We are experiencing e-mail problems at this time. A few of your messages to me may have bounced. A few more may still bounce. Some might not bounce but might not get through. All will be fixed eventually. Sorry.
It's starting to look like one other Senator, in addition to Ted Stevens, placed a "secret hold" on that bill to make government spending more accountable. It's not confirmed yet but Robert Byrd may have also done the deed. For what it's worth, my opinion of Byrd is not as low as my opinion of Stevens...but it's close.
Over at Cartoon Brew, they're reporting the death of veteran cartoonist Ed Benedict at the age of 94. Which would mean he was almost born in the same year as the cave people he drew so well for The Flintstones. Ed was mainly a designer for animation and he is generally given credit for the early Hanna-Barbera shows including Ruff 'n' Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and those cave people. (There are or were a few old-timers around who felt that others, like Dick Bickenbach, did more on those shows than is sometimes acknowledged. I'm agnostic on the issue but I thought it should be acknowledged.)
In any case, Benedict was certainly a terrific cartoonist...the kind whose very presence on a project could set the style for everyone else around him. He was especially effective in the fifties as studios were moving away from the ornate Disney look and wrestling with the new, minimalist U.P.A. look for animation. Benedict could work in either style but he was especially good at bridging the gap, managing to simplify the animation in a way that increased the expression and personality instead of diminishing it. Just drawing with fewer lines is simple. Anyone can do it. It takes the kind of talent Ed Benedict had to use fewer lines but to make them count for so much.
The Cartoon Brew obit and attendant links will tell you more about Ed Benedict than I ever could. I never met the man but I sure met and loved the drawings.
Back on August 21, George W. Bush held a press conference that...well, let's put it this way. You have your people out there who think the man is a terrible president and that there's something wrong with him in terms of being able to think or communicate. And you have your people who think he's a great leader and that he's fully in command of everything he's saying and doing. Both groups seem to think that this particular press conference inarguably proves their case. If you'd like to watch it, you can decide for yourself.
At the time it occurred, I couldn't link to it because the only place I could find the whole thing was the C-Span website, which seems to receive its tech support from Larry the Cable Guy. But Steve Billnitzer, a loyal reader of this site, figured out how to view it despite Larry's best efforts.
This link should work in most browsers. You'll need to have Real Player installed to view the clip, which runs a bit less than an hour. You'd think, in this era of Google Video and You Tube and ifilm that someone would establish an online source for all the major political speeches and press conferences. Yeah, you'd think that.
By the way: That's an rtsp link, those letters standing for Real Time Streaming Protocol. In theory, your browser is supposed to connect to an rtsp link and allow you to view the clip but not to download it...and in many cases, you don't want to download it to your harddisk because those files can be very large. But if you come across an rtsp link and you want to download it, it's a cinch with Net Transport, a file downloader that can download almost anything and run manage several download links at the same time. You can download a trial version of the program at the Net Transport website. Sometimes what you happen to do is open a media file in Windows Media Player or Real Player's standalone player, look on the Properties or Clip Info page and get the exact web address from which the media file is coming, then paste that address into Net Transport.
See what wonderful stuff you can learn from this site? I'm feeling so helpful today that I think I'm going to put up another ad to encourage tipping. My PayPal account is low and I need to buy some real odd junk this week.
Here's our last clip from The Night of 100 Stars, at least for now. It's in two parts which total around 11 and a half minutes.
Here's some trivia for you. Star #4 wrote the tune he's conducting. Star #10 went to junior high school with me. You may notice an odd similarity between Star #17 and Star #18. And you're about to see the lousiest part that Maureen Stapleton ever had in her whole career, as well as Joe Namath in a moment almost as embarrassing as when he modelled panty hose or when he was drunk and trying to kiss a lady reporter...
Okay, that's Part One. Now, click and watch Part Two...
To the surprise of absolutely no one, it turns out that "The Masked Senator" who's held up a bi-partisan bill to make government spending more transparent is Ted Stevens of Alaska. He was unmasked by bi-partisan detective work done on a thing called the Internet which, as I understand it, is a series of tubes.
So no one's surprised it's Stevens. What's amazing is his stated reason for doing what he did. Ted Stevens is the guy who fought for and got $453 million to build a bridge in his home state...a bridge that would only be of use to a very small group of people.
So then along comes this bill to establish a database of government spending so that our elected officials will be more accountable as to how they spend our money. The bill has wide support from both sides of the aisle and the database is only supposed to cost $15 million. So why does Stevens try to stop it? Because he's afraid it will cost too much.
You have to feel sorry for people who have to write political satire these days. How do you stay ahead of stuff like that?
If you liked the interview with Conan O'Brien I just linked to, you might enjoy the hour he spent last week being quizzed on The Charlie Rose Show. It's online at Google Video and while they usually charge a buck or so to watch one of these, they also have occasional "free" days and one is going on at this very moment. You can watch it here. If it's not free by the time you get to it, either pay the modest charge or check back each day until it's free again.
I should say that I thought Mr. O'Brien did a fine job hosting the Emmy Awards the other night. Lately on his own show, I've grown a bit tired of the catch-phrases and "audience lines" and repeated bits. Emmy night, he had his act perfectly tailored to the event. I'm a little more confident that he'll be able to make The Tonight Show work for him and vice-versa when that sea change occurs.
Russell Steele writes to ask, in reference to the clip I linked to here...
Just wanted to make mention of the Tonight Show piece where Carson went to the CPO Sharkey set to razz Don Rickles about breaking his cigarette box. I remember howling at that when I was a child. I had to flinch a couple of times while watching it now due to, no other way to say it, Johnny's racist remarks. By the time he got to the "cotton picking" line, my jaw just dropped. Just curious as to your reaction these many years later.
My reaction is that I still think it's funny — though probably less so than it was then — and I don't think Johnny's remarks were racist. I think they were a parody of the kind of thing Rickles was doing at the time, starting with when he hit Don with his own signature line, calling him "you big dummy," and continuing from there. Rickles's act today is kind of "old hat" so to see someone doing to him what he did to others is also a bit dated.
This gets back to something I was discussing here the other day. If someone utters an offensive remark and no one actually takes personal offense, is it an offensive remark? I say no. Offense is in the eye (or, I guess, ear) of the offended. This is a philosophy of mine that I developed during all the years I dealt with networks and their Standards and Practices departments. There'd be a line in a script that, if you really wanted to, you could interpret as being insulting to, say, the Irish. A quivering Broadcast Standards lady would come in and say, "That's got to go. The Irish Anti-Defamation League will picket the network. Irish Senators will challenge our broadcast licenses. Small Irish children will weep and older Irish women will faint in the streets." And so on.
And then you'd talk the Standards Lady out of cutting the line and it would appear on coast-to-coast television and be seen by millions and there'd be absolutely no protest. No complaints whatsoever. Or you'd get a few postcards from people who weren't Irish but who'd say, "I just know the Irish-Americans will be deeply offended by this." In other words, someone was concerned about it being offensive but no one was actually offended enough to pick up a phone and call the station.
It would amaze me how often this happened...and you have to remember that some people will write in letters of protest and call up in shock and indignation over the damnedest things. If you have some character in a show say, "I don't like asparagus," you may well get a flood of mail and calls from asparagus lovers and asparagus farmers and The National Asparagus Council (I'll bet there is one) and so on. It is stunning when you don't get protests over something...but quite often, you don't — and over things that one might think would bring villagers with burning torches, molten tar and feathers aplenty. If someone who seemed the slightest bit serious about it were to go on TV and say, "Let's kill all the Jews," okay, that's inarguably offensive and I doubt anyone would dispute that. But if it's arguably offensive, it probably isn't; not unless and until the targeted party takes serious offense.
Carson's lines in that bit don't bother me because, well, it's Johnny Carson. Does anyone think the man was a racist? Is there one anecdote anywhere of Johnny Carson mistreating a minority? I consider myself kind of a Carson scholar and I've sure never heard one. In fact, it's actually Johnny Carson imitating Don Rickles so it's even farther removed from Carson's own reality. You can't just take the words literally. It's like the difference between Lenny Bruce saying "nigger" in his act and some prominent White Supremacist saying it in front of a rally. It isn't the same word in the two different contexts and the former probably did not offend anyone personally, at least not if they understood how and why Bruce was saying it.
I'm not saying remarks can't be offensive. I just think that if no one is personally offended — or in the case of a statement heard by millions, almost no one — then the remark is not offensive. Because it didn't offend. If and when it does, we can discuss it then.
Wanna read a good interview with Conan O'Brien? It's over at The A.V. Club wing of The Onion and it's in two parts. Here's Part One and here's Part Two.
Keith Olbermann tears Donald Rumsfeld a new orifice. If you haven't read Rumsfeld's remarks the other day before the American Legion, go read them first. Then read Olbermann.
UPDATE: Here's another option: Click below to watch a video of Keith Olbermann delivering his remarks. It runs a little under seven minutes.
A bunch of you wrote in to ask what kind of Pocket PC I'd purchased. I bought one of these — the Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 2495. So far, I'm pretty happy with it but I'm not looking for a lot in a PDA so I'd probably be happy with about 85% of all the ones manufactured these days. The main thing I need it for is taking my phone book, calendar and "to do" list with me, and having a way to jot down notes and play games.
I picked this one because I've had good luck with H-P products, including my previous PDA which served me well long after it had become an antique. I also wanted something that accepted Compact Flash cards because my digital cameras all use them and I have quite a few here. And of course, it was being featured by Costco and I'm easily hypnotized by Costco. They sell coffins now and I'm thinking of stocking up, just because I love buying things from that place. When I see them selling hand sanitizer in ten barrel lots, it's all I can do to not purchase an eighty year supply.
Why, someone asked, didn't I get one that integrated a cell phone? Two reasons. I think those are a little clumsy to carry around and also, I'm really happy with the "hands free" cell phone hook-up I have in my car. I have a little dashboard cradle and I can just pop my Motorola cell phone into it and drive about, keeping my hands on the wheel, talking (when necessary) on the speakerphone. When I reach my destination, I pop out the cell phone and take it in with me. If I'd switched to a combination cell phone and PDA, none of that would work. I'd have to get the guy out again to install a completely new cradle/holder in my car.
Now then, a query: I use Microsoft Outlook for my contacts, calendar, task list, etc. — everything but e-mail. I want to stay with Outlook since it interfaces so neatly with almost everything but I find its task list clumsy and close to useless. You just list tasks and check them off when they're done. You can't mark something as high priority, can't mark a task as started but not completed, can't even (easily) connect a date or time to a task.
Does anyone make an add-on that will add that kind of functionality to Microsoft Outlook, allow you to sync with a handheld, and then have all that data available to you in both places? I need to have a task list on both my desktop and my handheld that can manage that trick. I'm willing to go outside Outlook if I have to. So far, the Personal Information Managers I've tested on the Pocket PC are also useless. They're as cluttered as a cable TV news screen and the extra info you enter into your task lists there doesn't seem to make it back to the desktop when you sync up. Anyone have any suggestions of what might make Mark happy?
"Hey, Evanier," I hear America saying. "We love these clips you've been linking to from the 1985 Night of 100 Stars special. You couldn't possibly have another one of those to embed in your wondrous website, could you?" Well, since I hate to let anyone down, here's an odd one that features Whoopi Goldberg...
This is just for my friends who obsessively track and itemize voice actors and their performances...
Just watching How to Succeed in Business Without Trying for the umpteenth time. How come I never before noticed the lady ("Mrs. Needleman," about 29 minutes into the film) whose dialogue is dubbed in by Mae Questel?
That will be of great interest to about twelve pals who read this weblog. The rest of you...thank you for indulging me.
From Greg Eckler comes the following message with the subject line, "Emmys Plane Crash Bit"...
I would love for you to weigh in on that one, as somebody who is both a news junkie and would understand the implications of dropping an opening bit from a major show that probably took weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars to make.
I think this plane crash was far from a space shuttle incident. It got big play all day on cable because that's what cable does, but was not in the national consciousness and most people probably didn't even make the connection with the Emmys bit (I didn't). The bit could've been dropped just from the Kentucky affiliates. I mean, if it's just about offending bereaved people, how many summer weekend drowning incidents took place this weekend and could those families not have been haunted by the Bob Newhart suffocation bit? Where do you draw the line?
I think I'll weigh in by agreeing with you. We have a tendency to turn into Little Old Ladies about these things, taking offense where we don't have to...and for no good purpose. I have, as I so often do, a story. Years ago, for reasons too boring to even appear on this weblog, I spent an afternoon hanging around backstage at The Tonight Show. Richard Dawson was guest-hosting and his entire monologue was about air travel and being nervous on the plane.
About the time taping completed, the producers got word of a major air crash in the mid-west with many fatalities. I got to eavesdrop on a sudden discussion between them and some network folks about whether or not the show should air in that context. Nothing definite was decided near me but I was struck by the essence of the debate. It was not about whether the loved ones of the crash victims would be hurt. The presumption was that those people probably would not be watching television that evening. If they did, they'd be seeing news footage of the crash that would surely be more unsettling than some reference to airline problems that had not actually occurred.
No, the potential problem was complaints from people who were not, themselves, impacted by the crash. "People who look for reasons to be offended" was what one person called them. And I've found this to be the case in my own wrestling with Standards and Practices. The networks are too quick to react to what are often very few complaints and even then, a lot of the complaints they get are from people who are saying, in effect, "I'm offended because I just know this will offend someone else."
This is the essence of too many censorship moves in television: Worrying about offending theoretical people who rarely seem to be actually offended, themselves. That's pretty much what this bogus controversy over the Emmy Awards comes down to. Yesterday, Matt Drudge linked to all these news reports that quoted people who said they were "horrified" at the insensitive airing of the plane crash sketch...but all those people were upset because, they said, it would upset someone else. Well, maybe. But maybe not. If I'd lost a loved one in a plane crash this morning, I don't think a sketch on the Emmys would make my day any worse.
(By the way: The final decision on that Tonight Show episode was to not air it that night. I suspect it was a matter of "Why take even the slight risk of offending anyone?" They stuck a Carson rerun in its place and then ran the Dawson-hosted show a few weeks later on a Monday night. It was full of dated references...guests plugging upcoming TV shows that had already aired, several topical jokes about what was in the news that day, etc. I always wondered if anyone wrote in that they were offended by having a show that was obviously taped a month or so earlier passed off as "today's" Tonight Show. I probably should have written one, myself.)
Okay, here it is: Your all-time favorite of all the video links we've provided on this site.
On December 13, 1976, Bob Newhart was guest-hosting The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Don Rickles was guesting, mainly to plug his then-current sitcom, CPO Sharkey, which taped right across the hall from The Tonight Show. During the spot, Mr. Rickles accidentally broke the cigarette box that had been in permanent residence on Mr. Carson's desk.
The next night, Carson was back and a bit was arranged to capitalize on the moment. As you watch this, it may be helpful to remember that while Johnny did his best to make it all look spontaneous and unarranged, it had to have been carefully planned. Rickles probably was not in on it and may have been genuinely surprised...but Johnny's producers and director must have been prepared for what transpired, and the producers of CPO Sharkey almost certainly knew. (At the moment Johnny entered, Don just "happened" to be shooting on the set closest to that door. The surprise wouldn't have worked as well if they'd been on one of the other sets. It wouldn't have worked at all if they they'd been between scenes or taping a portion of the show that Rickles wasn't in.)
Carson's show was taped in Studio 1 at NBC Burbank. The Rickles sitcom was in Studio 3, where Leno now tapes. These studios are side by side and share a common corridor of dressing rooms and a make-up department. You'll see Carson, in a seeming impulse move, take his microphone and cameras across the hall to interrupt Don's taping. (If you look carefully on the left side of the screen as Johnny crosses that corridor, you'll catch a quick glimpse of the late and legendary Pat McCormick, who was then one of Carson's writers. He's the tall guy with the mustache.)
While David Letterman would later make this kind of "wandering the halls" bit commonplace on his NBC show, this was done at a time when Dave was still showcasing for no money at The Comedy Store. I remember seeing Johnny burst in on Don that night and I laughed my fool head off. Later, when I knew enough about the teevee biz to realize it had been planned, my admiration for Johnny's ability only grew. Doesn't he give a great performance, making you think it was all something that just occurred to him on the spot?
So enjoy your new, all-time favorite clip on this site. And thank Peter Avellino for letting me know about it.
One United States Senator has placed a "hold" on a bill that would make federal spending more transparent by establishing an open database of it. Which Senator has stopped this bill? We don't know...which is somehow appropriate. Why shouldn't a bill to let us know where our money is going be killed by a Senator who won't let us know who he is?
As it happens, this is an issue that unites a lot of activists on both the Left and the Right. Many in both camps see the need for this database and have joined together to try and figure out which Senator placed the secret hold. Each Senator's office is being contacted and asked for a clear denial.
As of this moment, we seem to be down to six suspects...six Senators who've declined to deny they did the deed. Smart money seems to be on Ted Stevens of Alaska. In case you aren't scoring at home, he's the Senator who's in charge of laws governing the Internet but who keeps making statements that makes it clear he doesn't have a clue what the Internet is. He's also the Senator who threw what the Washington Post called a "hissy fit" when it was proposed that his state not get $453 million dollars of federal funds in order to build a bridge that would only serve a handful of people.
Here's the current tally. You still have time to get a bet down.
If you live in California, you might be surprised to learn that our Legislature is on the verge of passing a bill that would set up a system of Universal Health Care in this state. It was proposed by State Senator Sheila Kuehl and if it goes the distance — Governor Arnold has vowed to veto — Ms. Kuehl will go into the history books for substantially more than having played Zelda Gilroy on the old Dobie Gillis TV show.
I don't know the details of the plan...though what the above-linked article says is encouraging. What I'm hoping is that this is not an Election Year stunt to force Schwarzenegger to spend a lot of time defending what would probably be an unpopular veto. On the other hand, his opponent doesn't seem to be getting too solidly behind the proposal, either.
Health care costs in this country have become insane...and in many ways, more threatening to human life than all the shoe-bombers in the world. I honestly don't understand why people who are so concerned about the lives of embryos and zygotes aren't more outraged that, once born, those embryos and zygotes so often exist without the ability to get adequate medical care. (That is not a dig at the so-called pro-lifers. I admire much about their cause and might even join it if the "all life must be preserved" mantra didn't seem to have so many loopholes.)
It isn't just that people die because they can't afford decent medical care. The crunch of the uninsured lowers the quality of health care for us all. Most emergency rooms are packed 24/7 because they're the only recourse for the uninsured when they get sick. As a result, they fill the waiting rooms to capacity. Last February when I went to the E.R. at Cedars-Sinai with my leg infection, the wait was around six hours to get in, and then another hour spent lying on a gurney in a corridor. This was after a Cedars-Sinai doctor has arranged for my admittance. I wasn't waiting for a doctor to look at my leg. He'd done that. I was waiting for the Emergency Room crew to just get around to handling my case and find me a room.
And while I was lying on that gurney, I saw them turning away people who were deathly ill or injured...because there were simply not enough beds for all of them. The scariest thing I saw or heard during my entire hospital stay was when a nurse told me this was — and I quote: "...a fairly light night around here."
The crunch is impossible. The bills can be formidable for the insured, prohibitive for the uninsured. People die because they can't afford health care...and they're just as dead as if they were on an upper floor of the World Trade Center. I hope the California plan goes through, proves workable and becomes a model for the entire nation. And while we're at it, the bill that will soon be on Schwarzenegger's desk that will cap carbon dioxide emissions — and which he says he will sign — may also make us a lot safer than all those things that aren't working in Iraq.
Who says there's no cause for optimism in the world today?
So...you laid down the big bucks and you now have tickets to see Barbra Streisand in her upcoming concert tour. Everything is wonderful, right? Not so fast!
I seem to be having a blog-to-blog discussion with Jeffrey Wells, who operates Hollywood Elsewhere. This is all about the allegations — which I think are thinner than Calista Flockhart in a waist-cincher — that Billy Crystal was somehow responsible for an alleged destruction of the career of the late Bruno Kirby. Wells writes...
I also know from limited experience that when the word goes out on an actor or actress that he/she is bad news and/or more trouble than he/she is worth or has made an enemy of a very important person, etc., people pick up on this and they tend to steer away from him/her. It's cowardly but people do this. Actors can go cold for long periods of time, and sometimes the cold streak starts when a big name hands them a black spot.
Once again, I'm not saying Crystal did this to Kirby — I don't know anything — but I know that if a certain heavyweight decides to shun an actor, other heavyweights pick up on this and figure, "If there's a 1 in 100 chance I might alienate that heavyweight actor-director by hiring this character actor, why do it? Why not just hire someone else?" This is a town, trust me, that runs on terror, avoidance and backbones made of jelly.
Yeah, but here's why that probably does not apply in this case. First off, no one knows what happened between Crystal and Kirby...or even that anything did. If I were a cowardly, craven filmmaker and I heard some semi-credible, detailed story of Billy and Bruno fighting and of Billy screaming, "I'll never work with that S.O.B. again," I might think it would matter to Billy Crystal if I hired Bruno Kirby. But we haven't heard any such tales, which means they haven't been particularly widespread. Billy Crystal hasn't handed out any known black spots.
And even if he did, why should I care about alienating Billy Crystal? The man ain't exactly the most powerful guy in Hollywood or anything close to it. What do the top directors have to fear by incurring his wrath? That he might mispronounce their names next time he hosts the Oscars? I can understand not wanting to piss off Jerry Bruckheimer or Amy Pascal...but the worst thing Billy Crystal could do to an important director is to refuse to be in his next movie. Which would harm Crystal more than it would hurt any director, which is why he wouldn't do it.
Actually, I disagree with the premise that people in the industry are all afraid of alienating others. The two actors who seem to consistently place highest on all those "Most Powerful People in Hollywood" lists are Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise. There are folks out there defending them, to be sure...but there's no shortage of show business figures who are willing to be quoted as calling Gibson a racist drunk or to ridicule Cruise's sexuality or religion. Why would anyone who was willing to so pointedly get on those guys' bad sides be afraid of upsetting Billy Crystal?
Wells also makes a big thing out of the fact that in one interview, when asked about Kirby, Crystal said, "I think we're still friends." Wells thinks that's an obvious dodge and maybe it is...but we have no idea what he's dodging. I've had quarrels with people in the past and if you ask me about them today, I'll probably duck and weave and try not to reopen old wounds. In those disputes, I think I was right and the other party was wrong...but there's no advantage to me to resurrect an old battle and give my side of it, thereby baiting a former associate to rush out and give his side, inflaming matters and lessening the chance that we can ever bury the ol' hatchet.
Oops — look at the time. Got to get to bed. I think Jeffrey and I are pretty much agreeing that we don't know a lot about the alleged Crystal/Kirby feud and that's really the main point I was trying to make. One of the many things I've learned about Hollywood is that sometimes, the truth isn't as interesting as the speculation. So it's a lot more fun to play in the speculation...and easy to forget that that's all it is. Good night from Tinsel Town.
