Monday, January 15, 2007

Still Time To Get A Bet Down...

This is about the ninth time in the last twenty years we've been told Fidel Castro was on the verge of death. They're bound to be right eventually.

• Posted at 9:55 PM · LINK

So Here's What I Wanna Know...

Has no one told George W. Bush that every time he makes a "major policy address" to the nation, his popularity goes down?

That's what I wanna know.

• Posted at 7:50 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

A couple of readers have sent me info on books that argue that O.J. Simpson was innocent of the double murder. They're pretty obscure, small press books that received no attention because their conclusions (most pinned the killing on Mark Fuhrman or on Simpson's son Jason) were so inane and poorly supported. The point is that O.J. Simpson never got behind any alternate theory of the killings, nor did F. Lee Bailey or any of Simpson's other attorneys, nor did any prominent journalist or anyone with a smidgen of credibility. If one of them had crafted even a semi-logical case, they could have cleaned up. But no one could.

Regarding the movie Stop! Look! And Laugh!, a person who wishes to remain anonymous sends the following...

Is it possible there are two versions? I had never seen the movie until one Saturday afternoon, around 1984, when it was being broadcast on the old WNEW Metromedia station, in New York. I was paying special attention to the Winchell-Mahoney-Knucklehead Smiff scenes, as I had fallen in love with the performer, and his characters, nearly two decades earlier. But in the movie, when Winch left the kitchen, I was stunned, as the Jerry Mahoney puppet got up from the breakfast table, and walked to the sink, in full view of the camera...

Obviously, it was a little person, or child, in a Jerry Mahoney wardrobe, and rubber mask, but it was still almost kind of chilling, if only because of the surprise. When the movie was next broadcast, a couple of years later, I set the VCR to record it — more for the wonderful Winchell scenes, than anything else. I had the Stooges shorts, and really wanted a copy of the amazing — to me, at least — Jerry walks sequence. But when I checked the tape, WNEW had shortened the dining room material, cutting the scene out.

Years later, when I encountered a bunch of hard-core Stooges fans on the internet, they told me they had never seen the scene I described. And when I bought Stop! Look! And Laugh!'s prerecord, the sequence was also gone. Do you, or any of your readers, recall any such scene?

I don't, at least in that movie. I do recall an episode of The Jack Benny Program that creeped me out when I was a small boy. Jack visited Edgar Bergen at his home and saw Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd walking about. (They were both reportedly played by Billy Barty in masks.) It was very bizarre.

I have a vague memory of Winchell doing something similar on some show, though I have the feeling it may have been not a small person in a mask but a marionette. Perhaps someone with better info will write in and tell us.

• Posted at 7:40 PM · LINK

If I Did It (and Mistyped...)

Lots and lots of messages this morning telling me I'm lunkheaded (or other, politer terms) to believe that California does not have a Statute of Limitations on the crime of murder. Sorry, I mistyped. I thought I was typing, "...a Statute of Limitations on being an accessory to murder." Apparently, we do have one of those and it's three years. So if O.J. Simpson did have an accomplice in the grisly double killings, that person can't be charged. Come to think of it, even if he could, how do you charge Man #2 with helping Man #1 commit a murder even though Man #1 was acquitted?

Aah. It's all moot because of the three year limit and also because you couldn't prove Man #2 was even there. The evidence is non-existent and Simpson isn't about to take the stand and say, "Yeah...if I did it, that's the guy who got rid of the knife and bloody clothes for me." This is even assuming there was such an accomplice and that authorities could identify him, both of which I doubt.

I did predict that Simpson would disavow the contents of the book and especially that chapter as being wholly the work of the ghostwriter. Apparently, as David Seidman and others are noting in e-mails to me, he already has.

But while I'm back on this topic I wish I could get out of my head, let me mention one of the eight thousand things that helped convince me of Simpson's utter guilt in the whole matter. Usually in this world, when there's any sort of belief that is disseminated, there's an opening for the opposite belief, even if (maybe especially if) it's totally counter-intuitive. If the official version of how Kennedy was shot is "X," there's an audience for "Not X." Some part of the population is naturally drawn to any position that is framed as "Everything the general public believes is wrong." Maybe it's cynicism, maybe it's curiosity, maybe it's a desire to not want to believe what the masses believe. Maybe there's even truth to be found by tackling the issue from that viewpoint. But it's always there, that yearning for the other, "real" story.

There was a wide-open market and money to be made with a serious book that argued, with any kind of coherent arrangement of known facts plus a lot of speculation, that Simpson didn't commit the murders. The Geraldo-like talk shows would have booked its author with sufficient gusto to promote such a book onto the Best Seller list. True, whoever wrote it would have taken a lot of personal abuse and looked like an idiot to much of the population...but you do that if you write a book these days arguing that George W. Bush knows what he's doing, and people are still coming out with those. The Ann Coulters of the world make tons of money and receive other perks, advancing positions that cause much of America to hate them.

Just before and for a year or three after the Simpson acquittal, you did have prominent folks around asserting that he didn't do it, that he couldn't have done it, that the real killers would soon be found, etc. They could maintain this position for a few minutes on Larry King Live because they could say "The proof is coming." But none of them could write the book that included that proof. The case would not have to have been airtight. It could have leaked like one of those Seal-a-Meal vacuum-containers I once bought off an infomercial...but even then, none of them could come up with even a semi-credible alternate theory of who did knife those two people if O.J. didn't. I think F. Lee Bailey and one or two other members of the so-called "Dream Team" even announced tentative publication dates for such a book — and of course, Simpson announced his intention to clear his name with one —

— but there was no book. Even though there was money to be made, no one made that case.

Simpson says he went along with this If I Did It project because he needed the money. I can believe that. What I can't believe is that he wouldn't have made even more if he'd written the book that even came close to proving someone else butchered Nicole and Ron. Gee, I wonder why he didn't write that one.

• Posted at 10:50 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I don't want to oversell this movie — Stop! Look! And Laugh! — because it's really quite missable. But here's the trailer for it. Notice that someone thought it would be funny to throw a pie at one of the Marquis Chimps.

• Posted at 2:20 AM · LINK

January 16, 2007 • Current • January 14, 2007