surrounded by mimes? Then here's a website where you'll find people who feel the way you do. Includes online games where you get to punch and slap mimes.
AsnerCam - Two years ago, actor Ed Asner walked into a luggage repair shop in Culver City, California operated by Phil Willson. He never picked up the suitcase he left there and ever since, Phil's had a web camera trained on the door awaiting the return of Lou Grant.
Celebrities Yawning - Do celebrities bore you? Cause you to yawn? Well, here's a gallery of photos of famous people yawning. [CAUTION: Looking at this website may cause you to yawn.]
Watch Me Eat a Hot Dog - Want to watch people eating hot dogs? Then this is the site for you. [CAUTION: Looking at this website may cause you to want to eat a hot dog.]
This time around, thank Tony Isabella, Mike Dow, Bill Stiteler and Edward Douglas for all the suggestions of fake-sounding websites that aren't fake.
Back in this post, I reported that the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas had stopped accepting reservations for after April 15 and that a prominent demolition company had told a reporter that it was studying how to blow up the place. Things seem to have changed. The company that owns it was just acquired by another company, and they're now saying they need more time to plan what they're going to do. Reservations are now being taken for the rest of the year. What do you want to bet they keep it open until just after next year's Super Bowl? And that not a lot of money is spent on upkeep between now and then?
We all love voiceover actors, especially the select group of men (and one or two women) who have "trailer voices." These are the announcers who deliver a certain sound that is considered desirable for movie trailers. At the moment, the two most recognizable ones probably belong to Don LaFontaine and Hal Douglas. Don is based in Los Angeles and Hal is in New York, though they both do work for clients on both coasts. If you don't know what they sound like, here's a link to an MP3 demo recording of Don LaFontaine and here's a link to an MP3 demo of the work of Hal Douglas.
Tomorrow, I'll link to a video with Don and some other announcers in it. For now, here's a trailer that was done a couple years ago for the Jerry Seinfeld feature, Comedian. It contains not one second of the movie. Instead, it shows a voiceover guy (played by Hal Douglas) trying to record the trailer for the movie...
Tomorrow night (actually, Sunday morning) GSN's Black and White Overnight bloc will run two color episodes of What's My Line? One is from 1969, the other is from 1974 and on both, the Mystery Guest is Maureen Stapleton, who passed away a few days ago.
Then later Sunday, the channel is running a salute to the late Peter Tomarken. It consists of eighteen consecutive episodes of Press Your Luck, the first of which originally aired January 3, 1985. The marathon runs on GSN from 9 AM (Eastern time) to 6 PM.
It's possible this is Hollywood-urban legend, but it's in all of the TV Batman histories — and Adam West once confirmed it to me, personally — (Which might only mean, of course, as must always be taken into consideration when divining the lore of anything, that he had read the same stories...)
It's reported that just a few weeks after ABC cancelled the series, NBC called Twentieth-Century Fox, figuring that the show, weaker ratings or not, might be a nice fit for their 1968 Fall lineup. But the studio had already destroyed the sets and there was no way anyone wanted to pick up the tab for reconstruction...
Well then, NBC couldn't have wanted it very badly.
I have no first-hand info on what happened with Batman but these discussions are not uncommon, and their meaning is often inflated by those involved with the cancelled series. It takes a bit of the shame and failure out of the cancellation to say, "We almost got another year." What would be uncommon would be if NBC actually got to the point of making a genuine dollar offer.
My guess would be that what happened with Batman was that someone at NBC called Fox and said, if only to be sociable, "Just in case we have a hole to fill in our schedule, what would it run us for another season?" Fox already had 120 episodes of the show and was probably eager to get them into syndication so they could reap the benefit of past deficit-financing investments. Perhaps the sets had already been destroyed but as I recall, the Bat Cave was the biggie and it hadn't been too costly to build in the first place. I'd be more inclined to believe that even if there was some discussion, NBC wasn't all that serious about picking it up and Fox wasn't all that interested in keeping it going.
You may remember some time ago here, we were highly amused by the fact that Costco was selling original Picasso art. Well, it turns out they may not have been selling original Picasso art. Questions have been raised about the authenticity of the pieces and you can read all about the maybe-scandal at this link.
As mentioned here more often than its significance warrants, TiVo is discontinuing their lifetime service price. It was announced that last Wednesday was the cut-off date to sign up...but my spies inform me that the TiVo website is still processing orders. We know not how long this will last but one website claims the new cut-off date is April 15. I'm guessing they got a flood of last minute subscriptions and are enjoying the sudden cash flow.
Can anyone suggest a great website that lists all DVD releases by date, including the previous few months? I see lots of sites that will tell me what's coming out next week or the week after from the major distributors...but what if I want to look up what came out six weeks ago? And if I'd like to see some of the more obscure releases, too?
I didn't catch Neal Adams last night on the Coast to Coast radio show but I'm hearing today from several folks who did. They tell me that the conversation included some references to my old employer and friend Jack Kirby, and that a caller claimed that during World War II, Jack was a spy and that he spoke German and...
Well, I'm not sure exactly what the claim was. But don't believe it. Not true.
A bill has been introduced into Congress which would basically let the government eavesdrop on anyone at any time for any reason if the president thought it was necessary for "national security." There presently are no restrictions on who can be spied upon as long as the executive branch can demonstrate to a judicial oversight entity, either before or after the fact, that there's a reason for it. I don't know why this isn't enough for some people, even George W. Bush, but obviously it isn't.
My natural suspicion — which I admit is unsupported by any evidence so far — is that the White House has spied on a lot of Americans who are utterly unconnected to terrorist activity and for whom no judge would ever authorize surveillance. It might be as treacherous as Karl Rove wanting to tap the phones of political opponents or it might be overzealous or inept aides. This administration has certainly had an amazing history of bad aim and hitting the wrong targets. In any case, I suspect there'd be a full-blown, Nixon-like scandal if we ever knew whose phone calls have been monitored...so the Bush people need this kind of blanket "he can do anything he wants" law to avoid that.
Unfortunately, a lot of Americans have this attitude that we have to give the president every possible weapon he claims he needs to protect us or we'll all die. They've been led to believe (wrongly, as far as I can tell) that the existing arrangement stops the president's staff from listening in on calls to and from Al Qeada, or might stop it, or might somehow block something that would prevent another 9/11. I don't know why they think this...or even why they think, if the Bush administration did have such information, it would know what to do with it. The National Weather Service told them almost exactly what Hurricane Katrina would do to the Gulf Coast and we all saw how the Department of Homeland Security snapped into action on that one.
These folks are so terrified that they want to gut the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, authorize the president to spy on anyone he wants without accountability, and even make it retroactive to absolve him for what he did before the enactment of the law they're proposing. They aren't the majority but they may be hysterical enough to ram this one through the legislative process, threatening that anyone who opposes it is pro-terrorist or not serious about fighting them. (And by the way, why isn't that charge being hurled at all the Republicans who just defeated a proposal to spend more on port security?) Personally, I don't think any president should have that much unsupervised power and this one certainly hasn't earned that kind of trust.
For more on this new proposal, read this blog post by Glenn Greenwald. And then imagine what the Republicans would be saying if a Democratic president wanted the power that this bill would instill in our Chief Exec. I think we'd already be well past the stage where folks would be worried about losing the argument just because they introduced a Hitler analogy.
Might as well link to this one, too. Earlier this week, I subjected you to the excrutiating demo film that Batman TV producer William Dozier whipped up for a proposed Wonder Woman series. In 1967, the Batman crew made a seven minute short to spotlight Yvonne Craig as Batgirl.
There seems to be some question as to why this film was made. What I always heard was that the Batman show's ratings were down and ABC was considering cancellation of one or both half hours that ran each week. Trying to convince the network that the show still had life in it, Dozier went to New York and huddled with the DC Comics staff to discuss adding some new element to the world of the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder. What they came up with was the idea of introducing a new Batgirl character into the comic. Dozier then proposed to ABC that Batgirl could be added to the show and that this would make it worthy of renewal. The network folks were skeptical so the demo was made to show them how Batgirl could energize things, and how good Dozier's choice, Yvonne Craig, would be in the role. (Actress and former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley was reportedly set for the part before Dozier changed his mind. Ms. Mobley had a bad couple of years there, having just come equally close to the title role on The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.)
The Batgirl demo is a lot better than the Wonder Woman demo...but then, it would kind of have to be. It's really no better or no worse than what the Batman show had become...and there's some faint praise. The anemic villain in the demo, Killer Moth, was the antagonist in the issue of Detective Comics that introduced Batgirl. He suffered two back-to-back humiliations: Beaten by a girl and then he never got to actually appear on the series.
The short accomplished half its intended goal: ABC renewed Batman, though for once a week instead of twice, for what turned out to be the last season. Batgirl was cute but she did not alter the gimmick and formula of the show with which audiences had grown weary. Few hit programs ever wore out their welcome with the American audience as rapidly as Batman and though Ms. Craig's clinging tights brought a brief bump to the Nielsens, things settled back down pretty rapidly. The show seemed less interesting when it aired once a week, sans cliffhanger, and it also felt cluttered with the new character. The cancellation notice came halfway through its third season, in part because the studio behind it — Twentieth-Century Fox — wanted it that way. Airing once a week, Batman brought in half the revenue it had when it was on twice a week...but each episode cost a lot more than when they were making two at a time. Budget-slashing, of course, also didn't help things that final year...plus, it had stopped being the "hot" show on which big stars wanted to guest. The long-rumored Guest Villain appearance by Frank Sinatra might have boosted the numbers but it never happened.
Some histories say that Dozier's intention with what you're about to see (if you click) was to sell ABC on the idea of a spin-off Batgirl show. While the producer may have fantasized about another Bat-series, it doesn't seem likely that he thought it seemed likely; not with Batman ratings trending downward as they were. I think it was just an attempt to keep a sinking series afloat...and it did manage that, though not for long.
I was remiss in my blogging duties to not note the recent 85th birthday of Mad Magazine's Al Jaffee. He was born 3/13/21 but is still producing the monthly Mad Fold-In feature, which he's been doing for the magazine since 1964 with only the occasional month off.
Jaffee, according to the definitive book on people who've drawn for that silly publication, began his comic book career in 1941 at Quality Comics. He later became a writer-editor and occasional artist for Timely Comics and soon segued into a close relationship with Harvey Kurtzman, which led to him participating in some of Kurtzman's last issues of Mad as well as several post-Mad projects. It also led to him working for Kurtzman's successor at Mad, Al Feldstein, and becoming a mainstay of the magazine, first as a writer and later as a writer-artist. Along with the fold-in, he created the recurring feature, "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," which David Letterman has (actually) cited as a fine summation of all he does for a living.
Al is also a wonderful gentleman who loves to talk about comics and Mad and just about anything else. He is much loved by his colleagues and, of course, his readers too. And probably other people, as well, now that I think of it. It's hard not to like Al Jaffee, which is why no one's ever tried it.
Fortunately, though I forgot the guy's birthday, Stephen Colbert didn't. He did a nice little tribute to Al at the end of Monday night's The Colbert Report. He even displayed a cake decorated to read "Al...you have repeatedly shown artistry & care of great credit to your field. Love, Stephen Colbert."
Of course, when you remove the center section and push the left and right pieces together, it says something else.
A black theater group in New York has mounted a play called Kingfish, Amos and Andy that resurrects the characters from the old Amos and Andy TV show. One of these days, someone's going to put those old programs back on the air and everyone will wonder why they were ever taken off.
I've removed a section of this website...the one called Mark's Las Vegas Guide. I decided that since I haven't been to that town for a few years, its advice and reviews were way too far outta-date. I'll bring it back someday if I ever feel it's properly updated.
This is from last December. Nathan Lane appeared on Late Show With David Letterman and performed scenes from a forthcoming musical based on Brokeback Mountain. If Richard Rodgers hadn't died in 1979, this would have killed him...
Last week, the C-Span show Q & A had an hour-long interview with Keith Olbermann. I found it quite interesting. Whatever you think of Olbermann (and obviously, I like him a lot), he's been a pretty persistent and outspoken competitor in the businesses of sports and news broadcasting. I can't link directly to the video — and wouldn't, since it's an hour long — but if you want to watch it, it's viewable on this page. There's also a transcript there if you don't want to go the video route.