Yep, it's another clip from the 1985 Night of 100 Stars special. This one will take a little under seven minutes of your life but you'll see a lot of famous faces and you'll learn the history of the Actor's Fund, a show biz charity that does good work. Who, as Mr. Gershwin used to ponder, could ask for anything more? Certainly not us.
Well, you might want to...if you have The Sleuth Channel, which you probably don't. But if you do, you might be interested in this. Tomorrow night at 11:30 PM (my time), they're running an episode of the 60's Dragnet show that features the late Henry Corden in a showy part. Henry was a great cartoon voice actor, most notably as the second and longest voice of Fred Flintstone. But he also had a very nice on-camera career and some of his friends and co-stars in the voice biz have asked me to let them know when they could see him in one of these roles. Tomorrow night's the answer...if you have The Sleuth Channel which, like I said, you probably don't. Henry plays a furrier who has been robbed and then, thanks to the type of ace detective work that too often typified Dragnet, someone phones Joe Friday and tells him who the crooks are so Henry gets his furs back and why am I telling you all this? You probably don't have The Sleuth Channel. Forget I even posted this.
Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt discuss the state of the American economy. Bottom line: Almost all the good news is for the folks who were already among the wealthiest. Those who work for a living are working harder and earning less.
At this very moment, I am sitting in my car, which is parked in front of my mother's house in West L.A. I decided to see if I could post to my weblog from my handheld H-P iPAQ Pocket PC, which has connected to an open Wi-Fi connection. If you can read this, I was able to do this.
All last week in the Broom-Hilda comic strip, the witch and her vulture pal were discussing what to do with a dead cartoonist. A couple of folks wrote to me to ask if Russell Myers — who's been drawing that strip since Rembrandt worked in Crayola™ — was okay. Among his peers, Russell is famously far-ahead. Others spend their lives burning the Midnight Light Bulb to get this week's strips off to the engraver. Myers has around a year's worth of his fine feature Broom-Hilda, all drawn and ready-to-go.
So it's entirely possible that when he passes, which I hope won't be in the next few decades, his strip will continue to appear for some time. That's what happened when the late/great Virgil Partch was killed in a car accident in 1984. Ordinarily, when a cartoonist kicks the ink bottle, the syndicate has to decide A.S.A.P. whether or not the strip will continue and if so, who will do it. With Partch's strip, Big George, he was so far ahead that when people inquired about its fate, they were told, "We'll decide next year...or maybe the year after." The folks in charge finally chose to drop the feature when the Partch backlog was exhausted.
I decided to use the recent continuity in Broom-Hilda as an excuse to phone up Russell, who I've known for years, and make sure he was hale and healthy. He sure seems to be. Matter of fact, the joke here is that he's probably the syndicated cartoonist least likely to be found face-down-dead at his drawing board from "the ceaseless pressure of unrelenting deadlines." When he goes, it'll probably be from the strain of carrying around all those yet-to-be-published strips.
Here's a link to last week's Broom-Hilda storyline, which starts with the two panels above. Click the appropriate arrows to advance from day to day.
Saturday evening, a local TV station (KTLA) telecast an edited version of the Local Emmy Awards ceremony we wrote about here. The ceremony was chopped — ruthlessly but probably unavoidably — down to an hour. And I wanted to note that the two complaints I voiced about the treatment of honoree Stan Freberg were both fixed. (I am not suggesting it was because of this site.) The spelling of his name was corrected and a new song was dubbed in to play him on and off the stage. To whoever did that: Thank you.
Had he lived, he would have been 89 years old today...and still brilliant. Oh, his amazing creative powers might have dimmed with time and health. The last few years he drew, failing motor skills caused him to not draw anywhere up to his old standards. But that was okay because nobody else was drawing up to his old standards, either.
We're talking Kirby here...Jack Kirby, owner of (arguably) the most fertile imagination ever seen in adventure and fantasy comic books. People referred to him as a great artist, and he was...but I always thought that compliment kind of missed the point. It wasn't just that he drew so well but that he thought of wonderful things to draw that no one else would ever have imagined. Another pretty good artist, Al Williamson, once said, "If you told me or most of my buddies to draw fifty spaceships, they'd all look like they were built in the same plant. If Jack drew fifty spaceships, they'd look like they were built by fifty different alien races."
I miss Jack. I miss the guy the same way you miss that favorite uncle you always enjoyed being around. But I also miss just having a Jack Kirby in our midst...a man who just radiated creative energy and who made everyone he met feel a little more like a writer or artist. That was because he lived and breathed new ideas, new visions, new vistas. Young, wanna-be artists and writers went to him with their work seeking...well, some were seeking career help and others were seeking tips, but I think a lot of them just wanted semi-parental approval and the reassurance that they were breathing the same air as an idol. He encouraged everyone and they all went away with more confidence...because the King of the Comics stood on no ceremony. He treated everyone as an equal, even though no one really was.
I probably write too much about Jack but you have to understand. I don't do it for you. I'm not even sure I do it for him. I do it for myself because since he died, it's really the only way I have of spending any more time with him.
Happy birthday, Kirby. Make a wish and blow out the galaxy.
If you want to read the smartest commentaries on the Katrina reconstruction debacle, as written by someone who really knows the area, go read Harry Shearer. Start with the most recent column and just read back 'til you can't take any more.
I am told by several correspondents that Orange Life Savers have made a reappearance in the basic Life Savers assortment roll...or so they think. A number of people wrote to say they'd heard that the Life Savers people had bowed to popular demand and reinstated our beloved orange...but not one of these people had actually seen one.
So in the next day or so, if I'm anywhere that sells them, I'm actually going to purchase a roll of Life Savers and report. Check back here for this hard-hitting investigative report.
Hey, don't laugh. It's more legwork than Bob Woodward has done in twenty years.
Another clip from the 1985 TV special, Night of 100 Stars. This one spotlights "vaudeville," though I don't guarantee the definition of what they think falls under that heading. At least though, the featured stars in this one do a little more than just walk out on stage to applause. Among those who actually perform, you'll see Roby Gasser and His Sea Lions, an act from Switzerland that used to be featured in Splash!, the big show at the Riviera in Las Vegas. The way Mr. Gasser and his marine mammal leave the stage, which is the way they exit in this clip, always got one of the biggest ovations I ever heard in Vegas.
Another Vegas crowd pleaser is my pal Ronn Lucas, who you'll see in there with his pal, Buffalo Billy.. And I'll let the other ones surprise you. This runs a little under six and a half minutes and I guarantee you William Shatner is nowhere to be seen.
Curtains, a new musical from the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, recently debuted despite the fact that Mr. Ebb passed away two years ago. This article in The New York Times discusses what Mr. Kander has been going through since the loss of his collaborator, and what it took to get this musical up and running without him.
Jonathan Alter says that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, George W. Bush dropped the ball with regard to helping the poor.
This is one of those areas where I'm honestly baffled as to what to think. Is it that he wanted to make good on all those promises and then incompetence (his or someone else's) or some other obstacle prevented it? Or was there a deliberate attempt to pledge one thing and deliver another? I don't know which is the case...or even which would be worse.
In this message a few days ago, we discussed the dilemma of whoever had to decide who to include and exclude for this year's Emmy Award "In Memoriam" montage. I posted fifty names and said they'd probably feature 20 or 25. The montage aired this evening had 29 people in it, seven of whom were not on my list. Here's who they had in it...
Dennis Weaver, Barnard Hughes, Mrs. Philo T. Farnsworth, Don Adams, Dan Curtis, Lew Anderson, Ralph Edwards, Curt Gowdy, Robert Sterling, Michael Piller, Red Buttons, Mike Douglas, Scott Brazil, Tony Franciosa, Phyllis Huffman, Darren McGavin, Gloria Monty, Jan Murray, Pat Morita, Al Lewis, Maureen Stapleton, Buck Owens, Jack Warden, Don Knotts, Robert Wise, John Spencer, Louis Nye, Shelley Winters and Richard Pryor.
And there was a separate tribute to Aaron Spelling. To save you comparing lists, here's the roster of those who didn't make the cut...
June Allyson, Lloyd Bochner, Harvey Bullock, Jean Byron, Hamilton Camp, Franklin Cover, Robert Donner, Marty Farrell, Bud Freeman, Skitch Henderson, Douglas Hines, Bruce Johnson, Jerry Juhl, Pat McCormick, Sheree North, Lou Rawls, Charles Rocket, Rick Rhodes, Nipsey Russell, Vincent Schiavelli, Richard Snell, Wendie Jo Sperber, Mickey Spillane, Harold J. Stone, Amzie Strickland, Lennie Weinrib and Jack Wild.
I had Bob Denver in the list of possibles but I think he was covered last year. Beyond that, a couple of omissions surprised me. Nipsey Russell, Pat McCormick and Skitch Henderson did an awful lot of television. Jerry Juhl was a mainstay of The Muppets. Rick Rhodes had an awful lot of Emmys. But I suppose they had to draw the line somewhere and wherever they draw it, you could say, "Hey, what about So-and-So?" I was also surprised that they closed with Richard Pryor instead of Don Knotts.
This may all sound morbid, and I suppose it is. But I've lately known a few folks who were terribly hurt that their loved one, recently departed, was not deemed of sufficient import to make the "In Memoriam" montage. The suggestion has been made that the Emmys and Oscars should do away with such segments completely, and there's a good argument for that. Trouble is, when a Johnny Carson or a Bob Hope dies, you have to say something...and then the door is wide open. If you can mention Carson, why can't you mention this other guy who was almost as important? Or someone will argue that someone else was as important as Carson...and so on.
I haven't watched the whole show yet. I may or may not be back later with more comments on the telecast.
Speaking of William Shatner, as we must: I took time out the other day to watch Comedy Central's William Shatner Roast. Why did I do this when it would have been much simpler to shove a sharpened, #2 Dixon-Ticonderoga pencil up my nose...and the result would have been approximately the same? Beats the heck outta me.
I don't even fault the show. I fault me for not knowing better. The appeal of a roast when done properly is that (a) it's entertaining and (b) there's some genuine affection and camaraderie displayed towards the roastee. Neither occurs much on these roasts because — taking the latter first — the roasters rarely seem to have that much to do with the roastee. Jeffrey Ross, who probably knows Shatner about as well as my gardener does, is becoming the groundhog of Comedy Central. He puts in these annual appearances. showing up to insult total strangers and casting a shadow that signals we're going to have six more weeks of Bea Arthur penis jokes.
Yeah, they had a few folks present who'd worked with Shatner, like George Takei and Nichelle Nichols. But neither turned into a comedian at the rostrum and neither convinced me they had any particular affection for the honoree. Takei's presence seemed like it was because one of the producers said, "Hey, gay jokes are easy and we can't make any about Shatner. Has anyone who was on that show become a flaming spectacle? Sulu? Great. Book him at once!"
As for the humor content, it's tough for a show to make you laugh when the average punch line goes something like this...
No, but people all over Hollywood know William Shatner is a great actor. Of course, these are the same people who [BLEEP] that [BLEEP] put his [BLEEP]ing sh[BLEEP] in a bowl of Sugar Frosted [BLEEP]s."
I made that one up but you get the point. Half the time, you know what they said because of context and maybe even because they deliberately bleeped the "f" word in a way that made sure you heard a fraction of the "f" at the beginning and a strong "k" sound at the end. It's kind of a fake bleep designed to pretend they complied with rules. ("What do you mean you heard it? I definitely had them bleep that word. It's not my fault if the engineer was a thousandth of a second late.")
But then the other half the time, you don't know what was said and it's like some sick Sudoku game where you sit there, mentally plugging each of Mr. Carlin's Seven Dirty Words into the blanks to see if the sentence makes any sense. If it doesn't and you still care, you can either go to the Comedy Central website where there are online, unbleeped clips...or you can pay good money for the DVD. I'm guessing they hope for the second option.
There are, of course, some very funny, pithy lines here and there — how many hours did they tape to get the hour they aired? Three? Five? — but there are an awful lot where the joke, such as it is, is just crude and the laugh, if any, is over the fact that someone had the gall to dive that deep in search of a line. A friend who almost worked on the Shatner Roast was told that the only "taboo" subject was Mr. Shatner finding his wife dead in their swimming pool...and you know, it's almost a shame to close off such a fertile topic for humor. It's especially sad because the really, really painful insult that's "edgy" without being funny is what it's all about on these programs. It's when you get to see the acting abilities of target, dais and audience put to their fullest test as, knowing full well cameras are on them, they pretend to laugh. (Anyone remember the Chevy Chase Roast when most of those in the room couldn't even pretend?)
I like roasts when they're full of funny people who have a genuine respect or warmth for one another. Those usually flow from pre-existing relationships with speakers performing for each other, as opposed to playing to a mass TV audience. Televised roasts are generally packaged affairs based on who's available and who's willing to appear for scale. When Dean Martin did them, they were just as bogus but at least most of those performers knew one another before Tape Day and the lines weren't as nasty...which made it seem less phony when the speaker did the usual switch at the conclusion of their speech, abruptly going from calling the person an anal sphincter to saying, "I've always loved you and it's an honor to appear here to honor you."
With Dino's roasts, you weren't sitting there wondering why the "honoree" subjected himself to them, and almost wishing he'd leap up and tell everyone off for real, then storm from the set. Why did Shatner agree? He must have known it would mean sitting there for hours of taping, grinning like a demented ventriloquist as people he barely knew read quips based on the (arguable) premise that everyone agrees he's a terrible actor with no humility, no hair, no respect for his co-workers and not enough intregrity to decline any offer that gets him in front of a camera and pays...
...and maybe I just answered my own question. Okay, fine. Now I can work on the question of why I watched the thing. I suspect it has something to do with being stupid...
National Public Radio has a feature up on the life of Samuel Joel Mostel, AKA "Zero." It spotlights Jim Brochu and his one-man show...which have now actually been mentioned on this site more times than George W. Bush, Jack Kirby, orange snack food, and me combined. In fact, one more mention of Mostel on this page and I'm renaming the whole damn weblog, jews from me. But it's a good piece of about eight minutes so go listen to it over here.
I should warn you: This will run twelve minutes and there's a strong possibility that William Shatner is in it. I'm not saying he is and I'm not saying he isn't...just that you should be ever vigilant and on the alert.
Some weeks ago, I linked to a batch of clips (here and here) from an installment of Night of 100 Stars. These were specials that ran on ABC in the eighties, each of which featured well more than a hundred stars, even if you adopted a more realistic definition of the word "star" than the producers did. Most of the celebs didn't do much more than show up and walk out on stage but if you just wanted to look at familiar faces, you were probably in ecstasy.
Here, from one of those specials, is a salute to whatever was then on television (1985). It has Hal Linden, Michele Lee and Nancy Dussault singing a song that must have taken a month to pre-record, thanks to rhymes that probably gave the lyricist a hernia. I'll caution you one more time it's long...so long that it exceeded You Tube's ten minute time limit and had to be split into two pieces. And of course, I already told you that Shatner might be in it. If you're comfortable with all that, proceed at your own risk and click away.
Molly Ivins on "activist judges." Roughly speaking these days, an Activist Judge is anyone who for any reason doesn't decide a case the way you want to see it decided.
What is it with doing away with orange-flavored things? When I posted the previous item about Hostess Orange Cupcakes disappearing from shelves, I was unaware that another orangey (and sugary-good) treat from my childhood has gone bye-bye: Orange Life Savers. According to this article, the Life Savers people changed their standard roll three years ago, dropping orange, lemon and lime in favor of raspberry, watermelon and blackberry.
Interesting. As a kid, I had an Uncle Nathan who never knew what to give me at Christmas or on my birthday so he usually gave me money plus a "Life Savers Gift Set." I guess these were sold at some store he frequented, probably the place he bought pipe tobacco. They were little books that you'd open and there'd be twelve rolls inside — one each of what then comprised the Life Savers line. Here — I'll show you a picture of one of them...
A nice little gift but I really wasn't a huge fan of most flavors. Actually, I wasn't big on hard candies or gum at all but the only ones that interested me at all were the orange and occasionally the peppermint, lemon or lime. Every birthday or Christmas, I thanked Uncle Nate for the Life Savers Gift Set, pulled out the roll that was all orange and maybe one or two others, then gave the rest away. In fact, I think I usually gave him the Butterscotch ones.
I'm pretty sure I read an article back then saying that the Orange Life Savers were the third best-selling variety, right behind the "Five Flavors" assortment and the Pep-o-Mint. Orange was one of the flavors in the assortment so I always thought my fave should have been regarded as the most popular.
I also read that the orange roll was introduced due to consumer demand. Apparently, the way Life Savers were then distributed, they were limited to twelve varieties at a time. I'm guessing this had something to do with the size of the racks of them you often found by the checkout counter in markets and drugstores. The article said — I'm remembering back close to a half-century here so cut me some slack — so many people had written in and said they wanted a whole roll of the orange that Life Savers complied, dropping its lowest-selling roll, which I recall as watermelon. If I'm remembering this correctly, it would seem like Watermelon Life Savers got the last laugh.
All of this raises one of those questions that I doubt anyone can answer. What happened to Orange Life Savers? Why were they so popular for such a long time and now, they've even been booted out of the basic Life Savers assortment. Did the recipe change? I doubt that. Does the current generation have less taste for orange? I doubt that, too. (Life Savers has a new flavor called Orange Mints and their Creme Savers line has an orange version.) What doomed the basic orange Life Saver? Did Billy Crystal sabotage its career?
Boy, am I behind in my snack cake knowledge. It's been many years since I gave them up...maybe a decade since I even cruised that section of the supermarket. But the other night in a Pavilions, I had one of those carts with the one wheel that insists on dragging the other three (and therefore, you) towards stuff you have a hard time not purchasing. Quite against my will and intent, I found myself at the Cupcake and Twinkie display and I couldn't help but notice: No Hostess Orange Cupcakes. And no designated space on the shelf where they'd be if there were any in stock.
When did this happen? Probably shortly after I gave 'em up. The total number of units sold — at least around Los Angeles — must have plunged when I abandoned that favored way of getting stoked up on sugar. The Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes (which fortunately, are still produced en masse) were good but the orange ones...
Ah, the orange ones...
I not only used to eat Hostess Orange Cupcakes at home but if I was in a strange city and spotted them, I indulged...just to see what interesting and subtle variations the local Hostess baker might have introduced into the mix. The best ones I ever had, I had in Reno, Nevada. In a little market just up the block from Harrah's.
A quick bit of Internetting revealed that Hostess still makes them but just as an occasional specialty item sold in a few select stores. Most markets do not carry them and probably could not get them...but you can find ways of ordering them online if you're desperate. I'm not, but it's a relief to know that if I ever am, there are ways of obtaining them.
I also experienced a bit of a shock to learn that Dolly Madison Bakers — once the arch-rival to Hostess — is now part of the same company, the Interstate Bakeries Corporation. Zingers, the most popular of the Dolly Madison offerings, are now Hostess Zingers. I understand we live in a world of corporate takeovers and acquisitions but some of these still surprise you.
I thought I'd treat you to one more excerpt from Zero Hour, a play which stars Jim Brochu as the late 'n' looney Zero Mostel. This is the scene in which Jim re-creates Zero's 1955 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It runs a little under six minutes.
Jim Hightower provides a long, exasperating list of the failings and arrogances of the Bush administration.
ATTENTION, MIKE PETERS: Remember how yesterday over lunch, I told you that every now and then, you'd find a link on my weblog that would take you to an article that would make you very angry? This is just such a link.
ATTENTION, EVERYONE WHO IS NOT MIKE PETERS: The Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoons of Mr. Peters may be viewed at this site, along with his very funny newspaper strip, Mother Goose and Grimm. Both are also Recommended Reading, every doggone day.
Actor Bruno Kirby died on August 14 from leukemia. I didn't post anything about him at the time because I never met Mr. Kirby and had nothing to add to all the obits and words of regret. Unfortunately, I do now.
Ricocheting around the farthest crannies of the Internet at the moment is a "controversy" that strikes me as being based on absolutely nothing. People who never met Bruno Kirby or his occasional co-star Billy Crystal have taken an unsourced rumor that they had some sort of falling-out and have added a lot of speculation and a great many leaps of logic. The end-product is a theory that Crystal, apparently out of some sort of anger, "destroyed" Bruno Kirby's career. Even if the two men did have some sort of quarrel, that does not lead to the conclusion in articles like this one. (Note if you will that its source is a weblog by someone who has had no contact with Crystal and no inside info, and admits to an "animus" towards him.)
I would first argue with the premise that Bruno Kirby's career was destroyed. You can look over his Internet Movie Database listing and see that he worked at pretty much the same volume from when he broke into the field in 1971 until his death this year. He was in hits now and then, flops now and then. It looks like a pretty typical career arc to me. One successful film does not automatically earn you another, especially when you're working in supporting roles, playing the best friend. Sometimes, a good showcase role will get you offers, sometimes it doesn't. Even when it does, the offers may be for films that don't get made or released or which turn out so poorly that they're regarded as embarrassing credits.
There's always an enormous crapshoot involved and sometimes, it doesn't go the way you want, or the way you'd wish the system would work. One of the people arguing that Crystal sabotaged Kirby's career noted that "Kirby also won acclaim on Broadway, replacing Kevin Spacey as the male lead...in Neil Simon's memory play, Lost in Yonkers, which had won four Tony awards. At that point, Kirby's career was on a trajectory that was leading inexorably to Oscar nominations, and perhaps even a golden statuette."
That's a completely illogical conclusion. First off, even starring Broadway roles often do not lead to anything beyond Broadway...and rarely does a replacement get any notice at all. (I'm not sure why the guy mentioned the show's four Tony awards since they were won long before Kirby was even in the show. By the way, more than a dozen other actors were replacements in that show over its Broadway run and none of them got important movie offers as a result. Lucie Arnaz, who was one of them, won even more acclaim than Kirby. See any good Lucie Arnaz movies lately?) In any case, no one's career leads "inexorably" to Oscar nominations. Which is why the vast majority of talented, working actors go their entire careers without getting one.
For the sake of argument, let's assume Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby had some huge fight...and let's really stretch logic and say Crystal had some reason then to want to nuke Kirby's career. Yeah, I know. It doesn't make sense. Crystal's a huge star whose every live appearance sells out and who's begged each year to host the Oscars. In no way is he ever in competition with Bruno Kirby but just play along. Let's pretend Billy decides that Bruno Kirby's career must be terminated.
What could he possibly do? I mean, how might that be accomplished?
