Thursday, May 11, 2006

29% Approval

You know, when George W. Bush told us he'd be "a uniter, not a divider," I didn't realize he meant he'd unite us by convincing everyone in America he's a terrible president.

And this poll was taken before the latest revelation of massive phone surveillance. That oughta get him down to 28.

• Posted at 9:01 PM · LINK

Things I'm Not Buying - #5 in a series

The bed owned by the parents of Lee Harvey Oswald. The seller is advertising it by saying, "Oswald was conceived in this bed."

I was going to write a sarcastic comment but sometimes, it's just not worth the trouble.

• Posted at 7:45 PM · LINK

If I Had My Druthers...

Odds are good that I won't get back there to see it but the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut is staging a big, splashy revival (with some revisions) of the Li'l Abner musical. That show is a frequent topic of this website so I should mention that I'm hearing good things about it. Here's one review and here's another. From the former, we learn that though the show is set in the fifties, its Washington scenes include references to Jack Abramoff and John McCain, and that the gent who plays the evil General Bullmoose looks not unlike Dick Cheney. I have no idea how I feel about this. Back when I was briefly in talks to revise/update the book for a possible Broadway resurrection, the idea was to remove obscure references (like the line about Drew Pearson) but to avoid all anachronisms. I'm not saying that's the only way to do it, nor would I criticize their show without seeing it. Then again, in the show, Bullmoose does claim that "Progress is the Root of All Evil."

The Goodspeed website offers some goodies: A two-and-a-half minute video clip of scenes from the show, a five minute chat with director Scott Schwartz and a nice article on the property. You can also listen to two numbers from the original Broadway production.

Thanks to Mark J. Roy for reminding me about this. Wish I could get back there before July 2 to catch a performance. (I'd also love to get back to New York to see Billy Connolly's one-man show. If anyone who reads this site goes, send in a report.)

• Posted at 9:41 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Among our many and varied interests is the history of the city some call Los Angeles. We especially like to track how certain areas evolve and how one building can morph from a restaurant to a church and then become a hardware store and then a florist shop, all before becoming — as every structure eventually has or will — a Starbucks.

I can't embed it here but you might enjoy this video of around eight minutes of footage shot on the Sunset Strip in the sixties. Near the beginning, they give you a quick pan of a strip joint called the Classic Cat. That was located at the corner of Sunset and Larrabee, and before it was a strip joint, it was a restaurant owned by Jerry Lewis (bearing his name and caricature on the outside) and then it was an eatery fronted by L.A. radio personality Dick Whittinghill. Today, it's Tower Video. I also like that in the video, they show the rioting that occurred on the Strip around 1967 and in the midst of it, they have some brief shots of the Bullwinkle statue outside Jay Ward's office.

I can, however, embed this. A website called 1947project is attempting to document the city's history, amassing whatever info and pics they can find. They've assembled a 23 (!) minute video of still shots of old Los Angeles set to music. They also, on this page of their site, have a high-resolution version of the video below but they caution it'll only play on the latest versions of Windows. If you can play the high-res version, do. Some of the photos are quite wonderful.

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK