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.
August 13, 2006
