The other day here, I linked to a video clip of Jonathan and Charlotte Pendragon performing an amazing feat of magic. Jonathan would seem to have done the impossible again, surviving what would usually have been a fatal injury.
According to a message that Charlotte just posted to a magician's discussion forum, Jonathan was attempting to hang a light fixture when he fell onto the non-sharp end of an arrow from his archery set. The arrow pierced his stomach, his liver, an artery and went several inches in his heart. He underwent several hours of surgery, some of it of the open-heart variety, and is now recovering. Charlotte credits his survival to "speed of hospitalization, modern surgical techniques and Jonathan's will to live."
I'm happy to hear he's going to be around for a while. I've had the pleasure of spending time with Jonathan and he's one of the real gems in the field of magic — dedicated to his craft, brilliant at inventing new illusions and generous with his time and talents. Let's all send good thoughts in his direction. As soon as he's back on a stage somewhere, try and go see him.
Okay, so Bob Woodward wrote a book a few years ago that made George W. Bush out to be a decisive leader. The White House even recommended that people read the book in order to know the "real" Bush.
Now, Woodward's written a book that makes Bush out to be a pretty bad leader...one who ignored or isolated himself from good advice and who now presides over a military situation that's in chaos. (The book is entitled State of Denial: Bush at War, Part Three and that's an Amazon link to buy it, hint hint.)
So what happened here? Was Woodward accurate in the previous book and he's got it all wrong now? Was he wrong then and now he's wised up? Is there any way both portraits could be correct? I imagine both could be wrong but that's quite a contortion. Does Woodward suggest that George W. has undergone a massive change of personality and integrity in the last few years? Somebody help me here.
The book is just now getting out, just now being read. The last few days, we've seen people debating it on the basis of a few excerpts that have hit the Internet. Last night on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno and Bill O'Reilly discussed it and I don't think either had even read the excerpts, let alone the whole book.
So far, without benefit of actually knowing what Woodward wrote, the pro-Bush camp has tried suggesting that Woodward's earlier book was a work of integrity and that now that Bush-bashing is in vogue, he's gone that route because there's money in it. The anti-Bush crowd is throwing out the idea that Woodward was conned by Bush and hypnotized by Karl Rove before, but that he's finally snapped out of it and wised up. I don't know about you but I don't buy any of these explanations.
Mr. Woodward is making a promotional tour for the book. In the next week or so, he'll be on more shows than Brad Garrett...which makes sense because Woodward is funnier. Presumably, someone will ask him to reconcile his two versions of the current White House occupant. I'm curious to hear what he has to say.
I've decided to extend our "Festival of Great Moments in Sitcom Humor" a few more days so this is not the end of it. Today's clip is from one of the funniest half-hours ever done for TV, and you really need to see the whole half-hour. It's available on this DVD which I highly recommend.
It's an episode of a show known at various times as You'll Never Get Rich, The Phil Silvers Show and Sgt. Bilko. By any name, it was Phil Silvers giving a glorious performance as M/Sgt. Ernest T. Bilko, flim-flamming all who could be flim-flammed. This installment was called either (depending on what you read) "The Court-Martial" or "The Trial of Harry Speakup" or "The Case of Harry Speakup" or "The Court-Martial of Harry Speakup." I've seen it every which way. It first aired on March 6, 1956 and the writing was credited to Nat Hiken (creator of the series and its main director and head writer), Arnie Rosen and Coleman Jacoby. I actually worked with Arnie Rosen on one of my first TV writing jobs and was somehow then unaware that he'd worked on Sgt. Bilko. Wish I'd known because I'd have asked him about it. Then again, he was more interested in pressing matters like writing the show we were doing and having me fired.
The premise of the episode is that Bilko's Army Base is trying out some new techniques to speed up the process by which new inductees receive their physicals, take their written tests and get sworn in as soldiers. Via a plot twist you'll learn about when you see the whole show, a chimpanzee gets into the assembly line and before anyone notices, he is inducted. He also somehow gets a name. When someone tells him to "Hurry! Speak up!", another person thinks the recruit has said his name is Harry Speakup.
This will be humiliating to the officers if it isn't hushed up fast. The trouble is that due to red tape, the only way to get rid of the Harry Speakup problem is to court-martial the chimp and throw him out of the Army. Bilko is appointed to serve as Private Speakup's counsel in the trial that you're about to see.
One of the many interesting things about the Bilko program was that even though it was done on film, they tried to treat it as much as possible like a live performance. They barely stopped filming between scenes and often, if someone bobbled a line or things went wrong, they left it in. There are a number of instances when actors — most notably Paul Ford, who was otherwise so good as Colonel Hall — forgot important lines and someone else — usually Silvers, who had a fast mind and a great memory — would ad-lib around the problem. Silvers often improvised during the show and he had to ad-lib a lot in this scene because the trained chimp didn't always do what he was supposed to. At one point, Mr. Speakup ran over to grab a prop telephone and Phil came up with a terrific explanation right on the spot. (His quick wit caused a few of the actors to almost break up. At several points in the scene, you can see some of them trying to stifle or hide laughter. Especially watch the kid at left playing a guard.)
If you're interested in understanding how much the actors ad-libbed and paraphrased, we have a link for you. Many of the scripts, including this one, were published in paperback form in 1957. One website has scanned the relevant pages of that paperback and posted them here. You'll need something that can read an Adobe PDF file but you probably have just such a program on your computer already.
Okay...so the Army inducted a monkey and now they're trying to have a trial so they can kick the monkey out of the Army, and Bilko is the monkey's lawyer. Perfectly logical. Here's the scene...
At this very moment, over on The Drudge Report, the headline is "Gloves Come Off" and the premise is that Democrats and Republicans have stopped being nice and started bloodying one another with charges and invective and comments about how each other's mother is a whore. The big picture is of George W. Bush and there's a link to the AP coverage of his latest speech. And to represent the other side, Drudge has up three headlines which I've captured and reproduced above.
The first, the one labelled "Carter," links to a story about a speech given by Jimmy Carter, who's out campaigning for his son. The second, "Clinton," turns out to be about Hillary Clinton, not Bill. Almost the first thing I learned in my Journalism class in junior high school was that headlines should never be confusing or ambiguous about any aspect of the story. Obviously, Drudge never took that class. And then the third example of the gloves coming off is that Stone is ashamed of his or her country.
"Stone?" Who's "Stone?" Is there some former Democratic president or current Democratic senator I'm forgetting named Stone? We're not talking Sharon Stone here, are we?
Turns out it's director Oliver Stone. Which raises the question: How did he get in that list? No one ever elected him. His name's never been on any ballot aside from the one for the Oscars. There's no reason to believe he represents anyone but himself. I'm not even sure what political party, if any, he's signed up with at the moment.
Mr. Stone is entitled to his opinion and if the press wants to cover it like news, fine. But it seems to me like at any given time in the last decade or three, you could go to Oliver Stone and get a sound bite that he's ashamed for his country. You could also get a few juicy but ill-defined conspiracy theories at the same time. I'm not sure why it's news that Oliver Stone is against what any current administration is doing or why that now shows that "the gloves are off." There's always been someone, at least as prominent, saying that the president — whoever it was at the moment — was leading the nation into disaster and shame. There were guys on the radio who made their living doing that from Day One of the Clinton administration.
What I get from looking at the news is that the gloves are barely off...or maybe only off in the White House corner. Polls suggest that most voters embrace the idea that Bush needs a lot more Checks and a whole lot more Balances and maybe needs to be stopped altogether. Still, most prominent Democrats let Bush's latest "I can do whatever I want" laws pass with barely an ahem. Some opposed that bill just enough so they can say they were against it, not enough to perhaps do anything to stop it. And on this one, I sure get the feeling that a lot of House and Senate Republicans don't like that they were forced to vote for it, so as to not tick off a vital part of the G.O.P. base. During the debate stage, Arlen Specter (doing his usual Good Arlen/Bad Arlen act) said that the bill sets us back "900 years" in human rights, allows the president to imprison people indefinitely without trial and that it violates core Constitutional principles. But he voted for it anyway.
If he was a better reporter, Drudge could have finished out his "list of three" without going to Oliver Stone. You need three in a situation like that because two doesn't seem like a trend or a movement. For some reason, three does.
There certainly are other important Democrats who speak for a large part of the country who are saying that Bush is screwing up big-time: Kerry, Gore, Ted Kennedy, John Edwards, etc. There just don't seem to be very many who are in serious re-election campaigns at the moment saying it, which strikes me as odd. You'd think, with more than half the country saying Bush is doing a bad job, you'd have more than half the Democrats proclaiming that above a whisper.
Today, we bring you one of the great moments in the history of television. It's Monday evening, May 29, 1990 and it's the last episode of Bob Newhart's sitcom, Newhart, in which he plays an innkeeper married to Mary Frann. The show's going off and one of the writers — Dan O'Shannon, I'm told — comes up with a terrific idea on how to end the series in a way no one will ever forget.
We now bring you the last three minutes of that episode. Tomorrow in this space, another sitcom moment that many will never forget.
The DVD of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show is now set for December 5. This page has all the details. I'll post a link here to order copies as soon as the Amazon people add it to their wares.
Earlier today, I wrote here about how cartoon voice actors are too often not treated with the same respect as on-camera actors. As it turns out, my friend Paul Harris was discussing the same topic today on his popular radio show in St. Louis on station KMOX. His guest was vocal thespian Billy West, who's best known as about a third of the cast of Futurama. When it comes to not being treated right, Billy has some examples from his own career that would be funny if they weren't so maddening.
Aw, heck. They're funny anyway. You can hear Paul's interview with the brilliant Mr. West on this page. It runs about 16 minutes and if you enjoy it, browse Paul's site and you'll find plenty of other interviews you'll enjoy.
Michael Kinsley asks a couple of good questions about how some people (like, say, George W. Bush) who say they care about protecting the rights of the unborn don't have a big problem with human beings being killed after they're born.
I know some people reading this don't like Countdown With Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. I do, most of the time. Judging from the latest ratings, an increasing number in the 18-49 demographic category do, too.
Anyway, this is not about politics. Every day, he does a segment called "Oddball" that includes weird or interesting news footage. In today's, he had tape of newly-born baby pandas. There is nothing cuter on this planet than newly-born baby pandas. Nothing! You know how cute baby kittens are? Especially baby kittens swatting at a fly or a string? Well, newly-born baby pandas make baby kittens swatting at flies look like a cluster of unsightly pimples oozing pus. That's how cute newly-born baby pandas are. They're cuter than you are, certainly. They're even cuter than me and I'm pretty darn cute.
Here's a link which will probably only work for a day or three...but right now, it takes you to the MSNBC website and loads the video of today's "Oddball" segment. You can stop watching after the newly-born baby pandas. Nothing can top them, anyway.
And let me know if you find any other online footage of the newly-born baby pandas. You can never see enough of newly-born baby pandas.
In the above photo, the guy in the middle is Red Skelton. Very funny man. The lady at left is character actress Mary Wickes, who was also pretty funny. But let's focus our attention on the man at the right.
That's Lennie Weinrib...also a very funny man. Lennie, whose obit I sadly had to post here last June 28, was an on-camera actor (The Dick Van Dyke Show, Magic Mongo). He was a cartoon voice actor (Inch-High Private Eye, Flintstone Kids). He was the voice of hundreds of commercials and many a Sid and Marty Krofft series. He was the writer and voice of H.R. Pufnstuf, for instance. He was also a good friend to many of us.
A whole mess of Lennie's friends here in Los Angeles will gather to remember him and celebrate his talented existence on Thursday evening, October 26. One of his daughters, Linda, is throwing the event and I think I'm the Master of Ceremonies. There will be stories and video clips and wonderful anecdotes and food and glorious memories. If you knew Lennie, drop me an e-mail and I'll send you the details of how to be there. It's just our way of spending a little more time with a great talent and a great friend.
Stephen Colbert is currently accepting "atonement phone calls" from Jews who wish to apologize to him for...well, anything at all. If you're really Jewish, you can think of something.
I'm actually only half-Jewish so I called up and didn't leave a message. Still, I enjoyed hearing his announcement and you might, as well. The number is (888) OOPS-JEW. If you have no Jewish blood in you at all, you can give it a try and see if it works. I don't see how they would know.
If you do call, stay tuned past the annoying announcement where the lady informs you that they have the right to use your call on the air. Colbert gets the punch line just before the beep.
Here's a brief interview with Peter Cullen, a fine voiceover performer. Peter played Venger on the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show (which'll be out on DVD in December, they're now saying) but his big animation role was Optimus Prime on The Transformers. Wise people now doing the live-action movie of that property have seen fit to engage him again...because it just won't be Optimus Prime if it doesn't sound like Cullen.
There's an unfortunate tendency in the movie business to think of voice actors as not real stars. If Mel Blanc were still around and they were making a big Bugs Bunny feature — especially if it was live-action and therefore a bit removed from the old context — there'd be some studio exec who'd say, "Hey, can we get Mel Gibson to do the rabbit's voice? Or one of those Wayans Brothers?" What they don't realize is that the character is the star and the voice actor is an integral part of the character. They also don't realize that voice actors are stars, too. In fact, they're big stars...huge stars.
Stars in Hollywood are judged by how their movies gross. If you're in a movie that takes in $600 million, you're a bigger star than someone who was in a movie that took in a measly $300 million. If you're in a number of movies that take in a lot of money, you're a bigger star that someone who's in a lesser number of movies with lesser receipts. Stars are hired and they command top salaries because of their past grosses.
Now...suppose you fed into a computer the cast lists of all the movies and cross-indexed that with the grosses. Wouldn't it be interesting to see who was in the cast list of movies that had collectively grossed the most money? Can you guess where I'm going with this?
Here are the box office grosses going back a couple of decades for my pal — and maybe the best voiceover actor ever — Frank Welker. If you go by this, he was the number one grossing actor of the nineties, ahead of Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Williams or Bruce Willis...and I'll bet the total for Frank is, if anything, low. He was in a lot of movies for which he did not receive credit. (Okay, so some of his standing is due to sheer volume. When you only work one or two days on a movie, you can be in a lot of them. But it's still an interesting way of looking at the situation.)
And it's also kind of neat to note that Stan Lee is, at the moment, #20 on the Box Office List for this decade, ahead of Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy.
There are hundreds of weird homemade videos on the Internet that use Barbie dolls to act out bizarre perversions. Over on the official Barbie website, there's one that may just be odder than any of them. It's an ad for the new Barbie "Tanner Dog." I'm a little fuzzy on just what comes in the box when you buy one of these things but basically, it's Barbie's dog and you feed it plastic food...and then at some point (Immediately? A half hour later?) the toy dog takes a dump and you have Barbie clean it up with the Barbie Pooper Scooper, which I hope isn't sold separately.
Yes, yes. I know this sounds like one of those lame parody commercials they used to use to bridge sketches on Saturday Night Live but it's legit. Linking directly to the video on Mattel's site is a little tricky but here goes: This link may, depending on your browser, play it for you. If it doesn't, go to either this page or this page and look for a picture of Barbie and her dog to click on. It's a very short spot but it's everything I say it is.
I'm also a little fuzzy on the marketing idea at work here. I guess I'm trying to imagine the meeting when someone said, "Hey, you know what little girls all dream of doing?" Or maybe it has something to do with thinking that parents will buy the toy dog (and pooper scooper) to teach their daughters about being responsible when they someday get and walk real dogs. In which case they're going to then discover that the process is a bit messier than they thought...and not quite as odor-free.
And since it's doubtlessly on your mind, I'll ask: Is the plastic thing that comes out of the dog's rear the same piece of plastic that went in through the mouth? If so, doesn't that suggest the concept that you feed your dog crap? Or that crap is food? There are enough little girls around who are going to wind up anorexic without us planting that association in their fertile, young minds.
This is very disturbing. Very disturbing, indeed.
To get your mind off it, I offer the following embedded video of Liza Minnelli singing "New York, New York" on a 1982 TV special. Note that unlike the famous Sinatra version, she actually gets the words right. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with the video. Liza is actually slightly out of sync in real life. And then the next two days in this space, I'll be featuring what I think are two of the five (or so) most brilliant moments in the history of TV comedy. See if you can guess what they are.
...but ten more minutes in that Prescription Pick-Up Line and I might have done something that would have put me there. Forty-five minutes to pick up one prescription. I think I'm taking my business elsewhere.
By the way: I should have mentioned this before but please don't send me your "you think that's bad?" tales about how your pharmacy screwed things up. Every time I post one of these personal beefs, I get a deluge of stories, many of them quite long and well-written...and I really can't do anything with them. Start a weblog and post them. Maybe that'll get a few companies to snap to attention and fix things.
Not long ago, my friendly neighborhood 24 Hour Sav-on Pharmacy became a CVS Pharmacy. My first inkling that the conversion might not be an improvement — or even a zero-sum game — came when I saw all the signs posted around the place promising that as a CVS Pharmacy, the place would have "more convenient hours." More convenient than Always Open? Buckminster Fuller could probably explain how that's possible but I sure can't...and anyway, he's dead.
Actually, the old Sav-on (which I patronized for 20+ years) was about as perfect a pharmacy as one could expect, especially when that one (i.e., me) had the good sense to go in after 1 AM. During the more popular dayparts, the place was blatantly understaffed, which in this case is another way of saying that they did a tremendous business and that the management had not expanded the crew or the facility to service that demand. But in the wee small hours, it was a breeze. If I needed a refill, I could order it on the Sav-on website and go over and pick it up an hour later. If I had a new prescription from my doctor-person, I could take it in and whichever pharmacist was on duty would drop everything and fill it about as fast as humanly possible. The pharmacists were also truly friendly and willing to take the time to answer all questions.
Since the place went all CVS on me, things ain't working. First of all, they made a big show of announcing that all the prescriptions they had from their Sav-on days were still on file and could be refilled just as easily by the new management. This turns out to be untrue for those of us who renew online or even over the phone. We have to physically come in and order refills, even though that's just a matter of showing up and saying, "Gimme another round of my Glucophage." I am assured that once an old Sav-on prescription is renewed, it becomes a full-fledged CVS prescription and will thereafter be renewable online or via telephone. Perhaps...but you'd think someone could have worked that one out a little better.
But mostly, it's been a matter of prescriptions not being ready...when they're supposed to or at all. Two weeks ago, I took in two new ones. For some odd reason — I will never understand women, trigonometry or how my health insurance works — these required "prior authorization" from my insurer. As near as I can fathom, this means that my doctor — who has already filled out a prescription for the pharmacy saying that I need this medicine — has to fill out an extra form for my insurance company saying that I need this medicine. At the same time I took these in to be filled, I also ordered renewals on three other prescriptions, two of which needed okays from my doctor. My doctor authorized everything and filled out all his paperwork immediately but at the moment, the scorecard reads as follows...
Two prescriptions filled more or less promptly. (Both renewals, one of which needed my doctor's okay.)
One more prescription filled a few days later. (The other renewal that needed my doctor's okay. It was ready soon after, even though he okayed both at the same time.)
One prescription totally lost. I don't know where it is. They don't know where it is. My doctor filled out the "prior authorization" form and the insurance company says they authorized the pharmacy to fill it...but the pharmacy has no record of it. In the meantime though, it became moot. When my doctor found out I hadn't started on it a week after he'd prescribed it, he decided to fill it himself. He had me drop by his office where he loaded me down with free samples. I have to tear open a lot of little packets but I have my pills. By the way, this prescription would have cost me several hundred dollars even after the insurance company paid its part of it.
One prescription found, lost, then allegedly found again. The other "prior authorization" prescription was reportedly filled a week ago Monday. On Wednesday when I inquired at the pharmacy, they told me it still had not gone through. Apparently, it was sitting there, waiting to be picked up at that moment. On Saturday, since it had gone unclaimed for more than five days, they returned the pills to stock. I am told it has now finally been filled again and after I post this, I'm going to go see if that's true.
To get the found/lost/found one figured out and filled again, I had to spend well over an hour on the phone last night, most of which spent listening to tinny "hold" music, unsure if anyone would ever come on the line. Twice during that hour, I thought a human being was answering but I was instead disconnected, which is such a lovely feeling. The irony is that I was calling to perhaps save myself a trip over to the drugstore. As it turned out, I could have walked there, repainted the exterior of the building, then walked home in less time.
Thrice this month, I have phoned the CVS Customer Service line. During each call, I have spoken with an extremely nice, compassionate person (a different one each time) who has expressed shock at my experience, agreed with me that it's intolerable and apologized profusely. When I told this morning's Customer Service Person that I'd gone a week without my Omeprazole, she said, "Oh, I take that, too" and I thought she was going to offer to share her supply with me.
I'm not big on apologies from anonymous strangers. I'm never sure why I'm supposed to feel better because someone I don't know who had nothing directly to do with the affront says, "I'm sorry." I am impressed when they move to do something that might make things better, and the CVS Customer Service folks to whom I've spoken have sure sounded like they intended to try. The second had a high-ranking executive of the company phone me to hear my complaint first-hand and that person promised me that if I kept my business where it is, I would see a rapid improvement.
So I'm torn between waiting to see if they make good on this or just taking my business to another pharmacy...which will be farther away and probably not open 24 hours. I haven't decided what I'll do except for this: I am now about to walk (that's right — walk) over to the CVS Pharmacy and see if the prescription they told me was ready for pick up is actually read for pick up. If it is, I'll report back here later that it was. If it isn't, I probably won't post. That's because I will have done something that will put me in jail.
Hey, remember how I told you all to tape or TiVo the Laurel and Hardy film, Our Relations, from Turner Classic Movies? It was a bit of a disappointment. What they ran was (apparently) an old Nostalgia Merchant home video print with a mediocre picture quality, a flat soundtrack and a few seconds missing here or there. Nostalgia Merchant transfers were okay in their day but what you got was a copy made from one 16mm print with no video restoration. So if that print was faded or spliced, that's how the tape came out.
In the past, when Turner Classic Movies ran a bad or incomplete print of something, it has usually been a matter of the rights holder, whoever it is, supplying a bad copy. It used to remind me of the NuArt Theater over in West Los Angeles. Back before home video, it was the main place many of us saw classic films of the past. They ran a different double-bill every evening so they went through a lot of movies and good copies were not always available. Each month, when the following month's schedule came out, it was a moment of excitement ("Hey, look what they're running!") but also of reservation ("Are they going to have that lousy, incomplete copy that's making the rounds?").
The NuArt had a problem that I suppose plagues every "repertory cinema" house. They have to advertise their schedule well in advance but they don't actually get the print of the film until a day or two before the screening date. If it arrives and is chopped-up, scratched and a mass of splices, what can they do? Often with older films, that's the only print the distributor has. I can recall times when people stormed out of a program at the NuArt and demanded their money back. I also recall one time when we arrived there for an advertised evening of (I think) obscure Billy Wilder films and a hand-lettered sign on the box office announced something like, "We received lousy prints of these films at the last minute. If you want to put up with splices and missing scenes, fine. If you don't like it and want to walk out, we'll refund your ticket price. Just don't get mad at us. It's not our fault."
(The NuArt is still open, by the way, still showing old movies, usually for a week at a time. They're even running The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight every Saturday and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls at midnight on October 13. Here's a current schedule. Sad to say, I haven't been in the place since vintage motion pictures began coming out on Beta.)