A successful career is based on a lot of different producers and directors wanting to hire you. You need a lot because there are always some who don't like you. Perhaps Billy Crystal blocked Bruno Kirby being cast in City Slickers II and subsequent Billy Crystal movies. It was probably within his power to do so...but how could he stop Spielberg from hiring Bruno Kirby? How could he stop Cameron or Howard or...well, name the top fifty directors in the business these days. If one of them decided Bruno Kirby was the best actor for a given role, would that director say, "Let's go with our second choice. I want to help Billy Crystal destroy Bruno's career."?
What I'm closing in on here is that it's an enormous slam to the memory of Bruno Kirby to suggest that his entire career hinged on getting cast again as Billy Crystal's buddy. Never mind the insult to Crystal, suggesting he'd be that vindictive. It's just plain insulting to the deceased.
And it's all based on speculation about some things we know nothing about. Maybe Kirby wasn't in City Slickers II because the writers, producers and/or director didn't want him or his character back. Maybe he had a schedule conflict or he held out for an outrageous sum of money. Who knows? Certainly not the folks spreading the Crystal Conspiracy Theory.
Bruno Kirby was a good actor. He was in some good movies...in roles which, somehow, did not lead "inexorably" to Oscars. He was in some bad ones. I doubt anyone thinks he saved the good ones or ruined the bad ones, but he certainly was good on the screen in most of them. Let's bury this rumor and instead put the blame for his career ending on what was really responsible: leukemia. That's a real and effective career-ender...and unfortunately, it makes even less sense than show business.
It's Walt Kelly Day and you know what that means: We celebrate the birthdate of one of the world's great cartoonists by singing songs, dancing dances, drawing drawings, painting paintings, chanting chants and feasting on feasts. On this planet, we encounter so few talents of that kind...where everything they did, everything they left us, just makes you feel better and happier and maybe even a little smarter. The creator of Pogo Possum was one such talent, and we thank him for a lifetime of wondrous work.
And a reminder: Don't put the hats and horns away so quickly. Next Monday is Jack Kirby Day.
Last night, I posted this item telling you that all Fantagraphics Books are 20% off so this would be a great time to buy, for example, The Complete Peanuts. The first five volumes retail for $144.75 so a 20% discount takes them down to $115.80. That's a good deal for you and probably a nice profit for Fantagraphics. I like the idea of, where feasible, buying books directly from the publisher (or even better, the author), thereby allowing more of the purchase price to go to folks who'll use the bucks to publish more. I'll often buy something that way, even though it would be a bit cheaper to order from a serious discounter.
However, under the oath I took when I became a Weblogger, I vowed to always tell you the best possible deal I could locate for an item. This requires me to mention something that Nat Gertler reminded me about. You can get those five Peanuts books even cheaper if you buy Volume One and Volume Two as one boxed set, and Volume Three and Volume Four as another. You get the same books plus you get the neat little slipcase that miraculously transforms two separate books into one boxed set.
Over at the Fantagraphics site, the two boxed sets retail for $49.95 each. Add in the as-yet unboxed Volume Five ($28.95) and the list price for all five is $128.85. Take 20% off that and your cost is $103.08.
But as they say in infomercials..."Wait! There's more!" Cole Odell reminds me that Amazon routinely discounts the most popular titles from Fantagraphics up to 37%. Right now, they sell the individual volumes for $18.24 each and the boxed sets for $32.97. So two boxed sets plus Volume Five equals $84.88. And it's even better than that because if you order from Fantagraphics, you'll need to pay shipping, which will tack another $22.50 onto your order, whereas Amazon will ship for free. I'm all for supporting publishers but the total Fantagraphics price works out to $125.58, whereas Amazon will sell you the exact same thing for $84.88, a savings of more than forty bucks. My sense of honor requires that I mention this.
And my sense of industry requires that I provide this Amazon link to order. That link will take you to the ordering page for the first boxed set and from there you can navigate easily to pick up the other books. If you go to the Amazon site via that link, this site receives a small cut of anything you order while you're over there...and not just Fantagraphics books or Peanuts books.
However, do not forsake the Fantagraphics 20% discount altogether! It has its useful qualities. As Mr. Odell notes in his e-mail, "...where [it] comes in handy is with the part of the list that isn't discounted better, elsewhere: any items not distributed through the book trade, plus items like Roberta Gregory's Bitchy Butch TPB, Feiffer, The Collected Works Vol. 1, and probably a slew of titles that didn't turn up in my cursory Amazon search."
Good point. Wherever possible, support the folks who create the books and those who publish them. But hey, forty bucks is forty bucks.
If you're been reading this weblog, you know my pal Jim Brochu has been starring in a play up in Hollywood in which he somehow turns himself into Zero Mostel. I don't know how he does it, either...but he sure does it well.
The play closes tomorrow night and the last performances are long since sold out so this isn't a plug. Well, maybe it is, because I'm sure Jim will be doing it again in other cities, probably even in future decades. I have a feeling he'll be doing this show for the rest of his life, except that I'm suggesting that in about twenty years, he convert it to Nathan Lane.
If he does it near you, go see him. For now, you'll have to be content with this sampler of four minutes from the play...
If you haven't started collecting the new series of Peanuts books yet, now would be a great time. It would also be a great time to pick up on a lot of other great books published by Fantagraphics. They're having a 20% off sale. From now 'til September 30, if your order totals $40 or more, they'll lop a fifth off your tab. The first five volumes of The Complete Peanuts, for example, would ordinarily run you $144.75. Ordered during the sale period, you'd pay...wait, I'm doing the math...
Looks like $115.80 to me. That's five for the price of four. And it isn't just Peanuts. It's all the Fantagraphics books, Eros titles excluded. There are a lot of goodies there that would look splendid on your shelf and are even more fun to read. Go for it.
Jonathan Alter on one of the many things making us less safe than we oughta be from terrorists: The F.B.I. is still handling its data on computers not that much more sophisticated than the one I used to write Scooby Doo comic books in the early eighties.
Why is it so difficult to get this kind of thing upgraded? You'd think Dick Cheney must have one buddy in the computer business who'd gladly sell us $100 million worth of computers for a no-bid $2 billion government contract.
I made it through all 4+ hours of When The Levees Broke, an HBO documentary by filmmaker Spike Lee. Much of it is tough going because it means witnessing the pain that so many people felt when their homes and lives were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and — as the film makes clear — the incompetence (and sometimes indifference) of those we count on in a time of emergency. Parts of it also made me angry. I find that in the face of such devastation, I get angry at government officials of all kinds, of all parties, who spend time on comparative trivia like flag-burning amendments, pork projects for their home districts and buddies, and impeaching Bill Clinton.
The story is told through news footage, newly-shot footage and — most compelling of all — the personal accounts of a vast number of locals and witnesses. Lee found some articulate and perceptive people to interview and he let them talk, in some cases at considerable length. The stories and observations often cover the same ground and there are moments when you may be tempted to grab for the Fast Forward button and say, "All right, already. We get it." Part of me wishes Lee had made the film shorter, not because any of the tales are unworthy of telling, but because a lot of people who need to see this account won't clear the four hours. And if they do start watching, they won't make it to the last hour, the message of which is that the system is still broken with regard to helping people down there.
On the other hand, it is an important story...one of the most important ever told about life in these United States. Maybe four hours isn't too long.
Early Sunday morning (3:01 AM in some time zones), NBC is rerunning the full, 90-minute version of the Saturday Night Live originally broadcast on October 3, 1981. It was not a great episode but it was somewhat important in the show's history.
As you may recall, when Lorne Michaels departed the show after Season #5, all the cast members and writers went with him. A former talent coordinator named Jean Doumanian was inexplicably appointed Producer and assigned the impossible job of rebuilding the show, almost from scratch. Among those who were around the show at this time, there seems to be a consensus that no one could have succeeded in the situation (not much lead time, lower budgets, network expectations of an instant classic, etc.) but that it didn't have to be quite that bad.
Anyway, Ms. Doumanian was fired and a man named Dick Ebersol was handed the job of building something out of the wreckage. He didn't have a lot of money to do it with and he had even less time. Ebersol produced an episode or two...but then he caught a break. The Writers Guild called a strike and NBC agreed to end that season of Saturday Night Live early. Ebersol suddenly had until the Fall to remodel the show, and he did. The 10/3/81 episode was the first of the new season and while not great, it was a huge improvement. Eddie Murphy especially blossomed with a sketch in which he played an amalgam of the legendary rocker, Little Richard, and the legendary exercise instructor, Richard Simmons.
There was no real host but Rod Stewart did some musical numbers and performed in sketches so he almost functioned as host. You'll also see juggler Michael Davis do a nice turn, from back in the days when SNL used to book acts like that. The entire cast consisted of Brian-Doyle Murray, Robin Duke, Christine Ebersole, Mary Gross, Tim Kazurinsky, Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo and Tony Rosato.
The following week in the same time slot, NBC is running the 1/30/82 episode from the same season. John Madden was the guest host and Jennifer Holliday was the musical guest, singing two songs from the Broadway show, Dreamgirls. Most of the show was Eddie Murphy but somewhere in there, there's one of Andy Kaufman's odder appearances.
Back in this message, I mentioned a new video processing technique called Live Feed. It can take an old, grainy kinescope of a TV show and transform it so it looks like it's being shot on modern video equipment. I've seen several examples of it in action and it's stunning.
If you watch the Emmy Awards on Sunday night, you'll see a few seconds of it. In the "death montage" I just mentioned, there's some footage of Jan Murray hosting one of his many game shows. This footage was processed by the Live Feed people, who were given a very bad kinescope to enhance. Watch and see what they did to it.
I may have said this last year but I'm glad I don't have the job of preparing the "In Memoriam" montage that runs on the Emmy Awards, especially this year. Someone has to go over a list of who in the history of television has passed on in the preceding twelve months and then decide who to leave out...knowing full well the family of the omitted will be sitting there, disappointed at the slight. Some loved ones have even been known to send in formal protests describing their hurt and/or anger.
Someone also has to decide who's the "biggie" that they'll use to close the montage. Another tough decision.
Want to play? Here's a partial list of folks in the TV business who've died in the last twelve months. I've left out between 20 and 30 people who might have made the rundown in a lean year. I skipped over movie people like Shelley Winters and recording artists like Gene Pitney and just left in those I think have a shot at it because they did a lot of television. There are 38 names here. Tell me which ones you'd leave out.
Don Adams, June Allyson, Lloyd Bochner, Red Buttons, Jean Byron, Hamilton Camp, Franklin Cover, Bob Denver, Robert Donner, Mike Douglas, Ralph Edwards, Tony Franciosa, Curt Gowdy, Skitch Henderson, Barnard Hughes, Don Knotts, Al Lewis, Pat McCormick, Darren McGavin, Pat Morita, Jan Murray, Sheree North, Louis Nye, Buck Owens, Richard Pryor, Lou Rawls, Charles Rocket, Nipsey Russell, Vincent Schiavelli, Wendie Jo Sperber, Maureen Stapleton, Robert Sterling, Harold J. Stone, Amzie Strickland, Jack Warden, Dennis Weaver, Lennie Weinrib and Jack Wild.
Difficult to pick, right? Ah, wait. It gets worse...because I was only listing performers there. The Academy has been making an attempt to also acknowledge the behind-the-scenes people. The list they had to pick from also included producers, directors, writers, composers and many others. There are potentially fifty more contenders in these categories but I'll be nice and only give you 13 more names to consider. You probably have to get at least a few of these in so as to not slight their professions...
Harvey Bullock, Dan Curtis, Marty Farrell, Bud Freeman, Bruce Johnson, Douglas Hines, Jerry Juhl, Gloria Monty, Michael Piller, Rick Rhodes, Richard Snell, Aaron Spelling and Mickey Spillane.
Now, some of those folks aren't all that well known but the Academy would be demeaning itself and its awards to skip over them. Rick Rhodes, for instance, was a composer who received 27 Emmy nominations and six awards. Are you going to not mention his passing on the Emmy telecast? How about Jerry Juhl, who received seven nominations and one statuette for his work with the Muppets? Make-Up Expert Richard Snell, editor Douglas Hines and game show producer Anne-Marie Schmitt all received multiple nominations and awards. Gonna leave them out? (Irony Alert: One of the names that probably will not be included is Marty Farrell...and the irony here is that Marty often wrote the Emmy Awards and in some years, may have had a hand in this decision.)
I am told that Aaron Spelling will be the subject of a separate tribute. The rest will all go into one montage and while I don't know how many people will be in it, there won't be 50. I'm guessing 20...25, tops. Beyond that, I have no predictions other than that I probably left out someone important...and the segment will probably end with Don Knotts. Everyone loved Don and he took home a load of them Emmy thingies (five!) in his career.
So study the list. You still have time to place a small wager.
Want to listen to another interview with Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón talking about their graphic novel journalism version of The 9/11 Report? There's an audio segment with them over on the National Public Radio website at this link. The segment runs a little under eight minutes. Thank you, Quinton Buckley, for telling me about it.
As I mentioned here, I was appalled by George W. Bush's August 21 press conference. I don't think the guy's a very good president and I think almost every policy he's pursuing is exacerbating, not easing, the problems it was intended to solve. But this time, I was really stunned by his demeanor, his inability to defend his positions via coherent sentences and above all, his leaden attempts to josh with the press corps and to avoid serious answers via lighthearted faux friendliness. I kept waiting for at least one reporter to get up and say, "I don't mind the folksy banter, Mr. President, but I would like a real response to my question."
I think the Democrats are missing a bet (and there's a clause that's about as rare on the Internet as porn) by not opening up a website and just posting, without comment, videos of everything this man says and does. Let me show you what I mean.
Here's a link to the White House record of that press conference. There's a written transcript but it doesn't capture the panic in Bush's eyes or the desperation with which he tries to sell the Same Old Lines to a nation that has long since decided it ain't buying. You'll have to watch the video, which is also available on that page.
And while I'm at it: Am I the only one who can't get the videos on the C-Span site to play? I'm pretty good at navigating websites and I even understand the technologies involved in embedded and streaming video clips. I've now learned how to capture just about any clip and download it to my hard disk for posterity...but I can't even get the C-Span videos to open, and I've attacked them with three different browsers. I know C-Span operates on a budget of about eleven dollars a week, and that's including gas and electricity. But you'd think they could do better than to hire the guy who ran Joe Lieberman's website. Yeesh.
Here's a follow-up on this item about the new graphic novel interpretation of The 9/11 Report. Yesterday, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón appeared on a five-minute Today Show segment, interviewed by NBC newsman David Gregory. Gregory introduced them as having created Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich (which they didn't) and challenged them a little with the notion that their depiction of what happened on 9/11 is offensive to some who lost loved ones on that day. I thought Sid and Ernie did a good job of rebutting that idea. (By the way, I haven't seen Ernie in a while. When did he turn into Christopher Walken?) A shorter version of the segment also ran last night on NBC Nightly News.
What's that? You want a link to the online video of The Today Show? Well, let's see if we can do this for you. I think this will connect you to it, at least for a day or two. I don't know how long they keep these up.
We pause now for a commercial interruption. The Flintstones, who you'd think would know better, are still selling Winston cigarettes. Alan Reed is the voice of Fred, Mel Blanc is Barney Rubble and the little bird, and the voice on the record is Paul Frees in what I suspect is the first time he was ever connected with a Hanna-Barbera product. We'll be right back after this message...
The issue at hand (again) is the plan by Cartoon Network's British wing to cut many (not all) scenes of tobacco use out of classic cartoons. Over on Cartoon Brew, Amid Amidi asks the musical question, "If somebody tried to censor parts of a Picasso painting or a James Joyce story, there would be an uproar beyond belief. Animation, however, still doesn't merit similar consideration as Art, which is why the works of animation masters can be freely tinkered with and destroyed. When, if ever, will that change?"
My heart is in the same place as Amid's but my head — which I pray does not function like George W. Bush's "gut" — has some unfortunate answers. One biggie is that respect for art has to begin with the artist himself demanding (or at least, expecting) some level of respect. Years ago, when word got out that MGM planned to reanimate and redub parts of many Tom & Jerry cartoons to replace the black maid character, a lot of animation buffs were outraged. "Where's the respect?" they howled, and I recall talk of picket lines where we'd all put on the same kind of grotesque stockings that the black maid wore and we'd parade up and down in front of...
Well, I don't know where we'd have paraded. The plan never got that far, which was a shame because I'd have looked damned cute in those stockings. But then we heard that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had enthusiastically endorsed the changes and it seemed kind of inane to be picketing Hanna and Barbera for harming the work of Hanna and Barbera. A few years later, I arranged a night of Tex Avery cartoons up at U.C.L.A. with Tex present to answer questions. Several audience members tried to get him to say that he abhored the laundering of cartoons (his or anyone's) for present-day exhibition but Tex simply wouldn't say that. At one point, he suggested that if his cartoons were being shown to young kids — which had not been his intended audience when he made them — maybe they ought to have some of the more "violent" gags excised.
I remember the moment well. It's not every day you hear a hall full of Tex Avery worshippers actually boo Tex Avery.
Now, let me stop and defend those men for a moment: Their point-of-view might not have been mine but it was logical, especially to kids who'd grown up in the Depression era. Their goal was to keep the store open; to have the cartoons on the air and not withering in obscurity. It was important that the films continue to be exhibited and to make money. Maybe Tex's cartoons no longer made money for Tex but it reflected well on him that they made money for someone. He wasn't happy that certain, inexplicable edits were made in some cartoons but given the choice of being unedited and less commercial...or being cleansed and more commercial, Tex would have opted for the latter. Hanna and Barbera weren't proud of all the shows that were produced in their building, but doing Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch was preferable to closing the doors, laying people off and (by the way...) making fewer bucks.
Let me also point out that one aspect of this whole issue has gotten a lot better. I think it's a shame for great cartoons to be exhibited in edited, incomplete form...but back in the eighties and before, that's often all we had. Today, we can go out and buy uncut (usually) and nicely-restored (often) DVDs of what will probably soon be all the major theatrical cartoons ever produced in this country and most of the best done for television. Couldn't do that in 1977. The only version most folks could see of the 1951 Chuck Jones cartoon, Cheese Chasers, was the one CBS ran on Saturday morning. It was missing more than a minute, including its ending, and we worried then that the absent footage was lost and gone forever. That's no longer a concern; not with so many complete copies around on DVD.
So I have a little trouble getting too worked up over Cartoon Network UK cutting smoking scenes. I think it's dumb, especially because there's so little reason to do it at this time. There may never be even a solid financial reason to do it. But the cartoons are or will be around, unexpurgated, on home video...and besides, you don't see Joe Barbera objecting. He made the films now being edited and he's always had the clout to call the biggies at Time-Warner (or whoever owned his old films that week) and say, "Please don't do that to my work." But he never has. I love Joe. I worked with him for years and respect the hell outta him for many, many things...but even when he co-owned the whole studio and his word was the word of God, preserving the basic integrity of that work always took a back seat to marketing considerations. If they could have sold a new Jetsons show by making the characters Mexican, George and Jane would have been sporting sombreros in two seconds. I can't think of too many places in the mainstream American animation industry where that wouldn't have happened.
So to answer Amid's pained and admirable query: The reason the works of the animation masters can be tampered with so freely is that the animation masters never objected. Some of them even helped. That the situation is marginally better in live-action movies is because powerful directors, writers and actors and their unions have occasionally insisted on creative rights and creative controls, even if it means foregoing some sources of revenue.
Which brings us to the one thing that will change the practice of chopping up cartoons for new purposes and sensibilities. It will cease when consumers begin demanding the work be treated with more respect. Along the food chain, the only folks with more juice than the people who make the product is the ones who make it profitable. It will stop when customers become more demanding of better restorations and no cleansing of cartoons, ethnic or otherwise. I'm fantasizing of a day when someone high up in Time-Warner turns to someone else at Time-Warner and says, "Ratings [or sales] are way down because of that tampering we did. Have the guys in the vault haul out the negatives and restore everything."
That will happen if the marketplace demands it. Because even the most mercenary, insensitive ruiner of cartoons will give up the practice if there's no money in it.
Okay...enough chit-chat. Let's watch Fred and Barney pushing more cancer sticks on the children of America...
Here's Fred Kaplan again (he's been busy), this time discussing the presidential press conference that we talked about here yesterday. Anyone who's wondering why some people don't think highly of George W. Bush — or thinks the concerns about his mental powers are just about verbal gaffes — oughta read this piece. And it isn't even that Bush is wrong about a lot of stuff. It's that he's wrong about a lot of stuff and stubbornly insistent that if he never admits it, that will somehow make him right.
The other day on Scarborough Country on MSNBC, all a Bush defender could offer was to say something like, "I trust Bush's gut." In other words, he may not know what he's doing but he has good instincts. I'm sorry...even if that were true, you don't risk the lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of human beings, on someone's "gut." The next time a G.O.P. strategist says something like that, I'd like to see his questioner drag out the old (but not inappropriate) surgeon comparison...
You know: You're going in for open heart surgery. Your surgeon walks in and he stumbles over his words the way Bush does all the time, erring as to where your thyroid is located, just as Bush keeps saying certain countries are adjacent to Syria when they aren't. More than half the people around think he doesn't know what he's doing, and even some who still like him admit to some gruesome mistakes. There are others with different suggestions on how your surgery should go...which other organ, for instance, he really should be removing. Still, he's determined to do it his way and he lectures you about courage and not changing one's mind just because some of the evidence seems to suggest he's making the situation worse.
Do you trust his gut and let him do it his way? Or do you ask for another surgeon?
Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón are two talented and important veterans of the comic book industry. Sid was an editor for years at Harvey Comics, supervising the successful line that starred Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, Spooky, Sad Sack and so many others. Ernie drew thousands of pages of those comics and also branched out into adventure titles with his work for Warren, Gold Key and DC, and even into editing. In fact, he was briefly my editor at DC and so was Sid at another time and company. I mention that to make the point that these men have first-hand experience dealing with disasters.
Recently, they collaborated on a graphic novel based on The 9/11 Report and it's currently being serialized over on Slate. If you click on this link, it should take you to where you can read the first few chapters. What I've seen there is concise and serious, and the presentation of the material in that format gives it a clarity that has perhaps been missing from other venues. We'll talk more about it when they get more of it online...but you might want to start reading soon. Looks like a fine piece of work.
Fred Kaplan explains why the U.N. Security Council resolution — the one that was supposed to stop the killing in and around Lebanon — is working about as well as a Dell laptop battery. That's not the greatest analogy in the world but you know what I mean.
Director Spike Lee has made a long (four hours and fifteen minutes in length) documentary about the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. It's called When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and it is, by an amazing coincidence, in four acts. Acts One and Two debuted last night on HBO. Acts Three and Four debut tonight. I TiVoed last night's offering and while I've only had the chance to watch about fifteen minutes of it, it seems like "must" viewing for those of us who want to understand what happened and — more important — what can be learned from the tragedy that might prevent it from being quite so bad the next time. There will be a next time.