I think George W. Bush has been a disaster as a president but I also don't think much of moves to impeach or even censure him. Why? Well, censure seems like an excuse for not doing one's duty. If you think the guy really broke the law, you impeach. If he didn't break the law, you don't. Make up your mind, people. Which is it? If I'm accused of robbing a bank, I either go to prison or I don't. The judge is not going to split the difference and censure me.
But impeachment isn't much of an option, either...and it's interesting that most of the online articles that advocate this do not mention one unavoidable fact. It's that this guy Cheney is next in line. No one who wants to impeach Bush thinks Cheney would be an improvement so they just sidestep that little problem with their dream.
The problem the Democrats have, as I keep saying here, is that you can't beat something with nothing. Bush is at somewhere between 33% and 41% approval. I bet that number would drop at least ten points if his current supporters could see a viable alternative on the horizon. The trouble is that even most folks who think Bush is a terrible Chief Exec have trouble completing the sentence, "I would feel so much more confident with ______ in the White House" with a proper name. "Anyone else" is not a proper name. And even if we had a likely candidate, we have to wait until January of 2009 to inaugurate anyone who isn't currently in the presidential line of succession.
Face facts: We're stuck with Bush. Democrats should be running on the platform of "You need an opposition Congress to stop this guy." And they shouldn't be pretending that censure resolutions and talk of impeachments that aren't going to happen are the kind of opposition they're ready to supply.
Eighty years ago today, Joseph Levitch was born in Newark, New Jersey. He grew up — to the extent he grew up at all — to become one of the world's most beloved comedians, Jerry Lewis.
But he's a controversial beloved comedian. I know people who love him, people who hate him and people who feel some of both at the same time. It's not just the wide range of quality to his films or the way in one interview, he can ping-pong back and forth between humility and arrogance. There's just something electric about the man...something that makes him fascinating to watch.
In 1995, Jerry made his Broadway debut playing the devil in a revival production of Damn Yankees. My friend Paul Dini and I snagged tickets for his opening night and it was well worth the time 'n' trouble. The audience, packed with Lewis fans, gave him a huge ovation when he made his first appearance, popping up on an elevator from a hole in the stage. They gave him an even bigger ovation at the end when he took his bow, which he followed with a lovely, modest curtain speech. In between, they cheered and laughed at everything, but especially when he did something that just screamed, "JERRY LEWIS!!!" — a move, a reaction, even one "Hey, laydeeee" that somehow made its way into the dialogue. The star power was incandescent and I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget that evening.
As mentioned here, I saw Mr. Lewis speak recently. He looked in remarkably good shape, not only for a man his age but for one who's been through a chilling array of medical problems. To add to the list of things that make him special, you have the way he's defied all odds and the calendar. Throughout his life and career, he always told people he was six years old and it seems to be working.
By the way: Every history of Mr. Lewis, including those he authored, gives his birth name as Joseph. A few years ago, a devout Lewis fan checked the 1930 census data and found that it listed the son of Daniel and Rachael Levitch as Jerome. Could have been a mistake or it could have been his real moniker...who knows? I just think he's always been Jerry Lewis and always will be. It's nice to have one around.
A few weeks ago here — here, in fact — we were talking here about how the Monty Python TV series made its way onto American television. Here's a relevant relic: A videotape from a pledge break on the PBS station in Dallas. It's from 1975 and it's not complete but it's a rare interview from that era with Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman. As you'll see, it ends abruptly as Terry Jones is about to explain about "Owl Stretching Time," which was an early but rejected name for the series but you might enjoy what comes before...
Ever listen to George Noory's radio program, Coast to Coast? That's the one that always seems to have someone on who's convinced that robots are stealing their luggage or that shifting glaciers will soon be running us all down on the freeways. On tonight's broadcast, a featured guest will be comic book legend Neal Adams, who will (I assume) be discussing his theories about the construction of our universe. You can see some of them presented with impressive graphics at Neal's website.
I've got to run out to a recording session of my own (they're doing commentary tracks and special features for the forthcoming release of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons on DVD) so I haven't the time to research this better. But I think you can either listen live to the radio show at this website or hear it archived there after the fact. You can also probably turn on your radio but that's the low-tech way to do it. Thanks to Todd Bowland for the Head's Up on this.
Ladies...are you tired of cleaning corners? Or being cornered by some lecherous acquaintance? Then maybe you need to live in a round building.
And soon, that may be possible. The historic Capitol Records building, located not far from Hollywood and Vine in Hollywood, California is up for sale and the interested parties are all talking Condo Conversion. Designed by Wilson Becket and built in 1956 as the home of the most powerful record company on the west coast, it was intended to resemble a stack of records...reportedly, a suggestion made by Nat King Cole, who recorded for the label. For a long time there, you either recorded for Capitol or you just quite weren't in the music business.
The 13-story building always kind of said "Hollywood." In fact, there's a red light atop the building that blinks on and off all night, spelling out "Hollywood" in Morse Code — a fact known only to any very old telegraph operators who happen to wander by. It's a structure that has been much photographed and of course, whenever anyone makes a movie about a disaster in Los Angeles, it's one of the first things we see destroyed.
I guess I'm glad no one is proposing its implosion. There are precious few things in Hollywood worth snapping a picture of, and tourists are always disappointed that the physical area is so lacking in glamorous sights. I don't think I ever walked through the intersection of Hollywood and Vine without noticing some outta-towners with cameras standing there and muttering, "This is it?" I used to think the Chamber of Commerce should hire a good Marilyn Monroe impersonator and have her stand there over a grate with air blowing up her skirt...just to give shutterbugs something to shoot. But at least the Capitol Records building was just up the street, and it looks like it'll remain that way. So the tourists will have something to take pictures of, and all they'll have to do is explain to their children what a "record" was.
Paul Krugman makes the case that John McCain, the Republican that even Democrats like, is not much different from the Republicans that Democrats don't like.
I hope you're enjoying these. Today, we link to a one minute commercial for a company called EDS. This is a great commercial in the sense that it's well-shot and funny and memorable. It may be a bad commercial because I have no idea what they're selling or who they think they're selling it to. But now, experience the tale of the Cat Herders...
Last night, David Letterman's show with Howard Stern discussing the lawsuit CBS has filed against him got a 4.2 rating whereas Jay Leno, with no big guests, got a 4.9. That's got to be disappointing for the Letterman people, especially since Monday is usually one of their strongest nights. Perhaps it was because CBS barely mentioned Stern in the promos for the show but I don't think that was it. I think it was because America doesn't care about outrageously wealthy people and companies suing each other.
Stern has a problem. It's one that we'd all love to have but it is a problem: His money has become too conspicuous. Johnny Carson used to wince when guests remarked on how much money he had. It was fine to make fun of his suits or his monologue bombing or even his many divorces. But when they mentioned that he was the highest-paid performer in television, they made it that much harder for him to keep audiences liking him, as opposed to resenting him, and laughing at remarks about the things that annoy us all. It was funny for a while there when Johnny was kvetching about how he'd gotten stuck with a DeLorean automobile that didn't run and which no one wanted to buy. It was a little less funny if you remembered that Johnny was making enough money to buy five new cars a week.
The last time I heard Howard Stern on the radio, he was complaining about all the potholes in New York City streets. Once upon a time, this kind of talk was articulating the gripes and concerns of his listeners. But now there's been so much written about his contracts and deals that there must be people thinking, "Poor Howard...has to ride over a few potholes on his way to get paid a few million dollars a week for talking airhead strippers into taking their clothes off for him." At some point, a multi-millionaire complaining about little things sounds very much like Marie Antoinette or Leona Helmsley. People who can't afford to pay off their Visa cards sit there muttering, "What are you bitching about?" A lot of people, I gather, listen to Stern because they think, "He's one of us." Well, he won't be "one of us" for long if people keep getting reminded that he makes more money in one day than they'll see in five years.
This is for those of you interested in comic book history: Run, do not walk, to this link where Ken Quattro has written the definitive article on the long-defunct comic book company, St. John. Actually, that's faint praise since there have been so few articles about the firm so let me ratchet up the compliment a bit: It's a terrific, well-researched article on a publisher about which little has been known. Unlike a great many outfits that vanished and left no remnants behind, St. John published titles which other companies grabbed onto, and material which others later reprinted. The work for them by Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer alone guaranteed a high standard for the firm and many other titles lived up to that standard.
There's a lot of wonderful "scholarship" (I'm using that word loosely) being done these days about comic book history — much of it, alas, begun after too many of the participants have passed away. I'm sure glad someone decided to research St. John, and Ken did a first-rate job of it.
Here at news from me, one of our recurring complaints about network television is when they lie about start and stop times. If you TiVoed Deal or No Deal last night, you lost the last three or four minutes of the show. It was supposed to run from 8:00 to 8:59 but it actually ended around 9:03. This was not a huge loss since they were in the middle of a game. But if they'd been at the end, it might have been like sitting through an entire murder mystery and then getting robbed of the scene that tells you whodunnit.
I'm still a little fuzzy on why they think this helps their ratings. Let's say you're watching Deal or No Deal on NBC. It's followed by The Apprentice but you'd planned to switch over to Fox after Deal or No Deal and watch 24. When you do, because of the overage, you find you've missed the first few minutes of 24. Is the idea here that you'll go, "Shucks. Well, I don't want to watch this now so I might as well switch back to NBC and watch The Apprentice"? Do people actually think that way and switch back? Especially since in the process, they've probably also missed the first minute or so of The Apprentice"?
Or are they presuming you won't even switch at all; that you'll get to the end of Deal or No Deal, look at your watch and realize 24 has already started so you might as well stay put? I don't recall ever watching TV with an eye on the clock. I figure that when one show ends, the next ones are just beginning. Is the idea here to eventually disabuse America of that presumption? If so, to what end?
Is there evidence that this fudging of start and end times works? I'm trying to think what kind of testing or surveys a network could conduct to determine if this helps or hurts them. It seems pretty obvious it can only piss off folks who TiVo or tape a show for later viewing. How might it help the ratings enough with those who watch live to more than make up for that?
I asked one network person a few months ago and got back a shrug and an "I dunno." It may be that it's all anecdotal; that there's no proof it helps but it's been tried and some ratings are good, so someone sees a connection. Television programming is the most inexact of sciences, and there have been plenty of seemingly-successful strategies that turned out to be silly superstitions. This one may rank up there with rubbing a rabbit's foot, kissing a horseshoe or even hiring Tom Arnold to star in a new sitcom.
Here's a fuzzy video clip of Peter Tomarken from Press Your Luck. What happened on this episode was that a wrong answer was given to a question about Warner Brothers cartoon characters. The producers realized the mistake during the taping and since the game had run short and they had time to fill, they arranged for a phone call from Mel Blanc to correct the record. Let's go to the videotape...
More details are emerging about the plane crash this morning that claimed the lives of Press Your Luck host Peter Tomarken and his wife. The plane was on a mission for Angel Flight West, a non-profit organization which provides free air transportation for people with medical needs. The Tomarkens were on their way to San Diego to pick up a man who needed to get to UCLA Medical Center.
This article in USA Today says that Tomarken was piloting the plane. Some of the other news stories (like this one) have muddy language that suggests that a third person, whose body has not yet been found, was the pilot. In any case, the plane was registered to Tomarken and he and his wife were on board.
So not only did the Tomarkens die, they appear to have died while performing a volunteer act of charity. Which of course just makes a sad event even sadder.
Game show host Peter Tomarken and his wife Kathleen were killed this morning when a small airplane crashed just off the Pacific Coast, apparently due to engine trouble. Here's an article with the few other details that are currently available. Mr. Tomarken was 63 years old.
He had a background in magazines (he was an editor at Women's Wear Daily and Business Week, among others) which led him into advertising. Soon, he went from producing commercials to appearing in them and that led him into the world of game show hosting. He was best known from Press Your Luck, a popular CBS game show from 1983 to 1986 which still reruns on GSN. He also presided over Hit Man, Bargain Hunters, Wipeout and several other quiz programs, and did occasional acting jobs, usually as a TV news reporter. For a time, he was the host of a show on The Playboy Channel and a frequent emcee of infomercials. I thought he was always a classy and clever presence on my television, and the one time we met made me believe he was that way in real life, as well. He had a wicked sense of humor and would probably appreciate all remarks about him hitting the Ultimate Whammy today.