Anyway, when I hear of Turner Classic Movies getting stuck with a bad print, it used to remind me of the NuArt. But then I realized: This is the era of digital video. The company that owns the film can send them a copy well in advance. TCM can demand to see that print before they schedule the film and decline to schedule it at all until they have a good, complete copy. In the case of Our Relations, there are complete, excellent quality DVDs available overseas and plenty in this country. So there's no excuse for this. There really isn't.
It won't get much attention outside Los Angeles — and maybe even not much here — but Ralph Story died yesterday at the age of 86. Mr. Story had a brief career as a game show host (The $64,000 Challenge) but most of his broadcasting days were spent on local radio and television in Los Angeles. He did interview shows and the local news but was best known for a program he did for six years, starting in 1964.
It was called Ralph Story's Los Angeles and it pretty much consisted of Ralph bringing us interesting tales about our town — its heritage, its history, its very identity. Story was a fine storyteller with a friendly, folksy quality about him. Each week, he'd pick out some odd corner of the city and we'd learn what it was and how it came to be. I was born in this burg but an awful lot of what I know about it was learned from Ralph Story's Los Angeles.
The U.C.L.A. Film and Television Archive lists among its collection, and I quote: "104 two-inch videotapes of Ralph Story's Los Angeles (1964-1970), the highest-rated and most fondly remembered local series in Los Angeles television history." Wish someone would put those out on DVD. I suspect they'd stand up very well today...and the history in them would be more important than ever.
We have a magic trick for your today...and not just any magic trick. This is Metamorphosis as performed by The Pendragons.
Metamorphosis is an old trick done by so many magicians that it long ago became a cliché. It's the one where one person is tied up a couple different ways and locked in a trunk...then another person stands on that trunk and, before you know it, the two of them have changed places. You've seen it as many times as you've seen the Linking Rings or the Cups and Balls routine and you're sick of those.
Every so often though, a magician comes along who takes an old trick and makes it (a) new and (b) their own. You oughta see Johnny "Ace" Palmer do the Cups and Balls. Amazing. And now, you're about to see Jonathan and Charlotte Pendragon do their version of Metamorphosis. It's so special that when they do it at the Magic Castle, seasoned professionals in the world of magic stop by just to see this trick. They do it faster than anyone ever has...and actually, I think this is an old video and they now do it even faster than the demonstration you're about to see. In person, of course, it's even more stunning.
One other thing before we get to the clip: After you're suitably impressed by the trick (which only takes a minute and a half), notice what Charlotte Pendragon is wearing at the end, then run it back and notice what she's wearing at the beginning. It's another little twist they put on an old trick and many people miss it. Like it isn't already amazing enough.
The Bush administration today released four pages of the now-declassified National Intelligence Estimate. Here's a link to a PDF file of what has been released. It's pretty sad stuff, essentially asserting that the Iraq War is emboldening insurgents and fueling a new generation of jihadists.
If this is the part the White House felt might help them, one wonders what's in the rest of it.
Some weeks ago here, we griped about companies that bring out DVDs of great old TV shows on a season-by-season basis...and then, after fans of the show have bought each volume, out comes the "complete collection." And of course, the new set is cheaper and contains bonuses that weren't in any of the individual releases, thereby forcing the die-hard buff to buy the whole thing again. We do not like when they do this.
So we're pleased as punch, however pleased that may be, to report that the folks releasing Get Smart on DVD seem to be reversing the process. In November, they will release all five seasons of that show in one set. Later on, they'll be putting out DVDs of individual seasons for those who wish to get their Maxwell Smart that way but you can order the whole thing right now. I'm hearing that the video quality on this set is quite good and that the special features are especially good. Paul Brownstein's company is doing them and when I ran into Paul recently, he told me they'd just obtained permission to include some video from the memorial service for Don Adams, which I hear was quite wonderful.
Now, here are the catches. All five seasons (138 episodes on 25 discs) will run you two hundred bucks. They're saying the season-by-season releases, whenever they get around to putting them out, will be $40 each. If that's true, then $200 for the lot is no great bargain and you may think it's a lot of money to shell out at one time. You also can't go bargain-hunting for this if you crave it now because the set is available only from Time-Life Video until late next year, they say. (There's an option to pay in installments if that makes a difference to you.) Also, we can't guarantee that the individual releases won't contain some bonus material that isn't on the complete set, though that seems unlikely.
So you wanna buy a complete set of Get Smart: The Complete Collection? Then click on that name and start filling in your particulars. That's a commissioned link so this website gets a tiny payment which I think I deserve for posting an entire item about that show without employing one of its 8,022 catch phrases.
By the way: Get Smart was produced (and brilliantly so) by Leonard Stern, who had previously given us the one-season wonder, I'm Dickens, He's Fenster. I don't know if that show — which starred John Astin and Marty Ingels as two hapless constriction workers — was ever syndicated. Until recently, I don't think I'd seen an episode since they originally aired on ABC for the 1962-1963 season but I've always remembered it as a very clever, funny show. But a week or two ago, I saw one and I was delighted to see my memories validated...an experience you may soon be able to experience for yourself. Two different sources are telling me that a complete set of all 31 episodes is currently being prepped for DVD release early next year.
Here's one of those "goose pimple" moments from the stage, and this may take a bit of explanation. But bear with me. It's worth it.
As we all know, My Fair Lady opened on Broadway in 1956 with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. It was only the biggest hit in the history of musical comedy, chock full of delights. One that was often singled out as the most thrilling was the number, "The Rain in Spain" — in particular, the instant when Liza (Andrews) finally masters the language exercise and speaks that phrase properly. Librettist-lyricist Alan Jay Lerner cited it as the greatest "tingle" he ever wrote, meaning a moment when the audience just went crazy with emotion and excitement. And he was right: It is a wonderful moment. In every production.
Now, flash forward to Carnegie Hall in the year 2000. A special is being taped for PBS. It's called My Favorite Broadway: The Love Songs and it consists of star after star singing great show tunes with a romantic bent. Julie Andrews is the host, and it breaks the heart of the audience that she cannot be among the singers. Ms. Andrews, they all know, suffered a severe injury to her vocal cords in 1995 as a result of some botched routine surgery. It was said she would never be able to sing again...so she can only function as emcee for the proceedings.
It's the final number. Michael Crawford comes out and sings "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face"...and he's almost too good a singer for that song, the one that Henry Higgins warbles at the end of My Fair Lady. In the musical, Liza enters near the end and performs a few bars of "The Rain in Spain" to remind Higgins of how he taught her and who she was when she first came to him. On the stage that night at Carnegie Hall, Julie Andrews stepped back into the role of Liza and re-created that moment and...
Well, watch the video. You'll see an audience that's about as thrilled at what happens as any audience has ever been over anything. (You'll also see PBS harm the mood somewhat by inserting an announcement and rolling credits at an inopportune point. But what comes just before it is so good, nothing can ruin it.)
Molly Ivins on the debate about torture. I think one question that ought to be asked to everyone who speaks or writes about this issue is, "Does it matter to you if innocent people who have no valuable information are tortured?" If they say no, it might help get to the core of the debate a little faster.
Some time ago here, I recommended a visit to the online Archive of American Television interviews, a series of oral histories that have been shot on video and which are now available on Google Video. The item I posted yesterday about the Emerson College and their Oral History of Comedy project brought some reminders (the first from Trevor Kimball) that more videos are being posted all the time from that other, also-worthy venture. The TV Academy is interviewing everyone who'll sit for them who was important in the world of teevee.
The present list of what's up on Google for viewing is available in the right-hand margin of the project's weblog. If you can't find a dozen videos there you want to watch, you just aren't interested in the history of television. The next one I'm going to tackle is the one with my occasional employers, Sid and Marty Krofft. Sid especially has had one of the most colorful, fascinating careers in show business and if he tells some of the stories he's told me over the years, that's an interview not to miss.
The Archive of American Television interviews are very long. For example, Carroll O'Connor's (which was recently posted) runs eight parts for a total of 3 hours and 47 minutes. That's a lot of Carroll O'Connor. You might want to experience these videos the way I do, which is to start one going, minimize the window it's in and then do other work on my computer, allowing the audio to run, radio-style. I should also caution you that a few chapters of these interviews seem to not have made their way onto Google Video...at least not in a way that a search will turn them up. At the moment, I can't find Part One of Larry Gelbart or Part Five of Milton Berle.
That's about all I have to say about this. So I'll just add that I wish someone was doing this with the pioneers of the comic book business.
Turner Classic Movies, God love 'em, is running one of the best Laurel and Hardy features on Wednesday morning. Our Relations airs at 10:45 AM on my coast. You can figure out when it's on where you are. It's scheduled for an hour and forty-five minute time slot even though the movie only runs 73 minutes, so that probably means at least one short subject immediately follows. TCM is sneaking in some real treasures this way so you might want to take that into consideration if you set your TiVo or DVR or VCR.
By contrast, the Fox Movie Channel is running what I consider the most disappointing Laurel and Hardy feature — The Bullfighters — early the morning of Saturday, September 30. Then on the following Monday morn, they have The Big Noise, which isn't all that much better. Still, as we say around this website, weak Laurel and Hardy is better than...well, you know.
But getting back to Our Relations...this is a film about which I have two glorious memories which I'll share with you here. If you don't like it, you can go to some other weblog.
Shortly after Stan Laurel died in 1965, a tribute film show was held at Royce Hall, which is on the U.C.L.A. campus: An evening of Laurel and Hardy films with Dick Van Dyke as host. How could any fan of Stan and Ollie pass that up? My parents and I went and I have a very vivid memory of Mr. Van Dyke arriving and taking a seat in the audience not far from us, sitting all by himself like any other attendee. Autograph seekers quickly engulfed him and I think this caused the folks running the evening to notice he was there and, in kind of an appropriate Rob Petrie way, in the wrong place. They scurried over and quickly led him to another seat that had been reserved for their guest speaker. To open the festivities, he made some brief and appropriate remarks, telling the story of how he'd first met Stan, of how much Stan had influenced him, and how Stan had lovingly critiqued a Laurel and Hardy impersonation on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
They then ran two shorts — The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case and The Music Box — followed by the feature, which was Our Relations. If you asked most fans of The Boys about those shorts, you'd hear that Murder Case is one of their lesser efforts and Music Box was them at their best. (It was the only one they made that won an Academy Award.) That night, an audience of mostly adults — but a fair amount of kids — howled at The Music Box but there was even more laughter for The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case. Make of that what you will.
Our Relations is a mistaken identity farce. Stan and Ollie are roaming around town. So are their twin brothers, Alf and Bert, who are seamen in town for the day. Neither set of twins knows that the other is about. The sailors pick up some floozies and later the floozies think Stan and Ollie are their dates...only Stan and Ollie are with their wives at the time so you can imagine what happens. Alf and Bert are also running around with a valuable ring that doesn't belong to them. The rightful owner and some gangster types think Stan and Ollie have it and this is already a lot more than you need to know. You've got two Laurels and two Hardys, plus Jimmy Finlayson and moviedom's eternal drunk, Arthur Housman. How could that not be terrific?
That night at U.C.L.A., it was, it was. I can think of maybe a dozen moviegoing experiences in my life when the entire audience — every single person around me — was totally consumed by laughter. I don't just mean a lot of people thought a movie was funny. That often happens. I'm talking about those too-rare times when it all gravitates to some higher plane and there's that sense of a very magical, special event taking place...something that transcends a mere cinematic experience. You're all part of it together, laughing at the same things at the same times and sharing that sense of giddy, helpless happiness. An awful lot of strangers walked out of Royce Hall that night, feeling they'd been among friends and experienced something memorable.
Four or five years later, I had another of those keepsake "everyone laughing together" evenings thanks to Our Relations. Elsewhere, you may have seen me write of the Los Angeles Comic Book Club, which met weekly for a few years in the late sixties at Palms Recreation Center in West Los Angeles. I don't think I've mentioned that some of our members also had a monthly group that was called the Silent Movie Club until the night I am about to describe when we ran a sound film. Thereafter, it was the Old Time Movie Club...and proud of it.
Most meetings, the program consisted of 8mm silent movies from our personal collections of Blackhawk Films and other companies that sold what then constituted home video. I had and still have a bunch of such reels of Chaplin, Langdon, Keaton and others. I no longer have a projector on which to run them or any reason to do so but I still have them. The club's officers — Barry Siegel, Bruce Simon and Steve Finkelstein — had similar collections and you could see all our films at the club if you paid the modest admission. There was even live musical accompaniment, courtesy of a talented fellow named Jeff Gluckson at the Palms Park piano. Every few months, all of this put enough loot in the treasury to rent a 16mm sound feature and give Jeff a night off. When they decided to get one with Laurel and Hardy in it, I recalled that glorious evening at Royce Hall and demanded Our Relations.
The club's only publicity came from a small listing in the Los Angeles Times but that week, it yielded a full house...more than a full house. I think the seating capacity of the room was around 100 and we had at least 150 crammed in there. People were sitting on the floor, on the tables, on each other...and no matter how uncomfy they were, they all loved the film. I was wedged between a wall and an older, somewhat portly woman who was sharing the piano bench with someone and literally crying from laughing so hard. Every few minutes, she'd double over and topple off her half of the bench, falling onto me, all the time giggling so wildly she couldn't get her bearings to get up. There were moments there when I wished we were running The Bullfighters, instead.
Our Relations is a great comedy but it won't seem anywhere near that funny on Turner Classic Movies. You had to be there, had to be with not just an audience but the right audience. That's one of the things I miss with home video. DVDs and the cable channels give us the chance to have our favorite old films in our own homes, more or less on demand. They just don't give us the chance to have them the way the filmmakers intended: With an audience.
This one will be better if I don't tell you anything about it in advance other than that it runs a minute and 38 seconds and that like all of the really weird video links, it has William Shatner in it. Go click.
I'm not much into following sports but I've finally found one that interests me. Matter of fact, now that I've lost all that weight, I may start training for it. Here's a link to a video of my new favorite athletic endeavor.
One of the best comic blogs on the web is Dial B for Blog, run by the pseudonymous "Robby Reed." Oh, wait. I probably need to explain the reference here. In the sixties, DC had a comic book called House of Mystery and it featured for a time, a strip called "Dial H for Hero" about a kid named Robby Reed who had a magic device that looked like an old-fashioned telephone dial. Every time he dialed H-E-R-O on it, he was magically transformed into a different super-hero, almost all of which were new and never seen again after the one appearance. The comic was written by Dave Wood and drawn by Jim Mooney.
(Quick aside because if I don't put it here, I'll forget to mention it: Congrats to Jim Mooney, one of the great gentlemen of our business, on his recent and successful cataract surgery. I am told he's regained the use of an eye that hasn't worked so well for many years...and isn't that a wonderful thing to hear? He's probably drawing better than ever now, and he was already pretty darned good.)
Where was I? Oh, yes: Robby Reed. Well, the Robby Reed who runs Dial B for Blog isn't the same guy. I figured this out because the Robby Reed in the comic book was a fictional character. I'm not sure who the Identity Thief is who runs the blog but today, he's posted the first in a ten-part (10!) series on Ira Schnapp, one of the most important figures in the history of comic books.
Who, you may have just muttered aloud, was Ira Schnapp? Well, go read Part One of Ten (10!) and maybe you'll begin to get the idea. This is a long overdue bit of research and, as the saying goes, it about time.
Just watched Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater, an HBO documentary about the late senator from Arizona and 1964 presidential candidate. I enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it...in fact, here's a link to a page that tells all about it, including when it airs again.
However, I had the faint sense of maybe (just maybe) witnessing some after-the-fact whitewashing of a man's life; of Barry Goldwater being repackaged for posterity as the somewhat non-partisan elder statesman he became, not as the darling of the extreme right that he was in '64. I suspect, just based on a distant observer's perspective, he would have approved of such refurbishment...and to its credit, the film does give us a good glimpse of the 1964 model Goldwater.
Still, one overwhelming message of the film is that ol' Barry was such an honest, outspoken maverick that even his old enemies loved and respected him. That may be true to some extent — the on-camera interviews praising him are full of Democrats and Liberals — but it's the later Goldwater they loved. They liked the guy who was no longer a force of any note in the Republican party and who said things like "Nixon was no damned good" and that gays should be allowed to serve in the military. They liked him because when he said such things, he couldn't be dismissed by the right as some wacko Liberal. He was, after all, Mr. Conservative, the one-time pin-up boy of the John Birch Society and defender of Joe McCarthy.
In fact, the main theme of the film — apart from the one about Barry being such a swell, candid guy — is that he was Mr. Conservative and those who now represent that movement are not. (This is also the main thesis of the new John W. Dean book, Conservatives Without Conscience, that I just finished. The book, Dean says, started out as a collaboration with Goldwater.) The documentary even offers us testimony from present-day right-wingers like George Will to wish that Conservatism was more like it was in Goldwater's day...though I doubt Will would sign on to every view that Barry voices in the old footage.
My recollections of Goldwater in '64 — and remember, I was twelve at the time — is that he was the poster boy for those who wanted to slow down the advance of Civil Rights (like, to the point of moving backwards) and those who wanted the U.S. to find an excuse to drop serious nuclear explosives on those dirty commies in Russia...or maybe not even to wait for a reason. Those might not have been his views. In fact, they probably were not, but he sure did little to distance himself from that mindset and whatever votes it could bring him.
I also recall thinking his campaign was just plain feeble. There's a skill to running for office...a skill that has nothing to do with whether the candidate is any good or not. It has to do with fund-raising and advertising and presenting the product (the candidate) in a saleable context. Lyndon B. Johnson and his operation were just better at it than the folks marketing Goldwater, especially when L.B.J. was armed with a powerful weapon: A martyred president whose legacy he could claim to be trying to carry forth. (You can hear and read Goldwater's '64 acceptance speech here. It's somewhat less radical now than it was at the time.)
I don't know whether this country would have been better off if it had elected Barry Goldwater that year...probably not if he'd governed as per some of the campaign speeches he made. Once it was clear he'd never get another shot at the presidency, and maybe once it was apparent that Arizona voters would keep him in the Senate as long as he wished to serve, the man changed. He became the iconoclastic, beholden-to-no-one gadfly that the documentary makes him out to be. I wish they'd obtained footage of an appearance he made on The Tonight Show shortly before his death in 1998. Jay Leno was the host then and Goldwater had that wonderful attitude of "I don't care what people think...I'm going to say what I believe." It was a wonderful chat as he bashed Nixon and Jerry Falwell and anyone who opposed gay rights, then turned right around with equally strong words against several prominent Democrats and their efforts. I think that guy might have made a much better president than Johnson.
Alas, I can't think of a single politician today who ever became half as famous and who would absent himself from partisanship that way and just say and do what he thought was right. Which is why I'd like to believe the Barry Goldwater they sell us in Mr. Conservative was the real Barry Goldwater.
There's a family-submitted obit for Berny Wolf up at the L.A. Times. Animation historians might want to check it out for more details on his long and varied career.
Gary Hart says the October Surprise is a U.S. assault on Iran which will be sold as necessary to prevent the mass development of nuclear weapons...but it's actually Step One in a neo-con plan for "regime change" over there.
It seems to me that in the last few elections, there were advance rumors of an October Surprise. Then the October Surprise turned out to be that there was no October Surprise. Anyway, I'm linking to Hart's piece not because I think he's right but because I'm hoping he's wrong.
My longtime pal (of close to 40 years) Bruce Reznick found something wonderful on the web. He sent it to me so I can share it with all of you.
Emerson College is assembling a library of oral histories of comedy. Bill Dana (yes, Jose Jiminez) and Project Manager Jenni Matz have interviewed more than fifty important comedians and comedy writers on videotape and a sampling of this material is available online. You can read the transcripts of interviews with Dana, Louis Nye, Don Knotts, Larry Gelbart, Tom Poston, Bill Persky, Ed Begley Jr., Jay Sandrich, Phyllis Diller, Dick Gregory and Jan Murray. There are also video excerpts of some of the conversations. Here's the link you want. Enjoy...and don't thank me. Thank Bruce.
Take the time to read this article in The New York Times that says that...well, here. This excerpt will give you a pretty good idea of what it says...
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.
The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.
Yow. If this is an accurate characterization of that report, then the people we trust to know this kind of thing believe the Bush administration has made the problem worse, not better. And sadly, it's probably true since the report issued last week by the House Intelligence Committee said pretty much the same thing but with only a tad less pessimism. It's hard to fathom why there are still people in this country who back George W. Bush because they think he's made us safer. But there are such people. Five or six of them will now write to me and accuse me of "Bush-hating."
I have to go and work on a script. When I next find time to post, I'll try and make it something about comics or old movies or something more important than this War in Iraq stuff.
Andrew Sullivan on how the Bush administration defines torture.
Y'know, I keep reading how military men say that torture doesn't work; that it simultaneously leads to us (in this case) getting information that is questionable at best while also ratcheting up the chance that others will torture our soldiers...and still, the U.S. apparently engages in it and Bush manuevers to keep some form of it going. Has anyone credible yet come forward to argue that, oh no, we get great, accurate information from torture and it doesn't place our troops in any greater physical jeopardy? I don't mean that to be as lopsided a question as it probably seems but I couldn't think of how else to phrase it.
I sense there are some people out there who simply like the idea of us torturing "the enemy" or even anyone who kinda looks like or might be part of "the enemy." These are the same people who are happy when they hear a car bomb went off in downtown Baghdad killing 80 people because they figure the odds are that there were probably a few terrorists or future terrorists in that eighty. Leave those people aside. Is there a sane case to be made for practices that fit a reasonable definition of torture? Has any genuine military authority come forth to make that case? Or is the only controversy here what constitutes "torture?"
Their site may be a little busy this morning but Crooks and Liars has posted the first 20 minutes or so of Bill Clinton's interview on Fox News Sunday. I suspect that people who never liked Clinton will enjoy it because they'll see him as rattled and defensive while those who like him will say he did a great job of standing up to the Fox News machine. Some in both camps may enjoy seeing a United States president who can speak without a script and manage to get both a subject and a verb into most of his sentences.
I feel a little (only a little) sorry for the interviewer, Chris Wallace, in all this. I think Clinton is right that Wallace and his Fox News cohorts have done a lot to advance Republican Talking Points of at least dubious accuracy, and haven't put tough questions to the Bush administration in the areas under discussion. But I think he's wrong that he was baited-and-switched with the understanding that the interview would be mainly about his Global Initiative project. The discussion wound up being so much about Osama because Clinton took it that way. Actually, I suspect both men were delighted with how the whole interview turned out. Even though Wallace got spanked a little, he got a newsworthy, highly-promotable piece of tape out of it...and probably a lot of gold stars from his employer. And Clinton got his view out and got a lot of attention.
And you'll probably like it because no matter how you feel about Clinton, there's something in there for you. Give it a look if the link isn't too slow because everyone else is watching it.
Thanks to a more conscious public and some sane legislation here and there, some aspects of the environment are becoming a tad more free of pollution and degradation. This is not the case with the tap water in my neighborhood. For at least five years, it's been undrinkable and now it's slowly becoming unshowerable.