If you missed Acts One and Two last night, you might want to hold off on Three and Four just for sequential reasons. A week from tonight, HBO will run all four parts in a row and thereafter, Mr. Lee's effort will be broadcast repeatedly — sometimes, two acts at a time; sometimes, all four. I'm sure it will be depressing and frustrating but I intend to try to clear time to watch it from start to finish. If you're skeptical, wait 'til I make it through and I'll report back on whether I think it's worth your time. Personally, I think Lee should have put the major focus on FEMA and called his project, Do the Wrong Thing.
Didn't even notice this before. Also over at Animation World Network, there's also an article about the Comic-Con International and it even quotes me. In fact, there's a photo there of me with Lou Scheimer, the gent who co-owned and operated the Filmation cartoon studio. Some of you have asked me to post a picture so you could see what my weight loss has done to me. I'll let you go look at that one if you promise not to peek at my hair, which lately seems to be doing a kind of David Ben-Gurion thing with a Larry Fine flourish.
I've lost about fourteen pounds since then. In fact, I've just posted my latest weight loss news at the bottom of this page. I don't know how many thousands of you still have money riding on these numbers but here they are.
Before there was Dick Cheney, Elmer J. Fudd held the title of World's Most Famously Inept Hunter. Mr. Fudd was in that select (pre-Simpsons) group of cartoon characters who managed to become immortal without being either a super-hero or an animal. There were many reasons for this but the main one was probably Arthur Q. Bryan, who originated and performed the addictive Fudd voice. Over at Animation World Network, Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman provides a much-needed historical overview of Bryan and of Fudd...the man and the myth. Go read it and then come back here and I'll try to clarify the matter of Elmer Fudd's other voices.
Back so soon? Okay, fine. After Bryan died in 1959, Mel Blanc became the main voice of Elmer Fudd. Dr. Toon cites the oft-repeated story that Mel had to be convinced to take on the role because Mel didn't like doing impressions of others. I don't think that last part is quite true. Mel did lots of impressions throughout his cartoon career, including Lou Costello in A Tale of Two Kitties and radio actor Kenny Delmar in every single Foghorn Leghorn cartoon. In fact, well before Bryan's death, Mel did a few Elmer lines in the 1950 Daffy Duck extravaganza, The Scarlet Pumpernickel. He also occasionally picked up a line in a cartoon where Fudd was otherwise voiced by Bryan. (Best example: In What's Opera, Doc?, when Elmer yells "SMOG!," that's Mel. Tapes were recently found of Bryan recording the same line so apparently director Chuck Jones wasn't happy with how Bryan did it and had Blanc redo it at a later session.) Bryan was commuting a lot to New York during the fifties, appearing on TV shows that emanated from the East Coast, so he was not always available.
That was presumably why Bryan did not do Elmer's voice in the 1958 Pre-Hysterical Hare. The role was played by comedian-impressionist Dave Barry, and you can read about Mr. Barry here. As you'll see there, Barry told me he also did Elmer in a couple of kids' records. Elmer is in a couple of the WB records produced for Capitol in the fifties but they all seem to be Bryan. In one though — "The Bugs Bunny Easter Song" — Bryan does Fudd's voice and Bugs Bunny is voiced by Barry.
As Goodman notes, Bryan's last performance as the Mighty Elmer was in the 1960 Person to Bunny. There was apparently some talk among the creative folks of just abandoning the character after that but Warner Brothers quickly vetoed that notion. For obvious reasons, they didn't care for the precedent of losing a valuable merchandisable property just because someone had died. What would happen when Mel went?
They not only insisted Fudd continue but that he be uncharacteristically featured in some cartoons. So Elmer lived to appear next on The Bugs Bunny Show, which was produced in 1960 for ABC Television, and in some Kool-Aid commercials that ran initially in that program. In these, he was occasionally voiced by Blanc but mainly by Hal Smith, who's best known today for his role as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Smith also played Elmer in the two theatrical cartoons in which Elmer was starred. These were the 1960 Doggone People and the 1961 What's My Lion? (Blanc's in both and the latter also features Herb Vigran, who I mentioned in the previous item here.) and then Mel seems to have had the role to himself until his death in '89.
Some history books say Daws Butler did Elmer's voice after Bryan died...and Daws also said so, too. To date though, no one seems to have figured out where this performance might have appeared. Daws was an honest guy with a good memory so the logical conclusion is that he recorded a soundtrack for something, perhaps for Pre-Hysterical Hare, and it was discarded.
And that's pretty much all I have to add about Elmer Fudd...especially since I just noticed it's 2:30 in the A.M., which is no time for an allegedly grown man to be posting Fudd history on the Internet. Sweet dweams, my fwiends.
Everyone has seen this commercial in which The Flintstones sell Winston cigarettes, thereby answering the question of what made cavemen extinct. Obviously, it was lung cancer or some form of respiratory disease. (It may also have had something to do with overeating. Before I had my surgery, my dietician warned me that you should never order a plate of ribs large enough to tip over your car. Wise advice, indeed.)
Not everyone has seen the other commercials the Flintstones did for Winston so let's rectify that. Here's one. Alan Reed does the voice of Fred while the sales guy is performed by character actor Herb Vigran, who occasionally dabbled in cartoon voicing. Most of you will remember Mr. Vigran for his appearances on the George Reeves Superman series and/or from his membership in the Jack Webb stock company on Dragnet. Here we go...
As noted here — and sent to me by many of you, thanks — the British arm of Turner Broadcasting (i.e., Time-Warner) is excising scenes that "glamourize smoking" from vintage shorts. This, they say, is in response to one complaint about scenes in two cartoons.
Let me type that again and boldface two words: This, they say, is in response to one complaint about scenes in two cartoons.
But of course, that can't be true. You don't start chopping up your old cartoons in response to one complaint about two scenes. You do it because someone high in the company says to someone else high in the company, "You know, one of these days, we may have a problem with this." For some reason, when they make these decisions, they like to make it sound like they had no choice in the matter; that they gave in to public pressure, even when that pressure was close to non-existent. It's an excuse to take an action that is probably more economic than idealistic...and to make it sound like an act of social responsibility.
Which brings us to one of the little lies of the animation business. For years, studio heads have wailed about imposed censorship and insisted that their films could be better if only those danged Standards and Practices people would butt out and the pressure groups would back off. In many cases, that's absolutely true.
But it's also true that to protect the future marketability of their wares, some producers are way too willing, even eager to launder their shows and cut out anything that might be controversial. I wish they'd get a little more courageous...or at least consider that it would also be a demonstration of integrity to preserve works of art in their original form. If I were the guy in charge and the issue of cartoon characters smoking came to my attention, I think I'd try to find a more creative solution. And I'd start by waiting until it actually was a problem before I started fixing it at all.
In honor of this silly move, we dedicate today's video link...and probably tomorrow's, as well.
Frank Rich writes that the one big trick in the G.O.P. playbook — the assertion that you'd better vote Republican or terrorists will come by and kill you — ain't working so well anymore.
I can't find a working link to it online yet but anyone who's interested in the future of the world and the Iraq War ought to watch the press conference that George W. Bush held this morning. He was uncommonly flustered and defensive, giving nervous and desperate answers to what were mostly softball queries. I've asked tougher questions on Cartoon Voice panels. Throughout, Bush reminded me of a losing gambler in denial...the kind who says, "If I keep using my system, eventually the cards have to go my way." Well, no, they don't.
Earlier, I quoted the line that suggested we'll be in Iraq as long as he's in office. As a couple of you noted in e-mail, that's the kind of defeatist attitude that Republicans label "doom and gloom" when it comes out of a Democratic mouth. One of those correspondents, Tom Nawrocki, wrote me...
What's amazing about Bush's pledge to stay in Iraq for the remainder of his presidency is that he seems to be ruling out any possibility that we could actually win the war there over the rest of his term. Now I have no idea what it would mean to "win," but I'm surprised (and rather alarmed) that Bush doesn't have any sort of plan to win, either. He seems content to simply fight and fight and fight in perpetuity.
Yeah. It must be tough to still be at least an official supporter of this man. I have a theory that around half of those who claim they support Bush are inwardly revulsed when they have to say that. In any case, backing the guy seems to require that you maintain the jury is still out as to whether there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11...and then along comes Bush, in an appearance like the one this morning, saying that there was no link and no one in his administration ever said there was. Or you'd like to suggest that some reports of ancient, non-working weapons of minor destruction over there are proof that Bush didn't lie, nor was he wrong to say that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. And then you have Bush sawing the legs off your position, admitting this morning that there were no WMD. All that plus the man's stammering and inability to state his position in clear, declarative sentences must have his believers cringing. He sure isn't making their job easy.
You're about to see a Kellogg's Raisin Bran commercial starring those famed rockers, Mr. Jinks, Pixie and Dixie. They dress up as The Beatles for it and toss in some "Yeah yeah yeah"s...but whoever wrote the jingle seems to be referencing "California Sun" by The Rivieras. Daws Butler provides the voice of Jinks and Dixie. Don Messick makes sounds for Pixie and the announcer. It might not make you run out and buy bran but it's a fun way to spend a minute...
The strategy is to help the Iraqi people achieve the objectives and dreams, which is a democratic society. That's the strategy. The tactics — now — either you say yes it's important we stay there and get it done or we leave. We're not leaving so long as I'm the president. That would be a huge mistake. It would send an unbelievably, you know, terrible signal to reformers across the region. It would say we've abandoned our desire to change the conditions that create terror.
We're not leaving so long as he's the president. For those of you not near a calendar, that means — in the absence of impeachment — 882 days from now.
It's that time again. Around once a year, either the L.A. Times, the Hollywood Reporter or Variety will run pretty much the same article about the plight of the Animation Writer, a breed that occasionally includes Yours Truly. The pieces can all be summarized pretty much as follows: Writers who work on live-action shows that fall under the Writers Guild minimum basic agreement receive residuals and much better deals, as well as certain important protections such as health insurance and credit arbitration. Most folks who write animation are up the creek, sans paddle. Some of them are covered by no union whatsoever. Others are covered by Local 839 which, we used to say, was worse than no union whatsoever. Under its current leadership, 839 has gotten much better but it's still unable to serve the unique needs of its writer members.
This year, it's the L.A. Times doing the honors and here's the article in question. While generally accurate, I often feel these do our cause more harm than good. As even the reporter admits, there are deals in animation that pay residuals. There have always been such deals here and there, and because of in-roads by the Writers Guild, there are now more than ever before. Still, for some reason, the articles are never headlined with that encouraging development. Instead, we're subjected on this annoying annual basis to the press telling us how Animation Writers don't get residuals...and in some instances, making it true or truer.
Here's a story that illustrates the point. In 1985, I wrote about a half-dozen scripts for CBS Storybreak, a Saturday morning animated anthology on Guess Which Network. I had a little clout there at the time — Dungeons and Dragons was doing well — so my agent said to them, "Either Evanier gets residuals or he doesn't do it." That's what agents are for, after all...to say such things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This time, it did. The CBS guys gave in and it was written into my contract that I'd receive — and I quote: "Residuals at Writers Guild scale." Remember that phrase.
The shows I wrote ran. They ran a second time and as per the contract, CBS paid me the same rerun fee they would have paid if the show had been a live-action show produced under the WGA contract. The shows ran a third time and, again, CBS paid what the WGA said you paid a writer for a third run. The shows ran again and again and again...and each time, I received a check. The amounts diminished but they kept on coming, just as we'd agreed.
Around about the time of the tenth runs, one of the articles I'm discussing here ran in Variety. It went on and on about how Animation Writers don't receive residuals and it even quoted a high official in the Writers Guild lamenting that injustice. A staff weasel over at CBS read Variety that day and got an idea. The next time I was due a payment, I instead received a letter from CBS Business Affairs. It cited the article and noted that according to the high official, Writers Guild scale for an animation script was zero. Ergo, no check enclosed for Mark.
My agent at the time was the legendary (to his clients) Stu Robinson. Stu's reaction looked a lot like this, only with more flames. He phoned the weasel, threatening lawsuits and bodily harm. The weasel, being a weasel, gave in and sent me money. The amounts were by now pretty trivial; certainly not worth going to court over. More relevant was that Stu also represented writers and producers on some of the top CBS prime-time shows. So he wasn't the kind of guy it was cost-effective to piss off.
Financial negotiations in show business are largely a matter of precedents. How much they pay you for a job has almost everything to do with how much others have been paid for comparable gigs. If you keep saying, "Animation Writers don't get residuals," you're telling the industry that's the norm, that's standard. In truth, more cartoon scripters than ever are sharing in the ongoing value of the shows they write, and I don't know why the WGA isn't trumpeting that fact from the highest of the Hollywood Hills.
The Times article is, unfortunately, right about the coming war over DVD money. I think this town is heading for The Mother of All Strikes as the guilds demand a better deal for home video and the studios pursue their wish-dream of sharing nuttin' with nobody. Some observers are saying, as the Times piece suggests, that union jurisdiction over cartoon writing could become an issue in upcoming negotiations. Maybe...but it's the smaller war, the one that'll be easier to drop or postpone if the WGA is going to the mat over compensation for DVDs, cable and pay-per-view. Which is why it's even more important than ever that we who write cartoons make it clear that "no residuals" is not a given.
For years, comic book artists have handed around faded Xeroxes of a page called "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work." This was said to be a cheat sheet that the late, great artist Wally Wood had compiled for himself and his legion of assistants. Also known as "Wood's Lazy Layouts," it was said to be his repertoire of tricks to use in composing comic book panels, especially when the artist found himself stuck with long, talky scenes.
Turns out that, though Wood himself designed the components of this page, it was actually assembled by one of his assistants, Larry Hama, after Wood's death. This story is told on this page by Joel Johnson who — lucky man — is now in possession of the original paste-up of Wood roughs. But he's also a generous man because he shares some good scans of the material with us. Artists who have copied and recopied their bad stats for years can now rejoice in a fresh, first-generation copy of the page.
Whether it's a good idea for a comic artist to resort to these tricks is, of course, arguable. Wally Wood could get away with repeating compositions but few artists are Wally Wood. It would be interesting to see — here's a homework assignment for someone — if one could find panels in Wood's work (especially the stories that were largely unassisted) to correspond to each panel in the Lazy Layouts chart. And it would also be interesting to see if you could do it with the work of artists like Alex Toth, Jack Kirby and Joe Kubert, who've been famously praised for not repeating panel compositions.
Ed Alexander, who's been quoted before in this weblog, sends the following...
Y'know, I'm not sure that the penalties Mel Gibson will be undergoing aren't more onerous than you make them out to be. No matter what amount the judge might have fined him, there'd be no hardship meeting it, so the penalty couldn't really be financially commensurate with other folks who'd been found guilty of the same thing. As odd as it sounds, I have a feeling that the loss of regard and esteem with which a large percentage of the public held him in is more of a penalty than any fiduciary penalty that he judge might have placed on him.
That said, I wouldn't have minded if probation, loss of license and amount of actual community service he had to perform weren't greater (making an anti-DUI PSA doesn't really take much energy since someone else will write it for him and the crew will film it) but I'm not sure that jail time would be any more appropriate in this case than it would be for anyone else who was stopped and caught during a first offense. Since prisons have essentially become rape factories, I think that a victimless crime should be punished through other venues if there's a damn good chance that would result in there being no repeat offense. I tend to think that the real reason I'm offended by his behavior that evening was more for the offensively intolerant behavior than for the DUI, and I think that the court of public perception is a more appropriate venue for meting out punishment than a court of law. Hopefully that sentence will be appropriate to the offense.
Ed, I'm going to disagree with almost every sentence of the above. First off, I don't think drunk driving is a "victimless crime" — or to the extent it is, it's victimless out of dumb luck, not because of anything the drunk driver did. If someone goes out on his porch and starts firing live ammo around indiscriminately, he might not kill anyone. His actions might be victimless. That guy still oughta be locked up, even if there's zero chance of him doing it again.
Secondly, I'm not qualified to judge whether there could be a repeat offense of Mr. Gibson's inebritated actions...but this was not the first time the man's been pulled over for driving under the influence.
I'll agree with the part about the court of public opinion but only with regard to the reported anti-Semetic remarks. There are laws against getting behind the wheel while plastered and they ought to be enforced with more severity, if only as an example to the next guy who's inclined to break them.
There's a tendency among people who are rich, powerful, famous or some combination of those attributes to think that the law doesn't apply to them in quite the same way it applies to the poor, the powerless, the unknown. They assume many in authority will look the other way and if someone doesn't, a well-coiffed, high-fee lawyer can always put things right. I don't know if Mel Gibson is in this category but the fact that he will get away with no serious impairment to his life will surely heighten others' sense that if they get caught with a bit too much alcohol in their veins, the punishment won't be too severe.
It would be interesting for some reporter to dig into records and find similar cases where a driver with Gibson's history has been pulled over for a similar infraction. Have miscreants without his clout or cash received comparable sentences? If not, something is wrong. If so, something is still wrong but it's a different something.
Marvel is working some sort of deal where reprints of old comic books will be inserted into Sunday newspaper sections around the country. I gather the idea is that the newspapers get them for free and can tout them as a selling point, and Marvel's costs are paid for by the new advertising they sell in the comics. Even if they lose a few bucks on the deal, it's probably good promotion for their characters. On the other hand, it'll probably make the regular comics, which cost $2.99 and up, seem even more overpriced.
I couldn't help but be amused by the item that ran today in the Register-Guard, a newspaper that comes out of Eugene, Oregon. Here's one paragraph...
The first in the Spider-Man collectible series, "Amazing Fantasy: Introducing Spider Man," is dated Aug. 15, 1962, and features the art of celebrated cartoonist Stan Lee. It chronicles the transformation of bookworm Peter Parker into the web-spinning wonder in the blue and red tights.
Someone please explain to these people that Stan Lee is not a cartoonist and that the comic in question was primarily drawn by Steve Ditko, not by Stan Lee. Also, it's a reprint of Amazing Fantasy #15. which was cover-dated August of '62. It's not dated "August 15, 1962."
While I'm on the topic: Can anyone supply me with copies of these reprints? They come free in the Sunday sections so if your local newspaper carries them, it oughta be easy to round up a few of 'em from the neighbors.
Here's seven and a half minutes of one of my favorite movies, only in Spanish.
The thing I'd like to point out in this clip from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is the scene with Buster Keaton and the lack of English won't matter. In the full version of the movie as it was originally released, Mr. Keaton had a somewhat larger part, including a long scene with Spencer Tracy. When the film was cut down (as explained here), that scene was tossed. That's right: Someone actually threw away the only scene ever filmed featuring America's greatest dramatic actor and America's greatest comedic actor.
Okay: One of America's greatest dramatic actors and one of America's greatest comedic actors. Fine. Should we argue?
Anyway, everything that's left of his performance in the film is all in this clip and it's very brief. Still, I submit it's evidence of why Buster Keaton was one of America's greatest comedic actors. He is given absolutely nothing to work with and somehow, he makes it funny. Every single time I've seen this movie with an audience — must be twenty times or more — Keaton has gotten huge laughs, just through his body movements.
This is possible because he is not stunt-doubled in a scene where they might have decided to substitute a double. (And it's just a coincidence, by the way, that I'm discussing this and Mr. Keaton's one-time stuntman died recently. I planned to link to this clip and to write about this before I knew that.)
Keaton was 67 or 68 years old when this was filmed — not as agile as he once was — and of course, he was Buster Keaton. Nothing puts a damper on a funny movie better than having a comedy legend killed or injured on the set. Since Keaton was not going to be far from cars that were going to be crashing into one another, someone probably said, "Hey, we'd better put a stuntman in for him," just as — and you sure can tell from the cut — they put in stuntfolks for all the other stars.
And I'm guessing the director, Stanley Kramer, said no. There is no way any stuntman was going to move like Buster Keaton...no way any stuntman was going to get any laugh, let alone a big one, running around the way Buster did. I'd wager Kramer decided to take the risk of putting Keaton close to harm's way, surely after discussing it with the man. From all accounts, Keaton — even in his last year of life — never shrank from taking a fall or smashing into a wall or anything for the good of the scene, and I'm sure he'd not only have agreed but insisted.
The rest of the clip is cars chasing around Southern California. The first scenes start with the cabs coming down to Pacific Coast Highway via a road in Santa Monica called the California Incline. It's one of the few locations in the movie that's still pretty much identifiable if you go there today. The amusement park you can briefly glimpse was a place called (at different times) The Pike or Nu Pike down in Long Beach. The scenes with Keaton were done at Channel Islands Harbor and the shots before and after are on Malibu Road and Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.
Anyway, enjoy it. Or better still, get the whole movie and enjoy it more in English.
Mick Dillon, who had the great honor of stunt-doubling stars the likes of Buster Keaton and Ringo Starr, is dead at age 80. He doubled for Ringo in the movie Help! and for Buster in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This obit says that he was the only man who ever stood in for Keaton but that's not true. In the movie College, Buster was unable to do a scene that called for him to pole vault into an upper window so an actual track star was brought in to perform the feat. There are also reports that on Keaton's MGM talkies, the studio wouldn't permit him to tackle some of the more dangerous feats so doubles were quietly used.
In any case, Mr. Dillon had plenty to proud of in the stuntman's profession...and an array of injuries that he somehow managed to survive. (He fractured his skull for a scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can read about it and others in the obit.)
...but a semi-important one. Yesterday, I went and bought myself a new PDA. That was the package Costco somehow managed to get to me about eleven minutes after I ordered it. The PDA is equipped with a wireless Internet capability.
So now the question before us is: Can I wirelessly post to this here weblog from the thing? Can I, if you'll pardon the techie jargon, configure the frammistat to interface with the doo-hickey?
Back in this message, we linked to the rousing opening of the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon show. Today's link takes us to the end credits, which may be the saddest, most funereal moment ever seen in an animated series. Have a hanky ready before you click.
By the way: This is our last post relating to Post Crispy Critters cereal. I don't know why there have been so many because, like I said, I never liked the stuff.
I remember liking everything about Post Crispy Critters cereal except the cereal. Liked the name, liked the commercials, liked the mascot, liked his voice and his cartoons. But the cereal? It was like styrofoam peanuts dipped in sugar. No wonder they stopped making it.
I went through that phase where I had to try every new cereal when it came out...and the phase usually never lasted much longer than a box. Sometimes, half a box...and then it would be back to one of my two all-time faves, Cheerios or Rice Chex. The simple, basic stuff always won out in the end. (Before I drastically altered my diet last May, I ate a lot of my favorite adult cereal, which was Barbara's Shredded Oats. And it just dawned on me that it's kind of like Cheerios and Rice Chex rolled into one.)