Today's video link is to a demo film, a little under five minutes in length, that was made in 1967 to try and sell a Wonder Woman TV show to ABC. Its producer, William Dozier, already had a hit on that network with the Adam West Batman series and he locked up a number of other comic book (or comic book-ish) properties to see if he could make lightning strike again. He couldn't. Not with this effort, not with a half-hour Dick Tracy pilot he produced, not with several others that never got anywhere near a camera lens. The only other show he was able to sell was The Green Hornet and it didn't last long.
The short Wonder Woman demo was written by Stanley Ralph Ross and the team of Larry Siegel and Stan Hart. That's right: It took three men to write this.
Stanley was concurrently writing many episodes of Batman. He later claimed — and I'm not sure I believe him — that he hated the idea that Dozier had of making Wonder Woman into a broad sitcom about a drab lady who imagines herself as the more beautiful, exciting Wonder Woman. On the other hand, eight years later, after ABC had commissioned and passed on another Wonder Woman pilot (the one starring Cathy Lee Crosby), they bought a very faithful adaptation of the comic book, the pilot of which was written by...Stanley Ralph Ross. Stanley developed the Lynda Carter version and claimed it was the way he'd wanted to handle the property all along. So maybe he did.
Stan Hart and Larry Siegel were a fairly new comedy writing team at the time. Shortly after this project, they were hired for The Carol Burnett Show, where they worked for many years and won many awards. They also wrote a lot for (and may still occasionally appear in) Mad Magazine.
In what you'll see if you're brave enough to click on the link below, Diana Prince is played by a woman named Ellie Wood Walker, who had few credits and who, I guess, was television's idea of an unattractive woman. On TV, it's okay for a lady to play someone who can't get a man as long as she's pretty enough. Portraying her alter-ego — the beautiful version of W.W. — was Linda Harrison, who was then the actress cast in every role at Twentieth-Century Fox that called for someone stunning but didn't have much dialogue. The same year, she played "Miss Stardust" in A Guide for the Married Man. The year after, she was Nova in Planet of the Apes. And the year after that, they stuck her in my favorite trashy TV melodrama of the sixties, Bracken's World where, amazingly, she was allowed to talk. She did fine.
Her nagging mother was Maudie Prickett, who managed to turn up at one time or another in just about every sitcom in the sixties. Narration was supplied by William Dozier himself, filling the same job he'd hired himself for on the Batman show.
Why didn't his version of Wonder Woman sell? Well, watch it and see. What's usually the case when a network commissions a brief demo film instead of a full pilot is either (a) they have so much faith in the premise and creative team that they don't feel the need to waste the time or money...or (b) they have so little faith in the project that, though they've been pressured into giving it a try before the cameras, they don't want to waste the time or money. Guess which was the case this time.
In July of '76, the satellite Viking Orbiter 1 sent back photos from the surface of the planet Mars, one of which seemed to suggest a face. This article by Richard C. Hoagland notes that in 1958, in a comic book called Race for the Moon, Jack Kirby drew a story called "The Face on Mars" that bears more than a slight similarity to what the satellite photographed eighteen years later. This is not the first time this kind of thing has been noticed in Jack's work and they're probably all coincidences...but they sure remind me of the many times Jack was unquestionably ahead of his time.
Yesterday, I posted that the name of Howard Stern had mysteriously disappeared from David Letterman's guest list for Monday night. Earlier today, I posted that I was told that Stern would be on.
What seems to have happened here is that the CBS website had Vin Diesel up as the main guest for Monday. This was wrong or outdated, but it caused several Internet sources to think that a change had been made and they adjusted their listings accordingly. But nothing had changed. The website was just wrong.
The CBS website has now been updated to reflect that Mr. Stern is on with Letterman on Monday night. So apparently, he was never off. It was just a false alarm.
Over at the Chicago Tribune, they have a nice profile on "local boy" Tom Dreesen. Tom's a great stand-up comedian and one of the nicest, most ethical guys I've ever encountered in the business. You'll have to register to read the article, which was pointed out to me by Bruce Reznick.
I am hearing from one source that Howard Stern will be on with Letterman tomorrow night. His name has vanished from some online program listings but that may not be accurate.
I mentioned these before (back here) but we now have cover art and Amazon links for two forthcoming DVDs collecting Laurel and Hardy movies. As Laurel and Hardy movies are just about my favorite things on film, I'm quite happy about this and want to see them do well so there'll be more releases. Neither of these sets really includes their finest efforts and we'd sure like to see those make it to good DVD releases soon.
Coming out in May: TCM Archives - The Laurel and Hardy Collection, a set that includes The Devil's Brother, Bonnie Scotland and some extras, including trailers, excerpts from other features, a documentary on short films, and commentary tracks by Leonard Maltin and Dick Bann. The Devil's Brother is the best thing on either of these DVD sets...a very fine period comedy with our heroes getting involved with a dashing highwayman.
And coming out any day now: The Laurel and Hardy Giftset, a collection that includes Great Guns, Jitterbugs and The Big Noise, plus trailers, some short promotional films, and commentary tracks by Randy Skretvedt. I'm not sure why this is a "giftset" and the three films are from the later, declining period of Stan and Ollie when they made films for Twentieth-Century Fox. But even weak Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy so I'm getting this one, too. (There will be a Volume Two later this year with their other three films for Fox — The Dancing Masters, The Bullfighters and A-Haunting We Will Go. The ones on the first volume are better.)
As usual, Amazon is offering a package deal where you can buy both sets together and save, save, save.
So here's the big question: One of these DVDs is from Warner Home Video. The other is from Fox Home Video. Is it just a coincidence that the designers at both studios picked almost the same type font, out of thousands and thousands of possible choices, for the names of Laurel and Hardy on the two covers? I'm assuming it is since I can't think of any reason for them to have coordinated such a thing...and if they did, the fonts would be exactly the same, wouldn't they?
It's the video that was made for the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington during Bill Clinton's final year in office. The short was directed by Phil Rosenthal, who was behind Everybody Loves Raymond, and it was intended to answer the question of what the outgoing president was doing all day. As such, it generally pleased both those who liked Clinton and those who enjoyed seeing him go. You probably fall into one of those two categories so you might enjoy it. Runs about six minutes.
The conversation was a bit more interesting on this week's installment of Real Time With Bill Maher — the episode that debuted last Friday night and repeats throughout the week — but I'm still not enjoying it as much as I did last season.
There's a curious exchange with Maher, Larry Miller, Gloria Steinem and Ramesh Ponnuru. Miller, who is more or less pro-Bush, is making the argument that wiretaps are necessary because, you know, we might hear someone planning another terrorist attack and be able to stop it. This is a reasonable point but it's also, insofar as I can tell, not in dispute.
Miller further insists that time might be of the essence and that there might not be time to go before a judge and get a warrant. And for some reason, no one else on the show says, "Larry, haven't you read anything about this? There's a provision in the law that says they don't have to wait for a warrant if there's insufficient time for that. They can wiretap and then apply for the warrant up to 72 hours later." Maher is usually sharp about this kind of thing but he doesn't point that out. He's not the only person muddying the issue, which is not about whether wiretaps might be a useful tool in protecting America. The point of actual contention is whether the president can or should be able to order wiretaps without any supervision by the F.I.S.A. court, either before or after the fact. How about if someone tries debating that?
The New York Times has an article up about Alan Moore and his various battles with DC Comics and with the folks who have made (or tried to make) motion pictures out of his graphic novels.
We were talking here recently about product placement in TV shows and movies. This got me to thinking about the first time I was ever conscious of this in a program I watched. Kids' shows of the fifties and sixties were filled with commercials that merged almost seamlessly with content but there were the more blatant crossings of that imaginary dividing line. One occurred a couple times on Quick Draw McGraw. Quick Draw occasionally employed the services of a bloodhound named Snuffles who had a "thing" for dog biscuits. Give him one and he'd hug himself in delight, then literally float up in the air and down to earth, breathing a sigh of ecstatic fulfillment.
And what kind of dog biscuits evoked this reaction from Quick Draw's pooch? Why, Gro-Pup T-Bone Dog Biscuits, of course. Above, you see Snuffles holding a box of them in a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon — and this is not a commercial. This is a frame-grab from a cartoon. Anyone here think it was probably just a coincidence that Gro-Pups were manufactured by the Kellogg's cereal people, and Kellogg's was the sponsor of Quick Draw McGraw? Didn't think so. In fact, in at least one cartoon, the box wasn't a hand-drawn abstract like the above but an actual, pasted-in photo of the real Gro-Pup box. This was shortly before Augie Doggie, another character on the Quick Draw show, began turning up on the Gro-Pup boxes in stores.
I actually noticed this shameless bit of payola when I saw the show at age eight. It did not make me want to run out and buy that brand of dog biscuits, possibly because we didn't have a dog. But I did think it was cheating and I still do.
As you may have heard, CBS is suing Howard Stern, who is retaliating with some pretty scathing comments about CBS head honcho Les Moonves. A lot of folks were wondering what Howard, who was scheduled to be a guest with David Letterman on Monday night, would say there...and how Dave, who is said to be a close friend of Moonves, would respond.
If they're ever to find out, it won't be on Monday. The name of Howard Stern has suddenly disappeared from Letterman's guest list and that of Vin Diesel has mysteriously appeared in its stead.
We will hear more about this. Whether we want to or not.
Sometimes, I don't link to something because everyone else on the 'net seems to be doing so, and I figure that by the time you get to this site, you've seen it. But then, dozens and dozens of people send me the link as if I'm unaware of it. That's happening with this video that re-creates the opening of The Simpsons in live-action...though with a lot of CGI in there. So I'm posting it just to save you all the time of writing me to tell me about it. In case you're wondering who made it and why, here's that explanation. And here's the video link...
There's a quote making the rounds from Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair. It seeks to answer the question of why George W. Bush always sounds like he's talking to an audience of very small children...
He speaks to the audience as if they're idiots. I think the reason he does that is because that's the way these issues were explained to him.
There may be some truth to that but I'd like to throw out another thought. I think powerful, successful people cling to certain management styles and techniques that have worked for them in the past. When Michael Dukakis was defeated in his presidential bid, someone asked him why, when it was obvious the last week or so that he was not going to win, he didn't try something different. His answer, and I think this is more typical than not, is that when you're in a crunch is not the time to abandon all the things that got you as far as they did. Especially in crisis situations, most folks' tendency is to retreat to the methods of past successes, even though what worked then and there might not apply here and now.
I saw some old footage on C-Span a week or two ago of Bush in his Texas governor days. I can see why this guy got elected. He had a skill for simplifying issues down to the point where they sounded like his position was the only moral or intelligent option. It may not have been an intellectually honest approach, painting the opposing path as something it was not, but there was always an edge of humility to it. He laid out his case as if the choice was more important than he was, and it didn't sound condescending, didn't make him sound like a Kindergarten teacher. Maybe it's just that as he's gotten more powerful (and in his mind, I'm sure, more successful), the humble part of that has gotten harder and harder to retain.
There are still some people out there who admire the man's tenacity and cocksuredness. Having occasionally suffered at the hands of people who were absolutely sure of their direction, long after open minds would have realized they were going the wrong way, I don't find that as admirable as some do. A lot of people say Bush doesn't care about the polls and that he's sure history will vindicate him as having done the right thing in Iraq. I don't think there's ever been a politician who didn't care about the polls, if only because bad polling numbers make it more difficult to accomplish one's objectives. I'm more inclined to view Bush as a gambler who got lucky for a time with a system...and now that he's losing, all he knows how to do is bet more on that system.
In our never-ending quest to spend all your money, we're going to recommend two new DVDs of less famous Buster Keaton material. Both have been assembled with uncommon care and consideration, and both give you a chance to see Buster when he wasn't at the top of his form (or budgets) but still with flashes of the grand Keaton style.
Buster Keaton - 65th Anniversary Collection gives you the ten short comedies he made from Columbia between 1939 and 1941. Buster's career had fallen to the point where the man who'd once made The General now had the same job (and directors) as the Three Stooges. Compared to Keaton at his peak, the shorts are disappointing. Then again, compared to Keaton at his peak, almost every comedy film is disappointing. In these shorts, you can see Buster often rise above his material and production values, and the DVD is a first-rate package with good transfers and plenty of historical extras.