Every so often, I run into someone with a mad on for environmentalists...someone who thinks they spread bogus warnings about disasters that are never going to happen and try to inconvenience people or businesses with preventing them. That's certainly so in some cases but not always. The many folks who warned us we were polluting our water supply were 100% dead-on right and the folks who insulted and mocked them were utterly wrong. We're all paying the price for not heeding that warning. There's now a $22 billion industry in this country selling bottled water...and that number doesn't even factor in what's being spent on filtration systems and Brita pitchers. I'm amazed people aren't more upset about this. But then I'm also amazed they don't do much more about high gas prices than pay them and grumble about it.
I resisted bottled water as long as I could...but when the liquid coming out of my faucets began to taste like I imagine kerosene tastes, it was time to go to the bottles.
Like most of you, I've tried just about every major brand. Happily, the one that tasted best to me was one of the cheapest — Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water. The only negative about it, apart from the fact that I have to pay for bottled water at all, is that the largest size it comes in is the one gallon container. You can't buy or have them deliver a big five gallon jug like I need to put on my water cooler. For that, I have Sparketts delivered and it's okay...but most of the time, I swill Crystal Geyser out of half-liter bottles. Cheapest place I've found to buy them is Smart and Final when they run their occasional "buy two cases, get one free" sale. In addition to any health benefits I derive from the water, I get exercise lifting those 36 bottle cartons into and out of my car.
My Crystal Geyser water comes from a spring somewhere on or about Olancha Peak, which is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Other parts of the country get Crystal Geyser H2O that comes from other sources so I'm curious as to what it tastes like. Later this year, I'll be doing some travelling and I'm going to make a point of sampling, for example, the Crystal Geyser water from Benton, Tennessee where there's a protected source adjacent to the Cherokee National Forest, which is surrounded by the historic Blue Ridge Mountains. (In case you can't tell, I'm doing some cutting 'n' pasting from the Crystal Geyser website.)
I like the Crystal Geyser product but I'm sorry I have to pay and lug around plastic bottles to have drinkable water. When people tell me now that we're doing things that are making our air unbreathable, I think I'm going to take them more seriously. I'd hate to have to carry tanks around like I'm scuba diving everywhere I go. I have a feeling even that won't make some people think the environmentalists are ever right but we need to do something.
Hey, whadda ya say we watch a cartoon? The Private Snafu shorts were made between 1943 and 1945, mainly to be shown to our fighting men overseas. Some were a bit educational and some were intended to drill some message into the soldiers' heads...but all were intended to be primarily entertaining. To that end, the War Department allowed the filmmakers to be a little more adult in their humor. Bob Clampett, one of the directors who worked on them, said that they became a repository for many of the jokes they dared not put into the cartoons they were making to be shown in American movie theaters.
Frank Capra had the original idea for the series and Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel was their main writer. There is some dispute as to how much of Geisel's work made it to the screen and how much was supplemented by gag writers at the Leon Schlesinger cartoon studio, aka Warner Brothers. Schlesinger got the contract — which was originally expected to go to Disney — by underbidding Walt, then he turned the project over to his staff of directors: Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Frank Tashlin. Mel Blanc supplied the voice of the hapless Private Snafu, who sounded very much like Bugs Bunny.
This one is entitled Booby Traps and it was directed by Clampett and released in January of 1944. The narrator you'll hear is a man named Robert C. Bruce, who usually narrated travelogues for a living, and who was used by the Schlesinger/WB studio whenever they did a travelogue parody, which was often for a while there. The cartoon will teach you a lesson that we all learned well from later Warner Brothers cartoons; that you should never, ever play "Those Endearing Young Charms" because the last note of the first line is always hooked up to explosives. That joke certainly did not come from Dr. Seuss.
Several Internet message boards have erupted today with debates on whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead. I think he's alive but disguised as Tony Clifton.
The Writers Guild has posted a press release about the rally/picketing of last Wednesday. It'll tell you a few things I didn't cover in my reports, either here or here. There's also a link (WARNING: PDF File!!!) to the text of the speeches that were given that day. They were pretty good speeches, especially the one by Phil Robinson. Take a look if you're interested.
Donny Osmond has joined the New York cast of Beauty and the Beast, which is now entering its 700th year on Broadway. He's playing Gaston, and I imagine he's pretty good in the role...though not enough to make me go see him. But he'll sell some tickets to someone, which is what it's all about. I thought it was a pretty good show the three times I saw it...which were all, of course, sans Donny.
In the meantime, a rumor is circulating that The Producers will soon close...and the reported grosses would seem to bear that out. For the week ending September 17, the show played at 54.5% capacity, which was the lowest of all the Broadway houses. By contrast, Mamma Mia — which has been around almost as long — is filling 96.7% of its seats. I'm guessing The Producers is moving the bulk of its tickets via the TKTS half-price booth so its grosses are even worse than they might appear. This is a far cry from not-so-long-ago when Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick were in the show and people were paying hundreds of dollars over face value for tix.
But I find it hard to believe that The Producers will just give up without a fight. It's been quite some time since they had anyone in the cast with any sort of "name" beyond West 44th Street. I would think that before they closed the thing, they'd try bringing in a Jason Alexander or a John Goodman or any of a few dozen other stars who might make it into an event again. That's the idea behind Donny Osmond in Beauty and the Beast, after all. The only reason I can think of why the producers of The Producers might not try some stunt booking is because there's a huge deal in place to open the show soon at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. That production still doesn't have an announced cast or opening date. Perhaps they'll try to make it happen by using performers from New York...but that seems unlikely to me.
In the meantime, the Disney-backed stage musical of Mary Poppins, which is doing so well in London, will open in New York on October 14. I don't know anyone who saw it who didn't dislike it, in part because it strayed so much (and so fruitlessly) from the film. Over at the show's official website, you can watch a video preview that I guess is made up of scenes from the U.K. production. It seems calculated to look like they just brought the movie to life...so either the show has changed or they're engaging in some misleading advertising. Look on the left menu for the link to the video.
And while you're over there, you might want to visit the Beauty and the Beastwebsite and see a peppy 30 second video ad for that show. Without Donny.
Earlier this year, I got semi-hooked on the NBC game show, Deal or No Deal. My interest went up and down but I generally enjoyed the show and managed to TiVo and watch every episode. I was struck by how its simple premise created such interesting scenarios, by the expert hosting of Howie Mandel and by the skill with which the producers made the thing work.
And — oh, yeah — there were also those 26 beautiful models. They mattered.
Yesterday was the close of Deal or No Deal's season premiere week. It aired multiple times with the top prize cranked up incrementally to six million clams. They gave away a lot of money on these shows and there were some genuine moments of tension...and once again, I found my interest coming and going...but mostly going. I think some of it's the repetition and some of it's the time-wasting moments. Early in each game, you have the contestant struggling with an offer in the low-to-mid five figures...and we all know they aren't going to take it. You can pretty safely fast-forward from the first Banker Offer to around the fourth or fifth without missing anything except some agony that is either bogus or needless.
I also find my interest impaired by my having attended a taping of the show, as reported here. Reading back over that post, I think I was too nice about how long they kept us there, how uncomfortable it all was, etc. The experience probably made me even more conscious of how "pasted together" (edited) the show is and I find myself looking at allegedly spontaneous moments, noticing edits and wondering, "Gee, wonder what actually happened there."
I still have the TiVo set to record each edition and for the time being, I'll still be watching. But unless something new starts happening, I think the ol' "skip ahead" button will be getting a good workout.
Lastly, a question: My understanding is that the offers from "The Banker" are calculated via a formula. The silhouetted gent you see on screen actually does nothing. Instead, as each case is opened and its amount is revealed, that number is entered into a computer program. When it comes time for a Banker Offer, one of the producers consults a screen which gives him a limited range and he can decide on any amount within those parameters. What he decides is relayed to Mr. Mandel on the phone and that's how the offers arise. My question is whether anyone has figured out the formula. There are a number of computer games that let you play Deal or No Deal on your computer or Gameboy or PlayStation3 or Waring Blender or whatever you have. Has anyone formulated a program that lets you calculate banker offers the same way the producers have them calculated? Just wondering.
Speaking of money, it's been a while since I posted one of these...
Today, we have three Captain Crunch commercials, one of which you saw here the other day. All feature the voice work of Daws Butler, June Foray and Bill Scott, and the first one has Shepard Menken doing the voice of Robinson Crusoe. If he sounds familiar to you, it may be because he used essentially the same voice (a near-impression of actor Richard "Edwin Carp" Haydn) for the character of Clyde Crashcup, the genius inventor on The Alvin Show.
Shep was one of those prolific on-camera actors who pretty much gave it up when he began making a fortune in voiceover. He had done movies and TV shows, including several appearances on I Love Lucy, but he began to devote himself to announcing and animation. At one point, he had dozens of national commercials running, including most of the Jack-in-the-Box spots, but was best known for a long series of ads that ran only on this coast. They were for Western Airlines and in them, a rich bird was seated on the tail of a plane where he was served caviar and champagne. To close each spot, he would intone — in the dulcet tones of Shep Menken — "Western Airlines...the oooonly way to fly!" Shep was also in the cast of the historic comedy album, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Part One, which he called, "the high point of my career." That's an actual quote, uttered to me when I hired him to do a Crashcup-style voice on a show in 1989.
Anyway, he's in the first commercial, no one special is in the second...and I linked to the third one the other day but it's good so you might want to sit through it again. Here's the Captain...
Bill Clinton is being interviewed this weekend on Fox News Sunday. The show has already been taped and during it, Clinton verbally lashed out at some of his foes and at the interviewer, Chris Wallace. Some are characterizing it as Clinton "losing it" or "freaking out." Others say he spanked Fox News and right-wingers but good. One weblog has posted a rough, obviously error-strewn transcript of the most explosive section.
The 2006 Comic-Con International in San Diego ended on July 23rd. Since then, Peter Sanderson has been reporting on it for Quick Stop Entertainment. He has finally reached the end of his diary with this installment which includes a nice report on one of my two voiceover panels. Earlier columns, all of which are well worth your attention, may be accessed from this page.
Next year, Peter plans to see if he can complete his report on the 2007 convention before the 2008 convention. I wouldn't bet the rent money on it.
The other day, George W. Bush said, ""If they [meaning Democrats] get control of the House of Representatives, they'll raise your taxes and it'll hurt our economy." I assume you'll believe he said that but just in case you don't, here's a link to a news story.
Now, I think it's questionable that raising taxes hurts the economy. I think it depends on how you raise them and how much you're spending at the time and where you're spending it. But let's leave that aside for now.
Here's what I want to know: How could the Democrats raise taxes if they get control of the House of Representatives? Just how could they do that?
Wouldn't they have to get control of the House and the Senate? Doesn't a bill still have to be passed by both chambers?
And then, doesn't that bill then have to be signed by the President...who, for the forseeable future, will be George W. Bush? Wouldn't he veto a tax increase bill?
In order to raise taxes, wouldn't the Democrats have to not only win both the House and the Senate and win them both by such overwhelming majorities that they could override a Bush veto? And is there a single human being on this planet who thinks there's a chance of that happening?
More and more, I do not understand what Bush says. And I wonder if anyone does or if it even matters any longer.
This morning, Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow was asked if it isn't true that it's the Supreme Court that's supposed to decide if something is constitutional. His reply was as follows...
No, as a matter of fact, the president has an obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is an obligation that presidents have enacted through signing statements going back to Jefferson. So, while the Supreme Court can be an arbiter of the Constitution, the fact is the President is the one, the only person who, by the Constitution, is given the responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend that document, so it is perfectly consistent with presidential authority under the Constitution itself.
Ergo, when the Supreme Court — in its role as "an arbiter" of the constitution — ruled unanimously against Richard Nixon on the Watergate matter, Nixon should have said, "Well, thank you for your opinion but you're wrong" and ignored them. And when they ruled against Bill Clinton on the Paula Jones matter, he should have issued a signing statement or otherwise overruled them. If and when they rule against George W. Bush, it will mean he's right and they're wrong.
Yeah, I think that's how our nation is supposed to work.
In case you don't want to take the nine and a half minutes to watch the following video, I'll summarize for you: A group of scientists at Princeton demonstrate that it's pretty darn easy to infect a Diebold voting machine with a virus that will take votes from one candidate and give them to another candidate. Here's the video if you want to watch...
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is back with another article in Rolling Stone to suggest that past elections have been decided not by the voters but by the programmers of the voting machine...and he cautions that future elections will be even more crooked. Here's a link to his first work on the topic — an article that brought a lot of rebuttals and claims of inaccuracy. I read as many of these pieces as I could endure and came to the following conclusion. Kennedy failed to convince me that he had nailed down solid proof of rigged elections...but he sure cast a lot of reasonable doubt where there shouldn't be any at all. His new article goes even further in that direction.
Taken only moments ago: This photo of a small possum on my back steps eating Friskies Ocean Fish Flavors cat food.
According to Wikipedia, where anyone can claim anything is true, the Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana) is the only marsupial found in North America. A solitary and nocturnal animal about the size of a domestic cat, it is a successful opportunist and is found throughout North America from coast to coast (introduced to California in 1910), and from Central America and Mexico to Southern Canada and seems to be still expanding its range northward. It is often seen near towns, rummaging through garbage cans, or dead by the side of the road.
I have just fulfilled this weblog's educational content requirement for fiscal year 2006-2007. Thank you.
This will mainly interest folks in the Southern California area. KDOC Channel 56, which broadcasts out of Orange County, has just added Johnny Carson to its schedule. Monday through Thursday evenings at 11:00 and 11:30, they're running episodes of Carson's Comedy Classics. The station's website and official schedule refers to the program as Johnny Carson or The Best of Johnny Carson but what they're running is Carson's Comedy Classics, a package of half-hour excerpts from The Tonight Show that was originally syndicated in 1983. Someone went through the tapes in the Carson vault and pulled out comedy sketches and desk spots, mostly from the late seventies, assembling them into half-hours. I suspect that the fragmented nature of the presentation was the main reason these clip shows didn't do all that well.
Several people, including Carson's old producer Fred DeCordova, told me that Johnny was determined to find some way to market his old tapes. He owned hundreds and hundreds of hours and didn't want to see it all disappear down the old memory hole. Somehow, the idea of just syndicating whole Tonight Show episodes was rejected. Most of the attempts have involved repackaging the programs by yanking out the comedy sketches and/or star performances by now-famous comedians and music acts. I still wish someone would try airing the shows in their original form, maybe with a little intro by someone explaining some of the topical references. I'm not sure a lot of the material even works out of the context of a free-wheeling, quasi-live show.
KDOC actually has a great schedule if you like infomercials and reruns. The list of the latter they broadcast includes The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, The Untouchables, Becker, Mad About You, The Nanny, Cheers, Charlie's Angels, Magnum P.I., Hawaii Five-O, Quincy, Matlock, Little House on the Prairie, The Rockford Files, Hogan's Heroes, Combat, McHale's Navy, Rat Patrol, Mission: Impossible, In the Heat of the Night and Kojak. There must be one or two shows in there that you like.
Hey, remember how a few days ago here, I was talking about the play, Merrily We Roll Along, in which the action takes place in reverse? Well, Michael Kinsley makes reference to it in his latest column. It's about how George W. Bush is fighting the Iraq War in reverse.
Lisa Girion with a long article about recent cases in the area of health insurance. I'll give you the one sentence summary in case you're busy: A number of big health insurers are trying to weasel out of paying hefty medical bills for folks they insure. Anyone surprised by this? Anyone?
As I mentioned here earlier, a mass of Writers Guild members rallied yesterday to support striking writers on America's Next Top Model. Not that this could be the main reason but I wonder if any of the producers of alleged "reality shows" are balking at the WGA contract because they think it will harm their shows to even have writer credits, thereby admitting or suggesting that the "reality" is created. Money, of course, is the real reason...just as it's the real reason why most things are done the way they're done in the industry. It will cost more money to credit the folks who create the scenarios as writers and to compensate them accordingly...but somewhere, someone has to be thinking like some comedians did back in the early days of radio. When Jack Benny became the first comedy star of radio to credit his writers, several of his fellow stars went to him and said, "You can't do that. The public wants to believe we make all this stuff up, ourselves."
How many writers marched this morning? The L.A. Times says "more than 700," Hollywood Reporter says 800 and Daily Variety says 900. From where I was — in the midst of it — it looked like well over a thousand...but why quibble? It was a good turnout and the mood was very upbeat and positive and rife with solidarity.
The crowd also seemed to be full of what some call, with varying degrees of sarcasm, "working writers." One significant factor in WGA politics and policies is that we have here a union that includes a number of folks who write movies and run shows and make millions of dollars a year. We also have a certain, not-inconsequential number who aspire to that level but who make, quite literally, nothing a year as writers. They sold something in order to attain Guild status and if they continue to not get work, they will eventually be moved to inactive or non-voting status. But still, at any given time, you have a lot of Haves and Have Nots in the same bargaining unit and it's sometimes tough to get both groups to agree on priorities and what is lost or gained by striking. It's easier to walk out on your job when you don't have one...but then again, when we strike, many of the "working writers" have millions in their bank accounts, as well as residual checks rolling in.
In times of striking (or threatening to strike), writers of both stripes are usually good about linking arms and pledging loyalty to their common cause, even if they disagree about some issues. And those who oppose the strike, whether from inside or outside the Guild, are usually bad about recognizing that. In every WGA strike of my lifetime, they have spread the always-untrue calumny that "working writers" — the ones really writing the shows and movies — are not behind the Guild's efforts; that the strike is the construct of guys who weren't working anyway so who cares about them? "Radio Shack Writers," some called them in '88, meaning that they claimed to be professional writers but actually worked at Radio Shack. The folks I marched with yesterday morning spanned the full range of the writing community. I'm sure there were some who don't, at the moment, support themselves with their writing...but there were also those who make fortunes, large and small, with their labors. And to the writers, at least on issues of Guild Support, the difference doesn't matter that much. One bonding thing about them is that most are well aware that any day now, they could be in that other caste.
It's late so I'll write more about this in the coming days. I'm generally pessimistic about what will happen in the looming negotiations of '07, when the issue of compensation for home video and new methods of delivery stands to cause serious bloodshed. But I felt a little better about it after that rally yesterday morning. My Guild has the capacity to be its own worst enemy and to divide and conquer itself. Since we're currently only warring on one front that doesn't affect many directly, unity of purpose is easy...but we seem to be more "together" and better organized than we usually are. That doesn't hurt.
I got two messages today from folks asking me if Garfield and Friends (a show I done wrote years ago) is coming back to TV. It's back...on the Boomerang network. Every weeknight at 8 PM on the East Coast, 5 PM on the West. Yes, they're still only running 74 of the 121 episodes but they're back on the air. All 121 are available on five DVD sets and some selected episodes will soon be available on single DVDs. Fox Home Video is currently assembling two discs that will be issued separately, though they haven't told me when. One will be called All About Odie and will include episodes that spotlight the empty-headed pooch. The other will be made up of the episodes in which Garfield lectures about how cartoons are made. This one is going to be called something like Behind The Scenes With Garfield but it should be titled Garfield: The Episodes They Didn't Like Over At The Network.
It's two nights ago at the Dodgers-Padres game, bottom of the ninth. Padres are ahead, 9-5. So you figure the Dodgers are through, right? I mean, they're not going to make up four runs in one inning...are they? Here's a short video of the legendary Vin Scully calling the plays as the L.A. team gets four consecutive home runs to tie it up and another in the tenth inning to win.
Do you recall this news story I linked to? Don't bother clicking. I'll refresh your memory: A lot of our troops in Iraq, and other military folks serving our country, are being gouged by predatory loan sharks who take advantage of how poorly we pay soldiers.
Here's the latest development. A bill has been introduced which would cap high interest rates for folks in the military at "only" 36%. That's an obscene amount to charge someone but it's still not high enough for Rep. Geoff Davis from Kentucky. He's leading the charge to block this bill. And it's just a coincidence that one of his top campaign contributors is a loan company. Read all about it.
And this time, we're bringing you an old commercial with Top Cat and his pal Fancy Fancy selling Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Arnold Stang provides the voice of Top Cat...or T.C., as us close friends get to call him, providing it's with dignity. John Stephenson is Fancy Fancy, and the actress who did the girl cat's voice is a lady who went by several names. She appeared in a bevy of early sixties sitcoms where she was variously billed as Sallie Jones, Sally Jones and Sallie Janes. Remember the episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob got temporary amnesia and wound up at a party where he met a cute blonde and told her he was Antonio Stradivarius? Sally/Sallie played the cute blonde. Kudos to Earl Kress for making that identification. Now, does anyone know whatever happened to Ms. Jones or Janes or whatever her name is?
Just back from doing something I haven't done since 1988: Picketing. My first thirteen years as a member of the Writers Guild of America, West found me pounding pavement three separate times...or was it four? Whatever it was, we were striking more than some of us were working. In the '88 strike, I even got involved with helping to organize the picketing and the demonstrations.
When I have more time, I'll write more about why we had to strike then, why we haven't had to strike since, and why I fear next year will be the greatest year of Labor Unrest that Hollywood has ever seen. At the moment though, the immediate battle is over the "reality" show, America's Next Top Model. As explained here, its writers are seeking to be recognized as writers and to have the WGA recognized as their collective bargaining representative.
This morning, maybe a thousand WGA members — most of them clad in red WGA t-shirts — assembled at Pan Pacific Park, which is more or less adjacent to what they used to call, at the start of many a CBS show, "Television City in Hollywood." (It's not really in Hollywood and neither is anything done at NBC Studios in Burbank. But when you're on television, you're allowed to lie...at least about things like that.) We heard about an hour of speeches by our leaders, by prominent writers in the industry and by the striking "reality show" writers. Then we marched around the CBS building, effectively picketing the people waiting to go into a taping of The Price is Right.
I have to go off and do things this afternoon so I'm going to have to serialize this post and continue it later. But I have to say before departing that I was enormously impressed with, first of all, my Guild's organization of the event. Everything we did wrong or were unable to do in '88 from the standpoint of logistics and physical set-up, they did right this morning. Secondly, the mood was strong, the unity was almost tangible and the members who turned out — many of whom seemed too young to have been involved in earlier strikes — seemed to not only "get" what it was all about but to ready to march for any just cause. I sure felt better about the future for having been there today. I'll write more about why that is later today.
Eric Boehlert writes about the press and the way it's dealing with the unpopularity of George W. Bush. Basically, his thesis — for which he makes a pretty good case — is that there are reporters out there who are determined to write stories that say Bush's approval rating is bouncing back and on the upswing. So they keep writing that story even though it's unsupported by the numbers they're quoting.
We mentioned here what a good job ventriloquist Ronn Lucas did on the Jerry Lewis Telethon and we said, and I quote myself: "David Letterman is about to do a week of ventriloquists on his show, probably not because he likes that kind of act but because he thinks they'll be easy to make fun of. I hope they'll book Ronn and I hope Dave lets him just do what does so well." Ronn's on tonight's show, probably with his reptilian friend, Scorch.
I will be a guest at this year's Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, Ohio. This is an always-wonderful convention that takes place on the weekend following Thanksgiving...in this case, November 25 and 26. Also on the roster of folks appearing there are Al Feldstein, Dick Ayers, Herb Trimpe, Don Rosa, Tony Isabella and many others, including Joyce DeWitt and Richard Kline from Three's Company. I'll let you know more about it as the date draws nearer.