Apparently, Crispy Critters is ancient history but before it went away, it had a last hurrah. In '87, Post tried to bring it back in what I believe was a lower sugar version. At least, they call it "low sugar" in the commercial you're about to see, whereas the commercials for the earlier version (like the one in yesterday's link) emphasized sugar as a selling point. I never tried the 1987 version of Crispy Critters but since the sugar was the only reason to eat the sixties incarnation, I'm guessing I didn't miss much. More significant is the new spokescritter who sounds like Jimmy Durante as done by someone who doesn't do a real good Jimmy Durante.
His name was Crispy and he was a...well, I'm not sure what he was or why they selected an unidentifiable animal as their mascot. The appeal of Crispy Critters — and admittedly, this isn't much — was that you could identify each piece of your breakfast cereal as a camel or a monkey or a lion or an orange moose...or something. So why characterize the product with an animal who can't be characterized?
Even great commercials probably wouldn't have saved this product. But they didn't have to be this bad...
Glenn Greenwald has a good article up on Salon about today's court decision in the matter of wiretapping sans warrant. Here are two key paragraphs...
It is important to be clear about what this decision means and what it does not mean — particularly since the White House, among others, is already depicting this ruling as some sort of epic blow to the administration's efforts to fight terrorism. This ruling does not, of course, prohibit eavesdropping on terrorists; it merely prohibits illegal eavesdropping in violation of FISA.
Thus, even under the court's order, the Bush administration is free to continue to do all the eavesdropping on terrorists it wants to do. It just has to cease doing so using its own secretive parameters, and instead do so with the oversight of the FISA court — just as all administrations have done since 1978, just as the law requires, and just as it did very recently when using surveillance with regard to the U.K. terror plot. Eavesdropping on terrorists can continue in full force. But it must comply with the law.
In reading a lot of articles that abhor today's decision, I have yet to see anyone argue that the above is not what the judge's opinion says, nor have I seen anyone argue that this is a bad thing. The arguments all seem to be mounted as if the judge ruled that the Bush must stop all wiretapping, period. Guess that's easier to rebut or something.
So apparently the guy did confess — sort of but maybe not convincingly — to killing the little Ramsey girl, only now some observers are wondering if the confession is legit. At the same time, some others are wondering if the arrest and announcement were premature because the case hasn't been built yet and maybe it's even a stunt to smoke out the real killer and...
Stop.
I was kind of interested in this story the other day for a moment. It was a moment when it looked like all the folks who were damn sure (based on way too little evidence to be that certain) that Mrs. Ramsey killed her daughter were going to have to deal with being dead wrong. I'm not all that interested in who really killed JonBenet Ramsey...no more than you are in who killed a lot of people you didn't know. But I am fascinated by Denial of Reality, or at least by some folks' tendency to pluck opinions out of the ozone layer and then defend them to the death. I think our society abounds in way too many false conclusions.
I'm also interested in the press...in its uncanny ability to get things absolutely wrong and not get called out for it. So when the Ramsey story was briefly about that, I was also interested.
But now, it's all pulled a Geraldo and swung back into Tabloid Territory. We're in "We'll never know for sure" country. No matter what the disposition is of this John Mark Karr guy — even if he comes up with camcorder footage of himself strangling the little lady — there will always be those saying he's innocent, that he was framed, that there was a police conspiracy, yadda yadda yadda. Or if his innocence is proven beyond any reasonable doubt, there will be books about how that miscarriage of justice was engineered. Too many people have too much invested in varying accounts for any view to ever be buried.
So I'm getting off the train. I'll avoid the news stories as much as I can...which probably won't be enough. And I may grumble that, uh, American soldiers are dying overseas but that keeps getting booted off the CNN homepage by the latest Ramsey rumor. But I ain't following this one any more. To those of you who already came to this conclusion because you're smarter than I am: Pardon me for mentioning it at all. I don't know what came over me.
Veteran actor (and cartoon voice actor) Tony Jay died last Sunday following micro-surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumor from his lungs. His age is unknown but it is believed he was born in the mid-thirties.
Tony was an unusual player in the pool of voice talent. A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, he was the possessor of a magnificent baritone voice that he put to good use in countless commercials and cartoon shows. He was heard in hundreds of animated shows, features and video games, usually playing villains. The list includes Mighty Max, Tale Spin, Reboot, Buzz Lightyear, Bruno the Kid and the 1995 Fantastic Four cartoon series, for which he supplied the voice of Galactus. His standout role was probably that of the evil Judge Frollo (seen above) in the Disney Studios' version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Tony also had a very busy on-camera career that included roles in movies (including Love and Death and Twins) and television programs (including Lois and Clark, Twin Peaks and Beauty and the Beast) but his greatest pride was in his numerous stage appearances.
I only knew Tony casually, meeting him twice under what were probably unfortunate circumstances. A few years ago in an interview, he was quoted as making some rather ungracious remarks about his fellow voice actors. I don't recall the specific lines but the essence of them — which Tony suggested was yanked out of the intended context — was that he was a real actor and the others voicing cartoons were in some lower sphere of talent. Both times I encountered him, I was in the company of another voice actor who'd taken umbrage at the quote and testy words were exchanged...though, I must say, in magnificent tones. Neither moment was, alas, a propitious one for getting to know Tony Jay.
You can get to know more about him — and hear some samples of what the man could do before a microphone — at his website. An obit notice appears on this page.
Did the suspect being held in Thailand confess to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey? Well, you can take your choice...
Bloomberg: American John Mark Karr admitted killing JonBenet Ramsey, a 6-year-old girl found slain in her family's basement almost a decade ago, Thai police said.
Associated Press: An American suspect arrested in connection with the death of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey denied any connection to her murder when he was detained at his downtown Bangkok apartment Wednesday, police said. The suspect was identified as John Mark Karr, according to Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, who heads the country's immigration police. Karr denied involvement in the slayings, another police official said.
So what do we think the story is here? I'm not asking whether the guy killed the little girl. I'm asking about the discrepancy in the news reports on whether or not he's confessed. Did one reporter get one story from one source within the police department while a different reporter heard the opposite from another source? Does the difference lie with the fact that the second story is quoting someone in the "immigration police," whereas the first account is from a different police department? Something's wrong here and I'm curious as to what it is.
Here's a clever idea. You can send someone an ad for the movie, Snakes on a Plane, which will arrive in the form of a personalized message from Samuel L. Jackson. Click on this link to go to the page, fill in some info and you're off! Thanks to Carolyn Kelly for the tip.
One of the most in-demand voiceover artists in the business is a gent named Maurice LaMarche. You may have heard him bust up the joint on one of the Cartoon Voice panels I moderated at the Comic-Con International in San Diego last month. Or you may have heard him on The Critic or on Futurama or even on Pinky and the Brain, where he provided the voice of The Brain, which I always thought was like Vincent Price doing an impression of Orson Welles. Actually, the guy's all over the place.
Anyway, Mo (as everyone calls him) is appallingly talented and the fine journalist/webguy Ken Plume has done a very long, very interesting interview with the guy. For those of you interested in how the world of voiceover works, I highly recommend all parts of it except the ones where Mo talks about how he isn't up there with the top guys. If he says that one more time, we're going to have him arrested for perjury. Sheesh.
I don't think the Post cereal people still make Crispy Critters but when I was a kid, they did...and their commercials featured Linus the Lionhearted, whose voice was supplied by producer-gangster Sheldon Leonard. Linus had his own cartoon show for a while (we showed you the opening here) and this is one of his catchier commercial jobs. Get ready to hum the Orange Moose song to yourself for the next few days.
The Hungarian government is conducting an online poll to select the name for a new bridge spanning the Danube River. If you've been watching The Colbert Report, you've seen Stephen Colbert asking his viewers to vote for it to be named after him.
It started with an announcement near the end of this segment (that's a link to a video) and it's gone on from there. Wanna help?
This is the link to the page on which you can cast your ballot...and I'll warn you in advance that the site is very slow and sometimes doesn't load at all. You'll want to scroll down to "Stephen Colbert híd" and select that option, then scroll down to the bottom and click on "Elküld" to submit your vote.
It's actually a hassle but, hey, it may be the most important vote you cast this year. Or at least, the only one that's accurately counted.
So...I haven't been watching cable news today. But on past occasions when I did, I heard an awful lot of talking heads telling us that there was little doubt that one or both of the JonBenet Ramsey's parents had killed their daughter. At times, it was along the lines of, "If you think any other scenario was possible, you're an idiot."
Today, in light of the arrest of someone else for the crime, I'm sure all those pundits and experts are retracting and apologizing, right?
Cracked Magazine is back. You may not have even known it was gone...or maybe you thought it was gone long ago. But the longest-running Mad imitation is returning to newsstands after a two-year hiatus and an ownership change. The new version promises edgier material and "star" writers, including some from hit TV programs such as The Daily Show. This article tells a little bit about the return and then over on the Cracked website, they have a preview of the first issue under the new regime, which I believe is starting its numbering over with #1. (The last issue before the layoff was #357.)
Will the new version fly? I dunno. One does get the feeling that the day of the humor magazine is past; that the target audience can get all the irreverence it wants (plus porn) for free on the Internet. Sales on Mad are not what they once were, even though that publication's sharper than it's been in years. I'm guessing that the new owners of Cracked are expecting to drop a lot of bucks on newsstand sales and are just publishing as a loss leader. They're more likely out to hype a brand name that can be used in other venues, the way Mad became a TV show and the name of National Lampoon has been used to sell movies of variable merit. There hasn't been a National Lampoon magazine published since 1998 but its logo apparently still conveys some sales boost to teen-targeted comedy.
So maybe the new Cracked will succeed, at least in that way. Its name certainly seems to be lucky. Cracked started in 1958, when it was supervised by Sol Brodsky, who was later a key player in the Marvel Comics revolution of the sixties. The current management is trying something which was never really attempted either by Brodsky or his successors. They're trying to establish an identity for their publication...an identity that has nothing to do with Mad.
For much of its existence, Cracked was kind of a minor league or farm team Mad. Several key Mad artists, including Will Elder and Jack Davis, worked for it while in exile from the home of Alfred E. Neuman and other illustrators — like Angelo Torres, Bill Wray and Tom Richmond — worked for Cracked until they were deemed good enough for Mad. Several key Mad writers sold their Mad rejects there and one of Mad's most prolific writers, Lou Silverstone, edited Cracked for a number of years. In '87, Cracked got a huge boost by grabbing onto "Mad's maddest artist" Don Martin when he quit in a dispute with Mad's publisher and longtime Mad associate editor Jerry DeFuccio also found a home at Cracked when he was let go.
In other words, Cracked has consistently defined itself in terms of Mad, featuring talent that either had been in Mad or wanted to be in Mad, and aping the look and feel of the competition. The new management is trying to build something different and I hope it works. You'll know it has when we start seeing Cracked movies or a Cracked radio network or a Cracked TV show. Because sad to say, just being a humor magazine that succeeds as a humor magazine is no longer enough. There's no money in it.
Oh, boy! It's six minutes of the Quisp and Quake cereal commercials produced by Jay Ward and (probably, mostly) written by Bill Scott. The voice of Quake is done by William Conrad, who was the narrator on the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons but who's better known for his TV roles starring in Cannon, Jake and the Fatman and Nero Wolfe, among others. The voice of Quisp was done by Daws Butler, who was also Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Snaggle...oh, just go read my articles about Daws if you haven't already. And the other voices in these spots (and everything else Ward's studio produced) were supplied by Paul Frees, June Foray and Bill Scott.
It's a shame you couldn't do an ad campaign like this today. First off, thirty second spots are the norm and with a cereal, that's barely enough time to mention the product and do the disclaimer about it being a part of a good breakfast. And of course, there's no more Jay Ward operation and not many people who can be that funny. Nor are there many sponsors that would let someone entertain like that instead of laying on a hard sell.
Anyway, enjoy some commercials that were often better than the shows in which they appeared.
George F. Will discusses the British terrorist bust and what it may mean to us. One of the things he thinks it means is that John Kerry was right when he said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world." Of course, when Kerry said that, no Conservative — not even Mr. Will — would view it as anything other than some sort of admission of weakness.
Joe Darby is the man who blew the whistle on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He has come forward to tell his story and it's well worth your attention. I'll let you read the descriptions of torture for yourself but here's one section that's startling in another way. It comes after Darby has reported multiple abuses of law and morality to his superiors...
So I knew if I wanted to go back to my civilian life, if I wanted to integrate back home, nobody could know what I'd done. They'd never forgive me. And I was assured by the army that nobody would know. I would remain anonymous.
Well, it didn't work out that way. About a month after Graner and the rest of them left Abu Ghraib, we were up in Camp Anaconda, and I was sitting with ten other guys from my platoon in the dining facility. It's a big facility, packed with like 400 other soldiers, and I'm sitting there eating when Donald Rumsfeld comes on during the damned congressional hearings. It was like something out of a movie. I'm sitting there, and right next to me there's a TV, and Rumsfeld is on it when he drops my damned name. Almost nobody in my unit knew what I'd done until he dropped my damned name. On national TV. I was sitting midbite when he said it, and I was like, Oh, my God. And the guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me.
So they promised his name would remain secret and then Rumsfeld went before Congress — on international TV — and volunteered the name of the informant. Lovely. Do we think this was a screw-up or a punishment? Neither is particularly admirable.
This made me laugh out loud so I had to share it here. It sounds a lot like a certain Monty Python sketch...
Welsh-speaking cyclists have been left baffled — and possibly concerned for their health — after a bizarre translation mix-up.
The temporary sign, placed in front of the roadworks at Barons Court roundabout between Penarth and Cardiff, correctly says "cyclists dismount" in English, but says "llid y bledren dymchwelyd" in Welsh.
Owain Sgiv, an officer for the Welsh language campaign group Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, explained: "Roughly translated, 'llid y bledren dymchwelyd' means 'bladder disease has returned.'"
Rich Lowry on why Iraq is looking more and more like Bush's Vietnam. This is another one of those articles where I don't agree with every word but I think the view is worth a read.
Here's another way that bloggers can have an impact on the world. For some time now, tech blogs have been complaining about the tendency of the batteries in Dell Laptops to explode and burst into flame. Here's an example. Here's another example. Here's another example. Here are photos of a Dell Laptop exploding at a conference in Japan.
Dell has now announced what may be the largest recall in the history of consumer electronics. It's possible they would have done this anyway but the bloggers probably hurried things up a bit. And that means that a few less laptops will go kablooey, which is a good thing.
By the way: You can't bring a bottle of Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water onto an airplane in this country. But you can bring a Dell Laptop with a battery that can explode and burst into flame. Fill in your own snide remark.
Adam Cohen discusses the legal heritage of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court decision that first put George W. Bush into the White House. Here's the paragraph that most interested me...
The heart of Bush v. Gore's analysis was its holding that the recount was unacceptable because the standards for vote counting varied from county to county. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the court declared, the state may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another. If this equal protection principle is taken seriously, if it was not just a pretext to put a preferred candidate in the White House, it should mean that states cannot provide some voters better voting machines, shorter lines, or more lenient standards for when their provisional ballots get counted — precisely the system that exists across the country right now.
So, uh, how come that hasn't changed?
I know a lot of Republicans (including Antonin Scalia) tell Democrats to "get over it" but the article has a point: If it was valid law, it doesn't go away. It should be defensible in the context of ongoing legal decisions. By the way, the last person who told me to "get over it" is still posting in chat rooms that the Clintons should be arrested for the murder of Vince Foster.
I have a feeling that we're going to wake up one morning and find that some future configuration of the Supreme Court has said Bush should never have been installed in the job in 2000. The way things are going, we may see a majority of Republicans say that before long.
For those of you who find Sudoku puzzles too complicated, the Washington Post had one yesterday that Goober Pyle could solve in under three minutes. Here it is. It's almost as tough as the one I posted a few weeks ago.
How'd you like to watch six minutes all about the original, 1975 production of the Broadway show, Chicago? The two men interviewed together are the men responsible for its score, John Kander and the late Fred Ebb. They talk about its director, Bob Fosse. Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking talk about Bob Fosse. I think the guy at the end is New York Times political commentator (then, its Broadway critic), Frank Rich.
There's also some footage here of the original cast and one of the dancers you'll see is the lovely, leggy Charlene Ryan who was a Fosse favorite. (She was also in the both original Sweet Charity on Broadway and in the movie.) Charlene is now married to my friend, Sergio Aragonés. Every time I refer to Sergio as "the fastest cartoonist in the world," Charlene sighs and says, "Tell me about it."
And on that cheap sex joke, let's go the videotape...
AFTRA (the TV performers' union) has recently and happily announced a settlement of nearly a million dollars, negotiated on behalf of performers who appeared on The Dean Martin Show and whose performances have been put out on DVD. This is a very nice and just thing for the performers and I suspect it will serve as a nice precedent for future legal actions. A lot of DVDs have been issued by companies that haven't bothered to properly compensate performers, writers, directors or others who are contractually entitled to some cash, and the guilds have been slow to raise the proper stink.
And here's something that interests me in a strange, "small world" kind of way: AFTRA announced the settlement on this page over on their website. Among those who'll be sharing in the bucks — and are interviewed about it there — are two former dancers from The Dean Martin Show, Lynne Latham and Larri Thomas. Lynne was one of the Ding-a-Ling Sisters on Dino's show and later, she was a frequent dancer on shows I used to write for Sid and Marty Krofft. Very talented, charming lady.
I never met Larri Thomas but I know she was a Goldwyn Girl...one of the dancers in the 1955 movie of Guys and Dolls, in fact. Later, she was a favorite of the great choreographer Hermes Pan, who used her in the acclaimed Fred Astaire TV specials. And a friend tells me — and I swear this is a coincidence; I was going to write about this before I was aware of the possible connection — she's the woman who played Miss Clinger in the Allan Sherman clip I linked to this morning.
Over at The Christian Science Monitor, they're serializing the story of the kidnapped (and released) journalist, Jill Carroll. It looks a lot like someone's attempt to sell her story as a movie but that doesn't mean it isn't an important and interesting tale. And given how much apparent fabrication was introduced into the press by people trying to spin it to serve their political goals, it's about time we heard her account of what happened. It's over here with more to come in the following weeks.
In this item posted earlier, I suggested a number of reasons why George W. Bush might be withholding his endorsement of Alan Schlesinger, the Republican candidate for Joe Lieberman's senate seat in Connecticut. Several correspondents have suggested another. Apparently, Mr. Schlesinger has called for substantial U.S. troop reduction in Iraq on a timetable.
So what you have in that state is a Democratic candidate who wants the troops withdrawn soon, a Republican candidate who wants the troops withdrawn soon, and an Independent candidate (Lieberman) who says a number of conflicting thing but seems to eventually side with the administration. If you were George W. Bush, how would you play this one?
At a ceremony last Saturday evening, my hero Stan Freberg received the prestigious Los Angeles Area Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. These are the Emmy-giving-out people. Nancy Cartwright, best known as the voice of Bart Simpson, made the presentation and Stan accepted, accompanied by his puppet, Orville. In the screen grab above, Orville is the one without the glasses.
The Academy has put the entire event online in webcast format at this link...but wait. STOP! For God's sake, in the name of all that's holy, don't click on that link yet! The show's almost three hours long and even though Keith Olbermann does a nice hosting job, there's no way you want to sit through the whole thing. You just don't.
Here's what you want to do. Go to that link (here it is again) and start playing the webcast...then fast-forward or move the slider over to 01:09:10, [SEE BELOW] which is about where Olbermann introduces Nancy Cartwright who, in turn, introduces Stan. The whole presentation, including Stan's wife Hunter, a film about his career, Stan (with and without puppet) and his acceptance speech runs about eighteen minutes. And make sure you stay tuned after Stan exits to hear a quick story about him from Mr. Olbermann.
Lastly, a brief aside to the Academy, of which I am a member: I think it's wonderful that you honored Freberg. No one deserves it more. But if you're going to honor someone, it would be nice if a wee bit more research was done. Yes, Stan was the voice of Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent on Time for Beany...but you played him on and off, not with any of the dozens of hit songs he wrote but with the theme song from the Beany and Cecil cartoon show, which he had nothing to do with. And he made that wonderful entrance right after the tribute/history film on which you MISSPELLED HIS NAME! Come on, Academy. Your Mission Statement says you exist to "...promote creativity, diversity, innovation and excellence through recognition, education and leadership in the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences." Somewhere in there, it's kind of implied that you should your spell your honoree's name correctly. I would return my Emmy in protest if I'd ever won one.
[UPDATE: Since this was posted, the Academy folks have done a re-edit on their online webcast, shortening the proceedings. The introduction of Ms. Cartwright now commences 56 minutes into the video. So leap ahead to 00:56:00 and watch from there. And thanks to Don Brockway for calling this to my attention.]
I often feel sorry for presidential press secretaries. They're sent out there with marching orders to say X and not say Y, and then they're hammered by reporters because to say X and not Y is not logical. You can almost hear the press secretary thinking, "Hey, I know this is bull but it's what they told me to say."
Tony Snow, current holder of that thankless job, was obviously instructed not to say that George W. supports the Republican candidate for the senate in Connecticut. This may be because that candidate — someone named Alan Schlesinger — is currently polling at 6% and Bush doesn't want to get caught backing someone who may not get out of the single digits on Election Day. Or maybe there's some sort of loyalty or payback involved with regard to Joe Lieberman on a personal level, and Bush doesn't want to oppose him, at least for the near future. It could even be simple political gamesmanship: Schlesinger can't win so Bush figures he's better off with Lieberman than Lamont and wants Connecticut Republicans to vote accordingly.
Whatever the reason, Mr. Snow has to go out and not say that Bush supports Schlesinger...and act like it's the most normal thing in the world for a Republican president to not endorse the Republican candidate for some high office. Here's the exchange. It's probably close to word-for-word what would have been said if reporter Tony Snow was grilling the press secretary for a Democratic president who was trying to not endorse a Democratic senatorial candidate.
We are unsurprised but saddened still that GSN has finally decided to chuck the nightly reruns of old episodes of What's My Line? They go away later this month, only to be replaced by — insult to injury time — reruns of The Amazing Race. And we'd like to suggest loudly and with great outrage in our voice that low ratings on What's My Line? may have been caused by GSN leading into it with reruns of Beat the Clock, the stupidest and crappiest game show ever produced.
The lone remnant of the network's long experiment with hoary black-and-white reruns will be a bone they'll be tossing us once a week, late on Sunday nights...or, more correctly, early on Monday mornings. There, commencing August 27/28, they will run sixty minutes of old Goodson-Todman classics or semi-classics. They'll start with two shows, one being Get the Message, a 1964 series hosted by Frank Buxton and later by Robert Q. Lewis. The other, which they've run before, is What's Going On?, a short-lived 1954 disaster of a game show, produced by the star of several recent video links on this site, Allan Sherman.
ATTENTION, FRANK BUXTON: I expect you to send me juicy anecdotes I can post here about Get the Message. Never mind spending the lavish residuals you will doubtlessly receive for these airings. Please share with us whatever you remember. I promise not to run out on you the next time we have lunch together.