Industrial Strength Keaton is a collection of Buster's oddments and leftovers — a few of his shorts, some promotional films, a number of his appearances on early television and a load of the commercials he made in the late fifties and early sixties. Some devoted Keaton fans dug all this stuff up and wrapped it in informative commentaries, and while it's no substitute for Buster's best work (this stuff), it's a nice add-on for the devotee of the man's talents.
The above titles link to Amazon pages where you can buy the two DVDs for (at the moment) $19.86 and $18.99 respectively. Note that each page currently has one of those great Amazon package deals. This one lets you buy them both at the same time for $38.85, a savings of...well, let me call up my little on-screen calculator and do the complicated math on this for you. Aha! Yes, as I expected, it's a terrific savings of absolutely nothing. Well, I guess it saves you a couple of mouse clicks. In any case, Buster is worth it.
The L.A. Times has a nice article on pin-up queen Bettie Page...though for some reason, the name of the artist most responsible for her "rediscovery" — Dave Stevens — is unmentioned.
Mitchell Anthony produces and hosts Creating Success, a widely heard podcast that interviews successful creative people about how they do what they do. The guest on his latest installment belies the premise...which is a coy way of saying it's me. If you're an iTunes person, you can hear this show (it runs about ten minutes) at this link. If you're not, here's a link to a plain ol' MP3 download. We mainly discuss what it's like these days to try to break into writing or drawing comic books.
Woody Allen's years as a stand-up comedian are covered in a BBC radio special you can listen to by clicking here. It's about 23 minutes and includes comments from Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Dom DeLuise and others. BBC radio shows often do not remain on the website for long so if you want to listen, don't dawdle. And if you enjoy it, don't thank me. Thank Shelly Goldstein, who sent me the link.
If you've been thinking of buying a TiVo, their lifetime service deal is about to go away. No firm cut-off date has been announced but TiVo dealers are saying that the rumored date is March 15, which is next week. After that, you won't be able to buy lifetime service for any amount of money and certainly not for the current price of $299.
To make sure we're clear on this: When you get lifetime service, it's one machine's lifetime, not your lifetime. When TiVo originally started, they didn't make this clear so they allowed a lot of us early subscribers to transfer our lifetime subscriptions to another machine...once. It can no longer be transferred.
$299 is a great deal if you're going to keep your TiVo twenty-four months or more. I've had two of mine for more than four years and will surely be using at least one for another year or two. If I'd been paying by the month for those two machines, I'd have spent around $700 on each for the service.
A few years ago, there was little question that you would keep a TiVo for more than two years. Today, it's a bit more arguable. The current Series 2 TiVo machines do not handle Hi-Def. The Series 3 machines, which will allegedly be out at the end of the year, will have that capability, as well as the capacity to record two shows at once and there'll be other nifty features, as well. The grapevine suggests, however, that the Series 3 TiVos will lack certain existing features like multi-room viewing, which is the ability to transfer shows from a TiVo in one room to a TiVo in another, assuming you have two TiVos and that you have them networked. If you're thinking you might dump your Series 2 TiVo for a Series 3, lifetime service might not be such a peachy idea. On the other hand, it might be very easy to sell that Series 2 TiVo with lifetime service to someone who doesn't care about High Def.
So the decision's yours. All I'm saying is that if you're going to get lifetime service, you'd better get it now. You have to have the serial number for your TiVo and then order the service from the TiVo website.
You know, for all the touting I do of their products here, you'd think I owned stock in TiVo...but I don't. Maybe I should because one of these days — who knows? — the company might even start showing a profit.
I seem to be on a Google Video kick all of a sudden. Here's a video clip of a high-speed freeway pursuit from Oklahoma that I always thought was remarkable — one of those things that if you saw it in a movie, you'd think was hokey. Click on the little arrow to watch it. It's about two and a half minutes.
In 1972, there was a summer replacement TV series on ABC called The Ken Berry "Wow" Show. I don't understand the name either but that's not important right now. What is important is that someone (not me) is looking for video of this forgotten series to include in an upcoming TV special. If you have any episodes, drop me a line and I'll forward it to the appropriate party.
I swear I didn't retouch this in any way. It's up on the CNN website at the moment (here) and I thought at first I'd made a wrong click and wound up at The Onion. In case you don't get it, the "quack" story is about how some are saying Bush is becoming a lame duck president. That's bad enough but to put it next to a story about Bird Flu...
You know, it can be dangerous to quack around the White House. You might get shot by Dick Cheney.
I often read The Huffington Post but I hadn't realized until the other day that my friend Bob Elisberg is now among their gaggle of pundits. He has three columns up so far and I can recommend them all to you. Here's a link to his page there.
The other day, we were talking here about product placement, where some company pays to have its product displayed in a scene in a TV show or movie. Michael A. Burstein clues me in to this website, which is for a company that digitally inserts products into such material as part of sponsored placement deals.
As I've been been saying for years, I'm waiting for the day they can digitally take George Lazenby out of On Her Majesty's Secret Service and replace him with Sean Connery. Oh — and while you're at it, I'd like Carol Channing in Hello Dolly, Angela Lansbury in Mame, Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof, Peter Sellers in every Pink Panther movie that didn't have Peter Sellers, and W.C. Fields in the title role of The Wizard of Oz. Somebody get right on these.
Here's an auction you might not want to miss. I can already hear Star Trek fans emptying their bank accounts. (Thanks to Rowby Goren for calling it to my attention.)
This website reports that a study released by the Motion Picture Association of America says that last year's box office receipts were down 7.9% from the year before. This website reports that the ratings on last Sunday's Academy Awards telecast were down 8% from the year before. Anyone think this is a coincidence?
A couple of times in the seventies, I trucked out to the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills to visit Larry Fine, the oft-mauled "middle" member of the Three Stooges. Larry was recovering from a stroke and he welcomed company and a chance to tell his anecdotes, of which he had about a dozen. No matter what you asked him, he told you the same twelve stories. In fact, the second time I was there, he told me one yarn three times. The question everyone apparently put to him was "Did you ever get injured making those movies?" and he'd developed a little five minute monologue/reply that you'd hear if you asked him what time it was.
He also introduced me to other old actors who were living out there, most notably a woman named Babe London who was "the fat girl" in countless films, including some with Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy. Ms. London was thrilled that I knew who she was and she'd try to hijack my visits with Larry, diverting the conversation to her dozen anecdotes, which Larry was thoroughly sick of hearing. So I'd just sit there while she tried to tell me for the third time about being falsely accused of having an affair with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle while Larry would impatiently wait for her to finish so he could tell me for the fifth time about him getting a quill pen stuck in his forehead in one film.
Neither of them was much good for history beyond the little collection of oft-told tales. When I got to speak, which wasn't often, I'd ask something like, "What was Charley Chase like?" And since neither Babe nor Larry had a good Charley Chase story, they'd both say, "He was great." And then Babe would quickly start telling me the Fatty Arbuckle story again while Larry would try to interrupt and tell me one more time about the quill pen. Or if I asked something that actually did jog either's memory, it would suddenly turn into a scene from The Sunshine Boys...
"We had this prop man at Columbia named Tommy Blake..."
"Tommy Blake didn't work for Columbia. He was over at Republic."
"Like hell he was. I used to see him every time I drove on the lot at Columbia and I'd always say, 'Hi, Tommy!'"
"Well, I don't know who you were saying hello to at Columbia because Tommy Blake was at Republic. That's where I said hi to him."
"When did you ever work for Republic?"
In 1973, Larry's autobiography was published. It was called A Stroke of Luck and it's very rare these days. I once turned down $500 for my copy of what may well be the worst-written celebrity autobiography ever. Its other two distinctions are that (a) it probably holds the world's record for the most typographical errors ever in one volume and (b) you rarely see anyone unintentionally get so many of the details of his own life wrong.
I'll tell you how bad it is. If it was about someone else, you'd read a few pages of it and say, "Who wrote this? One of the Three Stooges?"
What's really odd about it is that as per its title, the book tries to view the story of Larry's stroke — the one that put him in a hospital for the rest of his life and took away his ability to walk — as a good thing. I can certainly understand trying to put a positive spin on bad news and can admire the tenacity involved in living with it and overcoming as much of it as can be overcome. But the book is so clumsily authored that at times, it's like Larry's saying, "Thank God I had that stroke...best thing that ever happened to me...you oughta try it."
The book is Larry's autobiography and it's written in the first person, as if by him. But the cover says "by James Carone" on it and there's an author photo of Mr. Carone on the back of the dust jacket. I don't know who Mr. Carone is or was, other than that he seemed to believe that you should never write eight words in a row without inserting at least four commas in there someplace. He even invented a whole new kind of punctuation where you put two or three commas in a row. But he took down Larry's memories and somehow managed to pry more than the usual twelve stories out of him. I suppose we should be grateful that he got as much history as he did out of the Center Stooge. Certainly, a lot of later books about the Stooges have unearthed a couple of true details of Larry's life buried somewhere amidst the errors and commas of Stroke of Luck.
There was a later biography of Larry (entitled simply Larry) by his brother, Morris "Moe" Feinberg, that compensated some for the shortcomings of Larry's book. And now, two very good authors — Stephen Cox and Jim Terry — have written a new book that I'm looking forward to. It's called One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures and it looks quite well researched and exhaustive. We just may have that definitive Larry Fine biography we've all been waiting for.
Before I leave this topic, I feel like I should include one other memory. I mention it elsewhere on this site but one of the oddest things I ever saw on television was on the local CBS News the evening after Larry died. They hurried a camera crew over to Moe's house to get his reaction and Moe — big surprise — was just devastated. He was crying and having trouble forming words as he talked about Larry and said, "He was like a brother to me...I loved him so...he was my best friend..." And as he spoke, they cut to old footage of Moe breaking pottery over his best friend's head, running a saw across his best friend's scalp and ripping large handfuls of hair out of his best friend's skull. Now, that's friendship.
Here's a link to a video of a cat and a chicken. Go there if you'd like to see a video of a cat and a chicken. This is for those of you who like videos of a cat and a chicken.
My thanks to Carolyn Kelly for calling my attention to the video of the cat and a chicken. I've always wanted to link to a video of a cat and a chicken. Now, I can.
Our friends at TiVo have announced "narrower fourth quarter losses," which I guess is a good sign, though not as good as actually showing a profit some day might be. They've also announced a new pricing structure which would basically give you your TiVo box for free if you committed to a long-term service contract. You can do the math on this yourself and see how good a deal this is. Of greatest interest is the statement that they're doing away with the lifetime price of $299...which I guess you have to do if you want people to pay $369 for a two-year contract.
The way it worked was that you'd buy your TiVo machine and then if you paid $299, you'd have lifetime service on that machine for as long as it still ran. This was not only a good deal, it was an incentive to keep that TiVo machine up and operating as long as possible instead of purchasing a new one. When my office TiVo seemed to be wearing out, I took it to these people and they installed a new hard disk — two, actually — and extended the lifetime of the machine with lifetime service. If the option of lifetime service on a new TiVo is going away, that may make me really try to keep this one going. It may also make some people want to sign up for it in a hurry, though many may not; not with the new Series 3 TiVo machines promised for later this year.
Also, TiVo has announced a new arrangement with Verizon where if you're a Verizon subscriber, you'll be able to program your TiVo from your cell phone. This article will tell you more about it, though it omits the fact that this service will cost five bucks a month.
The Writers Guild of America, of which I am a loyal but oft-bewildered member, is on a campaign against product placement in TV shows and movies. To that end, they've been producing a number of parody videos that illuminate the problem. You might want to visit the website they've set up to tackle this, see the videos and read up on it. I personally think the WGA has more pressing concerns but I do agree that people should be made aware of how many commercials they're getting shoved down their gullets...and often in more subtle ways than they imagine.
Here's a nice article on Jeannie Schulz, widow of Charles, who now manages his legacy and a very lovely museum up in Santa Rosa.
My pal Sergio and I went there a few years ago and got the grand tour, including Jeannie taking us across the street and showing us the skating rink, which I loved. I also liked the fact that in the Schulz Museum, there are Peanuts strips printed on the tiles that ring the men's room. You're not supposed to take photos inside the building but I was alone in there.
Mainly though, I enjoyed meeting Jeannie. Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and all the rest couldn't be in better hands.
I'm not sure who's had a harder time of it lately: The northern spotted owl or the independent bookseller. Both seem to be teetering on the brink of extinction.