Here's one of my favorite commercials. It's for Kellogg's Raisin Bran and the voice of The Sun is done by the late, great Daws Butler. I was never much for raisin bran but this spot almost made me run out and buy a box...just because of Daws. I believe the little "SV" on the screen stands for Shokus Video, run by my pal Stuart Shostak. If you ever need film or slides transferred to tape or DVD, he's the guy — honest, fast, conscientious, reasonably-priced...and he even appreciates a good delicatessen. Browse around his website and find stuff to buy.
I said somewhere on this site that I didn't like "hidden camera" TV shows. Let me amend that. I've never liked alleged comedy shows that play tricks on people. (Or which purport to play tricks on people. Some of them these days are obvious frauds where the supposed victim is clearly in on the gag and playing along. I'm not sure which is worse.)
I do like one kind of "hidden camera" show and I wish we had more of them. Those are the investigative reports that some TV news crews do, mostly in the area of consumer fraud. I know it's a stunt and I know most of 'em are hyped as far more dramatic than they are. Still, if some business is ripping off customers, I love the idea of them getting nailed like that...and of all businesses worrying a bit if the next person they cheat is an undercover TV reporter.
KNBC Channel 4 in Los Angeles has a reporter named Joel Grover who's doing some fine work in this area. As you can see in this report (and the follow-ups on the same page), they sent hidden cameras into nine Jiffy Lube stores in Southern California. In five out of the nine cases, they were charged for repairs that were simply and deliberately not performed. In another report (this one), they found out that many taxis in the Los Angeles area had their meters adjusted to charge more than the legal rate of $2.20 per mile. Grover and his crew caught the guy who configured a meter that way admitting that he did it and that it was illegal.
I wish TV did more of that. I also wish they aimed higher up. One thing that bothers me about some of these "investigations" is that, like many of the films for which Michael Moore became famous, there's a tendency to target the folks at the bottom of the corruption — the clerks, the security guards and so on. What impressed me about Grover's Jiffy Lube exposé was that he made it clear that it wasn't a couple of rogue servicepeople swindling the customers...it was almost Company Policy. Guess where I'm never taking my car for servicing.
Time for another report on my theater-going. Last evening, I went to see the Musical Theater Guild's production of Merrily We Roll Along. The M.T.G., as explained here many times, is a local group of very gifted actors and several times a year, they put on a great old musical in a "concert style" performance, meaning no sets, not a lot of costuming and sometimes, the actors even have to carry their scripts around. Despite the low budget nature of it all, they work wonders.
Merrily We Roll Along features a book by George Furth, freely adapting the play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The Kaufman-Hart non-musical version opened in September of 1934 and closed in February of 1935, lasting a disappointing 155 performances. The musical version opened in November of 1981 and closed...in November of 1981. Ordinarily, when a Broadway show shutters after sixteen performances, it goes in the books as a flop and is never heard of again.
But the musical had a score by Stephen Sondheim, to whom the normal rules do not apply. Once the regional rights were available, countless producers and directors lunged to take a shot at it, many regarding it as a challenge to make the show "work." There was so much right with it — particularly the glorious Sondheim score — that trying to fix the flaws was irresistible to some. Let me tell you what the show's about and maybe you'll see what the problem is.
Merrily We Roll Along is about a composer, Franklin Shepard, and two of his friends. Charley Kringas is his partner and lyricist during his early years when the two of them are out trying and eventually succeeding to write hit shows for Broadway. Mary Flynn is a writer herself and a platonic friend of both...though she is very much in love with Franklin, a fact that Franklin manages to never notice as he goes about marrying others. The three of them begin with near-poverty and idealism and eventually cope with their successes by fighting with one another. There's a major rupture when Franklin becomes a successful movie producer and abandons his Broadway career and Charley. He achieves great success but along the way, he leaves behind some of his friends, his first wife and son...and just about all his idealism.
This is pretty much a downer story. It's filled with unpleasant people and bad things happen to the pleasant ones. So there's part of the trouble. The other part is that the story is told backwards. That's right: Backwards. The first scene is the last in the above narrative with Franklin all grown up and assessing what he has become and what it cost him. Then Scene 2 takes place a few years before Scene 1, and Scene 3 takes place a year or so before Scene 2 and so on. The last scene is the one in which Franklin, Charley and Mary are young and poor and starting out on their careers with great high-mindedness and hope and energy. So you walk out of the theater thinking, "Poor kids...they had such wonderful dreams and it all turned out so sad for them."
Is it any wonder the show didn't catch on?
Maybe a little. Most of the songs are quite wonderful and I enjoyed pieces of Mr. Furth's script very much — or I should say, pieces of one of Mr. Furth's scripts. There have been a couple of different revisions but, as a friend said to me in the lobby, "No matter what they do to it, it's still about these talented people who screw up their lives...and the story's still backwards."
The Musical Theater Guild did a first-rate job with this one, as they always do. The leads were so good that I just went out to the garage at 3 AM to get the program book so I could get their names right. Robert J. Townsend was in terrific voice as Franklin, Lisa Picotte caught the tragedy of Mary, and Richard Israel was outstanding as Charley. Yes, this is the same Richard Israel who was so good in another musical I saw two weeks ago and which closed last Sunday. The guy gets around. There are two more performances of Merrily — one on September 24 in Thousand Oaks and another the following day in Long Beach. If you're anywhere near those cities on those dates, you might have a very good time. I did. Even though it's baclwards.
Take two minutes and sixteen seconds and watch this trailer for the movie, Blazing Saddles. See if you notice something I noticed...and try not to peek at the paragraph below the video box where I'll explain what I realized...
Okay, done? Good. Now then, did you notice what I noticed?
Right: The trailer isn't funny. I thought the movie was pretty funny but the trailer is amazingly unfunny. I've seen trailers that by excerpting everything that was remotely amusing in a 90 minute movie made you think the whole film was like that. Remember that movie, Partners, with Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt? Screamingly funny trailer, not-so-funny movie. How about Pure Luck with Martin Short and Danny Glover? People howled at the preview of that one, little suspecting that those two minutes were all there was to laugh at in the full movie.
But you rarely see it work the other way around. It's almost like the person assigned to edit and assemble this Blazing Saddles trailer was determined to cut out punch lines and make sure that jokes didn't have payoffs. There were plenty of mirth-filled clips they could have taken out of the film, starting with most of the stuff with the Mongo character played by Alex Karras...but Mr. Mongo is nowhere to be seen in these Coming Attractions, not even when he punches the horse. Nor do you see the campfire scene or the scene where Cleavon Little takes himself hostage or any other material that made the film memorable to those who loved it.
The essence of the movie is that you have this black sheriff who's in charge of a town where the people are afraid of a black man. That's a funny premise but they didn't even establish that in the trailer. In fact, none of the townspeople, all of whom were quite funny, are really in the trailer.
In the scene in Harvey Korman's office with Slim Pickens, there's a funny gag where Korman is fondling a statue. They cut most of it out — enough so you have no idea what he's doing — but they left in a shot of Slim reacting in disgust to it.
Then they tried to create a joke by cutting from Korman saying "See 'snatch'" to a shot of Madeline Kahn. I can almost hear the editor saying, "Naw, I don't want to put in one of those crude funny moments...I'll invent a crude one that isn't funny."
After that, there's the bit where Ms. Kahn looks at a cowboy with his hat on his lap and says — in the movie — "Is that a ten-gallon hat or are you just enjoying the show?" If you cut out the second part of the line, as they did in the trailer, you nullify most of the joke. Nice going, Tex.
Then we see Mel Brooks in his governor character (although there's no inkling of who he is) in the scene where he's sitting next to the lady with the enormous melons. In the film, he turns to her chest and says, "Hello, boys!" It's a big laugh so naturally, they had to cut the shot before his line. They'd already gotten what they wanted. They showed us that the movie contains about twenty seconds of huge breasts.
The editor cuts from the breasts to a shot of the fake town...which makes no sense at all if you haven't seen the movie. And from there it's onward to further incoherence but — God forbid — no humor.
Would you have any idea what this movie was about from the trailer? Would you think it was funny? Very odd. Oh, well. Nice narration job there by Marvin Miller, by the way. When is someone going to put his old TV show, The Millionaire, out on DVD or up on cable?
Over on the New York Times website, George Gene Gustines has assembled what they call a "slide show" to discuss Jack Kirby's artwork on a particularly fine issue of Fantastic Four.
I have two quibbles, one being that they've opted to reproduce from one of the deluxe reprints of the story, not from the original. Remember what I said a few messages back about how short-sighted movie studio execs often allowed the treasures in their library to rot rather than spend money on preservation? Well, Marvel Comics did that. In fact, they were doing it long after they were making beaucoup bucks on reprints. There were years there where some in the office — those who cared, which was not everyone — were tearing out follicles by the fistful over this. They simply did not have good stats or negatives or reproduction copies of 10-year-old issues of their books they wished to reprint at that moment so they had to print them off bad stats with faded linework. Incredibly, at the same time, no one wanted to spend the money to make extra negatives or stats to ensure that the current issues could later be properly reprinted in ten years or whenever.
With very few exceptions — most of them due to a handful of caring staffers who went way beyond the norm to do so — Marvel's reprints have lost serious linework and detail from the artistry of some very talented illustrators. This is another one of those matters about which there should be more outrage. (There are also some examples for which DC Comics should be whomped upside the head but not as many.)
So that's one of my quibbles. The other is that nowhere is the name Joe Sinnott mentioned. Joe inked the material that's being presented and with his fine linework made a major contribution to The Art of Jack Kirby.
Other than for those points, it's a great little tribute. Always so good to see classy venues catch up with Kirby.
Earlier today in a piece about cartoons, I made reference to "runaway productions done in Mexico for twenty pesos." This brought a call from an old friend of mine, cartoonist Roman Arambula, who was a little upset about it. He took it as a slam at Gamma Productions, which was the most prominent studio in Mexico that did work for U.S. television...and I guess he took it personally since he worked there for several years before relocating to Los Angeles. Gamma most famously did work for two studios in the U.S. — the West Coast operation of Jay Ward (Rocky and Bullwinkle, Hoppity Hooper, etc.) and the East Coast firm, Total Television (King Leonardo, Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog, et al).
Roman feels that historians have misrepresented Gamma as a studio filled with untrained talent pulled in off the street. That may have been true to some extent when it started but by around '60, which I think is also around when Roman went to work there, it was becoming pretty professional. Everyone can decide for themselves how good the animation was but I meant no offense to Roman or anyone who worked at Gamma. My point was that the rules changed when cartoon production segued from theatrical animation done on one kind of budget to TV animation done on another.
And there's probably an interesting history of Gamma to be written if someone will only interview Roman and the others who are still around who worked there. Is any good animation historian up for the challenge?
While I'm at it: I recently read How Underdog Was Born, a "how we did it" book by the creators of that show, Buck Biggers and Chet Stover. It's an interesting overview of Total Television and a unique look at what one had to do to sell a cartoon show in the sixties. According to Biggers and Stovers, their entry into the cartoon business came about as follows: General Mills was funding the Jay Ward Rocky and His Friends show on ABC and had Gamma Productions in Mexico doing the animation. Jay was always fighting with General Mills and/or the network about jokes that the latter entities thought would sail over the heads of the target audience, i.e., kids.
This had led to delays in scripts and storyboards being sent to Gamma, meaning that sometimes the artists there were sitting around...on the payroll but with nothing to do. That's just about the worst thing that can happen at a cartoon studio. When I worked at Hanna-Barbera, Bill Hanna would do anything, up to and including waterboarding the layout artists, not to have that happen. In the case of General Mills, they told Biggers and Stovers they wanted to have another operation producing cartoons so that Gamma would have always something to work on. (The book doesn't say this outright but the implication is that they also wanted to have another cartoon producer on their team in case Ward had to be dumped or if he demanded more money or anything of the sort.)
Biggers and Stovers went to work and came up with a show called King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, which was the first thing either man had done in animation and the first Total Television series. It's interesting how they went about it, studying the (then-short) list of cartoon shows that were on television because, for example, they felt their lead character had to be an animal that had not appeared on any other cartoon show. They "cast" the show by deciding on famous voices that would be replicated. Leonardo, for example, would be an imitation of actor Eugene Pallette and his loyal aide, Odie Cologne, would sound like Ronald Coleman. Later, when it came time to hire actors, they looked for actors who could do the designated impressions.
At the last minute, just before the final presentation to General Mills, they discovered the company was expecting to see artwork. They didn't have artwork, nor did they have an experienced cartoonist available to do artwork...so Stovers, who drew but had never done that kind of thing before, designed the characters. Somehow, it all worked out and King Leonardo became a pretty big hit...with more shows to follow.
Another point of interest: At one point, Jay Ward and Total were both developing new shows at the same time. The one Total came up with was Underdog...and you may remember that in that show's opening, there's a line where onlookers go...
"It's a bird!"
"No, it's a plane!"
"No, it's a frog!"
And then Underdog soars past and in the lilting voice of Wally Cox, he says, "Not plane nor bird nor even frog...it's just little ol' me — Underdog!"
Well, if we believe this book, that was an inside joke because Biggers and Stovers had been told that they could develop any kind of show they wanted...except a show about a frog. This was because Ward was developing a show about a frog. His would also sell and it would be called Hoppity Hooper.
The book's narrative takes some odd detours but if you're at all familiar with their shows, it's quite interesting. You can order a copy here. If you'll notice, Amazon has one of their great "package deals" where they take two related items — in this case, the book and an Underdog DVD — and sell them for exactly the same price you'd pay if you bought them separately. Wonder how many people don't stop and do the math so they think they're getting a bargain.
In response to some recent political-type postings here, Christopher Cook sent me a message that included the following sentence: "Now if we can only get Bush fanny smoochers like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to take off their rose-colored glasses as well."
That would be nice but I think it's a waste of perfectly good hope. If an act makes you rich and famous — and all prominent pundits are to some extent doing an act — you don't change it. I hear people ask, "Why does Ann Coulter say such things?" Answer: Because saying such things has made her a ton of money. She says what she says and she sells books, she gets on TV shows to plug those books, she gets talked about (which sells more books) and her speaking fees go way up. Moreover, when she gives those speeches, a certain kind of person packs the place and cheers her on and tells her she's the salvation of capital-D Democracy.
So why should she change? What exactly is her incentive to not demonize Liberals?
She may even believe some or most of what she says. Years ago, I produced a TV special with a bunch of professional wrestlers — Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan, Cap'n Lou Albano — and I learned a number of interesting things about their line of work. One was that while the blood feuds and personal hatreds may have been scripted, there was a tendency for them to become real. Roddy Piper (a very smart man, by the way) told me how the "scenario" would designate that his ring character had a particular hate on for a certain wrestler. It was phony at the start but after weeks of living the scenario and playing it and having arenas full of fans cheer him for beating the crap out of that certain wrestler, it was hard not to really hate the guy. Or maybe he said it was just easier to find reasons to really hate him.
I don't think the problem in our national discourse is really Rush or Sean or Ann or even anyone of the opposite stripe who gets as shrill and devoid of facts as they do. I think the problem is the tabloid nature of cable news and talk radio, glorifying anger and extremism, faulting no one for occasionally distorting the truth. There's fame and money in it and maybe even a certain feeling of power. You may feel that in the same situation, you'd retain your sense of balance and fairness and be able to admit when your side is wrong, as all sides occasionally are. But I think it helps to acknowledge that not everyone can or would. Hannity and Limbaugh will stop smooching Bush fanny if and when they decide it no longer bolsters their careers...and not a minute before.
Former G.O.P.-Congressman-turned-annoying-MSNBC-host Joe Scarborough suggests that Republican candidates who are running this year run as fast and as far as they can from George W. Bush.
Also in The Washington Post is this news story by Rajiv Chandrasekaran which says (basically) that one of the reasons the Iraq War has gone so poorly for us is that the Bush administration picked its officials based on blind loyalty to Bush rather than on, say, competence. Stories like this are why Scarborough may be right.
Perhaps because I'm hungover — yeah, that's a good excuse — I neglected to mention that Jerry Beck is the co-brewmaster of the must-visit animation website, Cartoon Brew. I often think of something I should post here about cartoons. Then I see that Jerry and his partner, Amid Amidi, have beaten me to it...so I don't.
Amid has two new publications out that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone interested in cartooning. Cartoon Modern is a new book that spotlights, with wonderful examples, the UPA/modern/retro (call it what you will) style that many dabbled in during the fifties. Animation was moving away from the ornate Disney look and hadn't yet encountered the spartan, very-little-moves era of Hanna-Barbera or of runaway productions done in Mexico for twenty pesos. During that time, some amazing work was done with, as I think I mentioned in the obit on Ed Benedict here, artists getting more expression out of simpler drawings. Great to look at, great to learn from. You can order a copy of Cartoon Modern from the Amazon empire by clicking here.
Amid also sent me the new issue of Animation Blast, which is his magazine of 'toon history and wonderment. There are many fine articles in this one and you can preview them on this page or just trust me and order a copy by clicking here. While you're at it, check out the remaining back issues. Not all are available and the ones that are won't be for long.
I mean all this even though I am still a bit loopy. In fact, as I sit here at my computer, I'm still afraid that the police will pull me over and arrest me on a B.W.L. — blogging while loopy — and toss me in a cell with Mel Gibson and Paris Hilton.
Lemme tell you about Jerry Beck and why we need one. We need one because people who run film studios usually can't see very far...usually not past this year's budget and what they have to do to costs down. They can't see into the past either, often being shamefully unaware of their studio's heritage. They are incapable of imagining that people would pay good money to see some of that stuff...that is, assuming the negative hasn't rotted or been lost because some previous studio head didn't want to spend sufficient money on preservation. In the area of animation, it is often necessary to call in someone like Jerry Beck and ask them, "What do we own?" and even, in this era of home video, "What can we do with it?" Sometimes, Jerry also has to help them track down viewable copies. We all get to see a lot of classic animation these days, in theaters and on DVD, because of Jerry.
Yesterday afternoon, he pulled together a minor miracle...a major one if you love 3-D animation. He arranged at this year's 3-D Film Fest in Hollywood, a screening of all (I think all) of the 3-D animated theatrical shorts. For technical and contractual reasons, this has never before been possible and it may never be possible again. A sell-out crowd of cartoon buffs packed the Egyptian Theater, put on the funny glasses and watched the two 3-D cartoons Disney made, the two from Paramount, the one from Warner Brothers, the one Woody Woodpecker, etc. It was about ninety minutes total and included some surprises such as a bizarre, inexplicable thing called The Adventures of Sam Space that starred stop-motion puppets that all had voices by Paul Frees.
It was all fascinating and expertly presented, with Dan Symmes and Jerry hosting and the two projectors necessary running flawlessly in sync. (Did you know it takes two projectors to run one 3-D movie? I didn't.) Oh, the Casper cartoon — Boo Moon — was kind of lame...but hey, it was in 3-D. They say the best cartoons appeal to audiences on different levels. Well, 3-D cartoons all have different levels. If you don't like what's happening in the foreground, you can always look at the background or just sit there and wait for something to fly off the screen and into your face.
So was there anything that didn't work for me? Yes! The 3-D didn't work for me. It made me loopy and more than a little sleepy and I probably didn't see the depth effects as well as I should have. I've been blessed with excellent vision but I found out yesterday it's somehow incompatible with 3-D motion pictures...or at least it is now. These were the first ones I'd seen in over 25 years if you don't count the MuppetVision presentation at Disney World in Florida. That worked for me and the 3-D epics I viewed a quarter-century ago worked for me...but the parade of shorts at the Egyptian literally put me to sleep twice and made me identify with the title of the Woody Woodpecker short they ran, which was called Hypnotic Hick. That was me. At intermission, I was staggering about like Otis the Town Drunk and when I got home, following a lovely post-screening dinner across the street at the Musso & Frank Grill, I fell into bed and slept four hours. I'm not sure but I think in my dreams, people kept throwing things at me.
I enjoyed the afternoon tremendously, especially the delight of the local animation community gathering together for such a historic event, and I'm glad I was there. But earlier in the day, I spoke with Alice Maltin (wife of Leonard) and she told me they'd sat through four 3-D movies at the festival and the next morning, she woke up with a hangover. Never having imbibed, I don't know quite what a hangover feels like but I wouldn't be surprised if it feels a lot like I do right now.
Here are the first two paragraphs from Frank Rich's weekend column for The New York Times...
Rarely has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush's 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC's Path to 9/11 so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.
No kidding: The Path to 9/11 was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them. Only days earlier, the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a truce and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.
The entire column can be read here if you're a subscriber to TimesSelect. If not, you're either out of luck or you'll have to find one of the many websites that repost Rich's columns in full.
As you may have heard, a woman committed suicide the other day after a blistering interview with Court TV host Nancy Grace. The few times I've watched Grace, I've found her whole act pretty tasteless. She seems to operate off the premise that a person who's under suspicion of a crime is probably guilty and once they're arrested, you can remove that bothersome "probably" qualifier and get on with the sentencing.
Even worse to me is this notion that if your life is touched by crime, the only appropriate response is pure, uncontained rage. For some, that may well be the proper course but there are those forms of anger that are self-destructive and which serve to extend the damage. There are also some people who simply can't handle the anger. I'm thinking now of one acquaintance of mine who, years ago, was a crime victim. The harm done to him by the criminal was nothing compared to the harm my friend proceeded to do to himself, hungering for some kind of revenge that became increasingly unattainable. In fact, it was almost like he was consciously enlarging his victimhood until it became so large that no one could ever take it away from him.
In the case of the lady quizzed by Nancy Grace, the news clips I've seen suggest that she was almost attacking Melinda Duckett for not playing her prescribed role on a TV cable news crime investigation. It's all pretty disturbing and I think I agree with most of what Dahlia Lithwick wrote about it.
A lot of e-mails this morning from Jack Kirby fans taking wild and informed guesses as to who inked the Orion figure on the cover of New Gods #1. The first five to get it right were (in order of time stamps on their messages), Joe Frank, Giles Lindley, Kurt Mitchell, Mark Daniel and Patrick Shaugnessy.
The correct answer is Don Heck but there's a little more to the story than that. I have to write my next column for The Jack Kirby Collector this weekend and I'll recount it all in there. I figure anyone who cares about this stuff has a subscription to that fine publication.
DC Comics has announced that they will soon issue The New Gods Omnibus, a series of volumes that will reprint in full, Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" series from the early seventies plus the additional material Jack did in 1984 — an extra story plus his grand finale graphic novel, The Hunger Dogs. I hope to have more information on this project after some firmer decisions are made...but I wanted to mention it's coming, which pleases me greatly. When the core books (The New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle) were cancelled in their second year, Jack was very depressed. He knew the work had value and felt there was a market for it if it was released properly. What mitigated his upset was that he knew, even if no one else believed it at the time, that those issues would be reprinted and re-reprinted and re-re-reprinted, etc., over and over, remaining in print long past most other comics of their day. I just wish he could have been around to see it happen for real.
Several people have written to ask me what I think of a petition that is now circulating in some Internet circles. It asks DC to expend the cash and effort necessary to restore, to the extent humanly possible, the original Superman and Jimmy Olsen drawings that Jack did for the Jimmy Olsen comic (some portions of which will figure into the Omnibus) and the first issue of Forever People. My opinion, along with an overview of what I believe happened there, can be found in this article, which I recently revised.
