This is funny. A few years ago, I purchased the book, Here's Morgan!, via Amazon. This is the autobiography of humorist Henry Morgan. Most of you know Morgan from his years as a panelist on the game show, I've Got a Secret. But he also did some very fine and clever programs on both radio and TV. Much of the humor in the early issues of Mad was inspired by Henry Morgan.
Anyway, I just received this e-mail from Amazon...
We've noticed that customers who have expressed interest in "Here's Morgan!" by Henry Morgan have also ordered "Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign" by Stephan Talty. For this reason, you might like to know that Stephan Talty's "Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign" is now available. You can order your copy for just $18.96 ($5.99 off the list price) by following the link below.
In other words: Since you were interested in Henry Morgan, the radio humorist, we assume you're interested in Sir Henry Morgan, the seventeenth century pirate. This is the same expert use of computers that causes our National Security people to arrest and torture the wrong person because they have the same name as the right person.
Vince Waldron suggested — and he's right — that this column by Rosa Brooks says all the salient things that the Christopher Hitchens column says about the Virginia Tech shooting, and says it with more understanding.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher seems to have inherited Bob Dornan's old job of being the looniest guy in the House of Representatives. The other day, at a meeting of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, he was trotting out the old line about how anyone who disagrees with his positions must hate America. At one point when the audience moaned at one of the sillier things he said, he told them, "Well, I hope it's your families, I hope it's your families that suffer the consequences." At one point, he said the following...
...we are at war, and we've got to make sure that we do not let go fifty terrorists who will go out and plant a bomb in London and kill 20,000 people in order to protect that one person who we arrested accidentally because his name was the same.
I don't fully disagree with this position...but the problem is that we don't just arrest the wrong people. Sometimes, we arrest and torture the wrong people. I don't think we should be torturing anyone. I have yet to hear an argument that it accomplishes anything positive at all, let alone anything that justifies losing the moral high ground. But if there is a reason to torture, it probably won't apply to torturing the wrong person.
Should we tolerate torturing the wrong person just because they have the same name as the right person? I don't know...but I do know it's an easy position to take if your name is Dana Rohrabacher. Somehow, I don't think he'd feel quite the same way if his name was Bob Johnson or Joe Smith.
This is one you may not want to click on but you should be made aware it's there. Roger Ebert, out of the hospital and awaiting still more surgery, has written an article about why, though his illness has made him look quite bad, he is not going to hide out. The man is unable to speak and a section of his mandible has been removed...but he is still planning on attending his upcoming film festival. The piece is accompanied by photos of the guy that will break your heart even though he's happily giving the "thumbs up" sign, which I guess is now more of an affirmation of positive thinking than a movie review.
Okay, I've given you sufficient warning. If you still want to read the article, it's here.
Christopher Hitchens rarely makes me feel that he is writing out of conviction and not, say, to cultivate a certain Angry Gadfly reputation. Every so often though, his nasty screeds say something that I think ought to be said, if only so it can be considered. This essay, which is about the national mourning of the Virginia Tech massacre, is one such entry.
My friend/mentor/hero Jack Kirby was involved in a number of odd projects in his life, especially in the eighties when he was more or less out of conventional comic books. One was a motion picture proposal called The Lord of Light, based on Roger Zelazny's book of the same name. For it, he did a pile of concept sketches as well as some designs for a proposed theme park related to the proposed movie. Above is one drawing of what the theme park might have looked like. (The odd part is that as wild and untethered to reality as Jack's imagination was, it might have been fairly simple to build buildings that looked like his did. His world had balance and mass and structure.)
The film never got made but it was apparently helpful in the freeing of six Americans who were trapped in Iran. This article tells the whole bizarre story.
Ed McMahon, you may be interested to know, has been intermittently touring the U.S. with a one-man show called "Tonight Show Memories." Here, we have a link to a piece about him in Chicago with it, including a video interview. Thanks to Jeff Abraham for the tip.
Wanna hear a radio show discussing animation history? Better still, wanna hear one that doesn't feature me (although I may call in and be part of the discussion)? Well, two eminent cartoon scholars will be the guests this Wednesday on Stu's Show, which is heard only on Shokus Internet Radio. Each week, my pal Stu Shostak welcomes either someone prominent in entertainment history or me to his microphones and this Wednesday, he has two terrific guests.
One is Jerry Beck, who's one of the brewmasters of Cartoon Brew, maybe the best animation weblog on the 'net. Any time you see a great DVD collection of cartoons these days, the odds are good that it exists and is as good as it is because Jerry talked the appropriate folks into doing it and doing it right. He's too humble to say this so I will.
The other is Keith Scott, who's one of the top announcers and voiceover guys in Australia, along with being the world class expert on animation voice history and on the Jay Ward studio. Keith not only knows everything there is to know about Bullwinkle J. Moose, he is Bullwinkle J. Moose. After the passing of the character's original voice, Bill Scott, Keith (no relation) took over the role and now they fly him in from Down Under when they need the eminent moose to speak. It's an uncanny replica...as I'm sure you'll hear for yourself if you tune in Stu's Show.
I suggest you do this on Wednesday. An awful lot of folks who've listened to Stu on my recommendation have told me they really enjoyed it. The show airs on the Internet for two hours, beginning at 4 PM on the West Coast, which is 7 PM on the East Coast. To hear it, click over to Shokus Internet Radio, select an audio browser and then listen. The show repeats at that time for several days after but you'll enjoy it more if you listen live. Trust Mark on this.
Here's five minutes from a 1950 Burns & Allen TV show. It's a dance spot featuring George Burns, someone named Harrison Muller...and the legendary Bob Fosse. Mr. Muller was a Broadway dancer at the time and his son (of the same name) has achieved some success as a star in action movies. For some reason, I just like watching Fosse dance, even though this isn't Fosse-style dancing. George ain't so bad, either.
April 25, 2007