Non-chain bookstores have had a one-two punch. A few years ago, big chains like Crown Books and Brentano's began doing to them what Wal-Marts do to the neighborhood mom-and-pop businesses in many a town. More recently, online booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have siphoned off enough business to cause book shop after book shop to close down and be replaced by a Starbucks or a Kinko's.
And now, Dutton's Books on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood is closing. Dutton's offered a glorious selection of new and used books for 45 years there. They're currently having a 50% off sale on their remaining stock and when it's depleted, which should be around the end of this month, Davis Dutton is shutting the door, moving his family to another state and doing his bookselling on the Internet. The Dutton's stores in Beverly Hills and Brentwood, managed by other family members, will remain in business...but the one on Laurel Canyon was the most wonderful clutter of books and interesting patrons. I never went in there without finding a book I wanted to buy and running into someone I wanted to talk to.
It was also a gutsy store, dedicated solidly to the right of authors to write and have their books sold. When Iran issued a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, Dutton and his staff posed for a photo that ran in The Los Angeles Times. It showed them selling the book and the accompanying story said they would continue to do so, no matter what. It was also a store that loved to host author signings, no matter what the book, no matter how small the potential turnout. A writer friend of mine was once unable to get his publisher to set up any events. He picked up the phone, called Dutton's and they immediately agreed to a signing party.
I feel guilty that places like this are going away. I rarely go into bookstores since Amazon is just so easy. But I should...before any more of them disappear. We all should.
Gore Vidal is one of those people I don't always agree with. I sometimes quite disagree with him, in fact. But I always find him interesting to read or to listen to. Here's part one of an interview with him and when you finish with that, here's part two.
A lovely human being named Bridget Holloman was found dead in her apartment this afternoon, having apparently died in her sleep a day or two ago. The cause of death is not yet known but she had been complaining to friends of headaches for a week or so.
Bridget was an actress, a model, a dancer, a choreographer, a make-up expert, a magician's assistant, a teacher of dance and exercise, and a businesswoman. In this last profession, she opened and operated an antique clothing business, exhibiting at Los Angeles fashion expos. She had also costumed and done make-up for hundreds of films, commercials and print campaigns.
Bridget hailed from Albuquerque, New Mexico where her mother — the acclaimed choreographer, Suzanne Moore Johnston — is the known center of the dance world. Bridget moved to Los Angeles in 1975 where she was immediately cast in Slumber Party '57, a dreadful teen comedy that is remembered only because its cast also included a then-unknown Debra Winger. She worked often as a dancer, often on the variety shows of Sid and Marty Krofft, which is where I met her, and racked up dozens of TV and movie roles and commercials. She had recurring roles on Days of Our Lives and a short-lived Tim Conway sitcom called Ace Crawford, Private Eye, and was seen in The Goodbye Girl, Stoogemania, Evils of the Night and about a half-dozen other films. For about two years, she had to dye her lovely blonde hair to red as she appeared in a series of print ads and commercials for Nexxus Hair Care products.
She was an industrious, talented lady who, in all the years I knew her, never had a mean or selfish thought about anyone or anything. Tonight, everyone who knew her is stunned and shocked and wondering aloud why someone like that has to die so young. Especially when so many more deserving candidates walk the planet.
A friend of mine who attended the Academy Awards sent the following note and asked me to post it here...
Right on that one difference between Ebert's review of Jon Stewart and Tom Shales', beyond the fact that Shales has never known what he's talking about, is that Ebert was there. Most people who were there loved Stewart. He got plenty of laughs, certainly more than Steve Martin the last time he hosted. If it didn't sound that way at home, that's not his fault. I watched a little of it on TiVo when I got home and the audience didn't seem as loud as it did if you were sitting there.
Also wrong to judge how a host is doing by the expressions of the stars sitting in the first ten rows. Those are people who are sitting there with cameras in their faces and they're nervous about being singled out and distracted because they have a lot riding on the evening. Where I sat, we were all howling at Stewart. They liked the monologues. They really liked the lines he did later in the show that seemed improvised because they were mostly commenting on things that had just happened and you should have heard some of the things that went on during the commercial breaks.
After reading some of the reviews that said no one was laughing, I went back and — also through the miracle of TiVo — watched Stewart's monologue again. People were laughing just fine at all but a joke or two, which is all you could ask for. But you're right that the audio on the audience could have been increased a bit.
I get the impression there was a slow bounceback on the laughter in the Kodak Theater. That's when the nature of the room, in part but not wholly due to its size, adds a fraction of a second delay to the time it takes the audience to hear the funny line and also to the time it takes the comedian to hear them laughing. When Victor Borge used to play large amphitheaters, he'd explain the problem to the audience — especially the folks way in the back — and ask them to please laugh a second or two before he said anything funny or it would throw off his timing.
My guess here is that when they sit down in a few months to discuss who'll host the 2007 Oscars, Jon Stewart will be among those considered. Steve Martin and Billy Crystal, if they'll do it, might be ahead of him but he'll be on the list. Unless some promising new contender emerges, we may well see Stewart again next year. Maybe they can crank up the audio on the audience for him.
The reviews might make you think there were two separate Oscar telecasts last night. Some folks, like Tom Shales, saw the one "hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by." Others, like Roger Ebert, saw the one where...well, here. I'll quote him in a separate paragraph since he's the one I think is closer to right...
After all of the speculation about the selection of Stewart as a host, his performance deserves perhaps the highest tribute: He was as relaxed, amusing and at home as Johnny Carson. The assignment is his again in future years, and in one night he positioned himself as the likely heir of a major late-night network talk slot.
The above variance of opinion may represent more than the fact that Ebert has always been a far more perceptive critic than Shales. It may reflect the fact that Ebert was actually at the ceremony, seeing how Stewart went over with the live audience, whereas Shales was far, far away, pouting as he so often does that what was on his TV set failed to please Tom Shales. (Shales also thought that Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep must have taken "weeks" to master the banter they performed to introduce Robert Altman. These are two of the best actresses alive and I'll bet it took well under a half-hour.)
I think what some folks don't get is that the Oscars are the Oscars. The movies of '05 were not the kind that generated vast amounts of dramatic tension as to who'd win and who wouldn't. They were probably good films, by and large, but well before the ceremony, America didn't care that much if it was Reese Witherspoon or Felicity Huffman. Most people didn't see either of their films, nor was there any special reason to feel that one was so much more deserving than the other. And if the underlying show doesn't matter to us, there's only so much the host can do. I thought Jon Stewart did just fine.
Also this morning, a lot of people are asking if Brokeback Mountain was snubbed and if so, what does that mean? Was the Academy afraid of being seen as too Liberal or too gay? Did they flee from controversy or what?
The problem with these discussions is that there is zero data on how people ever vote or why. You can look at a race for governor and say that there was a swing of Hispanic voters in the 18-49 age bracket who identify health care as the most pressing issue. There's polling and there are studies and there are breakdowns of how different precincts voted. About the Oscar voting, there is darn near nothing. If I declare that people voted for the films they viewed on weekends and passed over the ones they caught on weekdays, there isn't a shred of empirical evidence to argue against me. It's also highly unlikely that there was any one reason for how everyone voted.
It may be that some people thought Brokeback Mountain, whatever its merits, has received enough attention and that Crash had gone unfairly unnoticed. It may be that the local campaign for Crash — they mailed a DVD to just about everyone in Hollywood — paid off. It may be that all the Academy voters this year played Rock/Paper/Scissors to determine their votes and all across Southern California, Scissors won. It may be that...oh, just make up any silly reason. No one can prove it's wrong. Maybe Brokeback lost in certain categories by a single vote because one guy just plain didn't like the movie as much as he liked some others...or see it.
These are the Oscars, people. They matter to agents and actors and technicians and people in the movie industry whose incomes are pegged to how many tickets or DVDs get sold. They shouldn't matter that much to anyone else. I wish some of my friends spent less time caring about who wins Best Supporting Actor and more time worrying about who wins President of the United States of America. Personally, I think we'd be better off in both cases with Paul Giamatti.
I am informed by several folks that the Academy has a February 1 cut-off for each year's "In Memoriam" reel. I'm not sure how long they've had this, and I suspect they'd violate it for a big enough star. But that's the reason Don Knotts, Darren McGavin and Jack Wild weren't in this year's montage. As I look over the list of movie people who passed away during the applicable period, I don't see any glaring omissions.
It'll probably be changed by the time you see this but I think we should all be reminded that news reports sometimes get things wrong. This is from this page on the ABC News site. Thanks to Mitchell Anthony for pointing it out.
The management of this website apologizes to anyone who was induced to watch tonight's Jimmy Kimmel Live thinking that Jon Stewart would actually be appearing live on it. Turned out, he was in a pre-taped bit of no visible humor.
You know what's changed about the Oscars for me over the years? I seem to remember a time when you watched because you figured something would happen that was special and spontaneous. Someone would have an emotional outburst. Someone would screw up beyond belief in front of the alleged "billion" people. Someone would say or do something outrageous. Some Oscar would go to someone that no one expected would win but everyone was very happy that they did. When I think back at the memorable moments of Academy Awards past, they're almost never things that were under the producers' control. (And of the few that were, they're still mostly surprises — surprise presenters, for instance.)
For the most part, the Oscars now seem so safe, so lacking in danger. I don't think there was a single win possible tonight that would have had the impact of Roman Polanski's award in 2003. I don't think there was a nominee whose win would have had the impact of George Burns in 1975 or Jack Palance in 1991. There was no one to cause trouble the way Marlon Brando or Vanessa Redgrave or Michael Moore did. (Did Jon Stewart even mention George W. Bush? I don't think so...at least, not directly.)
This is not so much a criticism as a realization. I was just thinking of Oscar moments I remember. One that comes to mind was in '77, I think, when Peter Finch won a posthumous Best Actor award for his performance in Network. A few years earlier, Marlon Brando had sent an Indian woman to decline his Godfather Oscar and deliver a speech. Because of that, the Academy had made a rule that if you weren't there to pick up (or even refuse) your Oscar, the person who accepted for you had to be a member of the Academy. So when Finch won, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky went to the stage and immediately said that the person who should be up there was Finch's widow. Breaking the rules but demonstrating his flair for drama, he called her to the stage. There, she delivered a touching, tearful speech that a lot of people probably still recall because, among other reasons, it wasn't about the movie business.
It's not just that nothing like that happened tonight. It's that nothing like that could have happened. Forget for a second who was actually nominated this year. Can anyone suggest any nomination that might have been made that could have yielded a big, emotional scene at the podium? Or us really cheering the way we cheered certain long overdue wins of the past?
One of the reasons for this is that the nature of Hollywood has changed. Here's a list of the men who won Best Actor in the seventies: George C. Scott, Gene Hackman, Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon, Art Carney, Jack Nicholson, Peter Finch, Richard Dreyfuss, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. What did those men have in common? Answer: They had a lot of history. Most were known for many film roles prior to the one for which they won. Philip Seymour Hoffman may well be in the same class as those men in terms of acting ability and he's certainly not a beginner. But I'll bet you most people can't name two movies he was in before Capote. He's not someone we've known a long time, admired in other films and felt was overdue for recognition. The same was true of the other Best Actor nominees this year — great actors but they weren't on most folks' radar screens before they did the roles for which they were nominated.
There's probably no way to change this kind of thing and maybe there's nothing wrong with it. Maybe what we need to do is to change our expectations of how interesting the Academy Awards telecast is going to be. I've stopped being shocked that the thing runs three and a half hours. I need to remind myself that apart from the opening sequence and maybe one or two awards, all it's going to be is a show where a lot of people you don't care about thank their families, co-workers and maybe an agent or two. And what the women are wearing matters more than anything else.
I wrote a little while ago that I liked that Jon Stewart wasn't acting like the evening was all about him. I haven't changed my mind about that but I also have what may seem like an opposing thought. The problem with the guy as Oscar Host is that he isn't a big star, at least in this context, and doesn't act like one. His low-key style is refreshing in some ways but it diminishes the event in others. Hosts like Bob Hope, Johnny Carson and Steve Martin brought an air of importance to their intros. Stewart's just a guy out there being funny and keeping it moving during his limited moments on stage. I think it's a good job but it's a quiet good job, the kind that probably won't be appreciated by a lot of people.
The "In Memoriam" montage seemed too short to me...and not just because they didn't make the effort to include Don Knotts and Darren McGavin. Weren't there a lot of people who should have been in there and weren't?