Hey, I've written dozens and dozens of articles about Jack and done loads of interviews...but as I posted the above cover to New Gods #1, it dawned on me that I've never explained — because no one ever asked me — what happened there. Jack did the cover without the odd textured pattern in the background. That was added by the DC Production Department when they fiddled with his design. I'll write up the whole story for a future column in The Jack Kirby Collector
Now that I think of it: I'd wager most Kirby scholars don't even know who inked the drawing of Orion on that cover...and I've just decided we're going to have a contest with no prize whatsoever. First person to send me the correct answer will win...nothing. I'll mention your name here but that's it. And to give you a bit of help, here's a hint: It wasn't Vince Colletta, it wasn't Frank Giacoia, it wasn't Mike Royer, it wasn't Jack himself and it wasn't rainbow sugar nonpareils. It was someone who did no other work on Jack's DC books...and that's all I'm going to tell you now. Good night.
We seem to have solved half the mystery — alas, the easier half — of what to call my favorite cookie. About a hundred of you have written in, including a half-dozen folks from Australia where the little colored balls (excuse me, coloured) are known as "Hundreds & Thousands." Others suggested they were called "sprinkles," "dragees" or even "round jimmies."
But the consensus seems to be — and many of you sent links to pages that sell them under this name — "rainbow sugar nonpareils." Some sources hyphenate the last word and some spell it, "nonpariel."
Okay, that's what the decorations are called. Now, what are the cookies called?
I have about a dozen answers, no one of which was given by very many people. So I'm leaning towards the theory that no one is widely accepted. I'll wait a few days to see if anyone convinces me otherwise and then I'll post some of what I've learned.
Here's an example of why we love Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. It's the bit they did on Wednesday's program about news channels using question marks in their on-screen lower-thirds...
Take a moment and read this weblog post by Kevin Drum. It offers some evidence that conservation laws in California are succeeding in making us less energy-dependent without in any way harming the economy. The case isn't utterly conclusive but it's encouraging.
I'm probably way too interested in trying to "blog" (There's got to be a better verb for this than that) from interesting places. We're coming to you at this moment from the world famous Farmers Market in Los Angeles, a touristy assemblage of stores, eateries and markets that I've only been visiting since I was around three. Back then, the strict "moral" sensibilities of the Gilmore Family (They own the place) were reportedly what prevented it from selling alcohol or Playboy or even being open on Sundays. But time moves inexorably in a liberal direction and you could almost tell when some elder Gilmore passed away and the rest of the family had the chance to increase profits by easing up on another taboo. One year, they started opening on Sundays but only during the pre-Christmas shopping season. The world did not end and before long, it was every Sunday. At some point, beer and wine and men's magazines quietly appeared...and now there are a couple of full bars and the newsstands carry Hustler.
But not everything's changed. Magee's still carves a great corned beef sandwich, Patsy's Pizza still serves great spaghetti and meat sauce and Bob's Doughnuts can still sell you the best apple fritter in town. This last is a reasonable assumption by someone who no longer eats much sugar. But sometimes, you can look at an apple fritter and you know. You just know.
I'm typing this on a portable keyboard connected to my iPAQ Pocket PC. The Wi-Fi hotspots here are quite unforgiving and sporadic. I couldn't connect on the south side of the Market, near where the Starbucks is supposed to have the best access and couldn't connect for long on the west side. Then I moved over here to a table near the Pampas Grill, fiddled with my settings and — Voila! — I'm in!
The Pampas Grill is a Brazilian churrasco. Skewers of garlicky chicken legs and huge slabs of rare beef rotate over a fire and whisper to you as you walk past. Between paragraphs here, I'm chewing on a thin slice of Alcatra, which is a cut of beef that is somehow different from Picanha, another cut from the same cow. It all tastes the same to me...all great. In an odd way, writing this helps my digestion. Since my surgery, I'm supposed to take longer between bites so the rhythm of writing while I dine agrees with me. It's like blog / eat / blog / eat / blog...
Getting back to how the Market has changed and not changed in half a century: All around are stalls that sell lovely things to eat...but this is not exactly a food court. For one thing, there are no real chains here...no Sbarro's, no Panda Express, no Wendy's, etc. They're almost all one-of-a-kind operations, usually of the mom-and-pop variety. Some have been here as long as I've been around and they're all pretty good. Oh, every now and then, one of the stalls takes a serious nosedive in quality, usually as the result of new management. Because Farmers Market gets so much tourist trade, the lousy eateries have sometimes been able to hang in there and stay in business longer than they deserve. The locals learn to steer clear of certain businesses but the tourists don't know any better.
Eventually though, a rep for serving lousy food will catch up with the bad places and they'll go away, always to be replaced by something wonderful. For years, there was a terrible Japanese stand called Tokyo House where they served a dish I'd swear was Teriyaki Styrofoam. The Pampas Grill is now where Tokyo House used to be. Over on the west side of the market, there was a little seafood broiler where no one ate more than once. Now residing in that retail space is The Gumbo Pot. I don't know from Cajun food but a lot of prominent food mavens say it serves the best creole jambalaya beignets (or whatever that stuff is) in town.
Okay, my lunch is gone and there are people with full trays hovering about, hoping I am soon to vacate this table. It's time I did. Stay tuned for more Farmers Market Blogging the next time I have the opportunity to get over here. Might be a week or so with my schedule.
A great animator and an old friend of mine, Berny Wolf, has just passed away at the age of 95. Berny had a long career in cartoons that included stints with Paramount, Max Fleischer, Ub Iwerks, Disney, Tex Avery and Hanna-Barbera. Historian Mark Kausler lays out the broad strokes of Berny's animating years in this piece over at Cartoon Brew and I don't think it's even close to complete. I seem to recall Berny telling me, for instance, that he worked for Van Beuren and (briefly) for Paul Terry. It would probably take less time to list the great cartoon studios where Berny never worked.
His credits are, of course, amazing. Just having animated on Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo puts you up there in a rarefied strata of cartoon history. But you'll notice Mark's quick bio jumps from the fifties to the eighties and I can fill in a few of the missing years there. For instance, Bern worked closely with Walt Disney designing attractions for Disneyland, most notably some of the first walkaround character costumes. Through a series of companies he set up, Berny made those and produced industrial cartoons and educational materials for a wide array of clients.
In the seventies, his firm was called Animedia and it was located over on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake, doing art services — some, animation-related, some not. Among many other projects, he produced hundreds of employee training films for the Toyota company and also handled all the graphics and design work for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. When I edited and wrote Tarzan comic books back then, I did so through Berny's company. I also worked with him on some cartoon mascots for the Olympics, some educational materials involving the Woodsy Owl character, and a couple of animated commercials. He couldn't find anyone else to storyboard one of the commercials before the deadline so, though admittedly rusty, he sat down and drew it himself. It showed he still had it. Even though he'd been away from the drawing board for years, he was still a terrific cartoonist.
He proved it again a decade later when he folded Animedia and went back to animation where (he said) he was happier in every way except financial. Along with the shows Kausler mentions, Berny produced a series for Hanna-Barbera called The Paw-Paws. In the nineties, when he himself was in his eighties, he did some directing work on Garfield and Friends and other shows for Film Roman.
We had a brief e-mail correspondence a few years back and then he suddenly stopped writing. Soon after, his website disappeared and I heard no more from him. The last message he wrote me said he was "...working on some drawings and limited-edition cels." I hope he got some of them done for he really was a great artist. He told me more than once that he'd always regretted he couldn't make the same kind of living as a cartoonist that he made when he produced those training films for Toyota.
Here's a classic cartoon Berny worked on in 1933, when he was a mere lad of 22. In fact, you'll even see his name in the opening credits. It's "The Old Man of the Mountain," one of the Betty Boop cartoons made at the Max Fleischer Studios that utilized the skills of the great Cab Calloway. As you watch it, please think of Berny Wolf...a helluva talent and a true gentleman.
I mentioned someplace here — I forget where — that my taste for sugar and all things sweet has declined since my big weight loss. (And by the way, for those of you who have money riding on this: I am within ounces — ounces! — of being 100 pounds below my highest-ever weight.) Recently, I told you that I'd tried a few of my favorite cookies and found the sensation pleasing but nowhere near as wonderful as it once was.
This prompted several of you to write and ask, "So what is your favorite kind of cookie, Mark?" Well, one of you asked but I decided to seize the opportunity to, at long last, discuss something substantive on this weblog. Above is a photo I just took of an example of my favorite cookie. I have been eating these — not continually, despite what my need for Gastric Bypass Surgery might indicate — since I was about four years old. And you know something? I have no idea what they're called. I've never known.
They're sold in practically every delicatessen in the galaxy. The above specimen — which met its happy demise only seconds after the above photo was taken — was purchased at Canter's Delicatessen on Fairfax and maybe even baked there. For more than fifty years — half a freaking century — I've been buying these all over, mainly by pointing into a display case and saying, "The ones with the colored balls on top." There must be a better name for them than that...and yes, I've tried asking the employees of the various delicatessens. No one has ever given me a genuine answer. They usually say something like, "Oh, those are the ones with the colored balls on them."
Big help, lady. Tell me something I don't already know.
Once, in a deli that didn't look like it did any baking, I asked the woman who waited on me (who turned out to be the owner) if they made them on the premises. She said no. I said, "Great. Now, when you order them from your supplier, what is it you order? What is the name you give them that results in them delivering those cookies to you?" I was excited because I thought I was on the verge of a breakthrough...a revelation for the ages...the best-kept secret of one or more centuries...
She said, "I don't know...I ask them to send more of those cookies with the colored balls on top."
I'm not even sure what the colored balls are called. They aren't "jimmies." Those are long, not round. Some people seem to call the colored balls "nonpareils" or, in this case, "rainbow nonpareils." However, "nonpareil" is also the name of a cookie that is usually chocolate with white balls all over it so I'm guessing that isn't a popular name for the colored balls themselves. I've seen the colored balls sold in the cake decorating section of the market as "rainbow sprinkles" or "confetti" or even just "cake decorations," the last of these suggesting that even the people making them didn't know what to call them. But I've also seen all those terms applied to pastry adornments of other shapes and sizes.
There must be a word that denotes just the round variety. And there must be a name that you could use if you wanted to call a baker and tell him to whip up a batch of cookies like the one in the picture above. Someone...please...tell me what it is and don't toy with me. Not about this. If you write me that it's "the cookies with the colored balls on top," so help me, I'm going to add you to my Spam list and bounce all your e-mails from now on.
Today, we discuss what I think is one of the most gloriously illogical scenes ever in movie history. It's from the 1931 Marx Brothers movie, Monkey Business. Watch it and then let's unpack what happens in it...
Let us review. The boys are stowaways on an ocean liner. They have no passports so they can't get off the ship. Zeppo gets hold of the passport of the great French entertainer Maurice Chevalier and somehow knows that the bearer of it can prove it's his by singing one of Chevalier's songs. Well, that's an obvious assumption now, isn't it? I mean, how else would the customs guys verify that the holder of a passport was indeed that person? They'd expect him to perform his big hit tune, right? So to get off the boat, all four Marxes are going to have to pretend to be someone they're not.
This is not quite ridiculous enough so let's make it worse: Since they have only the one passport, they'll all pretend to be the same person. Not only that but they're all going to pretend to be a well-known celebrity that none of them resembles in any way.
The Italian guy's going to tell them he's Maurice Chevalier. And after that doesn't work, the rude guy with the mustache and no French accent whatsoever is going to tell them he's Maurice Chevalier. Even the guy who doesn't talk is going to claim to be Maurice Chevalier...and he's really got a surefire plan. First, he'll bolster his chances of getting through by throwing around all the papers on the Customs Agents' table like a maniac. That will surely make the officials more likely to believe he's Maurice Chevalier. Then he'll mime to a record, assuming they won't notice the phonograph under his coat, nor wonder about the sudden appearance of musical accompaniment from nowhere. And then to really convince them, he'll mess up all their papers again and rubber stamp the customs agent's bald head. If that doesn't prove he's Maurice Chevalier, nothing will.
(And that's really the point of the whole scene: Nothing will. Harpo's chances of getting through aren't all that much worse than what Zeppo tried, which was to actually impersonate Maurice Chevalier.)
It's the perfect summary of what was wonderful about the Marxes. After spending the first half of the movie doing everything possible to avoid the security personnel on the liner, not one of the four brothers pauses to wonder if it's a good idea to go up to the ship's police and all claim to be someone that none of them could possibly be. Even after the plan has completely failed three times, Harpo doesn't hesitate to try it...and I think it yields one of the most beautiful, wonderful scenes anyone ever put into a movie. Because you can go through life doing things the logical way or you can do them the illogical way. Should you decide to do something the illogical way, the way that is almost certain not to work, you might as well make it all as illogical as humanly possible. If that isn't the best advice in the world then my name isn't Maurice Chevalier.
I received a number of e-mails this morn from serial buffs who take me to task for suggesting that thirty chapters of Superman serial is anything less than thirty glorious viewing experiences...assuming one has the good sense to watch but one per day. Okay, fine, whatever. They're right that this material wasn't meant to be watched all at once. That's one of the problems of DVD sets.
I also wouldn't suggest watching the three films on the new Laurel and Hardy set back-to-back. As noted here, Stan and Ollie made six films for Twentieth-Century Fox in the forties after leaving their home at the Hal Roach Studios. Some are better than others and all have moments that remind you how brilliant they could be...but when I think of their great movies, none of these come to mind.
A-Haunting We Will Go, despite its title, contains no ghosts or haunting. It has a silly gangster plot and a showy guest role by the famous magician, Dante. There's nothing really wrong with it except that there's nothing really right with it. The Dancing Masters doesn't make a lot of sense and Stan was getting a little old to be parading around in a ballerina costume. The Bullfighters is, I think, the worst movie they ever made. It's actually the only Laurel and Hardy movie in which they're the villains and it has a contrived plot and an ugly, inane end gag. In it, Stan is mistaken for a world famous matador and forced to parade about in stock footage, wearing a matador suit.
Laurel and Hardy fans may argue over my ranking of best-to-worst but few would insist this is the kind of work that made Stan and Ollie perhaps the most beloved screen comedians of all time. Nevertheless, I have ordered this new DVD. Why? Because even weak Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy. In addition, the DVD set also has commentary tracks by Randy Skretvedt and Scott MacGillivray, two learned scholars of The Boys, plus there are bonus featurettes and trailers and other goodies. If you'd like to order one, here's a link to get it from Amazon. And while you're clicking that mouse of yours, here's a link to get the earlier set with the other three Fox films.
Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy also made two very weak films for M.G.M. in the forties — Air Raid Wardens and Nothing But Trouble. These are due out in November on a low-priced DVD you can order here. Again, weak Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy...but these movies make it a wee bit harder to believe that statement.
The best Laurel and Hardy work is only slowly making it to DVD with releases like this one that came out last April. More have been rumored but nothing's been announced yet. What we're really waiting for is something deluxe and complete like the set that came out in 2004 in Great Britain, which is unfortunately unplayable on most U.S. DVD machines. Here's a link to the Amazon UK page where you can see what they got over there. It sent American Laurel and Hardy fans into spasms of Brit envy...and out to buy region-free DVD players.
This article in The New Republic says that our military has been mismanaged, both in terms of manpower and equipment, to the point where it's unable to do its job properly. When neo-cons say that we need to send more troops into Iraq or send troops into some other sinkhole of a country, someone oughta ask them just which "more troops" they have in mind.
I have to get this post up before I go to bed. Otherwise, I'll get up in the morning and find seven thousand messages in my inbox saying what ten or eleven have so far: "Hey, Evanier! Don't you know that Warner Home Video is bringing out a DVD of the two Kirk Alyn Superman serials on November 28?"
No, I didn't know...and when I searched Amazon earlier to see if it was out on DVD, I somehow missed the relevant page. Here's a link to it in case you'd like to get in an advance order. Before you click, just remember: Between the two serials, you'll be getting thirty chapters that run a total of 518 minutes. There's some wonderful material in there, especially in the interplay 'twixt Alyn and Noel "Lois Lane" Neill...but it's 518 minutes. That's more than eight and a half hours of Superman serial.
If I were Warner Home Video, I'd make it like one of those restaurant deals where they serve you a twelve pound hamburger and it's free if you can eat the whole thing in one sitting.
Jerry Beck, co-Brewmaster of Cartoon Brew, informs me that Turner Classic Movies will be running the Kirk Alyn Superman serial in a few weeks. It's fifteen chapters long and they'll be running five on Saturday, October 28, five more on the following Saturday and the last five on the Saturday after that. I'll try and remember to remind you when we get closer to the date.
Matthew Yglesias discusses the torture that is now being committed on our behalf. He makes an interesting point. This administration has blamed a number of wrong moves on faulty intelligence. A lot of that faulty intelligence was obtained by torture.
Here's the history on this one: The Marx Brothers made their Broadway debut in a 1924 revue called I'll Say She Is. The show was never filmed or recorded and much about it is lost. In fact, I'm not even sure anyone alive can explain the title. (In interviews, even when he was lucid, Groucho couldn't.) One of the big comedy scenes was the opener, which involved the four brothers going to a talent agent to audition. The sketch had rhymed dialogue and in it, each of them did an impression of Joe Frisco, a famous stuttering comedian of the day who was also known for his distinctive style of dancing. (The entire script for I'll Say She Is has been pieced together from various sources and is available on this website.)
Got all that? Good. Now, flash forward to 1931 when the Brothers Marx were making movies for Paramount and the studio was staging a big publicity campaign to promote its wares. This involved producing a documentary called The House That Shadows Built, detailing the (then) brief history of the studio and showing clips from upcoming films. It was considered desirable to include a preview of the next Marx movie, Monkey Business. Problem: Filming had not yet commenced on Monkey Business so there was no clip. Solution: Make one.
Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo went onto a Paramount soundstage one day and filmed a scene that could be passed off as an excerpt from their upcoming feature. It was the talent agent sketch from I'll Say She Is with a couple of modifications. One was that since Joe Frisco was not a major Paramount star and Maurice Chevalier was, the impressions were changed from Frisco to Frenchman. In doing this, they created the only recorded remnant, such as it is, from I'll Say She Is. Take a look...
The filmed bit was included in the infomercial, then discarded. Neither the footage nor the routine was used in Monkey Business, although — perhaps to justify the bogus preview scene — there was a point in the storyline where the brothers all did Chevalier impressions in order to get past a customs agent. We'll discuss that scene here tomorrow.
Washington Monthly, which is a pretty Liberal magazine, is featuring articles by several prominent Conservatives in its new issue. They're in there, of course, because they think George W. Bush is a disaster for their political label and/or America and are willing to say so. It's one thing for Democrats and known Liberals to criticize this administration. The swing votes in this country can dismiss them as Democrats and known Liberals. What's amazing is that you could now put together a pretty damning critique of Bush-Cheney just by quoting established Conservative pundits and elected Republicans.
Tonight on Mr. Leno's show, Diane Lane was promoting her new movie, Hollywoodland, and she said something about George Reeves being the first Superman. She wasn't intending to slight the other gents who played the character before Reeves but she did get me to thinking about the late Kirk Alyn.
Kirk was an actor who had a fairly unspectacular career, primarily in the forties and primarily in serials. He played Superman in the 1948 serial of that character and again in a 1950 sequel. In 1952, he portrayed another comic book hero, Blackhawk, in one of the last serials made...and when the serials went away, so did the jobs for Kirk Alyn. Thereafter, it was mostly bit parts and not a lot of them. At some point, he simply gave up and moved to Arizona.
But that was not the end of Mr. Alyn's celebrity. In a way, he was ahead of his time.
These days, when you go to a comic convention, you're as likely to see famous TV and movie actors as you are to see folks who write and draw comics. There's a thriving autographed photo industry out there. A lot of celebs who aren't working at the moment — and even some who are — are now descending on cons to sell eight-by-ten glossies and — in some cases — autobiographies, many of them self-published. I won't cite any names but check out the guest lists for upcoming fan gatherings. You might see some pretty big stars there...and Kirk Alyn sort of pioneered the practice.
He was the first actor I can recall ever turning up at a comic book convention. At almost every West Coast con for years, you could find him sitting behind a table, selling autographed pic and his self-published autobiography, A Job for Superman. Easily approachable, he would talk to anyone for hours, answering what I gathered were around ten questions, over and over, usually including the painful one: "Why did George Reeves do the TV show instead of you?" Usually immaculate in suit and tie, he looked like a movie star, even if it had been a long time since he'd been one.
I don't recall when he first appeared on the convention circuit...around '73 or so, I'd guess. But at the time, almost no one in the fan community had seen him on film. He was the first film Superman, we all knew, but his two serials were long unseen and unavailable. Around '78 or so — I'm really guessing at these years — someone came up with a 16mm print of an edited version of the first Superman serial. I remember a wonderful evening at a small, local con where they screened it and I played emcee, interrogating Kirk before and after, and even during reel changes.
He had a wonderful twinkle in his eyes that evening. It was just about the first time in close to a quarter of a century that an audience had seen him starring in something, and it was an audience of folks who'd become his friends. The film was long and filled with laughingly-awful dialogue, amateurish supporting actors and the cheapest-possible sets and special effects...but Kirk was good in it and at the end, he received a much-deserved standing ovation — as much for sharing his history with us as for his performance. That evening and the subsequent availability of his Superman films completed his super-stardom in our circle. The next day, he told me that con-goers were treating him with more respect. No one had been disrespectful before but now, they'd seen him actually be Superman and it made a difference.
His two Superman serials — Superman and Atom Man Vs. Superman — came out on VHS some time ago to scant notice, which is not surprising. Each is over four hours long and like most serials, there's a lot of repetition and recapping and padding. You've got to really love that kind of material to make it all the way through. But like everything else that's ever been on film, it will someday be available on DVD and when it is, you might want to take a peek. I don't know that you'll enjoy it but I like the idea of people remembering who Kirk Alyn was. (He passed away in 1999 at the age of 89.)
'Til then, there's another way to remember Kirk. If you go to a comic convention and see some past or present-day actor selling photos of himself, think about Kirk Alyn for a second or two. He invented that.
Nothing I've seen or read lately has made me more pessimistic about the Iraq War than this article in The Washington Post. It's by William Kristol and Rich Lowry, two of the most outspoken "neo-con" voices in favor of that invasion. They have quietly, however, shifted their argument. The old version was that our cause was so right and our power so grand that we could achieve everything we wanted to in Iraq with Donald Rumsfeld's "leaner, meaner" U.S. fighting force. Now, they're saying we can triumph if only George W. Bush and his boys will send in more troops.
Nowhere in the piece do Kristol and Lowry address the fact that many generals have stated we simply don't have more troops, or that to send more into Iraq will cripple our efforts elsewhere. That is not a small detail, easy to skip over. In fact, my cynical side wonders if maybe the authors know full well that no significant reinforcement of troops can or will be sent in; that they're just laying the groundwork for the Official Excuse as to why their precious Iraq War didn't end the way they told us it would.
Not so long ago, Lowry was one of the leading non-administration voices telling us America was undeniably succeeding in its every goal there. He doesn't seem to be saying that now. He seems to be getting ready to write a lot of sentences that begin with, "Well, we could have won if..."
