Friday, April 27, 2007

Friday Afternoon Report

Had a nice time today at the Hollywood Collectors Show out in Burbank. I spoke to many of the folks I mentioned would be there and encountered many other persons of interest in the aisles. Got Mickey Rooney to sign a copy of his autobiography (the first one — he's done two) and bought Bill Marx's new bio about his life as a musician and his father's as a comedy legend. It's called Son of Harpo Speaks.

Mr. Rooney seemed surprisingly healthy but a bit disoriented by the crowds. Hard to believe that at age 86 — he'll be 87 in September — the man has been in show business for more than 84 years. I heard someone today describe Sid Caesar as an "old-timer" and he is. But Mickey Rooney was a performer before Sid Caesar was born.

Oddly enough, Rooney wasn't the oldest actor in the room today, nor was he the shortest. Jerry Maren, who was born eight months before The Mighty Mick, was wandering around. Maren was in his late teens when he played a member of the Lollipop Guild in The Wizard of Oz, and you saw him in a video clip here the other day playing Buster Brown.

My friend Earl Kress and I had a nice chat with Mally Lewis, daughter of famed ventriloquist Shari Lewis. Mally has been carrying on the family tradition, performing (and doing a fine job) with Lamb Chop. Actually, the whole place was full of interesting folks...but not too full today. The longest lines seemed to be for Rooney, Henry Winkler, Erik Estrada, Joey Heatherton and Seka. Most but not all of those folks are scheduled to be there tomorrow.

• Posted at 6:18 PM · LINK

Lightweight Topic

Back here, we linked you to the website of a new company that takes people on short, expensive air flights in which they get to experience weightlessness and other variations in gravity. As you may have seen on the news, renowned Cosmologist Stephen Hawking recently took such a flight.

So did Teller of the team of Penn & Teller. Here's a short essay he wrote about his experiences.

• Posted at 5:50 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Rosa Brooks says we shouldn't be as afraid of terrorism as a lot of us are. I think she's right.

• Posted at 5:39 PM · LINK

Busy, Busy, Busy...

...as Billy DeWolfe used to say. And on what other blog today are you likely to see a Billy DeWolfe reference?

Last night, I was out in the Valley for the first of what may be a regular — every other month or so — informal gathering of Animation Writers. My pal Steve Marmel threw it together. No speeches, no agenda. We just all go to a restaurant en masse for food and beverage. This one was at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Burbank, which I guess is a nice place if you like the beers they make. I never touch the stuff and I almost couldn't handle the hamburger or the noise, either. Still, I had a good time mingling with around seventy of my colleagues and will go to more of these, if and when Steve arranges them.

Then today, it's back out to Burbank for the Hollywood Collectors Show, where the Great and the Near-Great sell autographed photos and other memorabilia. Among those scheduled to appear today and/or tomorrow are Henry Winkler, Mickey Rooney, Brinke Stevens, Gregg Berger, Kelli Maroney, Nastassja Kinski, Traci Lords, Erik Estrada, Tom Bosley, Alan Oppenheimer, Monique Parent, Henry Silva and Joey Heatherton. I always find the attendees at least as interesting as the featured guests so I expect to have a good time.

Tomorrow, I'm heading for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books up at U.C.L.A. There, I will make my way to lecture halls I always tried to avoid when I was a student on said campus, and I will hear authors discuss their current books. One, I expect, will be Joe Conason, who's among my current favorite political reporters and commentators — a list that is hard to get on and harder still to stay on. Mr. Conason has a good article today over at Salon, all about Rudy Giuliani's silly "elect Democrats and die" remarks of the other day. I was already thoroughly disappointed by John McCain when he started renouncing past positions to try and get the support of the hard right-wing. It's sad to see Giuliani going the same route.

Sunday, I expect to spend writing and then Monday, it's back out to Burbank (again!) to do another one of those interviews for a special feature on an upcoming DVD. At this rate, I'm going to be on more DVDs than copy protection. I'll report on some or all of these events as they happen. And then I'll try not to go to Burbank again for the rest of '07.

• Posted at 10:14 AM · LINK

Another Interesting Statistic

On June 7, 2005, I posted the following item on this weblog...

George W. Bush's approval rating is now a full twenty points lower than Bill Clinton's was on the day he was impeached.

Quite a few people wrote me to express amazement at this. It was true, of course, but it was also amazing. I wonder what those people think now that Bush's approval rating is forty points lower than Bill Clinton's on the day he was impeached.

• Posted at 2:15 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The Three Stooges — colorized within an inch of their lives — lead a classroom in "The Alphabet Song." I never quite understood the premise of the tune, either. But it is kinda catchy.

• Posted at 1:57 AM · LINK