By the way: I started watching the Oscars an hour after most of you. I've been using the Fast Forward button on the TiVo and also the 30 Second Skip feature, and now I've caught up with real time. I don't think I've missed a thing.
Jon Stewart's doing fine. It's a tough room...big, cold, impersonal and full of people who really aren't there to watch a show. I like that he kept the monologue short and he isn't acting like this is An Evening With Jon Stewart.
Great to see Lauren Bacall there. I really think the Academy misses something by concentrating so totally on the current movie business. No viewers are going to tune out because of a couple of folks who represent bygone days. Okay, so she had trouble reading the prompter. She's still Lauren Bacall. What they need to do though is to connect the past and the present, and not just trot out a Lauren Bacall to introduce old clips.
And hey, wasn't that Stephen Colbert announcing those fake actress political commercials?
Jimmy Kimmel is doing a live post-Oscar show tonight. Ordinarily, his show comes from the El Capitan Entertainment Center, which is across the street from the Kodak Theater where the Academy Awards are being distributed. Tonight, the traffic and security for blocks around will be insane so Kimmel's program is emanating from the El Portal Theater. That's in North Hollywood, something like eight miles away.
Some listings say that Jon Stewart will be among his guests but the website for Jimmy Kimmel Live makes no mention of Stewart. I'm guessing that if he's on, it'll be a brief remote. I can't imagine the Oscar host completing the most important performance of his career and then instead of going to the parties or being with his loved ones or collapsing, getting in a car and fighting the world's biggest traffic jam to get to North Hollywood in time for another live broadcast. But even as a short remote interview, it might be worth watching.
By the way: Is Jimmy Kimmel Live actually done live every night? All of it? I see by their ticket page that studio audiences have to be to the regular telecasts at 6:15 PM. The show airs on the East Coast at 12:06 AM Eastern time, which is 9:06 PM out here. If it's live, people have to get there almost three hours before the show and wait that long. The website refers to it as "the first live nightly talk show in over 40 years," which I don't think it is. The Joan Rivers program on Fox was live for its first few months, at least. But that page on how you can attend the Kimmel show also refers to attending a "taping."
One of the possible disasters at the Oscars which has often been joked about but has never (they say) occurred is this: A presenter gets out there, opens the envelope and reads or announces the wrong name. There are rumors that a couple of the more unexpected winners have been crowned that way but it has never apparently happened.
There's a safety net set up to prevent this. The ballots are tallied by an accounting firm that is now called Price-Waterhouse-Cooper and there are two men on the premises from that firm. They travel to the Academy Awards via separate routes, each with a briefcase that contains a full set of the envelopes containing the winners' names. During the ceremony, one man is at stage left at the theater. One is at stage right. Presenters enter from both sides and when they do, they receive the envelope they'll be opening from the Price-Waterhouse-Cooper person on that side of the stage.
But the two accountants have another function. They've both memorized the full list of recipients and if a wrong name is read aloud, they're supposed to sound the alarm. There's some sort of code word for this. Near them always is a stage manager and if Jack Nicholson goes out there tonight and announces the wrong winner, the accountant will turn to the stage manager and give the code word. The stage manager will then relay this to the control room and then...
Well, no one outside the Oscarcast knows exactly what would happen but it's been planned and it's been rehearsed, just in case. My guess is that the orchestra leader would be told to stop the music and the host would be hurried out onto the stage to announce that a mistake had been made. The other Price-Waterhouse-Cooper man — the one who hadn't handed the envelope to the presenter — would open the one in his custody, make sure it had the correct name and then it would be hustled out to the host. But that's just my guess since it's never happened.
But it almost did one year...or so I was told by someone who worked on the broadcast. According to this person, a Very Famous Actor was presenting one of the most important Oscars. He was an older man and he got very confused and as a result, managed to announce the winner without opening the envelope.
His speech and the names of the nominees were on a TelePrompter but in rehearsals, he had trouble reading it. Just in case he needed it, he was provided with a card that had the five names. He had the card and the envelope in his hand as he entered.
When he got out to the podium, he found he couldn't read the prompter. Flustered and confused, he stumbled through his opening remarks from memory and then reached for the card with the nominees' names. As he did, he erred and instead of saying, "The nominees are..." he said, "The winner is..." On the screen, it looked like he was opening the envelope when he was actually just picking up the card that was in the same hand. Everyone assumed that he was forgetting to read the names of the nominees and had opened the envelope prematurely.
The nominees were listed on the card in alphabetical order and he read the first name there. The orchestra began playing the appropriate music. The winner jumped up and ran to the stage to accept. The Very Famous Actor, still a bit disoriented, assumed he'd done what he was supposed to do and stepped back.
The announced winner got to the stage and launched into his speech. He was a bit puzzled when he looked down and noticed that the envelope in his category was lying there on the podium, unopened. But he figured that since no one was stopping him, he must have won.
In the wings, a stage manager realized what had happened. Frantic, he turned to the accountant and asked who had won in that category. The accountant didn't see what his panic was all about. The winner was out there making his acceptance speech. By dumb luck, the victor in that category was the first name in alphabetical order.
Nothing was ever said, so as to not embarrass the Very Famous Actor. The Academy may even have been worried that some people would think the Oscar hadn't gone to the proper nominee and that they'd just gone along with it to avoid a nasty scene. But that's the only time I've ever heard of a glitch in the system and even that one turned out all right. I kinda hope that one of these days, some presenter actually does read the wrong name. I want to see what happens.
A billion people are not watching. People who ought to know better keep saying this and it's never been close to true. Back in 2001 in this article, I debunked the claim. Since then, others have finally taken note — like this article in The New Yorker and this article on the website of The Los Angeles Times. As the second of these notes, the Super Bowl doesn't draw a billion viewers, either.
People shouldn't take the winners and losers too seriously, especially since we never hear vote totals. You may think it's an outrage that your favorite Sound Mixer didn't win...but maybe he only lost by one vote.
Not knowing the vote totals also make it difficult to infer any real trends among the voters. Supposing all the gay-themed nominees win tonight. That doesn't mean Hollywood went for gay-themed movies. They may have all won by one vote. Assuming the Academy voting reflects everyone in Hollywood is silly. It's like assuming everyone in America wanted George W. Bush as president in 2004.
One should also remember that the voters are not Hollywood and Hollywood is not the voters.
Never forget that one of the reasons a film or person gets nominated (or doesn't) for an Oscar has to do with when it's released. Each year in each category, the Academy nominates five. If there are three great movies, they nominate five for Best Picture. And if there are thirty great movies, they nominate five for Best Picture. Woody Allen's movie Match Point qualified for this round of Oscars by being released on December 28, 2005. If the distributor had delayed it a few days, the film would be in next year's contest and some writer who didn't get nominated would be up for Best Original Screenplay tonight. Getting nominated is not just a function how good you are. It also has a lot to do with when your film (and someone else's film) got released.
The ratings of this year's Oscars will tell us absolutely nothing about Jon Stewart's popularity since we have no way of knowing how this particular broadcast would have done with someone else hosting. A recent Harris Poll said that 84% of Americans say they don't tune in or not tune in because of the host and the rest were pretty much split of whether Stewart would make them more or less eager to watch. For the most part, people probably watch because they care about certain pictures or certain nominees. There don't seem to be great dramas hovering over these decisions this year.
Every year, I hear someone moan that the Oscar voters are out of touch with the American people because they don't honor the films and achievements that the country voted for at the box office. This is a stupid way to look at it. If that's all the Academy Awards should be about, they can save a lot of time: Just give the statuettes to the producer, director, stars and writer of whatever film had the highest gross in the past year. The awards are supposed to honor excellence, not popularity.
That said, one of the reasons we have things like the Academy Awards is because movie studios want them to boost business. Selling tickets is not irrelevant to the proceedings. It often seems like the voters want to reward the films that were made without obvious commercial appeal and to give those movies a bump. Awards are supposed to recognize courage and it doesn't take a lot of courage to make some of the high-grossing high-concept movies.
Lastly: Yes, the ceremony lasts a long time. It's supposed to last a long time. There a lot of very expensive commercials to air. If you don't like it, record the thing and watch it later with your Fast Forward button at the ready. Tonight during the telecast is a great time to go to that restaurant that's usually too damn crowded on Sunday evening. You might have a much better time that way.
For those of you interested in Deal or No Deal, here's a link to an audio clip from NPR. The focus is on an economist from the Netherlands who's using the show to assess the ways in which people take economic risks. The story runs about four minutes.
My interest in Deal or No Deal sagged early in the week but came roaring back. I think Howie Mandel's terrific on it and the way the game's set up, it leads to some truly interesting, emotional moments. Okay, so they're artificially-created emotional moments. They're still real, at least by television standards.
Once upon a time, some game shows were rigged. Their producers would figure out what should occur to make for wonderful dramatic tension and to create an exciting story on the screen, and then they'd arrange to make that happen. This is no longer done, of course...but every so often, the reality of a game show works out as if it had been manipulated. That is, what transpires naturally causes me to think, "You know, if I were producing this show and I were rigging it, that's the kind of thing I would want to have happen." (This also was the case with Press Your Luck, an old game show that's currently rerun on GSN. As with Deal or No Deal, there's a vast amount of luck in how the game goes...but those who configured the game made it so that the luck often leads to interesting plot twists and situations.)
This past week on Deal or No Deal, they had one contestant who did about as poorly as you could do there. At one point, she turned down an offer of $172,000 to play on, but wound up going home with a big five dollars. She was a black lady surrounded by friends and a gospel choir from her church that was up and chanting, "No deal, no deal..." like it was some sort of hymn. Still, she crashed and burned. Later in the week, there was a black gentleman who was a single father and the coach of a girls' basketball team which had turned out to root for him. If you had to pick the contestant of the week that you most wanted to see win a pile of cash, it was this guy...but there was a moment when it seemed like he was going to repeat the disaster of the aforementioned woman. Howie, of course, has to let the contestants make their own decisions but you could almost sense that he wanted to slap the guy upside the head and yell, "Don't be an idiot! Take the money!" And I could imagine the producers, way off in a booth somewhere, fretting that their only two black contestants of the week would be the only two contestants to be utterly wiped out.
Fortunately, the basketball coach got lucky and bounced out of there with a quarter of a million dollars. All over America, I think people would have thrown things through their plasma screens if he'd left with chump change.
As I mentioned, the show has largely solved the problem of the awkward post-dubbing of some of Mr. Mandel's lines. It is still, alas, way over-edited in a manner that loses a lot of the "live" feeling. Whoever assembled Friday night's show apparently couldn't resist stealing reaction shots from other parts of the taping. In the last game, at the point when there were eleven choices left on the board, they cut to a shot of the silhouetted banker and in the background, the board had fifteen choices left on it. Then a few moments later, they went to another shot of the banker and then to a shot of the guy's family, both shots obviously from later on. In both of these angles, you could see the game board with only five picks left on it. Then the next time we saw it, it was back to eleven. This kind of thing happened several times during the week.
NBC is probably satisfied so far with the ratings they're getting with Deal or No Deal. It was up and down a lot as it went against some pretty formidable opposition, including special editions of American Idol but I'm guessing they don't think anything else would have done any better. The question is how long will it endure before it becomes repetitive. There was a fast drop-off with interest in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? as all of America got bored at the same time. In a way, what NBC may be doing with Deal or No Deal is not unlike the game itself, seeing how long they can press their luck with it.
In the seventies, most of the major comic publishers experimented with something they called "treasury sized" comics, which were comic books about 10" by 13" in size. I remember when Jack Kirby heard about plans to publish these, he was initially excited because he loved the idea of big comics. He was a little disappointed that they were only 10-by-13 and even more disappointed when the publishers mainly used them as a means of reprinting old comics drawn for the smaller format. But when they began commissioning original material for the bigger comics...that's when he was the most disappointed. They insisted the books be drawn not on huge sheets like he suggested, but at pretty much the same original art size used for the smaller comics. Jack did two original treasury books — an adaptation of the movie 2001 and a Captain America special — and they were pretty good. But what he really wished was that since they were printing the books at twice the size and selling them for more than twice the price, they'd paid him twice as much, let him draw twice as large and let him put in twice as much.