It's amazing that "new" footage of the World Trade Center disaster should emerge five years later but some has. A couple who lived 500 yards from Ground Zero shot home video that day and has now released their footage on the Internet. It runs about fifteen minutes and is very chilling because...well, because you hear a family watching the tragedy, wondering what's happening and commenting as they see it unfold before their eyes, practically in their back yard. Here is a link to it and I'll warn you that some of it is pretty graphic and that the connection may be overloaded at times. Thanks to Alan Light for being the first of many to let me know about it.
Also: Keith Olbermann did a long (almost nine minutes) and angry commentary on his show last night. He excoriated the Bush administration for many things related to 9/11 but mostly for the fact that Ground Zero is still, five years later, devoid of either a memorial or any new building. The piece was well-written, well-delivered and presented with a passion and clarity of purpose that I think we all, regardless of our political orientation, wish we heard occasionally from our leaders. I'm not sure I agree with his central thesis, however. A physical memorial to those who died on 9/11 seems almost trivial and unequal to our loss on that day...and to rebuild on that site strikes me as a lot more complicated than the White House just deciding someone should. I wonder how many companies would lease space in a new World Trade Center — even if it wasn't called that — and how many people would be willing to go to work every day in one. Here's a link to Olbermann's "special comment" on YouTube and in case you'd like to view it with his lips in sync, here's a link to it on the MSNBC site.
This is real quick but you'll want to watch it. How often do you get to hear Harpo Marx talk?
If you need more Marx in your day, here are links to two video clips that I cannot embed on this page. This link will take you to a performance Groucho did of the song, "Show Me a Rose." This link will take you to a duet Groucho did with Jackie Gleason. They perform a variation of the famous routine done by the legendary comedy team of Gallagher and Shean, initially in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1922. Al Shean from that duo was an uncle of the Marx Brothers, which I thought was worthy of mention even though I don't know if it connects in any way to the clip.
Watch or TiVo tonight's Tonight Show With Jay Leno...most notably the segments with James Woods. The first part is a moving discussion of his brother's recent death. The second is about 9/11. Then Charlie Rose comes out and further discusses that awful day and the heroism he witnessed.
Okay, I give up. I've watched about thirty more video clips relating to 9/11 — many of them suggested by folks who'd read the previous message here — and I couldn't find one that seemed appropriate to have up on this site today. Worse, some of them were depressing to no good purpose and I have things I have to do this afternoon. So no video clip today. I'll make it up to you with the ones I have lined up the rest of this week. Hope you folks like the Marx Brothers.
I may not be watching much news today, either. At some point years ago, I became acutely conscious that on the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, most of the televised remembrances were not about the tragedy but of the press discussing its performance in covering that tragedy. Looking back at the news footage of 11/22/63 is important, of course, but there's one way of presenting and configuring it that says "Here's what happened that day" and another that says, "Look how we — i.e., folks in our profession — rose to the challenge of that day." Makes you want to yell at the screen, "It's not about you!"
Some of the 9/11/01 remembrances today strike me as skewing in that direction. The rest seems to be about the upcoming elections and how Republicans and Democrats can influence how 9/11 is viewed, the better to garner votes. Last night, I saw a few minutes — I think on Fox News, what a surprise — about the heroism of George W. Bush on that day. Yeah, right. I watched longer than I should have but I was kinda waiting to see if it would include the part where he runs out and single-handedly captures Osama.
Roughly 3,000 people died on September 11 for no good, human reason. Countless others were injured and/or had their lives forever harmed in a myriad of ways...physically, emotionally, financially, etc. (I think there's an unfortunate tendency to talk about the number of dead as if that's the sole measure of damage that occurred.) I don't think we should look back at it all in a way that just makes us afraid it'll happen again. We usually do the wrong thing when we operate out of fear. But there's got to be a more constructive thing we can do with that memory than exploit it for short-term benefits.
I probably won't be posting much, if anything, the rest of the day. I don't feel I have anything positive to offer and it feels creepy to be posting here about anything else. And besides, like I said, I have things to do. I hope you do, as well.
As you know if you hang around this page, I try to pick out interesting video clips to link to, usually one per day. This takes less time than you'd think but last night, as I went searching for something to post tomorrow, it took an unusually long time. I felt that on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I ought to put up something that said something important about that day.
There are thousands of video clips on the Internet about the September 11 tragedies. Many of them are long, intense lectures by people who believe they've proven (but haven't) that the "official" version of what occurred that day is a sham. The twin towers could not possibly have collapsed the way we were told they'd collapsed...and of course, no plane hit the Pentagon. Of all that, they are sure. I am a big believer in the expectation that the government will shamelessly lie to us — any regime of the government and especially the current one — but in this case, I have seen no evidence that makes me suspicious that what most people think happened that day is not pretty much what happened that day.
So I won't be linking to any of those videos and besides, they're all real long and extremely boring.
There are also thousands of "tribute" videos people have made...some clumsily titled as "tributes to 9/11" by folks who don't mean to celebrate what occurred on that day. Most consist of stills and video clips edited against a properly somber record...often "Only Time" by Enya. (The first one I recall seeing online a little less than five years ago was this one. It's still quite moving and whoever assembled it did a helluva job.)
I watched a few of them last night and found myself getting alternately sad and angry. The sad part needs no explanation but perhaps the angry part does. The more I am reminded of the pain of that day, the more I resent the folks who've tried to manipulate its memory. No event in my lifetime (I'm 54) brought Americans together the way our shared suffering brought us together that day. It is appalling not only that this unity has been lost but that the emotions of 9/11 have been reconfigured to demonize one another. The worst kind of partisans have claimed 9/11 as a club to use against the other side. The same thing has happened with the Iraq War: If you don't see things my way and vote for my side, you must be objectively pro-terrorist, plus you hate America and pray for our troops to be killed.
That dung has always bothered me, but it never quite bothered me as much as it did last night when I was watching footage of the burning towers, still shots of innocent human beings plunging to their deaths and the pained agony of onlookers and family members. I kept thinking, "How did we get from this to where we are now?" I finally had to stop watching 9/11 videos and cleanse my video palate with stuff like this.
So I haven't picked out a video for tomorrow. If you have any nominations, let me have them...though I can't guarantee I'll be able to watch them all. It really depresses me that, as I read about this Path to 9/11 movie on ABC, some people seem to be trying to note the five year anniversary of that awful disaster by seeing how much blame they can pin on their political opponents.
Yesterday, we brought you the opening to the 1963 Casper cartoon show. Here's the ending, which is a bit sad until the last few bars of music. It's nowhere near as sad as the closing credits of the Linus the Lionhearted Show but it's still a bit depressing. Then again, the whole Casper franchise is about a dead child so maybe depressing is appropriate.
Something dawned on me as I watched this. The premise of the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons was always that poor little Casper just wanted to have a friend...but he didn't fit in with the ghosts and witches of his world, and he scared away almost everyone he encountered in "our" world. Usually, at the end of each cartoon, he'd find someone who liked being around him...and then the next cartoon, he'd be right back to moping about, trying to find someone who wouldn't spot him, do a bad Tex Avery "take" and run screaming into the background painting.
Okay, that was the premise when they made a couple of theatrical cartoons per year. When he got into the comic books, he started making friends left and right: Wendy, Spooky, Nightmare, etc. Someone at Harvey Comics — and I have to presume this was a conscious thought — decided that the idea of Casper scaring away all potential friends would get monotonous. It would also make for a pretty depressing comic book...so they pulled that idea way back. Casper in the comics sometimes scared people but mostly, the stories were about a kid who was different from all the rest. Since we all feel different from everyone else when we're kids, there was a nice bit of reader identification going on there. My friends who had older siblings (I was an only child) all identified madly with the way Casper was picked on by The Ghostly Trio...and of course, adding in all those friends as a supporting cast created plot possibilities, to say nothing of spin-off comics.
All in all, it was a nice bit of retooling an animated property for the comic book page. And it sure was successful for a couple of decades there.
Before we roll the clip, I should mention: I said when I posted the opening that Norma McMillan was the voice of Davey on the kids' show, Davey and Goliath. Anthony Tollin reminds me that she was a voice of Davey and that Dick Beals — who's mentioned more often on this site than Donald Rumsfeld — was the original voice. Dick Beals would also make a much better Secretary of Defense than Donald Rumsfeld but that's beside the point.
According to a CNN poll taken a week or so ago, 43% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
According to a Senate report released Friday, Hussein was not involved at all. This report seems to have settled the question once and for all, at least insofar as our leaders and prominent pundits are concerned. Partisans on both sides are arguing as to whether the Iraq invasion was predicated or sold on that misperception, and who should have known better...but I don't see anyone important out there insisting that the report is wrong and that Hussein was involved.
So here's what I'm wondering about. Two things, really.
I'm wondering what the number will be like, next time some pollster asks people if they think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. I'm assuming the number will drop but is it going to drop to 5% or 10%? Or is it going to drop to 39% or 40%? I'm guessing a small decrease, not much greater than the margin of error.
And I'm wondering about the people who thought or still think Hussein was involved. I'm wondering on what they based that conclusion. These are just people off the street with no access to Hussein or Al Qaeda documents or anything of the sort. They get their information from watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers and magazines and websites, and chatting with friends who get their info from the same sources.
Are these people working backwards from the fact that we proclaimed Saddam was the devil and we invaded Iraq? Is it that he suddenly became the worst villain in the world to the U.S. so it stood to reason that he must have been involved in the worst crime? Is it that Cheney and Company insinuated — and to an extent they now deny, spoke outright of a Hussein-9/11 connection? Is it that some folks are getting so paranoid that they just assume that all the various parties in all the nations that hate the U.S. must automatically be in cahoots with one another? (I've only run into one person who believes Saddam was involved in 9/11 and he fervently insists that the Russians, the Nazis, both Koreas, the Mafia, Fidel Castro and eight shooters on the grassy knoll were also in on the deal...which, by the way, was a series of well-planned controlled demolitions from within.)
I mean this question with more seriousness than my phrasing here probably suggests. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting John F. Kennedy and if you asked me, I could cite several books and arguments of logic that convinced me. I may be wrong but I didn't arrive at this view because God whispered it to me or because I consulted a Magic Eightball or I read it off a Ouija board. It came from somewhere.
So where did the belief that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 come from? And if it came from the public statements of Bush and Cheney, how do those people feel now that those men are running around insisting, "We never said there was a connection"?
Mark is still having some e-mail problems. I don't think anything you send is getting lost but there may now be a delay before it gets to me. The crack tech crew here at news from me — which consists solely of me — is laboring diligently to solve the problem so that I can get your mail quickly and not answer it, instead of getting it hours later and not answering it.
Also: This website may be offline for some time — maybe an hour or so — on Monday night as my hosting company does major equipment upgrades and such. Don't panic. Don't go into convulsions. Just find something else to read on the Internet until we become available again. I hear there are other sites.
Here, boys and girls, is the opening of The New Casper Cartoon Show, which appeared on ABC Saturday mornings (and sometimes on Sunday) from 1963 to 1969. Most of the history books say that this was a newly-produced show but I recall it as an amalgam of newly-produced cartoons and recycled Paramount theatrical cartoons of the forties and fifties. The new cartoons were interesting because they reflected the Casper that had evolved in the pages of the Harvey comic books.
Quick History Lesson: Casper the Friendly Ghost started out in Paramount cartoons in 1945 and after a slow start, he became their second most-popular star, bested only — of course — by Popeye the Sailor. In 1952, after another company had briefly published a Casper comic book, Harvey Publishing secured the license and their Casper comic became very profitable for them, spinning off many allied titles. Eventually, Harvey wound up owning Casper and his film library, and when this new Casper show was done in '63, Harvey was in control and Paramount was the lesser partner. The series featured supporting characters who had popped up in the comics such as Wendy the Good Little Witch and Nightmare the ghost horse.
We have here the 1963 opening titles, which I always thought were quite peppy and fun, which is more than I was able to say for the show. I believe the voice of Casper here is done by Norma McMillan, who was also the voice of Davey on Davey and Goliath and Sweet Polly Purebread on The Underdog Show. But Casper went through several voices over the years so I could be wrong about this.
John Bengston is a scholar of silent movies, particularly of Buster Keaton and of where movies were filmed. Here's an Adobe PDF file he compiled that details a tour you could take in Los Angeles and see where Keaton worked his magic.
The one that floored me when I first learned of it years ago was the one on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. You know that big newsstand at the corner of Cahuenga and Hollywood? Of course you do. Well, to the right of it there's an alley that I used to drive down to get to a great parking space no one knew about. Then years later, I found out that in one of Keaton's best shorts, Cops, you can see Buster run down that same alley.
The Library of Congress, in partnership with a bunch of other entities, has created an online web archive of online web reporting on 9/11. There's an awful lot of material there spanning a range of nations and languages. You might find it interesting to do some random browsing.
They also have some other online archives in the section they call Minerva...with more to come.
Our video funfest today brings us a commercial for Chocks, a vitamin for kids that was introduced into the market in 1960. Insofar as I can tell, these are no longer made. Vitamins shaped like Flintstones (introduced in '68) and other recognizable characters took away enough of the market share to bring an end to Chocks. All we have left are ads like this one.
The voice of the cuckoo bird sounds like Dick Beals, who we've discussed here many times before. The panda's voice was supplied by the world's greatest ventriloquist, Dr. Paul Winchell. The rocking horse is...well, I'm not sure. It sounds like Tom D'Andrea, a character actor best remembered from The Life of Riley. Then again, it might be someone doing a real good Tom D'Andrea impression. And I have no idea who the woman is who's doing the singing. Okay, let's roll it...
Another good article on my current favorite comedian/commentator, Lewis Black. Thanks to Lee Wochner for letting me know about it so I could let you know about it...and also read it myself.
Lots of e-mails asking me to write something about the upcoming Path to 9/11 "docu-drama" on ABC which will portray a version of history that, many are arguing, is a right-wing fantasy, intended to minimize the shortcomings of the Bush administration and to affix blame to the Clinton team.
As I've said before here — like when CBS had that TV-Movie, The Reagans — I'm not a fan of works that purport to dramatize history but reserve the right to fictionalize whenever it pleases them. It's one thing if you write or produce something and are willing to say, "I believe this is a reasonably accurate depiction of what happened." Then there can be a clear debate on the truth, or lack thereof in the work. It's quite different when you claim the right to fictionalize and say, in effect, "I'm just making stuff up here because it's more fun this way." Then everyone knows that it's bull. The docu-drama form, to me, is an attempt to have it both ways; to present something that many will take as history but to give its presenter an alibi for inaccuracies and even a free pass for intentional distortions. I don't like Oliver Stone movies for the same reason.
I haven't seen the upcoming semi-fictionalization of what led up to 9/11 but the advance hubbub does not sound encouraging as to the project's integrity. Left-wing websites have identified what they say are numerous wrenchings of the truth, often citing folks who were there at the time and/or on the 9/11 commission, on whose report the TV-Movie supposedly relied heavily for research. The people who made the new TV-Movie seem to be balking from claiming it's what actually happened, instead employing statements like "...for dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, and time compression." Every dramatization does that to some extent. I'd be more impressed if they offered specific defenses or sources for some of the alleged fibs.
They have also heavily embraced the right-wing blogosphere, freely distributing advance screeners to the Limbaugh crowd while denying them to any party (including those depicted in the film) who might find advance fault with their accuracy. At the same time, an ABC press statement said, "No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible." But of course, they have already distributed a version of it to folks they knew would embrace its every anti-Clinton moment and scream over any excisions that were later made. That's called Stacking the Deck.
I see utterly no reason to view this one any different from The Reagans, except that this one is about a more serious subject and has more relevance to an upcoming election. Blogger Glenn Greenwald has resurrected a lot of quotes from prominent right-wingers about how unfair it was to semi-fictionalize the lives of Ron and Nancy. I think they all apply to this one, too...though I would stop short of arguing that the work should not be broadcast at all.
If some network wants to yank a show or film because they decide it's seriously flawed, that's their right...but it shouldn't be done just because they were pressured into doing so. Pressure, as it's applied in these cases, is a capricious thing that often has more to do with who's efficient at rallying the troops — and getting to key affiliates or advertisers — than with any fair assessment of the offense or public outrage. I do think it's fair game to criticize the work in advance to perhaps make ABC (in this case) reconsider if they want to put their corporate integrity, such as it is, behind the project. If they do, fine. If I were the guy in charge at the network, or had I had that post at CBS when The Reagans was igniting controversy, I'm not sure what I would have done...other than to question the responsibility of green-lighting such factually-arguable "docu-dramas" in the first place.
The Reprise! Theatrical Company stages musicals up at the Freud Playhouse at U.C.L.A. with minimal sets and costuming but maximum talents. In the past, my reviews of their offerings came too late to do much good for Los Angeles theatergoers: Their shows only run for sixteen performances apiece and my season tickets were for the next-to-the-next-to-the-last performance. Ergo, by the time I could post my rave recommendation here, it was too late for most of you to scurry out and by tickets.
Not so, this time. Last evening, I attended opening night of the Reprise! presentation of My One and Only, which is sub-titled "The Gershwin Musical." Actually, it's a Gershwin musical but let's not quibble. If you live in L.A., you have to scurry out (or over to this website) and purchase tickets.
Some history. In 1927, George and Ira Gershwin did the score for Funny Face, a musical with a book by Fred Thompson and Paul Gerard Smith. Several of its tunes, including "'S Wonderful," "He Loves and She Loves" and the title tune were quite popular and the show itself ran 244 performances, which was a respectable number back when theaters weren't air conditioned and shows often closed for the summer because of it. (Funny Face opened November 22, 1927 and closed June 23, 1928.)
In the late seventies and early eighties, a number of shows that made it to Broadway were highly-revised revivals of old musicals with familiar tunes. Usually, someone would come in to revamp and modernize the book, and they'd interpolate a few hit songs from other shows by the same composer(s). When Ira Gershwin — he was still alive at the time — gave the okay to bring back Funny Face, that was the idea: Update its rather silly story and toss in some other great Gershwin tunes. By the time it made Broadway in May of 1983, My One and Only (the new title) had changed more than its makers had expected. Tommy Tune starred with Twiggy, Roscoe Lee Browne, Charles "Honi" Coles, Denny Dillon and a whole bunch of great hoofers. Mr. Tune also co-directed and co-choreographed with Thommie Walsh...and the show must have delighted audiences because it ran 767 performances and has had a healthy life since.
Peter Stone and Timothy S. Mayer supplied the new book and I don't know why but I'm going to try to summarize the plot. It's the story of Captain Billy Buck Chandler and famous swimmer Edith Herbert. He's a somewhat-unkempt hick (no one is ever too unkempt in a Gershwin musical) who wants to be the first man to ever fly a plane non-stop from New York to Paris. This is before Lindbergh, obviously. He is distracted from this goal momentarily when he falls in love with Edith, who has recently made headlines by swimming the English Channel. She is the third woman to do this but, as her scummy manager boasts, "...the first attractive one." The manager is a slimy Russian who is keeping her under his thumb because he has her passport...and also some naughty photos she posed for when she was younger. She needs Chandler's help to escape this horrible relationship...and that's pretty much what it's about.
No...come to think of it, that's not what it's about. It's about performing Gershwin tunes. What's in the previous paragraph is just the excuse to sing "Strike Up the Band" and "How Long Has This Been Going On?" and "I Can't Be Bothered Now" (several times) and other glorious tunes. Since the company does a splendid job of this, a good time is had by all.
Michael Gruber plays Cap'n Chandler. He's terrific, striking the right notes of hayseed and suave sophistication at the right moments. Rachel York plays Edith. Rachel York has been wonderful in everything she's ever done and the streak continues, unabated. Vicki Lewis, who was so good in the last Reprise! show I saw (City of Angels, though I neglected to mention her at the time) just about steals the whole show. The only thing that stops her is that Betty Garrett is also in the cast and you can't steal what someone else has already stolen.
Yes, it's Betty Garrett...Betty Garrett from Words and Music and On the Town and My Sister Eileen and talk about your Living Legends. Someone — maybe director-choreographer Dan Mojica — had the genius idea to cast her in the role played on Broadway by Charles "Honi" Coles. Well, why not? Ms. Garrett's late husband Larry Parks did okay working in blackface, playing Al Jolson. Why shouldn't his widow play a part written for a short, older black man? (I got to speak with her after the show and she joked she was worried about being "typecast" in that kind of role.)
The whole cast is excellent...and I'd like to single out Richard Israel, who played the Russian. As you may know, these "concert-style" shows are done with very little rehearsal and Richard had less than anyone. Another actor was to have played the part until he suddenly got cast in a new TV series. Mr. Israel was called in and began rehearsals last Saturday and there was a preview performance on Tuesday night. Most human beings could not even learn half the dialogue in that time, let alone all the staging and blocking and dancing that goes with it. If he'd screwed up a bit, you could forgive the guy but that wasn't necessary. It was a thoroughly polished, flawless performance.
I had a rollickin' good time at My One and Only and as far as I could tell, so did everyone else who was smart enough to get tickets. It's almost a no-brainer: You can't beat The Best of Gershwin and note for note, tap for tap, this cast more than does justice to the legacy of George and Ira.
If you're going to send donations to Lea Hernandez via PayPal — something we greatly encourage — use this link. Don't use the PayPal link in the margin of this page because that sends the money to my PayPal account and then I have to either return it to you or forward it on to her.
Gail Simone is one of the better writers to enter the comic book field in the past few years but that has nothing to do with why I'm posting this at her request. I'm posting it because Lea Hernandez is a great talent and a great lady. Please do what you can to help...
Early this morning, the Texas home of award-winning writer/artist Lea Hernandez, my friend and co-creator of the graphic novel Killer Princesses, caught fire and burned. Half her house is now gone, and the rest is smoke-damaged. In addition, she lost at least six of her family's beloved pets, two dogs and four cats. If you knew Lea, you'd know how devastating that is.
She's lost a great deal of her family's possessions, including irreplaceable art. She doesn't yet know the full accounting of what's been lost at this time.
Most know Lea as the brilliant creator of such works as Rumble Girls and Cathedral Child. She drew the Marvel Mangaverse Punisher book, and has drawn for Transmetropolitan, among many other accomplishments. She is also the co-founder and original editor for Girl-a-Matic, one of the most important venues for female-friendly comics created to date.
She's also my friend, and it's entirely possible I wouldn't have a career in comics if she hadn't asked me to write Killer Princesses for her to draw.
And finally, Lea is one of the last great firebrand hellraisers in comics.
Lea has two (wonderful, amazing) special needs children and right now they need a place to stay and some clothes to wear. More than that, they need some help, and fast, in the form of donations to her PayPal account. Lea's a proud person so I'm going to ask for her. This is important, and a great chance to do a wonderful thing for a creator who has consistently enriched this industry we all love so much. Please, take a moment and send whatever you can to Lea's PayPal account and help make this time a little bit less painful for someone who would do the same for you if the positions were reversed.
If you're a retailer, I ask that you set up a donations jar. If you're a creator, I ask you to think of how devastating this would be to your career and donate what you can. If you're a reader, I'm asking you to take a moment and hit the PayPal link. You'll be doing something heroic and you'll feel great about it, I promise.
Donate (PLEASE) to her PayPal account at divalea@gmail.com.
Finally, if I understand the story correctly (as told to me by Lea's good friend and current Girl-a-matic editor), it was Lea's daughter hearing the smoke alarm that allowed the family to get out in time, so for God's sake, do everyone you love a favor and CHECK YOUR SMOKE ALARMS.