Heather MacDonald considers the moral dilemma of the Conservative who is athiest or agnostic. I don't have a strong opinion on any of this — at least not yet — but I thought the article provided some interesting topics to ponder. So here's a link to it.
No newspaper has reported it yet — and even the film blogosphere found out months after it happened — but a prominent "b-movie" star of the seventies, Candice Rialson, passed away four months ago. The cause was liver disease according to her husband, as quoted in one of several movie blogs that have scrambled to obtain details. Their common goal at the moment seems to be to make enough fuss to prompt obits in the mainstream media...and I've decided to join the cause.
Between around 1974 and 1979, Candice appeared — starring, usually — in a number of low-budget movies of the Roger Corman variety...some of them, like Hollywood Boulevard and Candy Stripe Nurses, even for Roger Corman. She briefly showed promise of making the uneasy transition to upscale film and television work but somehow, it never happened and she was retired from acting (at age 27) by 1979. I shouldn't say "somehow" because at least one reason was obvious: Too many sleazy credits for the casting folks at the major studios. She certainly had the looks and she probably had the talent...but she also had Chatterbox on her résumé. (Chatterbox was kind of like The Vagina Monologues, only literally.)
I don't think it would matter today. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't. But it mattered back then.
At least it did to CBS the time I had her called in to audition for a show there. I had seen her in the aforementioned Hollywood Boulevard, which — unlike most of her other credits — was a delightful, funny feature with much to offer beyond the visual of Ms. Rialson with her shirt off. Shot on a budget that on a film shoot today wouldn't cover the donut bill from Craft Services, it was cleverly written (by Danny Opatoshu) and hastily but brilliantly directed (by Joe Dante and Allan Arkush). And it also had some splendid performances by Dick Miller, Paul Bartel and Candice. So a week or two after I first saw it, when my producer said, "Can't you think of some really beautiful women who can do comedy?," I thought of Candice and we brought her in.
She read so well that the casting director immediately called her back for several other projects he was working on. But she didn't get them and she didn't get my show...and like I said, the other credits were a contributing factor. A few months later, I met her at a party and she asked me why we'd hired someone other than her. I tried to be diplomatic but she knew just what the problem was...and even added, "Wait'll they see what I've got coming out in a few months." Ten or twelve years later, a prominent director tracked her down and, based wholly on his love of Hollywood Boulevard, offered her a fully-clad part in a major motion picture. What he got back was along the lines of, "Thanks, but I'm out of the business now."
If you'd like to know more about Candice, this website is all over the story and so is this one and this one and even this one. And who knows? Maybe the L.A. Times and Variety and Hollywood Reporter will all notice, too.
Ol' pal Paul Harris, who's heard Monday through Friday on KMOX radio in St. Louis, has dug a great interview out of his archive. It's a chat he had with talk show legend Mike Douglas in late 2000. Go listen to it — especially the part where Mr. Douglas talks about having Malcolm X on his show...and being afraid to admit that he agreed with much of what Malcolm X had to say.
My TiVo's forever doing me favors. Why, just the other day — completely on its own and without me doing any kind of programming — it recorded A Big Steaming Pile of Me, which is an HBO standup special that Richard Jeni did last January.
How I missed it in the first place, I have no idea...because Jeni has long been one of my favorite comedians, especially after the remark I quoted in this item. The guy's very funny and very clever and unlike many good comics working these days, his material is in no way derivative of eight dozen other guys mining the same areas. I'm not sure why his name isn't mentioned more often when people tick off the names of the hottest comedians out there.
That special is so good, I just ordered the DVD from Amazon...which you can do by clicking here. I've also begun checking this page on Mr. Jeni's website to see when he's going to be performing within an easy commute of my area. (I just missed a couple nights he did at a club to which I could have walked. We won't be making that mistake again.)
And if you're too cautious/cheap to spring for the DVD, HBO2 is running the special at least once more — August 21, at a time when most of us are asleep. I'll remind you as we get closer to the date just in case your TiVo doesn't do you any favors.
Allan Sherman performs "The Painless Dentist Song," a lovely parody of the tune, "The Continental." Whenever I hear the latter now, I think of the lyrics of the former. Mr. Sherman did that to any number of songs for me.
Electricity was out in my neighborhood all evening. That happens, and the D.W.P. does a good job of correcting these problems and getting the juice flowing through the lines again. But here's the part I find a bit annoying...
You phone up to make sure someone has reported the outage or to see if they have an estimated restoration time...and you wait on hold for a human being to come on the line. While you wait, you have to listen to the same recorded announcement over and over...
...and it keeps telling you that they're experiencing a high caller volume and you'd be better off checking the Department of Water and Power website, instead. Which is tough for some of us to do when the power's out.
On the web, you can find a bunch of reports on this year's Comic-Con International but you won't find any better than Peter Sanderson's. He's serializing his accounts over at Quick Stop Entertainment. Here's a link to Part One, which you should read but you can skip if you're short on time since it doesn't mention me. Here's a link to Part Two, which does so you have to read it. I'll be linking to future parts as they appear, especially if they mention me.
Image Entertainment is announcing a new DVD that will present the entirety of the three episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show on which Elvis Presley made his legendary appearances.
Well, not exactly.
I'm not sure if this will be mentioned on the DVD or not but there were a couple of non-Elvis segments on those episodes where there were legal clearance problems. They're not historically significant so they're being replaced on these DVDs with segments from other Sullivan programs. If you watch carefully, you may note Ed's wardrobe changing suddenly as he introduces them. The Will Jordan monologue on the January 6, 1957 episode is one of them. Will wasn't on that program but his spot has been edited in to replace one that couldn't be included.
These should be great DVDs for two reasons. One is that they're including all the other material for those of us who don't care all that much about Elvis. There's a spot with Carl "The Amazing" Ballantine. There's one with Señor Wences. There's Carol Burnett and Charles Laughton and a great musical number from the Broadway show, The Most Happy Fella. For those who don't care about such performances, the DVD producers are including a menu option to play only the Elvis songs. I wouldn't mind another option that said, "Play everything except Elvis."
The other selling point is that I've seen a preview of the video quality and it's incredible. The photo above left is not from the DVD. The video on the DVD has been processed by a new restoration process called Live Feed that makes it look like...well, like a live feed. It looks like Elvis is performing today, there's a black-and-white video camera on him and you're next door, watching him on a monitor. I'll try to post something about this amazing technique in the next week or two. It's salvaging old kinescopes and making them highly watchable today. After you see it, you'll want to join me in encouraging more companies to employ it. The video quality on some recent releases is disgraceful or, at least, not as fine as it could have been.
You can see the full listing of what's on these peachy DVDs over on this page at TV Shows on DVD, which is your one-stop source on the Internet for info on what old treasures of the cathode tube are coming out on DVD. It's a great place to find out that while you already bought all seven seasons of The West Wing individually, your completist tendencies will force you to also purchase the special "gift set" for yourself, even though it contains the same seven seasons, because it also has extra material available nowhere else. (I need to write more about that scam...)
The "Photo of the Day" over on the Stars and Stripes website is especially cool today. Take a look...and thank Joel O'Brien, who called it to my attention.
The other day, I told you that Turner Classic Movies was running Pretty Maids All in a Row this morning. I'm watching it now and I realize I forgot to tell you something about it. I forgot to tell you what a truly crummy film it is.
In my defense, let me assure you I'd forgotten. It was not atypical of many movies that came out around 1970 that couldn't seem to figure out the morality of sleeping around...whether it was a good thing or a bad thing or even, beyond the release of horniness, what it might mean to someone's life. It's almost like movies were afraid to have a point of view on their own sex scenes. They were there because that's what ticket buyers were buying tickets to see and that was more than enough.
There are some other odd things about the movie. I know Rock Hudson wasn't dubbed in this film but for some reason, he sounds like he was. It's also a bit distracting, in light of later revelations and his death, to see Mr. Hudson play an unabashed heterosexual hedonist. And isn't it odd to see Telly Savalas rehearsing to play Kojak? Even though the character had the silly name of Sam Surcher, it's Kojak. I think this is the first time Savalas played that kind of part and it wouldn't surprise me if he got the role of Theo Kojak in that TV-movie because someone saw him in this film.
But really, the "who's killing the co-eds?" plot is so lame with no surprise and no logical throughline. When the film came out, I was baffled as to whether Hudson's character was really as one-dimensional as it seemed or whether I was missing something. My curiosity led me to buy and read the book by Francis Pollini from which the movie was based. I thought it might give me a clue but it didn't. The paperback had a great James Bama cover but no more insight. As I recall — it's been 35 years since I read it — the book had a much stronger racial angle, keying off a young black student who was suspected of the killings. In adapting that work, Gene Roddenberry eliminated that character, thereby creating a murder mystery with no suspects and no clues...and not much of a point.
Still, it was nice to see my old high school...and even nicer to see Angie Dickinson. But I apologize if you went out of your way to watch this one because of me.
The Boomerang Channel is about to begin rerunning Garfield and Friends, a cartoon show I wrote years ago. I think it might play better if they had the show translated into Finnish. See if you don't agree.
On this page of the website of the Transportation Security Administration, one can find a certain amount of information on what one can and cannot now bring onto an airplane...but not a lot. If there's a lot of confusion — and we're hearing there is — it may be because of questions and answers like these...
Question: What about liquid eyeliner and similar items?
Answer: If you are in doubt about an item, please leave it at home or place in your checked baggage or the item may be intercepted at the security checkpoint.
Well, that's helpful...not. One of the folks who was at this morning's breakfast (the one I mentioned in the previous item) was a fellow named Johnny Dark who commutes to New York every week or so to play The World's Oldest Page on the Letterman show. Johnny's going back this weekend and he seemed pretty baffled as to what he'll encounter at the airport and what he can take on the plane. He asked a few questions and no one at the table had any idea.
How difficult would it be in this Age of the Internet to put up a simple list of what you can and cannot take on the plane? Why do they have to turn this into a game show?
Here's a link some of you are really going to enjoy...
This morning, I had breakfast with a gang of comedians and comedy writers. One of the latter was Bob Mills, a gent I'd heard of but never met, and we had a very nice time talking about show business and mutual friends and his career and even a little of mine. Bob's is more interesting as he spent many years in the service of Mr. Robert Hope. Mills was one of those writers that Hope had on call 24/7 and would sometimes phone in the middle of the night and say, "I'm playing the Rutabaga Festival in Jerkwater, Alabama tomorrow. I'll call you back in 90 minutes for some good rutabaga jokes." Some very fine and loyal writers worked that way, and Bob Mills was one of the best. Still is, though he doesn't get many calls from Hope these days.
Mills has posted some of his tales of working with Bob Hope over on this website. They're very good and, of course, straight from one who was there. Many of the anecdotes are accompanied by audio examples and don't pass them up. In fact, don't pass up any part of this splendid memoir.
A few items ago, I was plugging some upcoming showings on Turner Classic Movies. To be of more service to you fine people, I should have noted that TCM seems to have changed its attitude in the last few months. They went through a period where they weren't showing anything that we all weren't sick of seeing and most of it was stuff we all have (or could easily have) in our home video libraries.
But lately, someone there — some wise, kind lover of cinema — has decided to intermingle such selections with some genuine rarities, digging deep into the vast aggregation of acquired companies that represents the Time-Warner film vault. They've also apparently licensed a lot more films that weren't already lying around the office and that offer more esoteric appeal. (In October, they're running two of Russ Meyer's less salacious independent efforts, Mudhoney and Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill! Can Mondo Topless be far behind?)
So I'm going to suggest that you browse their listings and to make it easier for you, I'm going to provide some links. Here's what they're showing the rest of this month. Here's what they're running next month. And here's what they're running the month after. Notice that I'm linking to the listings for the Pacific Time Zone because...well, guess where I live, pal.
You may note some strangeness in these schedules...a number of offerings that are "0 minutes" in length and some blanks to be filled in, especially in the October list. These will get filled in as we get closer to the dates in question. You may also notice that someone there still thinks we yearn to see Sabrina, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and a few others every month but I can't help that. Just enjoy what else they're giving us...and I'll try to point out some highlights with enough advance notice that you can set your TiVos.
As readers of this site are well aware, I'm a big fan of Allan Sherman. I even have a discography of the man's work here. Despite the fact that he threatened to sue me when I was in junior high school (a story I oughta tell here one day), I think he was a brilliant performer of very clever musical material. Here's a clip of him performing a truncated version of one of my favorite of his parodies...
If you've been following this site, you've seen an ongoing discussion of drunk driving, which is one of those crimes I think should be punishable by...well, by more than the customary punishments these days. An acquaintance of mine, Bob Cosgrove, weighed in here on the matter and then an anonymous (to you, not to me) person was quoted here. Now, it's Bob's turn again...
It's really all about the trade off between encouraging people not to drink and drive and fairly punishing those who do. (Actually, it's really about keeping people alive.) It would be interesting to see some research on that issue — what's the ideal "tipping point" beyond which jacking up the penalties yields little perceptible gains. With luck, your posts on these issues will get people thinking. Your concern probably has a bigger impact on people, coming from someone they tune in to for your interesting comments on entertainment and related issues, than from someone with a perceived ax to grind.
Anyway, I thought to just shut up and not bother you again, but at least for your own information, I felt I had to make one comment on the very interesting post from the fellow who had the dui conviction. As you would expect from my original comment, I agree with a lot of what he had to say, especially about sentencing. But two comments, then I promise to shut up on the subject.
Given a normal rate for metabolizing alcohol (and some of us are faster, some slower), to have been one above the "legal limit" (and I assume from the rest of his post, he's talking .08), he would have had to have consumed those three beers within one hour, and he would have to have weighed about 110 pounds. For a guy 200 lbs., consuming 3 beers in the same amount of time, the result would be under .05, low enough to get the charges dismissed in most states. Maybe he's a lightweight, maybe he has a slow metabolism, or maybe he lost count of how many beers he actually drank. There are various charts people can play with on the internet to figure out averages by weight and time — they just have to google something like "blood alcohol chart" and take their pick.
Second, if there is a phrase I could consign to hell, it would be "legal limit." The press uses it all the time, though I've never seen the term in a statute. The implication is that it's like fishing — catch ten fish and you're fine, catch eleven and you're fined. What the "legal limit," so-called, usually is, is the point where the blood alcohol level alone is high enough for the jury to draw an inference of guilt, absent any other evidence of impairment. But you can be impaired (as I tried to suggest in my comment you were kind enough to quote with my story about blowing a .06) at levels far below the "legal limit." (And frankly, a practiced alcoholic may drive better substantially over the "legal limit" than a lapsed teetotaler with a few drinks under his belt). That may be why the "legal limit" for airline pilots is zero.
Well, I assume the "legal limit" for pilots is zero because they can get an awful lot of people killed or hurt. I think there should be more recognition that a drunk behind the wheel of a Plymouth can do that, too. A message I received but didn't post here included the observation that drunk drivers who don't get into accidents frequently get off with little or no punishment out of a sense that they didn't endanger anyone but themselves. But of course, that's a fallacy; they endangered lots of people. They just didn't hit any of them.
Not that you're suggesting this but the idea of people deciding if they're sober enough to drive via math strikes me as appalling. It's easy to imagine someone thinking, "Well, I weigh 241 pounds and I only had 3.5 Coronas in forty-three minutes so it must be safe to drive." It may be that what I'm really seeking is not so much more severe penalties for drunk driving but less inclination to give the marginal case the benefit of the doubt.
I also think that in all areas, I'd like to see more societal rejection of the notion that you're not responsible for your actions while tipsy. Among the many reasons I don't drink is that I've seen a number of people — including, alas, a few close friends — do and say enormously rude and even harmful things...and then, later, offer "I was high" as if it's some sort of acceptable excuse. One of the drunk drivers responsible for a friend's death seemed genuinely convinced that being drunk was a form of Temporary Insanity so you were not legally or even morally culpable for what you did in that condition. (He further argued that someone else had forced libations upon him so he was not even responsible for being intoxicated.) I'm generally a very forgiving person but I cannot find any forgiveness in myself for the evil that men do when plastered. If you're a jerk when you're drunk, you're a jerk, period.
Since some may think this sounds prudish or puritan, I should add that I really have no problem with people drinking or doing drugs. I don't think people who are stoned should be stoned. I just don't want them around me. If the world ever became a dictatorship with me in charge — and call me pessimistic but I'm starting to get the sense this might not happen soon — I would liberalize the laws for private use of drug and drink, and tighten them for doing it in public. I'd also do something about Regis Philbin being on TV so much but that's another matter.
We may have beaten this topic into the ground so I'll just thank everyone — Bob Cosgrove, especially — for participating. And now, I think I'll link to a video clip of Allan Sherman...
Very early Sunday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running Pretty Maids All in a Row, a 1971 movie produced and written by Gene Roddenberry. It's not a very good film but it interested me greatly when it came out because much of it was filmed at University High School in West Los Angeles, shortly after I graduated from the place.
Well, actually, what really interested me was seeing my alma mater depicted as a place crawling with beautiful young ladies who'd have sex with anyone and everyone. Given the reality of Uni High, I always thought of the movie as Roddenberry's greatest contribution to the world of science-fiction...as if casting Rock Hudson as a rabid heterosexual wasn't incredible enough.
And then all day long Sunday, TCM is running film after film starring Walter Matthau...or as we described it in this article, "Walter Matthau, ad nauseam."
On Wednesday, they're running Soylent Green. In case you weren't aware, Soylent Green is (SPOILER ALERT) people.
On Thursday, they have a heaping helping of Carole Lombard. Then on Friday, you can get sick of seeing Bela Lugosi. It's quite a week on Turner Classic Movies.
What we have here is a short interview, a little over three minutes, with the wonderful Mr. Gary Owens. It's plugging his book, How to Make a Million Dollars with Your Voice, which is a pretty good introduction to the voiceover business. We recommend it and the following link...
I've never liked seeing myself on television but since I lost a lot of weight, it's become an especially odd experience. Earlier this evening, I finally watched a little mini-doc on the Huckleberry Hound DVD with me among the interviewees. It was shot in March of last year and I must have been near my top weight of 366 pounds at the time. I'm currently at 274 so that's close to a hundred pounds more of me.
Once I get past my discomfort at looking at any version of myself, I have two opposing reactions. One is that I want to have Warner Home Video to recall all the Huck Hound DVDs and issue a "corrected" edition with the shots of me updated. I'm sure they'd be delighted to do this. The other is that I'm glad the old footage is out there so that when people see me now, they'll go, "Hey, you've lost a ton of weight." There are about a dozen other DVDs that have come out in the last year or three that have footage of the old me somewhere amidst the bonus material but I haven't watched any of them.
I'm also aware there are more mixed feelings to come. The Dungeons and Dragons DVD comes out in November and there's a "making of..." documentary on it in which I weigh about 350. At some point in the future, a deluxe 'n' fancy DVD is supposed to come out with the recent Fantastic Four movie on it. As another of those plots to get you to buy another copy of a movie you already purchased, it will be full of special features and extras, one of which is a nice documentary about Jack Kirby. I probably weigh at least 340 in that one. By the time it comes out, I should be under 240.
(To answer the most-asked weight-related question in my e-mail: My doctor thinks I will level off in the vicinity of 220-230. A chart in his office says that "ideal weight" for a large-framed 6'3" Jew is 218 so that should be nice...though I tell everyone that if the shrinking process stopped today, I'd still consider it a success.)
Needless to say, now that I look more like I think I oughta, no one is asking me to appear in any video documentaries about anything. All I'm getting is occasional requests for radio interviews. That's not a hint because I still don't like being in front of a camera and am quite sure I never will. I'm just sharing the irony.
Frank Jacobs — the poet laureate of Mad Magazine — wrote to thank me for a recent message here. In his note, he suggested I link to this article by Ben Stein. I'm not sure it's an accurate representation of what's occurring and I sure don't agree with the part about George W. Bush being a "hero for the ages." But hey, I'll do anything for Frank Jacobs.
Eric Boehlert on what's wrong with the Washington punditry. I don't always agree with the articles to which I link but I think this one's on to something.
Longtime talk show host Mike Douglas has passed away and yes, I have an anecdote.
I barely met Mr. Douglas — just a quick handshake was all — but I feel like I knew him. First of all, I watched his afternoon talk fest for a long time, especially during the years it was being broadcast out of Philadelphia. Located there, he wound up with a guest list that was more esoteric, and therefore more to my liking, than if he'd been in New York, picking up whoever was plugging their latest movie or record album. Who else would have had Moe Howard on all the time? The show wasn't nearly as good after it relocated in Hollywood and began booking all the same people you could see on competing programs.
Also, I worked for several years with a producer named Woody Fraser who had produced The Mike Douglas Show and, many said, "discovered" its star. Woody was forever talking about Douglas and it was almost always a compliment. He spoke of a man who was keenly aware of his own strengths and weaknesses as a performer and who was willing to compensate for the latter through hard work and a strong dedication to doing whatever it took to make the show work. Once while I was associated with Woody, a current (and failing) talk show tried to hire him as a consultant to save the series from cancellation. I somehow wound up in the meetings where Woody made the point that the failing show's host was too non-participatory, refusing to do things that might muss his hair or tarnish his image. The host had refused to wear a funny costume in a sketch. The host had refused to be part of a stunt where jugglers would toss Indian clubs on either side of him. The host had refused to do an exercise demonstration with a bunch of leotard-clad starlets would have had him down on a mat...and so on. Woody was practically shouting, over and over, "Mike Douglas would have done that in a second. That's why he was on for so many years!"
Okay, so here's my Mike Douglas story. I'm backstage — this is after Douglas had moved his show to Television City in Hollywood — because a comedian I write for is a guest on what is about to be taped. I'm chatting with the Stage Manager and he says, "We're close to tape time. Mike will be down any minute now to tell us today's dirty joke and to stammer on the dirty words."
I say, "Beg pardon?" And the Stage Manager explains to me that someone had told Mr. Douglas that the way to establish a rapport with the crew on his show is to tell dirty jokes. Dirty jokes do not come naturally to this man so he'd delegated an assistant to dig some up and, each tape day before he comes down to the set, he memorizes one to tell the camera guys and grips.
Sure enough, Mike Douglas soon appears, expertly dressed and made-up, looking very much like a Big TV Star. He tells the Stage Manager, "Hey, get the guys together. I've got a good one," which is apparently what he says before every taping. Two minutes later, the lighting guys and the grips and the cable-pullers are all massed around him and there, displaying none of the professional ease he will shortly muster on-camera, he tells an utterly sexless dirty joke — the kind of dirty joke that's only a dirty joke because it has the "f" word in it. It's not a bad joke but it would be better if he could utter the "f" word without stuttering on it, which he can't. He adds about six "f's" to the beginning.