The format did not last long. A marketing person once told me — I have no idea how true this is — that what did treasury books in was when the industry changed distribution deals in the late seventies. Most comics went from being sent out on a returnable basis, where retailers could ship it back and not pay for it if it went unsold, to non-returnable terms where the retailer was stuck with whatever they got. The treasury format books, I was told, were too often damaged just sitting on a shelf and dealers were hesitant to order them on non-returnable terms. As good a theory as any.
A lot of the treasuries contained very poorly-chosen (and in too many cases, poorly-reproduced) reprints...but there were some wonderful original creations in the format. Marvel and DC co-published an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, the contents of which were created by Marvel people — Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga. It was quite entertaining and I am still boggled at the fact that Buscema drew it from memory, having not seen the movie in over twenty years. This is not humanly possible. I also liked the two Kirby did and a couple of DC entries, like the first (and only) of several announced volumes adapting The Bible (written by Sheldon Mayer), a couple of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer specials (also by Mayer) and the Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali book (written by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, drawn by Adams). Never cared much for any of the DC-Marvel crossover books. I thought everyone involved in them did better work doing one character or the other solo.
You can view the covers of almost every treasury edition published in the U.S. — and few other oversized comics that maybe weren't officially called "treasuries" — over at a great new site set up by the gifted illustrator, Rob Kelly. It's www.treasurycomics.com and he has every one I know of up there except for Charles Biro's Tops and one or two other Gold Keys that I'll dig up and send him. He even has three Hanna-Barbera specials that I wrote so I did a little interview with Rob about what I recall of them. You can read it via a link on this page.
I haven't been too impressed with the new season of Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO. The conversations have seemed rather flabby with people talking a lot but not saying much.
The most interesting parts of the new episode — the one that debuted last night and which repeats throughout the week — were two interviews near the beginning of the show. The second was with Harry Anderson, who was down in New Orleans, reminding us what a disaster area it still is down there. The first was with former FEMA director Michael Brown, who seems to be rehabilitating his image due to one videotape that shows him acting with some amount of competence in sounding a pre-Katrina warning. I think people are so shocked by this that they've forgotten how little actually was done and also about some embarrassing quotes and e-mails from Mr. Brown. Perhaps "Brownie" was not quite the incompetent he was made out to be. Perhaps he was to some extent the scapegoat for the sins of others. I'm still skeptical but in fairness to the man, this article helps make the case for him.
I can't recall when we had this kind of open warfare between two shows competing in the same time slot...but Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann are going at it. O'Reilly doesn't mention Olbermann's name, nor does he allow it to be spoken on either his TV show or his radio program. The other day, when a caller to the radio show mentioned it, O'Reilly cut him off and threatened the guy with some kind of reprisal that...well, it didn't make a lot of sense. Here's a link to a site that has Olbermann's latest response, including the audio of O'Reilly's radio weirdness. I think Bill's embarrassing himself mightily and giving his competition a big boost but you be the judge.
For no visible reason, I suddenly felt an urge just now to see again one of the most thrilling moments I can recall catching on television. It was that moment in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta when Muhammad Ali appeared out of nowhere to light the Olympic torch. I don't know why but I just wanted to see it again.
I found it on this page. Go down to the link that says "Relive the opening ceremony."
My pal Andy Ihnatko has his annual Oscar predictions up. You can read them here and they put any Oscar predictions I could make to shame. Of course, Andy cheats. He actually goes to see the movies.
Andy will be live-blogging the Oscars as will another pal, Gary Sassaman, who also has his Oscar picks up. My thanks to Andy and Gary who are doing this so I don't have to.
The only predictions I have are...
...that we'll hear a lot of jokes about Dick Cheney shooting people (including a possible Elmer Fudd impression by Robin Williams), a joke or two about horny penguins walking miles for sex, something about George W. Bush not being informed of some Hollywood related disaster (i.e., "The White House denies that the president had advance knowledge of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo."), a line about how Harriet Miers couldn't get to the Supreme Court but Anna Nicole Smith did...and enough references to gay cowboys to kill that topic off for the rest of the year.
...that the "In Memoriam" montage will start with Richard Pryor, end with Shelley Winters and that someone worked overtime to get Don Knotts, Darren McGavin and maybe even Jack Wild in there.
...that Jon Stewart will surprise a lot of people and be a great host. I also think he'll do a lot less political stuff than anyone expects but that even the slightest reference will bring howls of outrage from those who feel their side has been slammed. It would also not surprise me if someone were to suggest that three years ago, Michael Moore got booed at the Academy Awards for saying what most of America now believes. But I'll betcha it won't be Stewart. This is his chance to show America that he's more than a political comic on basic cable.
I'll be TiVoing the ceremony and watching it with the Fast Forward button properly deployed. The scheduler has it down for three hours but I'm adding an hour of pad, just in case. My good buddy Leonard Maltin will be there doing red carpet interviews. You'll recognize him because he'll be the only person on the premises besides Roger Ebert and Mickey Rooney who knows anything about movies more than five years old.
Our TiVos will soon have a new feature — something called KidZone. It will enable parents to restrict what can be viewed on their TiVos so that Dad can record the Playboy Channel and when he's out, the tiny tots won't be able to watch it. Based on no evidence whatsoever, I have a hunch that parents are fooling themselves as to how effectively they can block access to certain programs on cable or certain sites on the Internet for kids above about ten. I've yet to see anything that would have stopped my friends and me when we were twelve and desperate to see naked women...but I guess it works for children who are younger or not too smart. And I certainly don't see anything wrong with such a capability if it doesn't mess up my ability to record and watch what I want. Here's a press release about this new feature.
My TiVos have finally received the new feature that accesses some Yahoo pages (like rather useless weather forecasts) on your TV screen. We await the arrival of the TiVo Undelete function, which I could really have used last week.
By the way: The other day, I began to notice a tinny, annoying quality in the audio of shows recorded on my office TiVo. I thought something was wrong with my new TV but it wasn't that. It turned out to be the TiVo. I rebooted and the problem went away. Never heard of that happening before but I thought I'd mention it in case it ever happens to anyone reading this.
Veteran political humorist Art Buchwald is dying. Here's a report on his current condition. The article is both depressing and reassuring on some levels. I am especially intrigued by the notion — and I hope this wasn't a joke — that he's written a column that will run the day after he dies.
I will always remember one time when Buchwald was on Crossfire, back when Robert Novak represented The Right. Novak asked Buchwald why he spent so much time criticizing the people in power in Washington.
Buchwald said, "Criticizing those in power is fun, Bob. You should try it sometime."
In the above-linked article, there's a reference to a recent radio interview that Buchwald did with Diane Rehm. Here's a link to a page where you can listen to that interview, which runs about 50 minutes. I found it a bit too painful to listen to right now but I intend to try to make it all the way through...one of these days.
Michael Kinsley on the Bush doctrine (or whatever it is) of spreading democracy around the world...or at least to nations where we aren't chummy with non-elected leaders.
In fact, for an interesting, multi-partisan take on Iraq, read Kinsley the Liberal, then go over to The Corner, which is a group weblog run by the Conservative National Review. Start with this post by John Derbyshire, then go read upwards through more recent postings for a bit. Take special note of where Derbyshire writes...
The difference between the Peters/GWB view and the Will/WFB/Derb view is not that the former opinionators are willing to "do whatever it takes to win," while the latter are not. The difference is, that the two factions have different estimates of what it would take to win. (Defined to mean: Create a reasonably stable, strong, orderly, and friendly Iraq.) And that the former estimate lies inside the boundaries of what the American people are willing to do, spend, and sacrifice, while the latter lies outside those boundaries.
I think that's what the whole Iraq debate is boiling down to: A simple cost/benefit ratio. The American people are deciding — and pretty much on their own because I don't see many pundits or even Democrats making this argument — that the human and financial costs of this war are simply not worth it for what we may get out of it.
The other day here, I wrote about how PBS, in airing the new Monty Python "Personal Favorites" specials had a few deletions made in material that once ran uncut on their networks. This brought an informative (I think) e-mail from David Thiel, who is the Program Director of WILL, a PBS station in Urbana, Illinois. Here are his remarks in full...
It's true that the climate for public television — and broadcasting in general — have changed since a few enterprising PTV stations first imported Monty Python to the U.S. There are things that we could get away with 30 years ago — even 10 years ago — that would be more problematic today. I doubt that many PTV stations could weather the huge fines that political watchdogs have proposed post-Janet Jackson.
A major issue for PTV programmers such as myself is that it's difficult to be absolutely certain what is and isn't permissible. For a time, it appeared that we could no longer assume that we would be protected by artistic or contextual considerations. The FCC has since clarified their stance and stated that the context of so-called "indecent" content still matters, but even so, I have no reason to believe that a pure entertainment series like Monty Python would be seen in the same light as a "Frontline" documentary. It's worth noting that in 1998 a radio station was fined for airing "Sit on My Face."
I don't know that I would consider myself "terrified by fines," but I'll cop to being cautious in the current climate. I have to balance my personal philosophy of pure artistic freedom against my responsibility as one of the stewards of a broadcast license. Thousands of people in our community depend upon our program services and our non-broadcast educational initiatives, and I think that it would be hubris on my part to recklessly jeopardize them just to prove a point.
To my knowledge — and I reserve the right to be misinformed in this case — the upcoming PBS feeds of the half-hour Monty Python series are unedited. Stations are being advised not to air them prior to 10:00 pm local time due to their content. After 10:00 pm, the FCC's "safe harbor" for indecent programming begins. The "Personal Best" specials were intended to air in prime-time, hence the edits. I hope that clarifies things a bit.
I wasn't suggesting, or intending to suggest, that PBS or any station had an obligation to buck the trends and go to the mat, especially for something as trivial as the cuts in these Python specials. You have to save your energies for the battles that are really worth fighting. But David has hit on one of the problems for broadcasters in a climate like this: The uncertainly of what is and isn't acceptable. It would be one thing if creators could create and broadcasters could broadcast with a strict guide of what is and is not acceptable. But the "rules" are vague, they change from time to time and they're enforced in an inconsistent manner. It is very common in television that they tell you that you can't use a certain word so you cut it out, then hear it used without incident on some other show.
Johnny Carson once did a Carnac bit where the answer was "Ass, bitch and horny." The question was, "Name three words they can say on Saturday Night Live but we can't use on this show." At that moment, he was right. NBC was bleeping those words on Johnny's show, which aired at 11:30 at night but allowing them on SNL, which aired at 11:30 at night. The Standards and Practices people were outraged when they heard the material at Carson's taping and I believe some kind of understanding was brokered: Johnny, having made his point, agreed to cut the joke out of the show, in exchange for which the Censor People agreed to become more consistent.
Of course, the trouble with that kind of variance is that you find yourself erring on the side of caution. Invariably, you cut things that would not have spawned any outrage at all. Standards and Practices people are spectacularly inept at predicting what will cause trouble so they caution you or demand the cutting of all sorts of things that could air without complaint, and they often pass things that do result in FCC fines and/or angry viewers. (The angry viewers are never very numerous, by the way. Weighted against a show's total viewership, they are always statistically insignificant. But sometimes, a few complainers can cause a disproportionate amount of trouble. Lately, they help trigger those ridiculous FCC fines.)
Thanks for the message, David. I absolutely respect the need to not gamble with a station's well-being, especially these days, when the standards are so variable and the punishments are so illogical. Our local Los Angeles station, KCET, ran a lot of things in the seventies — like Steambath, which must have aired a dozen times — that they probably wouldn't dare broadcast today. I'm not sure who benefits from this except maybe HBO, Showtime, Cinemax...
Here's a review of Will Eisner's last book, and it's in an interesting place. It's the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has done so much fine work to combat anti-Semitism and racism. Thanks to Bruce Reznick for pointing it out to me.
Before this site kicks over to tomorrow's date, I want to thank everyone who sent birthday greetings today. I'll try and answer them all but I still haven't responded to all the "get well" messages I got when I was in the doctor place. So it may take a while. Nice to hear from so many friends and even a fair amount of total strangers.
I've wondered here in the past if anyone ever falls for those e-mail scams that tell you you can share in someone's inheritance of a huge amount of money. Apparently, someone does.
John Dickerson on that newly-noticed video that shows George W. Bush being briefed before Katrina hit and not appearing to grasp what it all meant. So far, I haven't seen much of a counterspin on this one.
I love magicians and I especially love magicians who invent brand new tricks and do things on stage that no one else has ever done. You don't catch Sylvester the Jester doing the linking rings or the cups-and-balls...or if he did, he'd put his own, animation-inspired twist on those hoary illusions. Sylvester bills himself as "The Human Cartoon" and replicates on stage, many effects you'd find in a good Tex Avery short. In the course of one show, he is electrocuted, decapitated, stretched and squashed, and even has a few holes blown in him. It's all very original and very well-done and very funny.
You can find out where to see him at his website but for much of March, I can tell you where to see him: In a late show, Friday and Saturday nights, at Theatre West in Hollywood. Located appropriately near the old Hanna-Barbera studio, the Jester will be destroying himself on stage for your amusement, and I intend to get up there and see this happen. If you love magic or cartoons, you'll enjoy what he does...and I'm guessing one or the other applies to everyone who visits this site.
Jack Wild is the kid who, at age fifteen, played the Artful Dodger in the movie of Oliver and stole, not only people's purses but the movie, as well. Shortly after that, he became the human star of the popular Saturday morning series, H.R. Pufnstuf. After that, he has a brief moment of glory as a pop star and after that...
Well, "after that" was not kind to Jack Wild. He had problems with alcohol and tobacco and life in general. Sid and Marty Krofft, who'd produced H.R. Pufnstuf, became like surrogate uncles to Jack. When I worked for them, he'd occasionally visit the office or turn up at a party and I always enjoyed talking to Jack. A lot of folks felt sorry for him but I never got that he felt sorry for himself...not even the last time I ran into him. It was about three years ago and most of his voice was gone due to cancer of the mouth, one of the nastier things that can happen to a human being. Jack had a little card he'd show to people to explain why he couldn't talk and we had an odd, sad conversation with him responding mostly in mime and little grunts. He was proud that in spite of everything, he was still doing occasional acting jobs.
Jack died on Wednesday. He was 53. Here's a link to an obit.
Lennie Weinrib, who was the voice of H.R. Pufnstuf, just phoned me from Chile, where he now lives. He said, "Tell the world that Jack Wild was the nicest, most talented kid I ever met in all my years in show business, and that we're all just devastated at the news." I can't put it any better than that.
Back on KCAL, someone just said, "This started out as a routine traffic stop as part of an investigation of a stolen vehicle. The woman didn't want to go to jail." So to try and stay out of prison, she stole a police SUV and drove it around for 75 minutes. Good way to avoid a stolen car rap.
KCAL's news coverage has ended and they've returned to regular programming, which is people arguing in the TV courtroom of Judge Mathis. A woman is claiming her ex-boyfriend kept refusing to get a job and wasn't paying back money he owed her and had promised to pay. The ex-boyfriend is claiming that because of her drunken misbehavior, he was also driven to drink so it was her fault he was unable to find work. For some reason, these people thought it would be a good idea to go on television, air their private dispute, argue over which of them was the bigger drunk and let Judge Mathis settle it. This makes about as much sense as stealing the police SUV.
And how far are we from the day when they'll arrest someone like the lady who was driving around Palmdale and Lancaster, then bring her directly into a TV courtroom? Having just watched the arrest, we'll be able to then watch the trial. Judge Mathis can sentence her and then later in the day, Judge Judy can rule on her appeal. By evening, we could have the prisoner on Fear Factor for possible execution. Or just let Simon Cowell insult their grooming.
It might work. Couldn't be a greater miscarriage of justice than the O.J. trial.
Actually, she's been mainly in Lancaster the last fifteen minutes or so. On Fox, they're monitoring (but not letting us hear) some conversations the woman is having on the police radio with authorities. They're discussing (a) whether she's faking her emotional distress, (b) whether if she is, she's doing it to try and establish some sort of defense for when she winds up in court and (c) whether she's just enjoying the attention of all the helicopters overhead and news coverage.
This just in: She's stopped, police have stormed the vehicle and they have her down on the ground and under arrest. And now they're leading her away to another police car. Hope she doesn't steal this one, too.
I'm switching channels and watching the pursuit on different stations. Someone on Fox News just said that this vehicle would have probably have had a full gas tank at the beginning of the shift, but of course we don't know when that was. I'll report back if there's any more useful information like that.
More than seventy minutes ago, the woman stole a police vehicle and she's been driving in circles and running stop signs and red lights ever since, often weaving over to the wrong side of a road. A newsperson just said, "We have unconfirmed reports the woman is extremely agitated." You think?
I'm watching a police chase on TV at the moment. A woman has stolen a police SUV — they say it's a Ford Expedition — and has been driving around and around mostly the same streets in Lancaster and Palmdale for more than an hour. The newsfolks on KCAL Channel 9 are locked into that awkward position of having to say the same things over and over...and they really don't know all that much to begin with. At the moment, we're kind of on Tire Watch, wondering how long it'll be before a shredding left rear tire renders the vehicle undriveable. Stay tuned.
I have no idea what I'm doing up at this hour, either. But while I'm here, I might as well post something about bogus e-mails that pretend to be from PayPal or your bank or some other business institution. I get about twenty a week that tell me there's some problem with my account at Chase Manhattan Bank and, of course, I've never had a nickel in Chase Manhattan.
If things like this are causing you any confusion or problem, here's an idea you might want to consider: Dedicated e-mail addresses. A lot of people think they can only have one or only manage one. Actually, you can many different ones and if you bank, let's say, at Bank of America, you could have an e-mail address that's only for your correspondence with Bank of America. Once you've set it up, you can just assume all e-mails that purport to be from Bank of America but arrive at other e-mail addresses are phony.
I have a separate e-mail address for each of about two dozen companies with which I do real business. That doesn't sound as difficult to manage as it might because they're all set to forward to one master "business" e-mail account so when I download messages, I download them all at once. It's simple then to have the program I use to manage e-mail (Mozilla Thunderbird, which is free and wonderful) filter the incoming e-mail on that account and sort the messages into separate folders — the ones from my bank into one folder, the ones from the Gas Company into another and so on.
How can you get so many different e-mail addresses? Well, I control several domains and each domain gives you unlimited e-mail addresses @ that domain. You could achieve the same thing with several of the free e-mail services online. G-Mail, for instance, will let you sign up for as many accounts as you like and you can set each account to forward to another. If you're on AOL, I believe they still give you a number of screen names on each account.
Multiple e-mail addresses can be very handy for weeding out unwanted e-mail or separating the e-mail you really care about from the stuff you sort-of care about. I have a couple of accounts that I use when I have to sign up for something on a website — "junk mail" addresses, you might call them. If you have everything coming to one e-mail address, it swells the mailbox you care about and when you download your important e-mail, you have to download all those ads and newsletters with it. Most of my "robotic" e-mail — mass mailings from companies I've ordered from, for example — goes to one special address which I download once or twice a week. This separates them from my main e-mail account which receives messages several times a day.
Multiple e-mails and e-mail forwarding are easy to set up with most programs. Just something you might want to consider.
I just received a phony e-mail that claimed to be from PayPal. The subject line was, "Protect yourself from phony e-mails that claim to be from PayPal."
There are polls out saying Bush and Cheney are hitting unprecedented lows in personal (and policy) unpopularity, and that a solid majority of troops in Iraq think the U.S. should start packing to leave. I never believe any one poll but I suspect these are at least showing the direction in which opinion is moving. With Bush sticking to his guns on this Dubai Ports deal despite overwhelming public opposition...and with Cheney handling that shooting incident the way he did...it ain't hard to believe both men could have dropped a few points in the last week.
What I find amazing is that the American public is coming to these conclusions with very little help from the Democrats. There are a few Dems like John Kerry out there attacking the administration but not too well and without much notice. Frankly, I think Kerry's wasting his breath. This country never listens to anyone who lost an election; not until many years after, and then only when the person seems to have a good shot at becoming a winner again. Much of the U.S. didn't listen to Kerry before he lost and we don't even listen to someone like Al Gore who got more votes than the guy who allegedly beat him. With the occasional exception of Howard Dean, who doesn't get a lot of air time, I don't see any prominent Democrat out there making even a semi-effective case against the war and Bush policies. And yet, the country is getting there without them.
Reminds me of a joke I wrote after the 1972 election...one of the first I ever had performed on television by a professional comedian. It was, "Every time the Republicans do something wrong, I blame George McGovern. Because if Nixon had run unopposed, he would have lost." Bush is operating with pretty feeble opposition...and he's losing.
Two more of those "Personal Best" Monty Python specials run tonight on most PBS channels. I'm told by folks who study such things that some of the programs have some minor bleeps and the fuzzing of brief nudity, even though the exact same footage has run unexpurgated on PBS many times in the past. We have apparently reached the stage, post-Janet Jackson Super Bowl appearance, where a lot of broadcasters are terrified of fines. In the case of PBS, there are folks in the Bush administration who just plain don't like the institution and may be looking for an excuse to administer a few slaps.
The episodes featuring Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam reportedly are identical to what's on the DVD versions of the shows. The others have small changes except that there's a big alteration in the Eric Idle show where the entire musical number, "Sit On My Face," has been replaced by "The Philosopher's Song."
As mentioned earlier, PBS will soon rebroadcast all the original episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, from which most of this material was drawn. One wonders if they will be uncut and if so, why these compilations had to be laundered.
As noted here, cartoonist Aaron McGruder is taking a six month hiatus from producing his newspaper strip, Boondocks. During that period, newspapers will either run reruns or some other strip entirely.
Back when Garry Trudeau started this practice, taking some time off from Doonesbury, a number of older cartoonists criticized him. The criticisms were along the lines of "These kids today are so lazy." And it is true that in the "old days," a guy with a syndicated strip could only take a vacation by getting ahead on his work, and that most strips then required somewhat more drawing on a daily basis and a lot more on Sunday. Strips now are smaller and simpler, and a top creator of one current comic strip once estimated to me that, even putting in as much detail as he dared, there was still less drawing in a whole week's worth of his strips (7 days) than George McManus used to put into just the Bringing Up Father Sunday page.
I'm not sure why McGruder needs six months off, especially if it's true that he no longer draws the strip himself. Comic strips don't take that long to write. But let's say he does need to get away for a bit. Only a writer or artist truly knows the way in which his work fatigues him and what is necessary for recovery. Still, if I were the editor of a newspaper that has been buying Boondocks for years, I think I'd be annoyed. Boondocks is at its best when it's topical so reruns are really going to feel like a cheat. And if I bring in another strip to take its place for six months, am I not risking that my readers will forget about Boondocks and not welcome it back? Or want to see that replacement strip displaced? Reader loyalty to the comic strip page has already gotten pretty fragile in some cases and this won't help.
I wonder if the syndicates would consider offering some strips as time-shares. Maybe a strip doesn't have to run seven days a week. Couldn't it run Sunday through Friday, and then give the Saturday slot to some new feature? Perhaps the answer to shrinking newspaper space is to double-up. Instead of two cartoonists straining to produce seven strips per week and burning themselves out, maybe they could share one space — one strip on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; the other on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and then they take turns doing a Sunday page. Some strips might profit creatively from such a schedule.
Maybe it isn't that much of a problem. Most cartoonists don't take sabbaticals. Then again, most of them don't have a loyal-enough audience that they dare.
I'm a big fan of a chain of restaurants called Souplantation in some states and Sweet Tomatoes in others. I have no idea why the two names, or if there's any palpable difference. They all seem to be places where you can load a plate with salad, select from an array of soups, have some pasta, grab some muffins or foccacia bread and finish your meal off with something from the dessert bar. I wish there was a bit more protein to be had on the premises but apart from that, they're great places to dine. I've probably been in at least a dozen different ones in Southern California and the food and mood are always to my liking.
The only negative I have about going to Souplantation is that most of their soups are not as wonderful as you might expect from a place with that name. This will not be the case during the month of March. In March, most of their restaurants are featuring among their selections, a Creamy Tomato Soup which — unless they've gone and changed the recipe on me — is heavenly. It's kind of like Campbell's done right...and Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup is pretty decent to begin with. The last time Souplantation had Creamy Tomato in their soup rotation, I bombarded Souplantation H.Q. with demands that they bring it back. I'm reticent to take full credit but I'd like to think you can have it this month, at least in part, because of me.
By the way: At least in the Souplantations in Los Angeles, you can get 10% off if you show the cashier a membership card in the American Automobile Association (i.e., "The Triple A"). They don't advertise this much, and I admit it's not as good as free pancakes. But hey, 10% off is 10% off.
April 1, 2006