Thank you so much for helping. Really, any amount you can send will make a difference. That's all I can say.
And also, if you have a blog or a myspace account, please spread this around as best you can. Every little bit will help and every eye that sees this might be someone who donates.
Sincerely and gratefully,
Gail Simone
Nothing I can add to that except that if you've been thinking of making a donation to this website, send it to Lea instead. Our field needs people like her to be drawing and creating, so the sooner she gets her life restored to normal, the better off we'll all be.
Governor Schwarzenegger has vetoed the bill that would have established Universal Health Care in California. Here's the statement he issued explaining why. There may be some argument for his position with regard to the dollar costs — I don't have enough info to calculate that, nor do I have the math skills. But I wonder if anyone at this stage has enough information to evaluate the price tag...or even if it could possibly be worse than what we have now in this country. Where I become suspicious of the reasons for the veto is when he says...
I want to see a new paradigm that addresses affordability, shared responsibility and the promotion of healthy living. Single payer, government-run health care does none of this. Yet it would reduce a person's ability to choose his or her own physician, make people wait longer for treatment and raise the cost of that treatment.
Every time someone in this country opposes any sort of government-controlled health program, they trot out the claims that it would strip people of the right to choose their own doctors and force them to submit to the poking, probing and prescriptions of doctors selected by the government. That was said by those who opposed the national plan proposed by Hillary Clinton in 1993 and it was an outright lie, as anyone who read the plan could clearly see. The bill Schwarzenegger is vetoing is pretty explicit in saying you could choose your own physician. You can see the text of it here.
There's a bit of double-talk in a claim that under a government-run health program you'd be limited in picking your own doctor. Under a system of total free enterprise, you're limited in picking your own doctor, too. In fact, if you can't afford decent medical care, you're very limited. I suppose someone will point out that very rich people — like, say, multi-millionaire actors — can pretty much get the doctor of their choice...but your average Californian cannot. A pretty horrifying percentage of them, when they get sick or injured, have to just go to some hospital's emergency room and wait for hours upon hours to see whoever's on duty and receive a little assembly-line care. A half-dozen times the last year (once for myself, the other times for someone else), I've had to be in those emergency rooms. Anyone who'll tell you the current system isn't broken obviously has not.
As for the claims that the bill he's vetoing would "make people wait longer for treatment and raise the cost of that treatment," I'm also skeptical. I'd love to hear the explanation of why those things would occur. I suspect there isn't one, other than some general distrust of government involvement.
I believe we will soon see the kind of government-run single-payer Universal Health System that Schwarzenegger is nixing and that Republicans have long opposed. We'll see it established in some states, work in those states and then become national. Businesses increasingly want it so they can get the responsibility of employee insurance off their backs. The medical community seems to want it because they see how the present system is not working. Your average citizen/voter either wants it or would if people weren't scaring them with claims that they'll have to go to a doctor they don't like and even then, they'll have to wait months to have that broken leg or bleeding treated.
It'll happen. It's just that a lot of people are going to die or at least suffer from the current, inefficient system before that happens.
To the best of my knowledge, today is not this possum's birthday and I'm not putting this photo up instead of buying him a present. I'm putting it up because I just looked out at my back porch, saw him there and thought you'd enjoy a peek at him.
Today is the birthday of my collaborator and Best Friend (Male Division), Sergio Aragonés. This is a day when I traditionally post a photo of him on my website instead of buying him a present. It's cheaper, I don't have to worry about sizes, and he can't return it.
Some time ago, I began listing "released jokes" here. These are jokes that have been told so often that they've not only lost their humor value but people should be ashamed to use them. In light of all the publicity lately about our solar system and the reclassification of planets, I need to add another one to the list...
...jokes that flow from the fact that "Uranus" sounds like "your anus."
Please stop. Don't do them any more. Don't even explain or alibi or point out that others do it more than you do. Just stop.
More than two years ago on this site, we wished aloud that someone would rerun old episodes of The Dick Cavett Show. More than four months ago, we told you it was about to happen, at least for a few episodes cut down (alas) from 90 minutes to an hour...and those few start airing this Thursday on Turner Classic Movies.
Actually, the first one (which airs this Thursday and again on Sunday) is not a rerun. It's a new episode with Mel Brooks and of course, TCM will surround its airings with a couple of Mel Brooks movies. But then on September 14, we get an old show with Cavett chatting with Woody Allen. On September 21, it's a show from 1971 with Robert Mitchum and then on September 28, TCM will air Cavett's 1972 interview with Alfred Hitchcock. In October, they're running Cavett shows with Bette Davis, Groucho Marx and a two-parter with Katharine Hepburn.
I was also a big fan of Cavett's late night show and always felt ABC made a huge mistake by cancelling him when they did. No, he wasn't sending Johnny Carson to the unemployment line...but neither did anyone else for 30+ years. Cavett's show finished (usually) a respectable second and turned a profit, which is more than can be said for the shows that occupied that time slot for the next few years after he was booted out of it. Perhaps of greater value was that at a time when his network didn't have the most uplifting schedule, The Dick Cavett Show won awards aplenty and garnered critical acclaim.
In later years, I think a lot of network execs would have been thrilled to have a show that did that well against Johnny...but Cavett was working in an environment where being Numero Uno was all that mattered. That was his loss, ABC's loss and our loss. It's nice to see those shows hauled out of the vaults.
While I've got your attention: Very early tomorrow (Wednesday) morning, TCM is running Zenobia, the 1939 movie that stars Oliver Hardy with Harry Langdon but without Stan Laurel. It's not a great film but Hardy's performance makes it worth watching. This is followed by the three "Topper" movies — Topper, Topper Takes a Trip and Topper Returns, all starring Roland Young as the oft-tormented Cosmo Topper. You could do worse than TiVo the lot of them.
Not to be picky, but there is no "non-conspiracy" theory about 9/11. The official Bush explanation is itself a massive conspiracy theory, involving dozens (or more) of extremist Muslim plotters spread from the U.S. halfway across the world to Afghanistan.
I point this out because some people use the phrase "conspiracy theory" merely as a label for explanations they don't like. This is dangerous to encourage, because it predisposes some people to disregard unpleasant explanations out of hand. And given the truth about the Boston Tea Party, the sinking of the Maine, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident (to list a few), we should keep a healthy skepticism regarding "official" explanations.
You're right. There are real conspiracies in this world and I certainly would never believe anything just because the voices that comprise "the government" at some point in time asserted it. On the other hand, I also don't give extra points to any theory just because it wasn't the official explanation. I think some people do, especially when the official version is of no use to them in their personal campaigns. Anyway, I'll try to be more precise about this in the future.
I received an unusual number of messages relating to the commercial I linked to for the Marx Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots. Several people informed me that the version that is currently being manufactured is — in the words of one correspondent — "a scaled-down piece of junk lacking the magnificence of the original toy." Others who wrote said similar things but seemed less outraged.
Someone who didn't sign his name tells me that the boy on the left in the commercial is Bobby Buntrock, who played the kid on the TV series, Hazel. Someone who did (David Oakes) calls my attention to the illustration work of Eric Joyner, especially this print.
Jim Kakalios, who bills himself as "Your Friendly Neighborhood Physics Professor" writes the following...
Of course, there's an easy, elegant solution to the problem of an only child wanting to play Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots...play by mail! You do it just as in chess — each postcard has instructions such as: move red robots left arm two inches forward, etc. Reflexes and timing are de-emphasized and it beomes a true game of strategy! In this way, I became Mid-West regional Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots champion in 1972 — until the damn judges discovered that I had Crazy Glue-ed my robot's head down in place!
Oddly enough, no one wrote about the truly sad moment in the saga of the Rock 'em Sock 'em guys. It began when the Blue Bomber got drunk one night on WD-40 and signed that one-sided management contract with Don King. It ended one night behind a Toys R' Us when, bankrupt and reduced to picking up the occasional buck as a sparring partner for a couple of Transformers, the one-time heavyweight champion (plastic division) took his own life by throwing himself in front of a Big Wheels Tricycle. The whole sordid story stands as a sobering example of what happens when robots turn to a life of violence in the ring.
It's a commercial for the Marx Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots, a toy I never owned. I was 14 when they came out in 1966 so I was a little old for it but I remember a younger kid down the block who was always trying to get me or anyone to "box" with him. I think he sometimes made his mother operate the Blue Bomber and then he'd knock her block off and complain she'd let him win. I wonder if anyone in the toy industry ever did a psychological survey of those who buy toys that can only be played by two or more, contrasted to toys one can play all alone.
The two robots had enormous staying power. After many years out of production, the Red Rocker and Blue Bomber made an amazing comeback. Mattel now manufactures the toy...which looks to me like the exact same design. There can't be a lot of playthings that went away and returned like that, and it's especially amazing in a toy that involved a certain amount of mechanics. You'd think something that came out in '66 would seem technologically ridiculous today...but the fight goes on. Here's one of the TV spots that promoted this epic battle in the first place...
Take a look at this 1996 page from the CNN website. President Bill Clinton is urging Congress to act faster on a package of anti-terrorism bills and the Republicans are balking at expanding presidential powers to wiretap.
Jerry's does a little of his "there's no people like show people" riff, then segues to talking about how he'll be directing The Nutty Professor as a musical for Broadway. He says they're planning on March, year after next, to hit the Great White Way and he brings on Michael Andrew, the "talented young man" who's going to star in the show. Like Robert Goulet before him, Andrew does a Vegasy rendition of a Lerner and Loewe show tune...in this case, "Almost Like Being in Love." Very nice...probably even Broadway caliber. But since Jerry said they're just getting down to the writing of the Nutty Professor musical, I'm a little skeptical about March of '08.
Hour 20 starts with Jerry performing a medley of Al Jolson songs. More shameless pandering to the young.
They come back from an extended local segment for the last ten minutes and Ed McMahon announces the more-or-less final total: $61,013,855. Jerry is emotional, fatigued, overwhelmed, alternately humbled and proud. He sounds, above all, sincere and I can recall a time when he didn't. Something interesting has happened to this telethon in the last decade or so and it's because of Jerry. Back in the seventies, he took a lot of heat for its excesses, its pandering, its promotion of his friends and their careers. But back then, he was just a comedian whose TV shows got cancelled and whose movie career had atrophied. The cause seemed to be promoting Jerry Lewis instead of the other way around.
That was then, this is now. As we've bemoaned on this site before, we're running out of legendary comics. We're going to wake up one morning soon and the Elder Statesman of Comedy will be a Wayans brother.
Benny's gone. Berle is gone and so is George Burns, so is Bob Hope, so is most of a generation of guys who transcended just getting up there and telling jokes. Even Johnny Carson, one generation removed from them, is gone. The other day at lunch, some of us got to naming the great older icons of comedy we have left and I'm afraid it didn't take long: Bob Newhart, Don Rickles, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, five or six others...and Jerry. And depending on when you discovered his work, he may be the biggie.
There was a time when I couldn't watch this telethon but Jerry's mellowed in many ways. He no longer does things that get reviewed so he rarely launches into his little diatribes against critics. He's triumphed over so many medical problems that just making it out onto stage is a triumph of sorts...plus late fatherhood and his new marriage seem to be agreeing with him...and he's reached legend status. So you have a guy with nothing to prove other than that he can still do it. I hope he keeps proving it for a long time.
I think I'm on Hour 15 now. Ed McMahon is back as announcer and Larry King is back to host, not in a tux and not even wearing a funny hat.
We seem to be in a crying hour...people tearing up as they talk of how Muscular Dystrophy or some allied affliction devastated someone's life. I feel better fast-forwarding through these segments since I made my pledge.
A corporate head just handed Larry King a check for $3,000,000. Larry asked the guy tougher questions than he's asked George W. Bush in six years. I also note that Larry's better than Jerry Lewis when it comes to sounding enthusiastic as you introduce a performer you never heard of before.
The Drifters/Coasters/Platters act returns and this time, someone actually manages to mention that they're appearing at the Sahara. These performers are not only good but they've been up all night. They deserve at least a bit of a plug. Looks like they even have a relatively full audience out there to play to, as well. They sing all different songs except for the finale which is, again, "Shout." Ever since National Lampoon's Animal House, it's a felony to not close any R&B oldies performance with that number. Matter of fact, I hear that Kitty Carlisle Hart — who just turned 96 and is still performing — closes her act with that. And then for an encore, she brings out a sledge hammer and smashes a watermelon.
43 minutes into what my clumsy math says is Hour 17, Jerry returns, tanned and rested. He kids around with the producer about the fact that apparently the dancers from the Folies Bergeres at the Tropicana are a no-show. Then he brings out Dean's daughter, Deana Martin, and they sing a duet: The return of Martin and Lewis. Over $37 million now.
The guys from Pittsburgh in the funny hats are back, this time with Jerry. Jerry asks them how long they've been with him on his telethons. One of them replies, "Fifty-one years, Jer," which means they go back with him to when the telethons were local in New York. Jerry says, "And for fifty-one years, you guys have never chosen to fix those damned hats." They give him a check for $425,000 anyway.
18 and a half hours into the telethon, Jerry bring on my pal, Ronn Lucas, who is only the best ventriloquist working today. Ronn gets a decent time slot and a good, personalized introduction. It's a good spot. David Letterman is about to do a week of ventriloquists on his show, probably not because he likes that kind of act but because he thinks they'll be easy to make fun of. I hope they'll book Ronn and I hope Dave lets him just do what does so well.
The Writers Guild isn't making much/any progress gaining coverage of folks who write "reality shows" like America's Top Model...but they have managed to secure representation of writers on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Here are a few (but only a few) more details. This is quite an achievement, given how elusive Comedy Central has been on this issue. One assumes The Colbert Report can't be far behind.
AFTRA, the union that represents on-air performers, is also about to announce a pact with Comedy Central and The Daily Show.
Jerry's still asleep so Tom Bergeron has the com, as they used to say on Star Trek. (Keep in mind that I'm commenting on what's on my TiVo, which is many hours behind what's on live TV. Actually, I think the telethon is over by now but us TiVo owners no longer live in the cruel world where shows start and finish when the stations broadcast them.)
From Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the heads of the Tall Cedars, a group connected somehow with Cedars of Lebanon, have sent representatives. The Supreme Tall Cedar (that's how he's introduced) and an associate have come on to wear funny hats and present Jerry (Tom, actually) with their first check for $300,000. I now see the fashion faux pas I've been making every time I've put on a tuxedo. I've been neglecting to also wear a funny hat. You won't catch me making that mistake again.
Whoa! We're well into Hour 12, I think it is, and suddenly an act is being introduced by Larry King. Where did he come from? No one introduced him. It's just like, all of a sudden, Larry King out of nowhere. He's wearing a tux but no funny hat. He introduces one small-name act and disappears. It's up to Bergeron to introduce a man billed, probably justifiably, as the World's Fastest Balloon Sculptor.
It's kinda like Host Roulette up there. Sometimes, it's Bergeron, Kelly Monaco and/or Bob Zany. Sometimes, it's a pre-tape with Jerry. A fellow named Billy Gilman is shouldering some of the heavy lifting/introducing, while Norm Crosby just popped up again to bring out Robert Goulet. I still don't understand what the hell Larry King was doing there as emcee for all of six minutes. Goulet, in a segment obviously taped earlier, sings a very Vegas version of "On the Street Where You Live" and a less Vegasy "The Impossible Dream." The guy looks pretty good, especially considering he's wearing a tux and no funny hat.
They're losing the narrative thread. Top of Hour 9, Tom Bergeron engages in banter with two Muppet-style puppets, then the latter perform their version of "Bohemian Rhapsody." It's a nice act but I went back and forth on the TiVo and couldn't find any mention of who the puppets were or where they appear or anything of the sort.
They're followed by Barry Manilow singing "I Write the Songs" with voiceover intro by Jerry and cutaways to him waving one of those glowing wands that Manilow audiences wave. It's a clip from a previous telethon but you have to figure that out. Then, fifteen minutes into Hour 9, Ed McMahon announces they're live from Las Vegas...and there's Jerry. Is he back from his nap? No, this is what I saw earlier, when I was up in the middle of the night. They're rerunning material from earlier in the telethon. Interestingly, I don't see any shots of the tote board and I think they've edited out the moments when Jerry and Ed go to check how much they've collected so far.
Shortly after the top of Hour 10, Jerry mysteriously disappears and we're back with Tom Bergeron, Kelly Monaco and Bob Zany...and I guess it's live because we're again seeing the tote board, which is up over 15 million. Still, it must be a snooze for the live audience in Vegas. Half the acts being shown are pre-tapes and between them, there are long stretches of pitches for MDA that are also pre-taped. Bergeron finally brings on Teri Ralston, a wonderful Broadway performer who was in the original production of Company. She offers up a nice preview of a new Broadway-bound show she's doing, Hats. Good performance, terrible time slot.
She's followed (after some plugs) by the ladies of "Fantasy," a show at the Luxor. Usually, I think they have their tops off when they do this number.
If you're going to record any part of this show next year, try to snag the wee small hours of the morning. It's an odd lineup of acts, mostly from Vegas, some of them quite good. I'm watching the performers who drew that coveted 4 AM time slot. Their intro was a bit fuzzy but I think it's the show from the big room at the Sahara in Las Vegas, which is called "The Platters, Beary Hobb's Drifters and Cornell Gunter's Coasters." I'm guessing lawyers worked that out because none of these folks were in the original Drifters or Coasters, and maybe one sang at one time with the Platters. By any name, it's a band of very talented black singers who get the crowd up and dancing to hits of the fifties...
...or at least, the crowd that's there. The audience is pretty enthusiastic — what there is of one. The performers sing "Shout" and try to get everyone up and dancing...but there's only so much you can do with empty seats.
Tom Bergeron is showing us scenes from Las Vegas, explaining how many streets are named for the great entertainers who've played the town. One throughfare was recently named (or maybe renamed) Jerry Lewis Way and the nice thing, he notes, is that it intersects with Dean Martin Boulevard. There's gotta be a joke there: Yeah, and then they split off and don't come together for the next thirty-five years. By the way, Dean Martin Boulevard is the only street in the world where you can get arrested for not driving drunk.
More reruns from earlier in the evening when Jerry was there live. I have to go do stuff so I may not get back to the Love Network for a while. I hope it doesn't read like I'm putting the telethon down because I'm really enjoying it, especially with fast-forwarding. I'll write more about it later.
Kevin Drum, one of my favorite political bloggers, brings us this chart of how median incomes have dropped across the U.S. in the last six years. It's a wonderful answer for those Bush backers who wonder why, with the economy doing "so well," more Americans don't give the administration credit for a great recovery. Maybe it's because it isn't reaching most of them.
I dunno why the Democrats don't build the second tier of their '06 campaign around this issue. The first tier, of course, would be Iraq and whatever other countries we're about to invade. But I can sure imagine a commercial that flashes photos of those execs (especially at oil companies) who are taking home a million bucks a day. Precede it with a quick soundbite of Bush saying how great the economy's doing, then show the execs as a voiceover intones, "It is...but only for Bush's billionaire cronies." Then tick off the list of states from that chart: Down 11.3 in North Carolina, down 12 in Michigan, down 10.4 in Oregon, etc.
It used to be the economy, stupid. Now, it's the war, stupid...and by the way, the economy, too. I'm going back to watching the telethon.
Actually, I seem to be Norm Crosby Blogging right now as I catch up with my TiVoed recording of the telethon. Jerry seems to have gone away halfway through Hour 4 and Norm is hosting. The corporate donors can't be that thrilled to be making their appearances to donate million dollar checks to Crosby instead of to Jerry...and in the middle of the night, no less. I'm guessing it's a trade-off deal: "Okay, I'll do 3 AM with Norm but you have to give me prime-time with Jerry for my next two checks."
If anyone ever sets up a Wikipedia page to define "tough room," they could link to a clip of Bob Zany's performance.
The local telethon segment is hosting a stunt they do each year that always struck me as a tacky context for fund-raising. Over the last few weeks, we are told, criminally big-hearted folks were arrested by MDA deputies and locked up in hoosegows throughout Southern California. They were given cell phones — I think that's supposed to be a pun — to call out and raise bail to earn their release. They fought the law but MDA was the winner. That's right: It's the MDA Telethon Executive Lock-Up and we see mug shots (most behind bars and in prison garb) of business folks who agreed to be prisoners until they could get their associates to donate some undetermined amount of cash to the cause. The background music for the mug shots is "I Fought the Law and the Law Won." I can sure understand why people want to raise money for MDA; just not why someone thought it would be cute to cast them in the role of crooks trying to save their own skins.
Speech after speech urges us to feel compassion and concern for people — children, especially — afflicted with Muscular Dystrophy...and I do. But there are some TelePrompter readings that also make me concerned for the health of Ed McMahon and, on the local segments in Los Angeles, Casey Kasem.
Six and a half hours in and much of the hosting job passes, without fanfare, over to Bob Zany and Tom Bergeron. They're announcing the telethon has topped the eleven million dollar mark. I'm not sure if my donation, made online at the MDA website, will be counted in there.
I think we need a new telethon to find a cure for Louie Anderson's tie.
Louie's performance, along with Bob Zany's, redirects my compassion to comedians who have to work a cold audience that's heavily distracted and sitting way too far from the microphones. Given the house, he does pretty well but it's sharper material than the laughs we're hearing at home would indicate. A writer friend of mine, the late Gary Belkin, used to point to comedians on TV and say, "Lost eyes," meaning that they were getting no sense of audience response and didn't know where to look, who to play to. We could send out a search party for Louie's eyes...that is, assuming they weren't distracted by the tie.
When Bob Zany (who's lost a ton of weight) comes over to thank Louie, it looks like the after-and-before in one of those Leptopril commercials.
I'm TiVoing rapidly through the charity pitches and watching the acts. There are some pretty good ones even if the live audience doesn't seem to know it. There's nothing deader than a Las Vegas audience that didn't pay to get in. I'll report back later.
And I just peeked at what's going on...and what's going on is that they're rerunning earlier hours of the telethon. Is this something new? It's been a few years since I tried to watch the whole thing and back then, they did twenty hours to fill a twenty hour telethon even though it meant others sitting in the host chair while Jerry got his beauty sleep. Is this how they do it now? They do some hours and then they rerun them? Even though the tote board is far, far behind reality?
When you get up in the morning, phone your friend of 35+ years, cartoonist Scott Shaw! Discuss the comic book story the two of you have agreed to do together for an upcoming special anthology and for God's sake, wish the guy a happy birthday! In fact, maybe you can post something cute on your site saying it's Happy Scott Shaw Day...that is, if you can figure out where the exclamation point goes in that phrase. And while you're at it, plug his website, Oddball Comics, and tell people it's full of the zaniest, wackiest comic book covers ever and that they'll have a great time if they click on over and read some of his Oddball Comics Commentaries.
I can't believe I actually got out of bed to post the above. Good night again.
Okay, Mark is confused again. It's the top of Hour 4 where I am and Jerry's getting emotional. He's paying tribute to a woman who used to work for him...Lil Mattis. He describes her as "one of the best lyricists that I had ever heard in our business." It's not clear if she passed away or just left his employ, though his manner would suggest the former. To honor her, he sings "Even Now," a song made famous by Barry Manilow. At the end, he shouts, "Lil Mattis...she wrote that!"