The crew laughs, more at his unease and to be polite, than at the joke. Then everyone disperses and Douglas untenses, since he's finished the part of his job he most dreads and now only had to go out and appear before millions of people. That's easy for him by now. In fact, as I watch him from the sidelines, I'm impressed by how totally in command he is of the show, and how devoted he is to making the guests look good. The comedian I write for scores big, both in his stand-up spot and especially after when he's seated next to Mike and Mike is throwing him the set-ups for pre-planned anecdotes. The segment is in no way about Mike Douglas being funny. It's all about my comedian friend.
Later, you could watch that show at home and think, "Boy, that comedian was good." And if you thought about Mike Douglas at all, you'd probably think of him as the dull one in the equation. But there's a reason The Mike Douglas Show was on for — what was it? Twenty-one years? — and that reason was Mike Douglas. The man who could do anything but tell a good dirty joke.
Someone wrote and asked me why I like Lewis Black so much. Rather than try to explain, I thought I'd link to this clip. (And after you watch it but not before, go read this item I posted some time ago.)
Just got an advance copy of Mad Magazine #469, which I think comes out next week. It has a cover with Barry Bonds (only with Alfred's face, natch) and inside is brilliance. Inside is a three-page poem by longtime Mad scribe Frank Jacobs about Bonds and the steroid scandal that is as clever and funny as anything that's ever been in that publication. Let me know if you see it online anywhere so I can link to it. Otherwise, pick up the issue and take a look.
One of the dumber political discussions I currently see on the Internet is whether Joe Lieberman should withdraw from the Connecticut senate race for the good of the Democratic Party and who might be able to convince him to do this. It's dumb because it's never going to happen...and this is not even a criticism of Joe Lieberman. It's simply the way politics is: Elected officials (or even people who come close to becoming elected officials) act out of personal preservation. They may say they're putting the party or their country ahead of their own personal needs and desires but no one ever does and it's silly to expect it.
Richard Nixon was especially obvious about this. Time and again, especially during the Watergate scandal, he'd say something like, "I will make my decision based on what's best for America." And then he'd make his decision based on what he thought was best for Richard Nixon. Once in a while, they corresponded but never was self-interest anything but the first consideration.
That's how they all function. Each and every one of them, including the good guys.
Because politicians' careers are all based on a simple premise: Electing me is what's good for the people. Joe Lieberman has spent his entire political life selling the notion that the best thing for the voters of Connecticut is to elect Joe Lieberman. He must believe it. Even if deep down, he thought Ned Lamont or the Republican candidate (whose name few will ever learn) would do a better job...well, that's the kind of thought that never makes it to the surface.
Lieberman may withdraw from the race but if he does, it'll be because the polls and his campaign coffers are low and he decides he'd be better off getting out and looking like a hero to some than staying in and looking like a loser to all. Maybe someone will even offer him something tempting, like 72 virgins or a new career. (I like the suggestion I saw on one blog that Fox News should hire him to replace Alan Colmes on Hannity and Colmes. He'd be perfect for that, defending Liberal values but never in a way that offends those who think Liberals do the work of Satan.)
But right now, the polls aren't out, his campaign seems to have enough money — maybe even to hire someone who knows how to set up a website — and he stands a very good chance of retaining his seat in the senate. And discussing who might be able to persuade the man to throw himself on a grenade for the good of the party is a waste of time because he's not going to do it. Nobody would.
In the last twenty-four hours, four different friends have sent me pretty much the same e-mail...
Just a reminder...from July 12, 2006, all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sale calls. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS. To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222.
It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time. It blocks your number for five years. HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS.
Scary. But in less than twenty seconds, I found the following over at www.snopes.com, the website that tracks urban legends and hoaxes...
Despite dire warnings about the imminent release of cell phone numbers to telemarketers that continue to be circulated via e-mail year after year, no such thing is about to occur, nor do cell phone users have to register their cell phone numbers with the national Do Not Call registry before a soon-to-pass deadline to head off an onslaught of telemarketing calls. The panic-inducing e-mails (which circulate especially widely every January or June, since many versions of the warning list the end of those months as a cut-off date for registering cell phone numbers with the national Do Not Call registry) have grown out of a misunderstanding about the proposed creation of a wireless directory assistance service.
You can read the full debunking on this page but basically it says it ain't true. As far as I can tell, the Snopes people are always right about this kind of thing. When they're wrong, it tends to get corrected quickly. This particular page is more than six months old and includes links to other sources.
I get an awful lot of these. People are always sending me the essay on politics by George Carlin that Snopes says Carlin didn't write. Or they send me the comedy monologue about 9/11 by Robin Williams that Snopes says Robin Williams didn't perform. Or they send me something else that they could have found out easily is of at least questionable veracity.
Please...I appreciate the desire to share something fun or important with your friends. But before you pass on some message to everyone in your address book, take the few seconds necessary to do a search over at the Snopes site. If they say it's bogus, it probably is.
Among the things we relentlessly plug on this website is Totally Looped, an improv show that occurs once a month (at the moment) up in West Hollywood...and which is being performed this (Thursday) evening. The way it works is that the director, Vince Waldron, picks out interesting film clips. The cast, which has not seen the clips in advance, has to improvise new dialogue right on the spot.
We have here five and a half minutes from a recent Totally Looped that should give you some idea of how fast and funny the improvisers are. Tomorrow night is their special "Salute to Alfred Hitchcock," which will involve them destroying some beloved moments from that director's films. If you want to see them do this in person, the info is over on this website. And now, here's your free sample...
And Jacob Weisberg provides the argument that the Lamont victory is bad for Democrats. I'm not sure if I think he's wrong or I just hope he's wrong...but his view is worth considering.
I keep warning you folks: If you want to get a parking space at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, you have to leave early. Lines are already forming for the 2007 and 2008 conventions. See here if you don't believe me.
You guessed it: Another Tom Lehrer song done for The Electric Company. I think this is the last one of these I'm going to feature but it's my favorite...the saga of Silent E.
I haven't particularly followed the Floyd Landis "testosterone" scandal so I have no opinion on whether he did or he didn't or what it all means. But I did see him this evening on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno...and I must say that he couldn't have done a better job of seeming guilty and evasive about it. I don't know why someone goes on a program like that to defend his innocence without at least figuring out a real answer to the question Leno asked: "Why should we not go by the tests?"
Jay did a good job with the questioning but the best line of the night came from Bill Maher, who was the previous guest and who was seated on the couch. He remarked, "It seems like we're having a giant debate about a sport no one gives a [BLEEP] about. Does anyone ever watch people bicycle racing, except for the last 10 seconds?"
A quick survey of pundits commenting on the Ned Lamont victory shows that no one has a clue what it all means. Neither do I but I know what I hope it means. I hope it means that Democrats will wake up to the idea that the mainstream view in this country is that the War in Iraq has been a colossal mistake. It is not a fringe, extremist view or even an exclusively Liberal view that any good office-seeker would be wise to keep at arm's length. It's the view of 60% of the country and there are even Americans who approve of the war but think the Bush administration has done a poor job of waging it. More Democrats need to stop hedging their statements in this area for fear of being accused of being branded unAmerican or pro-Saddam.
I love the many Republicans who were offering "advice" to Democrats on how to handle the Lamont-Lieberman situation. A lot were just being helpful (no other motive, of course) to suggest that if Lieberman lost the nomination and ran as an Independent, he'd split the Democratic vote. Maybe. But maybe he'll split the pro-Bush vote. Who knows? I just think the Lamont victory legitimizes the majority view a bit more tonight and makes it seem more politically viable. At least, I hope that's what it means.
Fred Kaplan wonders if George W. Bush even understands his own foreign policy.
This is one of the things that Bush-backers either don't "get" about criticisms of him or choose not to recognize because the truth is just too painful. There is a real sense of disconnect between what the man says and what his administration does. So even if you think one of those things is the right course of action, you get really worried about the other. And of course, it's also possible for neither to be wise.
As we all know, just about the only thing that can hurt Superman (besides copyright lawsuits) is the mineral known as Kryptonite. The history of this plot device is a bit convoluted and there are those who disagree about some aspects of it. But it is known that the idea began with a script that Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel wrote in 1940. In that 26 page story, Superman encountered a substance called "K-Metal," a radioactive remnant of his home planet of Krypton, and found that it weakened him to the strength of a normal man.
The story was illustrated by Siegel's partner Joe Shuster before the editors at DC Comics decided against publishing it. Various reasons have been cited for this decision. It was too long. They didn't want to introduce that vulnerability into the Superman strip. And there was a scene in which Lois Lane learned Superman's secret identity. In any case, the story was never printed. Years later, researchers came across Siegel's original script and collectors found a few pages of Shuster's artwork.
K-Metal was never seen in the comics but in 1945, Kryptonite — based on the same premise — was introduced into the continuity of the Superman radio show. And a few years later, it began turning up often (some felt, too often) in the comics.
Now, the folks at a prominent Superman website have embarked on an ambitious goal: Restoring (and in some cases, illustrating) that "lost" story from 1940. The extant Shuster pages are being retouched and colored...and where the pages are missing, artists are drawing them in the Shuster style.
So far, they only have a few finished pages online but if you'd like to follow the progress and learn more about this, go over here. It's quite an endeavor.
I'm withholding this correspondent's name but this seems to be a real letter and it summarizes another, important aspect of the problem we've been discussing here. I'll meet you on the other side of it with my reply.
I really didn't want to respond to your DUI comments, because you obviously have very strong feelings in the matter, but I can't help it.
I'm a convicted drunk driver who made a mistake one night and got caught. I won't get into details, but I spent two days in jail and had to go to counseling, have high insurance, restricted driving privileges, etc. For me, and I would think for most people, that was enough to keep me from drunk driving again. I never drink and drive anymore. Ever. And I tell everyone I know not to drink and drive. But a year in jail would have ruined my life. I'd have lost everything. Job, house, girlfriend, money, everything.
I'm now a very productive member of society, which is something I definitely wouldn't be right now if I'd have spent that year in jail. Not to mention the fact that jail is not a nice place. I was put in with serious criminals. Violent people. Being the comic geek I am, I'm sure I'd have been harmed during a longer prison sentence. Even those two days really changed me mentally. People who haven't been in jail don't really understand what people have to deal with in jail. It's more than just an extended vacation from the outside world. It destroys that person's life and everyone connected to them.
I realize that what I did was stupid and it could have hurt somebody. I deserved the punishment that I received, but that was enough to stop me from doing it in the future, and it's enough to get me to stop others from drunk driving. Isn't that what you want?
I don't think harsh sentences are a deterrent. Most people know that drunk driving is wrong, but they think they're not "really" drunk. They think they're "fine to drive." They don't realize how serious the courts take DUI offenses until they're standing in front of a judge. They know drunk driving is wrong, but they think only very drunk people get arrested.
Unless you carry a breathalyzer with you, you don't know how high your BAC is. Mine was only .01 over the limit, and I passed all the roadside tests. All I did was drive over the speed limit, which is what I do when I'm sober. I couldn't imagine being thrown in jail for a year over that. (Now I simply take a cab or walk, but public transportation is almost non-existent or very expensive outside of cities).
There have also been new studies that show driving just over the BAC limit is better than driving while talking on a cell phone (even the hands free models) And who sets the BAC limit? It's currently .08 in most states, but are you really impaired at that limit? That's three beers. I don't even feel drunk after three beers, which is why there are so many DUI arrests, I think. Is this limit being pushed on us by the insurance companies and politicians that want to show how tough they are? In Washington, they told states to lower their BAC to .08 or lose highway funding. It wasn't just science that lowered the limit, it was blackmail.
It's too hard to tell if someone is incapable of driving a car, the real purpose of the law. I don't think BAC alone is the answer. How accurate are breathalyzers? If they're going to give harsh punishments, they should be as accurate as possible, but they wouldn't give me the more accurate blood test when I was arrested. And a .08 for me can affect me differently than it does other people. My arresting officer said I didn't seem drunk, but I admitted to having a few drinks so he had to go through the process. He almost let me go. Maybe that blood test would have put me under the limit. Unfortunately, if you blow over a .08 then you're automatically convicted, and no amount of testimony will get you out of a conviction in my state.
I'm surprised you're not nervous about mandatory sentencing, considering your other political views. A mandatory sentence would give me the same punishment as someone who blew a .20. Are we saying that all cases are exactly the same and that judges can't be trusted to give a just punishment? As an aside, are you in favor of the three strikes and you're out laws?
I want to stop people from drunk driving, but I wrestle with what's fair and what's overkill. The only difference between you and I is where the line should be drawn. I don't expect to change your opinion on the issue, I just wanted to give my side of the story (even if I did ramble on a bit).
Love the site by the way...
Thanks...for the compliment and the letter. I do have strong feelings about this but if you've followed this blog, you know that I think the stupidest thing you can do is form your opinions and then close your mind to new evidence or arguments. I still think we need to get stricter with drunk drivers but you've put a little dent in my attitude about just what should be done. I'm also concerned that my own experiences — the loss of loved ones due to intoxicated motorists — can cause me to view this problem through too much emotion, and your note provides a nice bit of humanity on the other side.
Certainly, if the laws and technology can be improved with regard to how we measure intoxication, they should be. But I still think anyone who has even three beers and gets behind the wheel deserves to be slapped...and hard. One of my friends was killed by a drunk driver who probably hadn't had much more than that...and it was a first offense.
I don't know exactly how I feel about a blanket "three strikes and you're out" law. I keep hearing about — and these may be apocryphal — theoretical criminals whose three strikes were shoplifting food when they were starving. But certainly some crimes are serious enough that a person shouldn't be able to commit them three times and get out of jail...and for those offenses, yeah, I guess I'm fine with a three strikes law. The main thing that gives me pause is my lack of faith in our judicial system to convict the right people.
Maybe a year in prison is too strict for a first drunk driving offense. When I said that, I wasn't thinking of someone in the situation you describe...someone who just edges over the legal definition of drunk driving. But I've heard people talk about the crime in the same category as failing to signal for a left turn, and I think we have to do something to get it off that level and closer to the more serious violations. Let me think about it some more and get back to you. And thanks again for writing.
The new issue of Playboy carries a long interview with Michael Brown, the infamous "Brownie" who took much of the blame for the terrible handling of Hurricane Katrina. Brown makes a not-unconvincing case that he did little wrong and that a lot of other folks screwed up, starting with George W. Bush. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff comes in for an especially large chunk of criticism.
When I say it's "not-unconvincing," I'm not saying I'm convinced. I'd want to hear some rebuttals and responses before I believed all that Mr. Brown has to say. But the man does make a strong case and if the topic interests you, you might want to check it out. The interview does not seem to be available online so you might have to look at an actual magazine. Rumor has it that somewhere in the publication, there's also at least one photo of a nude woman, too.
And if you're near a newsstand, take a look at the new issue of Emmy, the official magazine of the TV Academy. This one's crammed full of good articles about old TV shows and stars, including a "reunion" of the cast of The Bob Newhart Show. There's also a nice piece on Yarmy's Army, the comedians' club I mentioned in this piece.
One other thing about DVD sets. Amazon currently has an offer to sell you the first nine seasons of M*A*S*H (the individual season releases) for $323.99. I'd post a link to the page but I'm afraid someone might click on it and order. You shouldn't...because Amazon is selling those first nine seasons for $23.47 each. In case you can't do the math, nine times $23.47 is $211.23. So it's kind of a quantity increase.
You can also buy that package deal plus the tenth season for $351.76. They currently sell Season 10 for $27.77 so this is another one of those Amazon package deals that gives you nothing off the price of buying the items individually.
Or you can wait until November 7 for the deluxe, complete set. It will give you all eleven seasons plus the original M*A*S*H movie plus two discs of bonus material and a slipcase for a suggested retail price of $199.99, which probably means the Amazon price will be $179.99.
My experience with comic fans is that nothing drove them away from the market faster than when they bought something for one price, blinked and found it was a lot cheaper. I can't believe it won't have a similar effect on some folks who are buying sets of old TV shows on DVD.
My chum Earl Kress has a post up responding to my gripe about TV shows being released on DVD as single volumes and then again as full sets. You can read the whole thing here but I'll post one paragraph before I respond...
But the one problem with Mark's argument is that it's a Catch-22. He says wait for the Ultimate Box Set, which has all the seasons of your favorite show. However, if the individual seasons don't sell well enough, companies are now starting to reassess midway through and cancel series. For instance, Huckleberry Hound Volume 1, pictured at left, may turn out to be the only Huckleberry volume released due to low sales. Other series which have recently been shelved after one or more seasons were released are Boy Meets World, Murphy Brown and Night Court. If the sales aren't good enough to release the entire series individually, they'll never get to that ultimate box set.
Earl's right that this is a problem...but I would hope that if people buy the way I'm going to from now on — wait for the series to finish and see if there's a complete set issued — it will lead to companies releasing these things as complete sets at the outset. Certainly, F Troop (a show Earl mentions he hopes will be go the distance) could have been put out in one volume.
The other thing they could do is make the extras available to folks who buy the set volume by volume. In the example of M*A*S*H, if you're a devout fan of the show and you bought the DVD releases season by season, you've sunk a nice piece of change into getting all the episodes but you don't get all the bonus material that comes when you buy the forthcoming complete collection. What they should do is include a coupon in every season set and if you send in all the coupons, you can purchase for a nominal cost, the bonus discs and the slipcase. But they won't do that. The goal here is to make the most fanatic M*A*S*H fans buy all the seasons a second time.
I think Warner Home Video dropped the ball on that first Huckleberry Hound set. It's great material but they brought it out at a time when the market was being flooded with complete sets of classic TV shows, especially cartoon shows, many of them Hanna-Barbera releases from Warner Home Video. Ol' Huck got lost amidst the release of the better-known Yogi Bear, Flintstones and Scooby Doo sets. I hope they'll reconsider and try the second and final collection.
I hope he'll forgive me for mentioning the number but it's not exactly a secret on the Internet. One of my personal heroes, Stan Freberg (seen above with his lovely spouse, Hunter) is eighty years old today. He is, as everyone knows, a fine actor, satirist, writer, voice actor, advertising genius, etc. He's also a very nice man whose friendship I treasure. It's a joy when one of your idols turns out to be as fine a human being as you could ever want him to be.
To celebrate this momentous occasion, this website is unveiling its Stan Freberg Discography. This is, please remember, a work in progress. I'll be updating and amending and rewriting some of the more hastily-composed entries as we go. But this seemed like the perfect day to put it online and to let everyone see the incredible body of work that Stan did in the recording studio.
Stan, if you're reading this, I'd like to suggest that you have a mid-life crisis. It's not that I want to cause you any anxiety but I kinda like the idea that this is the middle of your life and that we'll have you around for another eighty. Happy Day. Eat some cake, hug your friends and for God's sake, turn off the bubble machine.
The polls say that on Tuesday, Ned Lamont is going to defeat Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Connecticut. That's fine by me. As longtime readers of this page know, I didn't think much of Mr. Lieberman even when he was Al Gore's running mate. In fact, especially when he was Al Gore's running mate.
A lot of weblogs and pundits are now speculating as to what a Lamont victory will demonstrate about the power of the Liberal weblogs that have been advancing the challenger's candidacy. Some act like Lamont's whole campaign derives from that blogosphere. Some suggest "...the drive to oust Lieberman is really the next big test of the bloggers' political clout." Others write that "...if Joe goes down this week, I dont think that blogs will have had all that much to do with it."
I'm kind of with that last guy. In fact, I don't think the bloggers matter much either way. I think a large number of Democrats in Connecticut have been itching to strike a blow against the Bush administration, and voting against Joe Lieberman is the first chance they've had to do anything that resembles that. And that's all I think the vote will mean.
We'll find out how many of those Connecticut Democrats are angry enough at Bush to throw out an incumbent who has often cozied up to White House policies and parroted Republican talking points. But we won't know a thing about the power of weblogs.
We need to break a habit, people. Our favorite TV show is being released on DVD in complete seasons and we, like jerks, go out and buy Season One and then later on, we buy Season Two and Season Three and so on. We have to stop doing this.
Why? Because most of these are later going to come out in complete sets with more bonus material. This article lists some of the forthcoming such releases and I'll quote one here...
Not to be outdone, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is wrapping up its series of "complete season" sets of M*A*S*H with a 36-disc boxed set that contains all 11 seasons, the M*A*S*H film, and two bonus discs of never-before-seen extras, including a trivia game, a featurette on the show's fan base, and a 30th anniversary reunion of cast and crew. The Martinis and Medicine Collection is due November 7 at a suggested retail price of $199.98; season 11 comes out individually the same day.
Okay: Let's say you've always loved M*A*S*H and when they started releasing them on DVD, you raced to your local video shop and bought each of the first ten volumes. Assuming any sort of decent discounting, that's around $240 you've invested in those ten sets. On November 7, you can pay another $24 and get Volume 11 (for a total expenditure of $264) and you'll have all the episodes but you won't have the two bonus discs of never-before-seen extras, the trivia game, the featurette on the show's fan base, or the 30th anniversary reunion of cast and crew.
Won't you wish you'd waited and just bought the two hundred dollar version that includes all that, plus a copy of the original movie?
This is not just unfortunate timing on your part. Even as you read this, top execs at home video companies are huddling in meetings, discussing ways to package and repackage their wares so that you'll buy them more than once. There will be fans of M*A*S*H who will leave their old DVD volumes on the shelves and buy the new collection just to have everything in one nice package, thereby purchasing much of this material twice. That's the idea. (Appealing to the same mindset, there are companies that deliberately plan to release feature motion pictures at least twice. First, they bring out the standard video release and later — a year or two down the pike — they come out with the Platinum or Silver or Deluxe or Whatever They Call It Edition that includes the film letterboxed and with commentary tracks and documentary material and outtakes and such. Some people who didn't get the first release will buy this one but the big expectation is that many who did buy the previous release will buy it again.)
Well, you can fall for it but I won't. We're now about to see season-by-season releases of a number of great TV shows including The Addams Family, The Odd Couple, Get Smart and Whose Line Is It Anyway? I ain't buyin' any of 'em season-by-season. True, there's a risk that they won't eventually be collected into deluxe sets but I don't think any of them will be that difficult to pick up later as individual releases. The first season of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was released on DVD four years ago and you can still snag it and the others that have been released from Amazon, some of them for half-price. Season One of All in the Family on DVD even before that and all the collections to date are all still in print, some of them at discounted prices. If there's never a complete-in-one set of The Odd Couple, I can pick up the single volumes at some point in the future.
This kind of thing — repackaging reissues in a way designed to coerce loyal fans into buying the same thing again — hurt the comic book business greatly. A lot of readers eventually learned that when a story is released as a four-issue mini-series, it's better to wait and buy it when it's collected in a one-volume trade paperback. DVD buyers will eventually catch on the same way and the practice will cease...but until it does, we have to be smarter than they think we are. I've already bought a lot of movies several times — once on Beta, again on VHS, then in the deluxe, remastered VHS release, then on Laserdisc, then on DVD, etc. It's time to stop.
