Monday, August 7, 2006

On the Stands

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.

• Posted at 9:54 PM · LINK

P.S.

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.

• Posted at 8:12 PM · LINK

DVD DISCussion

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.

• Posted at 7:30 PM · LINK

Happy Freberg Day!

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.

• Posted at 1:41 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Another song Tom Lehrer wrote and performed for The Electric Company!

• Posted at 12:12 AM · LINK

August 8, 2006 • Current • August 6, 2006