Did she? Really?
I mean absolutely no disrespect to Ms. Mattis but the official songwriter credits for "Even Now," as listed on the sheet music and in the BMI Database, say it was written by Marty Panzer and Barry Manilow. Ms. Mattis was a member of ASCAP and a search of their listing for Lillian Mattis lists only eight songs, including a couple of Jerry Lewis movies and TV shows, along with the lyrics to the title song of the Jack Lemmon movie, How to Murder Your Wife. "Even Now" is not listed among her credits.
So what's the deal here? Did Jerry just pay tribute to Lil Mattis by singing a tune she had nothing to do with and giving her credit for it? Or did he just reveal that she ghost wrote that song and others took credit for it? [UPDATE, years later: Mystery solved.]
Changing subjects slightly: It's hard not to notice that Jerry Lewis has two modes for introducing performers. When he's introducing a pal, he's smiling and loose and urging everyone to go see them and obviously not paying a lot of attention to what's on the TelePrompter. But then along comes an act that's just an act to him, if that. He introduces The Village People with an unenthusiastic reading of the prepared text with no personal Lewis recommendation or plug...and then at the end of a performance pre-taped elsewhere, he doesn't thank them, doesn't say anything at all about them. It's off to the tote board.
Then again, the guys in the once-outrageous costumes who just sang "Macho Man" and "Y.M.C.A." are The Village People in the same sense that Steve Martin is Inspector Clouseau. I'm guessing one original member...two at most.
Okay, here comes Lance Burton. I'm going to watch one of the best magicians in the world, then go to bed. TiVo's getting it all down and I'll resume Jerry watching/blogging tomorrow. Nighty-night.
Did you ever wonder what the toys are doing when no one is watching? Yeah, me neither. But if you're my age or thereabouts (I'm 54 physically, 6 emotionally), you might recall this commercial. Or have had your very own Popeye jack-in-the-box.
(Quick aside: This is my second link to a new video site called Veoh. They offer a program which you can download to your computer and then it will download videos to your hard drive for you. There are some slightly suspicious things about this downloading software. On my system, it kept loading itself into memory and running in the background even when I didn't want it there, so I deleted it. I don't know if it's unsafe or if it was just some anomaly with my computer. Until such time as folks who know more about this kind of thing than I do weigh in, you might want to proceed with caution regarding the Veoh software...but the watching of online videos should be safe.)
Jerry keeps saying it's his fortieth MDA telethon but the website says it's the 41st. My pal Earl Kress phoned to explain why Lewis said it was his 56th telethon. It started as a local event in New York and later went national. So it's his 56th (or so) telethon but his 40th national telecast, give or take a couple. Before Earl called, I was further confused as Jer welcomed some firefighters by saying, "These guys have been with me on the telethon for 52 years." These were New York City firefighters so they started with him on the local broadcasts.
I don't know why I care about this, either.
Jerry just introduced the next musical act...Gary Lewis and the Playboys. How'd they arrange that booking?
I'm a few hours behind the rest of the world but thanks to TiVo, I'm watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon. Jerry looks good but Ed McMahon is a far cry from the guy who used to sit next to Carson and go "Hi-yo!" He starts the festivities by introducing the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman as "the mayor of Los Angeles."
I'm a bit confused, too. Jerry begins by announcing this is his 56th telethon and that it's "officially" the fortieth MDA telethon. I'm not sure what that means but the MDA website says "The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon is the 41st annual Labor Day show."
I'll report back if I notice anything else interesting.
The Batman TV show (the one starring Adam West) went out of production in early 1968. In 1972 or 1974 (accounts vary), Burt Ward got back into the Robin suit and Yvonne Craig redonned her Batgirl tights to film this ad for...well, you'll see what it's an ad for when you watch it. That's Batman producer William Dozier — who narrated the original show — reprising his role, too.
But that is not (repeat: not) Mr. West playing Batman. At the time, he had decided those days were behind him and that he would never again wear the costume or do the Batusi, the better to establish that he could play other parts. So the guy in the bat suit is Dick Gautier, who may be best known to you for playing Hymie the Robot on Get Smart, Robin Hood on When Things Were Rotten and about eight thousand other appearances. Dick, with whom I've had the pleasure of working a few times, is one of the funniest human beings on this planet and also, as you can see on his website, a gifted cartoonist. I always thought that if they'd made a TV series of Will Eisner's The Spirit when Gautier was younger and if James Garner wasn't available — or maybe even if he was — Dick would be the guy.
The clip runs one minute. The person who prepped it for uploading to the Internet has an odd way of spelling the word "commercial" but there's nothing I can do about that so don't complain to me.
A certain segment of the population is always talking about "supporting our troops" and I'm often baffled by what they mean by that. At times, it seems to mean not suggesting their leaders are fallible or that the war is not being fought properly or even not challenging incumbents.
I would think that "supporting our troops" meant — at an absolute minimum — making certain that they have the best possible equipment...to, you know, kinda minimize as much as possible the chance of them being killed. I would also think it would involve paying them a good wage and guaranteeing them the best possible medical care, both during and after their military service.
I would also think it would include doing something about predatory lenders. As recounted in this article, a lot of soldiers are simultaneously trying to serve while struggling with personal debt...and there are people out there who are exploiting this dire situation. It also, of course, suggests that while we might honor the soldiers' service and pray for their speedy and safe return, we sure ain't paying them enough.
One of the reasons this is a problem for our soldiers is that last year, in what many claimed was a bill bought and paid for by the credit card industry, our federal lawmakers made it much more difficult to declare personal bankruptcy. There was an amendment offered to that bill by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to exempt our servicemen and servicewomen from that vulnerability, at least while they were fighting overseas. The amendment was soundly defeated. Someone ought to ask the senators who voted that way if they think "supporting our troops" includes forcing many of them into the hands of loan sharks.
In 1929, MGM began shooting a big, expensive color musical starring Lawrence Tibbett, a performer of grand, operatic presence. The film was entitled The Rogue Song and it was well into production when the studio's ranking genius, Irving Thalberg, decided it was in dire need of corrective surgery. Lionel Barrymore was directing and doing a fine job of proving that a great actor could also be a leaden, uninspired director. The movie lacked many things but what it really lacked was comedy. At the same time, the marketing folks were fretting its commercial appeal, especially overseas where Tibbet was largely unknown. Thalberg decided that both problems could be solved with two additions to the cast — one named Laurel and the other named Hardy.
Not long before, MGM had borrowed Laurel and Hardy from their native habitat — the Hal Roach Studios — to appear in an all-star feature, The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Their presence in that had enlivened the proceedings and been singled out by critics. In light of that, a deal was brokered whereby Roach would again loan their services to Metro...and this time, Hal Roach himself would come along to direct and consult. New scenes were scripted to add the additional characters to the continuity and others were deleted to make room. In one interview years later, Laurel said that Tibbett had actually completed his scenes and returned home to New York when he was summoned to return to Hollywood for additional shooting.
The Rogue Song was released in early 1930 to decent reviews (Tibbett got an Oscar nomination for Best Actor) and a decent box office response, especially overseas. It was not a smash hit but the consensus seems to be that it did a lot better with Laurel and Hardy than it would have without. In some cities, they were billed as its stars even though their total footage count did not warrant that.
How was the film? I dunno. I haven't seen it and neither has anyone else for more than half a century. It is a lost film.
A few pieces of it have turned up here and its sound track exists there but there are no complete prints. Laurel and Hardy fans have fantasized about locating one, not because they expect a masterpiece but because, well, it's a lost film...one of the few gaps in the Stan and Ollie library. Also, apart from one public service short they made in the forties, it was their only appearance before a movie camera loaded with color film. It's hard to remember this since some of their movies have been colorized...but they were all in black-and-white. All except for Tree in a Test Tube (the public service film) and The Rogue Song.
Our clip today is of a bit less than three minutes of The Rogue Song. This may whet your appetite to wish the rest would someday be located or it may make you say "eh" and decide that nothing wonderful has been lost. There isn't much of Laurel and Hardy in these three minutes and one suspects their scenes were shot some time after the surrounding footage. But as we say here at news from me, a little Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy.
A lot of people say they want to know what's going on in Iraq. I'm not convinced some of them do. I think a lot of people (the loud ones, mainly) want to know just enough to support their pre-existing view of the Bush administration. That which does not must be ignored or written off as propaganda or bad/biased reporting.
There are times I think the best way to know what's going on — assuming you really do — is to ignore all the pundits. Ignore the guys on the left who tell you what you should think. Ignore the folks on the right who tell you what you should think. Even — gasp, choke — ignore me. Just look at official documents and give them whatever weight common logic tells you they're worth.
A few days ago, the Department of Defense issued a 63-page report on how things are going in Iraq. I think it's reasonable to assume that the Pentagon is not going to make things sound worse than they are over there. If anything, they will err on the side of spinning events to make things look rosier.
Here is a link to an Adobe PDF of the report. I just went through the whole thing — and while I won't claim I understood every nuance and detail, large chunks of it are perfectly clear...and most of them are not encouraging. Civilian deaths are increasing and spreading over a wider area. Increasingly, citizens are giving their support to insurgent and militia groups that are providing security where the national police forces have failed, and homelessness and displacement have taken a sharp rise. Economic conditions are bad and confidence is low. And this is not some critic of the Bush administration saying all this. This is the Pentagon.
But like I said: Don't listen to me. Read it for yourself. And don't ignore the good news that's in there, either.
The things I do for you people. The other day, I bought a roll of "five flavor" Lifesavers candy...the first roll I've bought in (I'm guessing) 46 years. They were a nickel the last time I purchased one. Now, they're 69 cents and the rolls are just as hard to open as they were then, and I think the Lifesavers themselves are slightly smaller.
Orange does, indeed, seem to be back and the other four flavors are pineapple, raspberry, cherry and watermelon. This is not to suggest they all taste like the corresponding fruits. As one reader of this site, Rob Staeger, wrote me when we were discussing Hostess Orange Cupcakes, "When I was in college, my friends and I realized that they didn't taste like oranges at all. We came to the only logical conclusion: They tasted like the color orange, not the fruit." (The above photo does not seem to be of the current flavor line-up.)
So how do Orange Lifesavers taste these days? I'm afraid I'm not the one to ask. Ever since my Gastric Bypass Surgery, my sweet tooth has gone sour. One of the unexpected changes in my body is that I've lost about 80% of my taste for sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup, especially the latter. Things taste sweet but it's a joyless sweet. Recently, just as an experiment, I tried a few of my favorite cookies and I'm sure they still taste the same to most folks...but it was just a mild pleasure to me, barely worth the effort.
This does not displease me. Losing the fun of sugar is not a bad trade-off for dropping all that poundage. In fact, I'm not sure that a lack of fondness for sugar isn't a very good thing in itself. It's certainly not something I would have imagined I could ever have...but I gave up Pepsi-Cola and other sugary, bubbly soft drinks back in February with surprising ease. In fact, I'll tell you when I did it. It was those four days when I was hospitalized for Cellulitis. I drank no soda in the hospital and didn't miss it. I already knew I'd probably be having the Gastric Bypass Surgery before the year was out, and that it required the abandonment of carbonated beverages and caffeine. So I decided to see if I could keep the soda abstinence going and I haven't popped a pop-top on a pop since.
Which really amazes me. Once upon a time, I went through a six-pack per day and got severe headaches when I tried to withdraw. I didn't think I could give up Pepsi any more than I could give up exhaling. Guess I don't know me as well as I thought I did.
Since the surgery, I can and do eat sugar but it has to be in moderation. If I ingest too much, I am liable to endure an attack they call "dumping." Symptoms include such fun things as bloating, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, weakness, sweating, and rapid heartbeat. I have never experienced this but I have read articles (like this one) from people who have and it sounds like one of those experiences you don't need to ever experience.
But I wasn't afraid to try a Lifesaver. One Lifesaver only contains 10 calories and 2 grams of sugar and I guess it momentarily reminded me of being a kid and getting my bi-annual (birthday and Christmas) gift of Lifesavers from Uncle Nate. 46 years from now, I'll have to try another one. Hope they still have the orange then.
Over on his weblog, my buddy Earl Kress mentions one of my favorite Hanna-Barbera characters...Chopper the Bulldog from the Yakky Doodle cartoons. It got me to wondering how many people know that Chopper was sorta, kinda inspired by the great western actor, Chill Wills.
In 1961 when the Yogi Bear show was in production (with the Yakky cartoons as a segment), Mr. Wills was in the news, at least in Hollywood. The year before, he'd had a showy role in the John Wayne movie, The Alamo, and there was talk of him winning an Academy Award for his performance. Much of this talk came from Chill Wills, who took out a series of costly ads in the Hollywood trade papers, first to tout himself for a nomination and then, after he was nominated, to ask people to vote for him.
In later years, it would become fairly standard to see the pages of Variety and Hollywood Reporter crammed with ads urging members of the Academy to vote this way or that way. At the time though, it wasn't such a well-established industry custom...and even later when it was, the ads would usually not be so personal. Today, there will be pages aplenty suggesting you vote for Nicolas Cage but those pleas are not purchased by Nicolas Cage or signed by him.
The Wills ads struck many as excessive and offensive. In one, he said that the producers of The Alamo were praying as hard for Chill Wills to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the defenders of the actual Alamo had prayed for their lives before battle. Others were worse, though late in the campaign he seems to have realized he was alienating voters and toned it down. After the balloting closed, he took out a full pager that said, "Win, lose or draw, you're all my cousins." This prompted a response ad from Groucho Marx who wrote, "Dear Chill Wills...Am happy to be your cousin but I voted for Sal Mineo." When the envelope was opened, it turned out that most people had voted for their cousin, Peter Ustinov, for his role in Spartacus, and it became industry legend that Chill had put a chill on his own chances with his trade ads. (Twelve years later, the same would be said of the campaign mounted on behalf of Diana Ross for her performance in Lady Sings the Blues.)
So one day in the midst of the voting in '61, Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera and their creative team are working on their newest show. They'd decided to build a cartoon around a little duck character who'd appeared occasionally in their earlier cartoons. He'd been called Itty Bitty Buddy (or Iddy Biddy Buddy) when he'd appeared in earlier H-B cartoons and a slightly different version of the duck had popped up in the Tom & Jerry cartoons that Bill and Joe had directed for MGM. They'd named his newest identity Yakky Doodle Duck and now needed a strong supporting character to play off him. They found a direction for that character when...
Well, if we believe something Barbera once told me — and I'm not saying I do — the phone rang and it was Chill Wills, calling to ask J.B. to vote for him. Joe told me he promised Wills he would, got off the phone and thought, "Gee, what a great voice...and that manner. That's just what our duck needs." Before the day was out, Chopper the Bulldog was born.
Cute story...and maybe it's even true. Or maybe Joe just noticed one of Chill's ads in Variety and that provided the inspiration. A lot of Hanna-Barbera characters started with some reference point to a comedian or character actor — Jimmy Durante for Doggie Daddy, Bert Lahr for Snagglepuss, Joe E. Brown for Peter Potamus, etc. Either way, Chill Wills inspired Chopper.
Since an Academy Award Nominee wasn't about to do voicework for what Hanna-Barbera paid, an actor with a similar vocal quality had to be found. Joe Barbera looked as far as Channel Five on his TV, hiring the local Bozo the Clown, the gravelly-voiced Vance Colvig, Jr. Vance was a second-generation Bozo. His father was Vance "Pinto" Colvig, the first Bozo on records and on local TV. Below is a photo from the 1989 Al Yankovic movie, UHF. That's Vance in the center with the money...and I'm sorry I couldn't find a better photo of him.
(Finding the voice of Yakky Doodle was a little harder. For that, Barbera had to go all the way over to Channel Thirteen...to an afternoon kids' show called Cartooneroony, hosted by "Uncle" Jimmy Weldon and his duck puppet, Webster Webfoot. Weldon did a great duck voice for Webster and it also became the voice of Yakky.)
And that's about all I have to contribute to the subject of Chopper the Bulldog. Yeah, I know: A lot more than you wanted to know. But that's what the Internet is for.
[UPDATE: Jim Engel just sent me an e-mail asking me if the Chopper characterization wasn't based on the Wallace Beery role in the movie, The Champ. He's right and I meant to mention that. But the character started with the Chill Wills voice, the same way The Jetsons started out to be based on The Life of Riley and turned somewhat into Blondie along the way. So I guess I did have more to contribute.]
Jerry Lewis is doing his 41st Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon this weekend. The entire network telecast from Las Vegas is 21 and a half hours but some cities only run portions of it and some let their local segments lengthen the broadcast. In Los Angeles, for instance, the entire show will run 23 hours on KCAL Channel 9...I think. My TiVo is somewhat confused because the schedule has the festivities broken into four separate parts. The first and third are called The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon while the second and fourth are called The 2006 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon (Cont'd). If you want to record the whole thing, you need to mark all four sections.
Thanks to my little satellite whatzis, I can also watch on it WGN in Chicago. They're running fifteen hours of it, then they go away for a baseball game. The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs are currently locked into a life-and-death struggle for last place in the National League Central Division and you don't want to miss that. After they duke it out, the station will cut back to Jer for around two and a half hours.
Wanna know about guests? The following is from a press release...
MDA National Chairman and Telethon star Jerry Lewis, joined by anchor Ed McMahon and co-hosts, Jann Carl, Tom Bergeron, Norm Crosby, Billy Gilman, Larry King, Tony Orlando and Bob Zany. This year's on-air talent includes Celine Dion, Paul Anka, Goo Goo Dolls, Lee Greenwood, Dave Matthews Band, Joshua Bell, Jo Dee Messina, Daddy Yankee, Cheap Trick, Rita Rudner, Neil Patrick Harris, Ray Romano, William Shatner, Donald Trump, Sean Hayes, Lance Burton, Clint Holmes, Louie Anderson, George Wallace, Julie Roberts, Maureen McGovern, George Clinton, Village People, the casts of Phantom of the Opera, Shout, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Color Purple and The Wedding Singer and more.
Not bad...but still a far cry from the days when Sinatra would come on to sing and would bring along his friend, Dean Martin. I linked to a fuzzy and brief clip of that moment here but we now have access to a longer version that includes more of the performances before and after. Here's Part One, which you may or many not want to skip. It's Frank singing before bringing Dino on and it runs a little over eight minutes...
And now, here's Part Two, in which Sinatra brings Dean onto the stage and the audience goes understandably crazy. This part runs a little under ten minutes...
Finally, here's Part Three, which is mostly Dean Martin carrying on for four minutes. I suspect an alien from another planet could watch this and find it hard to believe the man ever made a living as a professional entertainer...but I still enjoy watching Dean even when he's phoning it in from the wrong area code. There will be nothing like this on this year's telethon but there will be Shatner. That's something.
A new Fantastic Four cartoon show is about to debut. I have no idea if it'll be any good but its press releases are a little screwy. Here's an excerpt from one of them...
The original 1967 animated action-adventure series, THE FANTASTIC FOUR, premiered on ABC with 19 half-hour episodes produced by Hanna-Barbera in association with Marvel Comics. The complex characters were conceived by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who then enlisted the help of Hanna-Barbera to create a half-hour broadcast network series. It was faithful to the source, featuring plots and characters straight from the original comics series and complete with character designs from the late acclaimed artist Alex Toth.
Itemizing the bad phraseology may be unnecessary for readers of this site but just in case: The Fantastic Four property was indeed created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby...but it was created in 1961 with Kirby handling the character designs and no Hanna-Barbera involvement. Years later, a cartoon show was produced by H-B, which is when Mr. Toth's design work was done in '67 as he distilled the Kirby models down for animation purposes, not as part of the creation of the characters. Also, there were twenty episodes (not 19) produced.
I never know what to make of things like this. Even if they handed the job of writing the press release to someone who knew nothing about the comic book or its first animated version, you could find all this info with about two minutes of Googling. The show is financed by a French studio and produced over there so I'm guessing the problem is that the press release was authored in that language and then someone did a bad translation job. Makes you wonder if wars don't sometimes get fought because of mistakes of this sort.
Today is the eightieth birthday of one of the world's great comic artists, Gene Colan.
Gene is one of those guys who was so prolific in comics that we all took him for granted. I have the theory that if he'd only drawn a couple dozen stories in the sixties and then disappeared, fans would still be haunting the newsstands with glazed eyes, wondering aloud, "When is he coming back?" Instead, Gene just did good, solid work from when he got into the field (around 1944) until...gosh, he's still drawing the occasional story so I guess it's 62 years and counting.
For about the first ten years of that incredible career, his work was okay but unremarkable. Some time around '54 — I think it was on a Tuesday — he seems to have suddenly decided to stop drawing the way everyone else was drawing (in order to please editors) and to start drawing like himself (to please himself). That was when the Gene Colan we know and love was really born. By the late fifties, he had a style that was all his own...and one reason it was all his own was that most other artists didn't draw well enough to replicate it. He seized control of dark and light in his panels, working in and out of shadow and posing his people so that even when what they were saying or doing was a yawn, you were at least mesmerized by the way they were lit. Dull scripts — and he was handed hundreds — sparked to life and his people actually breathed, right there before your eyes on the cheaply-printed comic book page.
In the mid-sixties, he began applying all this to Marvel Super-Hero comics, becoming the first guy in the place to break significantly with the Jack Kirby template...yet he still managed to do what Jack did: Make everything he drew interesting. He worked on almost every franchise in the place but most notably on Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Daredevil, Dr. Strange and (later and perhaps best), Tomb of Dracula. His delicate pencil work was inked by just about everyone who came within a block of the Marvel offices but most didn't understand the unique approach he was taking, working not in line and not in tone but in some middle ground of his own invention. I loved the work at the time but later, as I become more familiar with his pencil art, I came to realize how we only got 40%-60% of what he put into his pages. His best inkers — the Tom Palmers, the Frank Giacoias, etc. — managed to retain maybe 75%. Even Gene, on those rare occasions when they'd let him ink his own work, could only manage to keep 90%. He really was and is an incredible craftsman in graphite, and it's unfortunate that he did so much of his art at a time when comic book printing techniques were unworthy of him.
I've been fortunate to work with Gene on one or two occasions and would drop everything to do it again. Stan Lee wasn't kidding when he dubbed the guy "Gentleman Gene" because Colan truly is a gentleman, along with being a gentle man. He was never loud. He was never flashy. Those who worked with him rarely heard him complain. He just hunkered down and drew comics about as well as they can be drawn.
If you're a fan, drop by The Official Gene Colan Website. There, you can read a bio and interviews and see many examples of Gene at his best. You can also see the wonderful sketches he's now doing and if you're smart, order one...and there's also an e-mail link there if you'd like to drop Gene a note and wish him a happy birthday. Or even eighty more.
I always loved these expensive promos that networks used to do to "sell" you on their new fall season. The idea always seemed to be to embed the notion — which I doubt any sentient human being ever bought — that there was something so wonderful and hip and crowd-pleasing about their schedule that you should just leave your dial tuned to their station all year. I'm sorry they so rarely make these spots these days. You always got a catchy jingle — to the point where many of them would reverberate in your skull, long after the shows they were trying to sell had been cancelled. And as in this one, you often got the spectacle of the season's stars participating, smiling like they really want to be a part of it all. Here's what ABC did in 1978 along those lines.
October 1, 2006