I haven't had a Tom Lehrer link for quite a while. Here's one of the songs he composed and performed for the TV series, The Electric Company. It's been nicely animated, too.
Esther Snyder and her husband Harry (who passed away several years ago) founded the In-n-Out Burger chain that dots California, Nevada and Arizona. If you have to eat a burger at a fast food restaurant, that's the place to have one. Everything's fresh (never frozen) and you can even see the workers slicing the potatoes for the french fries. As this obit explains, Ms. Snyder has passed away at the age of 86.
One hopes this is not the beginning of the end of our favorite fast food burger chain. As we discussed back here, there have been family squabbles in the organization that suggested the company might undergo changes. We hope they leave well enough alone.
Norman Lear and Robert W. McChesney object to new regulations that will allow media conglomerates to get even more powerful by swallowing up smaller companies.
An old pal of mine, Bob Cosgrove, sends the following in response to my earlier posting about people who drink and then get behind the wheel of an automobile...
When I was a law student, I took a course in "trial practice." One day, my professor called with an unusual request — could I show up at his office a few hours before class and have some scotchs? The evening's lesson was cross-examining an expert witness, in this case, a breathalyzer operator. I did my part and continued to drink right through class (probably the only time the "defendant" was ever identified in court as "the guy over there sipping scotch"). I'd downed about three glasses in the course of a few hours, then took the test. I weighed in at about 190 at the time, and blew a .06. At the time, a jury could have convicted me with that number, but in order to infer, based solely on my BT score, that I was under the influence, I would have had to blow a .10. I took the subway home a few hours later, and by the time I got back to my car, was sober. But I never would have driven feeling as I felt with the "low" score of .06. My class experience made me the last person a defense attorney would want on a jury.
At the time, I had no particular thought of going into criminal law. Later, as a prosecutor, I must have tried around a hundred or more OUI cases. With respect, I think you have a layman's conception of how to deal with "drunk drivers." (Or — forgive me — a politician's). A side note: most states, perhaps all states, and I suspect your own state, don't require that a defendant be "drunk" — merely that the defendant's ability to drive be impaired, or alternatively, that the blood alcohol be over a certain level. So "drunk driving" is something of a misnomer.
Most people are all for toughening "drunk" driving laws. Throw the book at them! Look at what might have happened — someone might have been killed. Then they get into court, and on a journey. There's the defendant, in his suit and tie, looking quite different from the obnoxious loudmouth the cops describe. (And there's the cops — looking pretty much like they did that time they pulled you over, even though you were only going a few miles over the speed limit when you went through that light that really was yellow when you first started through). Sitting behind the defendant are his wife and adorable three kids. Suddenly, the hypothetical "victims" whose lives the drunk driver may have claimed fade into pale, forgotten abstractions. You won't hear that the defendant refused to take a breathalyzer, because you can't tell a jury that (at least in my state). (That, by the way, is why I, unlike most prosecutors, always liked to have people who had been convicted of "drunk driving" on my juries, at least when they had pled guilty — they all knew exactly what it meant when they heard nothing about any breath test: the defendant had refused to take it because he thought it would show he was intoxicated). The jurors have heard about the new tough penalties — they know if they convict, the defendant is going to have to pony up a few thousand for an alcohol rehabilitation program, pay fines and probation fees, lose his license — by the way, defense counsel has slipped in that he's a truck driver, and his livelihood depends on that license — and perhaps do some jail time. All because he had one drink too many at a party and slipped up for the first time in his life. (They won't find out that this is his third arrest for "drunk" driving — the previous two, by the way, resulted in "not guilty" findings). There, half the jury will be thinking, but for the grace of God go I. In some ways, it's easier to convict someone of murder than drunk driving. Nobody's sitting in the jury box thinking, "Gee, if they had caught me chopping up my wife with an ax, that could be me there."
The high penalties will also scare the hell out of the defendant. He'll pay the high fees necessary to get a good lawyer, and tell that lawyer to fight like hell. The defense bar's continued opposition to increased drunk driving penalties is a tribute to their integrity; every jacking up of the penalties ought to be called the "Defense Attorney Employment Act of (year)."
Do you really want to give some guy with one too many drinks a year in jail? I'd be surprised if the first break-in to a home in your state typically gets a year — but we should do it for OUI (as it's called in my state: DWI most other places)?
My own preference would be for a change in the rules of evidence that would put more information before juries and make it easier to convict — and at the same time to lower the penalties for first offenses, also to encourage easier convictions that would put the defendants in line for treatment for alcohol problems. Raising the penalties sounds tough — and no doubt it is tough — on the increasingly smaller percentage of those found guilty of the crime.
Yeah, I'm not proud of it but I do think I want to give some guy with one too many drinks a year in jail...or maybe a lesser sentence that still involves staring at metal bars. The fact that the penalty for a first break-in may be too low isn't a rationale for eliminating the penalty for some other crime.
I understand what you're saying about how difficult it is to get a conviction and I agree with you about changing the rules of evidence to include some of the things you say are excluded. I also understand what you're saying about juries identifying with a defendant and feeling compassion towards him...and I think that's just the nature of the jury system. Which is why I made reference to a "mandatory sentence." Maybe that would prompt a few more jurors to say, "Hey, the guy drove drunk. I don't like sending him to the slammer but the law's the law."
Obviously, I'm looking at this less as a matter of properly punishing drunk drivers than I am as establishing a more solid deterrent. I do think there's a value to that kind of punishment. You're correct, I'm sure, that jurors don't identify with ax murderers...but this is the kind of crime that too many people think isn't one. They need to be reminded and I think stronger sentences could do wonders. I've had a few friends who really screwed up their own lives with alcohol abuse — by driving while tipsy or otherwise — and it's been my experience that they serve as good bad examples. Hearing about the disasters they bring on themselves does a lot to discourage others from making the same mistakes. Maybe it's naïve of me but I think learning that an acquaintance did hard time for driving drunk would go a long way towards preventing most folks from committing the same sin.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that out, Bob. Nice to hear from someone who's in the middle of the problem.
Here's one minute from The Lucy Show, the series Lucille Ball did from 1962 to 1968. This scene features Lucy, guest star Ann Sothern and a surprise cameo guest...and that's all I should tell you about it in advance. Watch and enjoy.
Give a read to this article by a gent named Wade Sanders, who is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy. It's all about the new tactic of attacking the military records of your political opponents.
Cartoonist Bob Thaves, best known for his Frank and Ernest strip, has died at the age of 81. A multiple winner of National Cartoonist's Society awards, Thaves is said to have been the first cartoonist to do a single panel cartoon in a horizontal strip format. Frank and Ernest began in 1972 as an outgrowth of his magazine cartooning work and became a very popular feature. In the late eighties, Thaves launched a second strip — King Baloo — which did not fare as well.
His family announced his passing in this message on the Frank and Ernest website.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have released a report that basically indicts the Bush administration on an array of power abuses and violations of Constitutional law. You can read it here and marvel that these allegations do not (yet) warrant the filing of a Bill of Impeachment. It's especially amazing when you consider how low Republicans set the bar when they had feeble evidence that William Jefferson Clinton had fudged the truth in a deposition over a matter that had nothing to do with presidential power or getting people killed.
Why are so many people of all political stripes calling for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation?
I'm not asking why they think he's a failure in his job. That should be obvious by now. I'm asking why the demand isn't for George W. Bush to fire the guy.
A Secretary of Defense serves at the pleasure of the president. If I were in the Cabinet and I one day realized I was screwing things up beyond belief, I'd go to the Chief Exec and tell him how I felt...and then I'd resign if and when he told me it was the right time. He might not agree I'd messed up, in which case I would certainly not ignore his opinion. Or he might concur but feel that my resignation should wait until things were more stable or a suitable successor was in place or certain events had occurred. Whatever, I'd quit when he felt it was best for the country.
Public figures as disparate as Hillary Clinton, William Kristol, John McCain and Michael Moore have said that Rumsfeld should go. I get the feeling that even most folks who want to "stay the course" think Rumsfeld has made too many clumsy, untrue predictions and statements to be effective in his position and would welcome a fresh face there. It's hard to believe Bush is even keeping him there for any reason other than to avoid the admission that major mistakes have been made.
But ultimately, isn't it Bush's call that we need a new Secretary of Defense? And if he doesn't think so, isn't that the problem?
In the thirties, Variety used to have a column called "Released Jokes." It was an ongoing list of jokes that the paper's reviewers felt should be retired because they had just been repeated too many times by stage performers. Legend has it that the column was eventually removed from the paper because the editors realized that too many new comedians were getting their material from it, thinking that the name meant these were jokes that had been "released" into the public domain or something of the sort.
It was a bad title but a good idea. There are some quips that I'm just tired of hearing...so I'm going to start listing them here. These are jokes that were once clever and funny but have simply been done to death. I'll start with three...
The most dangerous place in the world is not [name of war-torn locale]. It's anywhere between [name of publicity-seeking celebrity] and a camera. (As in: "The most dangerous place in the world is not downtown Baghdad. It's anywhere between the Reverend Al Sharpton and a camera.")
Person A asks about something that's supposed to be a secret. Person B replies, "I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you!"
Squirrel nut double-entendres. (As in: "It was so cold, I saw a squirrel warming his nuts" or "It was so hot, I saw a squirrel packing his nuts in ice.")
And while we're at it, I'm also tired of political comments that use the phrase, "At the end of the day," as in, "At the end of the day, the voters will decide" or "At the end of the day, Bush is still president." What about the beginning of the day? What about the middle of the day? Doesn't it matter what happens then?
More of these as they occur to me or you send them in.
Don't be too quick to click on this one. It runs 27 minutes so you might want to wait 'til you have the time to watch a long interview with comedian Lewis Black. This is an episode of the PBS series, InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse. It's a serious chat and a good one.
Earlier today in this item, I joked that Harold Lloyd had more new movies coming out than Chevy Chase. Half the known free world has informed me that Mr. Chase has a new film called Zoom coming out in a week or so. Perhaps I should have said that Harold Lloyd dead is still funnier than Chevy Chase alive.
Also, in this item, I mused that the idea of raising the minimum wage must have shocked the execs at Wal-Mart. According to this article, their CEO has urged Congress to up that wage. I'm a little skeptical that the company really wants that — it sounds to me like good P.R. to get behind something that will probably happen anyway — but it wouldn't be fair not to make note of their statement.
And if the Minimum Wage does get raised and you suddenly find yourself with a little surplus income, here's a good cause to which you can put it...
My buddy Len Wein and I are both fans of the TV game show, Deal or No Deal so today, we went over to watch the taping of an upcoming episode. A friend got me V.I.P. passes but it turns out we probably could have received much the same admission if we'd gone to this page and filled out the online application.
I think we had a good time, though we had plenty of complaints, including the sheer length of the session. We were there more than five hours for the taping of one one-hour show...and for much of that time, we were all treated like it would be a capital crime to leave early and a serious felony to go use the bathroom. The seats were enormously uncomfortable and the audio, at least where we were seated, was frustrating. We couldn't hear half of what was said by the contestants and host Howie Mandel, but the warm-up guy was way too loud. (I should write a sequel to this article about warm-ups at TV tapings. It used to be that they were hosted by someone connected with the show who'd answer questions and talk about how the program was done. Nowadays, the trend — and what they do on Deal or No Deal — is bring in someone to play games with the audience, getting people up to sing and dance, and awarding them t-shirts and other prizes.)
The Deal or No Deal games themselves were also rather boring. During a break, Mr. Mandel told the audience that during recent tapings, contestants had been experiencing a run of bad luck, going home with less than exciting sums. We saw the end of one game, a complete game with another contestant and the start of yet another game with a third contestant...and none of them seemed to be breaking that streak.
So what did we like? Well, we had a good view of the show's twenty-six prize models, so that was nice...though I could have done without the guys seated behind us who were speculating out loud on which one they'd pick if they were given their pick of having sex with any one of them. Amazingly, as of the time Len and I left, no one had given them that choice. I always love how men invent those little discussion games like that kind of thing ever actually happens.
I enjoyed watching how the show is done, studying the little technical details. It's slickly-produced and apart from the constant delays, done with great efficiency. The set, like all sets for TV shows, is smaller than it appears on your home Plasma screen and most of the twelve cameras are robotic and unobtrusive. There's a nice feeling of intimacy and audience involvement the way the stage is designed. Unlike most shows where sightlines aren't clear and you wind up watching much of the proceedings on a monitor, you can see almost everything from most seats and there are no monitors.
We also got to see The Banker as he walked up to take his place in the skybox. He's kind of an average-looking guy with reddish hair...and he has the easiest job in television. He just sits there while they tape and does nothing. (The "offers" that allegedly come from The Banker actually are from the show's producers.)
The thing I don't like about the program as I watch it at home is the heavy editing and the "pasted together" feeling it sometimes has. At the taping, one can see why this is. There are a lot of pick-ups (doing something over for the camera) and a lot of inserts where the audience is asked to "act" (applaud, moan at a bad break, etc.) when nothing is actually happening so that footage can be edited wherever needed into the show. I did a show once for ABC where we weren't allowed to do that. If you cut to a shot of the audience laughing, that had to be footage of them actually laughing at whatever they were represented to have laughed at. Either the rules have changed or NBC is more lenient on that count.
But all in all, it was an interesting field trip that makes me even more impressed with how the producers have made their game work. And that's pretty much all I have to say about it because I need to get back to work on something. Hey, Len! Did I leave anything out? If so, send me an e-mail I can post here.
In 1929, Harold Lloyd was the number one comedy star in America...and determined to remain that way. He had made a silent comedy feature called Welcome Danger and was readying it for release when he became aware of a seismic shift in his business: Talking pictures. Suddenly, that's what the public craved and Lloyd wanted to be at the forefront of talkies.
So at considerable personal expense (he financed his own films), he decided to scrap the silent version of Welcome Danger and to immediately remake it with sound. He recast the actors who couldn't talk well with actors who could and rushed right back to what were mostly the same sets to redo the feature.
It may or may not have been worth the expense. Lloyd was never as good nor as popular once films began to talk. The sound version of Welcome Danger was a decent film but far from his best. The following year, he made Feet First, which was another one of those films in which he dangled on window ledges...to much less comedic impact than when he'd done the same kind of material silent. Demand for Harold Lloyd movies decreased from that moment on and he only made a few more films before his last picture, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, in 1947.
Technically, that was the last Harold Lloyd movie to be released apart from some compilation films. But next month, that changes. On September 15, the silent version of Welcome Danger will be rescued from the vault and screened (with musical accompaniment) at the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. Only a few film scholars have seen it so it is, in effect, a "new" release. If it gets a few more screenings before the end of the year, it might even be eligible for an Oscar...not that I'd bet real money on its winning one.
I'm looking forward to it, if only for the comparison with the talking version. And also because it's been something like thirty years since I saw a Harold Lloyd movie I hadn't seen before. I also think it's funny that the man has been dead since 1971 and he has more new movies coming out than Chevy Chase.
This runs a little under eight minutes. It's a segment from The Soupy Sales Show featuring Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis and Trini Lopez and disc jockey William B. Williams. The annoying kid is played by Frank Nastasi, who was Soupy's sidekick-puppeteer on his New York shows. This originally aired September 10, 1965.
Earl Kress writes about the strike currently being staged by the writers of America's Next Top Model — one of many TV shows that employs writers but calls them something else in order to avoid paying them Writers Guild minimums. (There's actually a secondary, non-monetary reason. Some of these "reality" shows don't want to have a credit that says "Written by" because they don't want to call attention to how much of the show is carefully scripted.)
You can guess where my sentiments lie. I'm going to try to get time to go by and join the picket line. The Guild has allowed this kind of thing to go on for way too long.
Matt Yglesias says that the original Bush administration estimates of the cost of the Iraq War — which ranged from $200 million to nothing at all — were waaaaay wrong. The total cost is going to be over one trillion dollars. How many businesses would just shrug and not get upset if some cost estimator was off by that many jillion percent? And if so much of the overage had just gone into contractors' pockets without work being properly completed?
Heading to Vegas soon? I might go, just so I can see one of my favorite comedians, Pete Barbutti. Pete's set up shop at the Four Queens downtown with singer King Errisson in a show called "Back to Back." Sounds like a winning parlay to me.
Pete holds the world's record for more appearances on The Tonight Show with Mr. J. Carson than any other comedian. There's a reason for this. He's awfully funny in front of an audience. Matter of fact, a few years ago, I got to hang out backstage with Pete a few times and he was even funnier back there, telling stories about Vegas and other performers and working for sleazy club owners. Someone is missing a bet by not grabbing guys like that (and alas, there aren't many guys like that left) and doing a cable show where they could share their anecdotes. In the meantime though, get thee to Sin City and see Pete Barbutti live and in person. You won't regret it.
Here is a very important article in Vanity Fair about what happened the morning of 9/11, complete with audio excerpts from tapes made in the NORAD control room. Among other things, the piece demonstrates that a lot of what is commonly believed about the government's actions on that dreadful morning has been misreported.
Every poll says that Americans overwhemingly favor raising the minimum wage in this country...and it isn't just Democrats or Liberals who feel this way. In the latest Gallup Poll, Democrats are in favor 94% to 5% but even Republicans approve of the idea by a margin of 75% to 22% or more than three-to-one. So why don't Republicans just pass the thing and make everyone except Wal-Mart executives happy?
Along with his cohort Chet Stover, W. Watts "Buck" Biggers was one of the founders of Total Television, the company that brought us Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo, Go Go Gophers, King Leonardo and his Short Subjects, The World of Commander McBragg and a number of other popular cartoons of the sixties. Mr. Biggers will be appearing on Sunday, September 10 at the one-day Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention down at the Shrine Auditorium. There, he will sign copies of his new book, How Underdog was Born, as well as an exclusive Special Collectors Certificate that comes with the purchase of the new Underdog Vinyl Figure from Dark Horse Entertainment. He'l be there from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM and I plan to get down there and buy a book because I've never met the man and would like to. If you'd like to do likewise, check out the details at this website.
AP has a story out headlined "Experts Say Gibson's Apology Too Late." Who are these experts? They're described in the story as "celebrity crisis management experts" but there's really no such animal. What they are is publicists — folks whose main line of work is getting their clients mentioned in the press and onto magazine covers.
There are no experts in celebrity crisis management because there's no science there. Every celebrity is a little different in his or her public image and every scandal is different from every other scandal. Moreover, the playing field is constantly changing. What was shocking five years ago might not trigger a raised eyebrow today. Not all that long ago, if it came out that a major male star had openly used marijuana, participated in public group sex and groped unwilling women in the workplace, that star's name would have been mud. When all that came out about Arnold Schwarzenegger, people shrugged and his name became Governor. That may or may not be a proper response on the part of the public but what "expert" would have predicted it?
Expertise is based on precedents and there's no recent case of a star of Mel Gibson's magnitude getting caught making anti-Semetic remarks. And even if there were, it's different with Gibson because he's the guy who gave us The Passion of the Christ, about which many people had strong feelings, and it's well-known that his father is a Holocaust denier. Also, he made his remarks while drunk and some people — I'm not one of them — think you aren't responsible for what you say or do when intoxicated. Add to that that given what's going on overseas, this is a touchy time to be out there raising the idea that Jews are responsible for all wars and we're really in uncharted territory.
So will people forgive Mel Gibson? Some certainly will because some people don't think there's anything all that wrong with what he said. But no one knows how others will react. My guess is that there will be protests and boycotts of his next project or two and that he'll lose a few deals as some sectors of Hollywood distance themselves from the guy. At some point though, he'll make a big apology tour. He'll swear sobriety and denounce religious bigotry and surround himself with Jewish leaders who will praise his atonement and all the projects he will be doing for them and their people. All that plus his considerable personal charm will cause most of the anger to blow over.
Then it will just be a matter of whether he's making movies that people want to see...which is all that usually matters in his line of work. If he makes movies like Lethal Weapon and Braveheart, he'll remain a movie star and some people will say that the public was too quick to forgive an anti-Semite. If he makes crummy movies, his career will be over...but then if you make bad films, your career ends even if you don't get busted for drunk-driving and start talking like a Klansman. People will blame the arrest but it will really be the movies that destroy his career.
At least, this is my guess...and I emphasize that it's just a guess. All I know is that no one knows what's going to happen to the guy's stardom, not even those "experts." Because like I say, they aren't experts. They're just publicists trying to get some publicity for themselves.
It's one of the first commercials for Captain Crunch, done back when they were produced by Jay Ward's studio and supervised by Bill Scott. Bill is the voice of the pirate, Paul Frees is the announcer at the end and the Good Captain is performed by one of the greatest voice actors of all the time, the immortal Daws Butler. It's almost enough to make you want to eat the cereal.
My pal Bob Elisberg (who owes me a lunch or vice-versa) has some common sense points about the Republican love of playing Reverse Robin Hood, transferring financial burdens from the wealthy to the poor. I still think the desire to eliminate the estate tax is nothing more than a desire on the part of some of the wealthiest Americans to pay zero in taxes and to see the cost of running the country they profess to love shouldered by the lowest-paid.
We noted here last November that Claypool Comics — a small firm issuing three long-running black-and-white comics — was in jeopardy. Like all comics these days, Claypool relied on Diamond Distributors to get its product to market, and Diamond had decided that certain items, Claypool's titles among them, did not meet a minimum profitability. There was a brief grace period while Claypool tried to get its sales up to the point where Diamond would continue to carry them but now the ax has fallen. The last issue of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark will be #166, the final issue of Soulsearchers and Company will be #82 and Deadbeats will also end with #82. The storyline of Deadbeats will continue in some form as a web comic.
This is a shame on many levels. They were all solid, well-crafted comics that obviously had some following. In an industry where a lot of titles are considered successes to last three years, Claypool's books had been around a very long time. Obviously, they were doing something right. It just wasn't right enough for the current marketplace.
There are many possible ways to look at what this means for comics. It could mean that the readership (or perhaps just the retailer community that orders what its thinks will serve that readership) favors short-term stunts over long-term consistency...or maybe that it favors Big Names, period. All comic publishers who aren't DC or Marvel have had to contend to some degree with a mindset out there that holds that if it ain't from the Top Two, its worth is suspect. There are also the views — and I don't suggest that either is invalid — that the market is simply glutted and that it's in sorry need of a second major distributor.
I think Claypool may also have suffered from the fact that, unlike the top companies these days, they were in the business of publishing comic books. They weren't a self-described multimedia company that was out to produce movies, video games and other merchandise utilizing properties they introduced in comics. They were just publishing comic books and they couldn't make a go of it. Like I said: A shame on many levels.
September 1, 2006
