For the first time in over a year, I'm posting a picture of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. This, as anyone with an I.Q. higher than that of a cocker spaniel can tell you, is an ancient Internet tradition that few besides me carry on. The pic means that the proprietor of the website is too busy to post much of anything for a little while. In this case, it may be a few days and I may not be able to answer a lot of e-mail, either. If you look hard, somewhere on the Internet you may be able to find something else worth reading in my absence.
For some reason, people with no conceivable financial stake in the answers are fascinated with the box office grosses of new motion pictures. I was once in a sports bar near the airport in Hartford, Connecticut — don't ask why I was there; I don't even drink — and one of the lady bartenders asked me what I did for a living. When I said I was a TV writer, she said, "So, how do you think the new Bruce Willis pic will do this weekend?" Though I said I had no idea and that I didn't even know there was a new Bruce Willis movie opening, she persisted in discussing it with an interest that probably exceeded Bruce's.
So in case she's reading this: Here's an article about how the early grosses are tallied for press releases. The process is sloppy but most people accept it as accurate. It's kind of like the way we choose our presidents.
Today, we have an unembedded video clip and an embedded one. First, the unembedded clip. Someone posted it to YouTube with this description...
In 1969, the U.S. Senate had a hearing on funding the newly developed Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The proposed endowment was $20 million but President Nixon wanted it cut in half because of the spending going on in the Vietnam War. This is an video clip of the exchange between Mr. Rogers and Senator Pastore, head of the hearing. Senator Pastore starts out very abrasive and by the time Mr. Rogers is done talking, Senator Pastore's inner child has heard Mr. Rogers and agreed with him. Enjoy.
I can attest that Fred Rogers had that effect on people I met him once (described here) and he had a way of just draining all hostility and irate feelings from people around him. Here's the clip, which runs a little under seven minutes and is well worth the time.
Which brings us to our embedded clip. Okay, here's the premise: Let's take the movie The Ten Commandments and make up a movie trailer as if we're trying to market it as a teen comedy. Got it? Go...
May 28, 2006
