My friends pick up their bad habits from me. Earl Kress, a fellow writer who has been mentioned in this site many a time, has followed my horrid example and started blogging. He's just getting started but if you like this site, you'll like Earl's. In fact, if you hate this site, you'll still like Earl's. Go take a look.
I want to add a couple of thoughts to the discussion about the Gordon Lee case. There are a number of hypocritical things about the way some prosecutors handle cases relating to pornography or adult entertainment. One is that they usually go after the folks who can least afford to fight them. It is possible now to view hardcore porn on satellite or in most major hotels...but you don't see them going after Rupert Murdoch, who owns DirecTV, nor do they try to close down the local Marriott and throw its operators behind bars. They don't even go after Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt any longer. Those guys have too much money. The reason to go after a Gordon Lee is because he does not have friends in high places, does not have deep pockets, does not have the ability to hire Floyd Abrams or some other top First Amendment lawyer. The hope here is that the little guy will just plea-bargain, admit guilt and give them a "win" that will intimidate others.
Which brings me to another area of hypocrisy in these cases: The efforts made by the prosecution not to give the accused his day in court. Many juries simply will not vote to convict and judges often decide the charges are excessive. The Gordon Lee affair started with him being indicted on two felony charges and five misdemeanors. The felony charges were tossed out and the misdemeanors tossed out or condensed down to two...and then on Monday, the prosecutors dropped those and announced they'd find others. It's like they played by the rules, decided they couldn't win by the rules and now they're changing the rules. And what's really galling about that is that these are their rules.
A lot of prosecutions in this category fall under the general heading of Prosecutorial Tyranny. They don't want to try the case because they know they'll lose...but they also know that they can waste the accused's time and money, keep his life off-balance for years and scare the bejeezus out of him. The idea is to make it less painful to plead guilty to some lesser charge than to incur the cost and uncertainty involved in proving one's innocence. I know why our system of justice works like that but I don't have to like it.
Forgot to mention (sorry) that early this morning, GSN started rerunning old I've Got A Secret episodes again. Last time GSN ran this show, they started with episodes from 1952 but this time around, they're skipping all the ones with cigarette sponsorship...so the one that aired this A.M. was from September of 1959. So we're missing a lot of good episodes there and it may be impossible to predict what will air when.
In the meantime, the What's My Line? reruns are up to December of 1962. The one that airs tomorrow morn should be one with Vaughn Meader as the Mystery Guest. Mr. Meader then had the hottest record in the business with The First Family and one of the other contestants is football great Ray Nitschke. Thursday morn, the Mystery Guest should be Bert Lahr.
Okay, it's the 1999 Tony Awards ceremony and a star is born. The revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is up for Best Revival of a Musical and business ain't so hot. This means they want to win the Tony and also present on the telecast a musical number so fine that it will cause people to storm the box office. Of the two, the latter is more important.
They don't win for Best Revival (Annie, Get Your Gun with Bernadette Peters does) but two of the Charlie Brown cast members — Kristin Chenoweth and Roger Bart — take home Tonys as featured performers. People seem to love the number that is performed, mostly by Ms. Chenoweth, but it does not motivate a stampede of ticket purchasers. The show winds up posting a closing notice a few weeks later.
Our video link is to that performance from that evening. The sound is a hair out of sync but it's still quite watchable. The clip also includes Kristin Chenoweth winning her Tony immediately following the song, making what may well be the fastest change of clothes ever accomplished by a woman. I just ran a stopwatch on it and from the moment we last see her in one outfit to the moment we first see her in the other is 43 seconds, which means she probably had 5-10 seconds less than that. I used to date ladies who couldn't change direction in that amount of time.
Right after this aired, every producer in several media wanted to hire Kristin Chenoweth. I'm not sure how many of them loved how she sang and danced, and how many were just thinking, "Boy, an actress who can change that quickly...think how much money that will save."
You may recall that when "Grandpa" Al Lewis passed away in February, there was a mini-controversy over his age. He'd been telling people he was 95. Other sources suggested he was 83...which, if true, would mean that a lot of those stories he'd told about what he did in the twenties — like involvement in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 — were fibs.
Well, the Social Security Death Index — which one can access online — now has his listing up. They say he was born April 30, 1923 and they oughta know. That means that when he died on February 3 of this year, he was 82 years, 9 months and 4 days old. Or if you like: 82 years, 9 months and 4 days young.
I'm so glad that's settled. You have no idea how many nights of sleep I've lost over this.
April 5, 2006
